Canned Dogs

Famed Final Fantasy illustrator Amano Yoshitaka will apparently be drawing his own artistic renditions of famous 2ch ascii art live on nico nico douga on the 25th of August. There will be a vote on the show on the day itself to decide which one he will be drawing from the list of ascii art shown here.

The ascii art drawing will be live on the 25th of August from 20:00 to 20:30 (Japan time) and there will be another live drawing event on the 26th of August from 18:00 to 19:00 (Japan time). The theme for the second live drawing event has not been announced yet.

This must be the biggest waste of talent I’ve ever seen to have somebody like Amano draw an illustration based on 2ch ascii art! I definitely want to see it though!

The TBS anime festa 2009 has also announced that Konami x Ryukishi07 x Peach Pit’s PSP game Ookamikakushi will be made into an anime. Also Hidamari Sketch will get a 3rd season called Hidamari Sketch x ☆☆☆ (pronounced Hidamari Sketch Hoshimittsu), and K-on will have a live event in December.

Via: Moon Phase

The official site for the Black Rock Shooter anime has opened and it actually looks pretty cool! The anime is slated for April and will be supervised by Yamamoto Yutaka, directed by ex-Kyoto Animation staff Yoshioka Shinobu and animated by Ordet.

The character designs will be by ex-Kyoto Animation animator Matsuo Yuusuke who had worked on many episodes of Kanon, Lucky Star (100 cuts on ep 20), and Kannagi.

The music will be composed by Ryo and the staff are working with huke to expand the brs world. Black Rock Shooter pilot edition will be released on the 30th of September and will apparently contain Pilot animation that goes along with the Black Rock Shooter song. There will also be a booklet with the image board used for the pilot animation and a CD produced by Ryo which is supposed to be a “live performance + Hatsune Miku voice-beta” version.

It says the anime will start in April but doesn’t say if it’s a TV anime or something else. Also it seems to be a common misconception but the character in Black Rock Shooter is not Hatsune Miku.

Edit: A preview of the pilot animation was on the animelo 2009 live stream and a recorded version can be viewed here (youtube)
Thanks to the commenter that pointed this out!

The official site for Mahoromatic has updated announcing that Mahoro is returning after 7 years for a two episode TV special in October called Mahoromatic Tadaima Okaeri.

The anime will be directed by Saeki Shouji who had worked quite closely on Mahoro season 1, was assistant director for Mahoro season 2, and director for the summer special. The animation director and character designer, the sound director and music composer that worked on all the previous Mahoro anime are returning to work on the new TV special too. The only exception being the scriptwriter Urahata Tatsuhiko who has not worked on any of the previous Mahoro anime.

The first part of the TV special will air on 17th October and the second part will air 24th October, and the Blu-ray and DVD will be released on the 23rd of December, together with the Blu-ray edition of the first season and second season of the TV series.

I can’t believe they’re bringing Mahoro back again! Gotta watch this.

Via: Seasons of Change

Type-moon Ace vol.3 has a comment from Nasu Kinoko saying that he hopes the Fate movie will be a very densely packed 90 minute experience.

I can’t imagine Unlimited Blade Works in 90 minutes, I wonder how they’ll try to pull it off.

Also Nasu Kinoko said in an old issue of Tech Gian that development for Mahou Tsukai no Yoru had paused for a while and it was because he was too busy playing Demon’s Souls.

Also the official site for MBAA PS2 has updated with Arcueid (Princess)’s profile:

The princess of the True Ancestors. Arcueid’s true form.
A True Ancestor of high purity, a representation of the aspect of the planet’s feelers. It’s not an alternate personality of Arcueid, the normal Arcueid is the same as what she is.

Her appearance this time is where she has temporarily borrowed the body. For Arcueid’s body to return to this form, she will apparently have to first get back her hair which was taken away from her.

Just add Altrouge already.

The Hello Kitty to issho! website has updated thanking everybody that went to the Hello Kitty booth at Comic Market 76 and apologizing for the slow downs in sales which caused people to have to queue for a long time. They will try to work on improving the product line up and prices in the future.

They also apologize for the low amount of stock that they brought to the event which resulted in a large number of people being unable to buy their goods.

And with that they also announced that they will be getting more illustrators to join the project for Comic Market 77.

I guess this wasn’t a one time thing. Maybe Sanrio will soon open a Hello Kitty store along the Akihabara main street.

Kaiji author Fukumoto Nobuyuki is apparently going to make an appearance in the upcoming live action Kaiji movie which will be starting on the 10th of October 2009.

