Remember how GONZO released a Tower of Druaga MMORPG as well as the anime?

Well, it looks like they’re expanding their gaming revolution: they just issued a press release announcing that they’re partnering with Gamania Digital Entertainment to release their MMO Pandora Saga in China, including Taiwan, Macau, and Hong Kong. (The Druaga MMO is still Japan-only, or at least Japanese-only, as far as I can tell).

I also noticed that the press release mentions that Gamania releases games in Korea, the home of about ten million different MMOs, so I wonder if that’s a possibility, too? Meanwhile, they don’t care about the US. (Not that MMORPGs are really my thing anyway.)

Chuosha has announced that a manga version of Gonzo’s Tower of DRUAGA ~the Aegis of URUK~ is being developed. It was originally going to run in Kadokawa’s Ace Assault shounen mangabon, but it’s apparently been moved to Comptiq (home of Lucky Star).

The manga will begin in the July issue of the magazine (on sale June 10th), and it will be created by Makoto2, who did the art for the Rental Magika manga (pictured), as well as Tales of Destiny’s manga and 4koma.

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.

I feel like this should be a Scooby Doo mystery: The Case of the Disappearing Anime Series!

Crunchyroll has announced that for the time being, they’re taking down Tower of Druaga. Why? I have no idea; all they say is tha it’s not GONZO’s fault.

BLASSREITER is still available on CR, though, and other sites (YouTube, BOST, and apparently BitTorrent) are still streaming both BLASSREITER and Druaga, and in BOST’s case offering downloads for iPod and PSP. At least now BOST’s is free.

Still, though…I wonder what happened? Speculation, anyone?

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.

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).

Sum-up of my findings on the various downloads (prices, resolutions, etc) are after the review!

• Title: Tower of DRUAGA ~the Aegis of Uruk~
• Studio: GONZO
• Genre: Fantasy/Comedy

Ratings (out of 5):

• Story: ♥♥½

• Animation: ♥♥♥
• Characters: ♥♥
• OP/ED Themes: ♥♥½
• Overall: ♥♥½ (Warning: This date may or may not be representative of future dates.)

Thoughts:
Secondary warning: this review will, of necessity, contain spoilers for the first episode. Read with caution! I’m also including full details on how to get the different versions of the episode at each of the three sites hosting it. They’ll be after a jump at the end.

Right, then, on with the show. As promised: the high-quality version that Crunchyroll is selling for a minimum donation of $0.01 (NOT for free as previously reported– sorry guys) is both DRM-free and reasonably high resolution (854×480). It’s not HD, but it’s perfectly acceptable. The subs are good-quality, simple white text tucked at the very bottom of the video, virtually never in the way of the action. It is at least as good quality-wise as your average fansub.

The show’s visuals are as expected from GONZO: pretty decent-looking both in terms of art and animation. It’s generally a little bit softer and rounder than Romeo x Juliet, but otherwise similar. The art styles change when they’re parodying something specific, which brings me to the plot.

With the exception of a brief bit at the beginning, the entire first episode is a particularly glorious dream-version of what might happen, imagined by the main character, Jil. It’s actually all pretty amusing, especially the references to Gurren Lagann, Evangelion, and tentacle porn. I really enjoyed the episode as its own thing.

However, it made things really unclear in terms of where the series is going. It introduced the main character to us, and a few side characters, but it’s hard to get a grip on those side characters based on Jil’s imagination-versions of them. Also, I couldn’t help but notice that the group of character you see Jil with during the ending credits is not the group you see him with for the episode (although the episode-group appears in the clever opening video).

So, while I found the episode pretty fun, I have no clue what’s going to happen from here on out. Will it be a bit more serious? Stay a comedy? Continue parodying other shows? Noooo idea. So, sorry folks, I can’t really recommend whether to watch the series or not based on this episode! I’m definitely going to pick up the second one to see where this goes, though.

Now, as promised: I actually went through the process of all three sites’ Druaga episodes and have full instructions and details after the jump. I also included an image from each so you can compare the quality. I hope they don’t screw up the layout.

Read the rest of this entry »

EDIT: I may be incorrect about this– per the comment of a user, I went through the process fully this time, including putting my credit card info again, and I DID get an error due to the attempt to charge $0.00 on my card. When I get home later today I’ll play with it more on all the sites and give a full report. I hate it when I’m wrong!

So I went through the process of buying the high quality copy of Tower of Druaga. The way the system works is that you can elect to pay $2, $5, $10, or “Other.” In “Other” the number you specify must be in X.XX format, but you CAN put in 0.00 and download the episode for free. I’ll report on the video and sub quality when I get back to my computer tonight and watch it.

I want to encourage everyone once again to try and pay at least a nominal fee, even if it’s only $0.25. Think of it as proving that anime fans don’t completely suck.

If you’re curious, I paid $10– not because I’m willing to pay ten bucks per episode for anime generally (hell no!), but because I want to show strong support for this experiment. The price I’ll pay for future episodes will probably depend on how much I wind up liking the series, but I expect I’ll pay at least $1-2 per episode from now on.

For those of you who are downloading the high-quality version: how much are you planning to pay?

Is it sad that I’m this excited about GONZO’s awesome distro experiment? I’m actually working in an office today and I went and set up my remote PC access stuff so I could set up the first episode download at home as soon as the show’s available, since I can’t actually watch it at the office.

Ah, me. I should get my first date report for the show up tonight. ♥

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.)