Heads up, One Piece fans – there’s a new, extra-special anniversary episode coming your way that’ll fill in some of the blanks from the time jump!
manga (Page 110)
Good Smile Company, the figure powerhouse behind the popular figma and Nendoroid lines, decided to hold its third figure creation contest for its employees. The entries are impressive, but what do you expect from professional figure makers?
You can check out all the entries at the company’s blog, but here are some of our favorites.
We’ve been impressed by Nissin’s clever ads for Cup Noodles more than once. With previous ads featuring breakdancing samurai, battlefield language barriers, and fanatic idol fans, we’ve usually come away with chuckles or goose bumps, and sometimes even both.
Now Nissin is back again with a skewed look at another piece of pop culture: romantic leads in girls’ manga that pound on the walls.
No matter how deeply you respect someone’s core values, or how physically attractive you find them, it’s hard to build a successful romantic relationship without some common interests. So it’s really no surprise that an upcoming singles party in Tokyo’s anime mecca of Akihabara is looking for men and women with a shared love of animation.
This isn’t the only romantic anime event coming to Tokyo, though. On the other side of town, organizers are in the process of assembling a quorum of guys who’d be happy dating women who’re fans of male homosexual anime and manga.
Jiro Kuwata‘s 1960s Batman manga series will get a complete English release for the first time in both digital and print formats this year. DC Comics will first release a new chapter online each week beginning on Saturday. DC will then publish the complete run by the 8 Man manga artist in three volumes later this year. The manga will appear in its original right-to-left format.
Although most manga artists have a team of assistants backing them up, compared to live-action films, comics allow for a much more direct transmission of the creator’s vision. Movie and TV programming are by nature a collaborative effort, and you can’t really watch a scene go from concept to finished version in real-time.
With manga, though, you can give a talented artist a pen, and within minutes see him or her transform the emptiness of a blank sheet of paper into a character that will inspire and entertain countless fans, like in this video featuring some of Japan’s most popular manga artists and characters.
You may be surprised to hear this, but Japanese manga is thriving in Spain. Look no further than massive conventions such as Madrid’s Expomanga and Barcelona’s Salón del Manga, where fans can celebrate their favorite series and characters with other like-minded people. So what are some of the factors that contribute to manga’s success in España?
The folks at Japanese website Niconico News recently caught up with David Hernando, the Editorial Editor of Planeta DeAgostini Comics, which is a Spanish-Italian publisher that distributes many beloved Japanese manga series throughout the Spanish-speaking world. Mr. Hernando graciously shed some light on the current market for manga in Spain in an exclusive interview with them, and the following piece will attempt to summarize some of his key points, along with some other related topics we have taken notice of.
We would love to hear the thoughts of our readers residing in Spain as well, so please leave your comments at the end of the post!
Some of Japan’s most famous characters created by legendary manga-ka Fujiko F Fujio have been turned into robots by Bandai, which can then be combined to create an even more epicly-super-cool robot of retro awesomeness!
Since his first appearance back in 1954, Godzilla has cut his teeth on dozens of films and taken down a number of enemies in the process. When it comes to the battle of the batter, however, it seems Godzilla and his mate Mothra have walked away defeated, as there’s no shaking off a coat of oil and Japanese breadcrumbs.
Attack on Titan has such a worldwide following that many visitors to Japan can’t help but keep an eye out for possible sightings of the Colossal Titan as they travel around the country. Chance encounters with the steaming giant are now more real than ever, thanks to a new series of souvenir straps featuring the hungry beast at famous locations throughout Japan. Now you can see him dressed up as a samurai, devouring Tokyo Tower or reincarnated in the form of a giant gold Buddha. If you want the whole collection, you’ll have to do some travelling as each souvenir is limited for sale only at the local tourist hotspot it features. From Tokyo to Osaka, check out the Colossal Titan posing like you’ve never seen him before!
Japan’s national soccer team floundered through the first several decades of its existence before finally earning its first World Cup berth in 1998. Since then the squad has shown steady improvement, with an impressive performance in South Africa in 2010 that saw it reach the Round of 16.
But while expectations and confidence are both running high, that doesn’t mean Japanese soccer fans don’t wish there countrymen could receive a little help from the world of comics and animation, as shown in a poll asking which manga characters they wish were a part of Japan’s team competing in Brazil.
