Now, when I originally heard that FUNimation was going to do a podcast, I assumed that it was going to be an audio deal…but apparently while they have an audio-only version of it, it is actually a video podcast. And at 14 minutes, the video comes in at 170 megs…FUNi, c’mon. You can do better than that. I could do better than that! For this reason, I’m not going to bother embedding the video here– it really wonks up the page’s load time. If you want to check out the video yourself, you can do so here.

Moving on to the actual content. I was kind of excited about this being a potential opportunity to really talk about what’s going on at FUNimation, what they do, how they do it, etc…and a cool opportunity for announcements, too. But this first episode is pretty much just a 15-minute commercial for Shin-chan, School Rumble, and One Piece, among others.

It’s hosted by Todd Haberkorn (above) who you’re most likely to recognize as Watanuki in the xxxHOLiC dub. The presentation is decent; the video quality is great and the FUNimation staff has always been awesome at the light, slightly self-deprecating humor…but sometimes, just because you make fun of yourself for being awkward, that doesn’t make it any less awkward.

All of that said, there’s hope– they mention that they’ll be podcasting live at Anime Expo next month, which I’m hoping also means the appearance of events manager Adam Sheehan, who is a hilarious guy. They’ll also be making an announcement for the next vidcast. There are going to be weekly check-ins as well as the longer monthly podcasts as well, and those could be nifty.

But this episode you can really mostly just skip, unless you’re really desperate to see the trailer for the School Rumble OVA.

SaiAni has a report about a new site for a new anime. It’s from Shin-ei, the studio that does Doraemon (and not a whole lot else). It might be a kids’ show; I’m not sure because I could find precious little info on it. It’s called Futatsu no Kurumi, or two walnuts, about a girl who lives with a rather harsh mother and grandmother and her dog, and who meets another girl. From the look of the site it looks like there’ll be flashbacks to 1945, and a monument to those who died in World War II is also mentioned, so we can probably expect some amount of historical talk.

The show is going to be directed by Tetsuo Yasumi, who has worked on stuff like the Shin-chan movie, one of the eight trillion Doraemon flicks, and a few other kiddie-type shows and movies. (Hence my belief that it might be a bit of a kids’ show, though of course Shin-chan isn’t exactly onee.)