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Weekend Wrapup: 7/Aug - 13/Aug

posted on by Jon Hayward
Madman premiering the new Last Exile at Manifest, and piles of paper full of pirates and lawsuits and lawsuits about pirating.

Madman Entertainment announced it has acquired Last Exile -Fam, The Silver Wing-, Gonzo's upcoming television series set in the Last Exile universe. Similar to the screening held at Anime Expo in the US last month, Madman will present two screenings of the first episode at the Manifest convention in Melbourne on the 26th and 27th of August. The series will begin screening in Japan in October, with a teaser trailer released last week.

The Japanese publisher Shogakukan will begin multilingual publishing, with selected books to be released simultaneously in Japanese and other languages within the country and internationally. Beginning with the business book Nihon no Mirai ni Tsuite Hanasō (Talk About the Future of Japan), books chosen by the company's new multilingual publishing team will be released in Japanese bookstores in Japanese, and at the same time English volumes will be published in North America and sold through North American bookstores and e-book markets. Shogakukan, a joint owner of the North American manga publisher Viz Media, is reported to be releasing an educational manga in September through this method and will take a greater role in the process of translating and publishing manga for international audiences.

ADV has filed a lawsuit against Gainax in regards to its rights to produce live-action adaptations of Neon Genesis Evangelion. ADV translated and distributed the original Neon Genesis Evangelion television series and movies, and obtained the option to create "at least three (3) live-action theatrical motion pictures, five (5) television programs and three (3) direct-to-video movies products" in 2003. The live-action option was revealed at that year's Cannes Film Festival as a joint project between Gainax, Weta Workshop, and ADV. According to ADV, the company made payments to extend this option up to February 2010 but Gainax has not returned sufficient confirmation that they own the copyright and other rights, asked for the agreement to be changed and returned their last payment back to them. ADV's lawsuit seeks to confirm that they own the rights to develop the live-action adaptations and related spin-offs and merchandise.

The trading card company Upper Deck International is suing itself over claims of counterfeiting Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, and resulting legal charges and loss of reputation. Dutch-based Upper Deck International was granted the rights to distribute Konami's popular trading card game in Europe and South Africa, while its American subsidiary Upper Deck Co was granted the rights to distribute in North, Central and South America. It is claimed that Upper Deck Co counterfeited Yu-Gi-Oh! cards it was not authorised to distribute, and upon discovering this, Konami terminated the American contract, then attempted to terminate the European contract. In addition to seeking compensation for the resulting legal battle, Upper Deck International also claims that Upper Deck Co gave misleading information to Konami that enables the company to continue suing Upper Deck International, despite its lack of involvement in the alleged counterfeiting.

Finally, the hugely successful manga series One Piece set new records, with the brand-new volume 63 selling 2,119,400 copies in its first 4 days, the fastest-selling manga volume since the Oricon charts began recording sales in 2008. In addition, it is the third One Piece volume to sell over two million copies and beats the series' record for highest weekly sales set by volume 60. The volume has also broken the records for print runs set by the previous seven volumes, with publisher Shueisha printing 3.9 million copies of the volume in the lead-up to its release.


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