Anime Expo was a bit quieter this weekend when compared to years past. There weren't tons of new announcements made by every company, but FUNimation did have the most things going on.

In terms of new licenses, they've FINALLY gotten the DVD rights for the first 13 episodes of DragonBall, something they've been trying to get for the past decade. Now that they have those, Funi will start re-releasing the entire DragonBall series in remastered season sets, similar to what they've done for DBZ & GT. Season 1, the first 31 episodes of the original series, will be released on September 15. They also got the anime adaptation of the Nintendo DS game "Sands of Destruction" (World Destruction: Sekai Bokumetsu no Rokunin). Both Funi's season set & Sega's American release of the game will hit in Spring 2010. Finally, in a very up the the wire last second announcement, they cleared the rights to Production I.G's Sengoku Basara. Funi also stressed that they haven't lost the One Piece DVD license & DVD sets will continue to come out. They also stated that they don't have the Rebuild of Evangelion 2.0 movie yet.

FUNimation confirmed that they plan to launch ShoDojo.com, a brand new online anime community site to take the place of their now defunct animeOnline. Thousands of streaming anime episodes will also be a part of the site, meaning they're probably planning it to compete with Crunchyroll.

FUNimation also announced the dub cast for Slayers Revolution. & they're keeping most of the original cast! Best news I've heard all con. The fabulous Lisa Ortiz will resume her role as the lead character Lina Inverse, & most of the others will also be the same. The only exception is Xellos, who will now be voiced by the (relatively speaking) newcomer & extremely talented Michael Sinterniklaas. He will also direct the dub. Pretty interesting how FUNimation, which is located in Texas, is letting all the recording for this series go to New York. Especially considering Zelgadis' VA no longer lives there & has since moved to join the California voice actors. The main cast:

( Read more... )

After nearly two years of waiting, Rebuild of Evangelion 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance finally debuted in Japanese theaters this past weekend. The film opened at the #1 spot in the Japanese box office, earning over 512 million yen (~$5.3 million) in its first weekend. It was shown on 120 screens (versus the first film's 84 screens), but earned about twice the amount the first film did in its first weekend back in 2007.

A preview trailer for Rebuild of Evangelion 3.0 was shown at the end of the movie, which has been titled "Q quickening." The English subtitle for the film hasn't been revealed yet, but will likely include "(Not)" in it somewhere. As for the second film itself, plenty of websites have written up summaries of the film. While 1.0 was mostly the exact same as the TV series, 2.0 begins to change things drastically. & with all the surprise twists in the second movie, 3.0 looks like it'll be nothing at like the finale of the anime series. At this point I'm going to share my thoughts on what I've read, so beware of massive spoilers after the jump.

( Read more... )

This week's column actually has much more in the way of American movie trailers, but everything featured here should still be of interest to anime/Japanese movie fans. Kicking things off is FUNimation's brand new English dub trailer for Rebuild of Evangelion 1.0! They've done a great job at it, so I can't wait to see the English version. Unfortunately, even though Funi announced that they'll be giving the film a limited theatrical run, I wont be able to catch it on the big screen. It is VERY limited. In fact, most of the theaters they're listing are in Canada. You can see if you're luckier than me by checking out the theater list in the link below.

There are still a few Japanese trailers here today, including one for a film called Air Doll (about a sex doll that come to life) & a new trailer for the freakish Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl. & after that, some American-made but pretty cool stuff.

http://www.funimationfilms.com/events.html

( Read more... )

DokiMajo Plus:

Now that E3's over with, let's take a look at some of the exciting gamees that are just coming out or just announced. A big Japan-only one is the third DokiDoki Majo Shinpan game for the DS. This time they look to be expanding upon just touching young girls' bodies, with more gameplay being involved. But don't worry, there's still plenty of touching going on as well. Though compared to the more recent KimokawaE for the DS, DokiMajo now seems very mundane in terms of perverseness.

Below you'll also find videos for the latest Haruhi game for the DS, as well as the brand new Idolmaster for the DS. Yup, Idolmaster is going portable. There's also Evangelion's Misato reading the news, the scary Ju-On (Grudge) based game (for the Wii of all systems), an Astro Boy Movie game shown at E3, & more:

( Read more... )

To help promote the upcoming Rebuild of Evangelion 2.0 film, Bandai Namco Games will start putting up a software on the Japanese Playstation 3 that allows gamers to watch a news program hosted by a CGI version of Eva's Misato. The "Misato Katsuragi News Project" will launch on June 6 will offer up to date news on the stories of the day, such as politics, the economy, sports, & of course anime. The software uses an advanced voice synthesizer that makes it seem like Misato really is delivering real time news.

