This post is just to keep fans up to date on Toei‘s milestones. It is too early in the year to know if there’s a window of possibility of Sailor Moon in North America.

From January 25th-27th in Las Vegas, the National Association of Television Program Executives held their annual Market and Conference. Toei didn’t make any announcements with respect to the North American market, but did make a few towards the Latin American market (which is also handled through their Los Angeles office). Dragon Ball is headed to Chile, and will be broadcast on Megavision TV, and Digimon Frontier is headed to Brazil on Rede TV. The DVD rights for Digimon Frontier have been licensed to Brazilian distributor Five Stars. Toei had a booth at the market, but doesn’t appear to have made any major presentations other than these announcements.

Perhaps one of the biggest announcements comes from FUNImation – and this was posted a little over two weeks ago. FUNImation announced that it did in fact get a license from Toei for Dragon Ball Z Kai, a retelling of the DBZ saga. In Japan, the series is known simply as Dragon Ball Kai, featuring remasterd Hi-Def picture, sound, and special effects, along with a brand new voice track recorded by the original cast. Since many of the frames from the original were destroyed after production was completed, the frames were redrawn over still frames from existing footage and filled in with softer colors to reduce the visual damage – and all kinds of tricks were played, some frames were cropped, others became more detailed. But the most important difference is the faster pace of this story, which remains true to the manga and doesn’t drag on like the last series did at points. There will be around 100 episodes once this is complete in Japan. FUNImation announced the cast for the English version, however the comments show that many fans are unhappy with some of the changes (in fact some fans are still angry over the lost of many of the Ocean Group’s dub VAs).

The second big story from Toei is all of the buzz surrounding Halo Legends, which was released last tuesday. Toei was one of a few Japanese studios commissioned to produce one of 7 different shorts based on the popular gaming franchise. Toei’s, was special though. While the other six shorts were considered to be canon with the “Halo-verse”, Toei’s was a complete parody of it! It involves a character named 1337 who falls off a ship and lands on some strange planet. He meets a couple of kids riding a dinosaur, gets into a DBZ-esque fight with a Brute… and it only gets goofier. So far, reception of Halo Legends has been positive. So, if you’re looking to watch Toei take a ridiculous and hilarious take on the “Halo-verse” definitely give this one a rent! Fans can get more information on the release here.

And a bit of news on Sailor Moon’s “rival” in Japan that is currently trying to take the world by storm, Pretty Cure. The 7th series, Heartcatch PreCure debuted last week on Japanese TV, and features two Seiyuu that were from Sailor Moon: Chika Sakamoto (Sailor Star Healer/Yaten Kou) and Taeko Kawata (Momoko Momohara). They play Kaoruko Hanasaki (Tsubomi’s/Cure Blossom’s Grandmother and Confidante) and Shypre respectively. On March 20th in Japan, a new Pretty Cure movie (Precure All Stars DX2: Light of Hope— Protect the Rainbow Angel!) will be released in theaters featuring all PreCure heroes from past and present! YTV has also put Pretty Cure back on the schedule on Saturday Afternoons (this is probably the second or third run of the series). And, while we were researching all of the exciting news coming out of Italy we stumbled upon some dubbed trailers for other seasons of Pretty Cure on Toei Animation Europe’s site here and here. It’s likely that these trailers were probably dubbed in Canada (the voices do sound very similar to the ones used in the dub of the first season). We’re not sure what Toei has in store for Pretty Cure, but we encourage all fans who want to see more seasons of this in English as well as a DVD release, to support the show as best they can in Canada and write a letter to Toei about Pretty Cure.

