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.

Another fine flock of lolis shall frolic freely in a TV anime series based on the supernatural comedy manga Kannagi: Crazy Shrine Maidens (maidens, mmm). The rumor sparked a month ago was confirmed this week, in the lastest newsletter of publisher Ichijinsha.

"The story begins when an art student named Jin Mikuriya carves a statue from the wood of the Kannagi tree - only to have the statue come to life. The original tree happened to be possessed by a goddess, who has now taken over the statue. Jin finds himself being dragged around as "Nagi" goes around taking care of the duties of a goddess."

Thanks to ANN for that bit of story, to go with the Kannagi fanarts freshly added to our gallery, and the official website - for the select few who are initiated in the ways of kana and kanji. The rest of us can just enjoy the sights...


Update: Did I mention that the director of the Kannagi anime is the ex-director of Lucky Star, Yamamoto Yutaka? Yeah, how about that. His new studio Ordet isn't animating the show, however. That part will be handled by A-1 Pictures. (thanks Canned Puppies)

Looks like we failed to mention last autumn that the Kyouran Kazoku Nikki light novels (Deranged Family Chronicles, or Frenzied Family Journal, depending on who you ask) was getting an anime adaptation. So we'll ignorantly do so now, along with passing word that the upcoming series' website is now open for business. The leading loli is flat enough to stir our wildest desires professional interest, and the rest of the characters look weird enough to make for a lol'ish anime.

From what I could gather on Amazon's Japanese website, so far the Kyouran light novels span over ten volumes, so there should be more than enough wanking material for the anime series. No idea when exactly it starts airing, but you can bet we'll keep an eye out.

We here in Romania are proud (and some of us, not so proud) of having some of the best hackers in the entire world. Why? I don’t really know, must be the environment, the sunny breeze, cheap booze, and massive porn downloads. The fact is that, once every few years, some 9 years old kid decides to hack into NASA, or Pentagon, or whatever gay self-defense (read “institutes meant to take over the world”) organizations they might have. And what do American officials do? The smart thing, for once. They don’t throw the kid in jail, nor rape him, they just... offer him a job. Because obviously, he knows what he’s doing.

Following a similar trend, Tokyo Anime Center dude Masakazu Kubo, submitted a paperwork regarding Japan’s anime industry, its ups and downs, where they went wrong and how to improve it. Amongst others, Kubo-kun mentions about the “amateur” translators responsible for subbing and uploading illegal English version of certain anime series onto the internet. His solution? You guessed it right, hire the fucking bastards. Hire their asses so they will be too busy behind a desk, wanking on naked legal lolis, to actually fansub something.

Animenation scoop.

Having a nice chat with the folks at ICv2, ADV announced that its future anime releases will count on the support of Blu-Ray - and that this translation will happen very soon, possibly starting this spring. As for the titles involved, ADV wants to prioritize their newly purchased licenses, as in the series currently running or the ones planned for airing in the near (and hopefully safe) future.

Seems like the good old anime titles that actually hold a meaning and are worthy of high definition quality, are ignored. Again. Go go money-hungry marketing!

It must be a big difference between watching anime piled up in your armchair, with loads of popcorn/drugs/booze/boobs at your side (depending on one’s preference), casually staring like an idiot in your monitor, and following a certain series on television. Come to think of it, it is. While you can manipulate your own, personal, collection, watch it any time of the day or night, giving it a pause to go take a huge dump or to refill that sad-looking, empty glass of beer, on TV, you are bound by a certain schedule. Which you will have to respect, if you ever want to see a show from top to bottom. Plus, let’s not forget about the imminent censorship, that plagues official distributions like women plague a man’s free time.

Probably that’s why the girls at Comcast, a huge cable TV operator in the United States, decided to close down AZN Television (a tiny little channel that broadcasted stuff like Tsukuyomi “I’m the hottest loli there is” Moonphase, Last Exile, Kakurenbo, plus a variety of live-action adaptations), due to the small revenues it generated. Started in 2005, AZN attracted around 14 million viewers, which, according to their owners, was not nearly enough to sustain the financial losses. With the last 15 employees waiting for Comcast to offer them other suitable jobs inside the company, AZN Television will go down the drain on April, 9th.

CNN scoop.

I can't believe that even a perfectly sane *cough* show like Genshiken 2 was censored on TV. But it was, and that makes me a sad panda. I will certainly not make the same mistake as I did by starting to watch Kojikan, not knowing that it was brutally censored in the TV version, so I'll just sit back and wait for the more private DVD release. As confirmed by Heisei Democracy today, the second DVD volume of Genshiken 2 shows the uncensored kissing scene at the end of episode four, and it's said to be "one of the most graphic kisses I’ve seen in something that isn’t an eroanime". The only turndown is that it's shared by Ohno and Tanaka, instead of Ohno and some other random chick - preferably Ogiue.