Danny Choo announces collaboration with Japanese hobby maker Good Smile Company to release Japanese kanji learning flash cards.

TOKYO (MAY 5th 2012) – Danny Choo, Producer of the worldwide TV series “Culture Japan,” today announced his collaboration with Japanese hobby maker Good Smile Company to release “Moekanji” – a set of 87 illustrated cards to help individuals learn first grade Japanese Kanji which include the “On” and “Kun” readings written in hiragana.

The Moekanji cards feature the mascots of Culture Japan which include “Mirai Suenaga” and characters of the TV show and website “Culture Japan” and are illustrated by the Japanese illustrator Ikkyuu.


Moekanji also has collaboration cards which include the Nitroplus mascot character Super Sonico.

Pre-orders are currently being taken for Moekanji which retails for 2500 yen (about 25 USD). Moekanji is due to hit the shelves at the end of May 2013.

Danny is also collaborating with Japanese online Hobby Retailer AmiAmi where a Kanji Wallscroll will be given away with all pre-orders taken at AmiAmi.

Moekanji is the second product in the “Moe” learning series and follows on from the hit product “Moekana” which teaches individuals the basic Japanese syllabary Hiragana. Even though Moekana was aimed at non Japanese to learn Hiragana, Moekana became the 2nd best selling anime product in the Amazon Japan sales rankings.

Event to be graced by Japanese J-Pop and ‘Ani-Song’ Star May’n

Singapore / Kuala Lumpur, 5 March 2013 – Following last year’s successful Animax Carnivals in Malaysia, Taiwan and the Philippines, Animax (Astro Ch 715), Asia’s first channel specializing in anime, is set to bring its signature event back to Kuala Lumpur. To be held on 16 and 17 March at Sunway Pyramid, Animax Carnival 2013 will be graced by Japanese guest star, J-pop and ‘Anisong’ (songs featuring in Japanese anime programs) diva, May’n (Macross Frontier, Shangri La, Accel World).

Starting from 10am on 16 March, at the Blue Concourse of Malaysia’s first themed shopping and entertainment mall at Bandar Sunway, Subang Jaya, Animax will offer Astro customers and all visitors to Sunway Pyramid a weekend of traditional and modern carnival games and fun activities from Japan.
“We welcomed more than 8,000 visitors to the inaugural Animax Carnival in 2012, and we are pleased to bring the event back bigger and better this year. Just as Animax serves up great anime programs to viewers of all ages in Malaysia and across Asia, Animax Carnival will offer something for everyone in the family, and make for a fun and engaging weekend to ring in the March school holidays,” said Mr Ricky Ow, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Networks, Asia, Sony Pictures Television.
Headlining Animax Carnival Malaysia 2013 is a special showcase by Japanese songstress May’n who is best known as the singing voice of character Sheryl Nome in the hit anime series Macross Frontier. From 1pm on 16 March, Day One of the event, May’n will be making an exclusive appearance and performing ‘live’ her latest hit ‘Chase the World’, the opening theme song of Animax’s new anime series Accel World, coming to Astro’s video-on-demand service this month. She will also be singing ‘HEAT of the Moment’ and ‘Kimi Shinitamo Koto Nakare’ which featured as the opening theme song in anime series Shangri-La.
Following May’n’s performance from 3pm, Animax will celebrate the launch of its latest, third season of hit anime series Fairy Tail (premiering 13 March, airing Mondays to Fridays at 7.30pm on Animax), with a screening of the ‘Tenrou Island’ arc episodes of the long-running series at the Animax Carnival Malaysia stage.

On 17 March, Day Two of the event, Animax’s Fairy Tail extravaganza continues into cosplay as the event will be the stage for some of the most colourful local cosplayers to show off their Fairy Tail costumes. Cosplay contestants will have to be at their best in putting together and donning the costumes of their favourite Fairy Tail character and perform to compete for prizes worth over RM10,000. Catch the cosplay contest semi-finals from 1pm and the finals from 4pm.
Off stage, the event lives up to being a carnival as attendees can try their hands at new and traditional Japanese carnival games through both days. These include ‘Wanage’, tossing of hoops over small toys; ‘Syateki’, shooting toys with a toy rifle; and ‘Darum Otoshi’, using a hammer to knock the layers off a multi-layered doll without it falling over. Participants who complete all carnival games can get their ‘Game Card’ fully stamped to win prizes. In addition, visitors can get a unique anime themed picture of themselves as a memento of Animax Carnival Malaysia.
Day One on 16 March, Animax Carnival Malaysia 2013 is open only to Astro customers from 10am – 6pm, and open to the public from 6pm. Astro customers should present their January, February or March 2013 Astro bill to redeem admission tickets for four, with the first 500 Astro Variety Pack customers entitled to a special gift. Day Two of the event is open to the public from 10am to 10pm. See https://www.animax-asia.com/carnival2013my/event or look out for the Animax Carnival promos airing on Animax (Astro Ch 715) for more details.

