Cast for Ghibli's Karigurashi no Arrietty Revealed

The Japanese newspaper Sports Hochi has revealed a partial cast list for the upcoming Studio Ghibli film Karigurashi no Arrietty (The Borrower Arrietty). Mirai Shida, who previously performed in the live-action television adaptation of Mari Okazaki's Suppli romance manga, will play the lead character Arietty in her first voice acting role. Ryunosuke Kamiki (Howl's Moving Castle's Markl, Summer Wars' Kenji Koiso), will play Sho, the human boy who discovers Arrietty. Tomokazu Miura (ALWAYS Sanchoume no Yuuhi, Yomigaeru Sora) and Shinobu Ōtake (The Mouse and His Child) will play Pod and Homily, Arrietty's parents. Keiko Takeshita (Hi no Tori, Swan Lake) will play Sho's great aunt Sadako, and Kirin Kiki (Taro the Dragon Boy, Kamikaze Girls) will play one of Sho's family's helpers, Haru.

Karigurashi no Arrietty is an adaptation of Mary Norton's The Borrowers (Yukashita no Kobito-tachi) fantasy novel. The original, Carnegie Medal-winning 1952 novel revolves around the "little people" — 10 centimeters (about 4 inches) tall — who live underneath the floorboards of an English country house. (The Japanese title of the book literally means "the little people under the floor.") 14-year-old Arrietty and the rest of the Clock family live in peaceful anonymity as they make their own home from items "borrowed" from the house's human inhabitants. However, life changes for the Clocks when a human boy discovers Arrietty. Ghibli's adaptation will transport the setting from 1950s England to the Tokyo neighborhood of Koganei in 2010. (Koganei is the western Tokyo home of a number of Japanese animation studios, including Ghibli itself.)

The film will open in Japan on July 17.

X-Men: Misfits, Wolverine: Prodigal Son Cancelled

Dave Roman and Raina Telgemeier have confirmed this weekend that their X-Men: Misfits graphic novel project with artist Anzu has been cancelled. Antony Johnston confirmed on Monday that his Wolverine: Prodigal Son graphic novel project with artist Wilson Tortosa has also been cancelled. Del Rey Manga published the first volumes of both projects in collaboration with Marvel Comics last year. In each project, the creators had intended to end the first volume's storyline in the second volume.

 According to Johnston, "the simple truth is that not enough people bought them. Despite Wolverine being praised by readers and selected for two library YA lists, despite Misfits making it onto the New York Times bestseller list, and not least despite all the efforts of Del Rey themselves and our editors there, there just weren't enough readers to justify the costs. This is, sadly, more common than you might think in comics." Telgemeier adds that the creators did get paid for the second volumes, although the unfinished work for the second volumes cannot be released in any format without the licensors' permission.

Final Fantasy's Yoshitaka Amano Directs 1st Film, Zan

Yoshitaka Amano, the artist famous for designing the characters in the Science Ninja Team Gatchaman animefranchise and the Final Fantasy game series, is directing his first anime film called Zan for worldwide release next year. To that end, he established his own production studio, Studio Deva Loka, which he is personally heading.

The story of the 3D film begins at the end of the 19th century, when a samurai named Zan is led to a world in an alternate dimension to battle evil. In addition to directing for the first time, Amano conceived the story and drafted the original art.

Last month, Amano hosted an unmanned exhibit space at Tokyo International Anime Fair 2010. The space only contained two white walls adorned with the name "ZAN," and a huge black feline statue twice as big as an average person. He displayed the statue, with a similar lack of explanation or context, at the Opéra de Paris (Palais Garnier) in France last fall. The statue depicts the steel beast named Panther that becomes Zan's partner in the film.

Amano coined the name "Studio Deva Loka" from a phrase that means "the place where gods assemble." The studio plans to announce more projects that it will produce after Zan. Amano has been displaying art as part of a Deva Loka exhibition in Berlin, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

Amano has been in the anime industry since he was 15, when he joined the veteran studio Tatsunoko Production. Among his first character design credits at Tatsunoko were Time Bokan, Hutch, the Honeybee, and Shinzo Ningen Casshan. After he became a freelancer, he contributed visual conceptual art to the first of many Final Fantasy games from Square (later Square Enix). He also created Yasai no Yousei - N.Y. Salad, a television anime about the secret nocturnal life of vegetables in a New York kitchen, and that series inspired a 3D film this spring.

