2chan.us

Source: unknown (Comiket staff?) via Yaraon

This time around the most interesting change is the new section for Tiger & Bunny, which was split out of “Anime (Sunrise)”, and starts out with an enormous 1109 circles; the rest of Sunrise was left with only 269 in the process. Since most of the other girls’-side genres – Reborn, Gundam, short stories and Hetalia – are down this year, I think we can assume their doujin will not feature Dragon Kid but instead gay dads, which I think is what that show is about according to Tumblr.

By the way, fanfiction (‘SS’ in Japanese and most of ‘FC(小説)’ at Comiket) seems to be very popular with fujoshi (including all my English-speaking friends), but I don’t know a single guy including myself who cares about it at all, even though I’ll happily read all kinds of amateurish comics. I’m sure there’s plenty of counterexamples, though.

In other news TYPE-MOON has almost double the circle count compared to where it’s been for years (presumably due to Fate/Zero), Leaf&Key continue to fade away and Touhou is still the most popular genre out there at 2670.

http://www.niconico.com/

Unlike the other language translations, this is a new site design, but JP accounts work. And nobody has commented on anything yet, so go nuts.

As for English-speaking user features, it seems they’ve added Facebook login, and you can add Nico-style comments on Youtube videos. Which I’m pretty sure was a feature on nicovideo.jp until Youtube blocked them…

Also the videos don’t load half the time, just like the original.

A few classics:

• http://video.niconico.com/watch/sm9
• http://video.niconico.com/watch/sm197203
• http://video.niconico.com/watch/sm4538955
• http://video.niconico.com/watch/sm9198860

Tokuma Shoten, the publisher of Denno Coil and Taisho Yakyuu Musume among other things, will reissue the 1968 Kitaro’s Vietnam War in December. That’s Kitaro as in Gegege no Kitaro.

【鬼太郎のベトナム戦記】 1968年発表の幻の作品集の復刻企画。~水木しげるが描くベトナム戦争の真実~。子泣き爺が潜水艦に攻撃を仕掛け、ねずみ男がゲバラに変装？　決死の戦いを繰り広げる妖怪達……。 戦いの合間に田植えをする農民達。……サイゴンへの道は遠い。この伝説の作品を巻頭に、以下作品を収録。初出は以下。 『鬼太郎のベトナム戦記』：『宝石』1968年7~12月　 『ゲゲゲの鬼太郎　蓮華王国』：『小説マガジン』1977年7月　　 『ゲゲゲの鬼太郎　妖怪ロッキード』：『プレイコミック』1976年11月

Kitaro’s Vietnam War: We plan to reissue this elusive work first published in 1968. The truth of the Vietnam War as illustrated by Shigeru Mizuki. Konaki-jijii devising submarine attacks, Nezumi Otoko as Che Guevara? The youkai unveil an all-out battle to the death… and in the mist of the slaughter, the farmers planting their rice… the road to Saigon is long. The included works follow with their first apperances: “Kitaro’s Vietnam War”: “Houseki” July-December 1968. “Gegege no Kitaro in the Lotus Kingdom”: “Shousetsu Magazine” July 1977. “Gegege no Kitaro and the Lockheed Youkai”: “Play Comics” November 1976.

Amazon.co.jp. Descriptions of some of the stories here. The volume was last reprinted in 2000 by Bunshun; copies of that reprinting fetch 30,000 yen.

Source: Nensyu Labo, compiled by them via publicly available securities reports and documents submitted for 2008.

Average yearly salary, in tens of thousands of yen. (100,000 JPY = roughly $1100)

1. Toei: 864
2. Toho: 837
3. Shochiku: 735
4. Tokyo Rakutenchi: 710
5. Gonzo: 654
6. Toei Animation: 651
7. TYO Productions: 620
8. OS: 620
9. Tokyo Theatres: 619
10. Subaru Enterprise: 615
11. Kokusai Hoei: 607
12. Aoi Advertising Promotion Inc.: 605
13. Tohokushinsha: 604
14. Flight System Consulting: 571
15. Marvelous Entertainment: 534
16. Sotsu: 518
17. Shizukatsu: 512
18. IG Port: 501
19. Omega Project Holdings: 490
20. TMS Entertainment: 485
21. We’ve: 483
22. Kin-ei: 444
23. Nakanihon Kogyo: 435
24. Musashino Kogyo: 430
25. Tokyu Recreation: 383

Sales Rankings, in hundreds of million of yen (100,000,000 yen = roughly 1.1 million USD). Number in () after studio name is rank in above list of average employee salary.

1. Toho (2): 2134
2. Toei (1): 1076
3. Shochiku (3): 949
4. Tohokushinsha (13) : 681
5. TYO Productions (7): 311
6. Tokyu Recreation (25): 277
7. Tokyo Theatres (9): 232
8. Toei Animation (6): 217
9. Aoi Advertising Promotion Inc (12): 167
10. Sotsu (16): 159
11. TMS Entertainment (20): 141
12. Marvelous Entertainment (15): 101
13. IG Port (18): 71
14. OS (8): 65
15. Gonzo (5): 63
16. Tokyo Rakuenchi (4): 37
17. Kin-ei (22): 37
18. Nakanihon Kogyo (23): 37
19. Kokusai Hoei (11): 34
20. Flight System Consulting (14): 30
21. Omega Project Holdings (19): 30
22. We’ve (21): 30
23. Subaru Kogyo (10): 24
24. Musashino Kogyo (24): 20
25. Shizukatsu (17): 11

…in condensed bullet point form of because there’s no way i’m completely translating a 39 page technical PDF just for fun, even if the project is really interesting.

