In yet another example of Japan realizing that good, old shows like Trigun and Slayers are better than new, shitty ones, a return to Appleseed has been announced, says Moon Phase. Following the success of Appleseed EX Machina, a new TV anime called Appleseed Genesis, based on Masamune Shirow’s manga, is in the works.
According to the description, it looks like it’ll be directed by Romanov Higa, who basically did all the technical stuff and directed Catblue Dynamite as well as directing the action in the Hellsing OVA, and it’ll also be a 3DCG flick like EX Machina (which Higa did not work on).
Only one cast member has been announced, but it’s a doozy: Romi Paku, who most famously voiced Ed in Fullmetal Alchemist and Nana O in Nana, as well as Hitsugaya in Bleach, Hyuuga Natsume in Gakuen Alice, and Faris (the original, the bounty hunter) in Murder Princess.
Neither Sony nor Warner Brothers are companies who make the bulk of their money selling anime DVDs to North American fans. And yet, both of them are releasing anime these days: Sony’s Blood+ release is finally on the calendar, and Warner Bros is releasing Appleseed EX Machina now.
Each has made some…interesting choices when it comes to these releases. Let’s see how they stack up.
SONY: ANN has received reports that the first episode of Blood+ is a bonus feature on a couple of other Sony discs, notably Loch Ness Terror and 30 Days of Night (the latter is a vampire flick; the former a low-budget horror B-movie). Grade: I’d love to see anime advertised to a more mainstream audience, but this is a great first step. B+.
Warner Bros.: According to Anime on DVD, Warner keeps having errors in their press releases and packaging. Apparently a poorly-worded release caused a scare that the movie might be released without Japanese audio at all (which turns out to not be true), and the Blu-Ray disc packaging also has a misprint as to what type of audio the Japanese track is (it’s Dolby Digital 5.1, and claims to be Stereo). Not a big deal to me, but still pretty lame. Grade: A whopping D (at least it turned out to have Japanese after all.)