For Japanese otaku, itasha—literally "painmobile"—are about as geeky as they come. This past weekend, diehard itasha gathered and gawked in Tokyo's Odaiba.

Fullmetal Alchemist animator Satoshi Kubo has publicly stated on Japanese social networking site Mixi that he refused to work on a Super Robot Wars project. He cited the involvement of a certain staffer for the reason why.

AKB48, the most popular idol group in Japan at the moment, will be singing the ending theme for anime series Dragon Ball Kai.

Word has it that upcoming PS3 exclusive Ryu Ga Gotoku 3 requires, like a lot of PS3 games do these days, a mandatory install. Sign of the times!

Tecmo's Japanese marketing team has recruited "entertainer" Hard Gay to help promote the upcoming Rygar: The Battle of Argus in Japan. Over there, they call it Argos no Senshi: Muscle Impact and use CAPS LOCK.

Tales of Hearts is Namco Bandai's latest entry in the Tales series — though this time Namco Bandai is releasing two versions. One is a realistic CG version, and the other one is cutie anime version. If that wasn't enough (it's not, really), Namco Bandai's Tales team has joined forces with Circle K convience stores to…

What seems like every week or so, I get emails from readers asking where they should go in Akihabara. While I don't mind answering emails, here's a book I can point them to: The Best Shops of Akihabara. It's forty pages of an English-language manga-style guidebook. As a nice bonus, the book even points out which…