Animanga in the News: 8/7 - 8/13

Here you will find a run down of this week's anime and manga news! This week, we've got a Vampire-Hunting opening trailer, One Piece manga breaking even greater selling records, Lolicon political controversies arising again, Funimation going through some insane service changes, and STARZ adapting a Japanese anime into an English live-action series! Enjoy!


Three years ago, the Diet of Japan was faced with a petition for a new, harsher law against child pornography, that would have also incriminated 2D materials such as anime, manga and eroge. At that time, the Diet chose to "investigate" (a.k.a. ignore) the matter for three years - and all was good... until now. But time's up, and Japan's pesky Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is once again pushing for such a legislation, as they did back then.

In their latest anti-loli crusade, the LDP - together with their usual coalition partners, the Koumeito (the political party of a Buddhist cult) - want to explicitly include anime and manga in the definition of what can constitute "child pornography", arguing that they, too, promote crimes against children and thus should be banned. A insane statement, to say the least, though I won't go over the obvious counter-arguments, all over again...

For the time being, at least, the ruling Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) is opposing this bill. But let's not forget that they also opposed Tokyo's infamous "nonexistent youths" bill at first, only to support it later on... Leading, among others, to the great schism between Tokyo's Metropolitan Government, and anime / manga creators last winter (and the anger rages on).

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The official Twitter account for the Amagami support site confirmed that a second season of Amagami SS was announced at the TBS Anime Festa event on Saturday. The tweet also notes that musical artist azusa (Amagami SS OP1, Astarotte's Toy ED) will once again perform the theme song.

Amagami originated as an all-aged dating simulator released in 2009 for the PlayStation 2. It went on to be adapted into a 26-episode animated series the following year. North American anime licensee Sentai Filmworks announced in May that they acquired the distribution rights to the first season of Amagami SS and will begin releasing the series starting September.



The original plot involved high school student Junichi Tachibana, who is heartbroken after a former girlfriend stood him up before a Christmas Eve meeting. Two years later, Tachibana continues to loath the Christmas season until he considers going out with one of six girls at his school.

The storyline for the second season has yet to be revealed.

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STARZ is developing "NOIR," a live-action U.S. remake of a 2001 anime series that was about two female assassins working in a criminal underworld; after discovering they are mysteriously linked, the two have to work together on missions (under the moniker of "Noir") until they figure out why and how they are connected -- or until one of them kills the other.



Chris Albrecht, president of Starz LLC, confirmed on Tuesday that the American live-action adaptation of Noir is scheduled to air next summer of 2012. The project was approved in June and is currently in the pre-production phase of its development cycle.

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The North American anime distributor Funimation announced on Tuesday that all download-to-own services will cease on August 20. Users must redeem previous download purchases by that date. Previously downloaded episodes will continue to play, but if users transfer or remove video files, they may stop playing. The user will not receive a new license for the episodes to download them again. Customer service questions for the service may be answered by emailing them until August 30.

Funimation's download-to-own operations began in 2008, and the full English-subbed Black Blood Brothers series became available through the service then. Crunchyroll also ended its download services in May 1, 2010. Various anime remain available for download on Apple's iTunes Store.

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The market survey firm Oricon reports that the 63rd volume of Eiichiro Oda's One Piece pirate manga sold 2,119,400 copies between its first official day of sales (August 4) and August 7. It sold more copies in one week than any manga has since Oricon began reporting its book ranking charts in April of 2008.

Not only did the latest One Piece volume topped the weekly manga ranking chart, but it is the third One Piece volume to sell over over 2 million copies in one week. (Volumes 60 and 61 were the first two volume to sell over 2 million in one week, but volume 62 did not, in part due to the March 11 Great Eastern Japan Earthquake disaster and people buying before the first official day of sales.) It also beat the series record for weekly sales, which volume 60 had held by selling 2,094,123 copies in its first week last November.

Volume 63 already holds a manga record for having 3.9 million copies published in its first print run.

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The anime's 136 sec. opening movie was released on the 10th of August.



The story centers around a timid orphan named Mizumura who goes to a missionary school in Tokyo. His seemingly normal life changes when a beautiful half-human Romanian girl named Lilith suddenly transfers into his school. Mizumura discovers that he is actually a vampire hunter and the successor of the Romyuarudo lineage.

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