Welcome to the NHK is a brilliantly empathic yet unsympathetic look at geek life. It's geekdom's Requiem For A Dream, a look at the debasement, addiction and personal harm stemming from obsession with pop culture material, excepts it's hilarious.

Welcome the NHK makes a stark counter-point to the maybe-soon-to-ubiquitous Densha Otoko/Train. Already, three publishers have begun distributing three versions of Densha Otoko manga. The live action movie is similarly about to be released. Densha Otoko is the true/reputedly true/believed to be mostly true story of a geek who intervenes when a girl is being harassed in the subway and, with the help of advice from online compatriots, transforms himself into a person capable of dating the girl by conventional standards. It's probably a fair assumption that Densha Otoko hit phenomenon levels popularity in Japan because the culture is self conscious about its geek shut-in's, so a story concerning the nudge that could turn a shut-in into a conforming, contributing member of society was welcomed in open arms. In North America, not hugely invested in the shut-in concerns , the story comes across more as a fairy tale romantic comedy that in most tellings is a bit perfunctory and not terribly funny.

Welcome to the NHK is the anti-Densha Otoko since its geek responds terribly to its girl. It's convincing. It's depraved. It's hilarious because it is convincingly in its depravity. Its hikikomori, (shut-in) doesn't turn himself around when presented with the affection of a cute young woman. In fact, the meeting initiates a cycle of far worse degradation. Leaving his room just puts in into contact with people who provide him material that fuels his insular self-destruction. For the reader, this a blisteringly anti-cathartic journey. Because the depiction is bitingly self critical without being self loathing, for whatever degree you can see yourself in the character, you'll feel a bit dirty.

Welcome to the NHK is a work that stands to be harmed by spoilers. The shock at seeing the levels to which a guy, who in theory could turn himself around to some degree, sinks is a key aspect of the work's fun. Arguablely at some point, too much illicit drug use just cooks your brain, and you might clean yourself up and get a bit better, but you're never going to be as sharp as you might have been. Satou seems to have done a similar degree of damage to himself by stewing in an apartment for the two years since dropping out of college. As the series opens, he is being driven to the tipping point by the presence of a new neighbor who has been incessantly playing music from the incredibly age-inappropriate Ojamajo Doremi/Magical DoReMi. Satou professes that he'd like to find a job rather than leaching off his parents, but really, he seems too fried.

After attempting to chop through a beer bottle with his hand in imitation of famed karataka Oyama Masatatsu, the door bell rings. Opening it with a scream, Satou is confronted by a dumpy middle aged woman and a young woman with a parasol. The middle aged woman gives him some religious pamphlets speaking of the dangers of hikikomori before scuttling off, but, the young woman decides to take up Satou's redemption as a project. Unfortunately, Satou returns to his room, snorts some ground powder made from dicey over the counter drugs and begins hallucinating that the household appliances come to life and warn him of the danger posed by the NHK. The NHK is a Japanese television network. Thinking back to the quality anime aired by NHK, such as Nadia of the Blue Water (a pre-Evangelion Gainax work), Satou realizes that NHK doesn't stand for Nihon/Japanese Housou/Broadcasting Kyoukai/Corperation, but Nihon Hikikomori Kyoukai. Their mission has been to plant the seeds of Otaku-ness (visually presented by creatures that look disconcertingly like penises with faces and bobbed antennae).

The girl from before, named Misaki, turns up again and tries to direct Satou towards healthy human relationships. Unfortunely Satou finds of his noisy neighbor was a former schoolmate and is now a fellow hikikomori. The neighbor introduces Satou to porn, and porn games and the aspiration to create porn games. Satou takes to these very readily. Satou also meets up with a girl he used to know from school who now sports scars on her wrists and begins showing him all the lovely drugs she's been taking.

The reason why a geek will adore rather than loath Welcome to the NHK it is because its laughing to cover the tears with them, rather than leering at them. The manga is more disturbing because it's characters aren't cartoons or perhaps, more disturbing because the reader can see them as reflected in these people. While it would be comforting to think of the characters as exaggerations, they are not the Simpson's Comic Book Guy or Comics Party over-constructed. Most geek have encountered people who are worse than these, and if there is a character that rings a bit untruthful, its Misaki whose affection for Satou is at least balanced in that she sees him as a project, but is still a little too much of a conceit to be fully accepted.

