Posts Tagged ‘the anime network’

First Impression: This is EXACTLY what I thought it was going to be.

The series opens on the first day of the end of the world. High school student Takashi is skipping class and feeling sorry for himself after his childhood best friend, Rei, breaks her promise to be with him for another guy. From where he is standing Takashi sees how it starts for his school, a strange man comes to the front gate and bites the arm of one of the teachers. That teacher then dies, comes back to life and begins to kill other teachers.

Saving the one person in the school he cares about, the rest of the episode is a mad scramble for Takashi, Rei and her boyfriend Hayashi to higher ground as all around them students are dying in very graphic ways. Meanwhile in other parts of the school solitary survivors including a sword wielding female student, the genius and her friend and the busty (and probably ditzy) school nurse are finding their own way through the madness.

Good and the Bad

Out of all the new series this season, HSotD is one of the few titles that really gave a very clear picture of what audiences should be expecting: zombies, blood, boobs, violence, chaos, death, wanton destruction (though not necessarily in that order). This series delivers on all of that and still manages to give that much more.

Taking a very frantic and real approach to the situation, HSotD is a gory mess within only a couple of minutes (it’s an ecchi fan service fest before the end of the OP sequence). From the time the assault on the school begins to its closing moments there will be no time for the audience to process what is happening. Just as thought you were there to witness it personally, everything in this episode happens at a deliberately frantic pace. People are scared and there are no time for explanations.

If this was looking like it was just going to be a bunch of students running around randomly while occasionally fighting off the living impaired there would be no reason to push this onto anyone. What keeps this episode so intense and hard to turn away from are the simple inserts that are scattered in along the way. The process of the main characters is very simple; get to the one place in the school they think they will be the safest. There is no time for them to debate the fact so their path throughout the episode is pretty straight forward. Filling in the time in between, the staff behind the series puts forward their perspectives on human nature.

The raw fear and emotion that people are willing to show in times of crisis can be some of the most compelling to watch when done correctly. In this situation, the staff at Madhouse create an environment of fear that becomes completely self serving. When the announcement comes over the school PA that students need to evacuate there is only a slight pregnant pause before a stampede crushes students going down stairs. Moments later two best friends run down a hallway hand in hand promising to stick by each other. That is until one is attacked and the other makes a very quick decision. In another moment, a teacher of the school sees the chaos around him and for seconds, the series shifts its focus to this one man and his complete inability to process everything around him. These moments, while seemingly random, provided HsotD with an emotional credibility early on that some may not have expected at all.

As you’ve already guessed, the content in this series is not for the weak or squeamish. People are going to die in very bloody ways, flesh will be eaten and bodies will be ripped apart. On top of this, HSotD is NOT allergic to panties and breasts. In fact it seems to revel in having them appear on screen about as often as there’s a zombie around (though I might be underestimating how much the scale actually tips in the pantsu direction). Some may call this a pointless insertion of fan service but you can’t miss the wonderful call back to classic horror of the 70’s and 80’s that HSotD is obviously trying to pay homage to.

Overall

A personal hang up of mine is that I can’t watch most things from the horror genre. The one exception to this is anime horror which I love to watch whenever I can. After one episode with this series though I’m left with a feeling of dread; this was an amazing and gripping first episode that I couldn’t take my eyes away from but sometimes a little too intense for my own personal tastes. An amazingly graphic and downright uncomfortable at times premiere that is going to test the limits of many who watch. In the end though, if you love horror or zombies you have absolutely no reason to not watch and love this series.

Good news, earlier this week Kaichou wa Maid Sama began its streaming premiere for subscribers of The Anime Network! Better news, now it’s available to all registered members! I haven’t made much effort towards hiding how much of a fan I am of this series. I even consider it one of the best shows of the spring and was surprised when a simulcast wasn’t announced. Once May had passed I had pretty much given up on it happening and shifted my hopes towards a DVD release down the line instead. So thank you Anime Network for picking it up!

But for those of you out there who aren’t familiar with the series or aren’t sure what to expect, here’s what you need to know:

Kaichou wa Maid Sama thrives on the relationship between its leads. Luckily for everyone it works. With the two personalities serving as such polar opposites, Usui gets to play the perfect deadpan punch line to Misa’s hyperactive setups.

- Just pray that it doesn’t get repetitive.

I’m an open mark for this one but even I can admit when it gets repetitive. Certain elements such as Usui’s ability to be heroic and the amount of time it takes Misa to get to something even vaguely resembling a point can be difficult to sit through.

- J.C. Staff doesn’t slouch (well, at least here they didn’t).

From the studio who brought us Azumanga Daioh, Cat Soup, Excel Saga, The Familar of Zero, A Certain Magical Index and its spinoff A Certain Scientific Railgun; Kaichou wa Maid Sama is a well put together series just chock full of moe goodness. You’d think that the maid theme would get tiresome after awhile but it’s amazing how tame something can become once you attach the word ‘job’ to it.

- Push through the filler.

It doesn’t take long before the series feels the need to kill some time with a couple of filler episodes. Do yourself a favor; push through it and know that better things are waiting for you on the other side.

