Aye, we don't usually cover any licensing crap, but I happen to have an hour to kill, and this concerns one of the most enjoyable animes from 2007 - sola - so what the hell. Via Anime on DVD, it's become apparent that the anime sola ("sora" meaning "sky" in Japanese) is Bandai Visual's latest acquisition for North America, where they plan to launch the first DVD volume on June 10, 2008.

On Bandai's sola website (more like a static image, really), we are informed that the sola graphic novel will also be released this summer, by Broccoli Books. In case you're not familiar with this title, a brief description can be found on the publisher's products page:

"Once there was a girl who yearned to see the blue sky.
-But someone has to pay the price before it can come true.
Conceived by the creators of two Japanese blockbuster PC games, Naoki Hisaya (Kanon) and Naru Nanao (D.C. ~ Da Capo~), sola is a mysterious and fantastic story of Yorito Morimiya, a high school student who loves to take photos of the sky. One night, he meets a mysterious girl, Matsuri Shihou, who is what one calls a "Yaka", an immortal, ageless existence. Their chance meeting unravels a story that stood still for hundreds of years...

Lately, Bandai's licensing deals seem to be improving a lot, as they recently acquired the rights for bringing two other promising animes to North America - True Tears and the slightly-censored Shigofumi - both of which are currently being aired in Japan. Ganbatte, Bandai-kun!


Update: Bandai Visual USA has just issued a press release restating the above, along with more about the story, theme and creators of sola... plus a link to Broccoli Book's sola page, where the first graphic novel volume is listed for release on June 18, 2008. Oh and don't worry about dubbing if you're after the anime: it will only have Japanese audio with optional English subtitles.

To be, or not to be excited... Frankly speaking, after the second season of School Rumble - which I couldn't even endure to watch in full after its disastrous start - I'm not too crazy about the idea of yet another semester. Nevertheless, there is still the issue of Yakumo-chan (sono eyebrows O_O), which we would certainly not mind seeing more of.

With that thought in mind, we kind of welcome the announcement (via Densetsu Shoujo) of the third School Rumble season. According to Kodansha's official website, School Rumble San Gakki (School Rumble: Third Term) will be a two-episodes OVA bundled with the upcoming School Rumble manga volumes 21 and 22, the first of which is to be released on July 17, and the second one on September 17. That's about all, for now.

It's been a busy and productive day for Animekon, so I'll try to make this one real quick, and go get me some much needed fap sleep. That said, here are the new animes (hopefully all of them) that were revealed as of late, some clearly less appealing than others...

- Hakushaku to Yousei (Count and Fairy) - based on a shoujo (i.e. for girls) light novel series set in 19th century England, about a "fairy doctor" who meets a legendary blue knight count and, well, stuff happens (website, novel volumes).

- Natsume Yuujin-Chou (Natsume's Book of Friends) - based on a shoujo ghost-story manga, about a boy who can see ghosts, and some book made by his grandmother to trap said ghosts.

- Net Ghost PiPoPa - a virtual reality series for children. Begins on April 6 (website).

- Penguin Musume (Penguin Girl) - based on a 4-panel gag manga about a weird (but rich) girl named Nankyoku Sakura who is obsessed with anime and manga, and gets herself the nickname "Penguin" due to her family name meaning "South Pole". Looks LOL.

- Penguin no Mondai (A Penguin's Troubles) - based on a gag comedy manga for children. Not to be confused with the one above. Or better yet, to be ignored.

- Quiz Magic Academy - based on a series of arcade trivia games by Konami. The OVA will be animated by studio AIC, with a script and direction handled by the guys behind Amaenaideyo!! and School Days. The last part sounds promising, but the title doesn't.

- Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's - self-explanatory. Begins on April 2 (website).

Update: Added that bit of pseudo-info about Net Ghost PiPoPa.

Fighto! More ass-kicking and pantsu-shooting is sure to follow, now that the third Ikkitousen anime season was revealed on the cover of the Comic Gum magazine's April issue, with a similar announcement to follow on the Ikkitousen website this Monday (thankies HD). Funny thing, just today I was watching through some of those "Hotspring Specials" episodes that came after Ikkitousen Dragon Destiny. Life sure does have an amusing side once in a while... but let's get back to the point.

The third season will be titled Ikkitousen Great Guardians, and it's currently set to start airing on TV in Japan this summer. HD doesn't note any change in the anime's staff and cast comparted to that of Ikkitousen Dragon Destiny (so it will continue to be produced by Arms and Genco), but it speculates that this news does not bode well for that Sekirei anime rumoured one month ago.