Though Welcome to the NHK is ostensibly a comedy, it does take the characters seriously to some degree and doesn't soften them. Genshiken explained the rationale of geek fascinations with "modern visual arts" brilliantly well. Welcome to the NHK doesn't have to stretch situations too far to find the disastrously bad ideas that actually exist in popular culture. Satou is a person who does possess principles. There are things he deeply doesn't want to do, like lie to his mother (eying young girls is apparently less of an issue). However, because he has a social glass jaw and an inability to recover from a solid punch to his ego, the manga is able to capture his spectacular retreat. And while it is incredibly unflattering, the gross disparity between what Satou does and what approaches being a good idea makes Welcome to the NHK hilarious. The humor is helped in that the series goes for complex catastrophes rather than easy jokes .

Maybe after Battle Royale it shouldn't be surprising, but TOKYOPOP stood up with the intestinal fortitude and got through the first volume of Welcome to the NHK without excising content. On a presentation level, some time the difference between a pornographic comic and a comic that depicts pornography is slight. Satou goes for some very questionable anime/manga porn in the volume, and its depicted, and TOKYOPOP doesn't remove it.

Apropos of little, the volume features Satou's scrawled out proposal for his "relaxing erotic game", which is beautiful in its madness. "The game play is hands-free, where the CG images and text automatically appear on the screen. The story' script reads peacefully, like a poem". And that's before it really starts spirally out of control. TOKYOPOP prints the Japanese text, a text translation and headers. The page text boxes are aligned right to left page layout, the headers are left to right, meaning the headers are upside down. Oops.

Prose Spotlight
Seikai 1: Crest of the Stars: Princess of the Empire
by Hiroyuki Morioka

Released by TOKYOPOP

Crest of the Stars, the anime adaptation of which has previously been released in North America, is the novel that introduces Hiroyuki Moroika invention, the Abh, a creation of genetically engineering managed divergent evolution: humans so physically and socially tailor for interstellar life that they might as well be alien. The thrill of the novel is its detailed and thoughtful construction of an interstellar society, as well as seeing this institution tried in the military and political conflicts of a large scale space-war.

Moroika does establish compelling character threads, fostering curiosity about the progress of specific individuals, but the currency of Crest of the Stars is ideas and Moroika is quickly able to sell the Abh as a strong, intriguing concept with the capacity for great amounts of detail. Crest of the Stars could be called cultural sci-fi. It is speculating on the path of the development in the evolution of human for a group whose selected niche was to constantly move about the stars, as merchants, then in a development of somewhat earned arrogance, masters.

The larger universe of the series similarly is shown to have plenty of ideas to offer. The work does rely on sci-fi conceits, but to a far lesser degree compared to Card's post Ender's Game books in that series. The wilder and more original of its concepts are given more thorough explanations, and they kindof work if string theory is accepted.

Crest of the Stars starts on Planet Martine, a colonized planet that did not need terroforming, which offered an exotic host of flora and fauna but no pre-existing intelligent life. The planet boasted slim, poorly maintained defenses when the Abh arrived demanding that the planet surrender to annexation by the Humankind Empire of Abh. Despite what would seem to be negligible bargaining tools Martine's president Rock Linn was able to meet with the Abh and negotiate a peaceful surrender in return for his family admittance into the Abh ranks of nobility and position as governor of the star system. After which, Rock Linn's young son Jinto is rushed off Martine to be trained for a position within the Abh bureaucracy.

The novel lays out that it will begin put its own intelligent twists on sci-fi with this invasion. Rather than War of the Worlds or simplistic alien antagonism, the Abh exercise is more akin to gunboat diplomacy. The Abh exhibit their power, demand capitulation, and promise autonomy as long as the planet submits to their largely economic interest and that the subject society restricts its travel and influence to within its own solar system. The situation doesn't map well to any exact historical instance, but it does mirror real patterns in the late 19th/20th century. While the warfare engaged in during the volume is more World War II navy engagements, on some level, the work seems to be a parable of modern hegemony.

The speech of the Abh themselves is a large aspect of interest for the series. The novel gives their language plenty of attention. As it progresses more Abh words are introduced. Initially the Abh words are accompanied by a translation. Later, if a translation is desired, the definition is available in the volume's glossary. The extent to which real insight can be gained from Abh phonetics is a bit questionable. What is offered is just vocabulary and not really an original idiom. Instead, what all the Abh language within the work seems to be offering is an ownable jargon, possibly similar to Klingon within Star Trek, and with less linguistic detail than something like Quenya in Lord of the Rings. Still, the language has already captured the imagination of some fans, evidenced in that several fan groups consulted on the books translation.

