Checkpoint: Bakemonogatari, One Piece, Haruhi

- Bakemonogatari's 13th episode, "Tsubasa Cat - Part 3", has finally began streaming on the anime's official website this week, after a couple of delays. It was supposed to go online on October 28, but meh - it's free, so what's an extra week of waiting? This is the first of 3 new episodes that were not aired on TV, and instead are receiving a free online release.

- One Piece Episode 0 was announced as a new OVA based on Eichiro Oda's prequel manga of the same title, which goes back 20 years into the past. The OVA will be released on "3000 limited-edition DVDs that will be given away in collaboration with the House Foods brand". Hell knows when.

- Suzumiya Haruhi no Shoushitsu, the anime movie that was revealed last month, now has a pseudo-officially-confirmed premiere date: February 6, 2010. And there we were thinking it would only come out next spring. Cool.

- Mai-HiME is getting a new anime short titled "Kuro no Mai / Saigo no Bansan" (Black Dance / The Last Supper). This new footage will only be about 4 minutes long, and it will be included on the upcoming My-HiME Complete Blu-ray Box, which Bandai Visual is releasing in Japan on January 27, 2010. Below are some covers and tiny screenshots from the short.




- True Tears may also receive a new anime short, as part of a Blu-ray Box edition planned by Bandai Visual for March 26, 2010. However, the release won't happen unless fans make at least 2000 pre-orders. If it does happen, this 3 minutes "long" epilogue will depict the future of the main characters. Fascinating...

- The movie version of Eve no Jikan (Time of Eve) has been confirmed to premiere in Japan during spring 2010. The anime was originally released online in 6 acts (see our trailers), and the film will re-edit and complement them with new scenes. If you enjoyed Mizu no Kotoba (2002) and Pale Cocoon (2005), you'll love this one as well. Same director and stuff.

- A Saiyuki Gaiden OVA project has been revealed by Kazuya Minekura at the Saiyuki Festa'09 event last weekend, based on her fantasy manga which ended earlier this year.

- N.Y. Salad is being made into a 3D film, to be released in spring 2010. Originally a cute veggies-meet-anime series based on a graphics collection by Yoshitaka Amano (Final Fantasy, Vampire Hunter D), N.Y. Salad was aired in two mini-series during 2007 and 2008.

- The Bears' School (Kuma no Gakkou) is a freshly announced anime movie based on a children's picture book about 12 bear cubs and 0 pedobears. The premiere is planned for 2010, in conjunction with a stop-motion animated film based on Cheburashka Arere? - the fluffy mini-anime of Russian inspiration that began airing last month.

- Chuu-Zumou (Mice Sumo) is a new Ghibli anime that's already prepared for a January 3, 2010 premiere. But relax, it's only a 13-minute short for which Hayao Miyazaki adapted a folktale about sumo-wrestling mice. I'll spare you the story's gory details... But ANN won't.

- And to end this round-up, we hear that Clive Barker plans to develop one or more of his horror stories into anime projects. The top candidate for an anime adaptation is "In the Hills, the Cities", a short story from 1984. And the director is sure to be Ryuhei Kitamura, who already worked with Barker on the live-action version of "The Midnight Meat Train" (another short story from 1984), as well as this year's weirdly-animated Baton.