"This puts a crimp in the theory that we'd be seeing a Sekirei anime from this team sometime soon; I'm still holding out hopes that Media Factory will put the Genshiken staff to work on Sekirei, but we'll be watching for firm news either way come the middle of March.

Oh and looking at the ad - Ryofu is back?! New anime original character?! Things could get interesting here..." (ed. - our bolding)

According to another report, that new original anime character will be Sonsaku Hakufu's sister, and we can expect "a completely original story with added characters" (not based on the manga).

With two episodes already "altered in light of recent circumstances in the society at large" (i.e. censored), and another one completely skipped by a certain TV station, Shigofumi is starting to sound like a rather intriguing anime. I'm still waiting for the whole series to finish before checking it out, but considering that the third episode was censored last month, and tonight's eight episode suffered a dubiously similar fate according to ANN, it's only reasonable to conclude that Shigofumi is becoming a must-watch anime.

By the way, I took this opportunity to update our Shigofumi gallery with a bunch of new artworks. Pinch the sample for moar.


You have new loli mail.

Posts about ToHeart2 always seem to bring in some extra clicks (gee, I wonder why...), so here's a shameless exploit of that, to let you know about the new trailer we added for the second ToHeart2 OVA - which actually happens to be the opening movie.


ToHeart2 ad - as in the anime - will start airing on March 26, and of course the ToHeart2: AnotherDays eroge is still on track for its February 29 release, with all sorts of midnight launch events set up in otaku-land Akihabara (by the way, another eroge from Alice Soft called Beat Blades Haruka is also coming out on the same day).

Update: Upon further inspection, I found a couple of trailers for Haruka which are well worth checking out - here and here. I'm betting two sen yen this will get an anime adaptation!

The folks from Bandai Ent. thought it would be a mighty great idea to launch another couple of websites for Code Geass and Lucky Star - two of the animes they licensed for North America, where they'll become available on TV and DVD later this year (probably in spring). So now, apart from the renewed official Code Geass and Lucky Star websites, each series has a mighty useless MySpace page - one for Lulu, one for Minoru (boo, no lolis).


But to make this story newsworthy, we added the English trailers for both shows locally, as a painful reminder of why animes should never, ever be dubbed in English. Poke the filmstrips above and below to watch the Code Geass trailer and the Lucky Star trailer.

Tekkon Kinkreet may have lost the race for an Oscar, as we predicted last autumn (although it didn't take an Edo Rocket scientist to see that coming). But Justice has now been served in Japan, where Studio 4°C's animation film was recognized as the best of the best, by the Nippon Academy-Sho Association (sort of Japanese Oscars, ANN reckons).

Then again, the competition wasn't that challenging, Tekkon Kinkreet only having to prove its superiority against the likes of Evangelion: 1.0 You Are [Not] Alone, Summer Days with Coo, Piano no Mori, and the latest Detective Conan movie. Too bad 5cm didn't make it... By the way, this was only the second year to feature an "Animation of the Year" award, last year's winner being The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. Fair enough.

With few exceptions, I'm not a guy who drools too much when it comes to supernatural action anime. As said, with few exceptions. Soul Eater got my special and divine attention when I heard that many of the staff members were actually ex-Fullmetal Alchemist workoholics, like Yoshiyuki Ito, who took care of the character design, or scriptwriter Akatsuki Yamatoya. Along, of course, with the full support provided by Square “give us more JPRGs” Enix.

This show, which apparently will start broadcasting in Japan on April the 7th, will air in two versions, with each episode being fed to the public Monday at 6.00 PM, followed shortly by a late night edition, where the already aired episodes will contain even more stuff. My bet is like this: censored version in the afternoon, pantsu version at night, when all the good little girls are either asleep, either being played with by serious lolicons.

About the anime, Soul Eater is based on Atsushi Ohkubo's manga, which was being published by Square Enix in Monthly Shonen Gangan, and tells the story of Maka, a (hopefully) hot and young chick, who is accompanied everywhere by her menacing partener, Soul Eater. Something to do with lots of ass kicking, probably.

ANN scoop.

For those of you who shared my fear that the the Candy Boy OVA might have ended with that single web-episode from last year, here's some good news. The Sakurai twins' girl-on-girl relation will continue with more episodes, which should also be released online. However I didn't quite get if there will be 7 more episodes, or 7 episodes in total (it's probably the latter, since AnimeNation seems to have miss-interpreted ANN's story).

Try to keep your pants on for a little longer, though: there's no ETA on when the OVA will resume, for now. Or, if you really must... here's a nice yuri-a-trois wallpaper to help you relief that ecchi itching feeling.