Video

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I recently got a new digital camera that shoots 720p video to replace the one I lost at Anime Expo so I figured I’d use it to cover the omgitscoming.com counter reaching zero at noon yesterday and see what changes would happen to the related Nagi-sama Fanclub site. It had been widely speculated that both websites were part of Bandai Entertainment announcing a license for Kannagi and that’s what it ended up being. What was unexpected was a coordinated launch on ANN’s video service and the first of two DVD volumes available for purchase from Amazon Marketplace (through user storefronts operated by BEI and Shawne Kleckner of TRSI – a bit odd!) & Right Stuf only.

As I was offloading the first video onto my hard drive, I noticed some tweets about further details so I did a 10-minute follow-up video where I looked into those particulars, scoped out the subtitling on ANN’s streaming service, and took a very short survey about the T-shirt offered for preorders of the 2nd volume. (Sorry for accidentally moving the camera up during the survey – the other 2 questions were about what size and from which store would you likely preorder: Amazon or RightStuf.)

In the press release accompanying this announcement, Bandai president Ken Iyadomi said:

This is our way of answering the challenges of a changing marketplace to see how streaming episodes helps DVD and we are making both available at the same time to beat bootleggers who are hurting the industry just as much as the illegal downloaders.

North American anime companies have suffered unexpected heavy returns from general market retailers in recent years but if we can sell moderate quantities exclusively online where no sales returns exist, I believe we can acquire more anime for the US market to be released in this pattern. This is a very different business model and a new challenge.

Not bothering with retail stores like Best Buy on the initial release seems like a smart strategy for something like Kannagi that may have a small potential and I’m guessing the two-pack release in 2010 may feature an English voice track similar to the later release of Gurren Lagann, another Aniplex title, although I’m not willing to bet on it. [UPDATE 7/18: Turns it will not be dubbed, according to Dir. of Marketing Robert Napton.] Iyadomi’s mention of “moderate quantities” is an acknowledgement that such properties will likely not be huge sellers while “beat[ing] bootleggers” calls to my mind the speed to market strategy. The 7th episode of Kannagi premiered in Japan on November 15, 2008, so eight months is not a bad time gap.

Meanwhile: the domestic DVD release of Kurokami, the series Bandai aired dubbed on small-reach ImaginAsian TV as part of a simultaneous broadcast, remains in limbo. All the episodes are currently available for streaming on YouTube and Crunchyroll, though, so I guess there’s not too much of a reason for them to hurry. [UPDATE 7/18: BEI said at their Otakon panel that plans will be detailed in the near future and that it will be their title to be released on Blu-ray as well as DVD. So they did remember.]

Friday (today) is day 1 of Otakon and Aniplex has a TBA panel at 2pm (all times ET) as well as an Industry panel right after it at 3pm in the same room. Bandai is having their panel Friday night 9-10pm, which overlaps with the final third of the MELL concert that starts at 8pm. (If I were there and had to choose, I’d go with the concert and then think about possibly catching the end of the panel if I wasn’t tired.) I wouldn’t be surprised if something Haruhi-related came up (asosbrigade.com) either during their panel or later in the weekend. Also: director Yutaka Yamamoto’s panel is Friday morning at 11am.

To take a tangent, I ended up biting on the Bandai sale TRSI in its final hours last night and bought Cowboy Bebop Remix (I’ve only seen bits of the series), the Lucky Star OVA (because I previously liked it), and Hayate Part 1 (almost didn’t get this one). I bring this up because of Hayate‘s packaging, namely, the seven episodes on a single disc that Kannagi looks like it also has. Mania’s Chris Beveridge commented in his review that “[i]t all looks decent but lacks any real sharpness and vibrancy as the colors feel a bit muted” and that “it’s hard to tell if hard to tell if it’s coming from the encoding – which is in the mid range of five most of the time – or the actual source material”. Even though Aniplex provided the production materials to Bandai and I think well of them, I’m hoping that it’s a double-layered disc. (The True Tears and sola sets coming out next month will be spread out over three discs.)

Splitting Kannagi into two seven-episode releases makes some sense (14 halves evenly) but why for Hayate and why on single discs? After the second release in September, BEI will have 38 episodes left and if they continue at seven per disc (maybe a few 4-4 sets), there will likely be 5 more releases for a total of 7 for the first series. They’ve done 5-4 and 4-4 sets with Lagann, Code Geass, and Gundam 00 but all those had English dub tracks and have aired on TV while neither Hayate nor Kannagi have that advantage (yet). Whatever impact TV broadcasts actually have anymore on DVD sales is up for debate.

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This is a follow-up to Monday’s post about Funimation joining Comcast’s video on demand service. I didn’t start up any of the episodes because I wanted to keep the video relatively short so I don’t know if some of the content that is originally widescreen would have been displayed as such, though I imagine it should.

A few things I’ll point out:
1) There is a folder for Ouran Host Club but no episodes are there right now. I looked at the online listings and episodes 1-5 should have been there. Episodes 1 & 2 are set to expire tomorrow (May 15th) and episodes 6 & 7 should be added tomorrow as well.
2) There are entries for Aria ep. 1 and Maria Watches Over Us ep. 1 under Anime Network’s free offerings. (as reported here) Both are set to expire after June 3rd.
3) Under Movies & Events – Anime Network, Clannad Vol. 3 and Vol. 4 (both 97 min.) are available for $3.99 each. It’s not a wild guess to think the former contains episodes 7-9 and the latter has episodes 10-12.

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I have previously mentioned my ambitions of creating anime music videos and as such, I have had many half-baked and a few full-baked ideas for projects but have barely acted on them due to software and time. (The former might change since Vegas 9 just came out and it’s relatively cheap for $55 online.) One anime and music combination that I had on my mind for a while – since May 2006, in fact – is BECK: Mongolian Chop Squad paired with Foreigner’s “Jukebox Hero”. It seems so obvious to anyone who has seen the series and it was inevitable that an editor would actually create such an AMV once the DVD’s had finished coming out stateside.

Meredith “Meri” Cantoni was that person and so far her video entitled “One Guitar” has won 2nd Place in the Dramatic/Serious category at Otakon ’08 and won that same category plus Judges Best Overall at Anime Evolution last weekend. I think she did a great job in editing and while I had some of the same scenes in mind, her effort turned better than mine likely would have and I am thankful for that. This wishful project has been fulfilled but the next ones should be done by myself so I can feel more satisfied with my abilities and with using artists like Josh Rouse.

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The CLANNAD port for the Xbox 360 comes out this Thursday (August 28th) in Japan and there was a trailer for it during Japan’s Inside Xbox segment for Saturday after a countdown of the top 10 Live games for August 4-10. I figured that some people might care about something like this so I captured the whole segment – skip to about 1:50 if you only want to see the trailer.

The bulletpoints for this version include a visual upgrade to 720p resolution, Dolby Digital 5.1 channel sound, and distribution of the drama CD audio from the spin-off short story Official Another Story Clannad: On the Hillside Path that Light Watches Over over Xbox Live. The game will also support custom soundtracks if you want to pipe in different music while playing the visual novel.

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As a preface to the upcoming announcement of the main English dub cast, I figured people might be interested in how another country’s dub of Ouran sounds. Someone videotaped a portion of episode 6 from an Anime-Virtual DVD with Polish subtitles and it provides a sample of voices from each main character, which sound pretty good IMO.
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