Anime Apolyton - Spring 2008

[Wraith]

--"I have been working through http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SliceOfLife and they are pretty much all great."

Not sure I agree with all their classification there (school comedy != slice of life) but it's not a horrible list to start from.

--"When is Haruhi going to come in a bundle. I keep waiting, but not seeing it."

Mid July. There's some kind of bundle already out, but it looks like it's just a volume 1 plus CDs thing.

Not seeing too much exciting with the upcoming summer season. A new season of Slayers is the only obvious have-to-try.

Wraith
"Young lady, you dropped your porn."
-- Tsuyuri ("Doujin Work")

[Jon Miller]

So I finished Nodame Cantabile.

I liked it quite a bit, even though it wasn't as sweet or funny as other slice-of-life anime I have watched. I think I really liked the music, it might be want to start playing piano again (let's see if it holds through the week, I am busy right now). By the way, an example of what I mean by sweet is in ARIA (which I haven't completed yet, although I did watch half of the first season and am intending to watch more) although it has it's funny moments too.

JM
(Most seem more sweet or more funny, I have generally liked the ones who focused more on funny like Azumanga Daioh.)

[Wraith]

Anime Expo is this weekend, and I had intended to wait until it was over to post with all the news, but I decided not to wait.

Before I get to why, some other news that's happened since last post. PiQ, the Newtype USA "replacement" magazine, has already folded. Only had a few issues before they went under, but they suffered greatly from trying to be an everything magazine. Too many of those already out there, and were doing it better, so they really never had a chance.

Kodansha is moving in to the US manga market. They'll be selling titles directly. How well this will work out remains to be seen. Japanese companies releasing DVDs in R1 have not had a good track record, but manga might be a different story. Kodansha has already done a number of releases with English translations, since they've had a whole line of bilingual Japanese and English manga for people trying to learn English. At the least, we can expect better print and paper quality ^_^

ADV has been having some financial problems lately aside from the whole PiQ deal. They've laid off people, auctioned off a bunch of surplus office furniture and supplies, and pretty much stalled out on their entire manga line. Now, on the first day of Anime Expo (and no, this isn't the big news), they've announced that they've split from Sojitz, the Japanese company they had partnered with. Several titles, including Kanon and Welcome to the NHK, have been put on hold. No word yet on whether or not ADV will be able to finish them.

And finally the big news, which is that Funimation is taking on a number of Geneon titles. Looks like they'll be finishing everything Geneon left partially released, along with at least some of the titles Geneon had licensed but not yet released, like Nanoha.

I'll post more from the con as news comes out.

Wraith
"A superbly skillful execution with a spectacularly amateurish ending... it must be Skuld."
-- Keiichi ("Oh My Goddess")

[Jon Miller]

I own some manga now, btw, 1, 4, and 5 of Yotsuba&!

I have continued to watch quite a bit of anime. I also recently bought Noein cause it was relatively cheap and looked interesting. It was good, but not great.

I also saw Noir there,and never finished that. But it was expensive and I thought that Gunslinger Girls was better (when will they get up past the first season in the US Manga? Since the 2nd season was a disappointment?).

I am actually more interested in some light novel series than the manga. Those being Boogiepop Phantom (I own 3 of these), Melancholy of... , and Full Metal Panic.

JM

[Wraith]

--"I own some manga now, btw, 1, 4, and 5 of Yotsuba&!"

Good series, but unfortunately an ADV license. 6 was supposed to be out months ago, but isn't yet. ADV so far has claimed that work on it is finished, it just hasn't been printed. They won't commit to any release date for it, which seems stupid if they're really in as bad a shape as they seem, since with work on it done if they published they'd at least get some revenue going on it.

Which reminds me. Funimation is taking over 30 of ADV's titles, which gives them quite a big chunk of work to do. Their deal with Geneon is only distribution, I think, and the Geneon titles are pretty much complete as far as translation and dubbing goes, so they shouldn't be a big challenge. The ADV titles will require more work.

--"I also saw Noir there,and never finished that. But it was expensive and I thought that Gunslinger Girls was better"

It is. Noir is one of the style-over-substance shows to me (Bee Train Studio seems to specialize in them whenever they get in on the production side instead of sticking with the animation side). Pretty and a great soundtrack, but the story itself really isn't much.

--"when will they get up past the first season in the US Manga?"

Unfortunately, this is another ADV license, so don't expect any action on it any time soon. However, it does go a bit past where the first season of the anime ends, and introduces a new girl, the first of the next generation cyborgs.

--"Melancholy of..."

Not sure about the other two, but first of these is scheduled for April of next year, so you'll have a bit of a wait.

Which reminds me, I need to find out when the next Twelve Kingdoms book is due out.

Wraith
"I'm... a little shy."
-- Sora ("Sketchbook ~full color’S~")

[Jon Miller]

And I can't even find all the episodes of Sketchbook ~full color'S~ subbed

what I downloaded doesn't have subs for the last episodes

JM

[Wraith]

Hmm. Only new license announced at the con that I'm interested in is Spice and Wolf.

Wraith
"In my village, it's said that if you encounter a storm, you pray to God, but if you encounter Lina Inverse you curse him because there's no hope left."
-- Fishwoman ("Slayers Revolution")

[The Mad Monk]

DeathNote is dead, long live...ah, to hell with it.

It had its moments, including the next-to-last episode, but overall it was disappointing.

Especially the last episode.

[DinoDoc]

It's not over TMM. According to wiki, they still have one more episode to play.

[The Mad Monk]

That "episode" is a two-hour rehash of the series, that appeared two full months after epidode 37. I would call it a movie, but it might not be worthy of that name, so I'll call it scraping every last bit of value from the fanbase, instead.

[The Mad Monk]

...besides, AS is not showing it.

[Wraith]

Yeah, the last episode of Death Note was pretty disappointing.

In any case, Funimation is already announcing release dates for some of the Geneon titles they'll be releasing.

Wraith
"A fine is a tax for breaking the law; a tax is a fine for obeying the law."
-- J. H. Goldfuss

[DaShi]

Originally posted by The Mad Monk
DeathNote is dead, long live...ah, to hell with it.

It had its moments, including the next-to-last episode, but overall it was disappointing.

Especially the last episode.

Ugh, the last episode was horrible. The manga ending was much better. And given how much time they gave to Light crying, they would have had time to follow the actual ending to the story. For the most part, I feel that they pretty much gave up on the anime after you-know-who you-know-whated.

[The Mad Monk]

Code Geass is interesting.

[Nostromo]

I read somewhere there's a new Miyazaki coming out in Japan. Its based on the little Mermaid. And since his health isn't very good, it could be his last.