There’s kind of a funny thing about posting things on the internet, namely that you can never really be too sure on who might see it and respond. On the forums for the website, Horror Digital, a user posted some rumors that Media Blasters was in dire straits and would soon be closing their NY offices and warehouse. Well, Media Blasters President John Sirabella saw and finally felt the need to step in and correct some of the misinformation going around.

In the original post, rumors were being thrown around that included a complete closing of the Media Blasters warehouse/offices were imminent and there were staff layoffs which cut the staff from 52 down to a skeleton crew of 10 as recently as July. Additionally the poster cited his “source” as saying titles such as the live action Buio Omega was being delayed because the company did not have the financial means to replicate or even get an HD master.

In response to this Sirabella laid out his side of things: the original poster had no idea what he’s talking about (I’m paraphrasing that a bit). According to Sirabella’s response, Media Blasters never had a staff of 52 (at its largest it was around 40) but there have been layoffs. The live action Buio Omega has been delayed to October but it is still on track.

As for the warehouses and offices; starting today Media Blasters will be handing over their distribution to Iowa based retailer Right Stuf while their NY offices will remain open just as they always have. So Media Blasters may not be throwing out the yaoi and fan service as frequently as they used to thanks to a soft market but there is at least a very steady pulse.

Thanks for playing everyone, we now return you to your regularly scheduled insanity.

<Via AnimeNews.biz, Scott Green>

There are lots of boring jobs out there but hey, we all gotta do what we can to make a living. Somehow though, anime has the magical ability to take many of these mundane jobs that no one really thinks about and make them exciting and interesting.

Maids/Butlers

In my neighborhood growing up, no one ever said ‘I want to be a servant who waits on someone else hand and foot when I grow up!’ It was usually the exact opposite actually. With the advent of maid cafes that slowly started to change into New York Anime Fest announcing a maid/butler cafe and having to create a waiting list for all the potential applications. It’s a weird world but thanks to a culture that loves their maids and butlers we can all enjoy this. So let’s all say a big thank you to Misaki, Emma, Hayate, Kogarashi, Sebastian and the others who have helped make it cool to want to wear a frilly uniform or tight suit.

Guns for Hire

Soldiers of fortune, assassins, mercenaries; doesn’t matter what you call them because they don’t care and would probably rather see you dead anyway. Sure this life does mean that you’d constantly be on the run, trying to scrape by just enough to have something hot to eat and bullets in your gun. In the end, you’re also usually the one causing the explosion, bagging the random love interest and thinking of your next big adventure. This is the glamorous life of an anime mercenary and if any part of it is as fun as it looks sign me up! Quit laughing! If Rokuro Okajima can become Rock than I can become something ridiculously manly too like… Boots! Yeah!

Mail Carriers

Neither rain, nor sleet, nor hail, nor giant armored bugs, nor people who want to kill them will keep these brave souls from making their deliveries. Sure being a civil servant has its perks but carrying the mail isn’t exactly a glamorous line of work… that is unless you’re carrying it across deserts and forests filled with danger. I may never see my mailman carrying a small firearm with him as he makes his rounds (then again…) but you ever get the feeling that extreme mail carrier games are just around the corner?

Teachers

This was the last job that I ever thought I’d end up with as a kid. Teaching? Going to school when I didn’t have to? Ha! Not bloody likely! After seeing series after series set in Japanese high schools however, sometimes I wonder what would’ve happened if I had applied myself a little more and taught overseas. Wacky gaijin gets a job teaching at a high school… yeah, it’s been done I’m sure.

Shut In

Sure it’s not technically a job but millions of people find ways to shut themselves off from the world and still survive each month on a strict convenience store diet. It’s not a great existence but sometimes you just want to tell the world to piss off.

Royalty

Every little girl grows up thinking that they want to be a princess before reality manages to crush all of their hopes and dreams. Plus let’s face it, in the modern age royalty around the world are largely figureheads who don’t get to much of anything anyway. When was the last time a king decided to smite his foes and plant his flag down on what was now their soil? At least in the anime world there are still some royal families with dreams of grandeur.

Doctors

In this world there are doctors who will heal you and make sure you live to see another day. In another world, there are doctors who will heal you, fix you, rebuild you and won’t let you die even if it means turning you a mindless shell armed with cybernetic implants. Hm, maybe in this case we’re better off with what we have.

