While attending Fanime 2009 in late May, I recorded most of the panels I went to with the exceptions being Meet the Anime Vice Squad (forgot) and Nerd Courting (because it was 3 hours!). You may hear some rustling noises caused by when I was shifting around or, in the case of Carl Horn’s panels, flipping through the samples he gave the audience pass around.
Music during lead-ins: “Blue Little” by 10:32 (album: Ghostly Swim – link)
A week ago, I wasn’t seriously considering travelling down to Anime Expo after last year’s long drive and feelings of fatigue afterward. But an hotel room offer came up recently from someone I know (not sure if I can say who) and since my family doesn’t have plans for the weekend, I decided to seize the opportunity. I pre-registered last night so unless I want to let my $65 go to waste, I’ll going to spend some time at the LACC next weekend.
Here is my preliminary schedule (subject to changes):
Thursday
10am: Digital Manga Publishing (will miss because I’ll be driving)
5pm: Nozomi Ent./Right Stuf
7:30pm: eigoMANGA
10pm-12am: TTGL Focus Panel and Documentary (missed this at Fanime)
Friday
9am: Bandai Ent.
11am: CMX
12pm: Aniplex or Yosuke Kuroda/Seiji Mizushima (leaning toward Aniplex) ***Why are these at the same time? ***
3:30pm: Viz Media
6pm: Without Watching the Anime: OPs & EDs (by Alex Leavitt)
9pm-12am: AMV Contest (list of finalists)
Sunday
10am: Directors Guests of Honor Panel
11am: Crunchyroll
12pm: The Problem With Otaku (Alex Leavitt again)
1pm: Production I.G.
2pm: NIS America (if I’m not exhausted by then)
Day 2 at Fanime (May 23rd) for me consisted of learning about the early days of fan subtitling, taking a slower walk through Artists’ Alley, getting something free for asking a question, eating an Italian dinner, and watching on-the-spot pitching of scenarios. Read the rest of this entry »
TRSI added a bunch of items to their online catalog today and along with many repackagings and consolidations in FUNimation’s September solicitations, there were many previously unannounced items and details to be found as well.
(UPDATE 6/24 3:44PM PDT: Robert of his eponymous Anime Corner Store wrote a post [saw via scottfrye] saying they now have pretty much all the same items up for pre-order.)
GONZO anime Burst Angel is evidently getting a Blu-ray release on September 29th at a list price of $79.98. (TRSI’s pre-order price is currently $60.) It will have all 24 TV episodes and the Infinity OVA, just like its Viridian Collection release in June 2008, except now in high-definition.
Nabari no Ou will have its first 13-episode set come out on September 22nd at a typical $59.98 price point. The ninja action series was one of Funi’s New Show A Go Go licenses last December and the manga is currently being published by Yen Press.
Sgt. Frog (aka Keroro) Season 1 Part 1 comes out on Sept. 22nd. That date was announced during their main panel at Anime Next but not the “budget” list price of $39.98 for 12 episodes. That’s at the same level as their Shin-chan releases but this will be a hybrid release (remember their test episode from November?) unlike the dubbed only Shin-chan.
Other first-run releases include the second half of Big Windup! sliding home (TRSI; RACS) on Sept. 29th ($59.99 MSRP), 6 weeks after the first half; the second half of Kaze no Stigmadropping on Sept. 1st ($59.98 MSRP); and One Piece Season 2 Part 3 continuing the adventures of the Going Merry crew on Sept. 29th ($49.98 MSRP). RACS also has that One Piece box set listed, saying it contains episodes 79-91.
After having finished with their Dragon Ball GT and DBZ uncut box sets, Funi will give the same treatment to the original Dragon Ball series when they release the first season uncut DVD set on Sept. 15th for $49.98 MSRP, the same price point as their previous uncut box sets from the franchise.
I’ll wrap up talking about Funi with some former Geneon releases. On Sept. 29, a box set of Heat Guy J will come out at $49.98 MSRP (TRSI) and both Black Lagoon seasons are being repackaged into a single box set at $69.98 MSRP, also on Sept. 29 (RACS; TRSI). There will also be a number of repricings of their $69.98 Geneon box set reissues last year: Ergo Proxy on Sept. 29th (RACS; TRSI), Fate/stay night on Sept. 1st (RACS; TRSI), and Shakugan no Shana on Sept. 15th (RACS; TRSI).
