Avex and Sunrise team up for Tribe Cool Crew anime

Animation studio Sunrise and Record company Avex are collaborating on a new dance themed TV series Tribe Cool Crew. It is not known if the series, which will be released in the fall, is animated or not, though it looks like it may be a CGI based series. The trailer, which is posted below was uploaded to Bandai’s youtube channel and features dancing character silhouettes reminiscent of other dancing idol franchises like Miku Hatsune’s Project Diva Video game series, or the X-BEAT PC game.

#1 Song Review: Week of 7/23 – 7/29

Ok, so this is a new feature we’re going to try to do every week. A few staff members will review and rank the #1 songs for the week on Oricon, Recochoku, and iTunes. We’re also going to give a cross reference so you can see how the #1 song on one chart did on the other charts as well. We’ll then turn it over to you, the readers, to pick your fave for the week. Feel free to write as much as you want. Check out the staff’s reviews after the jump!

Trailer for Kazuo Umezu’s Directorial Debut

The trailer for Kazuo Umezu’s directorial film debut “Mother” has recently been released. Kazuo Umezu is a pioneer in the horror manga genre, The Drifting Classroom and Reptilia are among his best known works. Umezu has also dabbled in different genres, his comedy series Makoto-chan was highly popular during it’s original run.

Mother has a completely original story, said to unlock the mysterious secrets of “Umezu’s world”. In the film, a publishing company is working on a book about Umezu’s life. The lead editor of the project, Sakura, is highly aware of the influence Umezu’s late mother had on his work and tries to explore this during her research. As Sakura’s research presses on bizarre supernatural incidents start to occur one after the other. It soon becomes apparent that Umezu’s supposedly dead mother is behind these events.

The main role of Kazuo Umezu is played by kabuki actor Ainosuke Kataoka. Mimi Maihane plays the role of Sakura and Kimie Shingyoji plays the role of Umezu’s mother Ichie. The film will be released in theaters September 27th.

Check out the trailer for “Mother” below

Live Monster for August 3

This week’s episode of Live Monster featured Shonan no Kaze. They performed “Suirenka” and “Puzzle.” They were interviewed as well. Check out the show after the jump!

Kaela Kimura stars in Farm Heroes Saga CM

A television commercial for the free game app Farm Heroes Saga starring Kaela Kimura began nationwide broadcast August 1st.

If you ever wanted to play a game extremely similar to Candy Crush, from the same developer just replacing candy with crops, then this is the game for you! In the game, you have a set amount of time to match up three “cropsies” and progress with the option of buying boosts and purchasing upgrades with in-game currency or your real life money.

Kumicky overcome with emotion at Popteen graduation

It was announced last month that top model Kumicky would be leaving fashion magazine Popteen. That day came a lot sooner than many fans thought as Modelpress reports that she has officially graduated.

In a Popteen-sponsored festival at Zepp Tokyo earlier, the model looked back at her six-year career and gave a speech of her aspirations while wearing a wedding dress she produced herself.

HAPPY release PV for ‘Magic’

Up and coming indie rock band HAPPY has uploaded the PV for their song ‘Magic‘ to their YouTube channel.

HAPPY was formed in 2012 by a group of friends born between 1992 and 1994. It consists of Ayabe, Kyoto natives Alec (Vo, G), Ric (Vo, Sync), Syu(B, Syn), Bob (Dr, Vo) and Chew (G, Syn). Their fresh sensibility and rich, electric sound that combines psychedelic pop and rock from the 60’s and 70’s landed them a spot at the music event SXSW held in Austin, Texas in March of this year. Their upcoming events include appearances at Summer Sonic 2014.

Check out ‘Magic’ below!

Yamapi Previews Tracks from dance mini album ‘Asobi’

Recently we reported the release for Yamashita Tomohisa’s first dance mini – album ‘Asobi’ set for August 20. Featuring compositions by BACHLOGIC, DAVE WAY, Yasutaka Nakata, Shinichi Osawa and several others, all 7 tracks of the album have been previewed in two aired episodes of Yamapi’s radio show ‘Cross Space’.

As he mentioned, the album will  be a collection of dance music of various genres. You can check out the previews below.