geekosystem

This is kind of complicated, but the facts boil down to this: A 30-second promo spot for Animation DO, a studio that was spun off from Kyoto Animation, featuring a bunch of young male swimmers dropped, this got picked up on Tumblr, which in turn created an entire fandom based around the fictional anime series. Still with me? Okay, well, to add another layer to this cake of Internet goodness, Kyoto Animation has officially announced that they're now going to actually make it a real anime series. Yeah.

If there's one anime that I could watch again and again, it'd probably be Ghost in the Shell. The series never really managed to maintain my interest, but the films -- both of them -- were and are fascinating to watch. Major Motoko Kusanagi is far and away my favorite protagonist of any film ever. That being said, there's a new prequel anime coming out called Ghost in the Shell: Arise. To be blunt, this doesn't exactly look like the Ghost in the Shell many of us know and love.

With Optimus Prime and the other Transformers practically rolling in the money generated from their titular film franchise, and relishing their renewed relevance in pop culture, it was only a matter of time before another '80s cartoon series featuring giant transforming robots -- relax, it's not Gobots -- dove in for a piece of the proverbial pie. Warner Bros. is planning to release a contemporary and live-action take on the revered Robotech anime from 1985 which introduced so many children of that generation to mecha and the multifaceted complexity of an animated space opera. Numerous writers have been working on the screenplay for quite some time, but no director has ever been selected to helm the project. It's now being reported that Warner Bros. is in talks with commercial director Nic Mathieu to helm the film, even though he's pretty much only ever done commercials.

There are two ways to ensure that workplace mistakes are kept to a minimum. The first is breathing down the necks of your employees and berating them for every little flub they make, which in the long run can become counterproductive and incites office mutiny. The second, and the least damaging to their fragile self-esteem, is the use of a dancing otter GIF set to Kenny Loggin's "This Is It" to let them know they done goofed. The security engineer for the tech operation of Barack Obama's recent campaign, Ben Hagen, pioneered this method, and obviously helped ensure the President's victory.

The best way to promote any product in Japan is obviously through an anime short. The setting for said short must be a decade or so from now, that way the animators can play with some totally sweet futuristic flourishes. Also, the first protagonist has to be an adorable petite girl, or the rest won't work at all. This is all apparently known to Mercedes-Benz, the car manufacturer, as they partnered with anime studio Production I.G -- the studio behind Ghost in the Shell -- to produce a short exactly like that to promote the release of the next A-Class model in Japan. Seriously.

This fan-made animated Star Wars short shows a massive, nondescript space battle between the Empire and the Alliance. Looking at Star Wars through the lens of YouTube video-maker Otaking77077's retro anime-style artwork is almost like looking at the universe through new eyes. There are some incredible dogfights... You know what, you just have to watch it.

The Mass Effect 3 single player DLC train is just starting to gain steam, which means we're probably going to be returning to the Normandy sporadically over next few months. If DLC isn't going to be enough to slake your thirst for stories from the Mass Effect universe, Mass Effect: Paragon Lost is a feature-length anime detailing the backstory of your favorite new crew member, James Vega. It doesn't take long to see that, while the world is populated by Asari and Krogans, the movie feel like a serious (and interesting) departure from the world we've come to know.

Talk about immersion! Stepping into Tokyo's Tokyo in Shibuya is like stepping into page after page of manga. This manga and anime store shows the rest of the world how otakus in Japan keep it classy, even when they're just stopping by for their Weekly Jump. The rest of the world will just have to live vicariously.

For those of you that have had your fill at the themed One Piece restaurant and need somewhere similarly themed to go for after dinner festivities, there is now a One Piece theme park in the works, with a budget of a whopping 79 million bucks.

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.