The annual “Anime Research” academic poll is open once again. Scholars from Texas A&M University, Niagara County Community College, and Renison University College have collaborated to compose the survey. This year’s questions have been completely renewed to delve deeper into fans’ psychological and sociological engagement with anime and help answer questions raised by fans regarding the results of last year’s survey. The survey is anonymous and should take less than 30 min to complete. Participants are eligible to win a $50 Amazon gift card. Chances of winning are 1 in 200; winner selection will be confidential and not associated with survey responses. The poll will be open from today, June 4, until July 4, 2015.

The results of the 2014 survey are available on the Anime Research homepage.

Our podcast mistress & resident fujoshi, Daphne, bought a new car recently. She’s started to customize it to suit her tastes. Take note of the license plates.

She’s also gotten the seats custom reupholstered.

We’ll have more pics to share when Daphne gets her Saiyuki itasha done.

In anticipation of its summer release of King of Fighters XII on the Xbox 360 and PS3, Ignition Entertainment is now hosting a King of Fighters fan art contest. Entries are due by July 31st. Prizes include copies of the game, game consoles, and a $1,000 cash grand prize.

Japanese pop group Morning Musume is now sponsoring an “Original Promotion Video Contest” for its song “3,2,1 BREAKIN’ OUT.” Participants can download the song and 82 “green screen” video clips of the group to be combined with original video material and editing. Submissions are due by June 19th. The winner will be announced during this July’s Anime Expo convention. The winner will receive a 390,000 yen cash prize ($4,000) and an exclusive video message from Morning Musume, and the video will be included in a future release from Japanese record publisher UP-FRONT WORKS.

Source: Tokyograph

Article provided by Daniel Zelter

You might notice the very pink, very valentiney new banner gracing the site today. Toorima on the AN forums is the winner our recent Valentine Banner Contest!

To see the rest of the banners submitted, check out the banner thread. (hint: go to the back, it’s huge )

Thanks Toorima! We’ll be running another contest very soon, so stay tuned!

So we haven’t run a new contest in awhile, and we need a new banner… Wait! We can get a new banner and still be lazy by having our more-talented-than-us members design our banner for us! Ah, my work here is done, can I have off for the rest of the day?

Seriously, we do need a new banner, and Valentine’s Day is quickly approaching. This time, we’ll give the winner the thinpak set of your choice! Just submit them by Feb 9th (next Monday) so we can put it on the site for next week. We’ll pick the winner Monday morning.

Don’t think we ran one last year, but here’s the submissions for 2007:

And of course, here’s where to post them:

Contests are fun, and we haven’t run many lately (ok, seems like forever), so look for more soon. Really. This time we really mean it. Now go make banners. What are you still doing here???