The Animation Co-Op Defense League (ACDL), a collective consortium of Adult Animation distributor’s and studio’s, has reported on it’s efforts to curb what it calls illegal distribution of adult animation (also known as Hentai). According to their press release, the consortium has made “significant progress in their efforts to educate and combat the proliferation of web sites illegally hosting and offering for sale selling unlicensed content which is owned by the major Animation studios”.

Providing some numbers, the group claims to have - for the year of 2008 alone - already “taken down a total of 10,738 infringers, including: 5006 Movie file-sharing links, 2123 Picture file-sharing links and 3609 Blog post”.

Full Press Release contained here-in after the jump.

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In celebration of marking 40 years in publication, Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump has announced that they will hold a “Jump Super Anime Tour”. This fall will see the tour visiting 10 cities across Japan while displaying new anime specials for Dragon Ball and One Piece.

The “Jump Super Anime Tour” will be one of eight projects that mark the 40th anniversary of Weekly Shonen Jump Magazine.

[ Muhyojo via ANN ]

Bandai Entertainment has announced that they will be re-releasing Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell: Innocence on DVD and Blu-Ray Disc with an English dub.

Dreamworks, who aims to produce a live action version of Ghost In The Shell, originally released Ghost In The Shell: Innocence in North American theaters and on DVD, however, there was only English subtitles and no dubbing present.

According to Bandai, Innocence’s dub will be produced by the same studio which dubbed the television movie, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex: Solid State Society.

Source: ANN [ Image © Shirow Masamune/Kodansha • IG, ITNDDTD ]

DreamWorks has acquired the rights to produce a Live Action feature based on Masamune Shirow’s, Ghost In The Shell.

Ghost In The Shell ( 攻殻機動隊, Kōkaku Kidōtai ) , first published in 1989, is a futuristic police thriller dealing with the exploits of Motoko Kusanagi, a member of the covert operations section of the Japanese National Public Safety Commission, Section 9, which specializes in fighting technology-related crime. She may be named after one of the three Imperial Regalia of Japan and Shirow makes reference to them at the end of the second manga. Although supposedly equal to all other members, Kusanagi fills the leadership role in the team, and is usually referred to as “the Major” due to her past rank in the armed forces. She is capable of superhuman feats, and bionically specialized for her job — her body is almost completely mechanized; only her brain and a segment of her spinal cord are organic. [ Wikipedia ]

According to Variety, Seaside Entertainment will be producing the feature while Jamie Moss has signed on to write the script for the adaption. Universal and Sony also attempted to gain the rights to Ghost in the Shell, however, Steven Spielberg is reported to have taken great personal interest in the property, thus leading to its’ reception by DreamWorks. “Ghost in the Shell is one of my favorite stories,” Spielberg was quoted as saying. “It’s a genre that has arrived, and we enthusiastically welcome it to DreamWorks.”

Continuing the ‘Otaku Shopping in London’ series, I will today be looking at Tokyo Toys…

Tokyo Toys started off as an online store for all things otaku, and a few months ago they opened a physical store in the London Trocadero. If I remember correctly it was on the top floor at the back (the front being the side you enter from the Leicester Square direction).

Below is a collection of images from the trip, click the thumbnails to see a full size view:

The London Trocadero:

Tokyo Toys:

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Terra Tag, the company behind the laughing man logo, have recently opened a small store in London selling their merchandise (primarily t-shirts). Since it seemed like more fun than revising, I thought I would check it out! Click the images to see an enlarged view.

Terra Tag store façade:

Anime T-Shirts:

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There is a reason why you should not imitate what you see on TV. Sadly, 10-year-old Cody Porter (Pictured Right, Below) of Seattle, Washington learned that the hard way this past weekend.

While playing in a sandbox in his family’s backyard - along with five of his peers (including three brothers and two friends), the boy requested of them to help him recreate a scene from Naruto by burying him in the one-foot-deep sandbox, head-first, from his head to his chest.

Once he was buried, the boy was said to have been thrashing around violently. After witnessing this, his friends realized that something was wrong and called for the help of adults. Upon arrival, the adults immediately called for medical help, pulled Cody from the sand and began to administer CPR to get him breathing once more.

Cody Porter; Image: KSDK News

Medics took Cody Porter to the Children’s Hospital & Regional Medical Center located in Seattle, Washington where he is currently listed in critical condition. After interviewing the five children who were in the sandbox with Cody, the Sheriff’s department named it as a “tragic accident”.

Here is what Cody’s half brother had to say about it:

“They watch a cartoon where they were like sand masters or something and they can manipulate sand or something like that. They came up with the idea that if he were to do this then he would be able to be one of them”

Seattle ABC affiliate, KOMO-TV, did a broadcast of this story which is available online. In it, various clips of Naruto are shown with Gaara (pictured left, above) performing Sand attacks and the characters are described as “sand ninjas” (ANN).

Remember kids, Naruto is an anime, do not try and immitate the fight scenes from the show in real life.

Sources: King 5, Komo-TV (via ANN)

Papa Midnight would like to remind you that picking on people is not cool. Let’s try to be nice and let this kid have some peace, especially when he goes back to school where he’s most likely to get the brunt of his insults (save, The Internet, of course).

Update:  Cody Porter was pronounced dead Monday afternoon. No doubt there will be some idiots who are quick to say that anime is evil and should be banned, but lets hope the fallout isn’t too bad. Comments along the lines of ‘it is a good thing for the gene pool when this happens’ are a little insensitive, the kid died, so try and refrain from doing so if at all possible.

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I was just browsing GaijinPot (a site for finding jobs in Japan) and noticed that J-List have recently added a job posting which is very relevant to us otakus.

The job is for an anime-related product description writer/web designer. A snippet from the description is as follows:

The job is for a description writer who can write interesting descriptions for the products our website. Ability to write interesting and informative descriptions that will add value to our image with customers. Ability to use Adobe Photoshop to aid in web graphic creation and InDesign to help make magazine ads is also a plus. We’re looking for someone with a passion for Japanese pop culture and the desire to be involved with one of the most famous companies selling Japanese animation related products directly from Japan. NOTE: if you don’t know what Fate/stay night, Newtype and The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya are, unfortunately you won’t have the skills we’re looking for and you should not apply.

To qualify you must currently reside in Japan and have passed the Japanese Language Proficiency Test at level 2 or above.

Full details at: Gaijin Pot

The Tokyo International Anime Fair’s homepage is announcing that a scheduled press event for March 30th, 2008 during the convention will be used for hosting a formal public announcement of Appleseed: Genesis.

The series will be presented in a 3D Computer Generated format which will be directed by Romanov Higa ( Urda, Catblue Dynamite, Tank Police Dominion Tank S.W.A.T. 01).

Source: Tokyo Anime [via Moon Phase via AnimeNation]

This is a notice to all those in New York City, the surrounding areas, or those who will be in New York City tommorow and/or Saturday.

The Independent Film Channel  (IFC) center in New York City will be screening Appleseed: Ex Machina on Friday and Saturday at midnight. According to ANN, the film will be digitally projected from a non-optical media source in high-definition (720p, 1080i, or 1080p was not specified).  It will be presented in Japanese with English Subtitles.