Welcome to the Jotaku News Roundup, our newest attempt at providing you with a quick roundup of the latest anime news stories.
This week, we talk about Ufotable tax evasion, drama over Crunchyroll voiceover rates, an update on the Kyoto Animation arsonist, and more.
We’ve be uploaded the roundup onto Soundcloud and a transcript onto here. Let us know what you think and any ways we could improve!
Some of the stories here we’ve known about but either didn’t have the time to write or enough info for a whole article.
JNR Transcript
Intro
Welcome to the Jotaku News Roundup.
I’m your host, Derek Chaplin, and today is June 13th, 2020.
Ufotable charged with tax evasion
Our first story: Unlimited Budget Works!
Animation studio Ufotable, known for shows like Fate/stay night and Demon Slayer, has been charged with tax evasion and forced to pay $1.28 million.
The Tokyo Regional Taxation Bureau filed the charge after discovering Ufotable president Hikaru Kondo routinely took 30% of proceeds from restaurant chains the company also owned and hid them in a personal safe at his house.
Kondo falsely recorded lower earnings and concealed income in three separate years, violating both corporate and consumption tax laws, and claims he used the money to help fund other Ufotable projects.
Both president Kondo along with studio Ufotable have made public apologies about the situation, filed revised tax reports, and paid back the amount owed.
Crunchyroll drama over VA rates for game
Popular anime streaming platform Crunchyroll is facing drama on Twitter this week after their Games division made a post looking for voice actors for upcoming RPG waifu mobile game, Grand Alliance.
The casting call, posted by developer Gaudium, sparked outrage when applicants discovered voice actors would only be paid $1 per voice line, with each character having around 10 lines each.
CastingCallClub removed the job post from their platform, saying a company affiliated with Crunchyroll charging those rates wasn’t something they were comfortable hosting.
Crunchyroll Games apologized about the casting call, stating they weren’t involved in the voiceover process before and plan to work closely with Gaudium so they hire a voiceover studio that ensures talent is paid properly.
The Promised Neverland live-action
Meanwhile: The Promised Neverland, the hit mystery horror drama about a world where orphaned children are raised to be food for demons, is getting a live-action series by Amazon.
Rodney Rothman, co-director and co-writer for Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse, is set to direct and produce the adaptation along with Meghan Malloy who’s set to be the screenplay writer.
Update on the KyoAni arsonist
Almost a year after the tragic event, the Kyoto Animation arsonist suspect has been formally arrested for the heinous act which led to the death of 36 people and destroyed the building.
On July 18th 2019, 41-year old suspect Shinji Aoba started the fire, but had such severe burns after being detained that he had to be transported to emergency treatment.
The suspect admitted to the arson, alleging that a light novel he submitted through KyoAni’s annual novel contest was rejected and then plagiarized by the studio.
His burns were so bad that he needed over 10 months to recover, but on May 27th 2020 the suspect was formally arrested.
On June 10th, the Kyoto District Public Prosecutors Office ordered a psychiatric evaluation of Aoba which will determine if he’s mentally competent to stand trial and healthy enough to be indicted.
CRX cancelled and FunimationCon
Crunchyroll Expo has been cancelled this year, which continues the string of event cancellations over the impact of COVID-19.
With the infectious rate of the virus, both anime productions and events have been affected.
Meanwhile, Funimation has taken the opportunity to host their own virtual event called FunimationCon.
The event is a free two-day virtual convention starting on July 3rd with panels related to Fruits Basket, Fire Force, and One Piece and music guests like Flow and Kana-Boon.
While Crunchyroll Expo has been cancelled, their posts specifically said the event is cancelled at least in its physical form.
We reached out to Crunchyroll Expo about if this means a virtual event is being planned, but they told us at this time they can’t confirm.
Domestic Girlfriend creator harassment
Domestic Girlfriend creator Kei Sasuga has been receiving backlash online from overseas over the recent ending of the series.
Sasuga took to Twitter and commented on how fans from overseas are upset over how Domestic Girlfriend ended, and now she’s receiving an overwhelming amount of jocular insults, criticisms, and prolonged harassment.
She acknowledged some of the criticisms and is considering adding an explanation to the tankoban, but thinks most of the people upset won’t buy it anyways.
While Sasuga says she isn’t really hurt, she’s been blocking especially cruel accounts and will probably refrain from looking at Twitter comments except announcements for the time being.
Re:ZERO season 2 coming July 8th
The second season of Re:ZERO starts airing July 8th, announced Kadokawa through a new preview for the show.
The trailer gives a look at the upcoming season’s antagonist, Satella the Witch of Envy, along with the new opening song “Realize” by Konomi Suzuki.
Season two of Re:ZERO will be a two-cour split season, meaning the first half will air this summer but the second half will be sometime in 2021.
Related to this news, a Re:ZERO tactical adventure game from Spike Chunsoft is coming out sometime this winter.
Crunchyroll Tower of God fanart contest
Crunchyroll is hosting a fanart contest on Twitter to promote its popular anime adaptation of Webtoon series Tower of God.
Grand prize and runner-up winners will receive illustrations from series creator SIU and character designers Masashi Kudo and Miho Tanino while all winners can have their work published on Webtoon and their social media.
Submissions for the fanart contest can be submitted by posting the art onto Twitter with the proper hashtags until June 22nd.
You can check out Crunchyroll’s Twitter or their website for more details.
Other quick news
Studio Chizu kicked off their new global Twitter account with its first post announcing their latest movie Mirai is streaming now on Netflix.
Netflix now also has 130 episodes of One Piece, and is gearing up to start casting and production of its live-action adaptation which had its script leaked last month.
Death Come True, a new full motion video mystery game by Danganronpa creator Kazutaka Kodaka comes out on June 25th for the Nintendo Switch, Android, and iOS with PC and PS4 versions coming later.
Shaman King creator Hiroyuki Takei has finally approved a rebooted of the classic anime, currently set to air in April 2021.
And finally: Despite what you might’ve read in a circulating clickbait article, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 6: Stone Ocean still has NOT been confirmed yet by David Production.
Outro
That’s all for this week of the Jotaku News Roundup, tune in next time and check out the Jotaku Network website and our Twitter for more content.
