Posts Tagged ‘hetalia axis powers’

Alright, finally we’re in the home stretch of this very busy news cycle that Funimation put everyone through today. Saving the best bits for last, Funimation made five license announcements today at their panel at Otakon. Starting with two new summer simulcasts, Funimation revealed today that they will be picking up the “fairy tale parody” series (I use that phrase very loosely and love that even Funimation use the phrase ‘fairy tale-ish’ in their release) Ookami san, the vapid moe harem eroge adaptation Blessed of Campanella (Shukufuku no Campanella) and the popular fan service series Strike Witches 2. Honestly all three of these are kind of a surprise to me; Strike Witches 2 because it started as a Crunchyroll simulcast earlier this month and the other two because they really aren’t that good. Regardless, all three series will begin streaming on the official Funimation site in August with DVD releases all planned for 2011.

In Hetalia news, Funimation also announced today that they have picked up the latest season of the popular series Hetalia World Party along with the movie Hetalia Paint it White. Like the previous announcements, the latest season will begin streaming on their official site in August and the movie will see a DVD release in 2011.

Finally, Funimation licensed two additional movies. The first one is the one that fans have probably long suspected would be coming but here it is anyway: Yes Virginia, Funimation is releasing the second of the four Evangelion remakes Evangelion 2.0: You Can [Not] Advance. The movie originally opened in 2009 in Japan and will finally be getting its North American DVD and Blu ray release in 2011.

Last from Funimation is the one that completely took me by surprise. Released in 2009, the family fantasy movie won the Best Animated Film category at the Japanese Academy Awards and features a family coming together to fight off a real world crisis that occurs after a teen accidently brings down a worldwide social networking site. That’s right, Funimation has picked up Summer Wars. You can tell them thank you for that in all the usual places.

And that does it for today. It’s almost 1am and I’m exhausted! If there are any incoherent rambles, typos or just plain weird passages that you notice I haven’t fixed feel free to point them out and I’ll fix them in the morning. For now though Funimation, thanks for an exhausting night of catch up. For everyone else, all the press releases are below the cut and as always it’s been real, it’s been fun, it’s been… zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

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An announcement has been posted to the Hetalia official website revealing that the very popular web streamed anime will be moving to TV starting this July. No details have been announced regarding what kind of TV premiere it will be (i.e. new episodes, re-airing previous episodes or something else all together) or what network it’s on but hopefully new details will go up soon.

Normally this wouldn’t be as big of a deal as you might think. Sometimes a series that started online gets to graduate to television, its not entirely unheard of. In this case however, Hetalia has scored a particularly meaningful victory because its getting to move back to TV.

When Hetalia first premiered in early 2009, it was always meant to be broadcast on television. Unfortunately, in the weeks leading up to the series premiere protests began springing up in surrounding countries regarding certain panels that they felt put them in an unfavorable light. The network says that it was due to the many ethnic jokes but either way, the series was removed from the TV listings and regulated to the Animate TV website. Not that it mattered, the series went on to become a hit with fans in both Japan and the US and is currently in its third season. Funimation also recently began streaming episodes on their official site as well.

Hetalia moving back to television shows just how popular this series and it’s amazing that it took this long for it to finally get onto television. Admittedly I could never really get into it. I tried once but Italy drove me absolutely insane. I recently asked someone if I should try again. Their reply was that if Italy drove me nuts that quickly it was only going to be worse for me later.

<Via Gigazine>

Fans of the wacky five minute weekly series Hetalia can rejoice as a second season of the series has been green lit for production. Despite being hit with a wave of protests from Korea forcing the series off television before it could even premiere, Hetalia continues to air online and via mobile phones gaining a loyal audience in the process. For those unaware, the series is a satirical look at the UN with each country being represented by a chibi character that uses the country’s stereotypes as a template. In the original manga, Korea and Japan have a little incident involving breasts which Koreans took as a reference to the rocks in the East Sea/Sea of Japan. No word on when the twenty six episode second season will be premiering online beyond ‘after this summer’.