Trading Markets is reporting that this year's Tokyo Anime Fair saw record number of exhibitors:

A record 289 animation production houses, toymakers and other companies and groups are exhibiting this year, including 79 from overseas, which is 24 more than last year.

Also, according to the Hollywood Reporter, this year's crowd was 7% larger than last year's:

Registrants at one of the world's largest anime events, staged at the Tokyo Big Sight venue, numbered 12,325, up from the 11,523 recorded a year ago.

The Earth Times has more on the event.

ANN is reporting that Shogakukan plans to celebrate Sho-Comi's 40th anniversary by making 4,000 pages of manga from 400 series available on Yahoo! Comic Japan for free:

The lineup includes Yuu Watase's Absolute Boyfriend, Fuyumi Soryo's Boyfriend, Chie Shinohara's Red River, Kotomi Aoki's Boku wa Imōto ni Koi o Suru, Kazuko Fujita's Rising!. The website is also hosting a free online version of Shojo Comic with new installments added on the 5th and 20th day of every month. This free online "magazine" includes a side story of Boku wa Imōto ni Koi o Suru.

Bandai Entertainment Leads with Most Nominations Followed by Viz Media, Geneon Entertainment, Bandai Visual and FUNimation Entertainment

Anaheim, California (March 27, 2008) ‹ The Society for the Promotion of Japanese Animation (SPJA), the overseeing body of the nation¹s largest anime/manga convention (Anime Expo®), announced the SPJA Industry Award finalists for 2008 at the SPJA Symposium held at Tokyo International Anime Fair held within Tokyo Big Sight¹s Special Theatre 2(Thursday; March 27, 2008; 16:30-18:00-Tokyo time). More information can be found on the website www.spja.org.

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MangaCast's Ed Chavez will be attending this year's Tokyo International Anime Fair as one of its panelist discussing "the Anime Fan's State of the North American Anime Business":

Like many fans of visual media I have my share of opinions on the state of the anime business. A good chunk of those thoughts are more directed at what happens overseas than what NA fans are doing. Luckily I was asked by the moderator for contributions to the discussion, so maybe we will talk a bit about the JA scene and the history of the American anime fan as well.

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Top 10 manga (3/26) according to Tohan:

1. Nodame Cantabile (20)
2. Fullmetal Alchemist (19)
3. Tsubasa: RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE (23)
4. Ahiru no Sora (19)
5. Fairy Tale (9)
6. Hajime no Ippo (83)
7. Konjiki no Gash!! (32)
8. Air Gear (20)
9. Minami-ke (5)
10. History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi (28)

Additional Rankings:

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According to posts on 2ch, PEACH-PIT's popular seinen manga Rozen Maiden, which was discontinued last year in Gentosha's Comic BIRZ, will resume serialization in issue 20 of Shueisha's Young Jump (4/17).

Celebrating Shonen Sunday's and Shonen Magazine's 50th anniversary, Kodansha an Shogakukan are collaborating on a variety of special features.

In order to keep the English fans up-to-date on the special features and events, Rumic World has created a special page to keep track of everything that's coming out, as well as translations of the press conference and others.

GB Shuppan has released the first issue of a full-color bishoujo manga anthology titled Comic Comomo (コミック小桃) on March 20th. Due to various circumstances, the magazine's release date was delayed from February 20th to March 20th. The magazine contains adult content and is aimed at males.

A Comic Comomo "volume 0" was released during last winter's Comic Market 73.

Libre Shuppan and MediaWorks are launching a new yaoi light novel label titled B-Prince Bunko on April 7th.

According to the report, publication planning and editing will be handled by Libre Shuppan, while ASCII MediaWorks will handle publishing and the novels will be sold through Kadokawa Group Publishing.

Source: LightNovel.org

According to ANN, Square Enix has sold over 30 million copies of Hiromu Arakawa's Fullmetal Alchemist manga in Japan:

The promotional sleeve wrapper on the 19th volume of Hiromu Arakawa's Fullmetal Alchemist manga announced that the series has sold over 30 million copies in Japan. Arakawa began drawing the "dark fantasy" manga in Square Enix's Monthly Shonen Gangan magazine in 2001, and Viz Media has been publishing the manga in North America.