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.

Day 2 in Japan, and if Comiket is considered the Mecca of Japanese animation culture, then

Akihabara would be it’s Medina. Since it will be Comike tomorrow, we limited our visit quite a bit as we will come here again after

new year

So

we are spending our end of the year in Japan this year in conjunction with Comiket! For

starters, we will be posting some pictures from our first day here

Well that was the question that we asked three anime industry people during the last Anime Festival Asia 2012 at Singapore. This was in regards to the earlier news of Masaki Yuasa’s decision to use crowdfunding, in this case KickStarter to fund his upcoming movie, Kick Heart. This was something quite new in the anime industry, and we were quite curious to heart other people’s view about it, especially ones that are involved in the industry. And we have the perfect opportunity during AFA, as we asked this question to Shinichiro Watanabe, Kamiyama Kenji as well as Tomohiko Ishii. So what was their answer? Read on

Shinichiro Watanabe
Shinichiro Watanabe is the most senior in regards towards working in the industry among the three people we interviewed. He has had a long career, working alongside the legendary Shoji Kawamori on Macross Plus as well as directing popular titles such as Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo. And hence as expected he is much more traditional in his line of answer as well. While he realised that directors now have new avenues that they could turn to (in this case funding a project via fans), he is still much more comfortable with the traditional way of asking funding from corporate sponsors. It was quite expected tho that he does not really know much about Kick Starter in the first place, seeing that the news was quite new at the time.

Kamiyama Kenji and Tomohiko Ishii
Production IG’s Kamiyama Kenji and Tomohiko Ishii both came down to Singapore to promote Production IG’s feature length anime film, RE Cyborg 009 that was directed by Kamiyama-san and produced by Tomohiko-san. Interestingly Production IG is the studio behind

the upcoming Kick Heart as well, which made it a much more relevant question to them as well. Both had a similar answer, and which made a lot of sense. As Kamiyama Kenji pointed out, Maasaki Yuasa is quite a well known director, cheap viagra pills and it has been quite a while since he has released anything, his last major project was the highly appraised Tatami Galaxy back in 2010. Hence a lot of people is actually looking forward to see him working on something new which would explain why Kick Heart garnered a lot of attention. This helped in reaching the funding’s goal way before the time limit ended. Interesting enough, Ishii added that if a new, upcoming director would use the same tactic, it would be more towards impossible to gain the same success as Maasaki did with KickStarter. I mean, who would pay to see a work of an unknown director? Both of them being modest, says that they will never turn to crowdfunding due to the inability for them to guarantee that they would able to garner as much attention and funds as Maasaki-san did, altho we really doubt that.

When Kick Heart was first announced, it was hailed as a new start for the Japanese Animation Industry, how the traditional way can be changed. But now, we are not really convinced. Sure, you might see another studio or two flirting with crowdfunding again, but could they emulate the success that Kick Heart had? Or would the fans stop funding after the novelty factor of “This anime is funded by me!” ends? Time will tell

The latest Rebuild of Evangelion movie has exceeded expectation, even with lower than expected reviews from viewers. As of today, 4 days after the cialis low price initial airing (17th of November 2012), a total of 1 Million viewers have watched the movies in cinema, raking in around 1.5 Billion yen in sales.

With such a strong showing it might no be long that it will grace the cinemas of other countries

as well

http://www.oricon.co.jp/news/confidence/2018946/full/

If you guys missed the recent Anime Festival Asia, and despaired the thought that you can’t watch the Day 1 Watanabe Shinichiro Panel and Day 2 Kamiyama Kenji Panel, we have recorded it for your viewing pleasure!

Sorry for the can someone do my essay audio quality for Watanabe Shinichiro’s panel. The location that we had set up the camera was awful and we only noticed it after the

panel has finished

Sometimes, the simplest things can be the funniest, and indeed, this is funny. We found these posters of Malay movie adaptation of popular Japanese animes on facebook, and we must say, we are actually looking forward to watching some, if not all of them for real

Sword Art Online

Detroit Metal City

Higurashi no Naku Koro ni

Girls und Panzer

Bleach

Oniichan dakedo Ai sae Areba Kankeinai yo ne!

School Days

Madoka Magica

Sky Girls - Strike Witches

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann

Ore no Imouto

Thanks to Gabriel Ross Johansen [bukan

nama sebenar - fake name]

Bullying is a quite unique subject in Japan. Traditionally it’s rampant, where people of power bullies much more weaker people. In workplaces, schools, heck even online like the 2ch boards are not safe from it. And yet it’s like an open secret, something that should not be talked about even if it’s happening in front of you (the recent government of Japan cover up of suicide/bullying incident comes to mind). Thus it’s quite a surprise to see such an reaction over a recent bullying incident revolving around a current anime series, Kokoro Connect

The incident, or “prank” as it’s known was planned by one Yamanaka Takahiro, a bigshot at Kings Record, and the producer for the Kokoro Connect series. The victim was one Mitsuhiro Ichiki (pictured above), an aspiring voice actor. In the spirit of dokkiri (どっきり – practical joke), Ichiki was offered a role of an original character in Kokoro Connect and was asked to come for an audition two months ago. The audition was recorded with variouss hidden camera (Dokkiri itself stems from どっきりカメラ aka Surprise Camera) with Ichiki being told to voice various lines as loudly as he could

During a promo event for Kokoro Connect, Ichiki was invited

to come on stage, without being told why. Expecting to hear an announcement

of his original character, instead he was shown a spliced, edited video of his audition, told that it was all a prank, and was forced to become Kokoro Connect’s PR. The event was shown live on NicoNico and also Ustream, and throughout, he was ridiculed by the “official” seiyuus, Terashima Takuma, Mizushima Takahiro and Oogame Asuka.

