AnimeNation Anime News Blog

AnimeNEXT, a convention that traditionally hosts American voice actor guests of honor, has announced two Japanese guests who will attend this year’s convention, Akitaro Daichi and Reiko Yasuhara.

Akitaro Daichi’s directorial works include Kodomo no Omocha, Jubei-chan, Fruits Basket, and Fairy Princess Ren.

Reiko Yasuhara has performed the theme song for the Now and Then, Here and There anime series, and provided the voices of characters including Ran in Kaze Makase Tsukikage Ran, Kyoko Honda and Saki Hanajima in Fruits Basket and Tsumura Mikage in Jubei chan 2.

This year’s AnimeNEXT convention will be held on June 17-19 at the Meadowlands Exposition Center in New Jersey.

Question:
What is the best current comedy anime? Things I look for in comedy anime seem to be more profound in older anime, but I figured I haven’t seen a great anime that made me laugh (for the right reasons) in a long time. What is your current recommendation?

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The official website for the Kidou Shinsengumi Moeyoken television series is now open. The series is scheduled to premier in July.

Anime on DVD has discovered that TOKYOPOP has announced its acquisition of domestic distribution rights to the 2002 internet/television anime series Psychic Academy. The first DVD will retail at $24.99 beginning September 13th.

According to Anime News Network, the first of two Psychic Academy DVDs will be released with volume 9 of the translated manga.

Right Stuf International has announced that the Gravitation OVA series DVD and the adult anime DVD Vanilla Series: Maid Service (Maid no Yakata ~Zetsubo-hen~) will both be released on August 30th. The Gravitation DVD will retail at $29.99. Maid Service will retail at $24.99.

Source: Anime on DVD

The official Japanese website for Square Enix’s upcoming Playstation 2 game Heavy Metal Thunder is open and now hosts a Flash trailer featuring a bizarre mix of CG and anime.

Source: Rakuga Kidou

Galaxy Anime has updated with plenty of previews of video games revealed at the recent E3 convention including Hironobu Sakaguchi’s Lost Odyssey, Tales of Legendia, Arc the Lad: Shadow of Darkness, Dead or Alive 4, Zelda: Twilight of the Princess, and much more.

Question:
Do American fans these days care more about DVD packaging than the anime on the disc itself? Maybe it’s an extension of my personal buying habits, but I always thought the people interested in buying Japanese R2s would generally be interested in acquiring titles either not likely to be picked up for American distribution or released exceptionally poorly here. But I can’t shake the feeling that many R2 buyers have become pack-in whores because limited edition extras are cool and they believe because R2s are better than R1s, it follows that they are better fans because they buy R2s. What compels someone to buy each volume of R2 Bakuretsu Tenshi as it comes and get it EMS shipped to them every month? With shipping fees added that must be at least $800. And the show is crap! But all that’s being talked about is how cool the artbox and figures are.

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Anime on DVD has published an interview with American voice actress and animation art instructor Samantha Inoue Harte.

Digital Manga has announced that artist Range Murata will attend Anime Expo this year to promote Digital Manga’s publication of an English language version of Robot volume 1, the color manga collection that Murata compiled and edited.

San Francisco, California’s ABC7 television station and Walt Disney Studios are now hosting a drawing to award tickets to an advance screening of Howl’s Moving Castle in San Francisco. The drawing is only open to California residents living in the 13 counties surrounding San Francisco. Howl’s Moving Castle opens in limited theatrical release on June 10th. The date of the advance screening is not specified.

Source: Nausicaa.net

New episodes of Gungrave will air on the G4/Tech TV network beginning in June. Episode 13 will air at 1 AM in the early morning of June 8th.

Source: Anime News Network

The official Japanese website for the upcoming Playstation 2 RPG Gundam: True Odyssey now hosts a streaming Windows Media trailer.

Source: Majoria News

The short anime prologue sequence of Namco’s upcoming Playstation 2 RPG Tales of Legendia is now available in streaming Windows Media format. The official site also hosts screenshots of the game’s opening animation. Character design for Tales of Legendia is provided by Nakazawa Kazuto, best known as the character designer for Samurai Champloo.

Source: Rakuga Kidou

Question:
What’s your opinion on Kureyon Shin-chan? While the show remains listed as one of the last TV programs in Japan for parents to have their children watch, the movies are highly and critically acclaimed. When _Moretsu Otona-Teikoku no Gyakusyu_ (”Like Anything! The Empire of the Grown People Strikes Back”) was released in 2001, some critics ranked it higher than Miyazaki’s _Spirited Away_. Shinchan the movies, however, are seldom mentioned in the U.S. anime fan community.

I saw Otona-Teikoku last month for the first time and thought it was hard to share fun and sentimentalism of it with foreigners because it’s very difficult to explain what Osaka World Exposition or Osaka Banpaku in ‘70 really means to us. For example, Otomo talked in an interview that he had directed _Steam Boy_ thinking of EXPO70.

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