More tragic news from Dentsu, Geneon‘s parent company. In a recent press release posted on their site (appropriately titled Dentsu Posts Extraordinary Income and Extraordinary Losses, etc.)that due to the downsizing of Geneon, they are anticipating huge losses. They are estimating figures close to ¥4.7 Billion in consolidated losses and ¥5.1 Billion in non-consolidated losses when they post their financial results for the first half of their fiscal year ending on March 31st, 2008. For those who have no idea what the above means, consolidated losses are losses to Geneon and its parent, Dentsu, and non-consolidated losses probably in this case just means Geneon USA. ¥4.7 Billion is around $40 Million USD, and ¥5.1 comes out to $44 Million USD. Perhaps these are the numbers that scared ADV away from the proposed deal? Dentsu is also going to back out of a partnership with Tohokushinsha Film Corporation. The partnership was a joint sales business for broadcasting rights in Japan to foreign movies and television shows. Tohokushinsha is also a production company with titles such as Appleseed, and we remember Geneon did a huge amount of promotion for this movie at Anime Conventions all over North America. They were hailing it as the next big thing in anime movies , and gave out a lot of schwag for it. Something very bad must have happened between them as well. Dentsu is Japan’s leading advertising agency and also has a powerful presence all over the world, and it is not looking like this company is having a very good year with it’s entertainment ventures.

This article is around 2 days old, and we thought fans here might like to learn of it. Nikkei Business Online has a special story about a professor who spent his childhood in China, and now lives in his native Japan. Dr. Endo Homare is currently teaching sociology at Teikyo University about Chinese Culture. He also has initiated special projects to bring in more international students to the University to learn about culutre. He muses about Sailor Moon along with a female Chinese student of his. In this article he talks about his move to Japan when he was only 12 years old, and how he discovered Sailor Moon. Sailor Moon is a big part of his life and what he studies. He talks about how he was fascinated with the notion of transformation in Sailor Moon when he saw it as a young boy in China. The animation was like nothing he had ever seen before and the show had a huge impact among the youth in China. Girls looked up to Sailor Moon and in some senses had become her – from pretending to transform like her or acting like her. The student remembers that she would often ask to eat her dinner earlier or later as it was broadcasted before the evening news just so she could watch it, and how she didn’t like anyone disturbing her when she was watching it – it was like she was in her own world. They go into a lot more cultural aspects of it and how it affected youth, such as youth weren’t likely to talk about it unless everyone else liked it, and how Sailor Moon had inspired girls to become strong women. It’s a really interesting article for anyone interested in the anthropological and sociological aspects of the cartoon!

More news from the current plight of Geneon USA today! Previously, Geneon was handling all of the distribution for Bandai Visual USA – fans can check out some of those titles here. Since Geneon abruptly announced their exit from anime distribution and marketing, Bandai Visual USA has confirmed that they will keep up with their new releases as planned, and are working to find alternative distribution agreements. This is good news for fans of Bandai Visual titles, but still no word on what is going to happen with Geneon’s titles. We met an independent Anime shop owner today who was shocked to hear the news, but not entirely surprised saying that Geneon had fallen back in the last couple of years. One of our readers even wrote us in to express their disappointment in the recent Geneon release of the Ai Yori Aoshi series – it was only the DVDs wrapped in plastic, no box, no thinkpak, no nothing. In our experience, titles were sometimes hard to find back then and are even harder to find now. Again, we will keep you posted once we hear any news of what is going to happen with Geneon titles.

Fifteen Entries already? It seems like only yesterday this feature began. This is probably our last week of “catch up entries” when it comes to commercials, we have 56 for your enjoyment! Of course since this blog is Sailor Moon related, we have to have this as our top pick of the week – a trailer for the new Aquarion movie in Japan! And it practically serves as a mini-reunion for the Sailor Moon Seiyuu as there are a lot of former ones in this movie! Leading this horde is Masaya Onosaka (Jadeite) as Pierre Vieira, and the others include Daisuke Sakaguchi (various minor roles) as Jun Lee, Mako Hyoudou (Amanju) as Otoha, Nobuo Tobita (Pupuran) as Jean-Jerome Jorge, Sakiko Tamagawa (Princess Kakyuu) as Sophia Belin, Toshiyuki Morikawa (Yuu Azama) as Touma, and Unshou Ishizuka (Sailor Chef) as Gen Fudou.

