Otaku, No Video

© 2008–2009 Kyoto Animation, Nagaru Tanigawa, Noizi Ito

ANN:  There will be a second season of K-ON! Thank the heavens. I’m sure plenty of people will complain, but blast it I loved that show. It wasn’t deep, it wasn’t gut-bustingly funny; it was a light, fun bit of entertainment.

ANN:  Crunchyroll will be simulcasting several new anime series soon: Durarara!!, which is the next anime by the folks who made Baccano! (a high-energy fantasy/crime series), and Chu-Bra!!, a show about a middle school girl who loves wearing lacy underwear, and starts a club about same to help girls her age deal with their adolescent body issues.

ANN:  Top-selling anime DVDs of the past week in Japan: Fireball winter package (based on a Figma doll, near as I can tell), Hetalia volume 6, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya volume 5, Mobile Suit Gundam 00 Special Edition II, Pokémon Diamond & Pearl: Arceus and the Jewel of Life, Prince of Tennis OVA Fan Disc: ~Message in a bottle~, Hidamari Sketch Fan Disc: Mō Sugu!, and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood Volume 5.

ANN:  Japanese anime TV rankings remain as they’ve always been: dominated by Sazae-san, Chibi Maruko-san, One Piece, Dragonball Kai, and Detective Conan.  But the final episode of the live-action adaptation of the Jin manga aired as the #1 drama on TV that week, with a 25.3 rating.

Three odd news items:

ANN:  California’s UTBHollywood has been airing Lupin III.  The original TV series (Part II, at least).  In Japanese audio with English subtitles.  Wha?

ANN:  Weirder:  WindySoft, the Korean online game company behind the Shin Megami Tensei and Katamari Damashi MMOs, has announced their next project: An MMO of Crayon Shin-Chan. Seriously, what?

ANN: Even weirder!  Japanese publisher Ichijinsa has announced a new magazine coming this spring: WAaI! boys in skirts. It will feature, yes, anime/manga images of cross-dressing boys.

© 1998 serial experiments lain production committee

This is a plea to those of you who don’t blog about anime, manga, or light novels.

I’d like you to join the conversation between me, Ogiue Maniax, Anime Almanac, and all the other English-language bloggers.  Voice your ideas.  Listen and react.

How, you may ask?  Easy.  Go to blogger.com.  If you don’t already have a Google account, you’ll be asked to create one (free).  Then click on the Create a Blog field, type in a name, and click Create.  Congratulations!  You now have an anime blog.  Free.

Now start writing about anime, manga, or light novels.  Talk about what it is you like about this stuff.  Be specific. Tell stories.  Write about stuff that only you like.  Have the courage to highlight your uniqueness.

Need a few tips? Sure:

• Schedule some time every week — or better yet, every day — to write.
• Subscribe to lots of anime blogs (see the blogroll on the sidebar of this very site for some great ones). Use them as inspiration.
• Blog about everything. Stuff you’ve seen and read. Other peoples’ blog posts. Your favorite manga. What’s wrong with the industry. What’s right with the industry.

Please.  We need your voice.

ANN:  Undoubtedly the biggest news of the week:  Mamoru Oshii, legendary anime creator who gave us the Ghost in the Shell movies, Jin-Roh, Sky Crawlers, and many other films, has announced his next project:  an adaptation of Gigantor.  I’m not joking.  I’ll also point out that he’s done several live-action films, and he didn’t say whether this movie would be animated or live-action.  So, um, good luck Oshii.  May it be less talky and dull than some of your other films.

ANN:  Speaking of giant robots, the English cast for the upcoming Gundam Unicorn release was announced.  Gundam’s never had top-of-the-line dubs in America — with the exception of 08th MS Team, which I think was mostly a fluke — and are almost always dubbed by the same studio.  Interestingly, Unicorn will be dubbed by a different studio, using more seasoned actors who’ve mostly never worked on Gundam before.  Among them:  Steve Cannon/Steve Staley, who played Shiro Amada in 08th MS Team!

ANN:  A bit more Gundam news:  Remember that full-size Gundam statue in Odaiba last year?  Remember how it was dismantled?  Well, have no fear; Gundam will return!  Bandai announced it’ll re-build the statue in Shizuoka (near Bandai’s model kit factory), and will then move it every year to a new location, turning it into sort of a traveling road show for Gundam.

ANN:  The Nippon Academy-Sho Association — who basically give out the Japanese version of the Oscars — announced its 2009 winners recently, and several anime works were included.  Evangelion 2.0 and Summer Wars both received awards, as did Oblivion Island: Haruka and the Magic Mirror and Detective Conan: The Raven Chaser.

