Tokyopop has announced a couple of innovative gift sets for the holidays, both involving promotionally priced combinations of products.

Since Bandai Entertainment released the original Big O anime series on DVD (all four volumes are still available), it comes as no surprise that Bandai will also be packaging the second Big O series for the American video market.

Guardians of Order announced at the recent Big Apple Anime Fest that it has acquired the rights to publish fan guides and RPG books for the Slayers and Revolutionary Girl Utena anime series.

Gutsoon! Entertainment, the U.S. sister company to the Japan-based Coamix Group, has signed a distribution agreement with Diamond Comic Distributors. Diamond will distribute the weekly manga anthology Raijin , Gutsoon's flagship publishing property as well as Fujin , the weekly update on anime and videogames.

Louis Porter, Jr. based his role-playing game, Haven: City of Violence, on contemporary crime comics like Frank Miller's Sin City and James O'Barr's The Crow , as well as on the Hong Kong action films of John Woo.

Interest in anime continues to expand as evidenced by the steady growth of attendance at a growing number of anime conventions. Anime Expo, one of the first American anime cons, which started back in 1992, has seen its attendance rise by a factor of almost 10 over its first decade of existence from around 1500 to over 15,000.

We recently asked Dark Horse's Lee Dawson for help in filling out our information on Ghost in the Shell 2 . Dawson collected the answers below from the editor, translator, and other sources.

Confirming what we heard in San Diego, the Tokyopop Website contains images and information about the manga version of Monsters, Inc ., which was created by Hiromi Yamafuji. Although no official announcement has been made yet, images from the manga that appear on the site are already fitted out with English captions and dialogue, and the book is listed with an October 15 street date.

Dragonball Z and the original Dragon Ball animated series are the backbone of the Cartoon Network's Toonami Block, where they regularly gain the network's highest ratings. Yes, the series has already been on the Cartoon Network for over two years, but the good news is that there are plenty of 'new' shows on the way...

An ICv2 Release. ICv2, with the support of sponsors Score, Diamond Comic Distributors, and Viz Communications, is launching its DBZ Dollars promotion today, to draw attention to the money retailers can make by capitalizing on the current bestseller of the anime category.