The amount of colloquial expressions is surprising. They are familiar and as such less forced than Farscape style pop culture inserts or the sort of invented alien metaphors seen in other sci-fi works (ie Star Wars' "just like shooting wamp rats"). There is talk of formality and etiquette among the Abh, but when these sort of off the cuff comments make their way into speech with ship captains, it makes the culture look very informal.

Something that wasn't captured in the anime, or at least Bandai's translation was the Abh's glibness. They aren't cartoonishly sadistic, but there is an edge There's a sort of half-self aware arrogance in their demeanor, where they know that they are operating on a different level than other humans, but they dismiss misunderstandings and impreciseness with a humorous disregard. This is very much in keeping with their behavior. There is an extensive conversation about the complex differences in Abh mating and reproduction explained to Jinto by Lafiel, a young Abh pilot in training who is the novel's second protagonist. The net of this is that Lafiel doesn't officially know the identity of her mother. As a child, her father responded to queries by showing her the family house cat and explaining that the cat was her mother, something that was theoretically possible given the Abh's technology, but morally outrageous. The Abh dialog is able and social acts demonstrate their mix of danger and charm. As a force that smart without outthinking the audience, they are a fascinating group to follow.

An issue that this first volume has is that the balance between exposition and storytelling is far from perfect. The protagonist, Jinto is almost strictly defined by his relationship to plot and his explanation affording ignorance for much of the early stretch of the novel. When there narrative is light, this information stream can get a bit tiresome. However, after the novel allow its protagonist to get into the action, the mix of information and story movement is becomes more effective.

Manga Spotlight:
Negima: Magister Negi
Volumes 2 - 11 By Ken Akamatsu

Released by Del Rey

Negima fans have said that the series deserves a chance, it gets good once Akamatsu establishes his direction and as the series moves forward it does increasingly cross the line between bad trash and good trash. Grudgingly said... by in large, Negima does what it needs to do. Scenes are effecting, long terms stories are intriguing and feature enough momentum, and Akamatsu's ability to illustrate action turns out to be surprisingly good. Conversely, sectional arcs are a mess, especially in the collected format, offering plenty of derailments, including nude or semi-nude fan service weapons grade fan-service is amazing for all the wrong reasons and which frequently demonstrated potential for halting a building event.

The series start with Negi, 10 year old Welsh boy wizard prodigy going to Japan to teach English to a class of middle-school girls in a CLAMP style super-school. Early phases featured character humor, frequently in compromising situations mixed a bit of magic-adventure. Many of these early chapters focused on Negi getting to known members of his 31 student class. As the series progressed, it evolved into divide up and fight hierarchical style shonen structured arcs, first during a class trip, then during a school festival.

Akamatsu handles these shonen tournaments well. His exotic range of design an ability to manufacture offbeat characters serve this situations well, especially when it yields entertainingly bizarre characters like Chigusa Amagasaki, an older wizard (compared to the class) woman who occasionally dresses in a monkey outfits an summon supernatural primates. And this sort of character especially works well when the series isn't hoping to be too dramatic.

Akamatsu's action is exceptionally well studied. The line about great writers stealing applies heavily. CLAMP, Kenichi Sonoda, you name it, Akamatsu works in great highlights. He also borrows from non-manga sources. His kung fu work looks an awful lot like kung fu and not just generic manga martial arts short cuts, both in traditional forms an some moves that appear to be borrowed from Bruce Lee. It's all taken to a fanciful degree of course, but when a character, punches, draws a sword or brandishes a gun, Akamatsu makes the action look clean, distinctive and charged.

Akamatsu certainly doesn't lack confidence in his illustration. He throws in every sort of outfits, diverse a complex architecture, both mundane and invented, and especially with his festival arc, every sort of prop imaginable. If for nothing else, his assistants must be working insane hours putting together the resource material.

Ironically, given the series' high concept, Akamatsu seems to have problems with magical battles. Occasionally he plays them like either Dragon Ball Z floating or Street Fighter hopping exchanges, but given how they are staged he doesn't satisfied with either metaphor, and he seems reserved about the use of spell effects, perhaps reluctant to turn them into another exchange of fire-balls.

