The Girl Who Leapt Through Time ( Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo )

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time is an animated Japanese film produced by the animation studio Madhouse and distributed through Kadokawa Herald Pictures, first released in theatres in Japan on July 15, 2006. The film was later released on DVD on April 20, 2007 in Japan in regular and limited editions. A German RC2 DVD (with German and Japanese dub and German and Polish subtitles) was released on September 24, 2007 by Anime Virtual/AV Visionen. A manga story, set as a prelude to the film, was serialized in Kadokawa Shoten's Shōnen Ace manga magazine between April 26, 2006 and June 26, 2006; the chapters were later collected into a single bound volume which went on sale on July 26, 2006.

On December 9, 2007 Bandai Entertainment announced that the anime film will be released as a region 1 DVD. Bandai Entertainment, who had very recently obtained the North American distributing rights to the film said in a New York press conference that they are also considering releasing the film in limited release in selected theaters in Los Angeles, New York, and possibly other locations. Bandai Entertainment did not specify whether or not they will release the film dubbed or subbed for American viewers, though they are considering both options.

Tsutsui Yasutaka's novel, Toki o Kakeru Shōjo (unofficial translation: The Little Girl Who Conquered Time) is the basis of the film, but the film is not a movie version of the book. Instead, the film is set as a continuation of the book in the same setting some twenty years later. Tsutsui Yasutaka praised the film as being "a true second-generation" of his book at the Tokyo International Anime Fair on March 24, 2006.

Death Note

Death Note

Death Note is a Japanese manga series created by writer Tsugumi Ohba and illustrator Takeshi Obata. The series primarily centers around a high school student who decides to rid the world of evil with the help of a supernatural notebook that kills anyone whose name is written in it.

Death Note was first serialized by Shueisha in the Japanese manga magazine Weekly Shonen Jump from the first issue in December 2003 to May 2006, with 108 chapters in total. The series has been published in its entirety in 12 tankōbon volumes in Japan and in North America. The series has been adapted into a pair of live-action films released in Japan on June 17, 2006 and November 3, 2006, and an anime series which aired in Japan from October 3, 2006 to June 26, 2007. Also, a novelization of the series, written by light novelist Nisio Isin, was released in Japan on August 1, 2006.

Some schools in Shenyang, People's Republic of China have banned the manga after some of their students started to tease friends and teachers by altering a notebook to resemble a Death Note and writing their names in them.

The newspaper Shenyang Night Report called Death Note "poison, creating wicked hearts". One major Chinese newspaper felt that the ban is an overreaction and is inappropriate.

Beijing also has a ban on "horror stories" around schools to protect the "physical and mental health" of students, which includes local adaptations of Death Note. China itself is likewise trying to weed out pirated copies of the books and television series, as well other Japanese horror magazines, where no legal publication house prints it. Wang Song of the National Anti-piracy and Anti-pornography Working Committee has said that the series "misleads innocent children and distorts their mind and spirit".

On September 28, 2007, two notes stating "Watashi wa Kira dess" (I am Kira, with "desu" being the more phonetic transliteration of the verb) were found near the unidentified remains of a Caucasian male. Nothing was found on or near the victim besides these two notes. Belgian police are investigating the matter further.

A senior at the Franklin Military Academy in Richmond, Virginia was suspended after being caught possessing a replica Death Note notebook with the names of fellow students

Rurouni Kenshin

Rurouni Kenshin

Rurouni Kenshin: Meiji Swordsman Romantic Story is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Nobuhiro Watsuki with an anime adaptation. The story is set during the early Meiji period in Japan. The English-language versions of the OVAs as well the film is released as Samurai X, although the original title was included in the DVD releases. The series tells the story of an assassin named Himura Kenshin, who was known as the Hitokiri Battōsai. Kenshin later grieves for all the lives he has taken, and vows that he will never kill again.

The manga originally appeared in Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump from September 2, 1994, to November 4, 1999, and the completed work consists of 28 tankōbon volumes. The United States release of the manga has been completed by Viz Media. Rurouni Kenshin is subtitled "Wandering Samurai" in some English releases, as a rough translation of "Rurouni."

Writer Kaoru Shizuka has written an official Rurouni Kenshin novel titled Voyage to the Moon World. The novel has been translated by Viz and distributed in the United States and Canada.

History of Anime ,Part 2

The Japanese term for animation is アニメーション (animēshon, pronounced /ɑnime:ɕoɴ/), written in katakana. It is a direct transliteration and re-borrowed loanword (see gairaigo) of the English term "animation." The Japanese term is abbreviated as アニメ (anime, pronounced /ɑnime/). Both the original and abbreviated forms are valid and interchangeable in Japanese, but as could be expected the abbreviated form is more commonly used.

The pronunciation of anime in English differs significantly from Japanese. The first vowel is further forward in English than Japanese: /æ/ is more likely than /ɑ/. As English stresses words differently than Japanese, the second vowel is likely to emerge as an unstressed schwa /ə/ or /I/ in English, whereas in Japanese each mora carries equal stress. As with a few other Japanese words such as Pokémon and Kobo Abé, anime is sometimes spelled as animé in English with an acute accent over the final e to cue the reader that the letter is pronounced as a Japanese /e/. However, this accent does not appear in any commonly used system of romanized Japanese, and English native speakers may produce /eI/.

Linguistically, the anime definition is subject to interpretation. In Japan, the term does not specify an animation's nation of origin or style; instead, it is used as a blanket term to refer to all forms of animation from around the world. In English, main dictionary sources define anime as "a Japanese style of motion-picture animation" or "a style of animation developed in Japan".Thus, non-Japanese works are sometimes called anime-influenced animation if they borrow stylistically from Japanese animation.

In western countries the word is used usually only to refer to animated programming of Japanese origin, with the term "cartoon" or "animated series" used for most other visual styles. The online anime database AniDB generally defines anime (in the singular form) as "an animated, professionally produced, feature film created by a Japanese company for the Japanese market". However, some anime are co-productions with non-Japanese companies like the Cartoon Network. Thus, anime is no longer specific to the Japanese market.

Anime can be used as a common noun, "Do you watch anime?" or as a suppletive adjective, "The anime Guyver is different from the movie Guyver." It may also be used as a mass noun, as in "How much anime have you collected?" and therefore is never pluralized "animes" (nouns are never pluralized in Japanese). However, in other languages where anime has been adopted as a loan word, it is sometimes used as a count noun in singular and in plural as in Danish "Jeg tror, jeg vil se en anime" ("I think I'll watch an anime") and "Hvor mange anime'er har du nu?" ("How many animes do you have now?").

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