Posts Tagged ‘jast usa’

Every year JAST USA attends Anime Expo and yet the company never gets as much coverage as you might expect. Just like previous years though, the eroge localizer didn’t fail to leave fans happy by announcing the license of Tenkuu no Yumina (Yumina the Ethereal) from Will (Yume Miru Kusuri) subdivision, Eternal.

Originally released in early 2009, the high school comedy RPG involves a heroine named Yumina Midorishita who gets bad grades and is destined to save the universe. Transferring into the school on the orders of his father, Ayumi Akashima begins his job of protecting Yumina but ends up making her fail her exams instead dooming her to repeat a year. Just when the two are about to give up hope, a chance to participate in the Seitokai Tournament arrives with the winner becoming the student council president able to make any rule they wish for the good of the students… say like, no more skipping grades.

During the panel, President of JAST USA Peter Payne noted that there were at least 100 hours of game play! The game will be released within the next year but it wasn’t noted which label it would be released under.

July 1st; usually known as the day that I’m up early and waiting for news to start filtering out of Anime Expo. A quick note that this year I am going to be at the day job for most of the weekend so there won’t be any (or hardly any) live coverage of the event. I will try to get news up as soon as I can but it’ll likely be in the form of nightly wrap up posts.

But alright, let’s get this game of Catch Up done so that I can get back to waiting for Google Reader to light up with updates!

NEW ANIME

Arakawa Under the Bridge Season 2: At the close of the Arakawa season 1, an announcement went up for a second season. – Yay I guess. Really didn’t like this one.

Beelzebub Special Episodes: Two special anime episodes will be made based off the manga Beelzebub. The two episodes will be shown at major cities around Japan in September as part of the Jump Super Anime Tour. – MyAnimeList notes that premieres of this nature are usually followed by online premieres to stay tuned for further updates.

ToHeart2 Bonus OVA: The first release of ToHeart2 is now scheduled to include a special bonus episode which will focus on the character Manaka. The disc will be released on September 23rd and will also have a special edition which includes other goods such as a pillow cover and drama/character song CD. – Are they STILL making ToHeart???

Sekai-ichi Hatsukoi ~Onodera Ritsu no Baai~ OAD: The last anime announcement to squeak out this week is for the boys love manga Sekai-ichi Hatsukoi. In the announcement, it was revealed that the fifth volume would be bundled with a 20 minute anime episode when it is released next year. – Two male shoujo editors becoming romantically entangled? Is this as common a theme in BL as it sounds?

Getting away from new anime and into the news that slipped through the cracks this week, we see some new DVD releases and a delay that can’t be blamed on Bandai!

Black Butler DVD Release Date: Like last week, Funimation has sneakily opened another official website with a brand new DVD announcement. According to the new official site, Black Butler (Kuroshitsuji) will be released January 11th 2011. – I’m curious to know why Funimation hasn’t been announcing these with a bit more fanfare.

Gainax Working on Dantalian no Shoka: Originally announced at the beginning of June, it’s finally been revealed that Gainax will be the studio working on the anime adaptation of Bibliotheca Mystica de Dantalian. The light novel series takes place in 1920’s London when a man meets a girl in charge of protecting the forbidden books of demonic wisdom.

Future Diary (Mirai Nikki) Delayed: The DVD release of Mirai Nikki has been delayed from September to December for an unknown reason. – Disappointing after they released a cool trailer only a few days ago.

Lightning Warrior Raidy 2 and Moero Downhill Night 2 Shipping: In a quick dip into the eroge news, the newest localized eroge from JAST USA are now shipping from J-List. Physical copies of Lightning Warrior Raidy 2 and Moero Downhill Night 2 are heading out to everyone who preordered first with download versions being made available to everyone next week. – Really want to play both of these games!

Six Ghost in the Shell Features at Viz Cinema: Stuck in No. California this weekend? Viz Cinema is offering something for you as well by showing six different Ghost in the Shell movies from July 3rd to July 8th. – Wow, can you imagine what kind of shape your brain would be in after watching 6 GitS movies over 5 days??

It’s been quite awhile since I’ve gotten to post any real news about localized eroge but a surge of activity has surfaced over at JAST USA which have made two big announcements: Both Lightning Warrior Raidy II and Demonbane are either complete or almost complete and will be released in the near future! Lightning Warrior Raidy II: Temple of Desire from eroge studio ZyX is the sequel to the original translated and released in the US on the G-Collections label in 2008. The fantasy adventure game follows a heroine named Raidy through a dungeon crawl to save the poor village girls who have been kidnapped by monsters. The game is currently set to be released at the end of June just in time for Anime Expo and is currently available for preorder.

Also announced at the official English Nitro+ site is the planned summer release of the highly anticipated Demonbane. The first joint production between eroge company Nitro+ and JAST USA, the dark story centers on a down on his luck private detective who stumbles upon the dark world of magic, giant mechs called grimoires and a fight between the Miskatonic University which protects magic and the Black Lodge Society which seeks to control it. Demonbane is also currently available for preorder here.

