Since ANN were being dicks about who bought the ads for Haruhi, I decided that the fuckers ought to have one done in on them and I told pKjd to tell me who licensed it… well, he figured it out through a little trick of shitty programming for their shitty counter. If you carry yourselves on over to this link, then you will see an error where the counter should be. The counter gives the username for the account ownder via the virtual directory there, and the username is Kado USA. So, I will call it official and say fuck it.

Honestly, I sort of guessed it wasn’t the normal companies because there’s japanese on the damn page. No one in America does that. So there you go. No more waiting two days to find out who has Haruhi for the states. If this site is any indication, they may just try to do right by the show here. Thanks, pK. Credit goes to him, I think, for this find.

UPDATE: Kado literally JUST fixed the counter. Oh man. Smells like they want a secret kept. For proof of the old bug, check out moetron. Exciting? YES! Just for the record, it had been no more than about 5 minutes since we posted this stuff that they got it fixed. Someone is watching.

Wow, this is the best news to come out of the American anime industry in quite some time. 4Kids Marketing Director, Roz Nowicki, has confirmed that 4Kids is not going to be adapting any more episodes of One Piece into English. That is to say, they won't turn it over to their crack team of drugged up retards and let them butcher an already innocuous story to keep our kids safe from any bad thoughts. And we wonder why American kids can't deal with shit anymore. "Oh no, don't let the kids see guns! They might decide to shoot up their schools! Edit them out of the naughty Japanese cartoon." Hopefully the implications of this news will come into being as them refusing to adapt any more episodes means that the original creator will likely refuse to renew the license when it comes up expired, meaning a proper company can unfuck the series… let's hope.

The bastard art-rapists at 4Kids have lost more money! Haha. I know, it's great, isn't it? Apparently the continued suck of all of their products caused 4Kids to lose $256 thousand in Q3 of this year. They blamed the Ninja Turtles and Yugioh, and as well all know that shit is a terrible lie because Ninja Turtles are fucking own and if anyone is to blame, it's 4Kids. They suck. You guys suck too.

Well, the clock is ticking down on the PS3 launch. Only another day or so until the PS3 drops in Japan. No, you won't be getting one. I won't either. After that, we're only looking at a few more days until I start my own mad scramble to get one. We need something, SOMETHING, to keep us saucy until the PS3 drops, whether we get one or not. And, well if you're a nerd like me, you will make good use of the fact that Sony has posted up the PS3 User Manual! All right! WOO! Let's go look at it!

Well, I just wanted to roll all this minor game news up into a single post. It's only two things really. First up is a list of Wii virtual console titles. Looks like America and Europe are getting the deep shaft on this one. The weird part here is that it literally costs NOTHING to roll these games out world wide, since they are digitally distributed. Also, keep in mind that the VC games are supposedly region locked, so even if you got them, they wouldn't load in a US Wii. Amazing. Joystiq shows the European releases as well. Same story there.

Second, Famitsu has done some reviews of a handful of PS3 launch titles. Looks like Ridge Racer 7 and Resistance: Fall of Man took top honors, but things did pretty well overall, especially for launch titles. I couldn't find scans, but whatever. It's fine. Of course, all of this caused a major rift among the fanboys out there with the Sony fanboys taking it as gospel and the others taking it to mean that the PS3 sucks and Famitsu is just in Sony's pocket. Yeah. Next up: Corporate espionage causes Wii to not be as fun as everyone thought.

Amazing! And also sort of exciting for me! It looks like ADV has announced that they will not be releasing Utawarerumono under the faggoty name "Shadow Warrior Chronicles." That's right (no disrespect to gays, by the way. I love your work on Broadway.) ADV has announced that they will be releasing it as Utawarerumono because, get this, of feedback they received from fans. HOLY SHIT! The world has gone mad! Their excuse for naming it Crapsuck Whatever Something in the first place was that they had wanted to make it accessible to as many people as possible. So, yeah. They're not of the hook yet, because they're clearly still thinking things like that. It's a step in the right direction, but fan reaction shouldn't be the catalyst. Companies should be doing it this way to begin with. Still, it gives a bit of hope for Air Gear. I'll be grabbing the Region 2 DVDs anyway. Pft. America. So passe.

Well, boy howdy, I am a bit late today. Haha. And with two bits of news that don't affect too much and are short, so here they go. First up, the manga magazine Shonen Blood didn't appear on news stands today, instead it was announced that they would be taking a short hiatus and would reappear as an online magazine starting this December. That doesn't bode well. Ah well.

Moving on, a recently bought out Best Western in Japantown, San Francisco is going to be renamed and rethemed into a Japanese pop culture hotel. The 125-room hotel is set to be turned into an "energetic" expression of Japanese pop culture. Joie de Vivre, the company that bought up the property, is hoping to use the hotel as an outlet to local shopping spots. They plan to decorate using anime, manga, J-Pop stars, and street fashion. Four things that have very little in common in any real way, well aside from anime and manga. But hey! It's not in Japan, so whatever, y0. Ok, this news sucked.