Priest/Priestess

Alright, to be fair I’m not saying that it’s not cool to be a member of the clergy. Providing spiritual leadership and support is a very important role to play. That being said, it’s still nothing compared to presiding over a congregation of the damned, having complete control of an entire facet or life or waking up your own robot maid just because you’re studying Onmyoudo. Just saying. And while we’re on the subject…

God

Not a bad gig if you can get it.

While everyone was busy being excited hearing about Viz Media nabbing the license for Vampire Knight awhile ago, everyone else was anxiously awaiting news that the second season had been grabbed as well. This morning via their Facebook page, Viz Media confirmed just that: Vampire Knight Guilty will be coming to American shores on DVD though no word on a release date.

Viz Media announced the license of the high school vampire melodrama at last year’s ComicCon before releasing it to DVD this summer. Glad to see that this one will be released in its entirety here even if I had to give up on it a few episodes away from the end. Yeah sorry but the emo vampires just became too much for me to overcome.

<Via AnimeNews.biz>

Earlier this month, Crunchyroll announced that it would be re-releasing the acclaimed anime movie from Motoko Shinkai, 5cm Per Second on DVD. Originally released to DVD by ADV in 2008, the streaming site announced that it would be put out again on DVD next year but before that happens special screenings would take place.

The first of these details have been released today via a press release revealing two screenings occurring Friday September 17th in San Francisco. The event will take place during the J-Pop Summit happening at the New People Center (which I still really want to visit sometime). The two showings happen at 7pm and 8:45pm with special VIP tickets being made available for fans to access a special meet and greet in between the screenings. Information on how to get tickets and the event can be found at the official J-Pop Summit website but are limited so grab yours early… because yeah, I’m certain that Makoto Shinkai screening tickets are going to disappear faster than the plot in a harem comedy.

So any SF peeps plan on checking out the movie?

<Via ActiveAnime>

Full press release below the cut

Read the rest of this entry »

Remember back in the day when, if you wanted to send someone a short message, you had to use text messages or email? My goodness, did we really live so primitively? Well, Levi’s in Japan has solved this problem for everyone by creating HipMail which combines video messaging with Shiri moji (butt writing). The idea stems from a game dating back many years (possibly dating back to the Edo period) in which people spell letters with their butts for others to guess. The game is still played in the modern era at festivals, parties and now online.

The website is very straight forward; upon entering the site users are allowed to choose either English or Japanese (you can only type capital letters, numbers and some punctuation in English or hiragana in Japanese) and enter a message which are then spelled out by the ass of a model in jeans. If you’re typing a longer message you can see your message listed out otherwise just type and save. Your ass message is then turned into a video message which you can share online.

Having tested out the website I can say for sure that while it is fun creating ass messages for my friends to read, this technology is still just too powerful for mere mortals. Perhaps in another time and another place we’ll all be worthy and mature enough to have this toy but maybe I should stick to my cell phone for a little while longer.

By the way, the two messages I included above read ‘THANKS FOR READING OTAKU REVIEW!’ and ‘HEH I MADE HER SAY ASS’. Told you we weren’t mature enough for this.

<Via Gigazine>

After simulcasting the second season last year, Crunchyroll announced today that they will be streaming the entire 52 episode first season. Licensed by Bandai, the series is now available on DVD and with the available in the United States and Canada. This series joins other series from Bandai already streaming on Crunchyroll including Eureka Seven and Code Geass.

So this is another one that I’ve always thought about checking out but never did. Should I be clearing some space in my schedule to watch this one from the beginning?

<Via AnimeonDVD>

Back to business as usual today and it’s time to take another look at some anime coming down the line.

Chinka: An OVA being put together by famed super otaku Danny Choo with studio Hibuse has finally gotten its first trailer featuring the voice of Sato Satomi (Ritsu in K-ON, Yuu in Hatsukoi Limited). – Wow, I have absolutely no words for this.

 

Koe de Oshigoto: A four episode OVA from Studio Gokumi adapating the manga about a high school girl who becomes a seiyuu for adult visual novels. The two minute trailer shows quite a bit of character art and I think gives a pretty good idea at its sense of humor. The first episode will be released November 17th. – At one point I was curious to see this release, can’t say I still feel that but how terrible could it be?

 

Yumekui Merry: A boy who can see dreams and nightmares meets a girl from the dream world. No idea when this one is hitting the air waves but the animation is produced by J.C. Staff (whom I always have kind of a soft spot for) so it might be worth a look at least. The trailer posted to the official website lasts just over a minute and spends most of its time with the lead characters.