Akamatsu can occasionally write believable characters or write characters believably. This can even work to the degree that there are moving human moments in his manga. In general, the problem is that the characters are so over constructed, it is hard to see a personality at work beneath the archetype role. The problem with Negima is that Akamatsu has so many characters, the 31 students, plus teachers, rivals, foes, additional third parties, that he tries to spend time with the characters, and consequently breaks the story arc flow to explore a personality that can't be detached from the role that the person is filling.

Negi himself is a break from the under-competent hero of Love Hina. In fact he's hypercompetant, able to teach, deal well with people and pick up skills at an exceptional pace. Unfortunately, unlike some hypercompetant characters, ie, lead heroes in the a mold a character like Kenshin, or ensembles like the cast of Cowboy Bebop, he's lacks charisma and is consequently not interesting. He's a driven, talent child, and Akamatsu largely writes him as such. Meaning he focuses on a goal, and just moves in that direction, without any sort interesting attitude about the progression. As a result, he's about as dull as Love Hina's loser hero.

In the translation, controversial adaptor Peter David was replaced by controversial adaptor T. Ledoux. While the dialog is more faithful under Ledoux's guidance, the Chinese character is now speaking Pigeon. "You weak! There no mores what is more strong?" This is probably something present in the Japanese to some degree, but it is still jarring. And the mystery fighter in the Mahora Budokai school festival fighting tournament is Ku:Nel Sanders, rather the pretty than directly carrying the awful pun for the fast food chain mascot.

Manga Quick Cut...Disgaea
by Arashi Shindo

The single volume Disgaia manga adapts a cult strategy RPG game (another manga adapts is the second game). While its based on the game, the manga is established well enough that you don't need to go into the work with a preexisting affection for the material. Though the manga is not going into the concept with a great amount of depth, it's a fun work, marked by the clean, well fashioned look of the games, which translate well into the manga.

Demon prince Laharl wakes up from a two year sleep, where upon Etna, a demon girl of questionable ambitions, informs Laharl that his father, the king has died. As Laharl begins attempting to badger his disinterested or overly self important vassal into order, Flonne, an angel trainee shows up in the Netherworld on a mission to assassinate Laharl's father.

The volume features short stories that build a loose arc following the three hot blooded young semi-divinities clearing the way for a new rein. While not terribly consequential, Shindo is able to apply some vitality to the game's iconicaly memorable design. Working with goofy concepts, like Etna;s pleg-legged blue and white penguin-like hired help Prinnies or Laharl's narcissistic rival Count Vyers aka "Mid-Boss" carry the bouncy tone. The single volume work is charming enough to be diverting and its illustration is eye catching enough that it is something worth addition glance-throughs.

Anime Spotlight: Tattoon Master

Released by Media Blasters' Anime Works

Tattoon Master is a well made, if terribly unurgent, mid 90's OVA from the then prolific (and still around) studio AIC. It's representative of the form, taking a larger (in this case, not too much larger) manga and capturing the highlights of the concept in an anime. ADV was once synonymous with this type of work, and formerly released this specific title. However since both ADV and anime production moved away from the format, Media Blasters became the company to rescue Tattoon Master from obscurity. Or maybe, to be more precise, give it another chance. At least in North America, though Tattoon Master has been around for a while, it was never terribly popular.

There's nothing especially distinctive about the construction of Tattoon Master, but it is interesting to see how the cliches of a decade ago become a bit novel after the passage of time. Almost a time capsule, in the current market, the appeal for Tattoon Master is more the current rarity of screaming, kick-ass guy/girl duos than specifically nostalgia for work like Slayers and 3x3 Eyes.

The anime is full of a mild political incorrectness that's just a bit too comfort in its dated world view. The high concept leverages early pulp projections of foreign cultures and a fair amount of the humor is bent a bit negatively against homosexuality/gender identity. Hibio/Eric in the English language dub (it's a bit of "Wow!" dub, not necessarily bad or un-entertaining, but very localized and very expressive), being a 90's trouble maker, looks a bit like Yu Yu Hakusho's Yusuke Urameshi. Hibio is also a vocal misanthropist. Somewhat as a reaction to his parent's aborted marriage, he's not shy about revealing that he doesn't have the time for anyone in general and girls in particular. And hilarity ensues because he acquires a fiancÈ. His anime shrew meets Indiana Jones mother travels off to what looks to be central Asia, where she meets with a mysterious woman in a burka. In return for being tutored in the tribe's mystic arts, she gives her son up to be the spouse of the tribe's high priestess. The priestess Nima/Balla shows up to interrupt a fight between Hibio and his loser father, and removes her coverings to reveal that she's a bouncy blonde in a tight two piece. As the title would hint, Nima begins glowing with strange tattoos and marks Hibio.

