One of the main differences between covering anime and covering films or video games is that there is a relatively short lead time – usually 1-3 months – between a title’s production announcement and its airing. Very little information surfaces about the development cycles except for the cast and the basic plot, which hampers the hype potential for most titles with the absence of previews but is likely a result of the quickness with which an anime is produced in Japan.
It takes a bit longer to get things produced for the aftermarket that is America and it has become more important to remind people about which anime are being released and why the purchasing public should care about them. That’s why I was looking forward to the debut of the Funimation Update, a monthly promotional podcast. I don’t listen to many anime podcasts and only occasionally check out Anime Today for the interviews so I figured I would check out this shorter-form, monthly video show. I actually enjoyed watching it as it reminded me of On The Spot (Gamespot’s weekly broadcast show) since the Update alternated between clearly-defined segments and related trailers.
The 15 minutes of episode 1 began with “Conversations” where two people involved with Shin Chan – voice director Zach Bolton and head writer Jared Hedges – talked about how they were given license to rewrite the original script in season 2 because much of the humor is dialogue based and to modify and magnify the perversion. They also discussed their favorite moments from the first season including the scuba squad song.
The next segment was “Minute With The Man Who Made It” (MWTMWMT?) where correspondent Scott Porter let strangely out-of-breath motion graphic artist Walter Parenton try to talk about his approach to producing the trailer for the Shin Chan Season 1.1 DVD before kicking to the trailer itself, which was kind of good.
“Gen’s 2 Cents” wins for most obvious pandering with CEO Gen Fukunaga pointing out the School Rumble Extra Class OVA in big text on his June release schedule. It made me recall the (intentionally?) bad acting in the ASOS Brigade videos last year in its similar slight awkwardness of promoting a title.
“Direct Word” brought us Mike McFarland talking with Scott about the One Piece uncut dub. Mike said the crew is around the late 20s, early 30s in episode progress.
Later on, Mike commented on the Star Trek chairs and both he and Scott went into their villain poses before saying goodbye.
“In Production” began with director of production Justin Cook addressing the audience wearing a cream-colored jacket and tells us that the process of casting Kenichi is wrapping up with Monica Rial directing that title.
Monica pointed out that Kenichi is different from her current work with xxxHOLiC since xxxHOLiC has Watanuki as the only real main male character (uh, Doumeki? Maybe he’s in the supporting cast) among “a whole bunch of chicks” whereas Kenichi has 300 dudes she has to cast. She said she’s looking for creativity and people who don’t play it safe.
Scott Cantrell, an auditioning voice actor (and Red Sox fan?), also got some screen time and said he sits back and watches cartoons to “see what the big guys are doing”.
At the end, Todd said there would be also be a weekly podcast called “The Quickie” released on Mondays (guessing it’ll be 2-4 minutes long) and that Funimation’s website will have up-to-the-minute coverage from Anime Expo — wait, are they trying to do news, too? — as well as having a “huge announcement” before setting up the final trailer of the episode, Shigurei.
Overall, I think that the Funimation update provides a good look into part of their business and promotes their properties in a non-evil way. Its host Todd Haberkorn and the interstitial animations/title cards smoothed the transition between segments and the segments themselves had a good length, were informative, and more entertaining than not.
This is another instance of the studio expanding into new media, having already put some of their series on download-to-own services like iTunes and Zune Marketplace, and an attempt to build on their double-digit sales growth over the past fiscal year (partly due to Geneon’s shutdown).
Omake:
The School Rumble OVA apparently has a giant CG mammoth in it.
Some lines of xxxHOLiC dub dialogue.
Walter in the intro to MWTMWMT.
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