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PortraitThey gave me my own webspace! The fools!

I figure it will be a week before I break the Internet, but failing that, this'll be a nice place to talk all things anime, and some things not.

It's early days yet, and frankly I'm making this up as I go along. But I have been reviewing DVDs for a while now, among them a good few hundred anime discs. There are also anime reviews from my colleagues to enjoy, and they'll be popping in from time to time to contribute. Have fun exploring the site, and feel free to partake of the many wonders that MyReviewer has to offer.
Essential Online Anime
With legal online streaming becoming the perfect way to preview series, I've linked to the shows that I'm watching right now. One click will take you directly to appropriate site. Don't worry, no fansubs here.

Natsu no Arashi
Kiddy Girl-AND
Durarara!!
Soranowoto
Hyakko
Yokuwakaru Gendai Maho
Charger Girl Ju-den Chan
Kanamemo
Time of Eve
School Days
Hayate the Combat Butler
Saki
Kigurumikku
Shangri La
Darker Than Black S2: Gemini of the Meteor
Shingu: Secret of the Stellar Wars
Fairy Tail
Emma: A Victorian Romance
Revolutionary Girl Utena
Hanasaku Iroha

And don't forget Anime on Demand, the UK's first dedicated anime streaming service, with an ever increasing roster of shows.

Anime on Demand
Essential Anime Links
It's a wide world of anime out there, and it can be a little daunting. Here are some cool sites to get you started.

The Fandom Post
EyeOnAnime
Anime UK News
Anime News Network
Otaku News
UK Anime Net
Anime On DVD at Mania

The five main UK companies can be found here

MVM
Revelation
ADV
Manga Entertainment
Beez
The Beez Blog
The Manga Blog
MangaUK

A useful resource...

Online Japanese Dictionary

A convenient shop for all your anime needs..

Anime On Line

And don't forget to visit

DVD Reviewer
MyReviewer

Anime Review Roundup
Monday, 23rd January 2012, 16:02

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No news is good news. It’s the first week in 2012 that no anime company has closed its doors, downsized, or announced that it is suing someone. No releases have been cancelled, downgraded, or delayed. Nothing much of substance has happened; I can breathe a sigh of relief and just get to talking about what I’ve been reviewing of late. First up last week was Samurai Girls: The Complete Series on DVD. It’s the first release this year from Kaze Entertainment, distributed for them by Manga. It’s set in an alternate Japan where the Shogunate never fell, and has maintained Japan as a great power in the world to the modern day, mainly down to the bonds that form between generals and Master Samurai, exceptional warriors that can accomplish amazing feats. Traditionally, the Master Samurai have solely served generals from the Tokugawa Shogunate. All that changes when samurai Muneakira Yagyu returns to Edo, only for a vulnerable naked girl to fall from the heavens into his arms. But when she kisses him, Master Samurai Jubei Yagyu is unleashed. Soon Muneakira has a harem of girls around him, wanting to be kissed to unlock their hidden powers. Sounds familiar? It’s another sexy girls combat anime, but Samurai Girls has a visual style you’ll have never seen before.


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Then it was time to delve into the back catalogue once more. I have a soft spot in my heart for the anime romantic comedy. Very rarely do you get a Tom Hanks Meg Ryan situation, and you never get a Hugh Grant in one of these things, although given how ineffectual some of the teen males can be... Anime romantic comedies are all about the situations, and with animation as the medium, the situations can be as bizarre as the imagination allows. The harem comedy is a staple of the genre, while other shows have teenagers falling in love with robots, androids, goddesses, demons, catgirls, aliens, ghosts... Once you start watching these things, you can get accustomed to the wildest stretches of imagination. But can you imagine a show where a high school boy, unlucky in love, goes to sleep one night, and then wakes up the next morning with a little girl where his right hand used to be. That’s the plot of Midori Days: Volume 1.


Manga Entertainment will release Samurai Girls on DVD and Blu-ray on the 30th of January. Midori Days is all Media Blasters’ fault, released back in 2005.

Posted by Jitendar Canth

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Anime Review Roundup
Monday, 16th January 2012, 15:31

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It Never Rains, But It Pours: Part 1

I had thought 2008 was anime’s Horrible Anus, the year when everything fell apart, when the bubble burst and companies dropped like flies. Well 2012 is turning out to be a Horribler Anus, as the New Year’s removal of Bandai and Beez from the landscape was apparently just the beginning.

Last week it emerged that Media Blasters, a fairly small but popular distributor in the US was downsizing, cutting 60% of its workforce. That leaves a core base of some 5 or 6 employees, while those who were mostly responsible for media production have been let go. There was a positive spin immediately placed on this by CEO John Sirabella, stating that the intention was to rehire these people on a freelance basis. Media Blasters then strongly indicated their intentions to continue in the industry by announcing the Blu-ray release of Bakuman, and the licence rescue of fan-favourite Fushigi Yugi.

To counter this optimism, retailers have slashed the prices on much of Media Blasters’ back catalogue, which is never a good sign. Either way, just as with Bandai and Beez, if you want a Media Blasters title, this is not the time to hesitate in opening your wallet.

