Alfred Gough and Miles Millar - the two creative minds behind the first seven seasons of the CW's Smallville - are going to be adapting the Robotech franchise into a live-action movie. As The Hollywood Reporter describes the movie:

"A sprawling sci-fi epic, "Robotech" takes place at a time when Earth has developed giant robots from the technology on an alien spacecraft that crashed on a South Pacific isle. Mankind is forced to use the technology to fend off an alien invasion, with the fate of the human race ending up in the hands of two young pilots."

The Dragonball/Dragonball Z franchise was my gateway drug into the world of anime, so I hold a special place for it in my otaku loving heart. Perhaps that's why I take such offense to live-action Dragonball film, which is tarnishing the history of that series and the movie hasn't ever aired yet! An albino looking Piccolo? Goku turning into a monster from Gears of War rather than the giant monkey he should be? The movie is even closer to its release date than ever before, as the movie was just pushed up, and now it will be releasing on April 8, 2009.

It's no secret that North American Naruto fans are way behind the Japanese releases. We haven't got to read half the content yet, and even the anime series seems to be a long ways away from airing the stuff the manga is now covering. Hoping to catch fans up at least a little, Viz is going to be releasing a batch of three manga at a time starting in February, culminating in a total of eleven books within a three month time span.

January is going to be a huge month for fans of the Afro Samurai franchise! For starters, the Afro Samurai videogame will be releasing on January 27th for both the Xbox 360 and PS3. Secondly, a new movie called Afro Samurai: Resurrection will air, which will bring back fan favorite characters as well as introduce some new ones into the fray. It's going to be a huge month for Afro Samurai...January can't come soon enough.

I really need to read the first volume - it's just sitting on my shelf untouched. It's cool to see, however, that FUNimation is looking to create the best Sgt. Frog release they can, so they've posted a test episode for everyone to see and then leave their feedback on. Leave your review on what you think, and if enough people have the same feeling, it is possible things could be changed to reflect the overall opinion of the people.

Hey...sounds like voting for a president doesn't it? Be sure to vote today if you live in the United States!

The popular Ninja Scroll anime series has just been picked up by Leonardo DiCaprio's Appian Way production company to become a live-action film. No actors are attached to the film yet, but Alex Tse is set to write the script, whose latest work includes Zack Snyder's upcoming adaptation of Watchmen.

We updated our site today and now you can search the entire site to find everything you're looking for. Want to find all the articles dealing with Star Wars? Are you craving all the LitteBigPlanet news and articles in one easy to find spot? Now you can do it all with the newly implemented search function.

We hope you enjoy the ability to search now! We're always looking to improve the functionality of the site, so you'll want to come here every day for the latest news and reviews.

If there are any other features you'd like to see added or suggestions on how to make the site better, please email me at jason(at)thehachiko.com

Umm...excuse me a moment.

(hurriedly runs to burn manga collection)

I don't know who is crazier - Iowa or humanity as a whole? There are simply too many things wrong with this case, which involves a man being arrested for the manga on his bookshelf. For starters, how did the mailman know the "package contained cartoon images of objectionable content" without opening it beforehand? Secondly, it's drawings, and someone's taking offense? If there is lolicon it's a little more questionable, but still not arrest worthy. I have Battle Royale and Saikano collected, featuring kids in high school, engaging in some nudity inducing behavior? Am I going to get in trouble? Hopefully, if there is any justice, this case will be thrown out quickly.

Who would've thought a single picture could potentially drive the lovebirds of Naru and Keitaro apart? It especially sucks for Keitaro, because he's always been the lonely loser, but now he has two girls interested in him, and he doesn't know whom to pick. There's a lot going on in this volume, but one of the biggest mysteries right now is finally answered…is Mutsumi the one Keitaro made his promise with back when he was young.

Manga doesn't ever get any loving! Sure, fans love it, but when it comes to awards, rarely is even manga acknowledged, let alone win. It was par for the course at the 2008 Harvey Awards held at the Baltimore Comic-Con, which happened over the weekend. Oh well, maybe one day manga will have its chance to shine and win an award one way or another.

When it comes to taste and perversions, I like to consider myself pretty open to anything when it boils down to experiencing it through different mediums. I've watched people chug blood and body parts in horror movies. I've watched kids murder each other for sport in manga like Battle Royale. I believe I've found my threshold, however, with Gantz. It isn't so much the naked woman, rape, and bestiality as individual components that turn me away, but when merged together into a story with an incompressible plot, an unlikable main character, and barely there dialogue, it makes for a manga that is unique but for all the wrong reasons.

If you live in the Boston area or will be vicinity in that vacinity on October 18th, you need to go The Boston Science Fiction Film Festival as they'll be hosting a twelve-hour anime film fest, featuring such titles as Grave of the Fireflies, Project A-Ko, Millennium Actress, Cat Soup, Tekkonkinkreet, and Ghost in the Shell: Innocence.

Ever since the first time I picked one up, RPGs have always been my genre of choice when it comes to videogames. So an RPG with Naruto characters is already a win-win in my book. I'm happy to report, however, that TOMY won't just be releasing a run-of-the-mill RPG with a coat of Naruto paint covering the interior, as the game won't just tell an original story, but will feature something hardly ever seen in an RPG – multiplayer battles. I talked with Nobby Matsuo (Producer) and Glenn Stotz (Product Specialist) to find out all about this new, multiplayer component.

When it comes to the Naruto franchise, I'm a stickler for developers doing something new with the series, instead of relying on the same storyline and characters that fans have seen used hundreds of times by now. TOMY is one such developer, who doesn't just take what they are given and pump a game out for bucks. Instead, TOMY has gone out of their way to not only include a story never seen before, but have created a handful of new characters to round out the Naruto universe, and delve into a part of the mythology rarely touched upon – the Anbu. In a recent chat, we talked with Nobby Matsuo (Producer) about the upcoming fighter for the Wii.