Yes, that’s right: Neptune must team up with Nippon Ichi-chan, Gust-chan, IF-chan, and Compa-chan to save the world. It’s the most self-referential and strange thing I’ve seen since Sega Gaga for the Dreamcast, and it is mind-boggling to think of the thought process that went into the concept of this game. Crossover specials like Street Fighter X Tekken or Capcom vs. SNK are one thing, but it takes a special kind of brain to say “Hey, let’s turn our companies themselves into cute young girls and have them summon our game characters as their attacks!”

I’m a little ashamed to say that I’m tempted to pre-order this.

Yus!

If the second season of the criminally undersold Arakawa Under the Bridge didn’t wow you, don’t worry – the prequel to Nisio Isin’s famed ghost story series Bakemonogatari is going to be animated by Shaft soon. With Kizumonogatari in the pipes, fans can now rest assured that the hit 2009 anime is going to get much, much more anime. Kizumonogatari takes place before Bakemonogatari, and covers the strange sequence of events that turned Koyomi into a vampire, then cured him. Also of interest, it shows how Kiss-Shot Acerola-Orion Heart-Under-Blade became the quiet little Lolita she is in the main story. No date or format has been announced for the new series, which is probably for the best.

With this announcement, it becomes very safe to say that every -monogatari story in the series is going to get its turn getting animated by the overworked people at Shaft. Whether or not they’ll be completed in time for release is another question entirely, thanks to the now-infamous missing scenes scattered throughout the Bakemonogatari anime. That’s good, because the hard-working Nisio Isin is scheduled to bring out a new novel every three months until December of next year.

Not content with finishing up Nekomonogatari (“Tsubasa Tiger”) in October, he’s following them up with Keimonogatari (“Mayoi Jiang-Shi”) in December and Hanamonogatari (“Suruga Devil”), Otorimonogatari (“Nadeko Medusa”), Onimonogatari (“Shinobu Time”), and Koimonogatari (“Hitagi End”) in 2011. Shaft’s going to fall behind at this rate – but then again, no one really expects them to be on time anymore.

In other news, this is the most hyphens I have ever used in a single post. I felt like mentioning that.

It’s been five years after the first iDOLM@STER game took over arcades, which led to two highly successful Xbox 360 games, 4 portable versions, and a whole ton of concerts and CD releases. Last weekend, Namco Bandai announced the newest installment of the famous music-producing simulation: The iDOLM@STER 2.

Interestingly, the sequel is going straight to console this time, skipping the coin-op business entirely and jumping straight into the world of console sales and super-profitable DLC. The character designs and rendering engine have been updated and characters from the PSP version have replaced old favorites; most notably, though, the trailer includes the all-new song “The World is All One,” which has successfully wormed itself into my brain.

Oh, and extra love for the Namco 30th anniversary bumper. I could watch that all day.

Sweet mercy, I go and take a break to staff AX and the anime companies unleash half of their big announcements! I’m glad I’ll actually have time during Otakon to post the news as it happens, because falling behind on AX feels like a mountain already.

So, here we go with the alphabetical company-by-company roundup:

Aniplex

Durarara!! (DVD)

Bandai

K-On! (DVD)

Crunchyroll

Occult Academy (simulcast)
Tono to Issho (simulcast)

FUNimation

Nozomi

Sora no Woto (DVD)
Revolutionary Girl Utena (TV and movie)

Sentai

Highschool of the Dead (simulcast)

Viz

Nurarihyon no Mago (simulcast)
Strawberry 100% (streaming)

Phew! What a list. Out of these, I’m most interested in the To Aru series, the Trigun movie, and the amusingly self-aware Legend of the Legendary Heroes. What are you guys looking forward to owning or watching?

"Pr...Pretty average. But... well done."

The World Cup is a fascinating time to study Japan, because they approach the event with all the tentative enthusiasm of a lifelong Cubs fan. The Samurai Blue aren’t bad at all – though the two own goals during the World Cup friendlies made me doubt that for a while – but going toe to toe with the Brazilian, Spanish, and Italian teams on the world stage can really teach a nation about humility.

