Posts Tagged ‘lantis’

Hana Saku Iroha: P.A. Works (True Tears, CANAAN, Angel Beats) has announced that for their 10th anniversary they will be working on a series titled Hana Saku Iroha. The story centers on a 16 year old Tokyo girl who begins working at a hot springs inn while trying to decide on her future. While there she’ll have coming of age adventures with other girls who are also undecided about their fates. The first trailer doesn’t feature any animation footage but does have character designs from Mel Kishida (Sora no Woto).

Hyakka Ryouan Samurai Girls: Wow, we’re only just entering August and the fall trailers are already popping up. Studios sure are moving fast this year! Anyways, from ARMS (Queen’s Blade, Kite) comes a new and very censored trailer for their fall action series, Samurai Girls. Adapted from the light novels the story takes place in an alternative present where the Tokugawa shogunate never lost power and kept Japan isolated. At a military academy, girls fight to keep order and suppress insurrection amongst the students. – The action, fan service and alternative history angle really reminds me of Strike Witches only without the heaps of moe and more pants.

Love Live: Anime meets American (Japan?) Idol had its second trailer posted on the Lantis YouTube channel. The series debuts in the coming weeks and will feature moe girls singing and dancing while fans vote on which girls they want to see stay on the series and which ones to vote off. The new trailer is only 17 seconds long but I should warn you now that the moe coming out of it is overwhelming. – Fans voting for moe girls = epic moe internet wars!

Redline: Finally, SIX new trailers have been posted to the official Redline YouTube channel including the 2 minute English trailer posted below. Well, I say English but it’s still mostly Japanese besides the odd announcer at the beginning who I kept expecting to say ‘Sunday! Sunday! Sunday! The epic space race to end ALL space races!’ but never did. – Eh, I want to see this movie but to say I’m excited to watch it would be a huge fib.

And that’s it for today! So what are you excited to watch? Samurai Girls looks interesting but I already worry that it’s just going to be girls swinging swords and boobs around (and judging from that trailer I’m not really sure which ones will be flung around more). I was once interested in Love Live but even I think it’s going to be difficult to swallow that much moe at once. What looks interesting to you?

A new website has appeared revealing that Japanese music producer (and Bandai Visual subsidiary) Lantis has produced their very own OVA. The OVA is the first actual animation ever produced by Lantis and will naturally feature four singers in the lead roles. Titled ‘Goulart Knights’ the series will be a fantasy action series taking place in our world. Creatures called Archons enter the world and threaten to wipe out mankind.  A group of four warriors are chosen to fight them off because they can use the only weapon capable of defeating the monsters. The four singers who will be filling the roles are:

Hokuto: Yuuki Kaji (Akina in Yozakura Quartet)
Nile: Atsushi Abe (Toma in To aru Majutsu no Index, a role that he will be reprising in the spinoff)
Ulbireo: Takuma Terashima (Apollo in Aquarion, Teppei in this season’s Princess Lover)
Regulus: Kazuma Horie (Kaname in Natsume Yujin Cho)

No release date for the title has been set but it seems that Lantis has already gone into promotion mode. Before the release, a drama CD will be given away at Comiket 76 next month before a mini album is released in September. I’ll let you know when they get around to actually talking about the anime itself.

[Via ANN]

In an interview with Mania, Ai Takai of Bandai Visual talked about the upcoming plans to release anime music in North America via iTunes. Teaming with Lantis, Bandai Visual will be releasing music by the end of the summer featuring a variety of artists including JAM Project, Aya Hirano, Ali Project, CooRie, yozuca*, KOTOKO, Saori Atsumi and many others. Now just off the top of my head I can name a dozen series that these artists have contributed music to in one form or another so that alone is enough for fans to get more than a little excited.

While an exact date for the store to be open hasn’t been set, Bandai Visual has already opened a MySpace page for the store which will be used to reveal new songs and artists uploaded. Takai notes in the interview that songs are likely going to cost .99 to 1.29 each with no DRM attached to them. Want to get even better? Also noted late in the interview is the goal of having music released the same day as the anime. I’m not entirely sure if that refers to the premiere of the anime on television or on DVD but either way, this is a great step in digital distribution.

In all the arguing over fansubs, music piracy within the industry seems to be largely ignored. With fans unable to afford import CDs, downloading is the norm. Hopefully fans embrace the new outlet and Bandai Visual sees strong enough sales to expand the iTunes store with new music. So I’m going to turn the question around on everyone, once Bandai Visual makes anime music cheap and easily accessible will you stop downloading singles?