Here’s the first trailer — in the form of a TV commercial — for the upcoming live-action Space Battleship Yamato film.

Over at CNNGo, Matt Alt presents a timeline of anime over the last decade, tracing the highs and lows the industry has known over the past 10 years.

Studio Ghibli has announced that it will be releasing a new film next summer, to be directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi, an animator for the company (this will be his directorial debut). The film’s title is The Borrower Arrietty, and is based on the British story The Borrowers, “an enchanting story about miniature people living under the floorboards of a home.” Via Spoon & Tamago.

Satoshi Kon’s next film is called The Dream Machine, and unlike his previous complex and adult work (Millennium Actress, Tokyo Godfathers, Paprika, Paranoia Agent), is being described as a family-friendly film. Here’s what Kon has to say about the film (taken from this interview):

On the surface, it’s going to be a fantasy-adventure targeted at younger audiences. However, it will also be a film that people who have seen our films up to this point will be able to enjoy. So it will be an adventure that even older audiences can appreciate. There will be no human characters in the film; only robots. It’ll be like a “robot movie” for robots.

The film’s official site now reveals a few images from the film, including the one pictured above. Via /Film.

As a follow-up to the post on “Fumiko’s Confession,” here’s another short directed by Hiroyasu Ishida (Tete). Via Tim Rudder.

Simply amazing: the above short, “Fumiko’s Confession,” was completely animated by one person, a student known only as “Tete.” Please, studios, give this person some money to produce a series or a film. Via Japan Probe.

Update: The short was actually produced by a team of five — they are listed here (in French). “Tete,” or Hiroyasu Ishida is the director.

Matt Alt highlights a few bits on the recent state of the Japanese anime industry from a report in Cyzo magazine on the Japan Anime Collaboration Market 2009 symposium held earlier this month.

Patrick Macias has a new episode of his Hot Tears of Shame podcast, and fans of otaku culture will not want to miss it. “Otaku Internationale: The Shinjuku Summit” brings together Patrick #1, Patrick #2 (that would be The Otaku Encyclopedia‘s Patrick W. Galbraith), PhD student Renato Rivera, and Otaku2 co-founder Adrian Lozano, covering a host of otaku-powered topics.

Let me also add that if you’re hosting a session of The Beatles: Rock Band and you need a singer, Patrick is your man.

The next film from Mamoru Oshii (Patlabor, Ghost in the Shell, Sky Crawlers) is Assault Girls, a live-action sci-fi flick starring Meisa Kuroki — who I must admit I have a crush on — and Rinko Kikuchi. It’s a follow-up to a planned trilogy that started with the short “Assault Girl ‘Hineko the Kentucky,’” below. Via Warren Ellis.

Patrick Macias gave a lecture this past week at California State University, covering “Theoretical Perspectives on Manga, Anime and Otaku,” and he’s now made if available as a download as an episode of his Hot Tears of Shame podcast series (#33).

As Patrick explains, “[w]hile some of this territory was covered before in my speech earlier this year at Temple University Japan Campus, there’s a lot of new stuff here (including sections on American fandom and Hating the Otaku Wave) in this one hour-long recording.”