Happy slightly used but still in mint condition year! Having looked back at 2009 in anime and manga for the past few weeks, I'd like to take a look this week at three companies and an anime series that promise to make the remaining 360 days of 2010 interesting.

» Sentai Filmworks. The anime industry could use a few stronger competitors to push leading publisher Funimation. Sentai Filmworks, one of the entities that rose out of the ashes of ADV Films, could be it.

Sentai might not have the flood of releases that Funimation has, but what it's releasing isn't an occasional trickle of titles, either — releases in the past few months include “;Clannad,”; “;To Love Ru,”; “;Tears to Tiara”; and “;Ghost Hound,”; with “;Yozakura Quartet”; and “;Tayutama: Kiss on my Deity”; arriving in March. If it avoids the mistakes of ADV — namely, licensing too many series of dubious quality at once — it could develop into a major player.

» Yen Press. Five words: “;Twilight”; and “;Gossip Girl”; manga. Any publisher that's not Viz and doesn't have access to its own gold mine of titles (”;Naruto,”; “;Vampire Knight,”; etc.) would love to have a strong “;gateway”; series to bring in new readers and direct them to other series in the catalog.

As the film version of “;New Moon”; demonstrated a few months ago, “;Twilight”; fans will lap up anything (even if it's savaged by critics), so the potential for strong sales of the manga is there. Yen also has the rights to “;Gossip Girl,”; with new stories drawn by Korean artist HyeKyung Baek and based on the original novels by Cecily von Ziegesar (the same source for the popular CW TV series). Whether these readers will migrate to more traditional manga remains to be seen, but hey, it's worth a shot.

» Kodansha Comics. One of Japan's manga market leaders stumbled out of the gate in the U.S. last year, making this year crucial for rebuilding trust with readers. Reissued content, as with “;Ghost in the Shell”; and “;Akira,”; might have been a way to test the waters, but I'm interested in seeing whether the publisher aspires to more in this market.

» The second “;Haruhi Suzumiya”; season. Before the second season aired in Japan last year, I would have said this would be a slam-dunk success if Bandai opted to pick it up for the U.S. That was before Kyoto Animation chose to animate the “;Endless Eight”; story arc from the “;Haruhi”; novels, in which the main characters relive the last two weeks of summer vacation over and over again. Accordingly, the same episode plot ran eight straight times, with a few minor changes each time. Japanese fans vehemently ranted online ... and then turned around and dutifully snapped up the episodes as they were released to DVD. With Bandai's recent hints that it has the second season in hand, I'm curious to see whether U.S. fans will be as forgiving.

WELCOME 2010 WITH FESTIVAL FUN

With the change in year comes a fresh start on the list of annual events with ties to local anime- and manga-related groups. The first event on that list: the annual New Year's Ohana Festival from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday at the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii, 2454 S. Beretania St., and nearby Moiliili Field.

JN Productions will be bringing its full complement of “;Kikaida”;-related activities and merchandise, including a show featuring the Kikaida Brothers in battle against the Dark Demolition Corps led by Professor Gill, photo opportunities and autographs from original “;Kikaida”; actor Ban Daisuke. Audra Furuichi and Scott Yoshinaga, co-creators of the Web comic “;nemu*nemu,”; will have a booth as well. And Oahu Anime Explorer will have a booth and screen anime in the center gallery.

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For more anime and manga news and commentary, check out “;Otaku Ohana”; at blogs.starbulletin.com/otakuohana. E-mail him at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).