As part of their worldwide effort to kill traditional hand drawn animation, Disney will fire its Japanese animators in June. Read about it here.
After the Japan studio is shut down, the only remaining overseas Disney studio will be in Australia.

According to Internal Correspondence Vol. 2 (aka ICv.2) Quentin Tarantino is planning to write and produce an anime feature film, which will serve as a prequel to his two Kill Bill films.Production IG is expected to create the film, which will be done in the same style as the animated segments in Kill Bill I. The prequel will provide Bill’s backstory by explaining how he became such a ruthless killer. Tarantino will write and produce (but not direct) the anime prequel.

Last night, during one of Lewis Black’s rants on THE DAILY SHOW, he did a great bit on the two deformed lumps that are serving as the mascots for the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens. The characters - Phevos and Athena - are inspired by a 2,700-year-old Greek terracotta doll, but as Black put it, they look more like dicks in sweaters. What’s especially humorous is that it took two committees of painters and gallery heads to pick this design from 196 submissions. As the UK’s GUARDIAN reasoned, “Perhaps they were all having an off day.” The designer of these two blobs, Spyros Gogos, who is not surprisingly an ad agency creative director, says that he wanted the design to evoke, “The brotherhood of man, equality of the sexes and participation irrespective of victory.” Here’s a LINK to an animated commercial featuring these characters, an ARTICLE about how people don’t find these characters very appealing, and an amusing EDITORIAL by the GUARDIAN. Of course, this is hardly the first time an Olympic mascot has looked so silly (remember Atlanta’s Izzy?).

Movielink, the broadband video-on-demand service, announced today it has launched a new “Cartoon Classics” section on its Web site through a licensing agreement with Classic Media and its affiliate, Bullwinkle Studios.Movielink will make over 350 half-hours of classic cartoon programming available for download. Under the terms of the agreement, consumers can download episodes of Rocky & Bullwinkle, Dudley Do-Right, as well as classic Famous Studio (Harveytoons) cartoons with Casper the Friendly Ghost, Joe Oriolo’s TV Felix the Cat, and UPA’s Dick Tracy and Mr. Magoo.

Financial website Motley Fool has posted this editorial by Rick Aristotle Munarriz, which asks “Remember when Disney’s golden animated features drew huge crowds and rave reviews?”Munarriz says… “Disney has been slowly dismantling its animation division… that could be a huge mistake. Blaming the medium instead of the messenger is akin to blaming your tailor because you gained a few pounds. You simply can’t make a blanket statement that hand-drawn animation is dead and that computerized renderings are the way of the future.”Would Finding Nemo have bombed if it were hand-drawn? I doubt it. Would Home on the Range have been a box-office blockbuster if the barnyard critters were dolled up on high-end Silicon Graphics machines? Nope.”There are plenty of computer-animated television shows out there, but the favorites are hand-drawn like SpongeBob and Rugrats. It’s not the format. It’s not pixels versus inkblots. It’s the story.”

MUCHA LUCHA! creators Eddie Mort and Lili Chin have figured out what the next big trend in animation will be: Christian anime! Of course they’re joking, but you just know somebody somewhere is developing this for real right now. Also in their update yesterday, they posted some cool artwork from their new project ENDSVILLE, which Eddie describes as their “Kustom Kulture/Ed Roth is God” series. Check out their blog HERE.

SaveDisney.com has posted a fine new editorial by animator Merlin Jones (a pseudonym obviously) who writes about how this is hardly the first time that hand-drawn animation has been pronounced dead. His bottom line: “It’s [Disney's] management style that must change, not the medium.” Truer words have never been written. Read the piece HERE.

You’ve heard of Disney Dollars?
In Japan, it’s Astro Bucks!Tokyo’s Takadanobaba district will start using Astro Boy currency this week, according to an ABC News article. The currency features the image of the famous anime hero, and many shops, organizations and Waseda University will use the currency for community revitalization efforts and environmental activities.
The article states: “Astro Boy’s strength was measured in horsepower and therefore 1 horsepower of the currency will be equivalent to 1 yen. The bills come in denominations of 10, 100 and 200 horsepower.”
Buddy, can you spare an Astro-dime?