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Meanderings
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Thursday, 13 December 2007 |
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When Welsh MP Ian Lucas suggested in Parliament recently that the Union Flag should be redesigned to include some Welsh aspects (it's currently a combination of the flags of St George, St Andrew and St Patrick - no St David there), I don't think he realised what he was letting himself in for. After the Telegraph covered his speech, Japanese forum 2ch picked up the idea and ran with it, leading to the Telegraph running a vote on a series of largely anime-inspired alternatives to see which garnered the most support. The winner, with 55 percent of the overall vote (although the Telegraph themselves admit there were suspicious voting patterns) is a Gurren Lagann-inspired piece, put together by an anonymous Norwegian, while the runner-up features Zero no Tsukaima's Louise riding on the Welsh dragon while waving a frankly tiny Union Flag, and picked up 7 percent of the vote. Here they are:
 
Apparently the winner...
...represents shouting "UNION!" and joining together; kicking reason to the curb and doing the impossible; fighting the power, and piercing the heavens.
Someone's definitely been watching too much Gurren Lagann. Probably the most we can learn from this is that we should fear the power of the internet, especially when votes on dumb topics are concerned. There isn't a snowball's chance in hell that any of these flags will be adopted (although the winner does look good, I'll admit), but at least some people had fun with it... :)
Coincidentally(?), Gurren Lagann looks set to get a UK release from ADV Films during 2008. I'm sure this counts as good publicity... |
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Upcoming Shows
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Wednesday, 12 December 2007 |
Japanese studio BONES (responsible for RahXephon, Wolf's Rain and Fullmetal Alchemist, amongst other things) have announced that their next project will be an anime adaptation of manga series Soul Eater.
The series is set at the Shinigami Weaponry Vocational School, a school for creating Death Scythes for shinigami. The human and demon students seek the seeds of the souls of 99 humans and the soul of one witch, all of which are needed to turn just one of the demon students into a Death Scythe. One of the human students, Maka Alban, is paired with Soul Eater, a boyish demon whose true form is a scythe, as they collect the needed souls to transform Soul Eater. Ten volumes have been compiled and published in Japan so far. The manga hasn't yet been released in an English-language version.
BONES' record has been a little patchy of late - I suspect there will be quite a few of the studio's fans hoping this series will mark a return to form. The idea sounds interesting enough, at least. More details at the show's official website (in Japanese). |
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Shameless Promotion
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Tuesday, 11 December 2007 |
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 That's the tagline that FUNimation are using for the US release of Witchblade, anyway - although having had a look at some of the promo art, I don't see it myself. Go figure.
Based on an American comic series, Witchblade is currently one of the best-selling anime shows in the US - I wonder if it will live up to the hype..? With the series boasting...
"...an unusually emotive and involving storyline that posits a moving mother-daughter relationship saga against the backdrop of an explosive supernatural action-adventure"
...it certainly sounds good. The series is getting its UK release courtesy of MVM Entertainment, with the first volume out in February. I have a copy here that I'll be reviewing soon, so keep an eye out for that - in the meantime, MVM have kindly provided a few promotional clips to whet your appetite with.
MVM Trailer | Promo Clip | FUNimation Trailer |
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Upcoming Shows
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Monday, 10 December 2007 |
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 It's been confirmed that Studio 4°C, Production I.G and Madhouse will be working on a collection of six Batman short films, collectively title Batman: Gotham Knight and due for release in the summer of 2008. Apparently, think along the lines of Animatrix and you'll be on the right track - it's another case of Japanese animators taking on a Western idea. On a similar note, Marvel are working with Del Rey to produce a version of X-Men that will appeal to the shoujo-loving crowd. With influences from Fruits Basket and Ouran High School Host Club, it will be set in an all-boys' school with a single female student. Somehow, that doesn't really seem like it will work to me...
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Editorials
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Wednesday, 21 November 2007 |
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 I've been very dismissive of anime download services in the past, and took specific potshots at ADV's US-based ADV Universe service a while back. It seems someone at ADV has been paying attention, though, and they've just redressed the balance a bit with the launch of Anime Network's new streaming service.
It's sadly only available to the US and Canada at the moment (unless you're sneaky enough to make use of an open web proxy, but that's a whole legal grey area that you didn't hear me mention), but the idea is sound: 3 episodes each from a set of anime series, with new episodes added each week, streamed from the website using Flash (as used by YouTube) and free to the user. There's some advertising before, during and after each episode, but the Flash player they're using apparently allows you to skip forward and back through the clip, so presumably that can be used to avoid the ads.
Here's what's good about this:
- It's platform-agnostic - Flash player is available for Windows, Mac and Linux, so anyone can play.
- It's advertising-supported - anime fans seem to be a cheap lot, outside the hard core that buy huge numbers of releases, and this lets them get their fix for no outlay. That's half-way to beating the fansub scourge (they still need to work on the long window between Japanese airing and English-language release).
- There's no need to install any DRM-encumbered crap on your PC. Given the numerous horror stories about some of these "apps" and their behind-the-scenes activities, that can only be a good thing.
The bad things? It's streamed, and not download-to-keep (although I wonder if any of the tools that let you strip Flash videos from YouTube would work here), and by the sounds of it each episode will only be available for a limited time - but be honest, how many of the shows that you watch or buy will you ever watch again anyway? And it's free.
So two thumbs up to the folks at Anime Network. The shows initially available are:
Ah! My Goddess: Flights of Fancy
Air Gear
BASToF Syndrome
Chance Pop Session
Comic Party: Revolution
Gilgamesh
Jinki:Extend
Kurau: Phantom Memory
Magical Play
Pani Poni Dash!
Saiyuki
Utawarerumono
Now we just need them to roll this out to the UK, and we're set...
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