Finally: there are some Nozomi releases of some decades-old series. The first of two Kimba the White Lion mini-collections come out at $49.98 MSRP on October 6th (link), the second Gigantor collection on Sept. 15 for $39.98 MSRP (link), and two mini-collections of Astro Boy, both on Oct. 6th at $49.98 MSRP apiece (set 1, set 2)
Whew, that was tiring to put together!
UPDATE 6/23 11:10 PM PDT: I later found out that Nozomi had issued separate press releases about the Kimba and Astro Boy mini-sets.
My three year “aniblogiversary” was actually last month on May 14th since my first anime blog post was in May 2006. (Technically, I wrote the first two on Blogger but quickly switched over to WP.com for better customization options. But it was not my non-LiveJournal blogging debut – see here for that.) I was a little busy with schooling around the true anniversary date but now I can appropriately wax on the past 37 months and wonder why the hell I’m still doing it. Read the rest of this entry »
I saw the above book on Akibablog and instantly wanted to buy it. Published by Daiwa Shobo and retailing for 1400 yen (tax excluded), it contains profiles and illustrations of 54 philosophers paired with diagrams explaining their particular theories and Tetsu-chan (哲ちゃん) chiming in.
Profile on Socrates
It’s split into five chapters that cover ancient philosophers including Thales, Parmenides, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, and Marcus Antonius; medieval philosophers such as Jesus (really?), Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, and Machiavelli; early modern philosophers like Luther, Michel de Montaigne, Bacon, Descartes, and Kant; “present-day” philosophers such as Sartre and Foucault; and Eastern philosophers like Confucius and Kitaro Nishida.
Earlier this week, some upcoming Viz Media products were added to the online catalogs of RightStuf and of Robert’s Anime Corner Store including the 16th and final Naruto Uncut DVD box set (eps. 206-219), the 1st Naruto Shippuden DVD volume, the season 1 box set of Honey & Clover, the 20th volume of Bleach (eps 80-83), the second Bleach movie (The Diamond Dust Rebellion), and of course Pokemon Elements Vol 3: Electric and Vol 4: Water.
That last “pre-jump” Naruto box set will come out September 23rd and the first Shippuden disc a week later on September 29th. It was already obvious that the latter would be a hybrid release given how much Viz has already invested in dubbing the first series for television, and how popular those voice actors are, but I felt a little sad when I recalled that there will very likely not a cable broadcast of the series.
The relationship between anime companies and Cartoon Network has frayed over the past couple years and Viz has shifted its focus to digital distribution with virtual marketplaces like iTunes, Xbox Live/Zune Marketplace, and the PSN store and also on video portals such as Hulu. In fact, the first 113 episodes of Shippuden are currently available on Hulu and Crunchyroll in subtitled form. I don’t know when the dubbed episodes will appear online but I’m sure they would decide to focus on that than on the diminishing returns of cable broadcasting.
There is a slim chance that it would air on Cartoon Network but given the channel’s new focus on live-action programming like reality shows, it’s trending toward none. Programming decisions are based on audience estimates so if those shows pull in more eyeballs than what was occupying their Saturday night block, then that’s that.
The first “season” (12 episodes) of Honey and Clover, a series Viz had been trying to pitch to broadcasters at trade events for the past few years, will be released on September 22nd in hybrid format at a list price of $60 (lower at online retailers). This means we’ll finally hear an English dub in action – something I’ve been idly curious about for a while. Some roles have been revealed on the respective actors’ websites: Heather Halley as Hagumi and young Kaoru Morita, Julie Ann Taylor as Ayumi Yamada, and Yuri Lowenthal as Takamoto; Chris Kent has been added onto the series’ IMDb page as Shuuji Hanamoto.
The FUNimation Channel is supposed to run episodes of that, Monster, and Nana sometime this summer. There are still no details about a Monster video release, as far as I know.
I had another bit of tangential web surfing last night. This one started with following a link in this tweet by wah to a drawing of Hajime Kunihiro (Saki) on pixiv, then going to the series’ Wikipedia article to find out what role she played. I noticed a mahjong arcade video game based on it was revealed at TAF 2009 and this Gigazine story was cited as a reference. I looked at other stories on that site including this one about 133 GeGeGe no Kitaro and Yokai statues on Mizuri Shigeru Road in Sakaiminato, Tottori, Japan, named for the manga’s creator. Statue #102, a takekiridanuki (bamboo-cutting badger), was donated by Slayers author Hajime Kanzaka. (Another Hajime!)
