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Column by Scott Green
The Creators of "Cowboy Bebop" Are Back!
Wonder what Cowboy Bebop creator Shinichirō Watanabe has been up to since since his impressive follow-up work on 2004's Samurai Champloo? Well, he contributed a bit to the music on Eureka 7, some storyboard work on the worth-seeing sci-fi action Birdy the Mighty. The directed a short for Studio 4C's 2007 Genius Party anthology and supervised the music on the excellent, but unfortunately unlicensed Brazilian set mother/daughter crime epic Michiko to Hatchin.
Well, after long, dry spell, he's re-teaming with Cowboy Bebop composer Yoko Kanno on Sakamichi no Apollo, an upcoming anime show, that will be airing on Noitamina - an anime block that programs anime for audiences who don't typically watch anime.
via Crunchyroll News
Yuki Kodama, the artist of the Shogakukan Manga Award winning original work was quoted, "I've been blessed with the best staff—to the point where when the anime adaptation of the manga was announced I could have sworn there was no such thing as such a luxurious combination. I'm so happy my heart could burst. I'm just waiting to see what kind of visual and musical collaboration they have in store for us."
Director Watanabe commented, "Actually this is the first time I'm doing an adaptation. When I read the manga, I thought, 'This is something I should do.' I'm making it with the feeling of having jam sessions with Kodama-sensei and leveraging the distinct flavor of the manga."
Yoko Kanno had this to say: "In youth, jazz. This is the work I had been waiting for the most. By all means please listen to the sounds of these young prodigies performing that I can hear from the manga, the beat of their life. "
Other staff includes:
Script: Ayako Katou (from Fuji TV), Yuuko Kakihara (Chihayafuru, series composition for Persona 4)
Character Design: Nobuteru Yuuki (Maken-ki!, To Terra)
Chief Animation Direction: Yoshimitsu Yamashita (House of Five Leaves)
Disney "Secret World of Arrietty" Dub Preview
Disney's release of Studio Ghibli's The Secret World of Arrietty hits North America February 17th. The movie was previously released in the UK with a different English dub—Americans will be hearing actress/singer Bridgit Mendler as Arrietty along with Will Arnett, Amy Poehler, Carol Burnett, and David Henrie instead of Saoirse Ronan, Tom Holland, Mark Strong, Olivia Coleman, Phyllidia Law, and Geraldine McEwan.
The Hiromasa Yonebayashi directed movie, also known as Arrietty the Borrower, adapts Mary Norton's novel The Borrowers, about the little people secretly living in human dwellings. Studio co-founder Hayao Miyazaki wrote the film's script.
Six Minutes of the "Berserk" Anime Film
Studio 4ºC's Berserk Golden Age Arc I: Egg of the Supreme Ruler, the first of a three movie adaptation of the first arc of Kentaro Miura's medieval horror action manga hits Japanese theaters on February 4th.
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Dragon Age: Dawn of the Seeker - Production Update 01
EA, BioWare, and FUNimation are working with Vexille director Fumihiko Sori and studio Oxybot to produce an animated feature based on Bioware's Dragon Age games. Gackt and Sky Crawlers' Chiaki Kuriyama and Shosuke Tanihara have recently signed on to voice characters in a project that's intended to attract international attention.
2012 is the Year of the Dragon, which is perfect timing for the release of Dragon Age: Dawn of the Seeker. To kick things off, we're unveiling our brand new website www.dragonagemovie.com and behind-the-scenes Production Update. We here at FUNimation are so excited to be working with BioWare and Electronic Arts on this film. Site updates and behind-the-scenes info will be posted frequently, so check back often to learn about Cassandra, the Seekers, and the Dragon Age World.
Dragon Age: Dawn of the Seeker will be available on DVD and Blu-ray in spring 2012.
summary:
Dragon Age: Dawn of the Seeker -In the land of Orlais, where battles are fought with swords and magic, a young heroine rises as templars, mages, and dragons clash. Cassandra, a brash and beautiful Seeker, must stop a conspiracy that threatens the realm's most powerful religious order, the Chantry of Andraste.
Accused of treasonous crimes and hunted by friend and foe, Cassandra must clear her name and overcome her raging emotions in order to save the day and take her place in legend.
From Yale University Press - a New Book on Otaku Culture
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS is pleased to announce the publication of Fandom Unbound Otaku Culture in a Connected World Edited by Mizuko Ito, Daisuke Okabe, and Izumi Tsuji In recent years, otaku culture has emerged as one of Japan’s major cultural exports and as a genuinely transnational phenomenon.
This timely volume investigates how this once marginalized popular culture has come to play a major role in Japan’s identity at home and abroad. In the American context, the word otaku is best translated as “geek”—an ardent fan with highly specialized knowledge and interests. But it is associated especially with fans of specific Japan-based cultural genres, including anime, manga, and video games. Most important of all, as this collection shows, is the way otaku culture represents a newly participatory fan culture in which fans not only organize around niche interests but produce and distribute their own media content. In this collection of essays, Japanese and American scholars offer richly detailed descriptions of how this once stigmatized Japanese youth culture created its own alternative markets and cultural products such as fan fiction, comics, costumes, and remixes, becoming a major international force that can challenge the dominance of commercial media. By exploring the rich variety of otaku culture from multiple perspectives, this groundbreaking collection provides fascinating insights into the present and future of cultural production and distribution in the digital age.
MIZUKO ITO is Professor in Residence and John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Chair in Digital Media
and Learning, Department of Anthropology and Department of Informatics, University of California, Irvine.DAISUKE OKABE is lecturer in psychology, Tokyo City University, Japan. IZUMI TSUJI is associate professor of
sociology at Chuo University, Japan.
Fandom Unbound: Otaku Culture in a Connected World
Edited by Mizuko Ito, Daisuke Okabe, and Izumi Tsuji
ISBN: 978-0-300-15864-9 PB-with Flaps * eBook ISBN: 978-0-300-17826-5
Price: $35.00 * 352 pages, with 55 b/w illus.
Publication Date: February 28, 2012
