Death Note Special 2
The Japanese broadcaster NTV has announced that it will air the Death Note Rewrite 2: L o Tsugu Mono (Death Note: Rewrite 2: L's Successors) special on August 22. Like the first special, this new compilation will summarize a part of the 2006-2007 television anime series. Specifically, it will recount the final half of the supernatural suspense story, including the investigators Near and Mello's confrontations with the vigilante Kira. For those who have not seen the first special (Death Note Rewrite: Genshi Suru Kami) last August or the television series, the genius detective character L and his assistant Watari will provide exposition of the story leading up the second special.
Live-Action Cowboy Bebop Film
The IFMagazine.com entertainment website reports that film producer Erwin Stoff (The Matrix, A Scanner Darkly) is developing a live-action adaptation of Sunrise's Cowboy Bebop multi-genre action anime series for Fox. Stoff told the website that the project is "in the really early stages" since the parties "just signed it the other day." Shinichiro Watanabe's original anime follows the motley crew of the spaceship Bebop as it travels throughout the solar system in search of the next job. Stoff promised "a real degree of faithfulness," and added, “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.”
Pikachurin??
Researchers led by Takahisa Furukawa, M.D. & Ph.D. of Japan's Osaka Bioscience Institute have named a protein that they discovered after the Pikachu character from Nintendo's Pokémon game and anime franchise. The "Pikachurin" protein plays a role in the efficient transmission of kinetic vision information from the eyes to the brain, so the researchers named the protein after the Pokémon character known for its fast moves. The researchers expect that the discovery will help advance the treatments for retinitis pigmentosa, a major hereditary cause of blindness.
Japanese Villages Dying
It’s not science fiction. UK newspaper The Times reports that 62,000 communities throughout Japan are in danger of becoming extinct because their populations are mostly or entirely elderly citizens. As a result of Japan’s low birth rate (a majority of contemporary Japanese women are uninterested in motherhood, and according to the 2007-2008 Durex Sexual Wellbeing Global Survey, Japan has the world’s lowest rate of sexual activity) and young Japanese citizens migrating to metropolitan areas, small towns and villages in rural Japan are literally dying because they have no young residents.
Sources:
Anime News Network
AnimeNation Blog