Unlike a lot of children, I never doodled in my notebooks because I was bored at school. This wasn’t because I was consumed with the beauty of education or absorbed in what my teachers were saying. I was simply such a bad artist that listening to them drone on was still more enjoyable for me than trying to draw a picture, even if the lectures ended up putting me to sleep as often as not.
If they’d only had these Attack on Titan notebooks when I was a kid, maybe I would have stayed awake more often.
Sailor Moon’s ever-growing Miracle Romance cosmetics range is continuing the 20th anniversary celebrations with news of their most coveted release to date: the Eau de Toilette. Designed for adults, the fragrance features a delightful blend of fruity florals and earthy tones while the packaging includes adorable details fans will love.
Have you ever wondered what Sailor Moon soldiers would look like if they travelled to an alternate reality and were drawn by a western hand? Well, thank goodness for fan art because one clever artist has delivered the fantasy. This unique collection of Sailor Moon pictures has the scouts looking more like Disney stars rather than sparkly-eyed anime characters, and with heartbreaking back-stories in each beautiful portrait, you’ll be seeing the girls in a totally new light.
The majority of popular manga and anime are filled to the brim with characters that have ridiculous special moves. But while fans with a reasonable grasp on reality know they can’t possibly recreate Goku’s Kamehameha beam or Attack on Titan’s gravity-defying leaps, part of the appeal of action sports manga and anime is in trying to recreate the awesome-looking (though usually wildly rule-breaking) special moves featured within. Think every North American kid that tried to recreate The Mighty Ducks’ infamous “Knuckle Puck,” but far more ludicrous.
But we’re a little concerned that we might soon be seeing a nationwide epidemic of Japanese kids turning up to hospital with all kinds of mangled limbs in the near future, because already pretty ridiculous soccer manga Captain Tsubasa just introduced this wildly dangerous and maybe physically impossible new special move:
Fans of Attack on Titan are sort of in the doldrums right now as far as developments go for the smash hit anime and manga franchise. The recent release of a new collected volume for the comic means there’s likely to be a long wait until the next is released. The live-action adaptation isn’t scheduled for release until 2015, and the 50 lucky participants of the package tour that involves filming the movie have already departed.
Thankfully, there’s still one thing to look forward to in 2014, and that’s the first of two upcoming animated Attack on Titan compilation movies, which now has a release date.
With just a month left until the premiere of Sailor Moon Crystal, we’re so close to seeing anime’s most successful team of magical girls back in action for the first time in almost 20 years. Fans around the world are licking their lips in anticipation, which begs the question, aren’t they going to chap?
Thankfully, you can count on the Sailor Scouts to help you out of such a jam, with new Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune lip balm containers.
If you’re hungry enough, even a handful of breadcrumbs will seem like a sumptuous feast. Such was the case in April when the producers of the hotly anticipated anime Sailor Moon Crystal finally released a modest amount of character artwork for the series, years after the series was announced.
And while the main course of the series premiere itself is still a month away, fans can now savor this tasty appetizer: Sailor Moon Crystal’s first official trailer.
The 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil is almost upon us, folks! And if you’re a manga fan, just pick your poison to get properly revved up: the first volume of the Captain Tsubasa remix has been available since May in convenience stores all over Japan, Volume 1 of the new series Captain Tsubasa: Rising Sun just came out, and then there is the comic’s upcoming exhibition in Tokyo.
As if that weren’t enough, the Japan Professional Football League (J. League for short) has been collaborating with the über-influential soccer manga on a project called “Dream Shoot”. In it, as the name suggests, J. League players take on the challenge of bringing to life the dynamic and often over-the-top soccer moves featured in the long-running comic.
So today, we bring to you Part Three of the collaboration, in which three athletes from the Cerezo Ōsaka team reenact the “Twin Shoot”. Read on to view all three awesome videos, as well as to learn a little more about the manga series and its exhibition (because let’s face it, Flash Kicker, as it’s known in the U.S., never made it big here unlike the rest of the world). Even for a soccer newb like me, the “Dream Shoots” are a sight to behold!
Japan loves package tours. For many of them, you meet up with your tour guide and fellow travelers, hop on a bus for the countryside, then spend a few days relaxing in a hotel with some occasional shopping or sampling of local delicacies. It’s more or less the definition of safe and convenient, if not exactly exciting, travel.
If you’re looking for a trip with a little more adrenaline, though, there’s a tour next month that includes an activity set to get any anime fan’s pulse racing: helping to create the Attack on Titan live-action movie.
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