Source: Sport Hochi

Astronaut Noguchi Cosplays as Yamato Hero in Space

Not-So-Daily Link of the Day: On Saturday, the Japanese space agency JAXA posted a photograph of astronaut Sōichi Noguchi wearing the signature red-arrow-on-white shirt of Susumu Kodai, the main character of the classic anime Space Battleship Yamato. (Susumu Kodai was known as Derek Wildstar in the American adaptation Star Blazers.) Noguchi has been aboard the International Space Station (ISS) since last December, and the photograph was taken on Thursday.

A day earlier, fellow Japanese astronaut Naoko Yamazaki came to the station after the Space Shuttle Discovery docked as part of Mission STS-131. The photograph below shows Noguchi (left), Yamazaki (right), and another fellow Discovery astronaut, Stephanie D. Wilson (center), within the station's Destiny module.

According to JAXA, both Noguchi and Yamazaki were fans of Yamato as children, and the space opera anime inspired both to become astronauts. Yamazaki was also a fan of the Galaxy Express 999 anime, which Yamato co-creator Leiji Matsumoto conceived. Matsumoto now chairs the Young Astronauts Club (YAC) of Japan, and Yamazaki serves as a vice-chairperson.

During a YAC ceremony last December, Matsumoto presented Yamazaki with a wristwatch that he designed himself. The wristwatch is date-stamped "1999" and has the serial number "1999" — to commemorate the year that Yamazaki became an astronaut candidate. Yamazaki even made a special guest appearance in an episode of Rocket Girls, the anime based on Housuke Nojiri's science-fiction novel about a Japanese girl who becomes an astronaut.

On Thursday, Yamazaki and the rest of the Discovery crew woke up to Joe Hisaishi's "Hato to Shōnen" ("The Pigeons and a Boy") song from Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli's Laputa: Castle in the Sky film. When Noguchi was part of the Discovery crew on July 29, 2005, he woke up to Hisaishi's "Sampō" ("Walk") song from Miyazaki and Ghibli's My Neighbor Totoro film, as sung by Noguchi's daughters and the other students at the Houston Japanese Language School.

Daisuke "Dice-K" Enomoto, an early investor in the Japanese Internet firm livedoor, had planned to travel to the ISS in 2006 as the world's fourth "space tourist" — complete with a cosplay outfit modeled after the uniform of Mobile Suit Gundam anime character Char Aznable. However, Enomoto was unable to fly to the station due to a physical exam.

Mayoi Neko Overrun! BD #1 to Bundle Anime Extra

ayoi Neko Neko Neko Gekijō" bonus extra to ship with Blu-ray release

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The limited first edition for the first Japanese Blu-ray Disc volume of the Mayoi Neko Overrun! anime series will bundle an anime bonus extra, tentatively titled "Mayoi Neko Neko Neko Gekijō" ("Stray Cats Cats Cats Theater"). The television anime adaptation of Tomohiro Matsu and Peco's comedy light novel series, which have sold 1 million copies,premiered in Japan on Tuesday.

The limited first edition will also include a tentatively titledMayoi Neko Dōkōkai Kaishi (Stray Cats Association Newsletter) booklet with a short story by Matsu and comments from the director, a Mayoi Neko Kiite Go-ran!web radio CD-ROM, and a mail-in submission form. (People who collect the forms from all the Blu-ray volumes can mail them in for a chance to attend an event.)

Clash of the Titans Posters by Saint Seiya's Kurumada Posted

llaboration of Masami Kurumada, Titans director/St. Seiya fan Louis Leterrier

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The Warner Brothers movie studio has unveiled four posters thatMasami Kurumada, the creator of theSaint Seiya fantasy action manga,drew for Louis Leterrier's 2010 remake of the Clash of the Titansfilm. The posters began appearing in train and subway stations in Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, Sapporo, andFukuoka this week. (The film will open in Japan on April 23.) The art will also appear in special pamphlets in theaters throughout Japan as well as in Shueisha's Super Jump andYoung Jump magazines on Wednesday and Thursday, respectively.

During an interview at his film's March 29 world premiere in London, the French native Leterrier revealed that he is a big Saint Seiya fan. He specifically cited the armor that the gods wear in his film remake as a sign of homage and respect to Saint Seiya. (Both works are inspired by Greek mythology.)

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