Bloom Reviews

Welcome back to another installment in “Last Week in Geekdom” where I comb the internet for all the news you need to know so you don’t have to. I’m finally back after a very long and tiring weekend at PAX East, but I had an amazing time and will be getting some more reviews up this week hopefully. My Fruits Basket read-through is still going on and volume five’s review will be posted sometime this week, so keep an I out or feel free to catch up on 1-4 if you haven’t already. In terms of news items this week: Studio Madhouse is in the news after one of thier employees collapsed from overwork; Netflix has announced the casting for the Cowboy Bebop live-action series; and Captain Marvel has hit the 1 Billion worldwide sales mark. Be sure to check out some of the articles and videos linked below and, as always, enjoy your Sunday!

Top Anime and Manga News

Stein’s Gate visual novel creators 5pb have announced 10 new projects in the works to commemorate the series’ 10th anniversary. No new information has been announced about the nature of these projects or what form they will take,but we should be hearing more as the anniversary approaches later this year.

One of the employees of Madhouse has been hospitalized due to overwork. In response Madhouse staff have called in workers union representatives to negotiate on the policies that likely led to this including: no overtime pay and extremely long hours (likely 200+ hours of overtime per month).

Studio Xebec (to Love-ru and Fafner of the Blue Sky) will be merged with Production IG after 24 years in the anime production business. Many of Xebec’s old teams will be broken up and consolidated into Production IG and IG will gain control of many of their intellectual property and assets.

Netflix has announced the casting for the new live-action Cowboy Bebop series. John Cho has been cast for the role of Spike, Mustafa Shakir for the role of Jet, and Daniella Pineda for the role of Faye. No release date has been announced for the series just yet.

Anime Announcements:

• Mob Psycho 100 will be receiving an entirely new OVA
• City Hunter: Shinjuku Private Eyes film to premiere at Anime Boston

Manga Announcements:

• Saint Young Men manga to be published digitally by Kodansha
• Fruits Basket to get three new chapters
• Carole & Tuesday to get manga adaptation
• New One-Shot from Akira creator Katsuhiro Otomo

Top Comics News

Dark Horse Comics has cancelled on of their new series, Astro Hustle, after allegations of sexula misconduct surfaced about the head writer Jai Nitz. Nitz has also cancelled his appearance at Planet Comicon. Astro Hustle will still see issue #2 released in stores, but further issues will be cancelled.

Umbrella Academy has been approved for a second season on Netflix. Production looks to be starting in May of this year and going until September. Estimates put season two as releasing sometime in 2020.

Captain Marvel has hit the One Billion worldwide box office sales mark, making it the first Marvel movie centered on a female lead to hit this milestone. The movie generated 358 million in North America and 645 million overseas, beating Wonder Woman’s 841 million globally.

Featured Articles and Interviews

• Jim Zub takes to Twitter to talk about piracy of comics, especially his Champions series, and how piracy could affect the state of the series in the future.
• The Sakuga Blog talks with Yuki Hayashi, former animator of Toei Animation turned freelancer, about his experiences in the industry and how he came to choose animation as a career.
• Anime Feminist discusses the history of the all female acting troupe The Takarazuka Review and how it influenced the likes of Osamu Tezuka.

Featured Videos

• Neil Gaiman discusses the history and influence of Marvelman and how Alan Moore’s take on the character impacted his decision to get into comics.
• The Cartoon Cipher delves deep into the Simuldub industry and how it has influenced the anime industry and anime fandom in general.
• Get in the Robot gives us a run-down of the history of horror in anime, its beginnings and the popular series that made up this genre over the decades.

Featured WordPress Posts

• Irina discusses the question of when is anime more than just anime this week with a brief look at why people are drawn to making connections with the shows and characters they love.

~~Thanks for Reading!~~

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