Otaku

The first Anime Blog Awards is now underway:

The Anime Blog Awards is a bridge to highlight the best blogs in their various genres. We hope that the awards can celebrate the excellence of great anime blogs within the anime blogosphere. We also believe that this award will fulfill its desire to promote new or excellent blogs that should be given more attention.

To vote for your favorite blog, you need to own or contribute to a blog yourself. Nominations will end on April 22nd. Included in the award is a category for manga blogs. Go here for more rules.

Artinfo reports that the International Asian Art Fair, which takes place March 15???19, is featuring a contemporary gallery called Art Miya that dedicated its entire booth to manga sculptor Yabuuchi Satoshi.

Also, AkibaBlog has a report on "Raku-Job," an event where fans attend to look for a job in the anime, manga and game business.

Finally, BBC News looks at this year's China Comics Now exhibition in "When Manga meets communism."

topThe latest issue of Shounen Sunday came with a free Sakuya (a character from Kenjiro Hata's Hayate the Combat Butler) card that can be used in Hayate the Combat Butler TCG. New Akiba is reporting that a Hayate fan bought 398 copies of Shounen Sunday in order to get 398 copies of the Sakuya card.

Canned Dogs has more:

He had to travel to 82 different branches of 7-Eleven buying several copies of Shounen Sunday from each branch to complete the task (leaving a few copies so others can get their own copy) [...] 398 is a wordplay on the name "Sakuya", which is why he bought 398 copies.

Moon Phase is reporting that according to the current issue of MediaWorks' Dengeki Daioh, the magazine Dengeki Comic Gao will be suspended after this month's issue. Series currently serialized in Dengeki Comic Gao, such as Venus Versus Virus, ef - a fairy tale of the two and Gurren Lagann, will be moved to Dengeki Daioh.

Source: Heisei Democracy