Anyway, this project was announced earlier this month and the initial announcement about the basic form of the project (4 23-minute original animations to be produced with a 38 million yen budget each, with production focusing on the training of young animators) was picked up by the usual suspects. However, the general reaction on the comments sections seemed to be on the negative side, which was a little baffling to me. I have a lot of trust and respect for JAniCA, as they’ve been one of the most staunch supporters of animators (see translations here, here, and just about every substantial report over the last few years about animator salaries) and so the endless comments of “what is government doing???? just give money to the animators!!” were a little disheartening. These complaints seemed especially silly since the government funding is only coming in at around $2 million US, which in my admittedly rather business-ignorant mind isn’t going to do a whole lot if they just threw it towards wages. (Though if they took the proposed $130 million LDP budget for the manga library and gave that cash to animators, then maybe it’d be a different story…)

Anyway, I got to looking at the detailed application sheet that JAniCA put out a few days later, and wouldn’t you know it, it looks like a very well-meaning, intelligently drafted, and fast-acting plan! Anyway, here are your bullet points, as promised earlier. I’m doing this on a bit more of a rush than normal for me, so goyaku gomen. Please leave comments if you have any corrections/questions.

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The long-standing issue of how exactly to define moé has been resolved by ECPAT (End Child Prostitution and Trafficking) International. I quote:

The analysis estimates the market for moe products (books, images and games), which are related to anime and manga, was worth 88.8 billion yen (US$800 million) in 2003. The term moe is used in a neutral sense for economic analysis. But taken literally it refers to a fetishist sexual attraction that some fans of computer games, anime and manga have for female child characters, who may be depicted in pornographic and erotic contexts within games, animations and illustrations. Moe web pages sometimes link to other pages containing images, stories and chats in which very young characters are the objects of sexual violence, abuse and fantasy. A proportion of the moe market may therefore be regarded as related to child sex abuse images. The report expected the market for moe products to expand.

I am quoting page 32 of their information pamphlet “Violence against Children in Cyberspace“. Perhaps some of us are glad that this controversy has at long last been resolved. If you actually enjoy moé artwork, though, chances are you disagree with ECPAT’s characterization of your hobby. What’s even better, the only citation in this paragraph was a link to WaiWai News.

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Thanks to astrange I’m now able to spin off all my assorted news and dumb links posts from both this site and from twitter onto this newfangled blog, http://2chan.us/linkblog . Please watch over it warmly. Hopefully it’ll be a good site to get otaku news from without having to expose yourself to possibly criminal amounts of barely-clad anime 14 year olds!

So remember that list of unsourced rumors i posted about earlier from 2ch that just happens to be incredibly accurate? Welp, guess what showed up on the 2ch thread that everyone gets their news from?

I mean there is definitely a good chance that 10,000 hours, pixels, etc, but honestly, even if this is fabricated, Railgun anime almost seems like a given at this point, no?

Yunakiti reports on the 2ch thread where otaku realize that Geisai 12 took place right next to Reitaisai, in East hall 1. Guests there included Yamakan, Ozoku band (Tissue Princess and other Nico Allstars), and Zombies, the ultimate anison dance group.

I kind of feel bad about not knowing about this, but on the other hand it looks like if I went I’d be giving money to Takashi Murakami, and he doesn’t really need any more money than he already has. Not to mention that I honestly believe that Reitaisai is a more significant event of the two in basically every way! Well, except for no yamakan.

I wasn’t going to post this originally since it seemed too out there, but now that Hagaren’s cast has changed I feel marginally more comfortable posting these completely unsourced rumors from a random 2ch post, many of which have already, by pure chance, come true! via yunakiti since I am a busy adult with no time to actually read 2ch

Munto will be 9 episodes long ○
Basquash getting aired on 10 channels across Japan, is 2 seasons long ○
Strike Witches S2 in 2010, based on the light novel ○
April Haruhi airing will be a mix of season 1 and season 2, aired in chronological order
Shangri-La will be 2 seasons long
Asura Cryin’ will be 2 seasons, one in Spring, one in Fall
Seitokai no Ichizon airing in July ○
Omamori Himari getting an anime adaptation ○　(this, Seitokai, and SW s2 were posted in late January)
Railgun getting an anime in 2010
The Final Negima OAD won’t be produced by SHAFT (? i might be reading this wrong)
Mangrove doing Seiken no Katanakaji
Many changed voice actors for the new season of Hagaren ○
Wolf and Spice s2 in July, 12 eps in all ○

I guess we have to sit back and see how this pans out! Maybe it’s all part of Kadokawa’s master plan. even this very blog post.