Last week, the Mobile World Congress was held in Barcelona, Spain. This is a special conference held once each year, where thousands of mobile leaders from around the world “gather, collaborate, conduct business and experience vision in action.” This year’s conference featured keynotes and panel discussions, an exhibition with over 1,300 booths,and an awards ceremony and seminars that highlighted the most innovative mobile solutions. Among these 1,300 exhibitors, tucked away in the very last exhibition hall, was a booth from Toei Animation Co. Ltd. featuring two executives from their Los Angeles Office. Pictured left-to-right: Kenji Ebato (Executive Vice President of Toei Animation Inc. of Los Angeles) and Sae Song (Manager of Digital Media and Mobile Content). Those of you who have written letters to Toei, will have addressed the guy on the left, so now you can see who you are sending them to! What this image (from here) doesn’t show you, is that there was in fact a Sailor Moon poster on display. Yes, this is a pretty drab looking booth compared to photos of some of the others we have seen, but Sae had a lot of interesting things to say to Andrew Lim of Recombu.com. Sae first blames the decline of the anime industry on two things: Japan’s declining population of children, and bittorrent from overseas markets. The fans, according to him, are consuming anime differently, and it is difficult for Toei to keep up. They are facing the same challenges as many other companies are in trying to effectively monetize their content. They can put Fist of the North Star online, but it isn’t easy to make any money off it (we have a few qualms with this statement, but we’ll save this for later). He thinks that anime is at a tipping point now, and all of the studios need to get together and make a common hub for fans to watch anime online. But, this isn’t as easy as it sounds to get everyone on board, so Toei Animation Inc. wants to follow after Toei Animation Co. Ltd. in Japan, and get their content out on mobile phones and tablets. At this conference, they had hoped to speak to application developers and networks to come up with something “amazing”. But, the majority of companies that should be interested in this kind of thing, just aren’t. Toei hasn’t gotten a lot of requests for information from anyone about this. Lim ends by saying that they had a lot of great ideas, but they should have been put in a better part of the exhibition rather than in the very last hall.

As far as older series like Fist of the North Star goes, we think Toei might have been better off selling high quality episodes as digital copies, or releasing DVD boxsets. There are some hardcore anime fans that still enjoy these series, even though these audiences may not be as big compared to other series. Many fans are still a little irked with the new “movies” being produced of these older series (EDIT: Thanks to reader NJ_, it looks like there is at least some hope for Fist of the North Star). And, North America does not compare to the strength of Japan when it comes to mobile devices. There are maybe only a handful of mobile phones across the market which compare to most Japanese mobile phones, which are more powerful and capable of a lot more. For Toei to really be successful they would have to think outside the iPhone and Blackberry box with their fans to deliver mobile content that could work across most mobile phones. To Toei’s credit in Japan, they have many successful ANIMO sites for many different series (including DragonBall, Sailor Moon, Pretty Cure, and Saint Seiya), delivering anime content to mobile devices.

Fans can now see the T-shirts that Toei collaborated alongside Uniqlo with on their site. However, here’s the really strange part. The shirts are available on the English site for the European and American markets, but are nowhere to be found on the Japanese website. This brand is very popular in Japan, and we find it a little strange that this appears to be a deal reached through Toei Animation Europe, and not through Japan where the apparel could have been more successful since the brand is just making itself known in Europe and North America. Nonetheless, we like the t-shirts, and we have them pictured here for you. These shirts are only part of their men’s collection, and sorry, no Sailor Moon. They are affordable, priced at $15.50 USD.

And finally, Toei Animation Inc. has named Firefly Brand Management the North American licensing agent for Digimon. Firefly will have the rights to the merchandise licensing sales for the first five seasons. The article goes on to mention that it “briefly flowered in the U.S. during the early 2000s”. Reading something like this worries us a little, because shouldn’t a show still be flowering for a merchandise strategy to really be effective? Digimon was never as popular as Pokemon in North America, and we haven’t heard too much buzz about that franchise lately. Nonetheless Kanji Kazhaya (President and COO of Toei Animation Europe and possibly Toei Animation Inc. in Los Angeles) had some optimistic remarks, saying “As one of the industry’s most reputable and experienced licensing agents, we look forward to benefitting from the expertise of Firefly’s founder, Cynthia Modders, and her brilliant colleagues.” We hope that Firefly Brand Management redoes their site a little – there isn’t much there in terms of clients they have worked with, so we can’t say for sure what sorts of merchandise will come out of this deal. This sort of affects Sailor Moon because if Firefly does a good job with this series, we may see them handle some merchandise rights for Sailor Moon in the future. Speaking of which, watch this site. More action, coming soon!

