Alright, I'm sinking to the post-en-masse method. Shoot me.
Portions of Astro Boy Cast Announced
It has been announced that IMAGI Studios and Summit Entertainment will be respectively making and releasing a CGI Astro Boy film slated for 2009. The cast will include Freddie Highmore, Nicolas Cage, Donald Sutherland, Nathan Lane, Bill Nighy and Eugene Levy. Talk about a star-filled cast!
Source
Anime News Network
VIZ Sets Up Hollywood Office
Following examples from others like Madhouse and Aniplex, Viz is opening up an office in Los Angeles. The goal is to promote Viz productions within the eyes of the American silver screen big wigs. The fact that projects such as Drgonball Z and the American comic book-based movies exist are enough for anime companies to want to pitch titles to Hollywood screenwriters and directors.
Source
Anime News Network
FUNimation Acquires Big Windup! Anime
Funimation has announced that it has acquired Big Windup!, the 26-episode baseball television anime known as Ookiku Furikabutte in Japan. The series adapts Asa Higuchi's manga about Ren Mihashi, a losing pitcher who quit his middle-school baseball team after his teammates harassed him — they think he only became a pitcher because his grandfather ran the school. At high school, Ren is forced to become a pitcher again, but he and his new team eventually recapture the spirit of the game.
Where I Shamelessly Copied-and-Pasted From Because It Is Late At Night
Anime News Network
Holy Crap, A Japanese Execution!
Photograph of Miyazaki in 1989 after arrest.
Anyone who has been an "otaku" long enough to know that the word is inheritedly negative should be at least satisfied with this bit of news: the man convicted as the Otaku Murderer was finally executed on Tuesday.
Tsutomu Miyazaki (no relation to Hayao and Goro) was arrested back in 1989 after assaulting a six-year-old girl whicle trying to take graphically explicit pictures. When the police searched his home, they found 5763 videotapes, many of which were violent, pornographic and of the animated sort. They also found evidence that he murdered four girls ages 4-7 during 1988 and 1989. The trial lasted from 1990 to 1997, in which the end result was a death sentence. Both the Tokyo High Court and the Japanese Supreme Court held the rulings.
Before Miyazaki's creepy uncovering, the Japanese had already been using the word "otaku" as a way to describe introverted and obsessive fans of anything applicable. It was only after the case did the term become synonomous with otaku of the anime/manga variety, with the help from an essay about the case written by Akio Nakamori. The word "otaku", as described here is not a very acceptable term to call one's self at all if speaking Japanese. Since the word in English does not have the same negative connotations, it is harder for us to understand, yet "otaku" ultimately has the same effect as calling someone a "dork", "geek" or "nerd" here (casual overusage aside).
Sources
Anime News Network (article)
Mainichi Shimbun (photgraph)
