Fancy a Masters in Anime and Manga?

Kyoto Seika University (KSU) established bachelor's program in manga & animation and became the first real, accredited university in the world to do so in 2006. Now, KSU has upgraded its manga & animation program to the graduate level. Starting in 2010, you can earn not only a bachelor's degree but also master's degree in manga and/or animation.

KSU's "Faculty of Manga" department consists of cartoon art, comic art (story manga), manga production, and animation. Professional manga artists, anime creators, producers and editors from industry teach those courses. A legendary shoujo manga expert Keiko Takemiya (Fly Me to the Moon, To Terra..., Kaze to Ki no Uta) is one of the professors.

However, all the classes are taught in Japanese so international applicants must pass Level 1 of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test for admission.

It means the applicant must have studied the language more than 900 hours, mastered 2.000 kanji characters and 10,000 vocabulary words, and is able to discuss manga & anime in Japanese. Ouch.

English homepage of KSU

Autumn/Fall 2009 Anime Lineups.

This is lineup for 2009 Autumn batch. Nothing really caught my interest except for Natsu no Arashii 2 and Darker than Black 2. Nogizaka Season 2 and Darker Than Black 2: Comet of Gemini will be popular watch. However, I am actually very, very intrigued by Winter Sonata anime series. Why they redo it in this format puzzles me to no end.

Cencoroll / センコロール

What attracts me is one, this movie is done by ONE man ala Makoto Shinkai's Hoshi no Koe long time ago. Atsuya Uki will animate, wrote and direct this movie alone and there is sparse information about him. He did not appear to have done any major work in any other animation which struck me as very bold of him to do this. And Sony willing to bankroll him under aegis of Aniplex which shows how good his work must have been. Looking at the trailers, it does seem this way.

Synopsis is during one normal day in a Japanese city, a strange lifeform began to attack it. While the Japanese Self Defence elements try to stop it amidst panicking citizen, one girl; Yuki seems to know about this strange life form thanks to her acquaintance to Tetsu who have a weird pet goes by the name of Cenco. An inevitable battle ensues between 2. The main life form for some reason, reminds me of a very angry and cranky white penis.

The trailer have very funky music score and beautiful, fluid animation. The project was revealed 2 years ago at Anime Innovation Tokyo. This movie definitely is high on my must watch list. 3rd trailer just released online.

Premiered first time on July 28th with general release on 22 August, no announcement of DVD/Blu Ray release so far yet.

Official Website.

Fate/Stay Night the Movie running length

Fate/Stay Night the Movie "Unlimited Blade Works" will have a running length of...90 minutes. Honestly, I have no flying fuck idea how Studio Deen gonna condense the story. The knots in my stomach is tightening even further now.

Source.

Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn / 機動戦士ガンダムUC(ユニコーン will be 6 OVAs

It is announced that it will have 6 OVAs with running length of 50 minutes each. Release date is tentatively set at next spring. First OVA will covering materials from vol 1 and 2 of the light novels according to the author. As BANDAI stated, it will be simultaneous worldwide release, ostensibly to prevent digital piracy of the OVAs.

Bandai's announcement

The list of VA for the OVAs is here. Haruka Tomatsu seems to be everywhere this year, even in this series.

Black Rock Shooter anime pilot by Yamakan

The only reason why I knew this because I find out that ex Haruhi diretor Yamamoto Yutaka and the gang (Studio Ordet) will be doing this anime. Black Rock Shooter is a basically Miku Hatsune's opposite, as I was told. Expect fluid animation and very expressive face like Kannagi. Other than that, I have no idea. It looks good for sure.

The main site