Much in the way a new Black Lagoon was announced, the latest volume of Fullmetal Alchemist came with a wrap around ad for a new Fullmetal Alchemist anime!

This comes off of rumors that either a new Fullmetal Alchemist or Darker then Black anime was in the works by BONES through a leaked memo. When questioned, the company responded that they would be interested in going back and working with either anime.

I personally am very excited. While the movie left very few openings of where to have the series follow the Fullmetal Alchemist himself, there are still many open possibilities.

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Hey everyone! We’re trying to start another ‘project’ to SHAFT that give you the listener yet another way to contribute to the show and that’s by blatently ripping off someone else’s idea :p. That right we need you to help up start this project and here’s what you can do:

We want questions (like the one above) from you. Ask us anyting and they may appear in an upcoming SHAFT TV or even stream during our pre-show setup when we stream on Mondays at 7pm eastern.

Here’s all you have to do: either head on over to the post that we have up on the fourms here and post your question there (don’t forget to sign up if you haven’t yet) or you can email them to us at animeshaft@gmail.com with the subject “Dear SHAFT”.

Hope to hear from you all!

So io9 is under the impression that “after Akira blows everyone’s mind” that Hollywood should tread further into ‘manga territory’.

First off, since we still know absolutely nothing about the live action Akira and what little was do know was less then encouraging…. I’d hardly say we’re at the mind blowing stage just yet… if ever.

Second, they drum up a rather interesting, if not impractical list.

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What’d We Think?

So I was hanging around the other day and got sent a link to a site selling USB flash drives that resemble the Lancelot key in Code Geass and I thought that was pretty darn cool.

The best the US can do for USB drives that look like something else is lego blocks or some other useless crap. Looks cool but going for a hefty ¥9,240 or about $83. If you got the big bucks to go out and get one of these go for it!

Thanks to the Extralife chat room community for bringing this little nugget to my attention.

We’ve seen plans for anime movies in the past… Speed Racer… Dragonball… Astro Boy… Gatchaman… Ghost in the Shell… and now…

Cowboy Bebop.

I for one am not looking forward to the potential train wreck, Hollywood is not exactly building up a lot of faith with fans of the original work and isn’t necessarily bringing in new blood at this rate.

I have two problems up front already. First, the fact that Fox is putting this out(remember, they’re killing Dragonball) and that there is an ‘oath of fidelity’ to the original material. The second part is a load of BS and if you can’t see that then I know a Nigerian prince who would like your bank information.

Check out the fairly condescending article which seems to lump the anime demographic as ‘fanboys’.

Thanks to the numorious people who sent me this article through email, IMs and private tells.

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Breaking on the wire is the announcement of a new Black Lagoon series. This was confirmed by a wrap around ad in Japan around the first novel based on the anime series. This series will most likely take off from the events seen in Black Lagoon: The Second Barrage.

Funimation recently picked up Black Lagoon and Black Lagoon: The Second Barrage from Geneon USA and will be releasing it on August 19th of this year(Don’t sent emails because I said “first week of September” on the podcast this week).

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Earlier in the year, Animeondvd.com was bought up by Mania Entertainment. When the announcement broke, it was determined that the site would retain its staff and design. This was changed earlier in the week.

AoD is now linking directly to mania.com/anime with a whole new, and rather clunky looking interface.

One can only hope that the original vision and enjoyment of the site holds through the change in interface.

Since we think Digital Distribution is the wave of the future, we thought we’d point out some of the latest anime offerings on the internet.

Viz-

Joining Funimation and Manga Entertainment, Viz has put up some of their series for download on iTunes. Bleach, Death Note and Naruto are the first of the Viz series to show up.

I think it’d be fun if we could see other Viz series that are classics(such as Ranma 1/2 or Inuyasha) or something cutting edge(such as Eyeshield 21 or Hikaru no Go). Hopefully there will be expansion on this.

Funimation-

The big Funimation announcement actually comes from Sony out of E3. Sony announced the opening of their Sony Entertainment Playstation Store. The store allows you to download videos for their Playstation 3(PS3) and Playstation Portable(PSP) platforms.

No specific titles were mentioned however, we’ll be updating this post with them once one of our PS3 enabled contributors is available.

Overseas, BONES studio will also be releasing exclusive content specifically for the Playstation Store.

So the internets are here yet again to prove that people have WAY too much time on their hands and here’s the proof:

Thanks goes to Drew for sending the link along!

Just in case you didn’t already have 8 reasons for why you think the Dragonball live action movie is going to suck, Topless Robot gives you a nice long article on why you should hate the Dragonball Movie.

Some reasons are good such as “Goku looks more like Gohan”, “Creating New Characters. Some reasons are negligible such as “Americanized Music vs. Japanese Music” and some are stupid like “No Gratuitous Bulma Flashing” and “Making Yamcha and Yajorobie Cool”. It makes me think the original writers of the article have only watched Dragonball on Cartoon Network… with the Ocean Group dub.

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