Posts Tagged ‘jastusa’

This is going to be a quick one: JAST USA has announced via their blog that their newest localized eroge visual novel Cat Girl Alliance has arrived at the warehouse and is now shipping out to customers (presumably without any Scottish music) via J-List and Right Stuf. The high school romance follows a futanari (hermaphrodite) theme and features new transfer student Eiji Tachibana (that would be you) discovering the secret of his class president: She’s actually a ‘he’. After finding himself trapped (pun intended) he ends up joining his class president and another student in training a third student to be a sex slave.

I have to admit that this isn’t one I have any real intention of reviewing as the futanari theme just doesn’t call out to me. If anyone out there is planning to play this one and wants to submit a guest review, email me and let’s work something out!

So you may have noticed that I missed a week and didn’t get the Highs and Lames posted last week. Ironically the feature is returning today looking much shorter than it usually does thanks to a fairly low traffic news week giving me more time to keep caught up. So in the spirit of that, let me fill up some space by telling you that my advance review of Evangelion 1.01 will be going up Monday morning and surprisingly it doesn’t even resemble any sort of long rant on the evils of the series. Have I filled up enough space yet? Yeah, that looks good enough. On with the updates!

Funimation Posts First Four Soul Eater Eps and Almost Nine Minutes of Eva: Over the weekend, Funimation gave fans a reason to stay inside on Friday the 13^th with new videos on their website and YouTube channel. In anticipation of the new February release date for box set 1, the first four episodes of Soul Eater are available in their dubbed format for fans to check out. The latest dark shonen series to take hold of fans, early feedback has seemed to be mostly positive. I haven’t seen the episodes yet myself but plan to later today so that I can finally have my own opinion about the series. The first box set will be released on February 9^th 2010.

For those of you who are still on the fence about the picking up the new Evangelion 1.01 movie, this is also your chance to check out the first eight and a half minutes streaming. Those minutes aren’t going to take you very deep into the movie but it will at least show you a good portion of the fourth angel attack leading up to the Shinji’s first fight inside Unit 01. The movie will hit store shelves on November 17^th (that’s this Tuesday) and is available for pre-order from Amazon and Right Stuf.

Moero Downhill Night Now Shipping: The physical copies have come in and are presumably now free of Scottish highland music meaning that JAST USA has begun shipping the street racing themed eroge Moero Downhill Night. The game was released under the Peach Princess label is available from Right Stuf and J-List (NSFW). Speaking of JAST, it’s been a couple of weeks since they’ve posted any new characters or artwork for the upcoming Demonbane. I know I wouldn’t mind seeing more at least. 

Kaito Reinya Gets Winter Anime: The gag manga series Kaito Reinya will be getting an anime series in January. The series centers on a young girl who works as a sandwich board wearer during the day but at night is a dynamic thief who always foils the hapless police who try to catch her. The lead character was inspired (and will be voiced by) Morning Musume member Reina Tanaka. Can you imagine if a series like this tried to make it on the air here? First there would be no choice but to aim it towards children and then parents would throw a fit on a young girl working as a thief in the night and getting away with it. Ah, good times.

1212 Entertainment to Work on Anime/Manga Adaptations: Anime Vice reported on a new production company that has opened recently called 1212 Entertainment. Headed up by Joshua Long (who is already attached to the upcoming live action Cowboy Bebop movie), the company intends to work primarily on adapting Japanese anime, manga and video games into live action features. Long didn’t have any titles that he could specifically mention right away but promises big updates in the future.

LAME

Gonzo Turns Off Phone Support: Living in Japan and got a problem with the Gonzo DVD you just picked up? Good luck getting someone on the phone to talk about it! Gonzo announced recently that starting in December they will no longer offer any sort of phone support for their DVD products. Fans will still be able to contact the company via their official website. It sounds like this is just another cost cutting measure meant to keep the studio open for even just a while longer. From my fan perspective though if you’re already to the point where even turning off an extra phone line might make a difference, it might be time to start inching towards your panic button.

STUFF YOU DIDN’T KNOW YOU NEEDED UNTIL NOW

Subtitles Beamed Into Your Freakin Eyes Live! : The future is now! Japan based NEC plans to release a product in 2011 which is going to revolutionize international conversation (providing that the things work like they are supposed to). Looking like a simple pair of glasses, a small screen sits comfortably in front of the wearer’s eye. It then listens to whatever foreign language is being spoken and translates them into subtitles on the little screen. It’s not exactly a universal translator and hardly anyone will be able to afford the initial 80K price tag but this is the first step towards awesome new toys coming to us in the next decade.

Single of the Week

Only My Railgun – Fripside

With every new season of anime, there are two things that I absolutely have to do. I have to find the one or two series out of the dozens that I actually want to watch all the way through and I have to find the new theme songs that I enjoy. This season, I was lucky when To aru Kagaku no Railgun came out and managed to fill both of those descriptions perfectly. Debuting at #3 on the singles chart, I have yet to skip over the opening theme and animation while watching this series. I’m sure I will eventually but right now, it’s getting constantly replayed on my iPod. The single is currently available from CDJapan.