I thought he looked kinda cool before but now he just looks scary! He should be playing the role of Endou instead of Amami Yuuki.

Via: Seasons of Change

The latest issue of Tech Gian has announced that Type-moon’s Mahou tsukai no yoru has been delayed from 2009 autumn to 2010. Also some event CG from the game.

I’m starting to have a feeling that I’ll never get to see the Mahou tsukai no yoru three part series to the end when they’re taking at least 2 years to make the first part when the story was already written 13 years ago. They’ve still got Girl’s Work and Tsukihime remake before Mahoyo 2 too, this will take a while.

Also French Bread’s Narita was saying on his diary that MBAA PS2 is out and it’s probably going to be the last version, and whatever he does next will probably be in high res… but he saw the new goketsuji and started thinking that low res sprites may still be good too.

It’s “get your early leaked issue of Famitsu” day and it has been revealed that the Dream C Club for the Xbox 360 has gotten a 6/6/6/6 review by Famitsu.

6/10
Their expressions and gestures are really nice and help to lift your spirits, but, there aren’t many patterns to what they can do, so if an event happens and you don’t make any progress they’ll just repeat the same things over and over again. The karaoke was enjoyable at first but there’s no variation. On the whole it feels like the game lacks the extra step to make it special. It’s also a pity about the large amount of content you can’t get without connecting to the internet and the large amounts of loading in the game.

6/10
There isn’t much variation in the conversations and the character’s movements, the game just feels like you’re repeating the same thing over and over again just to raise the character flags. But, they have definitely put a lot of effort into making cute girls, and because of this there are a lot of faults that can be forgiven. However I feel that there’s a problem with the game where they force auto-save on the game when it’s so hard to meet the requirements to raise character flags.

6/10
The girls’ gestures and movements are really cute and the atmosphere of the shop is good. But when the player doesn’t know the requirements needed to activate certain events, the player will often find himself repeating the same conversation over and over again. I’m slightly concerned about the lack of variation in the ways you can earn money, the variation of the types of snacks available, and the the long loading times.

6/10
They’ve really built a pretty good atmosphere with the frequent character movements and the slight changes between before and after they’re drunk. But the lack of variation in the character’s actions and how the event conversations can contradict what happens in normal conversations affect the enjoyment of the game. Stress builds up as the decisions you have to make in the game are not obvious and the load times are slightly long. We can probably expect the DLC to make up for the lack of costumes and songs in the game. What a pity.

However, “Famitsu Xbox360″ (different mag from Famitsu) has given the game a high review score of 8/9/7/8.

As a comparison, Idolmaster got 6/7/7/6, Idolmaster L4U got 7/8/7/6, Idolmaster SP got 7/8/8/8.

Also it costs 800 Microsoft points per character if you want to be able to have jyakigan girl or robot girl available right from the start without having to do some requirements to unlock them.

Comic Gear is a new magazine being directed by Hiroyuki (author of Doujin Work) which runs on the new concept where all the mangaka on the magazine would get together and work in the same studio and work together on each other’s manga.

The benefits of this is that each mangaka can share their skills and knowledge with the others, and have their work looked through by all that are present and get their opinion.

And to this new magazine concept, Takato Rui (author of Cynthia the mission and MikarunX) has expressed his disapproval on his blog:

I’m sorry. But I want to directly name Comic Gear and state that I do not agree with what they’re doing. The concept itself makes me feel sick. I wonder how the person who started the project even thought of something like this in the first place. I wonder if he wants to become the leader of some friendly club. I wonder if all the young mangaka following his lead are mentally sane.

This is probably something that is already commonly said, but manga is not doujinshi. Being distressed alone, hiding from people and building up your own skills, and finally packing everything you’ve got and releasing it, that’s what you’d call your own world isn’t it.

“If we are to talk about what martial arts fighters are truly thinking, it’ll be that they’re all thinking that they’re number 1″. This is what Itagaki Keisuke wrote using the character Kuga Jyuumei.

Even if you’re still inexperienced, at least believe that you’re number 1. Show that you’re ready, be intoxicated by the loneliness, and build your own castle. By having everybody get together and draw manga that is like making a house out of candy, you won’t reincarnate into a beautiful 2D girl in your next life even if you temporarily become moderately rich for now.

They had stated that one of the merits of the magazine’s concept is that if one of them draws something boring he could be told immediately on the spot by all other mangaka. So I’m joining in from outside by saying this about their concept. I’ve never seen anything this bad in a long time.

Also it’s not very well known but Takato Rui uploads really long tracks of himself singing stuff like sentai and JAM project songs on nico.