New US anime licenses; Manga is “over in Japan”; X-Men shojo

This weekend is like any other for the UK-based anime fans, but over in the US, otaku are currently enjoying their first ever “New York Anime Festival”, which offers the usual mix of Western anime industry news and rumors.

• Although the event hasn’t given much in terms of new US anime licenses, Bandai have announced that they’ve picked up Mamoru Hosoda’s acclaimed 2006 movie “The Girl Who Leapt Through Time”, Mediablasters were able to confirm that they will be releasing otaku favourite Genshiken 2 and Viz Media have acquired another Shonen Jump fighting anime in “Buso Renkin”.
• Despite this being an anime festival, the most controversial talking points were courtesy of Al Kahn of 4Kids when he went ahead and claimed that manga was “over in Japan” and that if “you’re big in manga, you should be looking elsewhere, because it’s going south”, Rich Johnson of niche manga publisher Yen Press tried to argue for manga, but Kahn replied that “In your little niche, in your little world, you might be great, but in the real world, it’s not working” before Gen Fukunaga of FUNimation decided to step in and diffuse the argument.
• The other interesting tidbits of news include a couple of East/West collaborations. Basically, the likes of Studio 4°C, Production I.G and Madhouse will be working on a collection of six Batman short films; “Batman: Gotham Knight”, due out in the summer of 2008, is already being compared with the popular “Animatrix” project, given it’s combining a popular Western franchise with the cutting edge of Japanese animation. On a slightly weirder note, Marvel have joined forces with Del Rey to produce a shojo-tinged version of “X-Men”. Said to be heavily influenced by “Fruits Basket” and “Ouran High School Host Club”, it will be set in an all-boys’ school with a single female student.