Posts Tagged “bandai”

I was browsing around online to see how the covers from the first Haruhi novel and the manga’s first volume differed visually (they’re similar but not close enough to cause confusion) and saw that Borders, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon all currently list Volume 1 of the Lucky Star manga with a release date of May 15th, a price point of $9.99, and a page count of 150. Both its standard ISBN of 1604961120 and ISBN-13 of 9781604961126 checked out when I cross-checked them on ISBNdb.com.

Granted, Bandai has not officially announced anything nor have they sent solicitations to specialty retailers like TRSI or yet but the date looks right since it would be two months after the sixth and final DVD volume comes out on March 17th. I would expect them to announce this date along some more details at NYCC next month during either their general panel (Saturday Feb. 7th 12:30 PM-1:30 PM) or their Lucky Star panel (Sat. 1:45PM-2:45PM).

Here’s the product description that may show up on the back cover:

From the studio that brought you The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya! When eating a chocolate cornet which end do you begin with, the top or the bottom? Which side is the top and which is the bottom? For that matter, what is a chocolate cornet? The proper way to eat pastries is only one of the many every day occurrences explored by the girls of Ms. Kuroi’s class. Meet Konata, an athletic and intelligent girl too dedicated to her favorite primetime animes to excel in anything but otaku culture; Miyuki, the cute, bespectacled living example of Moe with an encyclopedic knowledge of all subjects; Kagami, the bitter-sweet, tough but shy sister; Tsukasa, a kind but air-headed klutz. Witness this study in the human condition as our heroines explore the unexplored in questioning the ordinary!

Yesterday afternoon, Bandai Entertainment held a special “Black Sunday” in Los Angeles’ Downtown Independent Theater (formerly the ImaginAsian Center) in order to reveal a “very unique” license…winter 2009 anime Kurokami (Black God), which will air simultaneously in Japan, Korea, and the US.

Well, not literally at the same time but close enough. And not on a basic cable American channel nor a widely-available digital cable American channel but ImaginAsian TV (iaTV), which is only available in select markets – namely, New York, NY; Los Angeles, CA; Princeton, NJ; Houston, TX; Dallas, TX; Fairfax County, VA; and Hawaii. Sorry, Midwest and Northwest…and the majority of America – you’re left out for now.

Here’s the rundown of regional airtimes for the collective “world historic first” broadcast premiere, culled from Bandai’s landing page* :

Japan (TV asahi): Fri Jan. 9th at 2:40am [Thurs. Jan 8th 1740 UTC]
Korea (AniBOX): Fri. Jan 9th at 10pm [Fri. Jan 9th 1300 UTC]
US-Eastern (iaTV): Thurs. Jan 8th at 8pm [Fri. Jan 9th 0100 UTC]
US-Pacific (iaTV): Thurs. Jan 8th at 8pm [Fri. Jan 9th 0400 UTC]

* The press release Bandai put out (one such copy) has what may or may not be a typo, stating the series’ Japanese debut will happen a day earlier on the 8th at 2:40am. cal.syoboi.jp says it debuts “2009-01-08(Thu) 26:40-27:10″, which agrees with the date given on the landing page, while both Sunrise’s site and the anime’s official website seem to agree with the press release. One thing is certain: it will premiere during the first full week of January 2009, barring a large broadcast interruption.

The two main beefs that Region 1 residents have expressed about this announcement are “Why the hell did Bandai Entertainment license this unknown series instead of already well-received series like Macross Frontier or Spice and Wolf?” and “Why the hell did they decide to put the dubbed version on a limited-reach cable channel and not include an online component?”

My response to the first question is because they wanted to appear progressive by using an untested show, similar to FUNimation with Shikabane Hime in October, except FUNi put it on four different online sites including their own. To the second one: I don’t know why since they could, and still may, make a subtitled version to be streamed online and should be able to functionally do so. I’m guessing its current absence has something to do with the arrangement among the partners involved and perhaps one or more of them is/are as willing to risks as Gonzo GDH (Tower of Druaga, Blassreiter) is and are still resistant to engage in legal streaming of their content over the Internet.

This announcement still remains a small step forward in terms of accelerating domestic DVD releases. Assuming the series is indeed 11 episodes as I’ve read in various places, the dubbing is guaranteed to be done by March because of weekly US airdates and an accompanying set of matching subtitles should be done if the translators doing their work at the same time, meaning the first volume (or even better, a box set) could be out on shelves by late summer or fall 2009. It is also a case of international cooperation in quickly adapting a new anime – dubbing off pencil test footage, for example – rather than working together on the actual production of a series, e.g. Afro Samurai, IGPX. I don’t believe it’s the first time but it is surely one of the first.

