Stoff goes on to explain his enthusiasm for the project and their attempts to remain faithful. “I have such an enormous admiration for its creators, that our first and foremost concern is going to be a real degree of faithfulness to the tone of the movie, to the mix of genres, and so on and so forth. When I met with them in Japan, one of the first things that I brought up was the experience that we had on A Scanner Darkly, and how hard we worked to remain faithful to Philip K. Dick, and that was our big concern here.“ Don’t get confused, this does not mean that they’re going for a similar animated look like A Scanner Darkly, as he explicitly said that it’s going to be live-action.

It seems there’s going to be a lot of live-action American-produced anime films coming down the pike. Dragonball Z is already well into production (not that I have any interest in it) and word has it that we can expect to see Ghost in the Shell and Akira in the not too distant future. It remains to be seen if these titles will make the transition to live action and an American interpretation intact, but Dragonball Z is looking pretty fucking cheezy so far.

Now when I say I’m getting too old for anime conventions it’s not because I’m so out of date on current anime that I didn’t recognize any of the characters or titles that were on display at the show, though there were plenty of said titles there, nor is it because I think I’ve outgrown watching anime. No, I say I’m getting too old because we were there for some 8 or 9 hours wandering about to different panels and watching people parade around in their cosplay outfits and by the time we got home I hurt something fierce. Not only my back, which gets annoyed anytime I’m on my feet for any length of time, but my legs and my knees were bothering me. Surprisingly enough my feet were fine and usually that’s the first thing to start hurting, but we managed to sit down often enough that my feet were happy.

The con itself was pretty good even though—compared to a lot of cons I’ve been to in the past—this one was fairly small. The dealer room had maybe six companies in there hawking their wares and the selection of items was somewhat limited and overlapping. None of the importers (Viz Media, Tokyo Pop, ADV Films, AnimEigo, etc.) were present and there were no Japanese guests of honor to speak of, though they had plenty of guests from the American side of the industry including a number of English voice actors who were often also directors/producers/translators and so on. Still there were plenty of panels on a wide range of topics and the obligatory rooms dedicated to video and table top gaming.

I think it’s been just over a decade since the last convention I attended and while things have largely stayed the same over the years, some things have changed. For one thing the quality of the Anime Music Videos has gone up considerably giving testament to the availability of inexpensive high quality video editing software on home PCs and the rise of DVD burning. Back in the day the quality of the video tapes often suffered due to the high number of copies of each clip that had to be made in order to splice them together and syncing it all to music was often a hit or miss affair. The better the syncing the more likely the video quality would suffer. Some of the stuff we saw yesterday looked like it came right off of MTV as it was that good.

Another thing that changed is that it seems like there’s a lot more… hugging... going on these days. I’m not talking about the oh-look-it’s-our-friend-so-and-so-let’s-hug-them type hugging, but people walking around holding up signs offering “free hugs” or “glomp me” that gave the whole convention a pseudo-1960’s Free Love vibe to it. It is tempting to make the obvious joke about otaku being so starved for any kind of physical contact, but considering that I’m still an otaku myself it would probably be hypocritical of me to do so.

Along similar lines is the fact that there’s quite a bit more accommodation, at least at this con, for more adult material and one form that seems to be particularly popular (especially among women) is known as Yaoi and is defined as follows:

Yaoi is a publishing genre which originated in Japan and often encompasses manga, dōjinshi, anime, and fan art. It is homosexual love between male characters and is sexually explicit.
...
Yaoi, outside of Japan, is an umbrella term for all male/male erotic comics made for women from Japan; as well as male/male erotic comics made in the west. The actual name of the genre in Japan is called ‘BL’ or ‘Boy’s Love’. BL is an extension of shoujo and Lady’s categories, but is considered a separate category. Like ‘Yaoi’ is used in the United States, ‘BL’ is used in Japan to include: commercial and amateur works, works with no sex, works with sex, doujinshi about adolescents with little or no sex, works in all types of media - manga, anime, novels, games, and drama CDs with male/male content, and characters of all ages in male/male content. Terms such as yaoi, shounen-ai, tanbi, June, and original June, are all referred to in Japan, as ‘BL’. However, it does not include gay publications.

Though yaoi is sometimes used to refer to any male homosexual content in film and print media, particularly in works created by females, that is generally considered a misuse of the term. Professional Japanese artists, such as Kodaka Kazuma, are careful to distinguish their works as “yaoi,“ rather than “gay,“ when describing them to English-speaking audiences.

Only in Japan could they have a category of entertainment that deals with homosexual love between men that isn’t considered gay. The popularity of this sub-genre is surprising, or at least it is to someone who’s been out of the convention scene for as long as I have, and there were people of both genders walking around with “I ♥ Yaoi!“ buttons and t-shirts on and at least one guy who combined his appreciation of yaoi with the tradition of “hug me” signs. Above and beyond just people openly admitting to enjoying one of the more esoteric forms of anime the convention itself had a number of late-night panels that were listed as being strictly for people 18 years or older and the con took steps to ensure this was enforced by putting a “Y” on the badge of any minor attendees. Considering that there’s always been at least some adult content at every convention I went to in the past, at least in regards to some of the titles/collectibles available in the dealer’s room, this seems like a natural and reasonable growth for the convention circuit. Of course I have no idea if any of the other cons are as accommodating, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they were.

