After an all-out four-day weekend in Los Angeles, Anime Expo closed its doors for another year on July 5. Finally, Marc Perez  has a few moments to breathe. “The hours are very nice a couple of months out of the year,” the CEO of the Society for the Promotion of Japanese Animation (SPJA), says of his job. Then it’s another 11 months of pre-con crunch time.

In June, the Chinese Ministry of Culture blacklisted 38 Japanese anime and manga from distribution in China. [...] However, in the hearts and minds of Chinese fans of Japanese anime, the Great Firewall of China is acting a little too late. 

The embassy of Israel in Tokyo has launched an animated, online series in its latest effort to boost tourism from Japan.  The seven-part show will broadcast on the embassy's official YouTube page.

There are a lot of things that surprise newcomers to anime. Why are the characters’ eyes so big? How come everyone has funky hair colors? What’s up with all the panty shots? A lot of those have simple answers. The giant eyes are an influence from legendary manga artist Osamu Tezuka, who was in turn inspired by classic Disney designs. Anime artwork uses a relatively small number of lines in drawing faces, and a large palette of hair colors is a quick and easy way to differentiate otherwise similar-looking characters.

The Blue Samurai, Japan’s national soccer team, will be fighting their way through this year’s FIFA World Cup tournament with the help of one of the world’s most recognizable characters. Adidas announced on Saturday that Pikachu, everyone’s favorite electrifying mouse-like creature, will be joined by 10 other Pokemon to cheer on the boys in blue.

Now, the guardians of Japan’s economic future are banking on much the same thing. They hope that the beloved, magical cat can reach into his bag of tricks and pull out a ticket to the global spotlight, both for himself and for the nation that created him. Although appointed Japan’s “anime ambassador” in 2008, Doraemon didn’t speak English until a few months ago.

The critters, warriors and doe-eyed women of Japanese animation and manga comics have long found fans around the world. But now the Japanese government wants to mobilise them for a far sterner task: boosting the economy. Enter the "Cool Japan" fund, a $500 million investment of public money aimed at helping Japanese firms promote their cultural wares abroad - an echo of South Korea's investment in soft power that has lifted its K-pop music industry and rapper Psy to global fame.

The Foreign Ministry’s appointment of the robot cat Doraemon as a “cultural ambassador” in 2008 is one instance. Another, less well known, concerns water trucks sent by Japan to Iraq in 2004 as a contribution to reconstruction of the war-shattered nation. The trucks were marked not by the Japanese flag but by a national symbol deemed (rightly) more instantly recognizable abroad — manga and anime soccer hero Captain Tsubasa. Talk about soft power!