Some interesting otaku news.
I was looking through the news on AnimeNewsNetwork and a few articles caught my eye.
Episode 6 of Moetan pulled.
The episode “Hajimete no Date”, “The First Date” in English, will be replaced with a clip show. It will still be on the DVD however.
That peaked my curiosity. Why was it pulled? Something to do with the story? Was it a bit of animation that the production company refused to edit out? Was it to create a response like mine and drive up DVD sales?
If you know the answer, please leave a comment and let us know.
Free English manga on Popteen.com.
A Japanese teen magazine is posting free manga on their web site, translated into English no less. I read the first part. It’s not too bad. Very targeted to the magazine’s audience though, so unless you have a subscription to Seventeen or a similar magazine, Gal Samurai may not be for you. It’s about a very stylish young girl, who happens to be very good at martial arts.
Toei will open “All You Can Watch” anime buffet.
An anime subscription service from Toei Animation will start up on September 1st. It’s supposed to have 15 titles and over 1,000 episodes. Pretty good for under $15 a month.
If only they’d release an English version, that’d be sweeeeeeet. Is it just me or do the American distributors seem like they’re way behind the Japanese companies with things like this?
In other news…
IK Comics open for bidness.
Online comic distributor opens IKComics.com. You can preview comics then buy them. I’m not sure about their methods. Windows downloads are .exe files, programs in other words. Since the previews are just .jpg files, I can’t really tell you about their software.
On the upside, there are a few good points. The comics are priced about the same as traditional paper comics, though personally I think that’s kind of high for a digital comic that has no printing costs. Comics are rated either “All Ages” or “Mature”, so you know what’s what.
Some interesting sounding titles like Infiniteens and Wildseed.
Anime, News, Anime News, Moetan, Moetan Episode 6, Popteen, Popteen.com, Gal Samurai, Toei Animation, anime subscription, IK Comics, online comics, Infiniteens, Wildseed
August 11th, 2007 at 4:01 am
Hey, they have a demo comic online too, looks like you missed it. You can download it from the home page. The viewer looks cool, quite easy to use. And its got some nice DVD style special features too… pencil art and stuff. I bought the INFINITEENS issue 1, the art is amazing… hope they put up issue 2 soon.
August 11th, 2007 at 8:51 am
Yep, I did miss it. Thanks for letting me know.
I’ve checked it out now. I don’t see anything really innovative about it. A lot of the stuff it does could be included in a .pdf file. Granted, it was the demo, the full version comics could have more features.
August 22nd, 2007 at 1:55 am
I like the idea of what IKComics is trying to do, but….
For those of us who don’t run Win or Mac, we’re kinda screwed. I’m sure if I really tried, I could find a way to get the viewer to work, but it’s just the point of the matter I’m trying to portray here. I’ll admit, I’m part of an extremely small minority, and most of the Internet is populated with these two OS’s. However, to really get out there, they shouldn’t put a restriction on their possible fanbase.
August 22nd, 2007 at 1:05 pm
Yeah, they are kinda shooting themselves in the foot with that software. The comic is a .pdf. If they’d just sell it as a pdf, then they’d have more potential customers.
Shoot, even my old Handspring P.D.A. can use .pdf files.