This is update night, and since there’s a lot to get to we’re going to keep things short! So a while ago, Toei’s Animated Cartoon * Comic service won an award at MIPCOM , an audiovisual media content market in Cannes. This service is unique, though a mobile subscription service, subscribers get sent a comic from one of Toei’s famous titles with comic bubbles over the characters head to tell the story of those episodic moments! For fans who were wondering, yes Sailor Moon is included!

Toei has just begun a promotion for the brand new Pretty Cure movie, as well as season 5 of the show. They are giving away 50 free parent-and-child movie passes, and they have also just added the last season, Splash Star, to their Ani BB service. Splash Star has a lot of connections to Sailor Moon, and even some Sailor Sightings have appeared in the past! They are: Kappei Yamaguchi (PGSM Artemis) as Floppy , Isshin Chiba (Kitakata – SS 137) as Currihan, Keiichi Nanba (Alan, Umino) as Moreunba, Mika Doi (Queen Serenity) as Saori Hyuga, Taeko Kawata (Momoko Momohara) as Princess Filia, Toshiyuki Morikawa (Yuu Kazama – S 115) , Yoko Soumi (PGSM Book Narrator – Ep. 5) as Asuka Suzuki, and Yuriko Fuchizaki (Cyprine) as Michiru Kiryu.

And today Anime News Network reported that Japan issued a formal statement of requests to the United States on regulatory reform and market competition a few days ago. They ask the government in “response to the network digitalization, the popularization of the Internet, advances in digital technology caused by the problem of copyright infringement,”to help them stop the illegal reproduction and distribution of anime online through peer-to-peer networks and video sharing sites. The Japanese Government finds the paths to litigation of these things too cumbersome and expensive, and they can’t keep up with all of them. In recent months we have noticed that most of the major studios now have anonymous forms that users can submit links to potentially infringing websites in an effort to make it easier for the studios.

And, this leaves Sailor Moon in a kind of odd situation. The series is popular, but we don’t think that everyone that would have liked to have owned a piece of it does. Secondly, it’s no longer easily available on DVD and we know of a lot of fans’ projects to upload the episodes onto video sharing sites or by other means to keep this series alive. It’s not licensed anywhere outside of Japan either, so it’s a gray area really. Aside from that though, we believe that fansubs are a good measure of what is popular with anime these days – and is probably a good indicator for distributors around the world to use when they are licensing series. Without it, you might think twice about picking up a DVD you might see at a store without having much exposure to it. We really admire sites like AnimeSuki which keep track of what’s been licensed and what hasn’t and that they step up to the plate to remove the links once a series has been picked up. A more realistic policy might be to stop (a little harder) the distribution of licensed series, which would mean that both Japan and the United States would have to be on the ball about these things. Popular video streaming sites that are Japan-exclusive, such as Nico Nico Douga, have a large amount of anime episodes that are streamed. We’ve even seen a few episodes of various dubs of Sailor Moon pop up on there. We do understand their concerns, because people in Japan have lots of different ways to obtain their anime and they really shouldn’t be streaming. We have a feeling that this is the real reason why they are asking for cooperation to control anime online.

And on a happier note, Anza Oyama(Sailor Moon in many Sera Myu Musicals) will be performing a concert with her Japanese Nu-Metal band Head Phones President at the 4th Annual Pacific Media Expo! The event is being held at the Hilton Los Angeles Airport and is America’s first major trade show dedicated to Asian-Pacific popular culture and entertainment media. If any fans are planning to attend this we would love to hear from you! The festival takes place from November 9th-11th.

Megumi Ogata Shares Her Love of Macs With Japan!

