Otaku, No Video

Looks like the upcoming Rurouni Kenshin live-action film is copying the OVA’s dark tone. Good for them. Kenshin can easily slide into weird melodrama, so the filmmakers have a delicate balancing act to maintain between action and drama.

Let’s say you have kids, maybe a few years from now. They grow up a bit, and it’s time to show them some anime. What would you show them?

Cobs Online asked this of its men, and I was surprised by what’s not there. The top 5 choices among 272 male respondents in their 20s:

1. Slam Dunk (23.9%)
2. Dragon Ball (20.6%)
3. Doraemon (19.9%)
4. One Piece (17.3%)
5. Sazae-san (14.7%)

Where’s Hayao Miyazaki? Where’s Pokémon?

First, the big news:

• Funimation licensed Evangelion 2.0, the Hetalia World Series film, Strike Witches 2, and Summer Wars.
• Bandai licensed The Girl Who Leapt Through Space (Sora Kake Girl), My-Otome 0~S.ifr~, and announced an English dub of K-ON!
• Madhouse is making an ONA with Yoshiaki Kawajiri called Ninja Ten Battles, which Madhouse’s head described as ”a guy in drag with a sword wh ofights ninjas.”
• Aniplex USA will ship all of R.O.D (OVA and TV) in Blu-Ray.

Second, my Brief History of Anime panel went great! Lots of positive audience reaction. Thanks to everyone who was there; I’m really looking forward to doing it again.

Third, my thoughts on the con:

I attended several informative, well-run panels:

• Experiments in the Anime Industry: noitaminA, an information-dense panel about the noitaminA anime block, which specifically targets the josei market.
• Writing Your World, a panel nominally about writing role-playing game supplements that evolved into a forum to ask role-playing advice.
• Anime in Academia. I skipped the Welcome to the Space Show premiere for this panel, and I’m glad I did. Lots of information from experts (one woman had a Fulbright Scholarship, another got her Ph.D. at Harvard) about how English-language academia is approaching anime and manga.

Unfortunately, the schedule was a mess. The convention guide listed panels in alphabetical order starting with whatever word the author thought was most important, so “A Brief History of Anime” may have been listed under A, B, or H. Worse, the schedule itself abbreviated the panels differently, so “A Brief History of Anime” may have been listed under B in the guide but written as ”History of Anime” in the schedule.

Worse, I saw a lot of panel cancellations. By mid-afternoon on Saturday, two panels I wanted to see were canceled, and every panel room I saw had at least two cancellations listed just for that room.

Then, Saturday afternoon as the podcasting panel was setting up, some knucklehead decided to pull a fire alarm. All 27,000 otaku had to exit the convention center. This is not the organizer’s fault, but I admit it didn’t help my mood.

The Dealer’s Room was smaller than last year, though we can get so much anime stuff online these days that a small Dealer’s Room is no problem.

In general, I loved the panels but was frustrated by the con itself.

Aniplex will be releasing Durarara!!…in January.  It’ll be released in three parts, each part containing two discs and a total of 8 to 9 episodes per part.

Funimation announced licenses for both To Aru Majutsu no Index and To Aru Kagaku no Railgun.  And the Trigun movie.  And the second season of Darker Than BLACK.  And the third season of Black Lagoon.  And Hellsing Ultimate 5 through 7.  And the second season, movie, and OVA of Shakugan no Shana. Whew!

Funimation also expanded the list of shows they’ve rescued.  The full list is now:  Chrono Crusade, Gantz, Kaleido Star, Peacemaker, Texhnolyze, Ai Yori Aoshi, Armitage III (both the TV series and the movie), Haibane Renmei, Hellsing, Serial Experiments Lain, and all of Tenchi Muyo!, presumably in one big honking box set.

Bandai had some cool notes.  Besides announcing street dates for shows like Gundam 00 season 2 and Kurokami, they announced that the three Zeta Gundam movies will be released as one big set.  (And it’s now available on RightStuf.)  Also, season 2 of Haruhi will be released as one big box set in August.  Then came the big Bandai announcement:  They’ve licensed K-ON! (season 1).  But, again, that’s all we know.

Right Stuf‘s still doing cool things.  They’ve licensed Sora no Woto, the well-received moe show from last season, and they’re going to remaster the Revolutionary Girl Utena TV series, as three boxsets, to be released next year.  Maria Watches Over Us season 4 will come out in the next few days, and over the rest of 2010 we’ll see El Hazard: The Wanderers, SuperGALS!, Gravitation, and Dirty Pair, while 2011 will see Junjou Romantica season 2 and Antique Bakery.

VIZ is still in the running.  They’ve acquired several new manga, including Mistress Fortune, Sakura Hime Kaden, Oresama Teacher, and Ai Ore.  They’ve also got the anime Nurahiyon no Mago, which will be titled Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan over here.  It’s already started simulcasting on VizAnime.com.