PS3 users also have the option of customizing the NERV News 24 studio backdrop, as well as Misato's clothes & hair. It doesn't seem very likely for this awesome sounding idea to make it over to America, unfortunately.

Source: http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2009-05-27/eva-misato-hosts-realtime-show-on-ps3s-in-japan

Anime Boston was held this past weekend in, well, Boston. FUNimation was on hand to make no less than two big announcements. The first was about a new license- Spice & Wolf! Kadokawa USA actually licensed the title for an American release last summer, but were looking for a distributor to take care of the dubbing & DVD releases for it & other titles (the others currently remain without a distributor). For fans of the series, Funi has stated that the official romanization of Horo/Holo's name is Holo. The license is only for the first season, with the second season premiering in Japan this summer.

FUNimation's other announcement was for the dub cast of the Rebuild of Evangelion 1.0 movie. While most of the roles have been recast with Funi voice actors, the voices of Shinji, Misato, & Gendo will be the same as ADV's dub of the Evangelion television series. Actually the voice of Gendo is the one used in ADV's Platinum redub of the series, as the original VA left the industry some time ago.

Probably the most disappointing change for fans is that Amanda Winn Lee wont be returning to voice Rei Ayanami. & while I would prefer to have as much as the original English cast come back as possible, with the exception of Shinji & Misato, it really doesn't matter what the other characters sound like. Shinji & Misato have iconic voices in the dub & are impossible to replace, but the same doesn't really hold true for everyone else. & yes, that includes Rei. Sure she's a major character, but considering how quiet & soft spoken a character she is, her voice just isn't that memorable & is relatively easy to replace (of course Rei fans might argue otherwise).

One other iconic voice that is impossible to replace is that of Asuka, who doesn't appear in the first movie. The fact that so few of the original actors came back makes me a bit worried that Tiffany Grant might not be back as Asuka. But considering that dub Asuka IS Tiffany Grant, I can't see how FUNimation could get anyone else but her to do the role. Funi, you better do it!

Interestingly enough, Greg Ayres is back for Rebuild 1.0, but NOT as Kaworu, which he played in ADV's Platinum redub. Rather, he's now playing the role of Kensuke. Quite an odd decision, but considering that he only played Kaworu in the redub & not the original English dub, perhaps Funi believed it didn't matter as much to make a change. A change they most likely felt was for the better. (Having Jerry Jewell voice him actually fits pretty well, IMO, & is a closer match to Kaworu's original dub voice.) The entire cast list below:

( Read more... )

Apparently Japanese cellphone companies are trying to target otaku as their next source for money. In the past week, two different cellphones modeled after those seen in anime have been announced. Firstly there's this extremely cool looking phone based off the phone used by Akira in Eden of the East. I mean just look at this thing. Gorgeous! It's being made by NEC, but not much else is known right now.

( Read more... )

The second official Rebuild of Evangelion 2.0 trailer is here! & you know what that means- more brand new shots of Asuka Langley Shikinami & new character Mari Illustrious Makinami! Every new shot of Asuka I see gets me so excited to see this film (plus I believer that's her shimapantsu we see at about the one minute mark- the animators sure know how to make us Asuka fans drool). So check the newness out above & then hit the jump for more recent Japanese film trailers:

( Read more... )

A quick update on stuff I've found out on the first day of Anime Central today, before I catch some sleep.

I asked some Media Blasters people at their booth what was going on with Moribito & Adult Swim. According to them, Moribito will indeed be coming back to AS & will be showing the entire series this time around, rather than just the first 10 eps AS originally aired over & over again. It'll be back on TV this summer. (July 25 I think is the date they gave me. Wish I had wrote it down.)

During the opening ceremonies when ADV head Matt Greenfield was introduced, someone in the crowd shouted a question about if we'll ever see the long-promised live-action Neon Genesis Evangelion movie. "Soon, & I'm not kidding" was Mr. Greenfield's response. He clarified a bit later that evening during an Evangelion panel, saying the closer he gets to sealing the deal the less he can say anything about it. & the fact that he can't say anything at all anymore should be a clear sign to us how close the deal really is. He seemed pretty confident.

There was also a marriage proposal during Anime Hell. Pretty cool. Finally, God Len from Japanator is also attending ACen, & he took some pics of the new fashion show we got going on this year. Check out his gallery here:

http://www.japanator.com/elephant/post.phtml?pk=9877

The latest issue of Dengeki Hobby magazine revealed scans of new character & mech designs for upcoming movie Rebuild of Evangelion 2.0: You Can [Not] Advance. Perhaps the most exciting designs were for the brand new Eva Unit-05, a mech that didn't exist in the original Evangelion anime series but is one of the many new additions for the Rebuild movies. It's quite different from all the other Evas as well, since it has four legs, a shark-like face, & each of its arms contain weapons built into the end instead of hands.

