Canned Dogs

Eroge maker KeroQ has announced Terebi no kieta hi through their newly formed sister brand, PetitKeroQ. I guess this means they are no longer interested in making Kage to kage 2, which they announced in 2005 May before they seemingly stopped all development.

For a while I kept wondering when they would announce that KeroQ was closing, since they haven’t released any games in the last 3 years and they seemed to be focusing all their attention on Makura…

A little late, but Peach Pit had updated on their blog that Vol.8 of Rozen Maiden will contain only chapters 41 to 43 and have no new art(usually common in a tankoubon to have some extras). It’s not known if that means the cover will also reuse older art. The book will be out on the 23rd of June.

The latest issue of Champion RED has announced in celebration of their 5th anniversary that in the next issue, they will be packing a CD of Wakamoto Norio reading “Mumyou sakanagare”, the first chapter from the novel of which the manga Shigurui was loosely based on.
Via: Daienjou

Teatime has put up the webpage for their upcoming eroge, Love Death 2. Lots of people held back from buying Illusion’s Schoolmate because the graphics on the demo for this game looked a lot better…

Lucky Star’s opening song, “Motteke! Sailor fuku” has continued to stay in the higher rankings of the oricon chart and has managed to rank 17th in the weekly singles chart even on the 4th week after the original date of its release and selling 7,262 units on week 3.

With the sales figures from week 3, the song has amassed a total of 113,115 in sales, making it the best selling seiyuu song since 2000. For reference these are the top 5 best selling seiyuu songs for singles released since 2000:

113,115 units - Motteke! Sailor Fuku by Hirano Aya etc
110,570 units - Over Soul by Hayashibara Megumi
109,777 units - Akatsuki no Kuruma by FictionJunction YUUKA
109,300 units - Suzumiya Haruhi no Tsumiawase by Hirano Aya, Gotou Yuuko
106,466 units - Hare hare yukai by Hirano Aya, Chihara Minori, Gotou Yuuko

This list only counts songs that are by seiyuu however, there are anime songs by people who are singers by profession that sell more than the ones listed. Much more in fact.

Via: The Natsu Style

Warner Brothers has announced that Oshii Mamoru is making a new movie called The Sky Crawlers and it will be in cinemas in 2008. The movie is based on the novel of the same name by Mori Hiroshi. Oshii’s last anime movie was Innocence, which aired in 2004.

Via: Yomiuri Online

Gigazine has got some shots of the moetan anime up, the art seems to look a lot better than the stuff that were on the anime’s official site…

The staff blog for Makoto Shinkai’s Byousoku 5 centimeter has announced that to celebrate the DVD release of Byousoku 5cm, they will be putting up Hoshi no koe and Kumo no mukou, yakusoku no basho for the public to watch for free via streaming video for a limited time. You’d need to have a Japanese IP however.

According to Sankei Shimbun, the Nippon Maid Association is on track to start their maid seminars in September and their maid test in December. The test will involve questions such as how the maid should react when a customer says the coffee is too hot.

The Nippon Maid Association was last mentioned here. I’d thought they had died out when they didn’t update their site, but I guess they’re still on track. Maids that qualify for the test will get introduced to potential employers in the industry, I wonder if this will gain importance in the coming years…

According to a survey by web portal site Goo, maid cafes take the the number 1 spot which people both males and females alike do not want to enter when alone, beating out even spots like lingerie shops for guys and all-you-can-eat restaurants for women.