In today’s update: a first glimpse of animated Simoun, several scoops from STG maker Cave, a few random game and anime-themed concert events in the works, April Tech Gian on sale and with it a raft of new eroge announcements (four thus far), some Banpresto prize figures, and the tip of the iceberg that is the broader Japanese coverage of Wonder Festival (including a humorous Maritan anecdote). Stay tuned as we try to catch up with the figure news typhoon of the past few days…

Media Side

  • Hobby Channel presents the first stills from the upcoming Simoun anime to make their way online (to my knowledge), and they do not disappoint. Here’s hoping the show becomes a fitting yuri supplement to tide us over until the Marimite OVAs coming later in the year (speaking of which, the prototype Marimite trading figure set was on display at Wonder Festival next to a very prominent “IF YOU TAKE PICTURES OF THIS YOU WILL BE SHOT” sign. They’re looking pretty sweet, although I hope the Maria statue is included with one of the other figures and not as a standalone item).
  • Cave updates their Amusement Expo 2006 page with further information about the Pink Sweets-related activites that occurred at the event. Pink Sweets also forms an odd couple with Half-Life 2 in eg’s coverage of the event. Back to Cave for a moment, release dates are out for the second and third figures in their Ibara villianesses series. I don’t know about anyone else, but I feel like picking these up would be supporting Cave’s hideous, infuriating and illogical move to release the initial figure + OST in such a limited and inaccessible run, a practice that should not be condoned when coming with a company with actual capital to get a decent run of the item produced. For shame, Cave, for shame. Oh, they also have details on the second stage of Espgaluda II online today.
  • Speaking of moe moe shooting games, circle Ichigo Citron will be releasing Melon Squash in early March. Why Toranoana is scooping this and not Melon Books I don’t know.
  • Speaking again of moe moe shooting games, a Touhou-themed live concert will be held on March 5th at Live House Shinjuku Loft in Tokyo. The official site for the event can be found here; apparently it will feature six different acts (artists and/or units); I imagine it will be mostly electronica? Still, for a doujin property with no (announced) anime in the works this seems to be a rather big event.
  • A special promo site for the Demonbane anime is now online.
  • Sunday GX brings us cast news for the upcoming Black Lagoon TV anime.
  • More screenshots from the Fighting Beauty Wulong PS2 game are online today courtesy of Famitsu. This really does have doujin written all over it.
  • February 23rd will see the simultaneous release of a pair of Broccoli-produced fan books, one for Galaxy Angel II and one for True Tears.
  • The official site for Sony Music Anime Fes.06 is now open. There’s enough English on the site that I don’t think I need to do any interpretation; might be something to look into for those in town in May (Tokyo) or June (Osaka).
  • Another Noein preproduction scoop is online today courtesy of Web Anime Style.

Ero Side

Hobby Side

  • The Wonder Festival Winter 2006 reports are rolling in, and we kick things off with scoops from Hobby Channel of their Maritan booth. [Navy-san cosplay] [Jie-tan cosplay] Presumably an Army-tan cosplay scoop will be online today or tomorrow as well. In other Maritan cosplay news, check the diary for a pretty funny update (note that the huge book Jie-tan carries is the Japanese constitution). An alternate translation:

    Army-tan: Jie-tan, your constitution is huge! It must be awfully heavy!
    Jie-tan: That’s because it’s full of mer– …
    Army-tan: … oh.

  • More Wonder Festival coverage from ITmedia, GA Graphics (worth checking for some wide-release stuff I missed, like Chidori and Bome collection Ignis), and Gpara.com. Massive scoops from the broader blogosphere are also in evidence, which I’ll get to posting here as soon as possible.
  • Figure news still trickling in from Amusement Expo 2006 today in the form of a selection of prize figures: Pretty Cure, Lum, Natsumi, Fujiko, Meyrin, and Lunamaria. These will all be available as prizes (presumably in UFO catchers) from Banpresto through the coming months.

I’ll try to get up to date tomorrow on all of the general news floating around, but with the tidal wave of Wonder Festival reports and resulting figure news added to the regular slough of Moon Phase, Akiba Blog and Akibajin updates things will be pretty busy around here for the next while. Ganbaru kara~