AnimeNation Anime News Blog

To refresh your memory or introduce you to an interesting opening animation sequence, I offer the opening of 1987′s Akai Kodan Zillion TV series. The theme song is “Pure Stone” sung by Risa Yuuki.

Without realizing precisely what I’d done, I now realize that I chose to attend the X Japan concert that occured on vocalist Toshi’s 45 birthday. The final performance of X Japan’s first North American tour was a spectacular show held on October 10, 2010, 10/10/10.

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Japanese publisher Kadokawa Shoten has announced the development of an anime based on writer Hiroyuki Fushimi and illustrator Takuya Fujima’s light novel series R-15. The novel series revolves around an exceptional student attending an elite school for geniuses who secretly works as a professional erotica novelist. The novel series premiered last year and currently has five volumes.

Source: Anime News Network

Japanese publisher Kodansha has confirmed that the Yozakura Quartet ~Hoshi no Umi~ OAD will be continued in a second episode. The first Hoshi no Umi OAD went on sale in Japan yesterday in limited edition copies of the ninth collected volume of Suzuhito Yasuda’s manga. The second Hoshi no Umi OAD will be bundled with limited edition copies of the tenth manga volume that goes on sale April 8, 2011.

It would be logical that there’s a second episode since the first episode is subtitled “Yozakura Quartet O.A.D. Series 001.”

Source: Anime News Network

The homepage for the upcoming Saiyuki Gaiden OVA series has added a 2:20 streaming teaser. The three episode series is scheduled to debut next year.

Source: Moon Phase

To refresh your memory or introduce you to an interesting opening animation sequence, I offer the opening of the 1995 Gokinjo Monogatari TV series. The theme song is “He.Ro.I.N” sung by Rumi Shishido.

Question:
Is J.C. Staff overdoing it? Are they going to end up like Gonzo? It seems to me that J.C. Staff is making more and more series. This fall season has four series from them, not including the Railgun OVA. Will their high production of shows bite them back just like Gonzo?

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Comic culture retail observation website ICv2 has estimated the 2010 retail sales of anime DVDs and BDs in North America to range from $160-200 million, down from a peak of $550 million in 2003. ICv2′s estimate is a rough estimate because the Walmart retail chain does not reveal its anime DVD sales statistics.

In 2009, anime DVD & BD sales in Japan earned 77.7 billion yen ($865 million USD). Remember that Japan is roughly the size of California.

Seven Seas Entertainment has announced its acquisition of translation and distribution rights for Nozomu Tamaki’s Dance in the Vampire Bund side-story manga Dance in the Vampire Bund Gaiden: Dive in the Vampire Bund. The single volume story revolves around two tourists in the “Bund” vampire nation who are turned into vampires and seek to reverse the affliction within the 48 hours before it becomes irreversible. The manga will retail at $10.99 beginning next April.

The November issue of Bessatsu Margaret Magazine that goes on sale in Japan next week will formally announce a January premiere of the second season of acclaimed shoujo drama anime television series Kimi ni Todoke. The first 25 episode anime adaptation of Karuho Shiina’s romance manga aired last fall.

Suddenly January can’t come soon enough.

Source: Anime News Network

Japanese television network TV Asahi has announced plans to acquire full ownership of the Shin-ei Animation production studio best known for animating Doraemon and Crayon Shin-chan. TV Asahi acquired a 90% ownership of the animation studio in 2008. The network has now agreed upon a deal to purchase the remaining 10% of the company from Sankichiro Kusube, the younger brother of Daikichiro Kusube, who founded the production studio in 1976.

Source: Anime News Network

The eleven year old anime production studio Future Planet Co. finalized bankruptcy filing on September 29 after shutting its doors permanently this past July 31. At its height of success, the studio earned 1 billion yen ($12 million USD) in its fiscal year that ended in March 2007. Late this summer the studio had a 1.026 billion yen ($12.34 million USD) debt. The studio co-produced the Romance of Three Kingdoms animated television series currently broadcast on Japanese TV as Saikyo Bushoden Sangoku Engi.

Losing any anime production studio is always a loss, but considering the terrible quality of the Sangoku Engi anime series, I can’t call this an especially big loss.

Source: Anime News Network

The DC Anime Club will host a three hour marathon of girls’ anime from 2-5pm at the Martin Luther King, Jr Memorial Library in Washington, DC on Saturday, October 16. This event is free and open to the public ages 13 and up.

To refresh your memory or introduce you to an interesting opening animation sequence, I offer the opening of the 1998 Kareshi Kanojo no Jijou TV series. The theme song is “Tenshi no Yubikiri” sung by Fukuda Mai.

On the evening of July 13, 1996 a friend showed me a three minute long anime music video. It was director Rintaro and character designer Nobuteru Yuuki’s X², their first anime adaptation of CLAMP’s ongoing manga series X. That fluidly animated, bloody, and spectacularly visual psychic action extravaganza stunned and awed me. However, the anime alone wasn’t solely what made the impact. The music video was set to a pounding, intense Japanese heavy metal song driven by insistent drums, powerful guitar, and raw, emotional vocals that demanded attention. Without even consciously realizing that was happening, I became an X Japan fan that evening, and in the fourteen years since, my respect and adoration of the group and its music has only increased.

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