Without saying anything about why the downtime happened, Crunchyroll has announced that Tower of Druaga episode 1 is back on their site, both the streaming and downloadable versions. Once again, you can see details on Druaga and BLASSREITER’s availability online at the bottom of my first date with Druaga.

According to Anime on DVD, BOST TV– the ugly middle child in GONZO’s release of Tower of Druaga and BLASSREITER –has given up on making people who didn’t sign up early pay for the episode and is now offering the episode for free to everyone who signs up. (Those who already used points to buy the episode will have them refunded.)

Their free offering includes a streaming 640×360 copy of the episode– higher res and smoother looking than YouTube, and way less choppy playback than Crunchyroll –and DRM-free downloadable versions for iPod and PSP. BOST’s iPod and PSP versions are slightly higher-res than Crunchyroll’s, though of course BOST doesn’t have the high-res downloadable CR does.

So now there’s even less reason to download fansub versions (Druaga now has three such releases, which have been downloaded over 6,000 times)– the BOST streaming version is pretty decent quality.

For details on the different resolutions and stuff for these GONZO online releases, check here.

• Title: BLASSREITER
• Studio: GONZO
• Genre: Action/Horror

Ratings (out of 5):

• Story: ♥♥♥

• Animation: &heats;♥½
• Characters: ♥♥♥
• OP/ED Themes: ♥♥♥ (ED only)
• Overall: ♥♥♥ (What can I say? I have a zombie fetish.)

Thoughts:
I was kind of amused that the episode almost started out like a Law & Order episode, with a couple of dumbass cops coming across a dead body. Except that it had a twist I’d LOVE to see in an L&O episode someday: the body turns into a monster, fuses with a bunch of stuff around it (including surgeon’s knives and the ambulance), and kills a bunch of people. Who wouldn’t love to see Jerry Orbach (may he rest in peace) deal with that shit?

Right, anyway. These monsters are known as “Demoniacs,” and no one knows where they came from, but there’s a special team to deal with them. Unfortunately, this particular Demoniac appeared at an ambulance next to a race track, and it interfered with the race, fusing with a motorcycle. It got into an accident with Germany’s top racer: Gerd Frentzen, who survived but lost the use of his legs. Fired from his team and dumped by his girlfriend, Gerd only gets bromantic comfort from his old pal and former racing student Hermann, who is a member of the team that handles Demoniacs, XAT.

Then suddenly a hot female doctor-type appears and hands Gerd some free medicine, which he decides to try out. If you couldn’t guess that he somehow become a badass (complete with legs) and trashes a Demoniac, you haven’t been around anime for long, have you?

On a more technical note, if DRUAGA’s characters look a bit like Romeo X Juliet’s, BLASSREITER’s share more with Dragonaut’s– though decidedly less ridiculous and boobalicious. Though the aforementioned hot doctor had pretty goofy hair. The art style is a little bit lighter-colored and less vivid than Dragonaut though, which seems kind of odd for an action series like this.

The action is all rendered in CG, a little over-CG’d in my opinion. I dunno, I’m not very into the oddly smooth feel of most CG action, so that was a little off-putting for me. The actual content of the action scenes was pretty awesome though, and I think we can expect plenty of badassitude from the show.

On the audio front: I like the occasional jazz riffs you hear in the background music, even if they sometimes seem kind of randomly placed. The ED theme was a nice, catchy R&B tune– there’s no OP in the first ep, but I’m hoping it’s awesome. Maybe sort of along the lines of Darker than Black’s op, abingdon boys school’s “Howling.”

Anyway, I’m curious as to where we’re going to go with the series, so I’ll be picking up episode two fo’ sho’. I don’t know about you, but I’m already anticipating finding out that the medicine Gerd took being related to whatever makes Demoniacs to begin with. ♥

So, it’s been just over 24 hours since the first episode of Tower of DRUAGA ~the Aegis of URUK~ hit the Internets, and on YouTube alone it’s been viewed over 22,000 times. Back on Crunchyroll, I don’t know how many times it’s been viewed or downloaded, but the top donor for the hQ episode is one “The_Onigiri” who paid $50 for the episode.

Meanwhile, the first episode of BLASSREITER is out. It appears to be accessible at YouTube, Crunchyroll, and BOSTTV with the same specs as Druaga (which you can see here), so there you go. I expect to get to a first date of it today (it’s currently downloading; I paid $15 for the HQ download).

Attention otakumart shoppers, this is just a reminder: GONZO’s new series BLASSREITER (Germany! Zombies!) and Tower of Druaga ~Aegis of URUK~ (Fantasy! Classic games! Uh…towers!) are both airing this weekend– Druaga airs at 1am April 5th in Japan (so about 12 hours from now) and BLASSREITER’s debut starts at 2am on April 6th, about 36 hours from now.

Why do these matter so much? Because they’ll be available subtitled in English legally practically at the same time they air. And you can watch them for free in low-qual and buy them (at your own price) in high-qual if you like ‘em. Here’s the word straight from Crunchyroll:

We’re going to have the new episodes streaming for free with some ads that make money for the show’s creators. if you guys really like it, you can make a donation and you get to download a high quality version to play on your computer and keep - the best part is you guys get to decide how much you want to donate to support this project!

Yeah, okay, I know most of this is repetition. And I’m going to repeat again: watch it legitimately. If you see raws or subs uploaded onto TokyoTosho or AnimeSuki or anywhere else, ignore them. Why? Because GONZO is trying to do the right thing for the industry by moving it forward, and I think most of us would like the other companies to move forward with them, so we want GONZO to be successful in its attempt. (Not to mention: zombies in Germany? Fantasy worlds with towers full of monsters? HOW CAN THEY LOSE?)

The race to kick ass bringing anime to American fans has begun! Not long after Crunchy Roll announced that it would be releasing GONZO’s new series BLASSREITER and Tower of Druaga ~Aegis of URUK~, BOST TV announced that in addition to doing the same, they will also be offering it in a DRM-free version at no extra cost.

Also, if you sign up for BOST before April 2nd, you get the first episode of each series for free.

Alright, who wants to one-up that? Anyone?

CrunchyRoll has announced that they are partnering with a number of Japanese companies, including GDH (Gonzo), otaku blog Akibanana (owned by Japanese media company GI Jane), DLE (a flash animation company best known for GI Joe and Transformers cartoons), and GTChannel (part of the Zigzag Asia Media Network).

The basics, of course, are that the companies will distribute some of their content directly to fans via CrunchyRoll.

GDH, meanwhile, has issued their own press release stating that they will distribute their content via CrunchyRoll, YouTube, and BOST, and the method of distro will vary per site depending on the site’s specs and whatnot; there will be some free streaming and some fee-based downloads. But this WILL include BOTH of Gonzo’s new April series, BLASSREITER and Tower of Druaga ~the Aegis of URUK~. And they WILL be subbed in English.

Which is some pretty sweet shit, let me tell you!

(Edit: By the way, GDH has been pretty busy– they’ve also signed a deal with Animax, too.)