Shou Daichi is working on Himeda Ridge as a delivery driver barely making ends meet. He goes into work every day dreaming of something more but doesn’t know what he wants. While out making a delivery, destiny meets him head on in the form of getting hit by a car driven by the beautiful Michi Konozaki. After Michi deems Shou as being the the ‘legendary man’ she’s been looking for, Shou is dragged into the high speech world of street racing. Now serving as Michi’s navigator, Shou will be challenged by a string of beautiful female racers and navigators who want to take on the ‘legendary man’.

Read the rest of this entry »

So it’s the end of the week (well, technically the beginning but since this is late getting up we’re going to do some pretending) which means it’s time for another edition of Highs and Lames. Though, by the way, Highs and Lames is a pretty lame title for this weekly segment of internet pollution, anyone got a better suggestion? Feel free to leave them in the comments and if there are enough interesting choices I’ll let readers pick the new title in a later edition.

23 Toei Titles Getting New Dubs: Earlier this week, William Winckler Productions (WWP), based out of California, announced a new partnership with Toei and Rioloco Productions. Under the new agreement, 23+ classic titles from the Toei library will be getting brand new English dubs. No actual US release or broadcast dates have been mentioned but in a comment to ANN, Jim Tousignant said “Winckler Productions and Rioloco Productions have been tapped to become involved in the U.S. distribution of these titles.” More titles are promised for the future but here is the initial list:

Gaiking , Gaiking II, Gaiking III, Danguard Ace, Danguard Ace II, Danguard Ace III, Space Pirate Captain Harlock, Space Pirate Captain Harlock II, The Adventures of Nadja ,The Adventures of Nadja II, Fist of the North Star – The Shin Saga, Fist of the North Star – The Ray Saga, Fist of the North Star – The Souther Saga, Fist of the North Star – The Toki Saga, Fist of the North Star – The Raul Saga, Fist of the North Star – The Kaioh Saga, Starzinger, Starzinger II, Starzinger III, Lun Lun The Flower Girl, Lun Lun The Flower Girl II, Kitaro’s Graveyard Gang and Kitaro’s Graveyard Gang II

Aoi Bungaku Will Bring Two More Stories to Life: The Madhouse produced series, Aoi Bungaku, will be animating six classic stories instead of the previously revealed four. Along with No Longer Human (created by Osamu Dazai), Kokoro (Soseki Natsume), Hell Screen (Akutagawa) and Run, Melos! (Takeshi Konomi), the staff has announced that they will also be creating animations for In the Forest, Under Cherries in Full Bloom (Ango Sakaguchi) and The Spiders Thread (Ryunosuke Autagawa). Call it a hunch that this series is going to be overlooked by quite a few fans after it premieres on October 10^th. For those of you who are making this series into appointment TV, the full cast and crew have been posted to the official website (translated by ANN).

Kuchu Buranko Gets Live Action Treatment: Speaking of upcoming fall premieres, the upcoming series Kuchu Buranko will be a mix of live action and animation. Yumi Sugimoto will be playing the sexy nurse/assistant to Dr. Ichiro Irabu as he sees his string of eccentric patients. The series premieres on October 15^th.

JASTUSA Posts Demonbane Character Profile: JASTUSA is just starting their process of getting fans excited about Demonbane. Step one: get to know the characters. In what I assume is the beginning of a series, JASTUSA has posted a character profile for the hero of their upcoming game Demonbane. For the most part the profile is an introduction to the general story of the game but I’m sure that once fans start checking out the early artwork all will be forgiven. I hope that JASTUSA makes this a steady new feature that builds up to a big release for this title… but while I’m sitting here hoping for things I could use a new car. ^_^;

Anime Charity Auctions on MySpace: In a vague follow up to a story posted earlier this week, a new MySpace profile has been opened specifically for anime charities. Organized to serve as a go between for conventions, the people behind the profile will help provide rare and autographed items to conventions around the country for their charity auctions. Very cool!

LAMES

Washable Pokemon Maxi Pad Takes Furry to a Whole NEW Level: And that level will be called ‘Oh my gods get that thing away from me!’ Exactly who are these pads being marketed towards? Are there women who would show this off to her girlfriends in a ‘guess what I have in my pants?’ sort of a way?

Shueisha Apologizes for Helium: Japanese publisher Shueisha posted a public apology for a scene in the manga series Sket Dance. In the scene, a group of the main characters are shown inhaling helium straight from the can. The publisher apologized for the scene and noted that people can suffocate from doing this too much. Seriously, if seeing this scene is enough to make someone suck in enough helium to suffocate maybe its just natural selection?

STUFF YOU DIDN’T KNOW YOU NEEDED UNTIL NOW

Dragonball Frying Pan: Alright, so Dragonball is an incredibly tired anime cliché. If you haven’t come to grips with that quite yet, I’m sorry to be the one to collapse your world. I’ll wait for you to recover… you good? Just because it’s a tired and overused cliché doesn’t mean that there aren’t still ways that you can make money off of it (a lesson that K-ON has taken to heart for the last six months or so) thus I present to you the Dragonball frying pan. It’s not going to create anything particularly amazing but you do get to have pancakes and other flat impressionable foods complete with stars or a Kame character! <Via Japanator>

Macross Frontier Meets Lucky Star: I’m not a huge fan of the Macross series or collecting figures. I AM a big fan of Lucky Star and I do have a brain that is capable of picking out an awesome crossover!