I remember tales of school children crying themselves to sleep after Australia’s 3-1 comeback win over Japan back in 2006, and the Japanese community has been very cautiously optimistic about this year’s Cup finals. Even after the team’s 1-0 upset over Cameroon this year, the Japanese fan base is trying to curb their enthusiasm with limited success. See above for an example of this, translated into terms that otaku can understand: tsundere. It’s so appropriate an analogy for the oft-burned fans that I adore it. Thanks, Age Soft (Muv-Luv, KimiNozo).

And, just because I can: Argentina’s legendary Diego Maradona turned into a girl, via EBBA on Pixiv.

I think more people would watch soccer if Maradona looked like this.

Not shown: zombies

The anime industry may be jumping on the zombie bandwagon a bit late, but when they hop on a bandwagon, they do it with both feet. On the heels of the upcoming Highschool of the Dead anime comes the announcement that the action-fantasy light novel series Kore wa Zombie Desu ka? (“Is this a zombie?”) has an anime adaptation in the works.

From the material available, it looks like this series has more to do with Ichiban Ushiro no Daimao than it has to do with George Romero-style horror. The story starts when young high school boy Aikawa Ayumu dies at the hands of a serial killer. His corpse is turned into a zombie by a cute necromancer (oh, Japan, you’ll add “cute” to anything), but far from becoming a mindless shambling killer, he gets the Buso Renkin treatment and becomes superhuman as a result of the reanimation process. From there, he becomes embroiled in all kinds of crazy battles, with chainsaw-wielding magical girls and rival vampire ninja clans suddenly popping up everywhere.

This sounds like it could be legendarily stupid, wildly entertaining, or both – we’ll find out soon.

Look at this picture, and you know exactly what to expect.

No one was surprised when Enterbrain announced that their popular PS2 romance game Amagami was getting an anime this summer. It was more of an inevitability than a dark horse, based on an age-old formula for creating harmless and profitable anime. Take a popular game full of cute girls, turn it into a harmlessly cute anime with a moderate budget, lie back, and roll around in merchandising money.

A trailer for Amagami SS is now available on the anime’s official website, and it’s everything you think it would be. Kind of cute, mostly harmless, and destined to be really popular with one segment of the population. Oh, and there’s ear-biting. That’s the big hook of this one, or something.

Chinka continues to surprise, as the small-studio anime’s first cast announcement consisted of one name repeated four times. Yes, that’s right: up-and-coming voice actress Satou Satomi (you may remember her as the drummer in K-On!) is set to play three lead characters in Danny Choo’s anime: Chinka, Shoka, and Megumi. She’ll also be doing the title call, announcing the name of the episode, but that’s not as newsworthy as one person playing all three lead characters. There’ve been lots of multiple-role actors in animation before, but for the life of me I can’t think of a single show where the entire lead cast was played by a single person.

Does anyone out there have an idea if this has ever happened before, or is this new?

Image taken from Kotoba, on Pixiv.net

Over the weekend, FUNimation’s panels at Anime Boston and SakuraCon announced three titles to add to their ever-growing library:

- Chobits, CLAMP’s tale about the complex relationship between a young man and his cutely anthropomorphic computer, has been rescued from its limbo state. It was previously licensed by the now-defunct Geneon Entertainment, and last saw DVD release in 2005.

- Eden of the East, a trilogy of movies that follow the popular mystery series of the same name.

- Spice and Wolf II, a surprisingly low-key fantasy tale that follows a young traveling peddler and his companion, who happens to be a harvest deity in the shape of a young wolf-girl.

Between a Geneon rescue license and two sequels, all three of these announcements were more comforting than exciting. Fans of Chobits will be happy that they can pick up one of FUNimation’s cheap box sets, while fans of Eden of the East and Spice and Wolf pretty much already knew that FUNimation was going to pick up the sequels.

Chinka, the anime created by famed Tokyo blogger Danny Choo, now has a trailer! It doesn’t have production values that’ll shake the world, but it looks good for a new studio. I’m not really into the whole “cute girls doing cute things and not much else” genre of anime, but I’m excited to see a fresh face in the industry. Who knows, maybe this is going to be wildly successful and usher in a new generation of anime makers! Okay, let’s not get carried away, but you get the point. New face in the anime business = interesting.