 

Freezing: The manga adaptation coming out in 2011 finally has its trailer and I admit, I am very impressed. Wow… it’s like someone mixed Queen’s Blade with Evangelion and added a side order of awesome. Seriously, check this out.

I had an actual Trailer Roundup planned for today but for some reason it just seems like a bad day to post it. I openly admit that I wasn’t a huge fan of Satoshi Kon’s movies. Certainly not as much as many others who are celebrating his life and legacy today. That doesn’t mean that I couldn’t recognize his talent for telling a story or creating lasting images. So with that in mind, it seems appropriate today to post an all Satoshi Kon edition of the Trailer Roundup. Tomorrow will feature a brand new Trailer Roundup featuring some upcoming series but today is for the fans who may have never even seen his works before.

Perfect Blue (1997 – Produced by Oniro)

Millennium Actress (2001 – Madhouse) : Remember back when studios had money to push their anime releases?

Tokyo Godfathers (2003 – Madhouse)

Paranoia Agent (2004 – Madhouse)

Paprika (2007 – Madhouse) : I accidentally included the video which had the opening animation, thanks for pointing it out. I’m adding the real trailer now.

It’s a sad day for anime fans today as it has been confirmed through multiple sources that director Satoshi Kon has passed away at the age of 46 from pancreatic cancer. Born in 1963, Kon began his work in anime as a set designer for Roujin Z in 1991 before making his full directorial debut with Perfect Blue in 1997 (He did direct one episode of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure years earlier). Afterward, Kon went on to direct several other acclaimed anime films and TV series including Millennium Actress (2001), Paranoia Agent (2004) and most recently Paprika (2007). At the time of his passing, Kon was working on a project titled Yume-Miru Kikai with studio Madhouse which was to be a futuristic folklore story that children could enjoy.

No clever comments here, no jokes about if this is all just going to be a dream. Just respect for his work. The anime universe has lost another great man.

Updated: Corrected age of death and added the cause.

Available from Amazon Available from Right Stuf

Shigofumi – Letters from the Departed – Complete Collection Released By: Sentai Filmworks Released: 8/17/10 Reviewed: 8/23/10 Rated: 17+

The Story

What if you died with one last message in your heart that you never got to share? No one realizes it but after death, people are granted one last chance to share their thoughts and send a letter to someone. Once they’ve written these shigofumi, letters from the dead, they are delivered by carriers chosen from among the dead by the Gospel Office. Sometimes these letters can serve as a moment of healing such as when a girl receives a letter from the mother she didn’t know or an older couple giving their beloved pet one last chance to nap in its favorite sunspot. Many times though these letters come from the apathetic after they have committed suicide or worse, ones with hate in their hearts such as when a boy is bullied past his breaking point.

Over the course of 13 episodes, the series will follow one of these shigofumi carriers named Fumika. On the job for 3 years, she and her talking staff Kanaka are driven on by the job and personal dreams. Fumika is different from others who carry the shigofumi to the living however in that she still ages while everyone else is frozen at the age they were when they died. As the series progresses, the hidden mysteries behind why this is will come into sharp focus as certain jobs will bring her past back into view. As the missions bring her in contact with more people however, people from her past will start to look into the mystery themselves and learn the truth about a quiet girl that they once knew earlier in their lives.

Good and the Bad

Whenever I start reviewing a new anime, it generally takes me a few days to get through it all and collect my thoughts. Once I started Shigofumi I had it completely viewed within a day.

In the first episodes, Shigofumi sets a tone for the series that will continue and rarely fail until the very end. Upon its introduction, it’s hard to deny the light, breezy atmosphere that it brings to the table. While Fumika is cold and calculating in her job, the flirtatious relationship between the teenagers she meets and Kanaka constantly spouting punch lines set a very mellow mood matched by a very soft art style. Shigofumi is one of the few series I can recall that will then take that hope it slipped inside of you and literally cut it out leaving audiences with the same despair that many of these people leave the world with. After completely changing the tone, Shigofumi will then spend most of its time afterward exploring the darker sides of death and the feelings that we might leave this world with.

