AnimeExpo has announced that voice actress and vocalist Kikuo Inoue will be attending the convention as a guest of honor. Inoue-san’s most memorable roles have included Belldandy of Ah! My Goddess, Electra from Nadia, Kasumi Tendou of Ranma, and Rune Venus of El Hazard.
Nomura Rie (age 16), a popular idol from Japanese Seven Eleven TV commercials, is about to make her musical debut starring in the lead role of Tezuka Osamu’s classic “Ribbon no Kishi (Princess Knight).” The musical will run Aug 8 - 12 at the Tokyo Performing Arts Center.
Based on the original manga by Tezuka-sensei published between 1953-56, Princess Knight later spawned a 52 episode TV series produced by Mushi Productions that aired on Japanese TV from 1967-1968. Princess Knight told the story of a young princess in a fairy tale kingdom who must pretend to be a male for political reasons.
Source: Anime News Service
According to The Magic Box, an Asian company has devised an unlicensed Playstation 2 memory card device that will disable the DVD player region code recognition in the Playstation 2, making any Playstation a region free DVD player while the mod card is inserted in the system.
Epoch Toys has revealed the first image from its second series of Soul Calibur action figures, a prototype of Astaroth. The first series of Soul Calibur figures included Mitsurugi, Xianghua, and Nightmare and is available in stores now.
Source: Figures.com.
Japanese toy company Yellow Submarine has announced a new variant version of the Belldandy Ah! My Goddess figure originally released earlier this year. The variant version will feature a lighter shade of blue on Belldandy’s dress and include a limited edition trading card.
Around the end of the summer Palisades Marketing will releasing a variant of their Trigun bust of Nicholas Wolfwood wearing his sunglasses with his cross-gun free of its cover. The statue will retail for $45.
Source: Figures.com
Jackie Chan has announced that he will star in an epic Mandarin-language film for Hong Kong’s Golden Harvest Studios. With a budget of $78 million, it will be more than twice as costly as the most expensive film previously produced in the Asian film center. Titled The Art of War, it is to be based on the 2000-year-old writings of Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu. Chan will also serve as executive producer.
Source: Internet Movie Database
Question:
I am looking for non-scifi non-fantasy anime. Hmm… that’s funny. None seem to exist. Are there any mature, character based, realistic anime out there? I want something the equivalent to a sitcom or something similar. Something about high school kids without powers or giant robots would be nice.
Media Blasters has announced several new anime releases and licenses.
The Maho Tsukai Tai TV series will debut on subbed and dubbed VHS and bilingual DVD on September 25th. The first volume, “I Wanna Do More,” named after the opening theme song, will include the first 4 of 13 TV episodes. The TV series is a direct continuation of the 6 episode OAV series.
Space Travelers will debut in the US on dubbed VHS and bilingual DVD on September 25th as well. The 1999 “retro” sci-fi film was accompanied in Japan by a live-action adaptation.
Also on September 25th, Media-Blasters will be releasing bilingual DVD versions of the Marriage OAV series, the first 13 episodes of Zenki (formerly released in the US on VHS by Software Sculptors), and both OAV episodes of the hentai series Slight Fever Syndrome.
After a lengthy delay, Pioneer has announced that they will release subtitled and dubbed VHS boxed sets of the second season of the Fushigi Yuugi TV series on August 21st.
FUNimation has delayed the Dragonball Z: World Tournament and DBZ: Frieza- Transformation DVDs from their original release date of June 12 until June 26th. No reason has been given for the delay.
Source: The Right Stuf
The AnimEigo Talk mailing list has reported that Rumiko Takahashi, creator of Ranma, Urusei Yatsura and Maison Ikkoku, has returned to her somewhat lesser known manga story One Pound Gospel. The series resumed in this week’s Shonen Sunday. One Pound Gospel follows a 19 year old boxer who receives encouragement from a young nun. A 50 minute OAV based on the series was released in 1988.
In its ongoing promotion of its domestic Trigun soundtrack, TokyoPop has referred to the series as, “seen on Cartoon Network.”
Pioneer representative Chad Kime has informed Anime News Network that, “This is simply an error by Tokyo Pop.” Currently there are no confirmed plans for Trigun to air on the Cartoon Network mainly due to the show’s “excessive use of guns.”
Tokyo Pop has announced that they have acquired the translation and publication rights to four manga series: Corrector Yui, Marmalade Boy, Kodomo no Omocha, and Island.
Corrector Yui, created by Kia Asamiya, is a cyber-shoujo magical girl adventure story that’s been adapted into two TV series.
Marmalade Boy is an odd relationship/romantic comedy that spawned a highly popular long running TV series.
Kodomo no Omocha is a hyperactive relationship comedy that somewhat parodies Marmalade Boy. It spawned a fan favorite OAV and 102 episode TV series.
Island will be the first Korean “manga” published in America and involves a haunted tropical island.
Our Japanese distributors have informed us that the Final Fantasy X theme song single, “Suteki de Ne” with the vocal arrangement of Arith’s Theme from Final Fantasy VII will be released in Japan on July 18th, and the 4 disc Final Fantasy X official soundtrack composed by Nobuo Uematsu will go on sale on August 1st. As with previous Final Fantasy soundtracks, the first edition Final Fantasy X soundtracks will feature limited edition packaging. AnimeNation will have both of these CDs available for pre-order shortly.
Namco has released some basic details regarding their upcoming arcade fighting game Tekken 4.
Tekken 4 will be set two years after the events of Tekken 3 and will totally disregard Tekken Tag. As such, Tekken 4 will return to singular one-on-one fights and will not feature tag-battle fighting with multiple characters. But, unlike all previous Tekken games, Tekken 4 will will no longer feature infinite fighting ground. The fighting areas will now be enclosed or feature walls.
Source: Mad Man’s Cafe
