Posts Tagged ‘movie’

At Izumicon and on the Anime on DVD forums today, David Williams from Sentai Filmworks had some interesting things to say about fan favorite moe drama that I still don’t get Clannad. Thanks to the fan response and the many requests from those same fans, Clannad will be getting a couple of new spring releases. First off, the sequel series Clannad After Story will be getting a re-release in April with a full English dub track. Like previous releases, if you’ve already purchased the subtitle only version a trade in program will be announced in the near future so that you don’t miss out.

Oh but that’s not all! Also announced at the panel, Sentai Filmworks let fans know that they have acquired the Clannad movie and will be releasing it on DVD in March. As with the After Story news, this release will also have a full English dub.

This is pretty awesome news for those who liked Clannad. Not only have they gotten both seasons but now they will be getting the movie, all with full English dubs. In this era, it sure feels like that’s about as close to a jackpot that fans can get these days. Though the rest of us who weren’t as impressed with Clannad will patiently wait for other news to flitter past us, like maybe a Kaichou wa Maid sama DVD release date perhaps?

<Via Anime on DVD, Image via Pixiv>

While the live action movie appears to be on life support, the original anime has gotten a bit of new life thanks to Image Entertainment rescuing Cowboy Bebop the Movie (originally titled Cowboy Bebop: Knockin on Heaven’s Door) from Sony Pictures. Originally released in the US by Sony in 2001, the movie will get a brand new release on December 7th with all the original extras.

So if you can’t look forward to a live action movie next summer you can at least look forward to this by the end of the year. That’s still something, right?

<Via AnimeNews.biz>

At the end of the second bonus episode of K-ON Season 2, a special announcement went up announcing that a full length K-ON movie would be released. The announcement was made official with a graphic going up on the series website The movie came as a surprise to everyone including at least one of the voice actresses but this is still quite happy news for the legions of fans who weren’t quite ready to let this series go.

I’m excited for this but of course my pessimistic side is a little concerned as well. Season 2 was already jumping the shark by stretching out into 26 episodes, will there be enough story to fill an entire movie? Luckily my other side has already jumped up to smother the first side with a pillow so I can go back to my happy moe place.

Note: A slightly modified version of this post is also available at Ani.me

I know I say this a lot but man, SF has been getting ALL the good stuff!

A press release has gone out announcing big news. Like super huge. Like so big that one of monsters that invade Tokyo on a weekly basis would look at it and go ‘Yeah, that’s big.’ Alright, maybe not that big but you see where I’m going with this.

In the release, it’s been revealed that the highly anticipated movie from Madhouse, Redline, will be getting a special one week premiere in San Francisco the SAME week that it is premiering in theaters in Japan. Written by Katsuhito Ishii and directed by Takeshi Koike (‘World Record’ – Animatrix), the movie features the galaxy’s most dangerous space race and the participants of it shown completely in 2D animation. The movie will be shown at the Viz Cinema located in the basement of the New People Center in San Francisco October 8th – 14th with $10 tickets available from the official website.

I haven’t seen the movie myself but from what I understand the visuals are done completely in 2D and are a complete head trip to watch. If I could afford a trip down to San Francisco I would be absolutely all over this premiere. But even if I can’t go, I highly encourage all anime fans in or around the bay area to check this one out and then tell me about it. I’ve always been up front about not being completely excited to the point of wired about this movie but the buzz surrounding it has me so very, very curious that I can’t not watch it.

Full press release below the cut

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Available from Amazon Available from Right Stuf

Blue Gender: The Warrior – Viridian Collection Released By: Funimation Released: 3/4/08 Reviewed: 9/8/10 Related Reviews Rated: 15+

The Story

A 2002 remake of the television series, the story for Blue Gender: The Warrior is similar but not quite. In the year 2031, a young man named Yuji is awoken from suspended to a world overrun with giant bug creatures that have killed most of the human race. With his only friend in the world being a military soldier named Marlene, he must trek to another part of the world in order to escape the nightmarish world and find out his role in the future of mankind.

Good and the Bad

My original intention was to watch both the TV series and movie and include my thoughts on both within one review. After seeing just how stark the differences between the two features are though, I knew that the movie was going to need its own separate piece. Produced in 2002 and armed with a new director (Koichi Ohata, previously an animation supervisor on the TV series) and screenplay writer (Daisuke Okamoto), the movie aims to take an entire 26 episode series and shorten it to about 90 minutes… and fails miserably.

The biggest change from the TV series to the movie is that in just 3 years, there were apparently some pretty major advances in animation technology. Completely eliminating ink and paint cells, the series is given a new sharp look for this release. Now filled with crisp lines, angles and sharp colors Blue Gender looks almost brand new on the surface. Once you start digging past the surface and getting into the guts of the release however, it’s easy to see just how hollow this rehash is. For the most part, the movie is able to capture the major points of the TV series and leave many of them the same as they once were but the feeling that was once there is almost entirely eliminated.

It’s not completely terrible, there are some improvements over the original such as much clearer explanations towards what the sleepers are and why they are being collected in the first place. That’s just a drop in the bucket compared to the horrid pacing issues that the audience will be forced to deal with just to find that one silver lining. While the original TV series suffered from issues with a lagging pace, the movie is buried under the opposite problem of always feeling like it’s in a rush to get to the next major story point. Always aiming for that next flag point, Blue Gender: The Warrior wants desperately to show fans what the series once was but instead manages to create a mess in its wake.

Completely eliminating story arcs and characters from various parts to save time, writer Okamoto is also not afraid to completely rewrite some of the more memorable moments of the TV series such the commander’s amazing death in a giant explosion or even the growing relationship that occurs between Yuji and Marlene. While it may have been slow moving, the TV series at least always felt like it was moving forward towards something. Here everything that occurs is just a mad dash towards the finish line that comes across as consistently improvised shortcuts instead of a cohesive sequence of story events.