News at ANN

It Never Rains, But It Pours: Part 2

To make matters worse, the biggest player in the US anime distribution business, Funimation, announced last week that they are suing the second biggest player in the US anime distribution business, Sentai Filmworks and the other related companies that were born of the ADV collapse, for $8 million. It all relates to how the collapse of ADV played out, the role of ARM and Sojitz, and the claim that as well as inheriting the licenses that ADV lost back then, Funimation also inherited a role as creditor, and that ADV’s debt to ARM is now owed to Funimation. It’s a legal morass that I don’t have any hope of understanding, but my feeling is that when it gets to this stage, the only winners will be the lawyers, the highest paid of which will determine right and wrong, and the losers will be the anime fans.

But you also have to wonder just how dire the situation is for the anime industry, as it seems to this layman that only if sufficient cash isn’t coming from your customers, would you resort to preying on your rivals.

Also in the UK, Manga Entertainment license and release titles from both Sentai and Funimation. I have a vision of Manga as the little child who has to choose between mummy and daddy in the divorce.

News at ANN

Manga Entertainment’s Forthcoming Titles Announced

Otaku News have been interviewing various figures in the anime industry, last week they spoke to Andrew Partridge of Kazé, and there is an interview forthcoming with Jerome Mazandarani of Manga Entertainment. But ahead of posting that interview online, they’ve reported on some of the titles that were mentioned in that interview, although most have been announced or hinted at previously on Twitter and Facebook and the like. This time there are concrete dates for some, and explicit confirmation that Manga have Clannad, and Clannad After Story lined up.

Angel Beats 2-disc DVD and BD releases (in conjunction with Siren Visual/Sentai) End of April
Baka & Test (no date given)
Clannad 3-disc DVD (May/June) 4 volumes
Fairy Tale (March/May/August/September is tentative)
Hetalia World Series (July/Early August)
Hetalia Paint It White (June 18)
Ghost In The Shell: Solid State Society (May) DVD/Blu Ray Double Play with more extras added as well as extras from Bandai US release.
Strike Witches Season 2 (No date given)

Read more details at Otaku News.

Crunchyroll Goes High(er) Definition

For those of you with a subscription, you may already know that Crunchyroll have started streaming selected shows at a full 1080p resolution. This is from materials supplied to them by the Japanese licensors, not upscales of the 720p material that they have been streaming to date, although it has to be said that there isn’t a lot of television anime that is animated at a native 1080p.

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Two reviews for you last week, old and new, beginning with the new, K-ON!: Volume 4. The end of this show came far too quickly for this viewer, especially with the bad news that accompanied it. So we aren’t getting the Blu-rays, so Bandai’s decline means that the second series and the film probably won’t be licensed in the West, this final volume still manages to wrap up the first series in inimitable style, the perfect confection of cuteness and charm. If you’ve been glued to this delightful tale of the most unlikely of rock bands getting together in high school, then this collection of three episodes will leave you with a warm glow, feeling better about the world. Find out just why by clicking the review.


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Then I took another trip into the back catalogue to take a look at some Blu-ray anime, something which looks less and less likely a certainty in the UK anime industry. I finally got to see Appleseed: Ex Machina, a film that I refused to watch on DVD when I learned that Warners was releasing it dub only. The original language audio remained a feature of the Blu-ray, which is why I had to wait until I finally got a Blu-ray player to watch it. The first Appleseed movie was a grand experiment, one of the first feature length CG animations made in Japan, and practically the first to use toon-shading to appeal to audiences more used to traditional anime styles. It was a qualified success, a decent story, action packed animation, but one limited by the technology and what the animators could accomplish. Appleseed: Ex Machina was made 3 years later. 3 years in CGI terms is a lifetime, and this time none other than John Woo was producing. See why Appleseed Ex Machina made my eyeballs beg for submission by clicking you know what.


Manga Entertainment released K-ON!: Volume 4 last Monday, while Appleseed: Ex Machina was released back in 2008.

Posted by Jitendar Canth

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Happy New Year, My Arse!
Monday, 9th January 2012, 16:55

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Where Bandai Goes, Beez Follows

It’s been a miserable New Year if you’re an anime fan, and at this point there doesn’t seem to be any light on the horizon. On the 2nd of January, the announcement came from across the pond, just in time for last week’s Review Roundup, that Bandai Entertainment International was withdrawing from the North American market. Subsequent information indicated that this was a decision mandated by Bandai’s Japanese parent company, Namco Bandai Holdings.

The next day saw rumours start to surface about Bandai Entertainment European Zone, or as we in the UK know them, Beez Entertainment, with a report on a French forum stating that their French offices had closed for business at the start of December, and the company was to all intents and purposes, dead. Well, Tweets, forum and Facebook posts have subsequently been issued which go some way to clarifying the situation, although we still have to wait for an official statement regarding Beez’ future.

Reading between the lines, Beez Entertainment are in the same situation as Bandai Entertainment, probably for the same reasons, Namco Bandai’s consolidation. Everything that is scheduled for the end of January will be released, including Code Geass R2 Anime Legends, and the final volume of The Girl Who Leapt Through Space. Beez’ existing stock remains available, and existing licenses remain extant.