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If one would measure an event success with the numbers of people visiting it, then Animax Carnival 2012 was a resounding success. For a first time event of this scale, it’s quite normal to scale down your expectations, but Animax Carnival promised us a good time, and it delivers on it’s promise. How so? More after the jump

Held for the very first time at Malaysia’s own 1 Utama, the event was not really a large one. Indeed it was only held in the oval section of the famous shopping centre. But what it lacks in size, it does not lack anything in terms of activities for the people that visited it. In here Animax has a lot to offer to visitors, mostly Astro subscribers including games, competition, a special appearance from Baby Beel (from the series Beezelbub) and meeting Animax’s own Animate, the lovely Alodia Gosiengfiao. We already shown her interview, but seeing her in pictures and videos and seeing her in real life are two different things, and thus it was a treat for her fans to finally able to see her live in person. This bubbly and cheerful celebrity did not disappoint her fans, signing autographs and taking pictures with all of them.

And what’s an anime event without a cosplay competition? And what a competition it was. 20 cosplayers with their partners/helpers duke it out in an interesting contest that was judged by Alodia, Animax rep Maria Ong and Malaysia’s own senior cosplayer Ayase.

L-R: Maria Ong, Alodia, Ayase

In a closely contested… well contest, Malaysia’s representative to the last World Cosplay Summit, Sky Fara and her partner Yuan Cross took first place, winning a cool USD250. Cosplaying the Golden Witch Beatrice and Ushiromiya Battler respectively, this pair manages to capture the heart of the audience, and most importantly the judges to win yet another title. In second place was Xajin Jian and third was Ayumi Goh.

The winner, Sky and Yuan

All in all, it was a great event and we do hope that Animax would be keen on making a second one next year.

Unamused Sakuya is unamused

Most people don’t like Japanese anime to be dubbed into different language. To be fair, some of the Japanese don’t like games or animations from other countries to be dubbed in Japanese like that Modern Warfare 2 being localized in Japan. In Malaysia, we are blessed with many animations like 2D cartoons or even 3D to be dubbed in Malay language. This does not applied only to kid shows. Dramas from Japan, Korea, Philippines, Venezuela and other Latin America countries were dubbed into local language. While we still retain some of the shows to be in its original language, it can’t be help when majority of Japanese anime, that being considered as cartoons for kids, to be localized.

Why dubs are being hated? It is because the elitistfags are the ones who preferred things to be in its glorious original forms. But that’s not all. In Japanese anime industry, producers put heartily effort to make the anime to be in its best ever performance of the show to the audiences. Seiyuu or voice casters are glorified in Japan, unlike in other countries. Seiyuu are idols just like any artist of different categories as they are usually not just providing their voice for the characters but also singing and making albums. Some of them are even acting in real TV drama or making gravure photobooks as people needed to be multi-talented to survive the entertainment industry in Japan. So a cute character in a series of anime that has a cute voice from the original voice actor/actress in Japanese that’s very talented is not replaceable with mere dubs.

In the explanation above, we can tell that anime industry is very expensive. When animation projects were outsourced to outside Japan such as South Korea, Vietnam and Thailand, the Japanese cut a lot of their costs and from here on, most of the production budget will eventually go towards the seiyuu. This is just an assumption but with a basis where we see that people who work as animators and other graphics division are getting low pay. Heck, even mangaka are effected with this. Apart from that, a normal seiyuu might only be lasting for 3 to 5 years as main characters before being sidelined as support or non-important characters with exception of infamous seiyuu. Why? It’s not because newcomers are better but it’s all about payments. Of course that experienced seiyuu are not cheap as they getting more and more jobs to be added in their CVs. So, fresh graduates from voice acting schools are being hunted so that producers can cut cost. Still, it’s a costly production for a series despite of what they’re doing.

Back to the original question, why local dub sucks? The main reason is that local televisions are buying them series cheap. How cheap? Veeeeeeery cheap. Do you know how cheap? For an episode of Crayon Shin-chan that being locally dubbed, the company will pay them RM 500. Imagine that! RM 500 per episode? Well, Crayon Shin-chan might be looked like a cheap cartoon. The best Media Prima can pay for a cartoon series would RM 3000 per episode and that’s Naruto. With such low pays, they would never getting those expensively made anime from Japan with original language dub. So, things go like this. As an episode of anime is originally expensive, the local company will get the license only for the animation (also sfx and OP/ED songs). Without the original voice cast, they got it very cheap. Then they slamp their own local Malay voice actors and then sell it to local TVs. What do you expect from RM 500 per episode? This is where the dub being suck, like some people without motivation. From that RM 500 on an episode, they need to cover for the payment of local seiyuu, voice editor, etc. including license that they pay for that episode.

