Things I should probably do before 2010 ends
Four months left to go in the year, and I still have lots of free time on my hands. It’s high time I knocked some of these things off my “to-do” list…
Show me your boo-er, moves
According to this Anime News Network report, the publishing company Media Blasters has started streaming anime on its website, which is still undergoing renovation at this moment. The company, which has distributed such popular series as Magic Knight Rayearth and the first season of Ah! My Goddess, posted the first English-dubbed episodes of three of its newest properties: Ikkitousen: Dragon Destiny, Kanokon: The Girl Who Cried Fox, and Queen’s Blade. All three of these series are quite fanservice-heavy, and not recommended for anyone under 17 to watch (of course, there’s no barrier of entry preventing younger viewers from getting to it…like those have ever stopped many people, anyway). I watched two of the three shows yesterday (skipping over Ikkitousen “Double-D” because I hadn’t finished the first season yet).
Random bits and bytes, spring break 2010 edition
WarioWare D.I.Y. is coming out on the Nintendo DS this weekend. While there are much fewer packed-in microgames this time as opposed to previous iterations (D.I.Y. has about 90 compared to Smooth Moves’ 180), the hook in this version is that you get to design your own. When I get my copy, I plan to make something involving Kirby (that is, if 9-Volt doesn’t beat me to it).
Samurai Pizza Cats: The Unsung Tatsunoko Heroes?
Back when I was around 9 or 10, one of the networks in my area (can’t remember whether it was channel 17 before it became part of “The WB” or channel 57 before it became part of “UPN”) used to air Samurai Pizza Cats after school. This was pretty much before anime caught on big in the U.S. (after Speed Racer and Robotech, but before the first dub of Dragon Ball Z, I think). My brother and I used to have a good laugh at the jokes on the show. Looking back on it, I find it even funnier when I found out that the English script writers had to resort to making up all of the jokes because they got the animation they needed, but not the transcripts of the original Japanese dialogue (consider that there are quite a bit of vocal anime fans who don’t like it when script writers stray too far from the source material). Arguably, it kinda worked, as even the original creators of Kyattou Ninden Teyandee prefer Pizza Cats to their original version.
It’s a…series of Gundams!
There’s going to be a new Gundam series available on DVD and Blu-Ray starting next month (called Gundam Unicorn; you can stop laughing…now). To commemorate this release, Sunrise has released streaming video of some of the older series that have been broadcast in the U.S., including the original Mobile Suit Gundam, its sequel Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, and the “re-imagining” of the series Mobile Suit Gundam Seed. Anime News Network is going to have all of them available for a limited time on the “Video” section of the website (MS Gundam has English dub versions of all of its episodes while the others have the original Japanese audio with English subtitles).
