So! Right Stuf has preorders for the first 9 episodes (on two discs) of Gurren Lagann, Bandai Entertainment’s sub-only release.
Interestingly, they also have a special edition of the bare bones release o_o; It’s unclear what all the features are, but don’t be fooled by the two discs; the regular edition has two as well. It looks like it comes with just a CD, presumably the “Sorairo Days” OP single or something along those lines.
And hey, speaking of Gurren Lagann– the official website has opened on up. It looks like they’re pre-selling movie tickets on May 30th, during which time the first 10,000 purchasers will get a free poster, and again on July 18th, when they’ll give away 10,000 limited-edition illustration anthologies (DO WANT). And the movie, of course, hits theaters September 6th.
In spite of Kanokon’s attempts to destroy Gurren Lagann, SaiAni reports that the Gurren Lagann film’s website has updated with the full name and date of the film. It’ll be Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: Gurenhen (”guren hen” being something like “crimson compilation”) and will hit theaters in Japan on September 6th, 2008.
In anticipation I’ve registered the domain “piercetheheavens.com,” but I’m not sure what I’ll do with it (if anything).
What, you thought Sakura Con was gonna keep me from checking in on Moon Phase? Nothin’ doin’! Today’s report mentions that the ever-controversial Kodomo no Jikan is getting a second season. (Damn RIGHT. It needs to give us more creepy!Reiji.)
Also being buzzed about: Shokotan will be singing the Gurren Lagann movie theme. I have more questions to ask her at Anime Expo now! ♥
…Okay, yeah, Doraemon is a more kid-friendly “anime ambassador“, not to mention he’s one of the longest-running anime characters ever. But c’mon, Kamina already conquered the UK with the cunning use of flags, so wouldn’t he be a great ambassador?
Okay, okay, fine, so he’d probably wind up beating up some high-ranking official. It’d probably be amusing for the world at large!
Ro, Ro, Fight the Pre-Open.
No new information about the movie, just some info about where there WILL (hopefully) be more information: the Tokyo Anime Fair later this month. Oh, to be at TAF…I’ll be at Sakura Con instead, but you bet your butt I’ll be keeping tabs on the interwebs to nab whatever information streams along. I’m hoping there’ll be a flood of it.
Let me say straight up from the get-go: I don’t really give a damn about the Devil May Cry anime. I’ve never played the games. I watched the first episode and was amazed at the mediocrity of the visuals for an anime based on such a popular game franchise. (They weren’t bad, but they weren’t great either.)
That said: ANN has a new release list from ADV that includes the second disc of Devil May Cry, now due out on May 6th (both in a regular edition and an edition with a box).
But the IMPORTANT news is that there’s still no word on a release for Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, which makes baby Jesus cry. And baby Simon. And baby Kamina. SERIOUSLY.
Also, ADV is apparently calling Kyoshiro to Towa no Sora (literally Kyoshiro and the Eternal Sky, Kyoshiro being a character of course) “Shattered Angels,” which is kind of silly. (If you had to give an English name, how about just “Eternal Sky”?)
Silly ADV.
Or at least, so says the Kadokawa page on the Tokyo International Anime Fair website. Well, okay, I said the mighty and manly parts. Here’s what they said (my rough translation):
The March 10th issue of Newtype will announce the Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann movie version and give it a strong push!
It’s a gekijouban (movie version), not a jissha eiga (live-action movie), so I assume it’s an animated feature set in the Gurren Lagann-verse.
If you’ll excuse me, I have to go wipe some manly tears from my face. And preorder that issue of Newtype.
On the most recent Podtoid-san on Japanator (not the most recently posted one; the one we just recorded) Zero-chan and I talked a bit about Revoltechs, Kaiyodo’s line of jointed action figures with exchangable parts and accessories.
Well, Revoltech’s official blog makes mention of a new special edition Gurren Lagann figure showing at WonderFest on February 28th, and I think they’re also saying that it’ll be three times the usual size. (The regular figure will hit streets in May ‘08). Score!
Some of you may have spotted copies of a Gurren Lagann OVA episode. This episode came with the recent Gurren Lagann PSP game, and I can’t say I especially recommend it. The animation isn’t as good as the TV show, and it’s also just not very good.
Like, it kind of feels like if they took a really awesome movie and turned it into a bad Saturday morning cartoon. Except that the original was a Sunday morning cartoon to begin with. But you know what I mean? It’s episodic, kinda doofy, with random characters incorporated out of nowhere….yeah.
…But if you’re desperate for a hit of Kamina after all this time, well, by all means.
A certain thread on a certain message board is claiming that in a certain interview in a certain anime magazine in Japan, certain Gurren Lagann creators dished on a bunch of certain random tidbits about the creation of the show. (God Len over at Japanator linked me, by the way; I just figured out the magazine and looked up as much stuff as I could.)
The only problem is: the message board is known for creating random stuff, I have nowhere near enough time and patience at the moment to go through and hand-translate it all (I’m only a third year in Japanese, people!), and the people who the thread claims were interviewed are NOT listed in the magazine’s contents on their website.
But even if this is a load of bullshit, it’s funny bullshit, so here, read it and have some fun. And a few dozen dozen grains of salt while you’re at it.
There was a recent interview with Hiroyuki Yamaga and Yukari Fukui* about GL’s finale and the future of the show in a weekly manga-zine released yesterday. They mostly said not so important stuff about what they believed but there were a few fragments of interesting information revealed here and there.
- Nakajima wrote a major number of side-stories about the characters and gave them to the production staff and the VAs, this would help for a better background of the GL world.
- Yamaga doesn’t really wants to make a sequel to GL… he would prefer to expand into animation the character side stories wrote by Nakajima.
- Simon isn’t virgin… however they had a different idea of how would he lose his virginity during concept stages. He was supposed to lose his virginity to a beastwoman in episode 6, he would get traumatized after discovering she wasn’t a human. In the final canon version he just had a somewhat cute but akward first time with Nia.
- The spin-offs they want to do the most would be either about Nia, as Fukui really loved the character and would like to act in a number of her side stories, or about Viral being a guerrilla freedom warrior during the 7 year timeskip.
Man, I would totally love a guerilla!Viral spinoff. But a Nia spinoff? Uh, no thanks, I can only handle so much sweetness and light in a given day.
* Yukari Fukui, Nia’s seiyuu, WAS interviewed in the magazine. However, Yamaga’s name isn’t listed in Otona Anime’s lengthy content post. I’m ordering a copy of the mag, btw.