Leading On-Demand Web Retailer Offers Unique Apparel, Stationery And Other Items Inspired By Japanese Pop Culture, Manga And Animation

San Francisco, CA, January 7, 2009 – VIZ Media, LLC (VIZ Media), one of the entertainment industry's most innovative and comprehensive publishing, animation and licensing companies, has announced a partnership with Zazzle to launch a new line of J-Pop, manga and anime-inspired apparel, stationery, and other items. VIZ Media's J-Pop Style Stop at Zazzle is located at www.zazzle.com/vizmedia and offers a variety of visually compelling and original designs inspired by a love of Japanese pop culture available on an on-demand basis with most products produced within 24 hours of ordering.

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Heisei Democracy, a blog "devoted to the latest in news, reviews, and opinion on the two-dimensional culture of Japan, with particular emphasis on the media (anime, manga, console games), ero (eroge, eroanime, eromanga, doujinshi), and hobby (PVC figures, garage kits, analog games) sides of the industry, and the culture and events surrounding them", has been inactive since September 2008. A few days ago, an announcement was posted announcing that the blog will resume operation.

Also, Ikimashou.net, another great otaku blog covering Japanese anime, manga, games and otaku culture in general that got its domain stolen at the beginning of 2008, is now back in action as well, and has made a post detailing what happened to the blog.

Comic Market, or Comiket, is the world's largest comic convention where fans gather to buy and sell doujinshi comics, games, etc.

The event takes place twice a year. The latest one, Comiket 75, is taking place from 12/28 - 12/31. Below is a round up of some of the English coverages from around the internet:

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Comic Market, or Comiket, is the world's largest comic convention. Currently Comiket is held twice a year, first in mid-August then late December, at the Tokyo Big Sight. Comiket 72 took place from August 17th - 19th. According to Mantan Web, over 170,000 fans attended Comiket 72 on day 1, 40,000 more than during Comiket 71 last December. The next Comiket, C74, will take place from August 15th to 17th.

Comiket is a place where doujin artists and groups gather and sell their works. While many groups hardly make any profit, Comiket is the place where they would try and make a name for themselves. Many of today's popular artists and groups began their career at Comiket. From Saimon Fumi to Rumoki Takahashi, or the mega-popular CLAMP, they all attended Comiket in the early days of their career. Some doujin groups, like Type-Moon, became so popular and made enough money to go professional.

Comiket began in 1975, and gradually grew into the world's biggest comic convention. In the last few years, each day of the convention saw an overall attendance of over 100,000, and C66 saw a total attendance of 510,000.

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Top 10 manga (5/14) according to Tohan:

1. Naruto (42)
2. Claymore (14)
3. Worst (20)
4. To Love-Ru (9)
5. Kaichou wa Maid-sama! (5)
6. Steel Ball Run (15)
7. Faster than a Kiss (3)
8. Angel Heart (26)
9. Initial D (37)
10. Yu-Gi-Oh! GX (3)

Additional Rankings:

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IGN has published an extensive article on Tokyo's Akihabara district titled "Next Stop: Tokyo's Akihabara District."

From otaku blog Akibanana comes an interview with Okura Atsuhisa:

Okura Atsuhisa, 39, a Kodansha Award laureate known for his work in the November 2007 edition of Wired. With the second volume of Moe USA in stores now, we decided to sit down with Okura to get to the bottom of the global move to educate otaku and experience Akihabara.

Top 10 manga (4/30) according to Tohan:

1. Hayate the Combat Butler (15)
2. Koukou Debut (11)
3. Kekkaishi (20)
4. Mahou Sensei Negima! (22)
5. Boku no Hatsukoi wo Kimi ni Sasagu (11)
6. Otomen (5)
7. Inuyasha (53)
8. Kamen Rider Spirits (14)
9. Cat Street (8)
10. Emma (10)

Additional Rankings:

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Jiji Press reports that UNIQLO, a Japanese casual clothing store chain, is planning on bringing its manga and anime T-shirts overseas:

Fast Retailing hopes to boost sales of the manga and anime T-shirts by luring more overseas customers who seek after Japanese pop culture as "Japan Cool." [...] In France, Fast Retailing on Monday opened a time-limited T-shirt shop at Galeries Lafayette, a major department store in central Paris. [...] UNIQLO's adult-size T-shirts are priced between 1,500 yen and 1,900 yen in Japan. [...] In 2008, the company aims at selling more than 12 million T-shirts worldwide. It operates UNIQLO shops in Britain, France, Hong Kong, mainland China, South Korea and the United States in addition to Japan.

Source: MangaCast

According to Canned Dogs, artist Ishii Meguru was arrested in Yokohama for committing "indecent acts with a 15 year old girl through November and December last year for a total of 4 times.":

The article reports that Ishii Meguru was an artist for the novelized version of Higurashi no naku koro ni (though he only did some art for Ichijinsha's novel anthologies, the artist for the official higurashi novels is Tomohi), and that he was also popular among fans of gothic lolita.