P.S. According to AnimeNews.biz, the anime has “its own story direction with major differences from the manga verison [sic] for the sake of adaptability”. Hmm. Guess I am more inclined to read the manga now in order to determine how far the anime strays from it.

According to Mania (formerly AnimeOnDVD), Bandai has delayed the release of Ghost Slayers Ayashi Part 1 and Clamp School Detectives Complete Collection by two months, meaning both are now scheduled to come out February 3rd instead of December 2nd. There are other minor, one- or two-week delays for more prominent titles like Code Geass Part 2 and vol. 5/vol. 6, Lucky Star v. 4, and Gurren Lagann Part 1 and vol. 1/vol. 2.

Some of you may recall the reissuing of Clamp School Detectives on DVD was kind of a surprise announcement during Bandai’s Fanime 2007 panel. Oddly enough, this is not the first delay for Ghost Slayers Ayashi since being announced at Otakon 2007: September 9th was the date given for these releases during the company’s panel at this year’s Fanime.

Bandai has not given an official explanation for the delays but I suspect ensuring the quality of the authoring process could be a factor given frequent reports of defective discs, like a AOD member who complained in August about receiving at least 12 defective discs from Bandai releases since late 2007, and of course that one week from last January where many of their releases had issues playing correctly. Better to delay the releases to fix any emerging problems than to risk worsening their reputation among heavy buyers. Another factor may have been increased attention in working on Gundam 00, which is debuting on Sci-Fi Channel’s Ani-Monday block on the 24th.

I received my first legitimate press release in the site’s inbox this evening and it did not seem exciting at first. It was sent by the The New Media Group and announced a collaborative content-sharing service to launch this December with Nico Nico Douga where Nico users will be able to view content from 20 “official providers” including as TNMG’s IPTV platform World On-Demand, MTV Japan, Avex, Bandai, and Livedoor. Wait, Bandai?!?

Yes, the anime and tokusatsu producer-slash-distributor is listed as one of many partners involved in this project (unclear if it is specifically Bandai Visual, Sunrise or both) so I have a little excuse to write about this. Frankly, there aren’t many juicy details except that Nico reportedly has 9.3 million Japanese (and secret foreign?) subscribers and commands either 2.3 or 2.9 million daily unique users, depending on whom from TNMG is trying to impress people. Simon Godden, President of e-learning service Teacher Tom Japan, thinks “this [deal] is a home run” so it must be great, right? Um, it guess it would be nice if you wanted to leave streams of comments on top of official music videos and foreign content as well as the swath of Touhou, IM@S, and Miku MADs that currently inhabit the site.

At any rate, you can read the entire release after the jump to get a few more optimistic quotes from executives focused on expanding the global reach of their managed brands.
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Bandai’s blog has a Anime Expo page pimping all the events possibly connected with them as well as teasing secret guests like the new English Gurren Lagann dub cast and a person (Mr. X) from BONES who will be signing autographs. They gave enough references about Mr. X’s previous work – Ghost Slayers Ayashi, Eureka Seven, Wolf’s Rain, Scrapped Princess – to narrow the possibilities down to three men: Toshihiro Kawamoto, Takahiro Komori, and Masahiko Minami. Both Kawamoto and Komori were involved in various animation capacties including key animation, animation directing, and character design whereas Minami has produced and/or planned all four aforementioned titles as BONES president.

My educated guess would be Toshiro Kawamoto since he has visited American cons before including Sakura-Con 2008 in March. But wait, then his appearance wouldn’t be a surprise, would it? Perhaps it will instead be the other animator, Komori, since he might have more to do with the items being signed than the producer would. I suppose we’ll just have to see who shows up that afternoon to put his John Hancock jisho on free posters and other stuff.

(UPDATE 7/2: It turned out to be president Masahiko Minami.)

Also: I found this press release from four years ago where Bandai gave anyone who cosplayed as a Bandai character (e.g. Duo from Gundam Wing, Spike from Cowboy Bebop, Lime from Saber Marionette J) a chance to spin “The Wheel” to win prizes. Four years later, they have members of American Cosplay Paradise putting on Lucky Star dances and TTGL heaven-piercing. How far they’ve advanced…

Original pic courtesy of Lelouch’s Myspace blog

Lucky Star’s first US volume got dated about three weeks ago and now we find out about the extras that limited edition purchasers expect to find inside the pretty art box come May 6th. The $35 “upgrade” will yield you pack-ins in the vein of the Haruhi LEs but tweaked a bit: the opening theme and Konata character single CDs, a T-shirt version of Ryou-ou Gakuen’s winter girl’s school uniform that frankly looks kinda lame, and a chocolate cornet screen wipe that actually might be useful. The regular edition will still feature liner notes so you can understand the more obscure references as well as “The Adventures of Minoru Shiraishi” which may or may involve footage from the fan events he hosted.