The good news, from a standpoint of good, macho anime fighting, is that Hibio doesn't really receive special powers, to the extend that an anime action hero can lack special powers. Meaning he's still pretty much just punching and kicking his opponents. (He can also sense what Nima is seeing and vice versa, but that's more a plot device). Unfortunately, although the anime has Hibio decking people who are attacking him with magical shadows and such, the fights are kind-of poor. Ironically, the problems with the fight choreography seem to be a function of what the animation in the series does well. While control scenes of drawing a bow are made to look powerful as depicted by the ranging, fluidity of cell animation motion and twisting field of vision, Hibio's flailing punches and exaggerates thrust kicks look like ineffective disjointed motion.

At times the round, shiny design does look a bit like Urushihara Satoshi's work. It's not, but the fact that it looks that way is indication of a trait that the series borrows plenty of other elements from the anime pop-culture space of the time. Another example is that some of the posed expressiveness seem to come out of Ranma 1/2. Given its age, these familiar call-signs make it almost cliff notes version of action animation from its day.
Given this, and that the work was a 90's direct to video OVA, the lack of nudity in Tattoon Master is surprising. There's plenty of almost nudity, but the series never goes all the way.

Tattoon Master captures and renders the look of its time well. It's cheery, it's obvious, it's explosive. These are qualities that aren't bad things is dumb entertainment anime. It wouldn't have been a sin to the anime if Tattoon master had remain lost to the DVD age, but it's nice to have an able demonstration of what trends looked like in the mid-90's.

Random thought: provided Production I.G hasn't burned it, a nice OVA to resurrect could be the early 90's Combustible Campus Guardess. A school of heroes (maybe it was the whole town) versus demon overlord from the creator of Bastard!!

Ghibli News

Ghibli News reports an interview will Toshio Suzuki has revealed that Studio Ghibli's next will be "Kodomo Mono". "Kodomo Mono" or "Children's Story" which refers more to the project title than the movie title. 282 cuts of 21 minutes of the film had been storyboarded as of September 5th. At the same time, the production team for "another project" has visited Spain for recording.

An interview with Toshio Suzuki revealed that when Studio Ghibli became independent from Tokuma Shoten, Miyazaki and Suzuki contemplated changing the studio's name. Hayao Miyazaki suggested "Studio Scirocco" after the Italian name for a strong southerly to southeasterly wind that carries hot, dry and dusty air from North Africa towards the Adriatic Sea and southern Europe (a synonym for "ghibli"). the new name was objected by the staff because they didnít want to say ìThis is Studio Sciroccoî on the phone ìIt sounds weakî. "Ghibli" refers to the

Creator Gossip

Takeshi Obata, illustrator of the manga series Death Note and Hikaru no Go was stopped for driving with a headlight and arrested for carrying an illegal knife.
Meanwhile, Shidou Nakamura, voice of shinigami deathgod Ryuuk in the Death Note movie and upcoming anime has been arrested for drunk driving.

In old news, junjiito.mutagene.net reports horror manga creator Junji Ito was married back in June to "another artist in a similar genre".

Figures News

Figures.com has pictures of Organic Hobby's release of the Round-Vernian FAM-RV-SIT, aka "Torunfam from the mecha anime Ginga Hyoryu Vifam here

Other Organic Hobby releases include:
"Brave Gokin 05 - Gaofighgar" is a transformable robot originated from the Japanese TV anime action series "Brave Gokin." The figure is 9-10" tall, transformable into four individual items and each item comes fully articulated.

"Ultra Jump - UJ-14" is originated from the cover/front page of the comic book "Ultra Jump" issued by Shuei-sha during 1995 throughout 2000 issues. This figure was created by the famous illustrator, artist and designer, Renji Murata. He is best known for his conceptual design work on anime series such as Last Exile and Blue Submarine No. 6. He has published more than a dozen books of his work, some of the most notable being ìRobot,î ìRule,î and ìFuturhythm.î The figure is a 1/8 scale and comes equipped with custom base for display

ikimashou.net points out:
1/6 scale Gosurori Ayanami Rei and the even more disturbing Asuka Langley

1BOX called CLAMP in 3-D LAND

Ghost in the Shell's Kusanagi Motoko by Vise.

