AnimeVision

Quite a few articles over Christmas about Sanrio's plans to make iconic Japanese character Hello Kitty more appealing to men:

Spokesperson Kazuo Tohmatsu of the Sanrio fashion design company announced on Friday that the company will begin selling Hello Kitty T-shirts, bags, watches, and other items for young men in Japan next month. The items will then be sold in the rest of Asia as well as in the United States. According to the Associated Press, the iconic mouth-less cat will be given a "more rugged, cool look to appeal to men in their teens and early 20s" for the first time. The venture began with a limited collaboration with men's clothing designers in the fashion-conscious Tokyo neighborhood of Harujuku this year.

Tohmatsu adds, "Young men these days grew up with character goods. That generation feels no embarrassment about wearing Hello Kitty."

Following on from Revelation's decision to increase the gap between their releases - with the lag between US and UK releases often given as a primary reason for people resorting to importing - AnimeUKNews has a word with Beez's Andrew Partridge about why the lag exists in the first place, and what can be donw to counter it. Worth a look. Andrew correctly points out that, currently, it's no really the lag itself that's the real issue, but rather the current US$/UK£ exchange rate, which makes importing a far cheaper option than buying UK releases - and that's not something the UK releasing companies can really do anything about...

You've probably noticed that I haven't been reviewing fansubs of late - I think it's probably been around 6 months since the last review of one appeared on the site, and it's longer than that again since I actually downloaded one. Looking at the recent flurry of comment on what fansubs appear to be doing to the anime industry, triggered by Justin Sevakis' letter posted to ANN, I'm beginning to get a slightly righteous feeling about that - even though I never made a real decision not to do fansubs and longer. I just found I didn't have time for them anymore.

Evidence is growing, though, that something will soon need to be done to deal with the freeloaders if we're to have a hobby to follow in a few years time. Read on for the details.