Checkpoint: Winter Season, Crunchyroll, Aya Hirano

Last update - Jan 5, 20:35 GMT (15:35 EST, 12:35 PST)

So the winter anime season kicked-off yesterday, with the jingling sounds of slot machines from Rio: Rainbow Gate! - whose first episode is already streaming with English subtitles via Crunchyroll. I also took the time tonight to pimp its local gallery full of Rio pics and, just for the heck of it, added the anime's trailer from a little while ago. Maybe a bit overkill for this particular title (it's not exactly the most wanted anime out there), but the plan is to keep this up for each new series that's starting this month.




Next up, today brings the debut of Kimi ni Todoke's 2nd season, much to the delight of squealing fangirls. And after a short breather tomorrow, the anime snowstorm will resume in full force starting from January 7 - with titles such as Infinite Stratos, Freezing, Gosick, Mitsudomoe 2 and several others. But no need to spam them all now, as I'll be touching upon each of them, as their premiere draws near.


Quite a few series will be streaming on Crunchyroll, as usual, and so far this year my mailbox shows 5 unread press releases from CR - their titles are a pretty obvious give-away: Rio: Rainbow Gate!, Beelzebub ("biggest shounen action title of 2011"), Cardfight!! Vanguard, Gosick and Dragon Crisis! are the first five new shows announced for streaming on Crunchyroll, so far this season.


As for Aya Hirano, it looks like the famously bra-challenged voice actress has put on the miko (shrine maiden) costume to celebrate the new year at the Washinomiya shrine - a.k.a. the "Lucky Star shrine", having been featured in the 2007 anime series (in which Aya voiced Konata). Since then, said shrine has been drawing more and more worshipers during each new year's festivities, reaching 450,000 visitors in the first three days of 2010. Still waiting for this year's numbers...


Update: Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas 2, the second OVA "season", has just been added to Crunchyroll's list - starting this February 23 with episodes 14 and 15 (given that last year's OVA had 13 episodes). Same-day streaming for a direct-to-video release in Japan? Nice!


Update #2: The first anime work in the new Berserk project that was first revealed back in September will be a theatrical anime film, planned for 2011. As it happens, the project's initial batch of trailers had just been added locally a few days ago.


Update #3: Mitsudomoe 2 now has the honor of being the latest title added to Crunchyroll's streaming line-up for this season. Their press release lists January 8 as the starting date (which is true for us Western sinners), but technically it's January 9 ("26:58" hours in Japan).