Otaku Review

Moetron has posted a YouTube clip has been posted which features Sunrise Chairman and CEO Tomino Yoshiyuki speaking at a conference in Italy. During his talk, he announces a new film titled ‘Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn’. The film will premiere in 2010 with the announcement being made formally in the 8th volume of the novel which streets 4/25. The novel series began in late 2007 and covers the start of human space colonization. I’d love to add more than that about the story but I didn’t even know that much before I started writing this post.

So there it is folks? Excited? Not? I’m not really a Gundam fan so I’d be lying if I said I was anything but a smidge apathetic.

Edited: Corrected ‘manga’ to read ‘novel’, added “story” background

SakuraCon is only a couple of days away and I wanted to drop a line to everyone regarding coverage this year. While SakuraCon is set to break attendance records with a projected attendance of over 10K, the panel coverage is going to be fairly light this year. There will be plenty of other things to do but in terms of industry panels, there will be fairly easy coverage to follow.

On Saturday the 11^th, I will be live blogging the Funimation panel  from 1-2pm. Funimation will be premiering the dubbed versions of Heroic Age and Romeo x Juliet over the weekend so I’m sure they will have plenty to talk about. If you have any questions that you’d like to have asked at the panel, feel free to drop the in a comment or email and I’ll do my best to get an answer for you. As with last year, I am doing my best to line up some interviews with the special guests. Nothing has been set into stone yet though so be sure to check back for updates.

Lastly I’d like to remind everyone to keep their eyes peeled on Otakureview.net ! There will be some HUGE changes coming in the next month or so.

On their official YouTube channel, Kadokawa have uploaded a sixty second trailer for the upcoming summer release, ‘Summer Wars’. The film opens this summer and follows a family who go about a series of fantastical adventures while on a summer vacation. The animation is produced by Madhouse and has the same writer and character designer as ‘The Girl Who Leapt Through Time’ which has to mean something. It’s hard to imagine it taking a long time before we hear about a US release date which makes it something to look forward to seeing. Maybe we’ll get really lucky and get to have a theatrical screening! By the way, best part of that screener? The big booming English ‘Summer Days’ at the end, completely unnecessary yet makes me laugh (for probably lots of the wrong reasons).

Over in the, ‘this is kind of cute and entertaining’ department we have a brand new preview of the upcoming Yoko music video. The official website for the upcoming Gurren Lagann ‘Kirameki Yoko Box ~ Pieces of sweet stars~ CD’ has posted a 30 second trailer of the music video for the single off the album. The song is sung by Marina Inoue as Yoko and the music video is entirely new animation.  Warning, the clips from the music video mostly struck me as cheesy but that’s just me and I don’t have rabid Yoko love.

Two new series have gotten the green light for TV anime series with one being about train bishies and another featuring pretty cat girls. The first series is titled ‘Miracle Train: Welcome to the Chuo Lines’ and will star the moe bishie mascot quintet that debuted recently as the mascot characters for the Chou train lines in Japan. Yumeta Company will be producing the animation with five cast members already set to take on the leads: Hiroyuki Yoshino (Rei Tokyo), Ryoutarou Okiayu (Shintarou Shinjuku), Hiroshi Kamiya (Riku Nakano), Miyu Irino (Takuto Kichijouji) (Gundam 00’s Saji Crossroad, Tsubasa’s Syaoran), Kouki Miyata (Rune Tachikawa). No other details are available about the project but one can only hope that it doesn’t turn into thirteen episodes worth of train commercials.

Also announced this morning is a series based on the manga ‘Omamori Himori’. The romantic comedy follows a sixteen year old boy who is protected by a spirit in the form of a cat girl. Also revealed in the announcement via the author is the news that Studio Hibari will be producing the animation. Personally I’m much more interested in this one at the moment than I am in the train bishies.

The trend has continued for at least one more film with ANN reporting that Mandalay Bay has licensed the film rights to the high school comedy ‘Full Metal Panic’. Additionally it seems that star of ‘High School Musical’ Zac Efron is already in talks to play the lead role of Sgt. Sousuke Sagara. There really is no news beyond this but for the sake of funs, let’s think about this. The high school comedy follows a young sargent who is put in charge of protecting a stubborn high school girl making him resort to pretending to be a high school student himself. The series ended up being hugely successful with multiple anime series and manga spinoffs being created over the years. The series saw a release in the US with both Funimation and ADV releasing seperate parts.

This is Zac Efron; nice kid… looks semi clean cut:

 This is Sousuke Sagara; not so much:

So, I suppose if we dirtied the kid up, squinted and tilted our heads you could sort of see where this idea came from.  What do you think?

Only a couple of new trailers have gone up over the weekend so it’s an easy catch up for me. By the way, I know that I’ve been kind of absent with updates the last couple of days but there is a big reason as for why. I’m busting it right now to get it done in time for SakuraCon so bear with me while I get that set. By the way, SakuraCon preview. Wednesday. Tell your friends.

First up is the brand new trailer for the upcoming CG animated movie Astroboy from Imagi. You might remember Imagi having enough financial problems earlier this year to cause a very short shutdown. Hopefully this film does well enough for them that they don’t run into the same issues with their Gatchaman movie set for release next year. Either way, I’ll probably go see this one just to see it but I don’t feel any sort of particular excitement for it.

Over on the official website (bottom picture has the trailer) for Hatsukoi Limited is a new short commercial which shows some of the upcoming series. It’s only a few seconds long but if you’re excited about this slice of life series than it’s something worth looking at.

For those of you out there who need to get your daily bishie fix, the new promotional video for 07-Ghost has made its way online as well. The new video is two minutes long (with another 30 seconds for credits, promos, etc) and introduces a lot of the characters. It’s hard to know what to make of this series so far but at the very least it’s going to have lots of bishie eye candy.