One of the great things about attending any anime con are the folks brave enough to engage in cosplay and, as you can see from the couple of photos already posted, they were out in full force at Youmacon. In fact there was a surprising amount of cosplayers for what is arguably a smaller convention and it contained the standard mix of very brave people wearing very spicy outfits to very brave people who probably should have thought twice on the character they decided to dress up as. Courtney was in charge of taking pictures and she’s still a bit of a novice at that so a few of the shots didn’t turn out too well and she also seems to have avoided some of the bravest of the brave. Still she managed to get some good shots of some of the best costumes at the con so I’ve posted a few of them in the extended entry.

But before we go there I’d like to mention one very special attendee of the con that I totally didn’t expect to see there: Jesus Christ himself, in the flesh, so to speak.

Who knew Jesus was an otaku?

Click to read more...

Take a look at the picture on the right (click for a bigger pic) and you’ll see a case mod that finally brings my two loves together in what has to be every geek’s dream form: a near life-sized anime character that is also a fully functional PC. Called the ERN005PC (KANA), this work of art is the creation of Kanna Higashi & Katsuya Matsumura and if the two of them ever manage to mass-produce these things they’re all set to make a killing with lonely geeks everywhere. Their website has detailed pictures of the sculpting and assembly of this case mod as well as plenty more pics of the final product. Considering the number of anime series out there that feature cute anime girls in skimpy outfits that are composed mainly of electronic components there’s something strangely appropriate about this case mod.

Fear for the species known as geeks once robotics advances enough to make fully automated sex dolls a possibility as they will never breed again and will die out not long after…

...with really big smiles on their faces.

Found via Engadget.

Warning: This site is very spoiler heavy.

Anime News Network - New DB and IY episodes on Cartoon Network

Cartoon Network will premiere new episodes of Dragon Ball beginning September 1st at 5:30pm EST. Additionally, the network will present a Dragonball Z movie each Friday in September.

9/05 - Bardock: The Father of Goku
9/12 - The History of Trunks
9/19 - Cooler’s Revenge
9/26 - The Return of Cooler

Meanwhile, new episodes of Inu Yasha started on Cartoon Network last night at midnight, with the broadcast of episode 37, “Man Who Fell In Love With Kagome.“ New episodes air Monday to Thrusday on Adult Swim.

So, there you go. Now stop bugging me about it.

Variety.com (original article only available to subscribers—free trial available), reporting from the Cannes Film Festival, reports that Gainax, Weta, and ADV are teaming up to produce a live action film based on Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Gainax and ADV Films should be instantly recognizable to any anime fan as the studio that created Evangelion and ADV as the studio that owns the worldwide rights to the TV series and localized it for North American audiences. Weta Workshop, however, may not be a familiar name. Weta is the New Zealand studio set up by Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson to handle the special effects for the LOTR trilogy.

Adding complete credibility to this story is the quote from ADV Films president and co-founder John Ledford: “The three main players here represent something of a dream team for a project like this. Between the quality and significance of Gainax, Weta’s industry-leading skill in visual effects and our expertise in the marketing and promotion of anime and anime-related content, this project is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.“

To top it off, while the film is still in early development, Ledford mentions an “aggressive timetable.“

A press release confirming this announcement has been released as well. Not sure how the hell they hope to squeeze such a big series down into a 2 hour movie format, but it’s certainly an ambitious undertaking to say the least. If ADV pulls this off it good be a big move for them.

If you’re not already familiar with Bebop then you should rush out to your local video store and buy at least the first volume on DVD or VHS and sit down tonight and watch it. Chances are you’ll be back out tomorrow to pick up the rest of the series. This is a show that even non-anime fans seem to get into as it is well written, has a good story, and the English voice acting in the dub is pretty damned good to boot. Don’t take my word for it though, go to the official site and watch the trailer for yourself.

The ads on the channel have only been showing Crest of the Stars and it didn’t look too compelling to me, but then it does appear to be fairly old. Of the rest I’m most familiar with Serial Experiment Lain as I have about half of that series on DVD and keep intending to buy the rest of it. If nothing else, it’s emphasis on technology and the ‘wired’ makes it a good fit, though it’s slow pace may leave some folks cold.

I’m looking forward to seeing how well TechTV handles their anime lineup and how much of a success it is. Though I still think they should expand Extended Play to a full hour. Not that it has anything to do with anime, but I thought I’d toss it in here none the less.

Alas you have to have Comcrap cable service and live in Philadelphia to get it as it’s part of a new Video On Demand service. Here’s some PR mojo ripped from the official website:

Initial programming will include both fan-favorite feature films and multi-episode series. Titles include Spriggan, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Excel Saga, Martian Successor Nadesico, Gasaraki, Noir, Dai-Guard, Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040, Orphen, Golden Boy, Sorcerer Hunters, Kimera, Ninja Resurrection, Tekken, Those Who Hunt Elves, Gunsmith Cats, Burn Up W and Samurai X: The Motion Picture.

Even dubbed into English, anime is nobodys cartoon. Anime is distinctly Asian, and explores the boundaries of animated moving pictures in ways that American cartoons never have. The distinctive style of anime is exploding into western pop culture, and anime titlesҗfrom Sailor Moon to Cowboy Bebopare beginning to appear on American television. The time is ripe for moreׅ

No word on what this service costs or when they plan to expand it beyond the Philly area, but the folks at TAN are already encouraging you to write your local cable company and bitch at them to get you the service ASAP. They even provide you with a handy-dandy locater thingy to tell you were to send your letter.

I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing Wide Open West pick up the channel as long as they don’t charge an arm and a leg for it. If nothing else it would allow me to get caught up on some of the ADV series I’ve missed since I dropped out of collecting anime.

And on a related note, the folks at TechTV are set to launch a new anime related show called Anime Unleashed. They don’t have any info on the show up on their website yet, but they’ve started airing ads for it recently.