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.
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.
FUNimation announced Monday (saw this on Anime Vice) that they have joined Comcast’s On Demand service through two folders: The Cutting Edge, where other anime video-on-demand offerings like Anime Network reside, and Movies & Events, where pay-per-view content can be found. While the addition of already-released series through a standard free VOD model is nice for me as a customer, I’m finding “pre-release pay-per-view access” that “provides unprecedented sneak peek access to brands before the release on DVD” a little more interesting. PPV offerings for this month will include xxxHOLiC, Devil May Cry, and Tsubasa while Honey & Clover and NANA are mentioned among those slated for this summer. (I shouldn’t have been too surprised to see those last two considering this but I still was.) I will try to explore both folders tomorrow and maybe I’ll shoot a video while doing that.
This story reminds me of one that may not have received much press when it came out in mid-April: the appearance of streaming and DTO labels on Viz’s websites for the Honey & Clover and NANA anime. Both components are currently unavailable but at least one of them is likely to be enabled this summer since the first NANA box set is supposedly due out July 21st.
The DTO episodes should carry the now-standard price of $1.99 per episode for downloadable videos and could just entail links to various download services (iTunes, Zune Marketplace, et al.). I wonder what their PPV price on Comcast might be – according to their VOD blog post, Funi has their new dubbed series pre-DVD release series pegged at 99 cents – a very reasonable price point considering you’ll if you choose to watch that way – so it’s very likely that Viz’s will bear that price as well, but there is still a chance it could be a little higher. Their $2.99 price point for movies is the same that Comcast offers for library titles on their general Movies on Demand service and that Apple does for library titles on its Apple TV and through iTunes. I suspect that the streaming component might involve Hulu if they are planning to embed episodes onto each respective show site since Viz also uses that for Naruto.com.
FUNimation’s foray into PPV adds another method of non-DVD distribution for the company along with streaming episodes through Hulu, YouTube, Joost, Veoh, and their own video portal as well as offering download-to-own episodes through their web site, iTunes, Xbox Live & Zune Marketplaces and, most recently, the Playstation Network. Viz has been making similar strides into “alternative” distribution with a presence on many of the same video portals and marketplaces that FUNimation is on. They also brokered an arrangement to stream newly-aired-in-Japan episodes of Naruto Shippuden on Crunchyroll, Hulu, and their own Naruto site.
The “octopus approach” operated by both companies continues to take them to new platforms, though Viz has some catching up to do. Meanwhile, Bandai just began on putting episodes on YouTube in February and currently have Code Geass season 1 and Gundam 00 up there. They don’t have the financial flexibility to venture out as much as the other two do but at least they’re starting to experiment with it.
P.S. I know this is all US-centric stuff so if you choose to make a comment, don’t just complain about regional restrictions. By the way, Evan Flournoy, Manager of Brand Protection and Rights Enforcement for Funimation, said last week that those restrictions are mandated by the licensors.
Kadokawa uploaded the above CM to its YouTube channel Friday to advertise Vol. 1 of Haruhi-chan/Churuya-san will come out on DVD May 29th for 5040 yen (about US$50). According to Animate, volume 2 and volume 3 have dates of June 25th and July 30th, respectively.
CDJapan lists the runtime for each of the three volumes (vol. 1 page) as 40 minutes, meaning one volume should contain about eight episodes of each series, assuming an average time of 3-3:30 minutes per Haruhi-chan episode and 1:30-2 min. for Churuya-san episodes. The CM also mentions first pressing extras of a soundtrack CD for volume 1 and four commentary cards & one of five bromide character cards for each subsequent volume.
Scott Green at Ain’t It Cool News passed along that Mamoru Oshii’s The Sky Crawlers, which is being distributed by Sony’s Stage 6 Films label, was granted a PG-13 rating by the MPAA Ratings Board for “material involving violence, some sexual content and smoking”. The next big steps are deciding on a release date and casting dub actors, if any.