A bit of info about Geneon — remember how I said in my previous vid that Geneon licensed Railgun and Highschool of the Dead?  But a few paragraphs above I wrote that it’s being released by Funi?  That’s the weird thing — Geneon licensed it, but Funimation will be releasing it. Huh.

Hoshizora Kiseki © CoMix Wave Inc.

Check out New Voice Productions (since defunct), a company that’s looking to license anime via fan support. Here’s how it works: they announce a planned anime license, along with the cost. Fans donate cash, which will be refunded if the license doesn’t go through. If the company gets to its target donation amount within the specified time frame, the anime gets licensed.

Their first attempt is with Hoshizora Kiseki, a short that looks not unlike Voices of a Distant Star, and was similarly made almost entirely by one guy. New Voice plans to release a $10 DVD for the 27-minute film.

I’ve already donated $50. Here’s a great way to support the industry, and at basically no risk. Go for it!

Update: On 24 June 2010, I received a refund of my money.  New Voice Productions removed all information about the Hoshizura Kiseki license attempt from its website, and now only hosts one blog post with a logo contest. I am somewhat confused. I thought the 60 days hadn’t yet expired, but I could be mistaken.

As usual, chartfag’s pulled through with an impressive summary of the spring 2010 anime line-up, as we know it so far:

Spring 2010 Anime Line-up, version 1

Click for a big version. Via chartfag.

Several big license announcements this week.

ANN: Funimation has licensed Dragon Ball Kai, the recent edit of the original DBZ to follow Akira Toriyama’s manga more closely, and to enhance some of the long-in-the-tooth special effects.

ANN: More big news: Adult Swim still shows anime, apparently. They’ve now picked up Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, which will start airing about a week from now, on Sunday, February 14th at midnight.

ANN: Meanwhile, Yen Press continues to license awesome stuff: the gag manga The Melancholy of Suzumiya-Haruhi-chan, kakifly’s K-ON! manga, and the first light novel in Mizuki Nomura’s series Bungaku Shoujo (the story of the weird members of a high school literary club).

ANN: I reported several months ago that Stan Lee was working with Studio BONES on an anime called Heroman. Well, we now have confirmation that it’ll air in Japan on TV Tokyo starting in April. Yay! Interestingly, it’s the story of a young boy living in America who stumbles upon a toy robot. The toy apparently then transforms into a giant pilotable robot, with the kid inside. So, Stan Lee is officially writing mecha. Woohoo!  (This also means at least one mecha show next season.)

AnimeNation.net:  Another new anime was announced: an adaptation of Daisuke Sato and Shoji Sato’s Highschool of the Dead, a horror action story about a group of high schoolers trying to survive a zombie apocalypse in their school. I keep hearing about this manga; apparently a lot of people like it.

ANN: Mamoru Nagano, creator of legendary shoujo mecha series The Five Star Stories, will be directing an anime film. It’ll be called Hana no Utame Gothicmade, and it’ll be mecha. So, cool! No word on when it’ll be released.

AnimeNation.net: Joseph Chou, producer on Appleseed: Ex Machina, has revealed that there will be more Appleseed movies.  This comes after plans for an Appleseed TV series were cancelled.

ANN: Chou also revealed that pre-production discussion on the live-action Evangelion movies continues, as they discuss the project with mysteriously unnamed producers and studios. Apparently, the project stalled mainly because of the recent downturn in the anime market.

ANN: Speaking of Eva, Japanese retailer “Geo on the Rakuten” now lists Neon Genesis Evangelion 2.22, which is the first we’ve heard of anything beyond Evangelion 2.0. According to the site, 2.22 has “enhancements” over 2.0. That’s all we know.

ANN: Namco Bandai’s in a spot of trouble. They released their 2009 earnings numbers this week. They had anticipated a profit of US $94 million for 2009, they instead had a loss.  Of US $340 million. So, they’re re-organizing! And in typical Japanese fashion, they’ve titled the re-org “Namco Bandai Group Restart Plan.” They’ll cut 10% of their workforce and re-structure their operations. Here’s hoping it’ll help.

One particularly interesting detail: one part of this production streamlining involves simultaneous release of anime on disc and online streaming. Good!

ANN: They’re not the only ones: Navarre, parent company of Funimation, saw a sales drop for the fourth quarter of 2009. They basically blamed the market, and said that fortunately they’re in a good position to grow as the economy picks back up.

ANN: A followup: Hayao Miyazaki’s Ponyo, which was on the ”long list” of animated films in consideration for the Best Animated Film Oscar, has been dropped from the final nomination list. No anime will be on the roster this year; instead we’ll see Coraline, The Princess and the Frog, Up, The Secret of Kells, and Fantastic Mr. Fox.

ANN: But J-Rock fans have something to celebrate. Major Japanese band X Japan has been invited to the main stage on Lollapalooza, the first time a Japanese band has ever received that honor. And yes, they’ve agreed to perform, in Chicago on August 6 to 8.