Bandai Entertainment has announced that it will no longer publish new manga, DVD, or Blu-ray titles as of February 2012. The company will be restructuring, taking its dedicated staff down from five to three, and will entirely change focus. Instead of new releases, the Bandai Entertainment will shift over solely to merchandising, broadcast licensing, and digital distribution.

Probably coming soon to an anime convention near you: A company called Neurowear has debuted a pair of wearable cat ears which respond to their wearer’s emotional state. The Necomimi cat ears [short for neural communication machine] respond to brain activity, perking up when the noggin beneath them is concentrating and drooping down when it’s relaxed. Which is to say that even if it was somehow socially acceptable to wear these in an academic setting, these would be precisely the wrong headgear to wear to that Monday morning lecture.

(via TDW)

A lot of anime really just consists of pretext for epic, outlandish attack animations. And we are perfectly OK with that.

(via this Reddit thread)

Ridiculously-sized weapons are pretty much synonymous with Japanese video game heroes nowadays, and the above video posted on YouTube by user michaelcthulhu takes one of the most iconic ridiculously-sized swords, Cloud’s Buster Sword from Final Fantasy VII, and shows us what would happen if a hero actually had to use said sword in real life. Head on past the break to see some pictures of the sword.

I’d want to say that someone having drawn all 493 original Pokémon as anime cosplaying females is a weird thing, but this is the Internet and stuff like that is fairly standard. Though however standard it may be, someone still took the time to lovingly draw 493 things for the rest of us to look at, and whoever the mysterious artist may be (if you know who drew this, let us know), we should at least take the time to see if we can identify which cosplaying females are which Pokémon, especially because doing so is pretty fun. Head past the break, then click on the above excerpt to view the (much) larger version containing every femaleized Pokémon.

Today is the 70th birthday of renowned Japanese animator, Hayao Miyazaki, known to some as “Japan’s Walt Disney,” known to all as the creator of some of the most successful animated features in recent memory. His 2001 release, Spirited Away, was the first Japanese movie to win an American Academy Award and was produced after a short retirement following his previous effort, Princess Mononoke in 1997. In other words, we probably haven’t heard the last of him.

Attention anime geeks: This is what Black Rock Shooter and Dead Master characters would look like in 3D 8-bit! Phat! Company will be offering these PVC figures May 11, 2011. If only they were more movable, it could be the most obscure episode of Robot Chicken ever imagined.

(via ALBOTAS)

Fuji TV announced they’ll be opening a restaurant themed after the popular One Piece anime on December 11, 2010, and it will remain open until May 31, 2011. Named “The One Piece Restaurant Going Merry-Gō,” the restaurant will be decorated like the interior of the anime’s Going Merry ship and will feature dishes that appeared throughout the show and manga.

From Anime News Network, regarding the menu offerings:

The menu includes the main character Luffy’s favorite piece of meat (complete with the bone that he is often seen gnawing), Sanji’s “terrible” soup (as seen on page 99 of the eighth manga volume), and Nami’s Fruit Macedonia (as seen on page 31 of the sixth manga volume).

Hey, if the restaurant is successful, they can always open up a second one themed after the Thousand Sunny.

(Anime News Network via Topless Robot)

Derek Lieu created this mashup of a staggeringly large amount of popular anime shows to show anime opening credits are basically all the same.

An explanation found on Derek’s YouTube post:

It’s always amused me the repeated imagery that exist in anime opening credit sequences. This video doesn’t cover them all, but it has a lot of the big ones. Interesting thing I learned, if a character is running it’s overwhelmingly to the left of the screen.

I first started thinking about this years ago when I saw the X-Men intro that they made in Japan to replace the American one. The part that especially hit home was Wolverine, and Cyclops standing on some nondescript land mass.

For this I used only textless credits I found on Youtube (with the exception of Evangelion). So if your favorite anime isn’t in here either there was no textless version or it had a pretty unique opening sequence.

Below, a list of all of the anime used in the video:

If you think #9 is an exaggeration, you may not be acquainted with something called “shōjo manga.”

(via 9gag)