A Long Overdue Anime News Roundup
It's been quite a while without anime news, hasn't it? In that case I'll have to remedy the situation with a small news roundup.
Last month Adult Swim publicly announced the airing of a new anime on February 14th at midnight. The move led many fans to speculate a range of possibilities from Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood to Soul Eater. More cynical fans suggested the announcement may have even been a joke. Fortunately, the latter turned out to be false as the Los Angeles Weekly blog confirmed the new anime is in fact Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood on February 4th. FUNimation also confirmed the news on its official blog on Friday. In other words, Adult Swim is still interested in acquiring new anime. You can argue that the network is playing it safe by airing a redo of a highly successful series, but a redo is preferable to endless reruns. At this rate it'll only be a matter of time before InuYasha: The Final Act is announced, as InuYasha is yet another popular series on the network. And as always official subtitled episodes of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood and InuYasha: The Final Act are available through Hulu, FUNimation, and Viz Media.
While we're on the subject of a popular FUNimation series why not go old school? It's official DragonBall Z Kai has been licensed for domestic release. For those of you unaware, DragonBall Z Kai is something of a light redo for the series. Where FMA: Brotherhood is a complete redo of the anime in order to closely follow the manga, DBZ: Kai simply cuts out all of the anime original filler keeping the DBZ plot and fights brief, as they appear in the manga. In essence the "Drag-On" is removed from DragonBall Z. Personally, I'd love to watch a version of DBZ edited for brevity considering how the length of the fights was one reason I grew tired of the series nearly a decade ago. My only concern is how FUNimation will pull DBZ Kai off, as consumer fatigue is a possibility because of the constant DragonBall related releases. I've actually lost track of how many times DragonBall Z was released and re-released. As of this writing FUNimation has not published any additional details on a release date.
On the Bandai side of anime distribution Gundam Unicorn had a world premiere in Hong Kong yesterday. On March 12th Bandai Visual Japan plans to release the first Blu-ray volume of Gundam Unicorn via Amazon.com exclusively. In fact, the volume will feature dual language dubbing in both Japanese and English, as well as subtitles in Japanese, English, French, Spanish, and Chinese. On the DVD side of things the first volume the latest Gundam series will ship on the same day as the Blu-ray release, but it will only feature Japanese dubbing and English and Japanese subtitles.
Bandai Entertainment has hinted at the possibility of releasing a second season of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya on DVD via its "official" ASOS Brigade website. There are no actual official confirmations of a domestic release of the second season of Haruhi, but it seems to be a matter of "when," rather than "if" at this point.
Given the success of both seasons of Code Geass, the announcement of a new project concerning the series should come as a surprise to no one. Bandai Visual and Sunrise have even stated that the series will have something of a "rebirth" later this year. At this point fans can only wonder if a new project would pick up where the second season of the anime left off, or if Sunrise has something else planned. We'll certainly discover the answer later this spring.
Image courtesy of Random Curiosity.
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I saw a commercial for Brotherhood last night. I think I'm going to check it out, especially since it'll be airing at a time that's actually reasonable by Adult Swim's standards. I might pick up the series on Blu-Ray if I like it.
Speaking of Blu-Ray, I really wanted to get Gundam Unicorn, but that price is lunacy. $50 for one 50 minute episode? Nice to see Bandai Visual still exists to implement their draconian pricing schemes!
I highly recommend FMA: Brotherhood. I've been watching it off and on via Funimation.com, then Hulu.com. Although the first 15 episodes are like watching a compressed or sped up version of the first anime. It makes you realize how much the first anime really stretched out the story since the manga wasn't close to being completed. With that said, at this point I consider the first series to be more emotional where the redo (and thus the manga) is more logical.
As for Gundam Unicorn... It's like you're paying a dollar per minute for hi-def awesomeness! But seriously, I'd give Gundam Unicorn a little while before it starts to come down in price. Or wait until Bandai Entertainment fully has the series in its grasp, their prices aren't too unreasonable at times.