xxxHolic

This is another manga, anime from CLAMP that ties in with Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle and Cardcaptor Sakura.
xxxHolic has been serialized in Kodansha's Young Magazine since 2003 and published in volumes under the KC Deluxe label.
It's published in the United Kingdom by Tanoshimi and in the US by Del Rey Manga.
On August 20, 2005, an animated movie, xxxHolic: A Midsummer Night's Dream, was released in Japan. The movie was released on DVD on November 24, 2006 and TBS (Tokyo Broadcasting System) began airing a TV animation series April 6, 2006 in Japan. Funimation Entertainment obtained the rights to both the movie and TV series for distribution in the United States.
At the end of the second season run of the anime, a special episode was announced for a DVD-only release. It will be bundled for release with volume 14 of the manga on January 16, 2009.

In the manga there are references to Cardcaptor Sakura, Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle, Magic Knight Rayearth, Legal Drug, Kobato, Chobits, Lupin III and Cat's Eye.
In the anime, there are references to Ōkiku Furikabutte (a baseball manga) and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex.

"Watanuki's Sixteen-day-old Moon Grass Story" was released as a video game in Japan for the PlayStation 2 on August 9, 2007.

Cardcaptor Sakura

Cardcaptor Sakura is a magical girl manga series from the famous all-female artist team CLAMP (creators of Angelic Layer, Magic Knight Rayearth and Tokyo Babylon, among others) .
Cardcaptor Sakura is published in Japan by Kodansha (the largest manga publisher in Japan) and was serialized in Nakayoshi (a shōjo manga magazine).
The manga series consists of twelve volumes.
The Cardcaptor Sakura manga is well-known for its emphasis on the shōjo genre (manga marketed to a female audience roughly between the ages of 10 and 18) of the series, with nearly every page having detailed flowers, bubbles, or sparkles around the main characters.
It won the Seiun Award for Best Manga in 2001, and the anime won the Animage Grand Prix award for best anime in 1999.
The manga was translated into English by Tokyopop.

Cardcaptor Sakura was adapted into an anime television series, animated by Madhouse (Death Note, Chobits, Trigun) and directed by Morio Asaka (who also did Chobits) .
The character designer and chief animation director for the series was Kumiko Takahashi (Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam).
It premiered on NHK from April 8, 1998 and finished airing on March 21, 2000.
Two theatrically released movies (Cardcaptor Sakura: The Movie and Cardcaptor Sakura Movie 2: The Sealed Card), and several specials (Tomoyo's video diary 1, 2 and 3) were also produced.
The second season of TV series won the Animage Anime Grand Prix prize in 1999.
Nelvana produced an English dub of the anime series, titled Cardcaptors, which aired in English-speaking countries.
An unedited English translation, bearing the original title, Cardcaptor Sakura, was broadcast in its English-language networks by the anime television network Animax.
Cardcaptor Sakura has also been released in North America (but not the UK or Australia) on unedited and subtitled DVDs under its original title.

Besides being a very popular anime, Cardcaptor Sakura has another interesting quirk.
Several of the characters from Cardcaptor Sakura have been reworked for use in another Clamp series, Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle.
Sakura (The Princess of Clow Country) and "Syaoran" Li (The son of Sakura Kinomoto and Syaoran Li) are two of the cross overs from Cardcaptor to Tsubasa.


The series has been adapted into several video games, developed for Game Boy, PlayStation, WonderSwan, Dreamcast, Game Boy Advance and PlayStation 2.

Chibi Vampire

Chibi Vampire was originally released in Japan as Karin.
It is a Japanese manga and anime series written and illustrated by Yuna Kagesaki.
The story is about basically a " reverse vampire"girl , instead of drinking blood, she must inject it into others because she produces too much.
Chibi Vampire first premiered in the shōnen magazine Monthly Dragon Age from October 2003 until February 2008.
The individual chapters of the story were published by Kadokawa Shoten into thirteen collected volumes.