And you might think why Naruto got bigger portion of payment? First, a shounen series is very popular towards kids. So, Media Prima won’t mind to pay for more so that advertisers, especially confectionery companies, will be rushing to secure the ads slots for Naruto airing. Well, what else will be giving them money other than advertisements? Second, Naruto series has a lot of characters and you wouldn’t want to use the same voice actor for 5 different characters inside. So, they were able to secure higher payment of RM 3000 per episode. Still, the payment is pretty much low in the case of world standards. With this revelation, we can understand that local TV companies are only taking shows around those prices (and slightly more for popular series).

I got to know about this when local 3D animation producers having a deal with Media Prima for their new debut series. Imagine that they acquired grants of millions in Ringgit Malaysia to get the expertise, software and equipments to create 24 episodes of the series only for Media Prima to pay only RM 3000 per episode? How a total of RM 72000 can be compared to the cost of millions? This led to them securing some advertising companies to sponsor that I heard they got a final payment of RM 60000 per episode. It still doesn’t give them much as their original cost are far more than that. For here on, you can understand that why our local series, apart from animations, suckass.

Now, we look at the implications. When local producers are making TV series, they’re doing it half-hearted. In a way, very lame series. People, as in audiences, are craving for better shows from the locals but few knew about how the local industry shows work. When the pays from local TVs are low, some producers usually go for movies and cinemas. But this requires a lot of initial costs. Anyway, if the locals pay so low, why not go global? Well, you need bigger budgets. To get bigger budgets, you need sponsors. But when getting sponsors or grants, usually they will ask the very damn favorite question, “Before you go global, why don’t you try locally?” This is actually what I experienced myself when my proposals were rejected. It’s not entirely their (sponsors and local TV companies) faults for giving low pays. Local TVs like Media Prima and RTM rely heavily on advertisements to survive unlike paid cable TVs. Advertisers rely on their ads to get more people buying their products. Thus, the cycle of entertainment industry itself.

Tragic Puella Magi Madoka

Magica character, Tomoe Mami is given a guro snow sculpture by a rabid Japanese fan, as can be seen below

Madoka Magica is fast becoming a hit this season featuring a dark twist to the usually bright and cheery Mahou Shoujo storyline.

Creepy idol galge IdolM@ster will finally get a real anime adaptation this time as confirmed via a creepy video

Aniplex might be the one involved with this project, which should be a good news to all of the lonely fans out there. Till this day, most won’t admit the Sunrise’s adaptation of the franchise with “Xenoglossia” being a failure and all

The character designs for the much anticipated sequel of popular anime series, Code Geass was finally revealed


The characters for the “Bouken no Akito” arc, Hyuga Akito and Layla was featured in the February issue of Newtype. Sadly not much difference is there to be seen from any of the other original Code Geass character, which suggest Sunrise has reverted to it’s tried and tested one design for all character philosophy. Indeed, Akito looks like a carbon copy of the lead Geass Character Lelouch meanwhile Layla looks just like Kururagi Suzaku.

Source: Moetron

Japanese cable channel AT-x has provided it’s own top 10 ranking of animes that were aired on that channel for last year
The ranking:

1. To Aru Kagaku no Railgun

2. Working!!

3. Ore no Imouto

4. Yosuga no Sora

5. Hakuouki

6. To Aru Majutsu no Index II

7. Seitokai Yakuindomo

8. Highschool of The Dead

9. Tamayura

10. Shinryaku! Ika Musume

Source: Kyou mo Yunakiti

The TMA quasi-porno parody of Ore no Imouto promises some quality (of one sort or another), with the usual painstaking care taken to emulate taken to emulate the original without actually resembling in it any way.

With all that adult parodies that TMA has done, one would think they could have gotten a better looking guy than him…

When you are a geek, obviously your wedding will be quite… different. This is just so what happened in Jerry (a Sega employee) and his wife Kat’s wedding, where they have a rather large caek. More after the jump

As you can see, they have this big ass SDF-1 Macross cake as their wedding cake. Something that not many of us thought of doing, and most certainly can afford. The cake, and also the Valkyrie fighter above was taken from the wedding scene of Maximilian Jenius and Milia Fallyna Jenius in the original anime. You can see their miniature counterpart in the plane.

The wedding reception also said to have included a lion dance, which is normal in every aspect, except that the lion is a voltron…

Via: Topless Robot