Two new trailers are up today with the first one being something kind out of the ordinary. The staff behind the upcoming fantasy action series Guin Saga has uploaded an English dubbed trailer to their website. The trailer is basically the same one that fans have already seen in Japanese but with all the characters dubbed into English. This tells me that Aniplex has been working with someone on this project and a license announcement could happen within a year but I’m guessing it will be much sooner than that. I have no official source on that nor do I have any kind of confirmation, that’s just my guess so don’t quote me. Equally impressive is how Aniplex is playing to the English audiences early with this trailer which is a nice trend that I’m starting to notice more frequently now. The series premieres April 5^th (later tonight in Japan).

Over on the official Shangri-la website, a second commercial has been posted for fans to view. It’s only fourteen seconds long and shows a little more of the action but not much else. It also premieres later with a premiere on Crunchyroll within hours after that.

I heard grumblings about this earlier this week but there’s confirmation and results now. On April 1^st, a poll was placed on yahoo Japan encouraging them to vote for their hypothetical cast members of a live action Eva series. It’s now being reported that Yahoo and TV Asahi are going to move forward with a live action Eva project using the results of the votes to cast the project.

No word on if it’s going to be a movie or a TV series but it does seem at long last that we will be seeing a live action Eva. The voting cast these actors in the roles, keep in mind that this may change by the time this actually sees production. I’ll be curious to see how many of these actors the network will be able to get involved with the project. Perhaps all of the choices had already at least confirmed interest? Do you think that Shinji as a real person would be, you know… likeable?

Ikari Shinji - Kamiki Ryunosuke
Ayanami Rei - Horikita Maki
Shoryu Asuka Langley - Toda Erika
Katsuragi Misato - Matsushima Nanako
Ikari Gendou - Abe Hiroshi
Akagi Ritsuko - Matsuyuki Yasuko

K-ON!
aka: けいおん！
Genre: Music Comedy
Premiere Date: 4/2
Studio: Kyoto Animation
Official Website

It looks kind of lazy in places but it’s still more than enough to make it three in a row for Kyoto Animation.

The Story

High school has started for four girls; Yui, Ritsu, Mio and Tsumugi. As more days pass by in the new school year, Yui still has yet to make a decision regarding which club she wants to join. Ritsu has already made her decision, she wants to join the light music club and form a band. She manages to nab her best friend and another girl to join but they need a fourth in order to keep the club from being suspended. Eventually, despite her having absolutely no idea how to play a guitar and being a ditz, Yui is number four.

Good and the Bad

It’s easy to see why fans have already started raving about this series since it first aired. These are incredibly cute and charming characters that are impossible not to like. All of their personalities have perfect roles to play and with only four girls playing the central leads, there is ample room for the characters to interact.

The one thing about the characters that confuses me so far however is why all the love for the lead character Yui. Yui is beyond a ditz or an airhead, she’s annoyingly dim. Always completely paranoid and on the verge of a panic attack or tears, I’m really finding it hard to really like her all that much in the beginning. I have absolutely zero doubts in my mind that her personality is going to grow on me as more of her personality is shown but right now, she is the character with by far the most room for improvement. So for the record, I’m putting my fanboy love on Ritsu and Mio. 

Ritsu and Mio were the characters that I really could not get enough of during this first episode. With Ritsu being so enthusiastic about saving the club, she becomes the over the top character literally begging people to join the club and save it. What makes this particular take on the character so unique however is that Ritsu isn’t being portrayed this way just to make her “wacky”, it’s just a side effect to her role as club president which makes it that much funnier. Mio serves as a perfect straight man to the over the top Ritsu and keeps the series grounded with her dry sarcasm and Ritsu smacks.

The one thing that got to me the most during this episode however was gaps in animation quality. While there are plenty of moments when the animation looks fabulous (such as the close-ups of the girls playing their instruments), there are other moments when K-ON just looks terrible. The lines will just be very rough and the characters in the scene just don’t look as they did moments earlier. 

When the animation does look good however, it always has a nice soft color scheme. While the characters aren’t designed as dark, none of them are overly bright with a lot of shading used. Even in the outdoor scenes the animation never looked that bright or overdone.

Music

It’s a music series so naturally the four leads are going to provide the theme songs. In the opening theme song, Aki Toyosaki (Yui) gets the lead with a pop song with a nice edge to it. It’s very upbeat and really portrays the girls well with a solid theme song for fans to start enjoying now before the girls even get to the point of playing their instruments. The closing theme is remarkably different however with Yoko Hikasa (Mio) getting the lead as the girls are dolled up as a gothic rock band. The entire closing animation looks like a gothic rock video and while disconcerting at first, is incredibly easy to get into within thirty seconds. Bonus points go to the animation staff who took the time to make it look like the girls were actually sort of playing their instruments instead of just mindlessly strumming.               

Overall

I can tell you right now that this series has me hooked in for the rest of the season. It’s cute, it’s very funny and three out of the four lead characters are already charming and entertaining. Kyoto Animation just keeps the hits coming along as unless something pretty bad happens to the animation or story quality in the middle, this one is going to be one of this season’s success stories.

The official OP animation for the upcoming eroge adaptation ‘Tears to Tiara’ has made its way online for fans to see. Coming in at a slightly longer 108 seconds (as opposed to the more standard 90 or so), the animation features a short intro and the opening theme ‘Free and Dream’ by Suara (who also did a theme song for another recent eroge turned anime hit, White Album). While I’m still excited to see the series, this OP is leaving me less than impressed… and the hat that Rhiannon wears is still monumentally stupid looking. She looks like a freakin mushroom. There I said it.