Both the manga and light novel series were released by Tokyopop in English. Tokyopop renamed the manga series Chibi Vampire and the novel series Chibi Vampire: The Novel.

In 2005, an anime adaptation of Chibi Vampire was created by J.C.Staff and directed by Shinichiro Kimura.
Twenty-four episodes were aired in Japan on WOWOW from November 3, 2005 till May 11, 2006.
It was licensed for an English release to Region 1 DVD, under the name Karin, by Geneon USA.
On July 3, 2008, Geneon Entertainment and Funimation Entertainment announced that Funimation had agreed to be the exclusive North American distributer of Geneon titles, including Chibi Vampire.

A guidebook to the Chibi Vampire series, Karin All-Nosebleeds Book, was released in 2006.

Chibi Vampire, Volume 1 (v. 1)

Mushishi

Mushishi is a manga series written and illustrated by Yuki Urushibara and published in Kodansha's Afternoon magazine. It ran from 1999 to August 2008.

The manga was adapted into an animated television series in 2005. The Artland production was directed by Hiroshi Nagahama. Episodes one through twenty aired in stations across Japan between October 2005 and March 2006. Episodes 21 through 26 aired on BS Fuji every Sunday from May 14, 2006 to June 18 of the same year. A live-action feature film adaptation, directed by Katsuhiro Otomo, premiered on March 24, 2007.

The Mushishi manga won an Excellence Prize at the 2003 Japan Media Arts Festival and the 2006 Kodansha Manga Award.

The anime series was animated by Artland and directed by Hiroshi Nagahama and spanned a total of 26 episodes. The first 20 episodes of the series first aired between October 2005 and March 2006 on Fuji TV and its affiliated broadcast networks, including Kansai TV, Tōkai TV, Hokkaidō Bunka Hoso, TV Shinhiroshima, TV Nishinippon. Episodes 21 through 26 aired on BS Fuji every Sunday from May 14, 2006 to June 18 of the same year.

The television series covered every chapter from the first five volumes of the manga and the first story from volume six, but did not adhere to the original order.

At the 5th Tokyo Anime Award competition held at the Tokyo International Anime Fair, held on March 25, 2006, the anime series won grand prizes in the categories of television series and best art direction (for Takashi Waki).

The series has later been aired by the Japanese anime television network, Animax, who have also aired the series later across its respective networks worldwide, including Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea. It has also been licensed for distribution across numerous other regions, including North America by Funimation.

Cowboy Bebop

Cowboy Bebop is an animated Japanese television series. It was directed by Shinichiro Watanabe and written by Keiko Nobumoto and produced by Sunrise. It consisted of 26 episodes. The series followed the adventures of a group of bounty hunters traveling on their spaceship, the Bebop, in the year 2071.

Cowboy Bebop was a commercial success both in Japan and international markets, notably in the United States. After this reception, Sony Pictures released a feature film, Knockin' on Heaven's Door to theaters worldwide and followed up with an international DVD release. Two manga adaptations were serialized in Kadokawa Shoten's Asuka Fantasy DX.

Cowboy Bebop has been strongly influenced by American music, especially the jazz movements of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s and the early rock era of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. Many of its action sequences, from space battles to hand-to-hand martial arts combat, are set and timed to music. Following the musical theme, episodes are called Sessions, and titles are often borrowed from album or song names (such as Sympathy for the Devil or My Funny Valentine), or make use of a genre name ("Mushroom Samba") indicating a given episode's musical theme.

Cowboy Bebop almost did not appear on Japanese television due to its depictions of violence. It was first sent to TV Tokyo, one of the main broadcasters of anime in Japan. The show had an aborted first run from April 3, 1998 until June 19, 1998 on TV Tokyo, broadcasting only episodes 2, 3, 7 to 15 and 18.

Later that year, the series was shown in its entirety from October 23 until April 23, 1999, on the satellite network WOWOW. With the TV Tokyo broadcast slot fiasco, the production schedule was disrupted to the extent that the last episode was delivered to WOWOW on the day of its broadcast. Cowboy Bebop won the Seiun Award in 2000.