Broadband Watch is a website in Japan that caters to the technological crowd kind of like what CNET is to us. They are currently running a special where they are featuring 100 desktops of celebrities in Japan, and #38 comes from Megumi Ogata, who we all know as Sailor Uranus. Broadband Watch conducted an interview with her and here are the highlights! Megumi has been a loyal Mac user for 20 years, since the days of the Classic II (our older readers may remember those computers!). At home she uses the 17-inch model and she doesn’t change her desktop frequently (pictured here, with a censored sticky). She does use the stickies on her Mac a lot though, from writing simple memos, to reminding her of passwords for sites she likes to use. Her husband 20 years ago was a programmer and that’s how she got started on first the black and white Mac Classic II, and then moved on to the color model. Her first game was called Makigame and she played it when she wasn’t doing housework, and remembers a screensaver with a flying toaster. Her private office uses a Windows Machine but she is happy that she can use Word and Excel on her Mac. She hates Internet Explorer and Netscape, but uses Safari on her Mac, and her only gripe with it is that it deletes her browsing history quickly. She uses Microsoft Entourage along with a memory stick for her email, and she is currently learning how to use Garage Band. We would have expected Toru Furuya to give this kind of interview as he is often seen at many tech events, and never expected to see Megumi Ogata for something like this! It’s an interesting read, and fnas should definitely go check it out. She also likes to blog, and fans can read her blog here.

Mitsuishi Kotono Narrates Commercial for Popular Tour

We found a tiny mention of Mitsuishi Kotono (Sailor Moon) with regards to a tour. Mitsuhiro Oikawa is a current heartthrob in Japan, having appeared in many dramas and live action movies. Starting in December, he is going to tour Japan singing on his very own tour, Ichaicha: Cherie, Tu Es Moi (Honey, You Have Me). Kotono Mitsuishi is doing the narration for the TV spots advertising the tour, and she is also impressed by Mitsuhiro. The article also mentions that many of his fans call him “Chest-Kun” because he is often shirtless.

Paprika Wins Another Award!

In 1996, the Animation Kobe awards were created for the promotion of anime and other Japanese visual media. This year marked the 12th anniversary of the awards, and critically acclaimed director Satoshi Kon has another reason to smile as Paprika won the Feature Film Award! The interesting thing is that last year’s winner(Mamoru Hosoda’s The Girl Who Lept Through Time), was released just a few months ahead of Paprika, but both of these exceptional films were able to win this award because of a technicality in the rules. The Girl Who Lept Through Time was released in July of 2006, and Paprika that November. August was the cutoff date for the 2006 awards. This is Satoshi Kon’s second win in this category, his film Millennium Actress won the same award in 2003. On November 12th, there will be an event showcasing the works of all the winners in Kobe, and other winners this year included one of Moon Chase’s favorite directors, Isao Takahata, and one of this years hottest OVAs, Ghost in the Shell: S.A.C. Solid State Society.

Paprika will be coming out on DVD November 27th, so only a month and a bit before all our readers can finally see this film! On a side note, we’d really like to thank Mongrel Media for the terrible job they have done with the distribution of this movie in Canada. The movie spent most of it’s summer run in a single theater in Toronto, and is now being shown for barely a few nights in theaters all over the country. Considering how popular this movie was among the critics and how it was hailed to be a hit, unfortunately the distributor thought it would be better to let the movie sit for a long time in one theater and skip across the country. Even Ghibli films don’t get this kind of treatment. We know of several fans all over who were waiting in anticipation to see this movie on the big screen and have heard too many stories of disappointment, and that the United States did not experience these kinds of problems in most states.

Glass Rabbit Is Up For Grabs!

During the beginning of November, the American Film Market(AFM) is set to take place in Santa Monica, California. We told you not too long ago about The Glass Rabbit, which is currently making it’s way through Canada through special features from the Japanese Consulate. The Glass Rabbit is now going to be included as part of the AFM, where companies showcase films in the hopes that they will be picked up for production and/or distribution. We’re really hoping that it gets picked up – this movie did remind me a lot of the epicGrave of the Fireflies and it does hold potential to be a hit of close to that magnitude. We have since learned that this heartbreaking film is actually based on the real story of the author Toshiko Takagi. All of the performances were very good in this movie – especially of the young girl who played Toshiko, Rina Mogami. Taeko Kawata (Momoko Momohara) played the innocent role of Mitsuko, one of the younger sisters of the main characters. It was an exceptional film and we recommend fans go see this one if they can!

