Media Blasters announced two new manga licenses, Makoto Akane's six-volume adaptation of Ira Ishida's Akhihabara@Deep novel and Ai Morinaga's two-volume shojo comedy Strawberry Chan no Karei Seikatsu (The Magnificent Life of Strawberry Chan), at MangaNext in Secaucus, New Jersey.
In addition to releasing the Akihabara@Deep manga, Media Blasters is planning to release the Akihabara@Deep live action film under its Tokyo Shock imprint. The 119-minute film was produced by Toei and directed by Takashi Minamoto and was released in late 2006. While the manga, which appeared in the seinen anthology Comic Bunch, adapts the novel's story of a group of otaku who band together to form a company to take on the problems (especially bullying) that plague Akihabara very closely, the movie takes a much darker look at the lives of the Akihabara otaku.
In contrast to the reality-based Akihabara@Deep (however rarefied and urbanized that reality might be), Ai Morinaga's Strawberry Chan is a wild comic fantasy about a frog and her twisted sadistic bishonen master from the creator of My Heavenly Hockey Club (Del Rey) and Your and My Secret (ADV).