What makes this tragic for UK customers is that Beez was one of the few companies innovating content for the UK, rather than just relying on what Bandai released. They released sub only discs of Durarara, Sound of the Sky, Tatami Galaxy, and House of the Five Leaves, the latter two which have yet to be released in the US. Doubly tragic is that in the riots of last year, most of Beez back catalogue stock went up in smoke, and although they had started to reprint selected titles, it’s unclear just how far that process has gone. Unlike the demise of ADV, which even after all this time still has content available on shop e-shelves, those looking to fill the gaps in their Beez collections will have a hard time finding those elusive volumes. Without the backing from Namco Bandai, it’s hard to see how Beez can recover from this situation. The best we can hope for is that the momentum of reprinting those lost titles continues, and some more stock makes it to the shelves before the plug is finally pulled.

This just leaves three anime distributors active in the UK...

Manga Entertainment’s Blu-ray Ambitions in Tatters

Friday was just a capper on a crappy week for UK anime fans, when Manga Entertainment announced that they were cancelling the Blu-ray boxset for K-On! Season 1, and then they cancelled the Blu-ray of The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya movie. Jerome Mazandarani, Head of Marketing & Acquisitions at Manga posted this statement via Twitter yesterday outlining Manga’s position.

To be honest, I was expecting the K-On! cancellation, having read about the crippleware forced on Bandai Entertainment for the US Blu-rays. Zero extras and DVD quality sound do not an attractive Blu-ray make. The Haruhi announcement came like a kick to the gut though, especially given the fact that Manga have been hyping the release for over a year, despite it being constantly delayed, and only a mastering error at the last minute prevented its November release. Also, it’s one of the highest profile titles around, and if you’re not going to make money on a title of that stature...

That’s been Manga’s problem with Blu-ray all around. With the rare exception, they have just failed to make money, although the constant litany of announcement, hyperbole, promotion, and cancellation has induced a wariness in UK viewers that makes many reluctant to take a chance. Low sales may have been a contributing factor, but Manga have also been the architects of their own downfall to some degree. They first cancelled the Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood Blu-rays two volumes in, realising that long series on Blu-ray are untenable in the UK market. They then tried something shorter, with Casshern Sins, and Xam’d Lost Memories. Both titles didn’t get past the first volume on Blu-ray, from which Manga learned that multi-part series in high definition won’t sell for them. It was single shots and movies only from that point on. Then their Christmas present for us was the cancellation of the single shot Darker Than Black: Gemini of the Meteor, and the movie sequel Gantz: Perfect Answer, after they released Gantz on Blu-ray. Now with the cancellation of K-On! and Haruhi, it seems that even movies and single shot series don’t work for them. That leaves Manga Entertainment’s Blu-ray experiment a non-starter. They just can’t sell enough discs to break even on the production costs, as they are creating the discs for the UK alone.

They’re still giving it a go though, with Ghost in the Shell: Solid State Society, Welcome to the Space Show, and Angel Beats pencilled in for Blu-ray in 2012.

They also have their European partners, Viz/Kazé who have grand Blu-ray ambitions for this year, and by splitting their production across several European territories, have the economy of scale behind them to potentially turn a profit. Kazé have the three Mardock Scramble movies, the Bleach and potentially the Naruto Shippuden movies, Roujin Z, Black Lagoon, and the Trigun movie, all pencilled in for Blu-ray this year, they had a success straight out of the gate with the Professor Layton phenomenon, and they begin 2012 with a Blu-ray release of Samurai Girls. Unfortunately, they have to set a price that is consistent across Europe, which in the UK means Samurai Girls is £45 on Blu-ray, where Manga’s equivalents last year were £35, and price is a significant factor in these straitened times.

Funimation’s Fairy Tale dual play releases are multi-region for BD and DVD, and are currently undercutting the pre-order prices for Manga’s forthcoming DVD only release, beating it to market by four volumes as well. Around half of US Blu-ray anime is Region A/B, while that which isn’t can usually be found on Australian Region B. The exchange rate with Australia isn’t as favourable as it once was, but if it’s the choice between Blu-ray or none at all... At the same time, some anime fans have just imported a Region A player and dealt with the situation that way.

Speaking personally as an anime fan, Manga Entertainment may make all the Blu-ray plans and announcements that they want, hype all the releases, and whip up as much fervour as they can, but I won’t get at all excited or enthusiastic until the retail release has happened. Besides, working out how much the Australian BD of The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya costs to import is too depressing.

Netflix Comes To The UK With Anime

The US content streaming company is starting up in the UK and Ireland, with a month free introductory offer, followed by a £5.99 monthly subscription. Of particular interest to anime fans will be a hefty chunk of Manga Entertainment goodies to be viewed, plus Beyblade. Anime News Network has all the details.

Why is this bad news?

Well, of all the Internet capable HDTVs there are in the world, Netflix is at this time only compatible with Samsung. I don’t own a Samsung.

Posted by Jitendar Canth

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