Archive for the ‘Anime’ Category

This is an interesting video that is linked (multiple times) in the comments of a Kotaku article writing on a blog post titled “Why do the Japanese Draw Themselves as White?” I am very surprised at the amount of commenters who are still reading the article through only one… cultural perspective(?), given the point of the article and the nature of the site itself. Perhaps they just lack knowledge of anime and manga history.

“Why Do Japanese Characters Look White?” [Kotaku]

Regardless of your opinion of yaoi, it’s hard not to enjoy this video, Anime Munters by go devil dante.

I came across this 2 1/2 minute anime short in the course of my daily browsing and throughly enjoyed it. While watching it, the old Looney Tunes cartoons came to mind. If nothing else, you can get your daily recommended pantsu.

Click for translations »

There is a new MMORPG coming out from NCsoft called Blade & Soul. I heard about this in the second half of last year when a trailer was teased for a week and then finally released. Sadly since then, there really hasn’t been any more information leaked out besides a couple of tidbits. The art designer is Hyung-tae Kim, whom you may know as the character designer for War of Genesis III and Magna Carta, both PS2 games. As the trailer shows, it has a very striking visual style. It will still be a while before we get to play it though, as it is marked for beta testing in fourth quarter of this year.

Blade & Soul (NCsoft)
Blade & Soul (Wikipedia)

In addition to the acquisition of many Geneon titles, Funimation also announced that they acquired over 30 ADV titles.  We had known that ADV had issues with its partner Sojitz.  Titles had been pulled and then reappeared from the ADV store.  Retailers were also saying that they were getting notice of distribution stopping for some titles.  Then last week, titles again disappeared from the online store with shipments being halted.

Funimation made the announcement on July the 4th that they were picking up a portion of ADV titles for distribution.  A handful of these titles had not had their whole series released, one of which being “Welcome to the NHK” (<3 the manga).

Funimation is setting themselves up to be a big American anime distributor.  Geneon is out and it remains to be seen if ADV will rebound from the loss of licenses.  I personally always liked the Funimation catalog.  They had the balls to carry titles that I couldn’t really see the other distributors carrying and have great titles like Fullmetal Alchemist, Beck and Gunslinger Girls.  They also seem to be embracing an online business model which will be the right way to go long-term.

Titles Funimation acquired are after the jump.

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Up until now, I haven’t done any anime or manga posts.  But with some of the announcements from Anime Expo this last weekend, now is a great time.

I was deeply saddened when I first heard about Geneon stopping its American distribution in September 2007.  They really carried many great titles and some wouldn’t even get finished before they stopped operations.  So when it was announced that Funimation was picking up select titles of Geneon, I was ecstatic.  I hurriedly clicked on the link in hopes that they would be picking up one title in particular.  And I am happy to say that they are picking up “When They Cry – Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni”.  They are picking up other series I wanted to watch also.  So it won’t be as hard tracking down the titles I want now.

As I nice little added surprise,  I didn’t know that Geneon had licensed “The Familiar of Zero” (Zero no Tsukaima) and this was also one of the titles that Funimation would be picking up.

You can find a list of titles being picked up after the jump.

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