Considering the Haruhi CD singles are individually priced at $10 each and T-shirts sell for about, you’re getting a bit of a deal. One question: will all the tees be the same size, e.g. large? If so, that may cause trouble for some buyers. I remember the FLCL Ultimate Collection included a postcard to send in for your free shirt but it took over a year and a month to finally get it in the mail so there’s definitely a tradeoff between speed and getting the right size.

Lucky Star Vol. 1 regular edition cover (Japanese Vol. 2 LE cover)

Anime on DVD spotted new listings on Right Stuf for Lucky Star Volume 1 (episodes 1-4) with the release date currently scheduled for May 6th. It looks like Kadokawa Pictures USA is going down the same release path that they did with Haruhi by releasing a $29.98 standard edition and a $64.98 limited edition plus box. The extras in the limited edition aren’t known right now – the pics on TRSI only show the outside of the box - but I’m guessing there will probably be some pack-in items. LE pics after the jump.
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Over the past week, there have been reports of problems with Bandai’s January 8th releases involving unreadable discs or specific episodes and extras not accessible. The affected titles (from ANN and the AOD forum thread) include Eureka Seven #11, Flag #2, My-Otome #4, and both the standard and limited editions of Gundam Seed Destiny #12. Not a good way to start 2008, for sure. If you have bought any of these and had problems, you can use Bandai’s customer service form to get in touch with them since they seem to be handling the problem directly, which RightStuf has advised its customers do in a recent news update on their site.

RACS owner Robert wrote about the problem, reporting a 20% rate and ended his post with the following warning:

For the record, this will be the third GSD DVD of the twelve that has come from Bandai with some sort of encoding problem in the first batch. It really is time for Bandai to fire their replicator and hire a contractor that has some decent quality control. These types of problems are getting too common in their releases, and if they continue fans will become more reluctant to buy their DVD’s – and then we’ll have another ‘Geneon’ fiasco on our hands…

So if you’re thinking of picking any of the above at your local brick-and-mortar tomorrow, chances are they will play fine but don’t be surprised if they do not. The only new release from Bandai this week that seems not to have had problems so far is Di Gi Charat Nyo! #5 but I expect that a lot fewer people were anticipating that release compared to Eureka or Gundam.

Over the weekend, the dub casts for both Code Geass and Lucky Star were announced. Johnny Yong Bosch now has another high-profile protagonist role as Lelouch and Wendee Lee will be following up her Haruhi performance by taking on Konata. There are also two overlapping actresses: Kate Higgins will voice CC in Geass and Kuroi-sensei in LS while Karen Strassman will be Kallen and Miyuki. Both titles are being distributed by Bandai with Code Geass v. 1 debuting on Adult Swim next spring while Lucky Star is TBA with 6 volumes planned and special editions in the works. I can’t help thinking how poorly Konata’s opinion of dubs would likely be, if she cared at all about them in the first place. Fuller casting details after the jump.
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In the first part of a ICv2 interview that was posted today, Bandai Visual USA president Tatsunori Konno said that there are not “more than 200,000 core fans” and estimated its size in dollars to be $350 million. Konno also clarified the difference between Bandai Visual and Bandai Entertainment and the company’s relationship with Sunrise. There was mention of the Wings of Honneamise being released in DVD/Blu-ray and DVD/HD-DVD packs at an MSRP of $79.99, which is double Freedom’s $39.99 MSRP. That is likely because Honneamise has a “quite long” running time (120 minutes vs. Freedom’s 25 minutes) and thus requires two separate discs (1 regular DVD & 1 hi-def DVD) instead of a single twin-format disc with HD and standard-def on the same side.

Konno said in part two that the company wants to let fans to know they are producing high quality products and that if people notice and buy it, prices could reduce gradually. Even with that justification, RightStuf, AnimeNation, RACS, and Amazon each have their pre-order prices at or below $59.99. Wings of Honneamise comes out in high-definition for both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray on September 11th, a little something nice to distract us Americans from the “anniversary” coverage the news media is bound to do on that particular Tuesday.