John Sirabella of Media Blasters has declared on the AoD forums that Seirei no Moribito will still air on Cartoon Network as it was originally planned prior to Geneon’s demise. Sirabella also notes that he has two more un-announced titles from Geneon, and that the company isn’t interested in partially-released series, so don’t go thinking that Media Blasters is going to save everything. (Wahhh!)

Anime on DVD reports that an extra on the KITE: Liberator DVD has announced that Media Blasters has acquired the license to release Seirei no Moribito from the mostly-defunct Geneon, the first rescued license from that debacle thus far.

Hopefully that means more is on the way, however!

You’ve probably already heard about this, but CrunchyRoll– the Jpop-culture-specific YouTube-esque site that houses any number of illicit fansubs for the masses and offers paid account for access to them all, thus breaking the no-making-money-off-fansubs rule –has now received $4 million in venture capitalist funding.

The follow-up? Well, ANN has a response from FUNimation, who has been “carefully monitoring” the site and says that “to date, crunchyroll.com has complied with FUNimation’s demands to remove the applicable content.”

Media Blasters’ John Sirabella chimes in on the AnimeOnDVD forums a couple of times, suggesting that when DVD prices drop super-low then fansubs may cease existing, but he thinks that fans won’t stop downloading subs even if American companies decrease the gap in time between Japanese and US releases. (He also suggests that if fansubbers are mad, they should just stop subbing, so CrunchyRoll won’t have that content. Yeah, THAT’ll happen.)

And now Kokoro Media offers yet another point of view: CrunchyRoll’s. The site hopes to legitimize itself and offer legal, ad-sponsored content for free.

Crunchyroll has been in discussions with a “select number of Japanese firms” over legitimizing their streaming content use with licensing fees. A demonstration of the advertising business model with a select number of partners may be coming this spring. Generating revenue $$ would make future discussions “easier than asking the entire industry to take a small leap of faith.”

Looks like we’ll have to wait and see how this develops. It could turn into something really good…but it could also turn into something really shitty. (The Kokoro Media link via Simon Jones.)

If you’re looking for a series with a bunch of attractive people (particularly guys) designed by a prominent yaoi mangaka and don’t want to watch Gundam 00*, good news! Anime on DVD reports that Media Blasters has licensed Night Head Genesis, which is about a pair of brothers with psychic powers and, uh…some other things.

…I can’t say I recommend the show. I watched the first five or six episodes and had no idea what was going on (in the bad way), and the two brothers just sat around (or ran around) and bitched a lot. They were very very pretty though. It’s actually a retelling of a live-action series called Night Head that I never saw. But yeah, I thought the show was impressively mediocre, personally.

But if you like supernatural mysteries and hot guys, well…maybe you’ll like it better than I did?

(* Yes, I know that most of Gundam 00 character designer Yun Kouga’s work isn’t officially “yaoi,” but she HAS done yaoi doujinshi and clearly aims for that market with many of her mainstream work, so nyah. The yaoi mangaka who designed the characters of Night Head Genesis is You Higuri, of Gakuen Heaven / Gorgeous Carat fame.)

So upon Bandai Visual USA’s announcement of True Tears and Shigofumi, I calculated the per-episode price of each 13-episode series– six 2-episode discs at $39.99 each plus one 1-episode disc at $29.99 = $269.93, divided by 13 = $20.76 per episode. I later talked about Right Stuf’s release of Emma as being more reasonable and was brought back to a per-episode price, and it came up again on IRC with Blood+.

So I started wondering: how much does an episode of anime generally cost? In search of this answer, I went through all January US anime DVD releases and calculated the price per episode of each release (excluding movies and special editions). I DID leave in a Geneon release for comparison, as well as a couple of other cancelled releases (like Hikaru no Go).

Now, keep in mind that this is really NOT enough samples to get a really solid view on all the companies. I mean, sure, ADV, FUNi, VIZ, and Bandai Entertainment each put out a good chunk of releases, but BVU only had two, Geneon only had one that I could find enough info on to include, and TRSI only had one period. Media Blasters and Manga Entertainment also both had only two each, and Manga’s were both box set re-releases (which, of course, tend to be much cheaper).

The average price of a single anime episode, though, was $5.65. The most expensive company was, of course, Bandai Visual USA (at an average of $16.66 per episode– but again, only two releases in January to work with). The cheapest was Manga Entertainment, who again only had box set re-releases that averaged to $1.99/ep; Bandai Entertainment was in second with $4.70/ep.

The cheapest anime was the Medabots box set (if I got the number of episodes right) at $1.35/ep; second place was Noein at $1.84/ep. The most expensive were, again, BVU’s releases, MS Gundam IGLOO and Super Robot Wars OG Divine Wars, both at $16.66/ep.

The average per-episode price for box sets and rereleases was $3.19/ep; for new releases it was $7.05/ep.

Let me reiterate that this is all pretty unscientific– I really should go through, say, all of 2007’s releases to provide a more accurate picture. (Maybe I’ll get to it someday.) But this is a bit of a taste, I suppose. If you want to see my spreadsheet you can grab it here.

Good morning campers! I’m plugged in to the panelists’ power outlets and Media Blasters has already announced that they now have a video game department, as some of you know. They haven’t gotten into it yet but I’m guessing that means visual novels for us!

They’ll be premiering Studio 4°C’s Tweeny Witches at 1pm here at the con, btw.

And now, on to the games department. Woot. First up, adult titles: Bible Black– which is completely uncensored, unlike the mosaiced Japanese versions. This one seems to be due out soon.

As for non-adult, they’ll be doing the Game Boy Advanced game Samurai Deeper Kyo, which is NOT a visual novel. Sweet. (Don’t forget GBA games work on DS!)

They’re hoping to release Gurumin for the PC, but they’re still finalizing the talks. Should be underway shortly. It’s also non-adult, btw.

They’re going to be offering an online card game called Alteil at www.alteil.com, which has veeeery pretty art. And unlike their main websites, the Alteil site actually updates! Wowee! It’s also free.

They have now sworn that someday, SOME GLORIOUS DAY, their websites will not suck.

They’re currently announcing that they’ll be working with Phoenix Entertainment in Japan, most famous for Nightmare Campus, La Blue Girl, etc., to do their own original animation.

They’re hoping to start do some yuri manga next year.

They also officially have the license for Genshiken 2, to no one’s surprise. ;)

…Just kidding. Daddy can’t take my T-1 away anymore! (Besides, I have DSL now. BTW, Qwest DSL sucks!)

Anyway, on to more interesting developments, like the fact that this post is #666. FEAR THIS POST. And now, on with the lulz:

• Either ICv2 or the CEO of FUNimation fails to know what Hellsing is. Either way, I’m laughin’. Oh, and FUNi wants to acquire some Geneon licenses, etc.
• At first glance, I thought this was about Yuko Goto, and I was all, “Mikuru pulled a Winona Ryder!?” But alas, it was just some Jpop guy.
• Bandai (JP) is doing some redecorating: they’re merging Banpresto into Bandai Namco Games, and they also want to buy up all of the Bandai Visual (JP) shares to pull the company off the public stock market. I don’t think that’ll mean much to individual BVU/Bandai Entertainment consumers in the US, but there you have it.
• Isn’t the guy singing in this video the same guy who sings in Metal Koi no Mikuru Densetsu? If not, they could be voice doubles of each other!
• Aaaand Media Blasters may or may not have licensed Doujin Work. I’d guess yes; it seems like a title that would suit them well.

Further updates as events warrant, natch.

Seriously, if there’s a TGIF, there should be an OGISN: “Oh God, It’s Sunday Night*.”