So, what were your highs and lames for the week?

Additional release dates that went unreported at the AX JAST USA panel have been posted to the official website revealing at least three new games this year with more being a real possibility. First up is the highly anticipated Family Project ~Kazoku Keikaku~. Originally released in 2001 by D.O. (Kana Little Sister, Crescendo, Pretty Soldier Wars 2048 A.D.), the game will finally see its English debut by the end of the month. Preorders for the game are still available via J-List and Right Stuf and the (safe for work) promotional video featuring the opening theme sung by KOTOKO is below.

Watch Family Project – Kazoku Keikaku Hentai Game I’ve Sound Kotoko EROGE AMV in Animation  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com 

Other appox release dates announced in the panel are as follows:

Cat Girl Alliance – September (J-List – Right Stuf)

Lightning Warrior Raidy II – Late 2009 (J-List – Right Stuf)

Downhill Night – Late 2009/Early 2010 (J-List – Right Stuf)

Going along with the partnership announced earlier this weekend between JASTUSA and Nitro+; a new English website has been opened for fans. The new website will contain news regarding future releases and already has an introduction up for the first game to be released; Zanma Taisei Demonbane (Unofficial English title: Demonbane).

Originally released in 2003, the dark fantasy game follows a private detective taking on the strange case of finding a black magic book. After meeting a mysterious girl, the pair ends up on the run before finding a giant mech to use in their battle against evil. The game was eventually turned into an OVA in 2004 and a twelve episode TV anime in 2006. The story really doesn’t sound like much but check out the original promotional video:

That’s certainly enough to get me at least sort of excited!

Day 1 was an absolute whirlwind of activity with Funimation jumping out of the blocks early via Twitter with a license announcement first thing in the morning. Right Stuf followed up strong with three license announcements and JASTUSA revealing a new partnership. So for those of us in the ‘Not at AX’ club, here is the first day of AX09 in a nutshell for you:

Funimation:

•  Announced license the 2008 TV series ‘Seeds of Destruction’ (World Destruction: Sekai Bokumetsu no Rokunin), expect spring 2010 release.
•  Cast/Crew for ‘El Cazador de la Bruja’:

Ellis – Maxey Whitehead
Nadie – Trina Nishimura
Blue-Eyes – Clarine Harp
Douglas Rosenberg – Ian Sinclair
Ricardo – Bob Carter
Lirio – Monica Rial
L.A. – Jamie McGonnigal
Dr. Heinz Schneider – Christopher Bevins
Line Producer/ADR Director: Christopher Bevins
ADR Scripts: Andrew Rye & Christopher Bevins

Right Stuf:

•  Announced licenses of Junjo Romantica, Aria the Origination TV series and Arietta OVA and Antique. All three series will be released as box sets (Junjo Romantica will be getting two season box sets even) during 2010. As per usual with Right Stuf, all of the releases will contain Japanese audio only.

JASTUSA:

•  Announced new partnership with Nitro+ (Phantom of Inferno, Chaos;Head, Sumaga), expect new game announcements in the future.
•  JASTUSA website has been completely redone with new RSS feeds and a page directed towards anyone who still uses IE6.

I’m instituting what I’m calling the ‘Eroge Rules’; if I’m writing about a dating sim, eroge, hentai, etc in a post you should probably assume that most if not all of the links are going to be NSFW.

In a mailer sent out over the weekend, JASTUSA has announced that their latest eroge , Cosplay Fetish Academy, has begun shipping. Released under the G-Collections label, the game was originally released by Sekilala who also created Come See Me Tonight and another upcoming title from JASTUSA, Cat Girl Alliance. Cosplay Fetish Academy is available at J-List while Right Stuf has it available for pre-order.

In their latest mailer, JASTUSA has announced that their upcoming release ‘Cosplay Fetish Academy‘ (Chakuse Kae Fetish) has officially gone golden master and will be entering the replicating phase soon. Usually when a game gets hit with the ‘Golden Master’ status it means that the game is mere weeks away from seeing a release which is cause for fans to get excited. The latest game to be released under the G-Collections label, ‘Cosplay Fetish Academy’ comes from Sekilala who also created the ‘Come See Me Tonight‘ series with artwork done by Kazuma Muramasa (Lightning Warrior Raidy) and is already available for pre-order from Right Stuf or J-List (NSFW).

This will just be a quick update but JAST USA has opened the official English language website (NSFW!) for their upcoming game ‘Cosplay Fetish Academy‘ (Chakuse Fae Fetish). The upcoming eroge originally released by Sekilala in 2005 features a hero who after being caught in an odd storm finds himself in a world where sexy cosplay in the norm. Nurses, Bunnies and Cat Girls – oh my! (No angry comments about that last line, I’m not too proud of it myself). The game is scheduled to be released before the end of the season on the G-Collections label and is already available for pre-order via Right Stuf and J-List (NSFW).