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Show Notes
0:00: Justin and Helen explain what they’ve been up to for the past two weeks, though Justin brings up an anime he watched after checking out the GTO live action series — the first Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle film. Meanwhile Helen talks about something current (The World is Dancing)
News
20:20: Shogakukan recently announced their findings from their 3rd-party investigation into publisher’s Manga ONE editorial department and involvement with manga creator Shōichi Yamamoto that happened earlier this year, which is long and fairly detailed, so Justin and Helen do their best to summarize a pretty distressing situation and what this ultimately means.
28:18: A 6.8 magnitude earthquake struck Kumamoto Prefecture in Japan, which caused numerous damage and loss of life to the people in the area — this prompted organizations and people, such as The Pokémon Company and YOSHIKI to donate funds to help as much as they can; Rare for a manga to be cancelled in the manner that Yang Can’t Live Alone did, where its creator sooncha revealed that due to a breakdown in their relationship with Manga UP!, it’s now ended, and working on obtaining the rights for it to be continued in the future; the creator of Gantz and Inuyashiki, Hiroya Oku, revealed in an interview with Courrier Japon published on Tuesday that he plans to retire after he finishes his latest manga.
37:03: Ryuta Amazume announced they’ve been diagnosed with cancer, so no work on manga serialization while undergoing treatment for some time; The Boruto manga will be on a 1-month break and return in the next V-Jump issue; Dark Gathering will also go on 1-month break and return in Jump SQ’s next issue.
38:39: The Skull Dragon’s Precious Daughter is going on a very lengthy break, with an expected return in Spring 2027, as creator Ichi Yukishiro overcomes their stress situation; Miyakokasiwa’s health has worsened to where Battle in 5 Seconds will have to go on indefinite hiatus; Masamichi Sato shared that they were hospitalized for a hernia, so while focusing on recovering, the Quality Assurance in Another World manga will go on an extended hiatus.
40:40: The recent digital issue of SAG-AFTRA’s quarterly magazine shared that Canadian voice actor Michael Donovan (Ryoga Hibiki in the original Ranma ½ anime, Cye Mouri in Ronin Warriors, Master Roshi in an older dub of Dragon Ball) passed away back in March; Katsushi Murakami, who was involved in numerous anime (from Shin Tetsujin 28 to Space Adventure Cobra) and media franchises (Kamen Rider) as a mechanical and toy designer, passed away a few weeks ago at 83.
43:00: The editors for Square Enix’s Monthly Shonen Gangan magazine announced that manga artist Yōko Umezu died July 7 due to cerebral infarction — the manga she was working on with Kōta Amana, Vermeil in Gold, will end with its latest chapter.
Licenses
45:49: Shueisha launched global digital manga platform MANGA MILLION last week, which is currently hosting one million pages of translated manga from 400 titles — very ambitious effort, but as Justin and Helen discuss, how these works were brought over despite Shueisha’s insistence that no AI was used has come into question.
55:15: Nakama Press announced exclusively on ANN that they will release Yūji Terajima’s Ace of the Diamond in a 3-in-1 omnibus format, but both hosts wonder about the exclusive part of things when Volume 1 of the series has been up on retailers for months; Online comic shop Sendai Books has announced they’ve licensed Natsuko Ishitsuyo’s Amazoness Kiss and Xian Ozn’s Never Mind Come Together as their first manga releases.
59:14: KADOKAWA announced the global launch of Ryou Mizuno & STUDIO WHITE’s webtoon Record of Lodoss War: The Necromancer Queen (Queen of Death), which can be read on WEBTOON for most places; the Ocean Waves novel has now been licensed by HarperCollins, which means Justin will find out how different it is from the film next year.
1:00:40: You Midorikawa’s Transmigrated to the Northern Frontier and Majisawa’s How to Feed a Delinquent Boy has been added to Manga UP!; Yuno Yozakura and Ryōsuke Sano’s Camp Master Extraordinaire has been added to K MANGA; and we have two new simulpub additions to MANGA Plus: Sango Honda’s Finding the Invisible Star and Shintaro Tengan’s MikotoHako.
Streaming News
1:01:40: Crunchyroll (and by extension Sony Pictures) will be the main home/distributor for Makoto Shinkai’s unannounced film around the world (excluding most of Asia); Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway: The Sorcery of Nymph Circe will be on Netflix at the end of August sub and dub; and Oceanveil is now streaming Miru Tights on their platform.
Weird News
1:03:01: The weird news is also disturbing this episode — starting with a man in Houston being charged with third-degree felony after allegedly leaving a profanity-ridden voicemail to the Governor’s Office related to anime (this weirdly though leads the hosts to learn about a site that’s actually not official, which then leads Helen to explain what happened when she brought it up on Bluesky!)
1:07:28: A woman is suing The Pokémon Company International with claims that their former engineering director allegedly hid cameras in various public bathrooms, including one in the company’s U.S. office in Bellevue — this engineer was let go following his charge of first-degree voyeurism in January. In other words, the hosts can only be disgusted at what this guy has done, and wonder how the lawyer feels about this case if they’re being honest.
1:11:00: The production committee for the recently announced Mii-chan and Miss Yamada anime issued a statement regarding criticism over the anime’s announcement and how it might affect people with intellectual and developmental disabilities — there was a surprising amount of backlash in Japan and that had led to questions to those unaware (like the two hosts) on what this manga’s really all about.
1:15:56: What will McDonald think of next to force a collaboration with (says Justin, as they paired One Piece and SpongeBob together, they’ve doing Hello Kitty & Godzilla, so what combo will they think of next?)