A new desert named after Japan's Minister for Foreign Affairs Taro Aso was recently sold in Akihabara. The desert, "Taro's Milk Castella," first appeared in Akihabara near the end of 2006. The cake sold at 525 yen a piece, and was said to be inspired by Aso's love of milk cake.

Taro Aso is famous for being an anime and manga fan. Due to his love for PEACH-PIT's Rozen Maiden, he received the nickname "Rozen Aso" (ローゼン麻生). Last September Aso's campaign speech at Akihabara received great response from the otaku audience.

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A new Kimi Kiss manga (based on the popular game of the same name) drawn by Taro Shinonome will start in Young Animal No. 3, on sale 1/26.

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In the February issue of Akita Shoten's shojo magazine Mystery Bonita, an announcement was made regarding the return of the shojo manga Bride of Deimos.

Written by Etsuko Ikeda and illustrated by Yuuho Ashibe, Bride of Deimos, which began in 1975, is one of Akita Shoten's most popular shojo manga and one of Akita Shoten's four longest-running series, with 17 tankoubons and 12 bunko-sized books (pocket/novel-sized re-packagings of the tankoubon) released to date.

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According to Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Shogakukan and Sony Pictures Entertainment and others have announced plans to explore the light novel market aimed at people between 10 to 20 years old. While Shogakukan will be officially entering the light novel market this spring, Sony Pictures plans to tap into the large pool of new writers who write using their cell phone.

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Otaku News has posted some information on a rumored "full blown Anime & Manga convention" some call Kanacon, which will take place in London in 2008 summer. There are no concrete information regarding the convention. Below is an excerpt from the press release posted on Otaku News:

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The new comic release list from ComicList, compiled by MangaCast.

Information on the previously reported Kodansha International Manga Competition is now available on Kodansha's official website:

www.e-morning.jp/imc

Celebrating the 25th anniversary of its manga anthology Morning, Kodansha has announced a new International Manga Competition to look for new manga talents from around the world.

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Cold Cut Distribution has released a list of its top 300 products for 2006. Icarus Blog (NSFW) has posted a filtered list containing only manga and adult titles:

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Kinoko Nasu, the mastermind behind the story of Tsukihime and Fate/stay night, is also the author of the novel Kara no Kyoukai (of which a featured film was recently announced). However, Kara no Kyoukai was not Nasu's only novel. On January 9th, Kodansha released volume 1 of Nasu's other novel, DDD, under its Kodansha BOX imprint.

The story of DDD was originally published in the magazine Faust. DDD volume 1 includes "J the E" (Faust September issue 2004), "HandS. (R)" (Faust November issue 2005) and "HandS. (L)" (Faust December issue 2005), and a new story titled "formaal hunt."

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BUZZMANGA, a new service launched by Machiokoshi, Inc., creates manga-based advertisements for clients from overseas. For each client, a manga will be created by a Japanese artist at the price of 150,000 yen (50,000 yen more if the manga is over 15 pages).

Source: ANS