Besides a couple of two episode arcs near the beginning and middle, every episode will features an episodic story that will eventually revolve around Fumika delivering a shigofumi. Before the audience can get to that moment however, each episode spends some time with the person who is about to write their letter. As with reality however, not everyone lives a happy existence. Everywhere in life there are challenges and this applies especially to high school. The most common themes to come out of each episode revolve around bullying, child abuse and suicide. Multiple times, suicide is a major motivation brought up but no matter who it is, there are always different reasons for why these characters have to take their own life and it is always put into stark realities (Interesting side note: multiple episodes of this series had to be altered from their original because of events that occurred in real life Japan).

Tying all of these single stories together is the gradual evolution of Fumika via the friends she had in her old life. As she goes about her job, Fumika initially comes across as cold and even calculating about her job. No matter the circumstances, the life of the person she’s delivering to means nothing to her. All that matters is the job. As the episodes progress however, her deliveries will bring her into more contact with the people she once knew while alive. In particular the story does a good job of creating a gradual evolution of the character as her past is revealed bit by bit.

This is also unfortunately where the series begins to slip just a little. In the first episodes of the series, the tone and story are introduced very quickly. We know who the heroine is and we know what her job is. A very short time late, audiences then already know Kaname and his desire to investigate the mystery. Another short time later, he has already uncovered most of the secrets and is now hunting for the last clues to tie it all together. Every single episode, Kaname makes more and more progress and by episode 8, the series has already hit a fevered peak which only serves as a letdown as Shigofumi winds down into a much less interesting conclusion.

What’s frustrating about this is that in this case is that Shigofumi didn’t have to suffer from this. Had the series been given more time, things could have been very different. Creating a dark, chilling feeling to its storytelling in the beginning it’s a shame that the story afterwards ends up feeling so rushed. While the single episode stories are incredibly intriguing, it never feels like the audience is ever given enough time to soak in this and really take in everything that happens because something new is happening with Kaname and his search for answers.

One of the best examples of this rushed storytelling is revealed through Fumika herself. Throughout the series her rival, Chiaki, will mention how mysterious it is that Fumika still ages. At no point in the series is this ever a major factor as it’s not like we’re ever around her long enough to actually see her age. Perhaps had the series been longer this could have been introduced in a more dramatic way but instead the constant reminders just sound like PSA reminders of ‘things we should know’.

The additional point of needless suffering are in the terrible questions and holes left by the close of the series. Throughout the series; Fumika, her partner Kanaka, another carrier named Chiaki and her staff Matoma, will refer to various things relating to their job: who they work for, laws that they have to follow, etc. At one point even, Chiaki will travel great lengths to consult with someone far wiser than she in order to save a life. And yet at no point will these things ever be explained. While it’s nice that the series puts the emphasis on the delivery more than any of the mechanisms behind it, it’s still puzzling to have absolutely zero clue behind anything or what they’re even talking about.

Music

The one thing in Shigofumi that surprised me the most was in the weak background score composed by Hikaru Nanase (Chrono Crusade, Gravion, Angel Sanctuary). With the dark nature of the series, I was constantly on the lookout for the dark tones and accents that Nanase has been notably capable of creating. As I watched each episode though there were always scenes that felt like they could have used a strong musical accent instead of the mostly underwhelming tones that rarely standout against the background. Very occasionally a soft piano solo could highlight a darker moment of loneliness or despair but this isn’t a series that you’ll ever have to worry about missing something because the background score was just too good or powerful.

Extras

It’s almost a weird feeling these days to say that there are actual extras included with this set but indeed on the first disc, there they are. Included with the animation are a series of visual dramas which are essentially characters voice over still images. In the series of mini episodes (each one is about 5 minutes long), more time will be spent with Fumika as she makes some additional deliveries and spends more time with her friends.

While the stories are relatively interesting, the changes in artwork were what caught me off guard. I wasn’t able to find information regarding the artists but it’s interesting to watch how the art style changes from short to short. In some of the shorts, the artwork are soft images that look like they could’ve been watercolors. In some the artwork is very similar to the actual anime and then are done in crude storyboards. It’s still a nice extra to be able to go through when the series is done but a ‘play all’ button would’ve been a nice touch to have.

Overall

The rushed storytelling prevents Shigofumi from being a great series. The very blunt presentation of the episodic stories and characters do manage to keep this series a very good one. While looking at the darker side of death, Shigofumi manages to keep fans entertained and even manages to generate a few laughs along the way with the occasional light hearted delivery. While a few plot holes will leave some frustrated by the end, they certainly weren’t enough to make me regret the time I spent with this series. A series that will leave you wanting more; this is a great way to cap off the season. Very recommended!