Animanga in the News: 3/26/11

Here you will find a run down of today's anime and manga news! If anything major happened the anime and manga world today, you'll find it in this post! By the way, I'm saladesu, one of the translators and global moderators of MH, and I'll be posting a post like this every day (as much as possible, anyway). Look forward to them ;)




In response to the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake (Higashi Nihon Daishinsai) disaster, the Japanese publisher Kodansha has decided to distribute issues from Weekly Shonen Magazine and five other manga magazines online for free. Kodansha Vice-President Yoshinobu Noma told Jiji Press the news on Friday.

Kodansha will distribute the manga sections of Weekly Shonen Magazine, Young Magazine, Morning, Evening, Be-Love, and Kiss — without advertising — online. The publisher will decide which issues to distribute, how to long to distribute the issues, and other details next week. For readers who want to read the magazines in print, Kodansha is offering its ordering service for back issues.

Another publisher, Shueisha, distributed the manga sections from this year's 15th issue of Weekly Shonen Jump online for free earlier this week. Many publishers announced that they will delay their magazines and books due to delivery problems and supply issues. The Asahi Shimbun paper reported on Saturday that over 100 children took turns reading one sole copy of the 16th Weekly Shonen Jump issue at a bookstore in Sendai — the closest major city to the epicenter of the earthquake.

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ANN has confirmed that the JManga.com website is the manga portal revealed last November by Japan's Digital Comics Association (DCA). The organization commissioned Toppan Printing, a Tokyo-based print and technology service provider, to create the site. The site will launch fully this spring, but the current beta version already contains free previews of the following manga:


The splash page for the site states that visitors will be able to read manga, connect with a community, and to "get to know" their favorite manga creators.

A representative of Toppan Printing informed ANN that Crunchyroll helped with "system development aspects" of the site. Crunchyroll formed a partnership with Bitway, a Japanese electronic book company originally launched by Toppan Printing, after Bitway invested US$750,000 in Crunchyroll.

Last June, the DCA and North American manga publishers formed a coalition against manga scan sites, and the coalition suggested that it might take legal action against these sites, although none have been reported at this time. The DCA currently includes the following publishers:


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Mangaka Inoue Takehiko, famed for his creations "Slam Dunk" and "Vagabond", drew a work of art on a byoubu (folding screen), entitled "Shinran" (the founder of a sect of Buddhism) at the Otani sect head temple Higashihonkanji in Kyoto's Shimagyouku. It was a commissioned work by the sect that commemorates the 750th death anniversary of Shinran.

The work was an immense one, spanning 6 panels, each 2.1m in height, the whole piece being 5.8m wide. On the right side, Inoue had depicted Shinran with a face of anguish and anger as he walked with the people through what looks like a river of mud, while the left side depicts him looking relived as he watches a bird. The entire piece is drawn in ink.

To raise funds for the quake victims, the sect has made and will sell posters of the artwork on the screens. The screens will be open for public viewing at Higashihonkanji between 4th and 17th April.

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L'Arc~en~Ciel will be singing the theme song to the Fullmetal Alchemist movie, "Milos no Sei Naru Hoshi", which opens in cinemas on the 2nd of July. This is the second time the band is taking on the theme song to one of FMA's movies, as they also provided the theme song for the 2005 FMA movie, "Conqueror of Shambala". The title has yet to be announced, but a short preview of the song can be heard on the movie's official website.

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Please note that there may be delays in the broadcasts or releases of certain anime and manga following the quake. You may see a list of affected publications here, here, here and here (new).



If you would like to help in finding and translating news of this nature, please contact saladesu via PM ^^ Feel free to PM me any interesting bits of anime or manga news you find floating around the internet, too.