The official Japanese homepage for Production I.G’s upcoming biographical anime film Miyamoto Musashi: Souken ni Haseru Yume (Musashi: The Dream of the Last Samurai) is now streaming a new trailer. The film will open in Japan on June 13.
Source: Anime News Network
Twentieth Century Fox motion picture studio subsidiary Fox International is presently setting up a Japanese “production consortium” to supervise the production and marketing of a live action film based on Ai Yazawa’s best selling Paradise Kiss manga. Fox will finance the $3 million-$4 million Japanese-language film with Inter Media Japan handling production.
Tokyopop began publishing the Paradise Kiss manga in North America in 2001. FUNimation presently distributes the Madhouse produced 12 episode anime television series adaptation from 2005.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
Japanese film production company Real Products, in association with Thailand’s Local Colour Film and unspecified Chinese and Korean producers, has signed director Takeshi Miike (Audition, Ichi the Killer, Yatterman) to helm the production of a $30 million live action film adaptation of Buichi Terasawa’s fantasy ninja action manga story Takeru. The Takeru manga story, very similar in style to Terasawa’s earlier Karasu Tengu Kabuto manga series, was released on CD-ROM in Japan in 1995, and in America the following year. The film is tentatively scheduled for release in October 2010.
If Miike is allowed to fully cut loose and revel in the sexuality and violence typical of Terasawa manga, this could be a real treat for mature audiences.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
A live action television special titled “MW Dai-0-sho ~Akuma no Game~” (MW Chapter 0: The Devil’s Game) will air on the NTV network on June 30, days before the live action MW motion picture premieres on July 4. Hitoshi Iwamoto, director for the motion picture, also directs the TV prequel. The TV movie will revolve around Takashi Morioka, a desperate young man manipulated into crime by Michio Yuki, the protagonist of the feature film. The theatrical feature is an adaptation of Osamu Tezuka’s 1976 crime suspense manga. The “Chapter 0″ TV special is an original story.
Source: Anime News Network
The TV Asahi network has announced that a live action Maid Deka (Maid Detective) television series, based on author Yuji Hayami and illustrator Kiyotaka Haimura’s light novel series, will premiere in July. The novel series began in 2006 and presently has 8 volumes. A 3 volume manga adaptation by Michiko Usami was serialized from October 2007 until December 2008.
Source: Moon Phase Diary
A live action television series adaptation of Ryo Kurashina’s 2006 manga series Teioh will premiere on the TBS television network on July 15. The series revolves around an earnest young man who loses his girlfriend to a #1 host of a club. So the young man becomes a host himself, aiming to usurp the #1 rank.
Kurashina has already had three other manga about the host club industry turned into live-action dramas: Yaoh (2005), Jyouou (2005), and Jotei (2007).
Source: Tokyograph
Kung Fu Cult Cinema has secured a low resolution image of the new Cannes Film Festival teaser poster for Axxis International’s planned live action Bubblegum Crisis movie.
Article provided by Daniel Zelter
Question:
My brother recently showed me a video he saw on YouTube and I’m not sure whether I should believe what I saw or not. Is true or not that they are making a live action version of Strawberry Panic? It would be nice since I’m a huge fan of the show.
~
I’ve heard from several people that there is going to be a live action Strawberry Panic series or movie. Is there any truth to this?
Australia’s Arclight Films, Canada’s Wizzfilms, Infotainment China Media Company, Singapore’s Axxis International, and the United Kingdom’s Latec International have acquired the rights to produce a live action Bubblegum Crisis movie from Japan’s AIC studio. Principle photography will take place in Australia with “two male leads and a quartet of female action babes — two Caucasian and two Asian.” Post production will be done in Canada by Wizzfilms affiliated company Mokko Studio. Axxis International reports that 70% of the film’s anticipated $30 million production budget has already been secured. The production is now beginning its search for a director and cast. The movie is tentatively planned for an early 2012 worldwide release.
It’s unclear how this new announcement relates to Singapore’s Cubix International, which acquired the rights to produce a live action Bubblegum Crisis movie last fall but is not associated with this freshly announced production.
Source: Screen Daily & The Hollywood Reporter
FUNimation has announced plans to begin streaming weekly TV episodes of One Piece an hour after their Japanese broadcast, beginning with episode 403 on the 30th. New episodes will be streamed on the OnePieceOfficial website then shortly later on other affiliated video hosting sites.
Viz will begin serializing the “latest chapters” of Eichiro Oda’s One Piece manga in Shonen Jump USA magazine this fall. Viz Media’s english translated collected One Piece manga volume 21 will be released on June 2. volume 53 was just released in Japan on the 10th and has already sold over 1.7 million copies.
Source: Anime News Network article 1, article 2
The first of 3 OVAs adapting Sensha Yoshida’s nonsense gag manga Utsurun Desu will be released on August 21. The anime will be available on retail DVD and will also be streamed to mobile phones. The original manga ran in Shogakukan’s Big Comic Spirits magazine from 1989 to 1994.
Source: Anime News Network
A Toei Animation financial report released publicly last week has been discovered to reveal that a Fresh Precure motion picture, based on the current television series, will open in Japanese theaters this fall. The first two Pretty Cure motion pictures were based on the franchise’s second television series. The third, fourth, and fifth Pretty Cure TV series have had one theatrical feature each. The sixth and most recent Pretty Cure motion picture from earlier this year included characters from all five prior television series.
Source: Anime News Network
Question:
What [do] American anime fans, especially fanzine fans, expect from doujinshi? How popular is doujinshi and how is it consumed in the U.S.? How do American anime/manga fans legally acquire adult-oriented doujinshi? How often is Japanese doujinshi translated to English and distributed in the U.S.?
G4tv now hosts the first trailer promoting the June 2 American Blu-ray release of the Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete motion picture. The “Complete” version of the 2005 film features 26 minutes of additional footage, a new English dub and theme song, and the new 2D anime bonus feature “On the Way to a Smile – Episode: Denzel.”
Source: Anime News Network
ComiPress now hosts a thorough article, by practicing legal expert Lawrence A. Stanley, analyzing the seeming erosion of the legally guaranteed rights of American citizens to access sexually gratuitous or explicit Japanese manga and anime, and even images and information about all types of anime and manga. The article specifically concentrates on the legal cases of Dwight Whorley and Christopher Handley, American citizens that have been indicted, and in the later case, even legally prohibited from having any interaction with anime and manga whatsoever, in contradiction to a seeming literal interpretation of present US constitutional law.
Please note that the article includes potentially offensive illustrations including one featuring nudity.
I’m not a legal expert, but this article by a professional legal expert does confirm my own arguments and citations from early 2006 asserting that “lolicon” material is not, and should not be, illegal in America. Certain overzealous prosecutors are clearly attempting to impose their own morality upon the law, regardless of the devastating impact on individuals who have, in any rational perspective, not broken any laws. As Mr. Stanley predicts, the basis of these legal convictions probably will be eventually ruled unconstitutional. But in the mean time, these convictions set dangerous legal precedents that impede the rights of all Americans to merely access information about Japanese comic art. This may sound like exaggeration. It isn’t.
Source: Anime News Network
