Otaku, No Video

Several big license announcements this week.

ANN: Funimation has licensed Dragon Ball Kai, the recent edit of the original DBZ to follow Akira Toriyama’s manga more closely, and to enhance some of the long-in-the-tooth special effects.

ANN: More big news: Adult Swim still shows anime, apparently. They’ve now picked up Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, which will start airing about a week from now, on Sunday, February 14th at midnight.

ANN: Meanwhile, Yen Press continues to license awesome stuff: the gag manga The Melancholy of Suzumiya-Haruhi-chan, kakifly’s K-ON! manga, and the first light novel in Mizuki Nomura’s series Bungaku Shoujo (the story of the weird members of a high school literary club).

ANN: I reported several months ago that Stan Lee was working with Studio BONES on an anime called Heroman. Well, we now have confirmation that it’ll air in Japan on TV Tokyo starting in April. Yay! Interestingly, it’s the story of a young boy living in America who stumbles upon a toy robot. The toy apparently then transforms into a giant pilotable robot, with the kid inside. So, Stan Lee is officially writing mecha. Woohoo!  (This also means at least one mecha show next season.)

AnimeNation.net:  Another new anime was announced: an adaptation of Daisuke Sato and Shoji Sato’s Highschool of the Dead, a horror action story about a group of high schoolers trying to survive a zombie apocalypse in their school. I keep hearing about this manga; apparently a lot of people like it.

ANN: Mamoru Nagano, creator of legendary shoujo mecha series The Five Star Stories, will be directing an anime film. It’ll be called Hana no Utame Gothicmade, and it’ll be mecha. So, cool! No word on when it’ll be released.

AnimeNation.net: Joseph Chou, producer on Appleseed: Ex Machina, has revealed that there will be more Appleseed movies.  This comes after plans for an Appleseed TV series were cancelled.

ANN: Chou also revealed that pre-production discussion on the live-action Evangelion movies continues, as they discuss the project with mysteriously unnamed producers and studios. Apparently, the project stalled mainly because of the recent downturn in the anime market.

ANN: Speaking of Eva, Japanese retailer “Geo on the Rakuten” now lists Neon Genesis Evangelion 2.22, which is the first we’ve heard of anything beyond Evangelion 2.0. According to the site, 2.22 has “enhancements” over 2.0. That’s all we know.

ANN: Namco Bandai’s in a spot of trouble. They released their 2009 earnings numbers this week. They had anticipated a profit of US $94 million for 2009, they instead had a loss.  Of US $340 million. So, they’re re-organizing! And in typical Japanese fashion, they’ve titled the re-org “Namco Bandai Group Restart Plan.” They’ll cut 10% of their workforce and re-structure their operations. Here’s hoping it’ll help.

One particularly interesting detail: one part of this production streamlining involves simultaneous release of anime on disc and online streaming. Good!

ANN: They’re not the only ones: Navarre, parent company of Funimation, saw a sales drop for the fourth quarter of 2009. They basically blamed the market, and said that fortunately they’re in a good position to grow as the economy picks back up.

ANN: A followup: Hayao Miyazaki’s Ponyo, which was on the ”long list” of animated films in consideration for the Best Animated Film Oscar, has been dropped from the final nomination list. No anime will be on the roster this year; instead we’ll see Coraline, The Princess and the Frog, Up, The Secret of Kells, and Fantastic Mr. Fox.

ANN: But J-Rock fans have something to celebrate. Major Japanese band X Japan has been invited to the main stage on Lollapalooza, the first time a Japanese band has ever received that honor. And yes, they’ve agreed to perform, in Chicago on August 6 to 8.