Mika Saeki, a member of AKB48’s Team B, is graduating from the group next month. The news came during a performance on Tuesday night at their Akihabara theater, followed by a comment posted on their official blog.

In January, Saeki took a break from AKB48 due to a leg injury that required half a year of treatment. That time has now passed, but due to poor health the treatment did not go smoothly. Thinking about her future, she decided to formally graduate in order to focus on her recovery, so that she can return to show business sooner.

Saeki joined AKB48 as a kenkyuusei in May 2007, then debuted two months later along with Reina Fujie. Saeki’s final concert with AKB48 will be the one at Nippon Budokan on August 23. The show will include a graduation “ceremony” for both Saeki and Risa Naruse, who left Team K in May due to a herniated disc.

Source: tokyograph

Yuna Ito will be performing in a charity concert in Yokohama Stadium in late September. Part of the proceeds from the concert will go to Wateraid, a non-profit organization which deals with water, sanitation and hygiene issues in 17 countries in Africa and Asia.

Ito said that she hoped people would realize the importance of clean water while they enjoy the shows. Singers Eikichi Yazawa, 59, will also perform on Sept 26 and Kyosuke Himuro, 48, will perform on the 27th.

Tickets for the concerts went on sale Wednesday and more information (in Japanese), including the rest of the line-up, can be found at www.live-for-love.com.

Source: Japan Today

Del Rey has made a few announcements at Comic-Con, check out the big news from Del Rey thanks to ICv2:

At the San Diego Comic-Con, Del Rey Manga announced that it will publish both a manga prequel and a manga adaptation of M. Night Shyamalan’s live-action feature film The Last Airbender, which is slated to debut on July 4th, 2010. Dave Roman (associate editor of Nickelodeon Magazine) is writing both the prequel and the adaptation. Joon Choi is illustrating the adaptation in full manga style, while Nina Matsumoto, who just won an Eisner for her work with Bongo comics and is the creator of Yokaiden, will illustrate the prequel, which is due out from Del Rey about three months prior to the movie’s debut.

Del Rey is also taking over the publication of the full color, screen-capture-based, “film comic” manga based on the Nickelodeon Avatar: The Last Airbender animated TV series with the first Del Rey Avatar “film comic” volume slated for release in the summer of 2010 and a second set for publication in the fall of 2010.

Image and news source: ICv2

Dark Horse has announced at Comic-Con that The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service and the MPD Psycho manga series were both in development as potential live action movies at Universal. If either movie actually does go through, it’ll definitely help boost sales for Dark Horse since they publish both manga series.

Would you watch either movies?

Source: ICv2

The July issue of Shounen Gangan will get to see 8 pages of Roxas x Sora Heaven from Kingdom Hearts 365/2. If you haven’t played the game yet, chances are you didn’t if you live in the States, you’ll more than likely spoil a lot of things for yourself. So don’t go reading it until you played the game if you really want to enjoy the manga.

Kingdom Heart 365/2 comes out in the U.S. in September.

Source: Anime Vice

You’re probably tired of hearing anything about the full-scale Gundam. That’s cool. How about hearing, or in your case reading, some news about Testujin 28, or Gigantor. Okay, maybe that’s old news. But it’s not that old.

Looks like Japan is aiming to have the life-size Gigantor to be completed by October. Just like the full-scale Gundam, the life-size Gigantor will stand tall at 18 meter (close to 60 feet or 5 stories tall).

Check out the video below.

Source: Anime Vice