Via Gunota
Gunpla (Gundam plastic model) Expo: The Revenge
The Gundam Base.Side 1
Dayloop
Bousou Suru Chiba No Saru here

Keroro Gunsou Plamo Collection Keroro Robo

Buddha Wins Harvey Award

The winners of the 2006 Harvey Awards, named for Mad Magazine's Harvey Kurtzman, were announced at the Baltimore Comic-Con on September 9th. Vertical Books' release of Buddha won the award for Best American Edition of Foreign Material. Buddha is Osamu Tezuka's fictionalized account of the life and enlightenment of Siddhartha.

Interviews and Commentary

Hudson (of Bomberman fame) has posted a rare interview with Jun Suemi, the artist perhaps best known to anime fans for contributing designs for Patlabor 3: WXIII here

Anime News Network interviews Emma manga creator Kaoru Mori here

1UP.com interviews artist Yoshitaka Aman here

Gunoata has a translation with Yasuhiro Imagawa (G Gundam) from CNAX 2006 here

The Japan Times has looked at language barriers and manga here

Twitch reviews Gedo Senki and interviews director Goro Miyazaki here

Variety review Katsuhiro Otomo's Mushishi or Bugmaster here

AniPages Daily looks back at Legend of Crystania here.

TOKYOPOP To Sponsor Video Games Live At The Hollywood Bowl

TOKYOPOP has announced that the publisher will be a sponsor for the Video Games Live concert, featuring the work of composers Tommy Tallarico and Jack Wall, at the Hollywood Bowl on September 21, 2006.

The concert will be performed by Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, led by Video Games Live co-creator and conductor Jack Wall, with an opening act from famous recording artist Brian "BT" Transeau previewing selections from his new album "This Binary Universe." Suitarists Steve Vai and Dweezil Zappa will be performing along with the orchestra, as well as special appearances by well-known video game composers. New segments include a live debut performance of the new "Halo( 3 Announcement" score as released this year at the Electronic Entertainment Expo, and the world premiere of Civilization IV, plus a rare special acoustic performance by the original Lucas Arts composers performing Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, and more. Video Game Pianist Martin Leung who will debut his unique Final Fantasy piano arrangement consisting of over ten Final Fantasy favorites.

The pre-show festival and costume contest will begin at 5:30 pm and is free to all ticket holders. Tickets ($3- $65) are currently on sale at www.ticketmaster.com , or click here to link directly to the VGL ticket page.
The show will begin at 8:00 pm.

BangZoom Looks at Manga

Anime News Network reports English language localization studio BangZoom Entertainment is looking for a marketing intern to support a launched graphic novel division.

JoJo's Movie News

ikimashou.net reports in conjunction with promoting the upcoming Jojo's Bizarre Adventures: Phantom Blood Project Playstation 2 game, details were reveiled for the long talked about Jojo's Bizarre adventure movie. The 90 minute feature, which will celebrate the 25th anniversary of the world-traveling supernatural action is scheduled for March 2007. The movie will cover the first iteration of the feud between the Joestar family and the vampire Dio Brand

Ghost Hunt Anime Adaptation

According to ikimashou.net, supernatural investigation procedural Ghost Hunt, the manga of which is released domestically by Del Rey, has been adapted into an anime series that will run on TV Tokyo starting October 3rd. The official site can be seen here

Toei Anime Releases Formally Cancelled

Anime on DVD reports Geneon Entertainment mailer has formally cancelled their distribution of Toei's aborted direct to North America anime release: Air Master and Slam Dunk.
Anime giant Toei's English language DVD releases were marked by poor localization and presentation.

Check back tomorrow for an in-depth look at Hayao Miyazaki's Castle of Cagliostro, a preview of quantum physics based teen sci-fi anime Noein, and looks at several instructional books.

For more commentary see the AICN Anime MySpace

Anime AICN - Geeks... Fear Introspection With Welcome to the NHK

Manga Preview Welcome to the NHK by Kenji Ohiwa and Tatsuhiko Takimoto

to be released by TOKYOPOP October 30, 2006

Prose Spotlight Seikai 1: Crest of the Stars: Princess of the Empire by Hiroyuki Morioka