Canned Dogs

Wonderfest, the largest garage kit event in Japan which is held twice a year, is slightly different from Comic Market in that you actually have to apply for a one-day license from the copyright holders if you wish to sell a figure of a copyright character.

Wonderfest winter 2008 is just 2 days away now, but according to Japanese blog nekolog, dealers that were planning to sell Hatsune Miku figures had some problems with getting the one-day license for Hatsune Miku, and a number of them were not granted the license.

The conditions for receiving the license are too difficult for amateurs to meet apparently, according to nekolog.

And even for those that were granted the license, they only received confirmation early February, which is pretty late considering that some of them don’t start seriously working on the production of the figures until they have the license.

According to kacchan no gareki heya, during World Hobby Festival Ariake, they would apply for the Hatsune Miku license from Crypton, which gave the license after approximately 33 days after the application. But for Wonderfest Winter 2008, they had to apply to Frontier Works instead, which took more than 2 months to give the license.

Japanese blog EWoE has a list of links to dealers that plan to sell Hatsune Miku figures at Wonderfest, and if you look around their sites, you can find people speaking of having not enough time to make the figures, and a handful of them report having been unable to receive the license.

The latest famitsu has revealed that yet another port of Higurashi is in the works once again, this time for the DS. They plan to release the game in 4 parts, with a total of 7 newly written chapters over the 4 games. The first volume will be released 26th June.

I don’t know how many renditions of Higurashi they actually want to release. I love Higurashi and all, but who’s going to read the same story so many times anyway!?

7 new chapters sounds great though, but it’s probably not worth buying 4 games at 3990 yen each for the new stuff…

Via: Ruliweb

Doujin circle souvenir circ has announced that they have been contacted by Kadokawa shoten to cease all distribution of their action doujin game Suzumiya Haruhi no gekitou. They’ve since taken off all info about the game from their website.

Kadokawa sure doesn’t think too kindly about fan works! They had requested for that massive wipe of all fan videos of Haruhi and Lucky star from youtube and nico douga a while back, and also stopped the sales of that awesome Keroro doujin game by ClassiC in 2004.

While we’re at this, CuteType’s doujin game Suzumiya Haruhi no gyakuten 3 has both Haruhi and Hatsune Miku, I wonder if anything is going to happen to them…!

The first book of Ikoku meiro no croisée by Takeda Hinata took me forever to find! It hit the bookstores late Nov / early Dec but it was already sold out in stores by mid December.

I hadn’t gone out and bought it immediately thinking that it was running in Dragon Age Pure and it’s probably under the radar, but I ended up having to check almost 20 different bookstores to find myself a copy in December.

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Japanese blog Muten daikoku had tried an interesting way of modifying the Lucky Star Nendroids, by taking their heads and putting them on the bodies from the To Heart 2 gachapon figures that were released a while ago, creating Lucky Star figures that are of proper scale.

I thought the Lucky Star Nendroids looked a little fat but I wouldn’t mind buying them now since I got a few spare To Heart 2 gachapon figures lying around…! (They were really cheap)

Famous Japanese blog Akibablog officially launched its English version a few days ago, and in the space of two days another English Akihabara news blog Akibanana emerged. It sure is getting crowded with the blogs! And it sure is getting empty here too as everybody runs off to the better English sites!

The Comp Ace official website has announced that they will begin serialisation of an official Little Busters manga starting from the May issue. I normally wouldn’t care about stuff like this, but the manga will be by Anaguramogura from doujin circle Nagucha. I guess it wouldn’t hurt to look forward to it…!

Japanese site Gigazine has a report on the arcade version of Trouble Witches which was playable at the AOU show complete with photos and a video. Shows one of the two new characters in action. Doesn’t show 2 player play though…!

The To Heart 2 Another Days website has updated with a special wallpaper in commemoration of being the third To Heart 2 game in a row to have a shipment of more than 100,000 copies. The game hasn’t been released yet though, it will hit stores on the 29th of February.

A shipment of 100,000 is pretty big in the eroge business. In comparison, the best selling eroge of 2006 had only sold a little over 60,000 copies.

The JAM Project blog has an official apology from leader Kageyama Hironobu about JAM Project’s disorderly conduct while they were on the Shinkansen on the way back from their Live event in Nagoya. Their conduct had apparently offended at least one person who made an angry post on his blog about them.

They apparently got drunk in their celebrations and created a lot of noise and even ran around in the train car. (while wearing their jacket with their band name on it)

Via: Yahoo news