The PR work is also a batsu game (punishment game) and if he fails certain task, he would be punished. If you guys are familiar with “Downtown no Gaki no Tsukai ya Arahende“‘s batsu game, you would realise that it’s quite harmful. He was even electrocuted for failing, live on Nico and Ustream. He was even ridiculed to lengths on the official Kokoro Connect radio show by the other seiyuus.

Ironically, this would have gone quietly under everyone’s radar (honestly, are the people watching the stream and listening to the radio stupid?) if it was not for Kikuchi Hajime (from Eufonius)’s tweet regarding the incident. The tweet lead 2ch to investigate, and pieces the incident together.

So what happened? Kokoro Connect took quite a large hit. The official radio show was canned (as the image above announced). Pre-orders from the Blu-Ray dropped and many went to Amazon and gave bad reviews for the series, meaning much more sale lost. 2ch also started to boycott the anime and won’t stop until Yamanaka resign. Ironically they are bullying the bully as well.

Things are not so well across the Atlantic (or Pacific? I dunno, all seas are the same) when 4chan’s /a/ board overreacted and started spamming Kitamura Eri’s twitter account with pictures of penises. This was due to an unconfirmed rumour that KitaEro is the girlfriend of Yamanaka, and decided to punish her, for some reason.

Due to the unwanted (negative) attention that they are getting, the management even forced Ichiki to say that this was just a staged stunt, something which makes no logic whatsoever.

Long summary of the incident: http://pastebin.com/Pu2hADMc
Other source: Kotaku

It’s not always that we have a chance to talk with a western anime and cosplay fan, and hence we contacted Maridah, a cosplayer from the United States which became well known due to her high quality Saber (Fate series) cosplay which was featured in Otacool 2. Much to our delight she agreed to this interview. And thus we are quite honoured to have her featured on our site.

More after the break

Misaki from "Kaichou wa Meido-sama!"

AS: Can you tell us how you first got started into cosplaying and what was your first ever costume?
M: I got the cosplay bug when planning for my first anime convention. I wanted to dress up for the event, so I made some costumes from myself and my friends to wear. My first cosplay was of Relena from Gundam Wing.

AS: How many characters have you cosplayed throughout your venture into this hobby?
M: I ‘ve lost count. It’s been so many. Easily over 30 characters~

AS: In your other interviews that you do your own costume. Where do you usually buy the materials for the costumes and how many have you made, for yourself and others included?
M: I like to buy my fabric from warehouse stores. They have better prices and selections. I’ve made too many costumes to keep count, and I’ve probably made twice as many costumes for friends over the years than for myself, so it has to be a big number by now.

Saber Armor from the Fate/Stay Night visual Novel

AS: All in all, how long would it take you to make a costume, and how much would it usually cost? In lieu of that, how much collectively do all your costumes cost?
M: It depends on the costume. Some take a day or two, others have taken a month or more. Same with cost. It’s variable. I’ve spent $6 on one costume’s fabric, and $200 on another. It depends on how complicated the cosplay is.

AS: What are your hobbies when you are not cosplaying?
M: I collect dolls- BJDs and Dollfie Dreams and enjoy sewing things for them. I also collect anime merchandise like figures and play video games occasionally. My less nerdy hobbies involve drawing, watercolor, and reading. I’m trying a little bit of gardening as well, now.

Like looking at the real thing

AS: For someone that is already 27, you don’t look it. Tell us do you have any secrets on, well still looking like a teenager?
M: No, there isn’t much to it. It’s not something I try for, so there really isn’t any secret I can share. For many years I hated looking young because it’s caused problems for me in my daily life, but it works for cosplay.

AS: How many anime events usually you attends in the US?
M: 2 to 3 a year.

Katsuragi Misato from Shin Seiki Evangelion

AS: Lastly any messages for your fans in Malaysia?
M: Thanks so much for the support and interest in my cosplay! It’s very encouraging and I hope I can continue to create cosplay that people will enjoy. Cheers to Malaysia! I hope to visit one day!

Well there you have it folks, our interview with Maridah. You can visit her website here as well as here facebook fanpage here.

All of the pictures were taken from her website, altho we wish that she could

come here so we could take some of her pictures ourselves. Thanks Maridah!

Remember

Radio

Emina? We had a special podcast session with some of the peeps from them last week! Hear it on it’s entirety below