- Romantic Progression, it exists!

One reason why I don’t watch more anime romantic comedy is because of the lack of actual romantic story progression. If I’m watching a series about a guy and a girl finding feelings for each other for the gods sake can they please just find them and do something about it?

Thankfully for viewers, Kaichou wa Maid Sama appears to be going somewhere even early on. No promises on where it ends up but early on at least the story looks like it’s actually moving in an intentional direction.

- DVD Release

It should have one. Please?

There! Everything you need to know early on to enjoy one of the better (best?) shoujo series of the year. Now go watch and come back to share your thoughts on episode 1 in the comments!

Alright Anime Network, you promised us a big surprise announcement this morning. Let’s see what you got… come on, try me. Make me excited. I dare you.

Wow, that’ll do it!

This announcement is proof that The Anime Network loves the world and wants it to be happy. Well… the section of it that watches anime on this half at least. Fresh off the virtual presses, The Anime Network has announced the streaming premiere of Kaichou wa Maid sama (Student Council President is a Maid!) for later this month! The shoujo romantic comedy produced by J.C. Staff premiered this past spring and has since gone on to become wildly under appreciated.

Based on the manga, Maid sama follows a very poor student council president, Misaka, who is in charge of a school that only recently started mixing genders after formerly being an all girls school. Quickly developing a reputation as a ball breaking bitch, she has to hide her part time job working in a maid cafe to keep it that way. Of course, the popular and quiet Usui finds out her secret but agrees to keep her secret.

The first episode will be available to premium subscribers starting June 15th and registered users on June 17th. After that new episodes be going up weekly on Thursdays. I don’t have a premium Anime Network membership at the moment but I think this announcement has given me a reason to change that.

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Story

In the future using magic is a common everyday thing and the gifted amongst magic users attend a magical high school guaranteed to land them government jobs after graduating. Sai Akuto lives his life doing his best to help others to make the world a better place. After getting into the high school, his magical physical reveals that instead of becoming a high priest (basically the grand high poobah of morality and virtue) like he wanted, he’s destined to become the new demon lord. Now feared by his classmates, Akuto must deal with a female classmate who wants to kill him, a girl who sees him as her prince and wants to protect him, a mysterious observer and a new man servant he never asked for, Hiroshi, who has decided to make him into his new idol.

Early Impressions

The first harem comedy of the season, Ichiban Ushiro no Daimao isn’t afraid to appeal to its audience. Between not incredibly subtle fan service and jokes which are set up on absolutely nothing, the series really wants to be funny and entertaining but has already set itself up with no legs to stand on. Early in the episode, you can see the setup coming: a boy is entering a new high school with high and virtuous dreams, naturally he’s going to end up getting the complete and polar opposite of what he wants.

Even had I ignored the thin premise, the writing was bound to kill me one way or the other anyway. Moving at an incredibly fast pace, the first episode works really hard to stack joke after joke on top of each other. Upon first hearing that Akuto is going to become the demon lord, the joke is repeated five times by various students. This is led into his homeroom teacher commenting about his impending death a few times and then there is a long string of jokes featuring Akuto constantly putting his foot in his mouth. What’s bothersome here is that the punchlines are always in the reactions. ’something vaguely scary was said! Everyone scream!’, ‘Akuto said something that we know is scary but he doesn’t, everyone scream!’. By the time the episode finally left the high school setting I was ready for the episode to be over but then realized there was still more to be watched.

Despite the content within the episode being a fast paced yell jokes over and over string of events, the actual episode itself looked pretty good. Animated by Artland, the look of the series is bright and clean. While many series with a magic theme can run into a trap of making certain sequences look too digital, Ichiban Ushiro no Daimao does a great job of blending the CG into the episodes to create nice looking scenes and battles.

Overall

For a first episode, Ichiban Ushiro no Daimao is going to appeal to those who really like their magical harem anime such as Maburaho or something more slapstick like Samurai Harem (Asu no Yoichi). As with other series of this nature, I suspect that within the next episode or two things are going to calm down considerably and the series will find some kind of pacing. After putting its best foot forward however, this is a series that leaves me feeling like I’ve seen it all before and it doesn’t look that much better this time around than it did the last time.

A little bit of interesting got mixed in with a little bit of exciting today while I was away. But here is what happened today wrapped up as neatly as I can get it.

Clannad Dub Premieres NEXT WEEK: When Sentai announced that they were going to dub Clannad I didn’t actually translate that into ‘we’ve actually already done it and now we’re going to blindside you with it so enjoy!’ I’m not complaining, I’m just saying this has been an incredibly fast rollout.

The press release went out this morning and has confirmed that the new dubbed version of Clannad will gets its first premiere on March 25th on The Anime Network’s Video on Demand. On March 26th, the series will become available via The Anime Network’s Online Player.