ANN:  Yahoo! Japan is streaming a trailer for a live-action film adaptation of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time – but this is an adaptation of the original novel, not the awesome anime film. So it’s not got the same story. It looks…pretty much like any other live-action Japanese film.

ANN:  The top-selling DVDs in Japan in 2009: Ponyo.  The biggest general anime DVDs: Gintama, La Maison en Petit Cubes (a funky independent work) and Mobile Suit Gundam 00: Second Season.  The biggest animated films: Ponyo, Biohazard: Degeneration, and WALL-E.  Sorry; anime film in Japan is just kinda non-existent outside Ghibli.

ANN:  The top-selling Blu-Ray Disc in Japan in 2009:  Evangelion 1.11.  Biggest general anime Blu-Rays: Bakemonogatari, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete, and…more Bakemonogatari.  Biggest movie Blu-Rays: Evangelion 1.11, and, um, Biohazard: Degeneration and WALL-E.  Again, sorry.

ANN:  Anime license announcement!  Section23 — the old ADV Films, and I’ll be glad when I don’t have to explain that — has licensed Yozakura Quartet (a superhero teen action show), You’re Under Arrest: Full Throttle (about two female police officers), and Tayutama: Kiss On My Deity (an adaptation of a hentai dating sim into a harem anime).

ANN:  Shin Koihime†Musou fans, rejoice!  There’ll be a new OVA of your favorite moe adaptation of Romance of the Three Kingdoms in July, where all the characters will go to ”a southern island.”

ANN:  Finally, for any of you old-school fans who remember CLAMP’s X, the rock group X Japan, who did the OP and ED, will be coming to Hollywood on January 9th for one night.  And…that’s all we know.

The Legend of the White Serpent (a.k.a. The Tale of the White Serpent, The Great White Snake, The White Snake Enchantress, or Panda and the Magic Serpent) was a Japanese animated film first released in 1958 in Japan.

Note that I didn’t call it anime. In my personal opinion, the anime style hadn’t been defined yet (Osamu Tezuka would begin to do that with Astro Boy several years later), and this film looks like an early Disney or Fleischer cartoon. It has far more to do with Snow White or Gulliver’s Travels than Astro Boy or Gigantor.

But this was one of the first full-scale animated films in Japan, and it was such an inspiration to the young Hayao Miyazaki that he claimed to have decided to become an animator after watching this film.  Indeed, Rintaro started his animation career as an in-between animator on this film.

It’s an adaptation of a Chinese myth, about a boy who’s forced to abandon a pet snake, which returns years later as a beautiful woman to seek his side.  They face many challenges — particularly from a priest who wants to exorcise the snake spirit — but they are truly in love.

By modern standards, the animation in Legend is relatively stiff and straightforward, and the direction is full of simple jump cuts.  The art direction, on the other hand, delivers delicate watercolor backgrounds reminiscent of ukiyo-e paintings and character designs lush with vibrant colors.

It’s a fairy tale, so the characters are exceedingly simple: the wondering hero, the enigmatic serpent woman, the joyful servant girl, and the helpful forest creatures who follow them around.  Yes, even back then, we had cute animals that could easily be turned into plushies.

The voice actors do their best, but this was not an era with a vast stable of seasoned Japanese voice talent.  Similarly, the music twangs with traditional Chinese melodies, rather harsh to my Western ears but not unpleasant.

But it is a lovely story, and beautifully drawn.  It’s hard to recommend this film unilaterally; it’s an anachronism.  But anachronisms are worth remembering and cherishing for their contribution to our world.

How can you see it?  It’s been out of print for years, but Brian Ruh was kind enough to shoot me a link to RaidenRS’s page hosting 4 .rar files that combine into a subtitled version of the movie.

Makoto Shinkai (right), image courtesy animeanime.jp

ANN:  The 41-year-old guy who convinced a 14-year-old girl to run away with him “to an anime convention” has been sentenced to 15 years in prison on a felony charge for soliciting a minor and maliciously enticing her. For the record, he pled guilty.

ANN:  In happier news, Makoto Shinkai, creator of Voices of a Distant Star, 5 Centimeters per Second, and The Place Promised in our Early Days, has announced his next project.  It’ll be about someone struggling to overcome loss, but the protagonist will be a cheerful and spirited girl.  Funny thing is, folks have been complaining that he’s just retreading the same themes of his previous works, yet they don’t seem to mind when Hayao Miyazaki or Mamoru Oshii do so.  :shrug:

ANN:  There’ll be another season of light-yuri Romance of the Three Kingdoms moe adaptation Shin Koihime†Musou in April. The new season will be titled Otome Tairan (which I think translates roughly to ”Inspection by the Young Princess”).

