Is it just me.. or do links look exactly like every other piece of text now? Hmph, going to have change the colors manually I guess.

Anyway, some really big news in the anime/manga world this week, but first let's see what's happening at Manga Recon!

Yours truly takes a gander at all four volumes of the CMX horror series, Variante! A tale of a girl with a monstrous arm and the secret organization that recruits her. It's dark, bloody and a bit of a downer. Click the link for more though.

In addition that I contribute to the Manga Mini's of 9/05 with two reviews! One for Samurai Champloo: The Complete Series, and the other for Togari vol. 6. Katherine kicks in reviews for the first volumes of Aspirin and Sola, while Michelle takes a look at Very, Very, Sweet vol. 1.

Changing gears to prose reviews, the end of the month means it's time for another installment of the August Edition of the Otaku Bookshelf! This month I take a look at Dark Wars: The Tale of Meiji Dracula by Hideyuki (Vampire Hunter D) Kikuchi. Chloe reviews the first volume of Kino No Tabi by Keiichi Sigsawa, while Katherine rounds us out with a review of the vaguely steamy Translucent Tree by Nobuko Takagi.

Other reviews for the week include Erin's look at S.A. vol. 2 - 6, Michelle's review of S.S. Astro vol. 1 and Sam's look at the first two volumes of One Pound Gospel, plus more! So make with the clickee. 

There was also a round table discussion of the new design for the Tokyopop site, but I can't find the link at the moment. Hrm.

Now that the plug's out of way it's time to move onto the big news of the week.. Unless you've been living under a rock, or possibly in one of the regions devestated by hurricanes recently, then you're probably aware of it already. Still.. one never knows so...

Adult Swim has heavily revamped their Saturday night schedule into one that seems custom made to see anime fail. Bleach episodes premier at 11PM, followed by FMA repeats. That's followed by some three hours of comedy shows. What about Codea Geass and Moribito? Glad you asked, they'll still be premiering on Saturdays.. just at 5AM. The internet's reaction has been less than enthusiastic.

So why the change? Speculation runs rampant with low ratings being the prime suspect, and while that's a valid argument it doesn't really answer why they're not yanking the comedy shows that under perform on Satudays? The fact is that Saturday nights in general aren't bringing in the ratings. Why? Is it the lack of advertisement for the shows? The constant tweaking of the schedule when one line up doesn't immediately produce results? Is the fact that their target demographic, 18 - 34 year old males are probably out doing something other than watching TV on Saturday nights? Probably a combination of all of the above, but focusing on the ratings fails to look at the big picture.

The fact is that Cartoon Network in general is working to phase out their anime content. Look at Toonami which was all anime not even a year ago. Now we've got Naruto plus CN original series. Is this a coincidence? Not at all. The major issue isn't ratings, it's merchindising. CN/AS don't get money from Bleach t-shirts, or One Piece DVD sales. They do for ATHF and Ben 10. With the original series that they own lock stock and barrel, they get a much larger piece of the pie when it comes to merchindising sales.

At least that's my theory. It makes more sense than the ratings, that's for sure. Especially when they do nothing to help boos the ratings, like say.. advertising the block outside of bumps.

Outside of the conspiracy theories there are a few other aspects of the situation to consider. Bandai and Media Blasters can't be happy about this schedule change. Does this sour their realtionship with AS? What's going to happen to the second season of Code Geass? Bandai now has a working relationship with the Sci-Fi Channel.. could we see it air on Ani-Monday? It also can't be an encouraging signal to the other anime companies out there. Why give your shows to a network that's going to make this kind of crazy programming changes..?

Should be interesting to see how everything plays out in the next few weeks.

Elsewhere..

Sci-Fi's Ani-Monday continues with their normal line up this week. An hour of Gurren Lagann followed by an hour of Now and Then. Hope you're watching these because they're quite good. Now and Then has really surprised me and has actually become my favorite from the two shows. Shame it's almost over though.

Hell Girl will be making its long awaited broadcast debut on IFC soon. Oct. 3rd at 11:30 PM, mark it down and tune in.