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.
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.
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. Read the rest of this entry »
I considered composing a long post about Greg Ayres’ panels and how resolving the status of the anime industry may involve ditching dubs and/or , but it was just easier to embed some YouTube videos relating to AnimeNext instead. (OK, here’s my short take on it anyway: general population is growing tired of buying physical media to own and the current economic situation is compounding the problem.)
The dude in the above video is responding to a boring, grainy, crappy video an actual attendee made showing off the Lupin and DBZ figures he bought and I think he makes a good point about spending money on figurines that perhaps some of the figure bloggers can explain to me. Saying Trinity Blood was just “the Japanese not understanding Catholicism” made me laugh but so far the guy has only been doing commentaries through video responses so ‘meh’ to him otherwise. The rest of the videos will be footage filmed by citizen journalists/teenagers/bored people at the con. Read the rest of this entry »
I found this news report on Nico and want to say two things about it:
1) It’s odd but a bit nice that the synthesized-voiced reporter felt the Gurren Lagann/Sci-Fi Monday deal was important enough to pass along to the NicoNico audience (about 700 views worth). Here’s the related story from Anime! Anime!.
2) That was one of the driest news reports I’ve ever seen, but it does get the information across in a straightforward way.
For those who don’t know, Weiß Schwarz is a 2 player trading card game like Project Revolution where you try to beat your opponent by using characters from various series. In the case of the advertised TCG, the series currently involved include Zero no Tsukaima, Little Busters!, Disagea, and Persona 3. [Akibahara Channel]
Last month at AOD, I interviewed Sean McCoy after his Animation Industry Insight panel after about 45 minutes and last night I got around to uploading the video to Vimeo. I would have added subtitles or at least composed a transcript because the convention space was a bit noisy for the first half, and I might append said transcript later when I get the time, but right now I’m pushing this out the door since I have wanted to refer to it for a while in relation to industry trends and fan habits.
I hope you excuse my lack of prepared questions and the trouble I had in formulating them into something I could ask. It’s always odd for me to hear my own voice on tape and the stumbling made it worse during editing. As I gain more experience doing things like this, my delivery should improve as well as the quality of the questions.
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.
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.
In yet another “12 Days of Xmas” look at a show currently running in anime club, the eighth anime-related “highlight” for me this year has been the awkward moments that turned into laughs in Bokura Ga Ita. Yes, I know that the two main characters suffer from “missing eye syndrome” (as exhibited above), the music is average, and Nana Takahashi is dumb as a brick. But her naivety and dimness paired with Yano’s latent sex drive and childish aloofness make for some funny moments and save the anime from being brought down by the emotional flashbacks about Yano’s previous (and now deceased) girlfriend Nana, who annoyingly looks like she was Takahashi’s older sister. Srsly, guys.
Anyway, I went and made a bunch of clips (15 in total) from the first third of the series and embedded them below. Read the rest of this entry »
It was rumored that ADV would likely get the license for Kanon (2006) when they announced AIR TV and that was strengthened when there was news the company had snapped up the domain “kanontv.com”. Now, there is this teaser trailer appeared in ADV’s trailer directory last Friday. No dialogue yet but I think a formal announcement could happen within the next month or two.
Tags: adv films, kanon, teaser, trailer
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