I admit that I do want to watch this. I saw the entire first season in its original Japanese and had a very lukewarm reaction by the end. Maybe a new dub track will help me take it a bit more seriously and not laugh at inappropriate times? (Full press release after the cut)

4Kids Strikes Back: 4Kids hasn’t been doing too well lately. It was recently reported that in the last quarter they posted a $21.3M loss (that figure was only $19.6M a year earlier) but when the going gets tough, the tough… um, license stuff. In a conference call with investors, Chairman and CEO Al Kahn assured investors that things are moving in a new direction, “The business reverses in the past few years have caused 4Kids to basically return to the very successfully business model that was used for 20 years prior to the launch of Chaotic. We have decided that 4Kids needs to return to its roots as a licensing and merchandising company that specializes in bringing wonderful Japanese programming and merchandizing to the rest of the world.”

Ready for the really good news though?

“We signed yesterday a very important Japanese property that we will be announcing in the next couple of days.”

And start speculating………… now!

Quick Durarara Update: In a quick update to something I mentioned earlier this week, VP of Licensing at Crunchyroll Rob Pereyda has mentioned on Twitter that Crunchyroll will be streaming the final two episodes of Durarara (episodes 25-26) and Sora no Woto (episodes 13-14) on the same day that they are released on DVD in Japan.

So yeah, that is mostly great news and I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth… but in 3 days, episode 12 of Sora no Woto airs. Volume 7 is set to street September 22nd. Durarara will finish streaming around June and there’s not even a date set for the final volume of that one. This is going to be a loooong wait.

Ikkitousen Adds Additional OVAs: Moving into spring premiere news, Ikkitousen can’t cram all of the breasts that it wants to into the third season, Xtreme Xecutor, so the staff is creating additional OVAs. That’s not quite a direct quote but it seems close enough to me. Each of the six DVDs will be released with an additional original OVA attached to them.

MM! Light Novels Get Anime: Finally, the light novel series MM! will be getting an anime adaptation in the future (all the usual stipulations apply; announcement only, no details). From what I have gathered, the series is an ecchi school comedy about a boy who is secretly a masochist when it comes to abuse from girls but is ashamed of it. Now in high school, he wants to confess to a girl but is afraid of his masochism freaking her out. Seeking a solution, he joins the 2nd Volunteer Club after the president decides that she can fix him.

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Everyone got their cake, streamers and stupid pointy hats handy? If you don’t, you still have time to go get some because you’re going to need them because today is the 7^th birthday of The Anime Network! Yay! For seven years, The Anime Network has been providing fans with anime in one form or another wether it be digital on demand or online through their streaming website and to celebrate the accomplishment, they want to give fans even more.

Starting at noon today (they never really specified but I assume that means noon central time, 10am Pacific, 1pm Eastern) and lasting until noon tomorrow, ALL of the anime on the site will be free for fans to view on their brand new shiny media player. Ya see it? Isn’t it all shiny and pretty? Of course, we’re hoping that this new player doesn’t end up like all the shiny toys that usually get opened at a 7^th birthday party and break within 20 minutes leading to crying fits and tears like my poor, poor Transformers *sniffles*… err I mean… never mind. Forget I said anything.  

To make this celebration even more special, the first two episodes of three recently announced series will be premiered for the very first time on the site: Special A, Blue Drop and Polyphonica. So if you’ve been looking for an excuse to start a new school comedy, music fantasy or yuri-esque mystery than you’ve officially run out of excuses.

Congratulations to The Anime Network for lasting seven years in the finicky world of the internet! Here’s hoping that you last another seven years and we get to celebrate the website’s journey into digital puberty!

Sad news for Comcast subscribers today as in the very near future the Anime Network will be expiring. The Anime Network, run by ADV, has been a Comcast feature since the early part of this decade offering anime to fans. In a statement released Anime Network they say “We’re, for lack of a better term, bummed that we’re leaving so many Comcast users high and dry for now, but we hope to be available again very soon, so watch out for that.”

The Anime Network just recently launched their online player though so things can still work out for ADV. Despite early reports of bugs, it seems that ADV has launched quite a few new features into the player such as improved security and easier navigation/filters. Still, this isn’t exactly the happiest news for The Anime Network. I have email out to ADV asking about some details but it is the weekend. If I hear anything back from them I will update here.

Funimation announced this morning via a press release that their Funimation Channel has officially become available nationwide via Comcast. Launching in September of 2005, he channel was one of the first on demand anime channels available (following behind ADV’s The Anime Network chronologically) and has spent the last few years developing a very loyal fan base due to the wide availability of both free and on demand programming options.

The one complaint that was heard constantly however was its lack of availability in various parts of the country (including mine!). Fans who have Comcast as their cable subscriber (which I no longer do since moving to Oregon, oh the irony) can find the Funimation channel in the ‘Cutting Edge’ folder for free programming while ‘Movies & Events’ will offer sneak peeks.

This comes hot on the heels of Funimation signing a new deal with Viz Media which will allow them to begin premiering some new live action titles over the summer such as ‘Nana’ and ‘Honey and Clover’ while still debuting their own titles such as the upcoming ‘Heroic Age‘ and ‘Murder Princess’.

Full Press release below the cut

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