ANN:  And if you’re a fan of the Japanese rock band POLYSICS — who did themes for Sgt. Frog and Moyashimon, they’re coming to the U.S. for a tour!  Here are the tour dates:

• 28 January - Bottom of the Hill — San Francisco, CA
• 29 January - The Roxy Theatre — Los Angeles, CA
• 30 January — The Casbah — San Diego, CA
• 02 February - Plush — Tucson, AZ
• 03 February - The Rhythm Room — Phoenix, AZ
• 05 February - The White Rabbit — San Antonio, TX
• 06 February - The Independent — Austin, TX
• 07 February - The Loft — Dallas, TX
• 10 February - Double Door — Chicago, IL
• 11 February - Magic Stick — Detroit, MI
• 12 February - Musica — Akron, OH
• 13 February - The Gramercy Theatre — New York, NY
• 14 February - The Middle East - Cambridge, MA
• 16 February — The Rock and Roll Hotel — Washington, DC

© ryuuen at deviantart.com

This is just awesome. One Japanese hentai game has added several in-jokes referencing the recent attempts to censor H-games, including an opening text block in which all the characters in the game collectively insist that they agreed to everything that happens to them. Canned Dogs has the whole story. A few excerpts from one in-game conversation:

Surprised Suigen Ninja:
We, fictional characters, apparently have human rights.

Listening Suigen Ninja:
Huh?

Surprised Suigen Ninja:
There are apparently some special people that will get angry and show sympathy for us if we get raped. And they’ll start lobbying for us too.

Listening Suigen Ninja:
Wow, we even can’t do anything ourselves without a creator or a player but we have human rights … since they acknowledge that we have human rights, I wonder if they’ll acknowledge that we have the right to vote too. Our creators will work hard to do some political manipulation.

Evangelion 2.0 © 2009 Gainax

ANN:  Kazuya Tsurumaki, co-director of Evangelion 2.0, has announced he’s currently working on some “re-takes” for the upcoming DVD release of the film.  So,  new footage.  Gainax?  Milking more money out of the Evangelion franchise? I’m shocked!

ANN:  Speaking of movies, the Japanese website for Weekly Shonen Jump is now streaming 2 minutes of footage from the upcoming Yu-Gi-Oh! movie.

ANN:  But in movie news that’s actually exciting, there’s now a trailer for the upcoming Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya movie.  I’ve seen it, and…I’m intrigued.  As is appropriate for a trailer.

A few cool interviews popped online recently: one in Egypt Today (since taken down) with Go Nagai during his recent tour of the Middle East, and one in Japan Times with Mamoru Oshii as he talks about his upcoming Assault Girls live-action film and his filmmaking process.  (Wait, Oshii has a filmmaking process?)

ANN:  Finally, news of the cute:  Beckii Cruel, the 14-year-old British girl who achieved net fame for dancing to anime songs, is starting a girl band. She’s joined by two other (older) British girls.  Their first CD, named Cruel Angels (ha ha!) will debut in Japan February 10.

ANN:  Let’s lead off with the big one: Studio Ghibli has announced their next film:  an adptation of Mary Norton’s The Borrowers, to be directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi, who besides working at Ghibli for years worked on Monster, Jin-Roh, and serial experiments lain.

ANN:  Speaking of Ghibli, the Ponyo Blu-Ray set was released in Japan this past week, and shot to the top; the standard edition was the #1 selling anime Blu-Ray of that week with 9,000 discs, and the special edition was at #2.

ANN:  However, Ponyo will not be getting a Golden Globe, as it hasn’t made it through the preliminaries onto the nomination ballot. Instead, the nominees are Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Coraline, The Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Princess and the Frog, and Up.

ANN:  2 Oklahoma elementary school students put together a Death Note…and actually put real students’ names in it. Seriously. The principal found out and said the students will be disciplined. I think I speak for all of us when I say: American elementary school principals know what the heck the Death Note is supposed to do? Whaaa?

ANN:  Viz announced two new light novel releases: Housuke Nojiri’s Rocket Girls and Project Itoh’s Harmony, in addition to a Bleach source book.

ANN:  There will be a Beyblade anime film in the summer of 2010. Anyone here care? Thought not.

AnimeNation.net: I bet people will care about this though: there’s a new trailer for the upcoming Fate/stay night anime film.

AnimeNation.net:  Crunchyroll has always had live-action Asian drama shows on its network; it’s now expanding its anime membership to dramas.  You can now buy a ”Drama Membership” for the same price as the anime membership and get essentially the same deal.  If you buy both, you get a whopping $1 off per month.

ANN:  Wondered where the heck James Cameron’s Battle Angel Alita has been? Cameron revealed it’s still back-burnered, but he’s completed a lot of pre-production work, so once he’s ready to pull the trigger, the movie can launch quickly. However, he cautioned that he’s now unsure if he’ll ever make the film.  :sad face: