dipfan writes "Anyone passing through London (England) in the next few months should check out Game On - the history, culture and future of video games, an exhibition at the prestigious Barbican gallery, which opens on May 16. The exhibition publicity says: "Game On will trace the 40 year history of computer games from Space War, which was made way back in 1962, right up to the latest, as yet unreleased games from the likes of Nintendo, Sony, Sega and XBox." Cool. Exhibits include the first home games console (the Magnavox Odyssey from 1972), special sections on the influence of anime and manga, and lots of playable games, from Pong onwards, and a whole lot of other interesting stuff. The Barbican cinema is running a games-related film festival to go with the exhibition: Tron, The Matrix, etc. Even if you can't make it to London, the exhibition is going to tour the US and Japan."

Raiyu writes "Spriggan, scheduled for DVD release on 04/23/2002, has been released early and is available at many local retailers now (Got my copy today). Supervised by Katsuhiro Otomo (Of Akira Fame) and directed by newcomer Hirotsugu Kawasaki, this is perhaps the best pure action anime made to date. Although criticized by some for lacking a strong plot, Spriggan still stands as an amazing anime because it never loses its focus, to entertain the audience." If they had edited out a couple minutes of the cackling laughter from the psychic child, it would have been superior movie. Looks like AnimeonDVD already has a full review of the disk.

dswensen writes: "According to the Sci-Fi Channel web site, Steven Norrington (director of Blade) is going to write and direct an adaptation of the classic anime Akira. Norrington says his story 'preserves the tone, the visual and the epic scope of the original, whilst telling a somewhat more accessible story [to Western audiences]." The article doesn't mention whether the adaptation will be animated or live-action. Given Norrington's track record and the butchery that usually takes place under the guise of making something 'accessible,' it's hard to take this as extraordinarily good news."

peter_gzowski writes "Neon Genesis Evangelion, perhaps the greatest anime series ever, has been reviewed in the LA Times. This coincides with the release of the box set of the entire series (not including the movies, which come out on DVD in the fall). Hooray for mainstream credibility!" Best series if I can somehow overlook the final eps of the original series.

Reader M. Grochmal writes with his brief review of Resident Evil, below. Yes, Resident Evil the game has been turned into Resident Evil, the movie. You have been warned.

Chris Gilbert writes: "This Thursday, a new *BSD OS project went online which is entitled 'LainOS.' LainOS is for the most part a heavily recoded version of FreeBSD 4.5 made to eventually resemble Lain's Navi from the anime 'Serial Experiments Lain.' It sports an animated splash screen, a more fully integrated X server, and a custom graphical login interface, amoung several other improvments over FreeBSD and Linux. You can check the homepage out at http://www.lainos.org ."

PenguinRadio writes "This is being reported in a few places, most notably USA Today which has an article about the US Army teaming up with MIT to develop a new nanotechnology-based outfit for our soldiers that can detect bio hazards, injury, and other funky things. The 5 year, $50 million grant also wants to look at bending light around the uniform to create some sort of invisibility." CNET has another story. The Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies has its own web page, of course.

mystyc writes "scifi wire has a disturbing piece on how Twentieth Century Fox acguired the movie rights to the Dragon Ball franchise. What is disturbing is that they plan to do a live action dragon ball movie! You'd think hollywood would have learned their lessons from such notable live action anime failures as The Guyver, Fist of the North Star, and others who's names must not be spoken. Then again, hollywood doesn't work that way."

aztektum writes "Since Saturday's tend to be slow days and it is Saturday morning I thought I'd send along Cartoon Network news. Ain't It Cool has a breakdown of Cartoon Networks 2002 itinerary." Several of the shows have been mentioned here before (Pilot Candidate and Gundam 0083 are both enjoyable so far. As is YuYu). Mentions the arrival of new DBZ in september. Also lots of non anime bits including Justice League (Many new episodes!). Also new Harvey Birdman, Brak, and Sealab 2021 although Space Ghost seems absent from the roster. Anyway, there are a lot of other shows mentioned too, but those are the shows that I have commanded tivo to snag ;)

Bonker writes "Anime News Network is featuring an interview with Jason Demarco, senior writer and producer for Cartoon Network's 'Toonami' block. Mr. Demarco explains why and how the editing process for several anime shown on Toonami, Midnight Run, and Adult Swim happen, as well as the pressure they're under to produce a product acceptable not only to fans but to parents as well. " Gives an interesting perspective on what CN goes through to get certain anime on US TV. I've said it before, but I'd still love a Toonami channel that didn't need to edit (or maybe just less). I watch more Toonami then any channel.

peter_gzowski writes "Disney has finally announced that it will be bringing Miyazaki's anime masterpiece Sen to Chihiro (Spirited Away) over to North American theaters. Sen to Chihiro is the most successful non-U.S. produced movie in the world. It has grossed about 30 billion yen ($226 million U.S.), which is more than Titanic (the previous record holder). We can expect it to be here around July." John Lasseter of Pixar fame is lined up to consult on the dub. No voices yet confirmed, but John: I'm available and willing.

