Canned Dogs

Fender is a manufacturer of stringed instruments and amplifiers and they’re the makers for the bass guitar that is being used by Mio in K-ON. Fender Japan has a staff blog, and they actually made a post about K-on back on the 10th of April which reads:

“Wow K-on is amazing

Sakurakou keionbu… looks really exciting

And the bassist Mio is using a vintage jazz bass (the 62 JAZZ BASS), and she’s a lefty too… it’s so moe.

I have a feeling that this anime will have a really big break.

adios!”

Next you know Fender will be producing guitars with K-on art on it! adios!

Itou Ichirou from Every Little Thing is going to be releasing his first solo mini album soon and he’ll be holding auditions on Nico nico douga to select a guest vocalist to sing one of the songs that will be on his album. He’s looking for a female vocalist between 18~30, but males that can do a female voice is fine too.

More details and the sample song that will be used for the first audition will be released tomorrow night in a live broadcast on nico.

The Umehara vs Iyo match was so awesome that it almost destroyed the world and killed all the invading aliens. I know it killed my Sunday because I got the incredible itch to play more sf4 after watching it!

Kami no mi zo shiru sekai author says the best galge was YU-NO
I’m sorry I ever doubted if he really plays galge!

Konami is making a PSP game with Ryukishi07 and PEACH-PIT
Ryukishi07 is director. What kind of monster is Ryukishi07 anyway, there are people who can write really fast, and there are people who take forever to write anything, and then there’s Ryukishi07 who can work on a hundred projects at the same time and get everything done on schedule.

Bass Guitar on Amazon is filled with K-on stuff
The “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought” section is filled with K-on stuff. But only for the left-handed version of the guitar, because it’s the model that Mio uses, and Mio is left-handed. There is only one customer review for the guitar, which reads:

“This is the same model that the bassist Mio-chan uses in K-on. I’m right handed, but I bought the left handed version as it probably wouldn’t make a difference since I’m a complete beginner. I’m now trying to learn how to play the opening song. It’s probably not a waste of money to buy this if you’re a fan!”

Sounds like the listing got messed up just because of this maniac!

Also, the one that Yui uses is the Gibson Les Paul Standard, which isn’t on Amazon apparently.

Akamatsu Ken posted on his diary that the reader survey results for the recent Negima chapters is doing really good right now, rivaling the all time high in Negima’s popularity in late 2005.

And this is all because of the recent incredibly manly battle with Rakan that has almost zero girls appearing aside from a short flashback.

The guys in Akamatsu’s studio who belong in the faction that is pushing for more battles are having a “told you so” look on their face now and are saying that next issue, which is the final climax of the battle, will do even better in the reader surveys.

Just from the numbers alone, Akamatsu says that he’s definitely capturing many of the readers that weren’t already fans and would usually just skim Negima when they’re reading Shounen Magazine. But he also notes that there has been a rise in complaints from long time fans about the recent direction of the manga.

Akamatsu’s opinion is that the current direction of the manga is good as the battles have been pretty compact and it’s good to have an increase in readership even if just for a short period of time.

However he feels that it’ll be safe to return the manga to normal again, as the popularity would probably not drop sharply after having become so popular now. As an analogy he says it’s like how he doesn’t want to rapidly do shoryukens, he wants to use some hadoukens to zone too.

The editor in charge also says that he has no intention of forcing Akamatsu to go in the direction of having more battles just because the survey results show that battle stuff is more popular.

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I like reading about what Akamatsu has to say because of how his readership seems to keep changing. I thought it’s going to completely become a battle manga now, but he’s surprisingly going back again.

Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei 3rd TV series to start in July

From Shounen Magazine, new title is Zan Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, anime will still be by Shaft, opening song will still be by Ootsuki Kenji.

Blackjack ni yoroshiku author Satou Shuuhou has been writing a lot about the manga industry recently. Which kinda led up to that announcement he would sell his chapters online through his website. Anyway this post only makes up half of the stuff that he has written, and it’s probably already the longest post I’ve ever written here.

Anyway, the stuff that he has written about how he feels that publishers are completely exploiting manga authors has been both positively and negatively received, so it’s up to how you want to look at it. I’ve tried to keep the nuances in the choice of words that he picks to describe some of the workings in the industry.

I’ll probably do the rest… sometime soon. Also some annonymous manga author wrote a response to Satou’s stuff which disagrees with him that I’d want to write about too, just to show the entire thing from a different point of view. There’s too much to post about!

Also if you can finish reading this incredibly long post in a single sitting you’re a real hero.

(more…)

Majima-kun suttobasu!! ran on Shounen Jump between 1995 to 1998 and got cut from Jump and had a really abrupt end back then, but more than 10 years later now the author Niwano Makoto has started a new sequel that takes place 6 years after the original manga!

The new manga is called “Majima, bazeru!!” and has just started in the latest issue of Comic Break which went on sale yesterday. Daienjou has a few pics of the new manga.

The Blackjack ni yoroshiku author Satou Shuuhou has announced that he will be putting up chapters from his manga on his site a month after they’re published in Big Comic Spirits magazine. Visitors will have to pay a small fee to read the manga on his site.

The thing about this is that magazines are paying authors to buy the rights to publish their manga on their magazine, but the rights to the original manga still belongs to the author, so as the author he can technically do whatever he wants with his manga after it has been published.

He’s trying to find a new business model where authors don’t need to rely on publishers, and he wants to see if it is possible for a manga author to produce manga while maintaining a consistent level of quality and speed without having to rely on a publisher.

He believes his current serializations will probably be the last of his work that will be published on magazines, partly because magazines will probably stop asking him for new serializations after this.

The date when he will start posting his manga online or the cost of each chapter has not been announced yet.

Via: Yahoo news

He has been writing a lot of stuff about the manga industry on his site over the past 2 weeks, mainly about money, manga authors not getting a big enough share of the money, and… other money matters. I was going to post about his stuff more than a week ago but that post has been half written in draft form and untouched forever because the post got too long! Amazing!

The Hatsune Mikue song “Sakura no Ame” which was apparently kinda popular at graduation ceremonies a month ago is going to be made into a live action movie by Tetra Film Studio, which is a film making group formed by students.

The story will apparently be about 6 guys in highschool who never cared about looking good and were secretly called otaku behind their backs by classmates. But as graduation neared they decided they decided they wanted to start looking cool and get the girls they like. So they started running into lots of trouble as they try to figure out how to go about doing it.

Via: Oricon

Vol. 334 of design mag idea magazine apparently has a feature on Yotsuba Studios and manga, anime, and light novel design. Yotsuba Studios has done a lot of awesome design work on various manga like Kannagi and Ichigo Mashimaro over the years, so it’s really cool to see something like this.

They also have features and interviews with many other manga and light novel designers in the magazine, and even a feature on doujinshi design covering 100 different doujinshi.

I’ve seen some really cool cover designs and book bindings used in doujinshi around, so it’s nice to see a feature on that too.

Via: Comic Natalie