Just to compare, here are what some other recent anime films to hit the big screen were rated: Paprika (2006; Sony Pictures Classics) – R for “violent and sexual images”; Howl’s Moving Castle (2005; Buena Vista) – PG for “frightening images and brief mild language”; Appleseed (2004; Arcangelo Entertainment) – R for “some violence”
I’d never heard of this eight 12-minute-episode OVA series (originally named Dai Mahou Touge) prior seeing it on October’s release schedule from Media Blasters so I lacked any assumptions going into it. I put it in my rental queue and it came a few months later. Read the rest of this entry »
Twenty-three anime will premiere next month as part of the winter 2009 season (eight of which are new seasons/continuations) and though a few seriously interest me, I may focus more on the series from this fall that I have been lax on keeping up with as well as series I wanted to check out but have not yet begun to, e.g. Ga-Rei Zero. I will provide short previews for each show to demonstrate why I am not very excited about the new season in the immediate future but may pick up some series down the line. Read the rest of this entry »
Before getting into my short non-review of the first Lucky Star OVA (not hard to imagine there will be subsequent releases), I would first like to point out the above copyright reminder that was displayed after the live action Lucky Channel segment, which a fansub group kindly took the time to translate in order to incriminate themselves. So anyone who watched this using ANY METHOD other than through a legally acquired digital versatile disc (i.e. fansubs, raws, streaming media), you have violated the law…and so have I. If you want screenshots or an in-depth summary, look elsewhere.
Now, I wasn’t expecting a lot from the Original Visual Animation but I found it humorous throughout its 40 minute run time. Almost all of it pleased me satisfactorily: (1) a daily life look at Minami’s pooch, Cherry-chan, with some good POV shots; (2) the Hiiragi sisters, Konata, and Nanao-sensei taking on a online RPG together; (3) Kagami as a reluctant Cinderella with a surprise ending; (4) a volleyball match where Tsukasa on Misao’s team tries to beat her sister and her team; (5) the usual quartet gets lost in the woods on the way to a class campsite; (6) a strange story involving a pet shop, frogs, and dialogue reiterated through text cards à la silent film; (7) Anime Tenchou approaching Konata in the MMO – the stinker of the lot; and (8) Lucky Channel with Hiromi Kanno and Minoru Shiraishi sans animation on top of a roof. The background music composed by Satoru Kousaki was good as always and his involvement in fall title Kannagi may get me to sample that new series.
For those stalwart legal viewers out there, I would speculate this OVA coming stateside in summer 2009 after television series vol. 6 comes out in mid-March or early April. About possible pricing, this should not retail for more than 15 American dollars since mediocre Mave-chan came out at $10 with negligible extras and there will surely be on-disc bonus material on par with the regular Haruhi and Lucky Star releases, namely, behind the scenes production and special event footage.
UPDATE 10/13:
A few hours after the post went up, Fanboy.com’s Michael Pinto made a comment (above) on Twitter that I heartily second – Cherry-chan needs more screen time! You should check out his site – he beat some of the technorati to a few new Japanese iPhone ads.
I mentioned in one of my AX posts that I bought Rescue Me Mave-chan from Bandai’s booth for $8 (MSRP $10), a cheap price compared to the full pricing of another OVA from a different publisher, Voices of a Distant Star. It’s a spinoff from the Yukikaze series of OVAs. Does it entertain within its 25 minute runtime, especially to someone who hasn’t seen the originating work? Read the rest of this entry »
I recently watched the premiere episodes of The Tower of DRUAGA -the aegis of URUK- and BLASSREITER on BOST TV, Crunchyroll, and YouTube to compare the visual quality and the placement of subtitles and also to see if they were shows worth following after the first two episodes. I decided to formulate two separate posts for each series so the next one will be about Blassreiter and will likely have the same technical results. (Links: BOST TV, Crunchyroll, and YouTube.)
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