Posts Tagged “toei”

ICv2 is reporting that 4Kids has let its Pretty Cure license lapse and revert back to Toei 31 months after they gained the US rights and did absolutely bupkis with it, despite planning to debut it on their TV block in fall 2006. Now the series sits in a zone where it has not been officially released yet but has lost a lot of momentum that it had when the initial license was announced. I’m not sure who is waiting for a DVD release but in the meantime, you can try out the first two episodes via Direct2Drive – something I did a few months ago and found them to be entertaining but not fantastic.

In its February 2006 story about its 4Kids license, ICv2 said that the series “has a chance to become the first magical girl anime series since Sailor Moon to achieve popularity here in the States” (did Cardcaptors flop?) and I suppose it still could if it’s marketed the right way. By the way, if you want some recommendations of other mahou shoujo series, Chris Fritz at the Pink Sylphide wrote a post about his favorites earlier this week.

ANN reports that BIGLOBE, a Japanese ISP owned by NEC, has teamed up with Toei to launch a subscription service wherein one can access “about a thousand” anime episodes from 15 titles by the production company for about US$13 a month. The selection will be refreshed every month with two titles being added and replacing two others, similar to video-on-demand from US cable television providers except this content is mainly going to be viewed on computer monitors.

The initial offerings for September include Sailor Moon, Fist of the North Star, Captain Harlock and Digimon Adventure (the first season). Looking at Toei’s production list, future additions could include Marmalade Boy, Mazinger Z, Cyborg 009, the 2002 edition of Kanon. I’m not so sure about more recent titles like Air Gear, Lovely Complex, or Pretty Cure but there is a possibility those could show up as well.