Otaku, No Video

ANN:  Congrats to Nana Mizuki! She’s the first voice actor to get a #1 single on the Oricon charts! In case you’re wondering, the single is Phantom Minds, it sold 54,000 copies in a week, and she’s the VA behind Hinata in Naruto, Fate Testarossa in Nanoha, Wrath in Fullmetal Alchemist, and many others.

ANN: Some licensing news: Hulu has started streaming the recent supernatural action anime Kekkaishi. They’ve already put up a sub of episodes 1, 2, and 5. No, that’s not a Monty Python and the Holy Grail joke. (“Three, sir!”)

ANN:  Fantasy manga Descendants of Darkness is returning after a hiatus of 8 years. No word on exactly why it’s taken that long.

ANN:  In manga and censorship news, Yoshiyuki Kazumi has revealed on his blog that his editor’s told him to tone down the erotic content in his manga Konohana.  The magazine it’s being published in is an all-ages magazine, which kinda explains that. I haven’t been able to track down a copy of it, so I’ve no idea how racy it actually is.  But not exactly a surprise, is it?

iPhone fans, rejoice!  There’s now a Crunchyroll app for your iPhone, as well as an Anime Network app, each of which offers free, streaming anime straight to your iPhone.  Both require the latest version of the iPhone OS software, and while the Crunchyroll app is free, the Anime Network app will set you back US $7.

ANN: AnimeNewsNetwork.com has a nice round-up of the various ways in which anime showed up on American TV shows this week, from the short-lived otaku on American Idol to the body pillow subplot on 30 Rock, the hentai mention on Scrubs, and the cosplay reference on Archer.

ANN: The Japanese Manga Publishers Society has released 2009 circulation numbers for a slew of manga magazines. The winner by a mile: Weekly Shonen Jump, with over 2.8 million copies sold last year. Overall, the big names saw increased circulation, but almost all the others saw lower sales (there was a recession on, don’tcha know).

Finally, must end on a sad note: we’ve had two deaths this week. Daisuke Gouri, voice actor best known as Mr. Satan in Dragonball Z, Bask Om in Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, Dozle Zabi in Mobile Suit Gundam, and Hiromi Yamazaki in Patlabor, passed away on Sunday at the age of 57.  And Takumi Shibanois gone, too; he founded the first science fiction fan magazine in Japan, which was a starting point for many Japanese SF authors. He also translated a number of SF books into Japanese, including E.E. “Doc” Smith’s Lensman series and Larry Niven’s Ringworld, which would greatly inspire Japanese SF fandom and, ultimately, manga and anime.  He also consulted on the SF aspects of several classic anime series, including Tekkaman, Gatchaman F, and Casshan. He was 83.