Clicking on “Slayers” in that description took me to its Wikipedia article and I saw that Tokyopop has been publishing the light novels in America, the latest being number 8 in January 2008. However, there has been no word on when they might release the 9th through 15th novels. (You can read summaries of some of the novels here.) I checked Amazon and all eight are in-stock albeit in very low quantities, i.e. single-digit level. I liked the first 4 episodes of the anime, which I watched through Funimation’s free video offering and have been meaning to continue, so I decided to buy the first one to see if I would like it before hopefully continuing to the rest.
P.S. I almost forgot to mention this post on Manga Life about how fans working together to express to Tokyopop their support of the novels’ publication and concern over rumors of its cancellation. I’m guessing it might have been posted in February 2006 based on this and some Internet Archive digging, which I had to conduct since Manga Life does not put clear dates on their posts.
On Thursday, TRSI added the first few volumes of Kodansha Comics’ Ghost in the Shell and Akira to their catalog (listings for vol. 1 of each were found on Amazon Canada last month). Vols. 1 & 2 of Akira and Vol. 1 of Ghost in the Shell are also on Amazon US, which I have linked to below.
It looks like Kodansha’s initial volumes of Akira will have a list price of US$24.99. That’s the same price as what Dark Horse sold volumes 1-3 at, although that rose to $27.95 for the 400-page volume 4 and the 416-page volume 5 and to $29.95 for the 440-page volume 6. I wonder if Kodansha will also raise the prices when it gets to that point – I hope they don’t, though.
Ghost in the Shell will street for a little bit more at $26.99 – Dark Horse’s trade paperbacks were $24.99 (Vol. 1 listings from 1995, 2004 2nd edition). I don’t know if Kodansha also has the rights to publish Ghost in the Shell 1.5: Human Processor Error, which Dark Horse put out fairly recently in trade paperback in October 2007 for $17.95.
The summer season of new anime is approaching and here are the premiering series I am interested in watching. (I looked at this for basic information.)
Umineko no Naku Koro ni [show site]
I only managed to get through eight episodes of Higurashi’s first season before putting it aside, annoyed by the rebooting and a little turned off by the violence. Since Umineko has a closed island situation and presumably fewer CRAZY EYES moments, I’ll give it a shot. The latest PV (via pKjd) shows a little bit of face contortion but the rest looks okay.
Taisho Yakyuu Musume (Taisho Baseball Girls) [show site]
It’s about baseball so I must try it out. It has the potential to be pedantic with many of the girls just picking up the sport but the 1925 (Taisho 14) setting might give it a different feel. The voice actress playing the bright-eyed Komue, Kanae Itou, is also voicing the similarly lively lead girl in Sora no Manimani.
Element Hunters [show site]
This could possibly be a sleeper hit for me because of a pedestrian interest in chemistry and the sciences in general. It deals with the chemical elements disappearing into another Earth on the other side of a dimensional wall, which a team of Element Hunters will try to breach in order to return the elements to their proper planet.
CANAAN [show site]
I saw some commercials for a live-action Wii adventure visual novel called 428 late last year and then quickly found out there would be an anime series by Type-Moon based on the scenario.
Sora no Manimani [show site]
It’s about Saku, a quiet bookish student, who moves back to his hometown as a high school freshman and gets brought into an astronomy club by Mihoshi, his childhood friend. I’ve had a passing fascination with the cosmos since childhood so that’s the initial pull for me. I currently have no expectations regarding the romantic comedy angle so we’ll see how that turns out.
Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 [show site]
Mildly interested in this one because it’s BONES, even though I am not too keen about plots that involve a group of characters trying to escape from something (e.g., The Happening, Cloverfield). Perhaps there will be some intangible that grabs me like chemistry between the three main characters, the initial disaster scene, or the overall tone.
Spice and Wolf II [show site]
I somehow only saw the first episode of the first season but didn’t continue despite liking it. I’m definitely still interested but I may or may not wait for season one to come out on DVD in December.
There are still a few series from this spring that I have yet to start and others I have only sampled so I’ll attempt to catch up those over the next month.
Profile on Socrates
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