Making her return to the San Francisco Bay Area for J-Pop Summit 2017, watch our interview with one of our reoccurring guests, singer May'n!

Fans of Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli movies were in for a treat at this year’s J-Pop Summit held in San Francisco. Azumi Inoue, best known for her singing in movies such as Laputa: Castle In The Sky, My Neighbor Totoro, and Kiki’s Delivery Service, performed on stage alongside her daughter, Yuyu. We caught up with the mother-daughter duo to learn more about their musical influences.

On July 3, 2017, Funimation hosted the world premiere of the live action movie, Tokyo Ghoul, from the hit manga at Anime Expo. Special guest appearances included lead actor Masataka Kubota who plays the role of Ken Kaneki, Director Kentarou Hagiwara, and Producer Tomohiro Nagae. The movie is set to release in Japanese theaters on July 29th, but Anime Expo fans had the exclusive chance to watch the movie before anyone else around the world.

This year, the highly popular series Fullmetal Alchemist will be celebrating the 16th anniversary of its original manga release which has gone on to sell over 67 million copies worldwide since its inception. Since then, Fullmetal Alchemist has been adapted into a televised anime series, video game, a theatrical animated film, and an upcoming live action film this December. To celebrate the upcoming release director Fumihiko Sori, and actor Ryosuke Yamada, who plays the leading role as Edward Elric, made a special appearance at this year’s Anime Expo in Los Angeles as part of  the "Hagaren World Bullet Tour."

Da-iCE is a 5 member dance group from Japan with a "facial deviation value of 75!" They are the recipient of The Japan Gold Disc Award for Best 5 New Artist and their latest single Paradive hit 3rd in the Oricon charts. Learn more about Da-iCE in our interview video at FanimeCon in San Jose!

FLOW debuted in 2003 with their 1st single “Blaster” and is famous for their Naruto opening theme songs such as “GO!!!” and “Remember” as well as Naruto-Shippuden’s opening theme song “Sign”. 

In 2015, they came out with their 2nd Anime Best album “FLOW ANIME BEST Kiwami” and traveled to Japan, Taiwan, America, Canada, Brazil, Peru, Chile, Argentina to their first world tour “FLOW WORLD TOUR 2015 Kiwami”. Hear what they had to say as we talk to them about their first appearance Los Angeles performing in Anime Expo held at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

While this year's annual Kohaku (Kouhaku) Uta Gassen is just around the corner, we take a step back to look at last year's show when our very own Alysa McWilliams was fortunate enough to cover the event at the NHK Broadcasting Center with performances by some of Japan's top artists such as Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, Perfume, EXILE, Arashi, AKB48, Nana Mizuki, T.M. Revolution, SMAP, Ayumi Hamasaki, Porno Graffitti, Kana Nishino, and more.