I found out from reading the Wikipedia entry on Lucky Star’s characters that “Anime Tenchou” Meito Anizawa was the main character in a 2 minute promo video done by Gainax (date: 2002) for the Animate retail chain. Some quick searching led me to the above video, which has pretty good animation but it’s not that great of a promotional device IMHO. Also, there was apparently a short-form (3 pages per chapter) Anime Tenchou comic that you can read online here with 10 chapters posted.
I got home from classes about an hour ago and found in my mailbox a letter from Newtype USA. “Oh great!” I thought, “this will probably explain how the transition to PiQ will work!” The first sign that there was something odd was that the return address was in Maple Shade, NJ, and not Houston, TX. I opened the letter and found out that it was asking me renew my subscription since I have two issues left. What?!? Read the rest of this entry »
Someone on NicoNicoDouga last Wednesday posted a MAD for the fifteen-minute long Lucky Star character song medley from ”Motteke Sailor Fuku Re-Mix 002″ and it has already gotten about 240,000 views. I had been waiting for something like the album came out and it looks pretty nice with different colored frames that slide on-screen to introduce each character’s portion and the utilization of a four-videos-at-once method that allows for more character screenage during the shorter segments of the medley. There was even a Densetsu Shoujo A segment paired with “Ore no Wasuremono”. Watching it helped me recognize some of the songs I hadn’t caught onto before (like Minami’s) as well as reminding me of a few moments I had forgotten like Miyuki supervising her younger relatives playing that “find the legend being described” card game, whatever it’s called.
P.S. Is it bad that I forgot that Ayano (pictured above) was a character until I watched this video? I mean, it’s not terrible because she was really a “background” character and didn’t seem to do all that much but that moment of realization still irks me a little.
ICv2 posted an interview with Funimation founder Gen Fukunaga where he was asked about many issues including the state of the US anime market, timing of releases and the impact and future of legal and illegal downloading. What follows are highlights from the question-and-answer session:
Mr. Fukunaga began by stated the obvious, that “illegal downloads are definitely an issue” and that “the main mode of monetization of the customer [DVD sales] is definitely suffering”. He also thinks that Japanese companies has “suddenly woken up” after seeing “the huge difficulties some of [Funimation's] competitors are having” (read: Geneon) and that they are “talking a lot about this issue”.
I read about the release date for the Evangelion 1.0: You Are [Not] Alone special edition DVD announced as April 25th on Furu Anime Panikku and thought that finally, around late April or early May, the rest of the world can see this first in the series of four films that reimagine the Evangelion plotline (through fansubs). But then, I wondered what the packaged extras would be and found this story on ANN wherein this sentence caught my eye:
The extras disc will include the Explanation of Evangelion:1.01 — an exclusive edit which superimposes Japanese commentary text over the actual film to explain each scene to fans.
Wow. I can’t believe that there will actually be an extra that will tell viewers WHAT THEY ARE WATCHING. I’m not sure whether to interpret this as the producers thinking the film is too complicated (not very likely) or as them thinking the fans are too dense to figure it out for themselves using their own eyes, ears and brains! Perhaps they believe there are a lot of first-timers who saw this film in the theater and don’t know the intricacies that a long-time fan would and I suppose I could conceive a certain portion of the audience being that way. But still, the extra comes off as patronizing to me and likely many other fans.
Oh, and there will also be a standard edition release on May 21st for 1000 yen less than the special edition mentioned above as well as a 400-page Complete Records Collection (release date unknown) and a 330-page animators’ drawing collection in April.
I feel bad that I haven’t been posting as much as I would like due to school picking up again. However, I don’t feel really bad since I haven’t had much to write about lately. Anyway, yesterday afternoon, I found something to center a composition around. I was in Fry’s to ask about a recording device for some kind of security camera setup for my house at the co-op and after I got pointed in the right direction and took some notes, I wandered over the games section to see if they had any deals. There weren’t many but there WAS something that surprised me.
Plentiful shrinkwrapped copies of Katamari Damacy at its original price of $20! (The game is also “in stock” on frys.com at the same price.) By comparison, Gamestop only has used copies priced at $29.99, ten dollars more. I didn’t have a PS2 back when it was released in the summer of 2004 but now that I own one, I instantly grabbed one off the shelf while wondering why this store still had a fair number of new copies three years after its release. Read the rest of this entry »
Last weekend I drove to Sacramento for Sac-Anime 2008 and enjoyed this year more than 2007’s iteration, although it still wasn’t as great as it could have been. Read the rest of this entry »
Today Netflix announced that all subscribers, except for those on the bare minimum 2-discs-a-month plan ($4.99/mo), will have no restrictions on how many hours they can utilize the company’s instant watching feature, a move the company likely made to counter the expected announcement of iTunes movie rentals at Macworld tomorrow. Last month, I signed up for the lowest unlimited discs per month plan ($8.99) and thus had eight hours of instant watching per month so now I can see more movies aside from returning a disc and waiting a couple days for the next one to arrive. This news also allows for a more convenient way to watch some anime series in their entirety or at least a healthy dose of episodes. [UPDATE (1/15): Forgot to mention that instant watching still requires IE6 or higher and Windows XP/Vista. Thanks, Scott, for reminding me about the Mac crowd still being shut out from streaming movies on Netflix.]
In a cursory click-through of their listings, one can watch entire series including Mezzo, GitS: Stand Alone Complex, Gilgamesh, Comic Party Revolution TV, Jinki: Extend, and Chance Pop Session as well as large portions of series such as AIR TV (8 out of 13), Air Gear (21 out of 25), Pani Poni Dash (14 of out 26), Saiyuki (25 out of 50), Utawarerumono (14 out of 26 episodes), and Xenosaga (8 out of 12). [It seems that many of these are ADV titles but that may just be a coincidence.] Also some feature films that are available to be watched online include Perfect Blue, Blood The Last Vampire, and Ninja Scroll.
The obvious caveat is that these will be dubbed versions but for those who don’t mind that much, such as myself, this could be a good way to check some series for free if you are already a customer. However, I’m more inclined to use my now-unlimited streaming for movies and TV shows (30 Rock Season 1) since the anime selection is very limited and watching my physical library is a higher priority.
The news this week that Newtype USA was ceasing publication with February’s issue took me by surprise but the follow-up announcement of its replacement, PiQ, was more so. Supposedly the new magazine will put out its first issue in mid-March and ADV is giving subscribers a two-for-one exchange rate on their remaining issues which makes me think that it’s going to be priced on the same level as Anime Insider. That also means that since my 6-month stint was supposed to end in April, I’m due to receive the first four issues of this new endeavor for free. I’m still going to miss the preview discs and postcard contests but hopefully PiQ (”peek”? “pique”?) will be worth reading.
I just got this month’s issue of Newtype USA in the mail today and was a bit surprised when I began flipping through it. Among their regular two-page series spreads were eight consecutive vertical spreads (16 pages in total) that composed the Japanese half of their Anime Invasion ‘08 theme. This caught me off guard since I don’t remember them doing this in the past. When I read a magazine I might be fine turning it sideways to read it maybe once or even twice but it gets to be uncomfortable if it happens on a regular basis. I might get used to it but it’s bugging me right now.
On a positive note, I was glad that many of the “new style” layouts involve currently airing anime such as Bamboo Blade, Ghost Hound, Dragonaut, and Rental Magica. I’m also making a poll about this topic so let your voice be heard there as well as in the comments about whether you prefer vertical or horizontal photo spreads or simply don’t care.
After the jump: some more vertical spread pics and, for comparison, the two horizontal layouts that bookend them in the volume. Read the rest of this entry »
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