Manga-ka: Kim Jea Eun
Publisher: Tokyopop
Rating: 13+
Released: January 2005 – March 2007
Volumes: 5
Synopsis: We follow the fast paced life of a young half-Korean, half-Caucasian boy named Kai on his journey through the streets of Harlem. With piercing blue eyes that put everyone around him under a spell, Kai finds himself learning how to kill before learning how to love.
When you open the book it feels like you can instantly tell what the story is about. There’s the classic love interest, in this case a Korean girl named Sunil, who happens to fall into this strange world by secretly following Kai down onto the dangerous streets of Harlem. Once discovered, Kai’s best and only friend, Spike, instantly falls in love with her. He asks Kai to hook them up, but instead of doing what he’s asked to Kai steals her away creating a rift in their friendship that lasts the entire series. So that’s what Soul to Seoul is about; just another stereotypical friend versus friend over a girl right? Not even close.
Read more…
MangaCast has posted Diamond Distrubuters shipping schedule for September (due to ship November-December). This is the time of year when poor college students can begin weeping and digging for pennies in their couches.
Fourth installment of the ‘Heavenly Sword’ anime-inspired movies has been posted. Watch it here.
Also apparently there’s rumours going around about a possible second season of Ghost Hunt. Let’s hope so, really well done series. The Ghost Hunt manga is currently being released in English by DelRey.
A possible leak may have revealed that the popular manga series, Junjo Romantica, a yaoi by Shungiku Nakamura, is being made into an anime. While the page which gave this information was quickly removed a day later, it still leaves fans wondering and hoping for the best after such a slew of successful manga-to-anime series in the yaoi genre so far this year.
Source: AnimeNewsNetwork
Erica Friedman, founder of Yuricon, has put up an editorial about what her definition of Yuri is. It’s a good read for fans of the genre and new ones alike. I also think it has strong points that can be crossoveredo the world of Yaoi showcasing the difference between couples that can define a Yuri or Yaoi, and ones that merely act as little fetish touches for fans.
You can read the editorial here.
Grave of the Fireflies, a Japanese novel about a boy and his sister’s lives during World War II, has been announced as having a live action remake. The story was made popular and well known around the world after the Studio Ghibli anime movie of the same name.
Read more at AWN
GoComi has announced the beginning of a doujinshi contest. Artists have the opportunity to create a 1-5 page comic based on their series, Black Sun, Silver Moon. Votes for the winners will be done at the New York Anime festival and the winner will have their work published in an upcoming volume of the series.
Click here for more information.
The New York Anime Festival is also doing a joint contest with DelRey. Artists are asked to do a picture with the theme of ‘winter’ and submit for the contest. Voting will also be at the NY Festival and the wnner will recieve all of DelRey’s 2008 books for free! As they say, sharpen your pencils people.
Read more information here.
Fans of the recent Japanese drama, Hana Yori Dango, can look forward to summer of 2008 when a movie will be releaesed in Japanese theatres to finish the story. With the same returning cast, it promises to appease fans of the drama and original manga alike. The plot will begin one year after the main character, Tsukushi’s, graduation ceremony. The popular drama, which ran two seasons, was based on a manga of the same name, released in English by Tokyopop under the name Boys Over Flowers.
Read more at AnimeNewsNetwork
Third installment of the anime-inspired, Heavenly Sword, prequel animations is up for viewing. It can be watched here.
As reported by Zannen.ca, these are the final voice actors for the Death Note dub. Note, the voice actors used in the originally released English trailers were not the final actors.
Light Yagami: Brad Swaile
L: Alessandro Juliani
Souichirou Yagami: Chris Brichon
Ryuuk: Brian Drummond
Raye Penbar: Michael Adamthwaite
Aizawa: Trevor Devall
Misa Amane: Shannon Chan-Kent (?)
Rem: Colleen Wheeler
Matsuda: Vincent Tong
Naomi: Tabitha St. Germain
Good things have already been said about the dub, by Canada’s own Ocean Group. Read more over at Zannen.ca’s post.
Company: Majesco
System: Nintendo Wii
Release Date: April 2007
Rating: E (Everyone)
Players: 1-8
Description: Launch colourful bubbles to make a match in more than 500 puzzles bursting with challenging fun! The ultimate 8 player bubble bursting bash!
Attempting to capitalize on the popularity of the Bust-A-Move franchise and integrate more of the Wii’s motion-sensitive capabilities into their sparse lineup, Majesco and Nintendo teamed up to give us this, Bust-A-Move Bash!
Read more…
Though originally scheduled for August 15th, DramaQueen has pushed their pre-order period for their August books to the end of the month. A post in their forums today stated it was due to production problems.
The news article with the statement “Anime is a Japanese form of animated porn.” was flooded with comments from enraged anime fans as news of it spread around the internet. Now, two days of the article in question was published, the page has been taken down. Tired of getting the same response from fans repeatedly or perhaps realize their error? Who knows. Original post can be read here.
Below is an interesting article that shows the backlash the man behind the multiple suings of people in Singapore over downloading anime from the internet, faced in light of his actions. Fans were not only outraged they’re being specifically targeted but also how casually he threw around the term, “I’m busy suing people.” He claims it was infrustration over dealing with them. He has been flooded with complaints and even a few death threats since then.
Read the whole article here.
The next seqment in a series of animated shorts for the upcoming PS3 game, Heavenly Sword, is now up for viewing. The stylized, anime-inspired, clips act as prequels to the much anticipated game.
Watch it here.
