Post from ICv2 about Keanu Reeves being eager to play Spike Siegel in a live action adaptation of the Cowboy Bebop anime:

http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/13950.html

An interesting article about archiving efforts at the The National Diet Library posted on The Asahi Shimbun, Dec. 30(IHT/Asahi: December 31,2008):
“Another challenge facing the institution is the preservation of manga comic magazines, which attract the interest of many overseas researchers.

The ink on manga magazines tends to smudge rather quickly, causing the pictures to blur. Under current copyright rules, preserving manga publications in digital form for wide availability requires permission from various parties concerned. It would be a tall order and require tremendous clerical costs.

We hope a system can be created to deal with this problem flexibly while paying due attention to the copyright issue.”

Top 25 manga properties posted on ICv2

Judge orders manga artist to pay 2.2 mil. yen over plagiarism claim (The Yomiuri Shimbun)