Canned Dogs

As many already know, there are currently many DVDs out in Japan featuring junior idols under the age of 15 doing various.activities. Angel Production, a company specializing in junior idols, has decided that 10 year olds were not enough and has released a DVD featuring a 4 year old model.

I already thought the junior idol industry was horrible, but using a 4 year old is going over the top. This is vol.1 in the “kindergarten series” too, so they will probably continue to produce even more DVDs from this age range. I guess it’s at least of some comfort that these DVDs aren’t porn, but man, what are their parents thinking!

Ys Online: The call of Sollum has opened registrations to all players for the period from 30th April to 2nd May. It is currently on it’s 3rd closed beta phase, though I guess open beta should be soon… Ys Online is a online game based on Falcom’s famous action RPG series.

Edit: Also I actually mean that players that sign up now can only play from the 30th of April till 2nd May. I did not mention that clearly.

Doujin circle Subtle Style has released a trailer movie for their 2D fighting game, Akatsuki Blitzkampf. The game will be released today at the doujin convention COMIC1. You can also get the demo here. It’s not bad, its the sequel to Akatsuki Shisei Ichigou.

Kyoto animation has announced that the current Lucky Star director, Yamamoto Yutaka, will be stepping down as Lucky Star director and changing hands with Takemoto Yasuhiro. The reason for the change was because Yamamoto was not good enough as a director apparently.

Takemoto Yasuhiro directed Fumoffu, Second Raid, and Komugi 1,2. He’s pretty good. But seriously, the original manga wasn’t that interesting in the first place. Changing directors might not change much.

Also I guess they already did the change a long time ago, or they wouldn’t be able to change directors within one episode at this point in time… unless it’s all a joke to parody Gainax.

Gusto is a family restauraunt chain with approximately 1,045 branches in Japan. A part time employee of a Gusto branch in Yokosuka has been found on mixi saying that the store was filled with very disgusting morning musume otaku today and the employees had goosebumps and stuff.

The main reaction on 2ch is “they’re right, can’t help it”. End.

Well actually one of the morning musume boards, the Haropuro board(also known as wolf board), is trying to organize for all the morning musume otaku to go to the Yokosuka Gusto everyday and try to stay in there for as long as they can. They plan to do this by going into the restauraunt and ordering food and drinks and taking their time. It will probably annoy the employees a lot. The world is peaceful today.

Comic Birz has announced on their website that the final chapter for Rozen Maiden will be published in next month’s issue. Rozen Maiden has been missing in action from Comic Birz for the past 4 months since Peach Pit had issues with the editorial team for Comic Birz in December.

This is only the final chapter for Comic Birz however, and one can expect that Rozen Maiden will be popping up in another magazine elsewhere. It has been rumoured since december that the fallout was because the editor lost the original copy of the latest chapter(which is very serious). However Peach Pit also wrote on their blog that they were having problems with the editor making very serious mistakes when putting the text into the manga, such as wrong punctuations, additional words that were not in the original, completely different names from the original, and even writing Souseiseki as “little brother”. Apparently the editor had not properly checked the names in the manga in the 3 years since they started.

Japan’s foreign minister Asou Tarou will crush Comic Birz when he hears about this. Not that they’ll need any crushing once Rozen Maiden leaves the magazine.

Both the limited edition and the normal edition of Toki wo kakeru shoujo DVD has topped the Oricon weekly charts. Yeah, it was obvious it would. No, I didn’t have anything better to write about.

The weekly web magazine Red Road has started on the 27th and will update with new chapters every friday. It currently features the weekly web visual novel Midnight Virgin and web manga Aoi sekai no chuushin de. The latter being done by popular doujin artist Crimson from Crimson Comics.

Personally I don’t like Crimson at all, but he is good with picking popular stuff to draw erodoujin and gaining popularity. I doubt his attempt with drawing normal manga will go well however. “Ku… kuyashii”

The ever popular moe english learning textbook, Moetan, has updated the official site announcing that Moetan will be made into an anime. I have a feeling it’ll suck, but maybe if they have great phrases like “My ultimate weapon is the China cannon attached to my groin”…

Akai Takami has announced on the official Gainax website that he will be stepping down as producer of Gurren Lagann and from the Gainax Board of Directors to take responsibility for his actions in having insulted all the Gurren Lagann viewers and 2ch. He regrets having to step down from producer of Gurren Lagann in this way, having worked on it for 5 years, but he believes that the younger staff working on it will be able to continue to make the anime successful as it is. His name has been removed from the Gurren Lagann credits as of episode 5. Akai Takami was one of the founding members of Gainax.

Mimori Keiko and Akai Takami have also both put up letters of apology on their mixi and Mimori Keiko has closed her mixi blog where all of this happened. All these just in time too, I was getting really worried that something bad would happen at the Gurren Lagann event at Akihabara tomorrow if they did not take any action regarding the matter.

There still are some who are unsatisfied however, because Mimori Keiko did not receive any punishment, and Akai Takami is still with Gainax.

This is a follow up to the Gainax trouble mentioned here and here.