2008 Anime News Updates

Posted Sunday, December 14, 2008 - Two years have passed since the battle with Majin Boo. Mr. Satan's hotel, built as a commemoration of the victory over Boo, is finally complete. While Goku and the other are enjoying the party, a strange pod falls to Earth. Inside, a sharp-eyed Saiyan detects strong fighting abilites and takes a small alien along to the party. When the Saiyan encounters Vegeta, his words shock everyone. Broadcast free until 1/31/2009 on the offical Jumpland website here! You have to install a free browser plugin on the site so you can watch the movie. Enjoy!

Posted Tuesday, December 07, 2008 - The official website for the new Fullmetal Alchemist television anime series has launched with a short teaser video, and it has confirmed that the television series will launch in Japan in April. It also promised that new information will be provided in the January issue of Square Enix's Monthly Shonen Gangan magazine (where Hiromu Arakawa's original manga is still serialized) on December 12. The same issue will also include a poster with a key visual image. The new Fullmetal Alchemist teaser trailer ran at the end of the episode of Mobile Suit Gundam 00 Second Season that aired in Japan on Sunday. The trailer says, "New training … a fullmetal artificial limb, a body of armor … the brothers' journey begins. Fullmetal Alchemist: April 2009 Training. In this palm, is there hope or despair?" The new television anime series was confirmed on the wraparound jacket band of the 20th volume of Hiromu Arakawa's Fullmetal Alchemist manga in August. However, a document with leaked information about animators who worked at BONES had already mentioned the possibility of "Hagane 2" ("Iron/Fullmetal 2") in July. Viz Media published the 17th volume of the manga version in North America this October, while FUNimation Entertainment released both the first television series and its theatrical movie finale.

Posted Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - Searches for the word " Naruto " were #7 on the Yahoo web search engine's list of the top 10 most popular search terms of 2008. That includes searches for the original manga, the anime series based on it, any of the several video game adaptations, or the main character Naru to Uzumaki himself. This is not an absolute ranking, but rather, is based based on a complex formula that includes both the actual number of times Yahoo users searched for it, and how this number compares to the term's popularity in previous years. Although Yahoo did not announce an official top 10 list last year, a company executive nonetheless confirmed then that Naruto was the site's fourth overall most popular search term of 2007. The highest ranking term on this year's list was "Britney Spears," and Naruto was the only one of the top 10 that referred to a fictional character.

Posted Sumday, November 23, 2008 - The fan group Dattebayo has announced that it will stop subtitling and distributing the Naruto anime franchise "permanently" on January 15. That date is when the Naruto.com, Crunchyroll, Hulu , and Joost websites will officially begin streaming the latest episodes of the Naruto Shippuden sequel series one week after their Japanese broadcast for free. A Dattebayo organizer who uses the alias "Interactii" says that an episode of Naruto Shippuden would get 450,000 downloads from Dattebayo in its first week. According to Dattebayo, the group accumulated 976,405 downloads for episode 20 in 489 days.

Posted Monday, November 17, 2008 - The North American anime distributor Viz Media has announced that it will begin streaming the latest episodes of the Naruto Shippuden anime sequel within a week of their Japanese broadcast premiere for free starting on January 15. The next latest episode will be added with English subtitles every Thursday thereafter. In addition, the official Naru to.com website will stream the first eight episodes of Naruto Shippuden for free on January 2. The website will add eight more episodes every Friday thereafter until all of the earlier episodes are online. Naru to.com is already streaming the episodes of the first Naruto ninja action series, and its ad-supported streams are available to users in the United States and Canada.

Posted Thursday, November 13, 2008 - After placing on the USA Today newspaper's list of the top 150 bestselling books the previous week, the newest volume of Masashi Kishimoto 's Naruto ( Viz Media ) rose again. It opened in the #123 spot two week ago based on early sales, but for the week of November 3-9, it jumped up over 70 spots to the #51 position. Officially, it just starting shipping on November 4.

Posted Tuesday, November 11, 2008 - The IGN entertainment news website reports that 20th Century Fox has pushed its American release of James Wong 's live- action film version of Akira Toriyama 's Dragonball manga two days earlier to April 8. April 8 is the Wednesday before the Easter holiday weekend next year. 20th Century Fox had originally listed an August 15, 2008 release date when it officially announced the project last November. The studio then pushed the film back to April 10 for additional shooting and post-production work before settling on the new April 8 date.

Posted Sunday, November 9, 2008 -Simon & Schuster , a distributor of books published by Viz Media , is listing the release of 11 Naruto manga volumes within the three months between February and April 2009. Masashi Kishimoto 's Naruto volume 33 is scheduled to ship on December 23. However, the next four volumes (#34-37) are all listed for February 3. Volumes 38 to 41 will then follow on March 3. Volumes 42 to 44 will end the accelerated schedule on April 7. The next volume, #45, is slated for July 7. The Amazon online retailer also lists the same dates.

Posted Saturday, November 8, 2008 -America's Cartoon Network will run the third Naruto animated film, Naruto the Movie: Guardians of the Crescent Moon Kingdom , this Saturday at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT. Guardians of the Crescent Moon Kingdom is slated for a North American DVD release on November 11. Cartoon Network revealed in September that it would end its Toonami action programming block. However, Cartoon Network is still running its online video-streaming service, Toonami Jetstream .

Posted Friday, November 7, 2008 - It has been one heck of a week working on the site about 4 hours a day... but in the end I think it will be worth it. The GFXs degisn always needs some work cause that is my weak area. However I re-orginized the internal link sturcture, Correctly Tittle all the new pages, and added a Media / Image Gallery. So the only thing left is to start addin new material. So if you have a suggustion then please send me an email!