Online Videos by Veoh.com

And then there was also this notable from Fuji-Q Amusement Park!

Online Videos by Veoh.com

We have lots more , especially for you J-pop fans so here come the rest!
☼ Nerdy Teenagers in an Acne Commercial!
☼ Japanese Aflac Commercials 1 and 2!
☼ Canon Eos Camera!
☼ Ardepro Property Management!
☼ CEATEC Exhibition!
☼ Cell Phone Gaming!
☼ Coca-Cola is for sharing!
☼ Docomo 2.0 Commercial – we mean no offense to Toku Fans!
☼ Docomo 2.0 Office Commercial!
☼ Drewell Sleeping Pill!
☼ Dusters from Japan!
☼ e-ma Fruit Mints!
☼ Essential Damage Care with Honey!
☼ Suzuki Every Wagon!
☼ Fed-Ex in China!
☼ Jessica Alba says hello to fans and wants them to go see Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer!
☼ Realistic Toy Ferraris!
☼ Fujitsu’s Gong Show!
☼ A Green Juice Commercial that practically reads like an infomercial!
☼ Men’s Hair Massager!
☼ Haagen-Dazs!
☼ DJ Halfby!
☼ House Design Collection!
☼ Honda Stylish Package!
☼ Japan ETC!
☼ Jomo Energy!
☼ Let’s Dance Compilation!
☼ Lotte Acuo!
☼ WARNING MAY BE A LITTLE NSFW! Meganest!
☼ Men’s TBC Soccer!
☼ Minaqua!
☼ NEC with Intel’s Core 2 Duo!
☼ Nissan Note!
☼ Nissan Compact Cars!
☼ Nissay Life Insurance!
☼ Ora2 Stainclear!
☼ Panasonic Viera!
☼ Poscam Gum!
☼ Strange Recruitment Commercial!
☼ Puffy wants you to Fly Panda with ANA!
☼ Samurai Pachinko!
☼ Seazoo!
☼ Nissan X Chemical Brothers!
☼ Windows Mobile Smartphone!
☼ Soken Bicha!
☼ WARNING MAY BE A LITTLE NSFW! DJ OZMA’s Spiderman!
☼ Success! Medicated Shampoo for Men!
☼ Suntory Boss Rainbow with Tommy Lee Jones!
☼ Ayumi Hamasaki’s Latest Power Single, Talkin’ 2 Myself!
☼ UFO Ramen!
☼ Shiseido UFO Fiber!
☼ Princess Kaguya endorses Vitamin C Pill!
☼ Wonda Morning Shot!

Shoko Nakagawa finally released her second CD of anime song covers on September 19th. Shokotan☆Cover x2 ~Anisong ni ai o Kome te!!~ doesn’t have any covers of Sailor Moon songs,but does feature another one of our favorites Catch You Catch Me from Card Captor Sakura! She also sings Rinbu Revolution from Revolutionary Girl Utena, TELEPORTATION -koi no mikakunin- from Esper Mami, and ETERNAL WIND ~hohoemi wa hikaru kaze no naka~ from Mobile Suit Gundam F91. The first song on the album is a favorite of Moon Chase’s Translator White Tiger King, 1/2 from Rurouni Kenshin! Fans can watch the music video for it here, and we have uploaded her performance from a week ago on Music Japan!

Online Videos by Veoh.com

Fans can also watch a performance from the audience of the World Cosplay Summit here. She is singing Sorairo Days, the theme song of the new hit anime, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann.

And no article about Shoko would be complete without a few Sailor Moon Cosplay sightings! Here she is cosplaying as Sailor Mars (and here, here, and here too), and Sailor Chibi-Moon here and here! She has also been doing a lot of art inspired by Sailor Moon’s Luna , featuring her own male cat, also named Luna.