Silverhammer writes "Just a reminder that the new five-hour Saturday night Toonami block starts tonight on Cartoon Network. It includes the american premieres of three of Bandai's new (or at least newly dubbed) anime series: Yu Yu Hakusho (11pm EDT), Pilot Candidate (12pm), and Gundam 0083 (12:30pm)." Also in the list is old favs Tenchi, Bebop, and Outlaw Star as well as the non-anime but still cool Justice League, which I've been enjoying, but is it just me, or are there only like 4 episodes that they just keep looping? I'll be Tivo'ing each of the new shows for a few weeks in hopes that they are good. I'm still first in line to vote for a Toonami channel.

Kallahar writes "NewScientist is running an article about how Phillips, Sony, and Pioneer have "asked customs officials throughout Europe to seize players made by unlicensed factories." Philips, Sony and Pioneer have pooled many hundreds of patents covering all aspects of the DVD system. Philips administers the pool, grants licences and collects royalties, which are then shared three ways." This comes on the heals of philips going after copy protected CDs. The draw for these DVD players for consumers is probably both price, and the fact that they are often free of those pesky region encodings (especially nice for anime junkies)

An anonymous reader writes: "Running out of space on your local disk? How about a Terabyte array for only a few thousand dollars. This article at KCGeek.com shows how to put together 1000 Gigs of hard drive space for the cost of a few desktop computers." I could rip my entire anime collection for instant access! Rip all my CDs and still have .9 Terabytes left! Maybe Mirror Usenet! I guess the simple truth is that now that 100 gig drives are a couple hundred bucks, we now have the ability to store anything we reasonably could need (unless you define "Reasonable" as "I need to store DNA Sequences").

darketernal writes "Escaflowne is appearing in theaters nationwide on the 25th, depending on your location. Rated PG-13. Here is a Yahoo! Review." If you've seen Escaflowne in japanese, you probably know that its a pretty cool show, and while its not one of my all time favorites, if the big screen release gets anywhere near me, I'll be there. Perhaps even bigger news is that the mega anime film hit Metropolis is being release at the same time.

An anonymous reader submitted a NY Times story (you know what that means: annoying free registration required) about anime as Japanese Film's 2nd Golden Age. It covers a lot of ground, as well as a lot of really amazing films including (obviously) Miyazaki's work, but also stuff like Ranma 1/2, Perfect Blue, Cowboy Bebop and Evangelion to pick a handful of my favorites. In short, it's a good piece with its share of criticisms and commentary, but it's cool to see a mainstream source talk up something that was so much subculture just a few years ago.

peter_gzowski writes "Well known film critic and closet otaku, Roger Ebert, has a bi-weekly segment on his website where he reminisces about the greatest films of all time (in his opinion, anyway). The most recent installment covers My Neighbor Totoro. This is the second anime to make the list, joining Grave of the Fireflies. For those unfamiliar, Totoro is a film by anime master Hayao Miyazaki, the man behind Princess Mononoke, amoung many other great films (Castle of Cagliostro being my favorite)." Always pleased to see anime get more mainsream cred. And Miyazaki always deserves it.

Deliri...uhmmm writes: "Cowboy Bebop, which was not shown last week on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim, is back this week. Apparently it was just a temporary reaction to the events of 9.11. Here is the The Adult Swim website" Does anyone have any word on the return of Mobile Suit Gundam? Anyway, Cowboy Bebop is simply one of the best shows ever made and I'm glad that Cartoon Network isn't dropping it. I hope they show more Anime, and maybe someday we could even get a dedicated Toonami channel.

Lhadatt was among several who noted unannounced changes in Cartoon Networks' anime lineup. It's easy to speculate that Mobile Suit Gundam and Cowboy Bebop were dropped because of Tuesday's terrorist attacks since each show has a fair amount of violence, but nobody really knows. You can see the evidence on Cartoon Network's Listings. Tonight, episode 5 of Bebop was scheduled to air: one of the best episodes, too.

NeoCode sends tons of juice starting with "Ghost in the Shell creator, Masamune Shirow, has talked about a sequel to GITS in a recent interview. The director of the original is working on GITS2. The Matrix Revisted is essentially a prequel to the original Matrix movie. My guess is that the anime story might be along the lines of the Matrix comics that are on their website. Anyways, here are some tidbits about the Matrix anime. And lastly, CartoonNetwork has a interviewed Daft Punk about their anime video and their anime" I saw the Daft Punk (as well as all 3 Gorillaz!) videos on Toonami last friday. Had to immediately hit Cheap CDs and buy the album. (Yes, I'm buying CDs again. I ended my boycott now that Napster battle is over) I thought it was just Gap commercial soundtracks, but those are sweet videos.