Any eroge fans out there looking forward to these as much as I am? Lightning Warrior Raidy was a surprisingly fun (if not ridiculously difficult) title and Demonbane has all the makings to be an epic title.

Thanks to the holiday season and the close of 2009, it’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve had the chance to write one of these. However that’s all old news and now that 2010 is here, it’s time to pick up another Highs and Lames! In this edition, it’s all about eroge and the all the fun things that they can do to improve your life. Did you know that a slightly ecchi workout partner can also be the key to finding a good night’s sleep? Well, you do now!

Soul Link Available Now, Cat Girl Alliance Available Soon: Starting with news closer to home, Manga Gamer announced over the holiday season that their latest release, Soul Link, is now available for purchase from their website. The sci-fi adventure created by Navel (Shuffle) takes place on a space station that has been taken over by a terrorist organization. Taking on the role of second year military cadet Shuuhei Aizawa, the game follows him and his friends as they attempt to take back control of station.

Meanwhile, JAST USA has announced on New Year’s Eve that their latest release, Cat Girl Alliance, has been given ‘Golden Master’ status and is in the replication phase even as I type this. The new game will be released on the G-Collections brand and focuses on the futanari (hermaphrodite) theme. J-List already has the download and physical versions already listed for pre-order. While I’m generally not really into the futanari theme (just not my thing), I’ll still probably check this one out if for no other reason than to satisfy my curiosity. Anyone else planning to close out the winter with some futanari school comedy?

AquaPlus to create 2D Fighting Game: At the AquaPlus Fiesta event held last week, visual novel publisher AquaPlus (Tears to Tiara, To Heart, White Album) announced that they would be working on a 2D fighting game. While details are still slim, Canned Dogs reports that sample footage shown at the event revealed characters from various games created over the last decade duking it out including: Rhiannon (Tears to Tiara), Multi (To Heart), Hakuoro (Utawarerumono) and others. Details for the game will be revealed later this year.

I have to admit up front; just the idea of two happy go lucky characters like Rhiannon and Multi trying to bitch slap each other into submission makes me giggle just a little too much.

Training with Hinako becomes Sleeping with Hinako: Last year otaku around the world got a little boost in their motivation to exercise thanks to Hinako. If you haven’t met her, Hinako is a 16 year old girl who “helped” otaku everywhere shape up by exercising with them while wearing very little animated clothing to cover up her bounciness. Now Hinako is returning in a sequel release which is intended to help otaku… sleep?

In the new Sleeping with Hinako DVD, users will get to watch Hinako sleep and decide her posture, dreams and other options via the menu screen. Now, before you perverts out there start thinking that this DVD is being released strictly so that you can watch an anime character sleep and have naughty dreams you’ve got a dirty little mind because Hinako is here to HELP you!

So, let’s say you’ve been having trouble waking up in the mornings. Alarm clocks don’t work because of snooze buttons and you can’t always count on someone being around to throw water on you (ah, childhood memories). With this release however, otaku will now have the option of setting up an alarm on the DVD. When the appointed time comes, Hinako will wake up and then help get you out of bed by whispering loving phrases like “Wake up you lump of shit before I whip your ass.” I’m sure there’s a certain beauty to that phrase which has been lost in translation.

Though I may be alone here but is anyone else even remotely concerned with the idea of leaving a DVD running all night long while you sleep? Just how many times will you be able to do that before you have to replace the DVD with a new one that isn’t burnt out from running for 8 or more hours every night? Oh well, I’m sure there are plenty of people out there who don’t mind and have already preordered their DVD or Blu ray from Amazon.

Single of the Week

There weren’t any particularly exciting new releases this week and so instead, I leave you with one last bit of eroge: the very cool opening animation to Princess Waltz from Pulltop (localized by JAST USA). Enjoy and I’ll talk to you all tonight as I post up the first of, what will hopefully be many, new Funimation licenses!

Once again it’s time to recap all the bits and pieces that fell through the cracks in the last few days. Before we get into that, I’d like to use this space to announce my vacation next week. It’s actually been a very long time since I’ve given myself some real time away from updating the site and now seems like as good a time as any. So as a holiday present to myself, next week I will be stepping away from daily updates. Hopefully I’ll get to use the time to catch up on some things that aren’t anime, write some reviews and other things that I’m behind on. I’ll be back in time for the new year and subsequent new winter season of anime so have a happy winter gift giving celebration of choice!

Now, on with the news…

Detective Conan Gets 14^th Film, Sgt. Frog Gets 5^th and SD Gundam Gets February Premiere: Detective Conan will be getting another movie premiere in the spring of 2010. The movie, titled Detective Conan: The Lost Ship in the Sky, will feature the detective facing off against his nemesis Kid the Phantom Thief with a jewel aboard the world’s largest airship as the prize.

