TV Tokyo has announced plans to form a new department that will focus on overseas sales of their anime properties. The department is currently titled the ‘Anime Department’ (and who says corporate doesn’t know how to be creative?) and will consolidate the three current anime departments which currently handle operations, production and business.
So what does this mean to you? Well, TV Tokyo has produced quite a few important anime titles in Japan which include fan favorites such as Naruto, Evangelion, Bleach and many others. The fact that they are actively exploring the potential for overseas sales seems to indicate to me that they are looking for new avenues of distribution. This doesn’t mean that you should be looking for their titles to appear on any new television stations in the near future but after the success of Crunchyroll, it wouldn’t be shocking to see more titles appear on the popular streaming site or even others like it before the end of the year.
Of course what would really be cool would be to see them jump into the localization game and start marketing their titles themselves to region 1 audiences but yeah… let’s not hold our breath on that one.
Guin Saga: A trailer has gone up for the upcoming anime adaptation of ‘Guin Saga’. The thirteen episode series premieres this April and will adapt the fantasy novels written by Kaoru Kurimoto. The series is being directed by Atsushi Wakabayashi with animation produced by Satelight. The trailer comes in at about two and a half minutes but requires windows to play on the website so I found a copy on YouTube to upload here.
I’ve been really bad about keeping up with fantasy series this year and so it’s hard to tell how much I’m going to get into this one after it premieres on April 5th. The animation and character designs look interesting enough but time will tell on how engaging the story is.
The official ‘Kiddy Grade’ website has announced news that fans have been waiting years to hear: There will be NEW Kiddy Grade produced. Two years since the last TV anime aired in Japan, six years since the series originally premiered and five years since the last time the US got a new DVD (but who’s counting?); the official website has announced that a new spinoff series is in production. Titled ‘Kiddy Girl-and’, the series will take place about two hundred years after the initial story in the original TV series. In this incarnation the audience will follow Ku and Asukuuru as they train to become members of ES, the finest special agents to work for the government. The series animation will be produced by Satelight (Aquarion, Glass Fleet) and no release date was made apparent.
A new trailer has gone up on the official website of the upcoming Tenchi Muyo spinoff OVA series, ‘Isekai no Seikishi Monogatari’. The new trailer is a full 74 seconds long but doesn’t really have much in it besides a short character introductions and background music. Also unfortunate is how small the video is on the website itself, I tried to expand it but didn’t have much luck. Luckily though someone has already uploaded it to YouTube:
A magical girl action anime series based off a pachinko game has been green lit for this summer. ‘Umi Monogatari~Anata ga Ite Kureta Koto~’ (which from here on out is going to be referred to as ‘Umi Monogatari’). Names attached to the project are actually fairly impressive so far: ZEXCS (Sister Princess, Chrome Shelled Regios) will be producing the animation while fantasy magical girl heavyweight Junichi Sato (Sailor Moon, Kaleido Star, Aria) and Yuu Kou will be serving as series directors. A place holder website has been created for the series but it hasn’t been opened yet.
Coming in from the very cool thing that I want to see someday department, ANN reported this morning that Meiji University in Japan have made plans to open a new anime and manga museum. When it is opened, the museum will contain 2.5 million different anime and manga related items on display for fans to see making it the largest museum in the world dedicated to anime and manga. There are also plans to include a library, screening rooms and research in the 91,000 square foot building chosen as the site.
No idea on when it is actually going to open but I just got an entirely new reason to start saving up for my eventual trip overseas.
A new website has gone up for the new spring anime, ‘Charady no Joke na Mainchi’ which premieres April 1st. The series is unique in that the staff is aiming to air 365 shorts consecutively for the next year. The shorts will feature a 26 year old character from San Francisco who will share a new joke from around the world in each new episode. The series will be airing on television in Japan but are also going to get same day streams by BigGlobe.
I don’t know, it sounds like it could be fun to watch but hard to keep up with. The short episodes will help with marathon catch up sessions though. Any of you planning on catching this one?
So upon one of my many adventures through twitter, I happened to stumble upon this picture. It was posted on Gizmodo (found via japanifyme ) and when I first saw it, I was stunned speechless.
Now, when one sees this photo for the first time I’m sure that there are a range of emotions that overcome you. Unfortunately I don’t have anyone handy so we’re going to have to use me as an example. Now, after I managed to wrap my head around what I was seeing I did the normal WTF. But then I started to look deeper and realized you know what, I have faith in Japan. Now I grant you that normally when you hear the phrase ‘weird porn’ your mind instantly goes to Japan. But this is also the country that brought us wholesome things like Hello Kitty! Surely there must be a more logical explanation for this photo than what it obviously implies! Luckily for you, I happen to be a man with way too much free time on his hands. So now I give to you, my perfectly logical* an explanation or four for what this is actually a photo of:
~ It’s just taken from a weird perspective! It’s actually a perfectly normal sized girl stepping over a miniature train. She just looks weird from that angle.
~ She’s just calling her giant puppy that we can’t see out of frame
~ She’s actually about to sit down and crush the train so it’s ok!
~ The train is carrying her to the giant horse waiting for her
A new 10 minute anime series will debut next month called ‘Cookin’ Idol Ai! Mai! Main!’ The show is aimed at children and will teach them how to cook with the anime heroine, Main, and her seiyuu Haruka Fukuhara. The series debuts at the end of March (on the 30th to be exact) with animation produced by Studio DEEN. I’ll admit it, I’m posting this for public interest but the odds of me actually sitting down to even glance at this are probably fairly slim. If any of you decide to watch it and actually learn how to cook from it feel free to share how it is.
ANN is reporting this morning that the April issue of ‘The Sneaker’ magazine as well as a wraparound jacket on next month’s ‘Strike Witches’ manga release that a second season has gotten the green light for production. No further details were made available regarding the project but you know that somewhere right now the producers are having themselves a nice little giggle. For those unaware, earlier this month the official website of ‘Strike Witches’ promised a big announcement which many fans thought was going to be a second season announcement. When it was leaked that the big announcement was merely the subtitle for an upcoming game that everyone already knew about, there were Kadokawa levels of angst and annoyance. The military lolicon series originally premiered as an OVA in early 2007 before getting a twelve episode TV series last summer.
TV Tokyo has announced plans to form a new department that will focus on overseas sales of their anime properties. The department is currently titled the ‘Anime Department’ (and who says corporate doesn’t know how to be creative?) and will consolidate the three current anime departments which currently handle operations, production and business.
