Archive for August 2010
Well, we have our first look at the new Super Robot Wars OG series ready, and I’m cautiously optimistic. While it’s pretty awesome seeing the Alt Eisen and the Weissritter in action again, the character designs are pretty lackluster.
I have low expectations Super Robot Wars anime based on how badly Divine Wars went, so it won’t take much for me to be happy with this show. It looks like it will have robots blowing up other robots, and I think that may be good enough for me. Super Robot Wars OG ~The Inspector~ starts airing in most Japanese markets on October 1.
I'm so glad this isn't a touch screen game.
Enterbrain has posted a brief teaser for the upcoming Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu OVA, filled with the series’ trademark insanity. It’s hard to call this a trailer since it’s really a gag video, but it’s funny, so I forgive it. The video is three fake scenes from a mobile phone dating game strung together, and it’s wrong on quite a few levels, especially if you try to make out what Hazuki is saying in her variation of the pinky swear.
I like it. The OVA does not yet have a release date, but will come before the second season hits the airwaves in 2011.
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Thanks to good friend Vincent Diamante, I’ve found my way to Makiko Itoh’s translation of Satoshi Kon’s farewell message to the world. I am not the kind of person to give way to emotion, but the simple and heartwrenching power of the anime director’s account of his last days had me misting up. There is a lot of dignity and power in his words, and thanks to Makiko for doing them justice.
The part of his note where he talks about talking to his parents and wife is a testament to his character, and a sad reminder that the anime world lost a great man and friend as well as a great director.
- In: News
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Edit: Satoshi Kon’s birthday is October 12, so technically he died at age 46. The Japanese sources said he was alive for 47 years, which isn’t quite the same.
An otherwise sleepy night in Japan has been interrupted by the rippling news that Satoshi Kon (technically, Kon Satoshi, but I’ve known him as Satoshi Kon for so long that it’s hard to go back to Japanese name order) passed away suddenly at the age of 46. In spite of the early hour – it’s 2 AM on the 25th in Japan right now – anime fans on social networking site Mixi and industry luminaries like Takeda Yasuhiro have expressed their sorrow at the loss of such a well-respected creator. More and more confirmations are coming in, with the head of Madhouse (via Jim Vowles of Otakon) stating that his company has lost a very important director. No cause of death has been given.
Satoshi Kon burst onto the scene with his psychological thriller Perfect Blue in 1998, and made a reputation for surreal and beautiful movies, with Millenium Actress and Paranoia Agent making strong impressions on international audiences. He was working on The Dream Machine (Yume Miru Kikai) at the time of his death, and no word has yet come on what will happen to the movie’s slated 2011 release.
RIP, good sir. I should go watch the Magnetic Rose segment of Memories again, to remind myself of just how much talent the anime world has just lost.
Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu fans like me are about to get a veritable smorgasbord of delicious BakaTest over the next year. The comedy series currently has a light novel series, a manga adaptation, two manga spin-offs, and a TV anime under its belt, and every one of those is running strong. Volume 8 of the novel comes out this month, a second TV season is coming in 2011, and now we can add an OVA adaptation to the family!
Kadokawa’s monthly Shounen Ace, which runs the main manga adaptation, just announced that an OVA bridge the first and second seasons of the wondrously stupid series. No details have yet been given, other than that it will be released before the second TV anime starts.
Hopefully, they’ll use this opportunity to get the series a bit more back on track – the first series was charming, but largely ignored the source material. The novels have been an absolute blast so far, and I’d love to see things like the baseball tournament and the haunted house get animated. Those stories are indescribably fun, and they’d make up for a lot of the filler that plagued the first season.
Also: more Shouko, please.
Love hurts. So does comedy, when it's very good comedy.
- In: Previews
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What you see above is the trailer for Time Paladin Sakura, a magical girl OVA by Circus that’s going to be released in November this year. The story takes characters from Circus’ game series Da Capo and mysteriously shrinks some of the characters to third graders, changing what was originally a high school romance into a cutesy magical girl show. It’s very reminiscent of what turned Triangle Hearts into Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha, which is funny to seiyuu whores like me because of Tamura Yukari’s connection to both franchises. Sadly, Tamura Yukari no longer plays Sakura, but given how low the budget of the production probably is, that was to be expected.
Meanwhile, TBS has been busy putting up trailers for Yumekui Merry and Soredemo Machi ha Mawatteiru, giving you your taste of dream-eating monsters and maids alike. Sadly, the MM! trailer is limited to Japanese viewers only, so even though I can link to it on YouTube, I can’t actually show it to any of you.
And then we have the trailer for the OVA adaptation of Koe de Oshigoto!, which you should most likely watch with headphones while no one’s around. It’s not adult content per se, but it’s very, very suggestive, given its subject matter. As you may recall, the story is about a young girl who’s coerced into becoming a voice actress for her sister’s adult game company, and has to learn the ins and outs of… ins and outs.
I can’t believe I just wrote that.
Macross fans who’ve been waiting for a year to hear about the second Macross Frontier movie now have a title and release date to hang their hat on. At last weekend’s Gira Summer Carnival fan event in Yokohama, Japan, the fans learned that Sayonara no Tsubasa (“Wings of Farewell”) will see a February 26th, 2011 release.
In the meantime, just like the release of the Universal Bunny album preceded the first movie, there will be a music video collection (a la Gurren Lagann Parallel Works) released on December 15 of this year. The DVD will collect footage from the TV series, add in some movie footage, and sprinkle in some original animation to create a new set of audio-visual feasts for fans to drool on.
- In: Previews
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Image from DenDen House
Comic Market 78 came and went with a great deal of fanfare last weekend, and animation studios didn’t miss the opportunity to tease hundreds of thousands of fans with their upcoming shows. If you’re willing to endure the sound being drowned out by the buzz of a convention floor, hit the jump and check out previews for highly anticipated shows like To Aru Majutsu no Index II and Kami Nomizo Shiru Sekai, as well as quirky dark horses like Shinryaku Ika Musume and S&M comedy MM!
I’ve been reading the To Aru Majutsu no Index novels recently, and while it’s a rough grind for someone who’s not quite fluent – I now know how to talk about muscular dystrophy, medieval gnosticism, quantum uncertainty, and vector mathematics in Japanese thanks to volume 3 – I’m enjoying the hell out of it.
In a recent Google sweep for more info on the series, I found this:
This is so what I would do with an army of clones.
The Misaka-mori box (“Box with extra Misakas”) comes out this December from Kotobukiya, and I plan on getting it. I mean, how can I afford not to buy it?
Cute, but not annoyingly cute. I like it.
The Ore no Imouto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai anime will be upon us soon, and AIC has been gracious enough to release a minute-long trailer. The trailer introduces the main characters in 60 seconds, set to whimsically fast-paced music.
As a reminder, the story of OreImo starts when a high school boy named Kyousuke finds out that his younger sister Kirino is a closeted otaku. Their already-complicated relationship gets weirder as Kyousuke struggles between his protective instincts, his natural sibling rivalry, and his distaste for disgust for his little sister’s porn being mostly about little sisters. Meanwhile, Kirino is forced to rely on the person she “hates” most in the world to keep her secret and provide brotherly advice, which leads the two of them into all sorts of strange, awkward, and amusing situations.
The animation looks good, the source material is good, the cast looks good… we’ll see if it all comes together in October.
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