Anime News 2011

The American television channel Syfy lists the anime series Chrono Crusade and Gurren Lagann for Thursday, March 24. The channel currently shows both series on Tuesdays and will continue to do so through March 15, but starting the week after, the anime block will air on Thursday nights. Additionally, as of March 31, the schedule lists the block as starting at 11:30 p.m. rather than 11:00 p.m. Syfy (then called the Sci Fi Channel ) launched its anime block in 2007 as a Monday-night feature, titled "Ani-Monday." In 2008, the block moved to Tuesdays.

The market survey firm Oricon reports that the 61st volume of Eiichiro Oda 's One Piece pirate manga sold 2,086,080 copies between its first official day of sales (February 4) and February 6. It is the first book to sell over 2 million copies in just three days since Oricon began reporting its book ranking charts in April of 2008. This volume topped the previous fastest-selling record held by the 60th volume, which sold 2,094,123 copies in four days in November. At a retail price of 420 yen, this one volume grossed up to 876,153,600 yen (about US$10.6 million) over the Friday-Sunday period. The top-grossing film in Japan, the first live-action Gantz film, "only" made $4,747,154 this past Saturday and Sunday. Even in its opening weekend the week before, the Gantz film made less money at $7,252,554. 40 of the manga's 61 volumes were also in the top 100 chart this past week. The One Piece Saishuhen The 15th Log summary book went on sale on February 4 and sold 48,326 copies to rank #8 on the comic sales chart. The 61st volume already holds a record for having 3.8 million copies published in its first print run. The series overall now has more than 200 million copies in print.

The North American distributor Funimation announced on Friday that its Funimation Anime video- on-demand content is now available on the Charter cable service nationwide in the United States. Charter subscribers have three forms of access to the channel: five episodes per month at no extra cost; a limited amount of episodes and live-action films on demand starting at US$0.99 each; or a subscription to all of the channel's content for US$6.99 per month. Episodes from the following series are currently available for free on demand: The Sacred Blacksmith , Shikabane Hime: Aka , Phantom ~Requiem for the Phantom~ , Trigun , and Eden of the East . A listing of premium offerings has been posted to Funimation 's blog. In comments on the announcement, the FUNimation Channel also indicated that it "will have more launch announcements in the coming months."

The North American anime distributor Funimation filed a copyright infringement complaint against 1,337 "John Does" over the 481st episode of the One Piece television anime on Monday. According to the suit filed in the Northern District of Texas, the unidentified defendants "collectively participated, via the Internet , in the unlawful reproduction and distribution" of the episode "Ace Rescued! Whitebeard's Final Order!" via the BitTorrent file-sharing protocol. The suit lists defendants by their host IP (Internet Protocol) addresses and Internet service providers. The alleged incidents of copyright infringement took place between January 9 and January 12. The lawsuit identifies three of the sites where the defendants allegedly found the BitTorrent reference descriptor files for the One Piece episode. The suit also notes that users in a BitTorrent "swarm," by the inherent nature of the technology , are simultaneously downloading parts of the file and distributing parts of it to others. Funimation believes that the identities of the current 1,337 defendants and "additional infringing parties" will be revealed during the pre-trial discovery phase of the lawsuit, and it will then amend the suit to include their names. Funimation asks the court to stop the defendants from infringing on Funimation 's copyrights for this episode and any other videos now or in the future. If another request in the suit is granted, defendants "shall destroy all copies of Plaintiff's [videos] that Defendant has downloaded onto any computer hard drive or server without Plaintiff's authorization and shall destroy all copies of those downloaded [videos] transferred onto any physical medium or device in each Defendant's possession, custody, or control." Funimation also seeks compensation for damages and legal costs. ANN is awaiting Funimation 's response to a request for comment.