Otaku News - Week in Review
Since I did not have time to post very much this week (lots of deadlines), I will instead post a summary of all that was interesting.
Japanese Second Life Competitor
ANN and others have been reporting on the announcement of a new Japanese virtual world, ‘meet-me’, which is now under development.
Included in the companies helping out with character design are anime studios Production I.G. and Studio Pierrot.
The setting for the game will be a virtual version of Tokyo. Expect to hear about an alpha version of the game late this year.
In releated news, Studio 4°C has announced it will be working on the design aspects of another virtual world called ‘Cyber Megacity: Tokyo’s 0th Ward’.
X-Japan Reunite
After being disbanded for 10 years, the surviving members of Japanese rock group X-Japan have said they will be reuniting to perform a new single and carry out a concert tour. The song will be a new vocal version of ‘Without You’, a tribute to Hide (the bands late guitarist). The first location for the tour will be Los Angeles.
Bleach Movie 2
It has been announced on the official Japanese Bleach movie website that a second Bleach movie will be released in Japanese cinemas this December.
Anime accounts for 26% of searches on Wikipedia
A testament to the popularity of anime outside of Japan, market research group Compete, Inc have released details on their blog which suggest that 26% of all searches on Wikipedia during the month of April were anime related!
And here we see what happens when incorrectly translated new gets spread over the web: X Japan will reunite but their new release - which hasn’t been specified as a single anywhere - WON’T be “Without Out.” THAT will be a production by Yoshiki and Toshi ONLY - and furthermore, that song is NOT a tribute to hide. hide7s death was just the catalyst for Yoshiki to write down something that has probably been in hi mind for a long time.
Please DO get for information right before you publish stuff!
According to an article at anime news network (http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2007-06-04/x-japan-to-reunite-with-single-concert-by-year’s-end) titled ‘X japan to reunite with single’ it is indeed a single! Unfortunately my level of Japanese is not good enough to read the original article and so I cannot confirm if this is correct.