The full series has also been broadcast across Japan by the anime television network, Animax, who has also aired the series via its respective networks across Southeast Asia, South Asia and East Asia. Cowboy Bebop was popular enough that the movie, Cowboy Bebop: Tengoku no Tobira (Knockin' on Heaven's Door), was commissioned and released in Japan in 2001, and later released in the United States as Cowboy Bebop: The Movie in 2003.

In a 2006 poll by TV Asahi, Cowboy Bebop was voted 40th for Japan's all-time favorite anime.

Japanese Anime: Aria

http://www.animecubed.com/animegirls/anime/Aria/Aria3.jpg.shtml

ARIA is an ongoing manga and anime by Kozue Amano. It is serialized in Mag Garden's monthly magazine Comic Blade, and has been collected into nine tankōbon volumes to date with more releases planned in 2006. It is actually a sequel series to the two volume series, AQUA, which is an introductory series to Aria and tells of how Akari comes to AQUA.

ARIA takes place in the twenty-fourth century, on the planet Aqua (formerly Mars), which has been terraformed into a habitable planet covered in oceans and seas. The town of Neo-Venezia, where the story occurs, is based on Venice both in terms of art and feel, and despite the futuristic time period, there is very little science-fiction to the manga at all.

The manga stars Akari, who is an apprentice gondolier with ARIA Company, one of the three most popular gondola companies in the city. She is training to become a full-time gondolier (or undine, as they are called in Neo-Venezia).

The style of ARIA is very laid-back, taking a "slice of life" approach to the story and is not plot driven. Most of it is devoted to the lush expansive art, as Kozue Amano frequently will take pages and pages to draw an environment, showing the wonder of both everyday activities in Neo-Venezia as well as one-of-a-kind events. It is very similar in tone to Yokohama Kaidashi Kikō.

The first three volumes of ARIA were released by ADV Manga in 2003 and 2004; however, the series appears to be on permanent hiatus. In 2006, Tokyopop announced it acquired the licensing for both Aqua and ARIA; the first three volumes of ARIA are to be republished before Tokyopop publishes further unreleased English volumes of the manga.



technorati tags: anime,manga, music, tv, movies, japan, comic, naruto, news, video, comics

Agent Aika

Agent Aika is an anime OVA series which stars a Japanese woman named Aika Sumeragi (voiced by Rei Sakuma) who works as a salvager for companies that hire her, but gets caught up in a plot for world domination. This OVA anime series is available in North America from Central Park Media.

Tokyo has sunk into the ocean, along with most of the world, during a land subsidence. Aika Sumeragi is a salvager who works for a small company run by a father and daughter tandem. Alas, the company isn't exactly successful, and money is needed desperately. Thus, Aika accepts the very dangerous job of acquiring an artifact called Lagu for a hefty sum. The boss' daughter Aida Rion joins Aika on this particular mission, and the two set off. Later on, Aika and Rion are captured by Rudolf Hagen -- an effeminate but over-sexed man who wants Lagu and Aika (and just about every pretty girl) for himself. Hargen commands a huge battleship manned exclusively by droves of cute girls in mini-skirts (the source for what is often called "fan service"). Alongside Hargen is his obsessive sister Nena, who is jealous of Aika, as well as another salvager named Gusto, who's also after Lagu and has a crush on Aika as well. When Aika's special bustier is activated, she becomes a " superwoman" who can take on whole armies by herself.

The automatic rifles shown and used throughout the series are German StG45(M), a weapon which historically never went past the prototype stage.
The planes Aika flies resemble Russian MiG-21 (episodes 1-4) and MiG-25 (episode 6).
There is about one panty shot every 20 secs in the Agent Aika anime (the first episode alone has about 122 panties in more or less plain view), even more, if you count group-scenes as more than one.

technorati tags: anime,anime girl,anime picture,japanese anime,anime manga,hot anime,anime dvd,anime music,anime gallery,anime movie,anime episode