Also new here is a better look at the brand new female character Makinami Mari Illustrious. She's even placed on the same page as Unit-05, which might be implying some sort of connection between the two. Or maybe they're on the same page just because they're both new to the Evangelion franchise, who knows.

Of course with me being an Asuka Langley Shikinami fan, I have to mention that we see new official artwork for her as well, as she's making her Rebuild premiere in the second movie. She's shown in the scans wearing a fantastic new outfit that looks great on her, as well as her in her plugsuit. There's also new artwork for Shinji, Rei, & pretty much every other major character (though Misato seems strangely absent). See the rest of scans in high quality here:

http://superrobotwar.wordpress.com/2009/04/23/this-months-hobby-magazine-2

Evangelion Jo:

( Read more... )

Tonight at midnight, at long last, DragonBall Evolution will premiere across American movie theaters. Now, of course this movie is going to suck. I think we've all known that for a long time now. But that won't change the fact that I'll certainly be going to see it. Some of you may feel the same way. But for those of you who feel you don't want to spend a single penny to go see such a train wreck, behold! The entire movie, leaked online. Sure it's bad quality & the beginning is missing, but this is pretty much the entirety of DragonBall Evolution. I wont be watching the above vid myself, since I'm waiting to see it on the actual big screen. But if you have the urge to check it out, do so above.

Now, onto the rest of our show! Including the pretty version of Evangelion 2.0, a new look at Blood, & finally a working Astro Boy trailer. Also, a preview for Eden of the East, one of the new series to premiere in Japan this Spring! Sure it isn't a movie, but it looks like one thanks to a great budget, plus is said to be one of the best shows of the season. All that & more below:

( Read more... )

FUNimation made a slew of huge announcements today, including losing one title while gaining another. Due to declining DVD sales & nowhere to air the series on TV anymore, Funi has canceled their contract with One Piece & will no longer be releasing the episodes. But never fear, Straw Hat fans! The One Piece license has been rescued & gone back where it belongs- 4KIDS!! That's right, 4Kids has One Piece back! No longer do we have to deal with the changed voices that Funi tried to shove down our throats! Hurray!

In exchange, FUNimation has picked up a former 4Kids title- Pokemon! For the first time ever in the US, Pokemon will be getting a TRUE, proper English dub, as well as uncut Japanese versions on the DVDs! Auditions are being held for various roles right now, though they have already picked out the voice for Ash Satoshi- Zac Effron! Best known for his musical numbers in the "High School Musical" movies & being cast as Light Yagami in the upcoming live-action American "Death Note" movie, Effron sent in his audition tape to Funi early on, which you can watch for yourself above. Also, Vic Mignogna has been cast as Mudkip.

FUNimation also announced their dub voice cast for the Rebuild of Evangelion movies. They couldn't get the ADV actors to reprise their roles, so instead Funi chose to go with an all-star voice cast! Check out the main cast below:

( Read more... )

Due to the amazing success & high praise for DragonBall Evolution, Twentieth Century FOX & other studios have decided to create even more live-action movies based on anime! FOX has already announced plans to adapt "Code Geass" into an American movie, & has already cast their lead actor. British thespian Hugh Laurie, best known as the titular character in FOX's TV series "House," will be playing the lead role of Lelouch. Granted, he might seem a little old for the role. But Mr. Laurie is a terrific actor & I for one believe he can pull it off. Plus, Lelouch is a Britanian, so of course he should be played by someone British! [Japanator]

( Read more... )

Just as it happened with the first Rebuild of Evangelion movie, a low-quality fan recorded bootleg gives us an early look at the first trailer of Eva 2.0. A preview for the sequel was included at the end of the first movie, but this is the first official trailer for it. Well, unofficially official. Hopefully just like the first time around, an official high-quality version is just days away.

As for the trailer itself, or at least what we can make out from it, there's a lot of interesting stuff going on. That first heroic shot of Asuka Langley Shikinami standing tall at the 10 second mark looks amazing (tis a great time to be an Asuka fanboy). Strangely enough though, there doesn't seem to be any shots of new character Mari. I do count a whopping SEVEN different angels in this trailer though, which means it's got a lot of episodes & plot to cover for just one movie. Do they plan to finish covering the rest of the series in this film, from Asuka's first appearance all the way to the final episode? Well, I doubt they'll be adapting the bizarre final two episodes for these movies (they were retconned by "End of Evangelion" anyway), & I'm sure Kaworu will be playing a larger role as well. Still though, it seems like this movie will be covering about 15 episodes of the anime series. So hold on for a fun ride.