This film is making it’s way across Eastern Canada, and we recommend fans keep checking these links below for information when these films will be playing near them. Side Note: They were all good, but Hotel Hibiscus was a little mediocre.

For Ottawa, click here.

For Toronto, click here or here.

For Montreal, click here.

We’ve known about this news for a couple weeks now, and it’s starting to trickle into the Anime world. The Japanese Consulate is presenting recent, select hit Japanese films in BC in a couple days. But what the other site isn’t telling you is that these movies are being presented in Alberta and Saskatchewan too, as part of a special Japan Film Festival! Now, years ago where I used to live, the consulate used to present two movies for free one night a year. They haven’t presented anything in quite a few years, and I am happy that this has started up again! Before we tell you when and where you can catch these films, we’re going to tell you about them first! And best of all they will all be presented subtitled!

Kamikaze Girls takes a look at youth subcultures in Japan. It is one of starcat’s current picks, and it’s also topped some of the friends of our staff’s lists too. The film stars Japanese pop-rock sensation Anna Tsuchiya in the role of the tomboy, Ichigo Shirayuri. Ichigo is a member of an all girls motorcycle gang, who makes an unlikely friend in Momoko (played by popstar Kyoko Fukada). Momoko is the complete opposite of Ichigo, as she dresses like a “Sweet Lolita” and and is the girliest of girls compared to Ichigo! The film has won many awards in Japan and was recently released on DVD in North America. Our readers can go check out a trailer here!

2004 Oscar Nominee Twilight Samurai (Tasogare Seibei) is a movie set in 19th Century Japan. Iguchi Seibei (Hiroyuki Sanada) is the lowest rank of his samurai, and works humbly taking inventory of his clan’s grain. His wife succumbs to tuberculosis and though she receives a grand funeral, poor Iguchi could not afford it. He rarely gets the chance for customary bonding with others in his clan as he is taking care of his daughters and senile mother. Things change for Iguchi when an old childhood friend Tomoe Iinuma (Rie Miyazawa) returns to his town after divorcing her abusive husband. The movie is directed by legendary director Yoji Yamada, who is most famous for the long running film series Tora-san (Otoko wa tsurai yo). This is another big awards winner and was also released on DVD recently in North America. Trailer can be seen here!

Hotel Hibiscus is a family movie that reminds us a lot of an older movie, Kikujiro no Natsu. This movie is about a young girl named Meiko and her family who live in a house in Okinawa. Her family consists of her mother, her father, her grandmother, two older brothers (both fathered by different American GIs), and a sister (also fathered by an American GI). They live in an old, run-down, hotel called Hotel Hibiscus, which only has one room available to rent. Eventually her family is pulled apart, her mother and sister want to venture to America to find the long-lost father, her father goes back to his father’s pineapple farm, and soon she is left alone with her Grandma. One day Mieko travels to deliver a message to her father, but on the way has a few adventures. Another award winner, this movie has not been released on DVD , so all the more reason to run to the theater when it comes!

And last but not least is The Glass Rabbit, the only anime that is part of this offering, and is just making it’s presence known to the world. Toshiko is a girl who is hit badly with the ravages of war, losing her mother and sisters first to an air raid, and her father just as they are escaping to the suburbs. Toshiko’s father used to work in a glass factory, and he had crafted her a glass rabbit. Unfortunately in the fires the shape became distorted, but it is all that she has left and it serves as a reminder for her to go on. This unforgettable story has a Sailor Moon connection (surprise!) Taeko Kawata (Momoko Momohara) plays Mitsuko Ei in this movie. Now this hasn’t been in very wide release but we are really hoping Eleven Arts steps this up. It looks like it will be nearly as good as Grave of the Fireflies!

If you are in Vernon or Vancouver and want to head to see these films, click here.

If you are in Calgary and want to see these films, click here.

If you are in Regina and want to see these films, click here.

I will be attending one of these, but if any of our readers are there and would like to report about the films or the crowds, as always you can contact us at Moonchasers@NOSPAMPLZKTHXgmail.com!