I don't link ICv2 very often, but hey, they put up something that I found to be pretty interesting. You'll remember that Viz was editing Fullmetal Alchemist to stave off the perceived threat of a mass exodus of Christian readers (see what I did there?) Well, ICv2 apparently felt about like we did about it and wondered what the fuck this edit was for. They went to Viz to find out and viz dutifully answered them clearly and concisely.

We asked Viz for the reason for the edit, and the response was the same as it has been in the past to "fit the criteria for release in the American market."

Yep. Doesn't get any clearer than that. Now, before you fly off and say "What the fuck are you wasting my time for, Randall?" I would go out on a limb here and assume that you'll be interested to hear this next bit of amazing hypocrisy. (How ICv2 got Viz to answer these questions is beyond me.) Anyway, ICv2 went on to ask how frequently Viz changes content to fit the American (read: unfan) market. Viz again replied with a horrible lie.

We also asked how frequently Viz changes its content for the American market, and were told that changes were made "rarely."

But here's the gem of that paragraph.

Anime on DVD has a running list of edited manga volumes from a number of publishers. Viz has 20 series with one or more edited volumes on the list.

Wow. That's a good chunk there. CMX has some catching up to do. Although, I'd noticed that CMX started wrapping some manga. Probably for more than 3 panty shots. Still, this edit doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but let me meet you in the next paragraph to explain my thoughts on this in the proper fashion.

Hi, glad you could make it. While I will pretend to respect the religious choices of the world, I do draw a pretty black line on the white background and that line comes around censorship and things of its ilk, especially in the interest of observing religions that not everyone subscribes to. This has to do with a lot more than manga, but manga is on the block. My specific problem with editing manga is the following: If our "market" does not allow for it to be brought over in its original form, then it shouldn't be brought over. I mean, do these fry eating motherfuckers honestly think that they're fans of anime and manga when they script and content have been adapted to fit their own culture? No, you're a fan of pretty pictures and what basically amounts to an American made comic book. If you're not enjoying the original Japanese jokes, the cultural references, and things like that it means you're not a fan of the form you're claiming to be a fan of. What you're read when things are heavily altered or adapted isn't "manga," it's an adapted work of fiction. I'd liken it to the remake of Ringu or other films like that. When you replace all the Japanese dialog, mannerisms, characters, and settings with American ones, you aren't watching a Japanese film. I guess that's the meat of it. At this point, I'd honestly rather spend my time translating Japanese manga than buying heavily adapted crap. Right now, DelRey is doing the best job in the American market, but their edits have put them in hot water with me. The cover of Air Gear 2 is fine. Want proof? Go look in the fucking Romance section of the bookstore. Middle-aged women will buy that shit right up, but show it on a cartoon book made for her 10 year old (misconception) and it's the devil. I mean, where is the strapping Native American man?!

Ok, I'll be done now. I'd like to thank my readers for not sucking like the overzealous twats at ANN. More the ones on the "the edit is fine" side of things. I may be a bit biased.

Wow, this certainly is a bothersome bit of news for everyone. As you may recall, Nintendo held a big unveiling event last week and in the same breath as all the news about the console's launch, it was mentioned by Piper Flannigan (Perrin Kaplan), or whatever her name is, that the Wii would be region free. Well, it turns out that Nintendo's most important people are either flat out liars or they don't inform their top people of what the console they're making is capable of. That's right, somber Nintendo fans. The Wii will NOT be region free. Oh snap. Here's the official quote:

"Wii will be region encoded by territory."

So there you have it. For those keeping score in the next-gen race for moral superiority… and I know some of you are, Sony is the only offering that will be region free. Apologies to all the Wii hopefuls. You might want to consider cancelling that Lik Sang or Play-Asia preorder.

So, I wrote yesterday about TOKYOPOP unexclusiving some of their web-only titles to cheers of "Who cares?" and "Fuck TOKYOPOP in the first place." but after having read a bit more about it, the situation looks a bit better for us, if not entirely fucking confusing. And by confusing, I mean to say they do plan to let web-only titles appear in stores, but they're doing it in a pretty stupid way. Here's the quote:

"Please note that details are still being worked out," TOKYOPOP publisher Mike Kiley told us, "but in early 07 we hope to provide stores the opportunity to purchase online exclusives during the same limited pre-order window offered to consumers."

So yeah, from the looks of it, retailers will be able to order web-only titles for their shops, but only during the limited pre-order window that is also open to consumers. That seems pretty stupid to me, and I'd also wager that it's possible that larger book stores won't bother themselves to make sure they order the books within a certain window. Also, TOKYOPOP makes no mention of how the re-order process will work, and whether or not retailers will be offered the wholesale price, despite them not extending such a price to consumers who would purchase the books at the same time. Time will tell on those spots, I suppose, but I wouldn't get my hopes up for any of it.