A trailer for the fifth Sgt. Frog movie was launched on the official website following a press conference held last Wednesday. The movie will premiere on February 27^th as part of a double billing with the new SD Gundam Sangokuden movie. The new Gundam movie will feature super deformed mechs recreating the Chinese story Romance of the Three Kingdoms which I am going to avert my eyes from.

Manga Gamer and JAST USA Lay It out Early: After a couple of small incidents this year for both companies regarding censorship in their games, it seems that JAST USA and Manga Gamer have taken a new transparency approach. On the Manga Gamer staff blog and official JAST website, notices were put up this month addressing any localization changes to their upcoming respective releases.

On their blog, Manga Gamer staff noted that there are some features missing from their release of Higurashi. While no censorship will be taking place, their release will not have the music room, staff room or mini game included due to license and copyright issues.  Over on the JAST USA site, it was noted that no major changes or alterations will be made to the upcoming release of Cat Girl Alliance though a few lines of redundancy were removed. Higurashi is available for order now from Manga Gamer while Cat Girl Alliance is still available for preorder from J-List and Right Stuf.

LAMES

Imagi Loses 25% Of Its Staff: I’m not an expert on big business or how large companies work but I can’t imagine that sacking 100 employees is a good sign. Most of the staff that was released were from the animation department and seems to be a direct result of the colossal thud left by Astro Boy upon its release to theaters earlier this year.

In the linked report, it’s stated that Imagi put $60 million into Astro Boy and have barely earned back a third of that which disproves my theory that it ever stood a chance at recouping costs on DVD. No idea what this means for Imagi’s planned adaptation of the anime series Gatchaman but hopefully they’ll have good news regarding that in 2010.

STUFF YOU DIDN’T KNOW YOU NEEDED UNTIL NOW

Ten Free Songs from FFXIII: As part of their ramp up to the release of the latest Final Fantasy, ten songs from the first disc of the soundtrack (which will be released as a 4 disc set January 27^th) were posted to the official site for fans to enjoy. Luckier for fans, Gigazine has pointed out that the virtual player is flash based meaning fans can easily download the songs for their own personal enjoyment. Just click track list on the official site and you’ll see the tracks composed by Masashi Hamauzu (FFX). The game itself hit store shelves in Japan today (December 17^th) while US players won’t get to enjoy it until March 2010.

<Higurashi – When They Cry image ©Manga Gamer>

I totally forgot to mention this over the weekend when I wrote up the Highs and Lames! Hate when I do that. Anyways, the new release currently being localized by JAST USA for a 2010 release, Deus Machina Demonbane from Nitro+, is now available for pre-order from J-List.

The fantasy adventure takes place in Arkham City and follows a struggling private detective who learns about the secret world of grimoires and giant mechs called Deus Machina. On the run from the evil Black Lodge, a young girl named Al Azif runs into the detective, Daijuuji Kurou, and teams up with him to solve the mystery of the Deus Machina and destroy the Black Lodge. Originally released in Japan in 2003, Demonbane became popular enough to generate both an OVA (in 2004) and a TV series (in 2006) which follows the game story much more closely. I haven’t seen any of the Demonbane releases because I am lame like that but the early artwork from the game has really made me want to seek it out at some point.

So another long week has come to a close just in time for another long one to begin. The new anime season is upon us which means I’m going to be scrambling for the next week or so. I’m not going to be covering every new series coming out this season but I will do my best to get my initial episode 1 thoughts down for as many as possible despite not even having the season preview finished. For those who haven’t been keeping track, my thoughts for Asura Cryin 2 and Letter Bee have already been posted. Book of Bantorra, Kampfer, Sora no Otoshimono will be coming in the near future as well. But enough about the new season, time to catch up on what I missed this week!

New Info on Upcoming Angel Beats! : Canned Dogs translated an article from Dengeki G’s magazine which has

 

revealed new information for the upcoming Angel Beats. Originally created by Visual Arts/Key (who you might remember from the ultra moe series Air, Kanon and Clannad), the animation for the series is going to be put together by PA Works (CANAAN, true tears) with Kishi Seiji sitting in the director chair. In the interview, producer Toba Hirofumi talks about how the comedy in the series is going to be a big emphasis which is why Seiji was chosen. The most interesting part of the interview was when Hirofumi talks about Hirata Katsuzou as art director because he was able to do intense action and moe. No word so far on when the series will actually premiere but it sounds like it’s going to be ready for the spring 2010 season or maybe earlier.

Full NYAF Keynote Speech: Just in case some of you have already forgotten, last weekend was New York Anime Festival. The big special guest for the event was the original creator of Gundam who gave a big speech and answered questions from fans. Anime Vice has the entire thing on their site split into two parts.

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