In a completely packed room with fans that waited hours in line, Miyuki Sawashiro held her panel on July 1, 2011 at Anime Expo 2011. Miyuki Sawashiro is a popular seiyuu (voice actress) in Japan who has voiced for many hit series including Rozen Maiden, Durarara!!, Strike Witches, Bakemonogatari, and Kimi ni Todoke. The panel was hosted by none other than famed otaku blogger Danny Choo.

This year was North America's largest anime convention, Anime Expo's 20th anniversary. To celebrate, the convention decided to bring back some of it's more popular guests and otaku blogger Danny Choo was one of them. It's been a year since we last interviewed him (you can read our past interview here), hear what's it like for an otaku blogger who is now an entrepreneur working with some of the biggest names in the business!

For those of you who were not able to watch the Hatsune Miku concert, Mikunopolis at Anime Expo, you can check out the 8 minute highlight footage below. Video provided courtesy of the organizers of Mikunopolis.

Stay tuned for our own recording of the first 6 songs of the concert, impressions, as well as an interview with the creative force behind Vocaloid, Crypton Future Media CEO Hiroyuki Itoh and Producer Wataru Sasaki.

© MIKUNOPOLIS 2011

_{Video used with permission, please do not reproduce.}

The-O Network Online has been undergoing some staff changes as of late, and we're all very lucky and very glad to have snapped up a new anime reviewer, Ken Ohata! Ken will be laying the smack down on the good, the bad, and the ugly of Japanese animation, so keep a lookout for more from him. After the jump we have his first official review, Working!! Read and enjoy! --Stephen Bajza, Editor

Another convention-themed podcast! Well, it is convention season after all, so dig in. Fanime is a San Jose based convention that does an excellent job of staying true to the "by fans, for fans" tagline. The whole thing is pretty much one giant anime and J-Pop themed party, and we've got plenty to discuss about Fanime 2011 antics. The second half of the podcast focuses on convention survival tips, so newbie and veteran con attendees alike should tune in and glean wisdom from the masters. We'll have a full article about this very topic posted soon, so check back in about a week for the update!

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The title may sound too ridiculous to be true, but it's not. According to the Comic Books Legal Defense Fund, the CBLDF, a U.S. citizen was flying from his home in the States to visit a friend in Canada and, while at the airport, security searched his laptop, iPad, and iPhone. Customs determined that the manga found on his laptop was child pornography, and he is now being charged with possession and importing these materials.

There's no mention of what type of manga the man, a computer programer in his mid-twenties, saved to his laptop. It's possible that Canadian officials determined ecchi, titlating but not erotic situations, or moe, situations involving cute girls, were actually erotic, or worse yet, they opened the wrong page in any number of Japanese titles containing benign child nudity. In the event that he was in fact holding on to lolicon or shotacon hentai, pornographic manga involving underage girls or boys respectively, support for him may wane drastically as was the case in 2007 with Christopher Handley who ended up serving a six month sentence in jail.

If the accused man had saved something not meant to be erotic, then the comic book, anime, and manga fan communities will need to act in unison to defend materials that may be perceived as illicit or perverted. However, if the manga in question are fully pornographic and involve small children, the issue becomes far more complicated. Many would say art is always art, and censoring any form of it is wrong and that there is no crime committed in simply looking at the materials. On the other hand, others would say that such materials are indicative of pedophilic tendencies or are in some way morally harmful to living children.

The debate is ongoing, and as anime and manga becomes more prevalent around the world and government actions against lewd or indecent materials and behavior seem to step up in intensity, what the future will bring is a matter of theory.

If you would like to support the unnamed U.S. citizen, you can donate here to the CBLDF to support his case, and you can read more from the original article and another that provides additional information.

Japanese visual-kei metal band, Exist Trace made their electrifying American debut in Seattle Washington earlier this year at Sakura-Con 2011. Check out our photos of this all girl band!

Don't forget to check out the band's autograph session photos: 

http://www.t-ono.net/Gallery/Convention-Photos/Sakura-Con-2011/Exist-Trace/

You can also find more information about the group and purchase their music over at JapanFiles.

In an interesting twist, a hacker had apparently broke into new comer anime convention, AM2 site over the weekend and fabricated a false message stating the convention had been cancelled and that the musical guests would be performing at Anime Expo.

We have contacted AM2 in regards to the possible compromise of account information, and Chase Wang, who is an organizer for the event, has reassured us that no data was lost or breached.

Wang also had commented earlier this morning, "I am extremely disappointed that there are individuals out there that are so willing to stoop to such levels to disrupt and harm our event after all the work and planning that has been done to bring as much fun to our attendees as possible."

AM2 will be hosted from July 1 to 3 at the Anaheim Convention Center on the same weekend as North America's largest anime convention, Anime Expo. There is clearly a rivalry between these two conventions...