The most noticeable place that this occurs is during the second half which is almost entirely changed to suit the purposes of the time limits. With two major characters completely written out and others turned into completely different versions of themselves, this is about where the movie starts to fall apart and starts its slow sputter towards the end. Once upon the characters introduced during this portion of the series were the ones that you were counting on to deliver the deeper meaning behind all of the events. Here they are introduced and just as quickly exited with only the vaguest hint at the drama they once added to the series. Capped off with a weak, go nowhere ending and I’m left wondering what the real purpose of putting this out there to begin with really was.

Music

Returning to compose the score for the movie, the score created by Kuniaki Haishima is seemingly one of the few who entered this project with the intention of improving on the original and actually manages to be successful. Once marred by stereotypical themes and scores that stood out simply because they could, Haishima returns with a new approach that allows scenes to carry themselves occasionally. When the music does standout from the background, the themes are soft and keep scenes from getting too far ahead of itself too quickly (though there’s only so much that his music can do). Even still, none of the music contains sounds that feel like should be in this release just because its a sci-fi and instead always feel like its making a genuine addition to what’s happening on the screen.

Dub vs. Sub

Reprising their roles from the TV series, Eric Vale (Yuji) and Laura Bailey (Marlene) pick right up from where they left off and instantly sink back into their characters. Now with a few more series under their belts, Vale and Bailey make noticeable changes to their performance that matches the change in pacing for the movie. While the characters are never really given nearly as much time to develop a relationship, the actors playing off each other had a much more natural sound to it that sounded flat in the original TV series performances.

Overall

Watching the Blue Gender movie is like having sex with a condom. The general feeling is there but you’ll be hard pressed to derive any actual pleasure from the experience. Shortened and rushed, the movie does manage to improve the pacing by removing a lot of extraneous items from the original but just goes too far and also completely eliminates what made the series cheesily enjoyable to begin with. If you really just want the cliff notes version of Blue Gender the movie is the way to go about it but if that’s honestly all you want I hardly even see the point in watching it at all. If you really want to experience this series, get comfortable and trek through the original TV series. This is just a novelty piece.

What happens when two foreign otaku get into a debate about their favorite anime series? An epic nerd fight that comes with better special effects than Dragonball: Evolution!

The movie was done by Kamikaze Productions (Spanish) and posted to YouTube a couple of weeks ago which makes it all the more surprising that this hasn’t circulated around the net more. Now, before you go back and watch it again (or call over your friends so that they can watch it) I have to say the switch to Japanese for the fight scene is very cool and adds a great new depth to the scene. For the record though, neither of these chumps would stand a chance to my l33t otaku skillz so ha!*

*Wow, how lame would it be if I actually talked like that?

So earlier this week a couple of trailers were posted online. Of course, I didn’t have time to write about them right away but I shrugged that off. ‘That’s alright,’ I told myself ‘It’s been such a slow news month so putting the trailer roundup off for a day or two won’t hurt anything.’ Then Friday came and everyone and their uncle decided to post their newest footage. Get comfortable, this is going to be another long one.

More after the cut

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Kyoto Animation and Kadokawa are on thin ice with fans right now but recently seem to have found some peaceful middle ground lately. On one hand, the anticipated Endless Eight DVD disaster is turning into an average level release after the first two volumes of the story arc went onto sell over 10K copies each. On the other hand, perhaps fans are just biding their time following the announcement of the long awaited Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya movie being released next year. In the original announcement, fans were forced to be satisfied with the vague spring 2010 release date.

A new release date has been released online though and states that the movie will now be released February 6^th, 2010 with fans in Japan able to buy advance tickets starting November 21^st. Also revealed in the announcement is that the movie is going to be a full 150 minutes. Wait, 150 minutes? As in it’s going to be two and a half hours long? Bloody hell that’s a long movie!

<Via Gigazine>

If you don’t get the joke that I’m making with that headline you probably shouldn’t look it up. No really, just pretend like I’m talking about an actual salad chef. Even better, pretend like you knew all along that I am about to talk about a vegetable anime series.

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, I’ve watched anime that has featured lots of weird premises or characters in the past. I’ve even watched (and apparently scarred others) with anime that featured vegetables coming to life in the past. This is the first time that I’ve actually heard of an anime actually being primarily about vegetables coming to life when no one is looking though.

A new movie is being created based on the series Yasai no Yousei – N.Y. Salad from Yoshitaka Amano (character designer for nine different Final Fantasy games, Vampire Hunter D and a host of other anime series). Each five minute episode in the series takes place in a New York restaurant in which the vegetables all come to life after closing when no one is around. The series had two successful television seasons which aired on NHK Educational in 2007 and 2008 winning awards along the way. The movie will utilize the same mix of CG animation and pencil sketches that the series has become known for and will premiere on 40 theaters screens in Japan in early spring.

<Via ANN>

Ever feel like there's a big weight on your mind?

No actual details are going to be released until Monday in Weekly Shonen Jump but it has been revealed that a movie based on the manga Gintama will be produced. All that is currently known is that earlier this month, Warner Bros. Japan registered a site address which currently points back to their own site. The manga itself has been running since 2004 and follows a samurai named Gintoki in an age when samurai aren’t needed and oppressive aliens live the neighborhood forcing him to work odd jobs to make ends meet. This isn’t the first time Gintama has been animated having been adapted into an OVA in 2004 and a 189 episode TV series starting in 2006 by Sunrise (Crunchyroll currently has 179 episodes up with episode 180 scheduled to go up within a matter of hours).

So, historical samurai comedy is getting a movie. Yay?

<Via ANN>