A weekly look into American otaku culture

Okay, since I have some free time at the moment, I figure I should just wrap up my day of blogging before I go off to the various hentai-themed events for the night. They’re always the most fun.

Following up how excited I am over FUNimation’s release of Negima, we all got a look at the artbox for the series. It’s a wooden box with golden outlines of the female characters on each side. The box opens from the top, and is magnetically kept closed. They said that it was supposed to be like a bentou / lunch box, but I didn’t see any connection. It was more like a jewelry box.

The boxes come with re-useable stickers featuring chibi-version of the female students and a thumb-size figurine of chibi-Asuna. They say that the rest of the volume will also feature a “Special Edition” with another chibi figure. I have a feeling I’ll be getting the box, the rest of the series, and the special edition volume with the Nodoka figure. (^_^)

So the overall impression of the con ended on a happy note today. While there were only two companies present at the event, they did make a very good impression on me.ADV seems determined to remain in the business and re-invent the way anime is teated in America. FUNimation goes through many hoops to ensure that they put out the best quality that they possibly can. So while these seem like hard times for many, there are still a handful of things that anime fans still have to look forward to in the months ahead.

FUNimation made the public announcement on FMP 2nd Raid, but that was completely overshadowed with the MAJOR SURPRISE for this fan. BECK!!! At the convention last year, rumor was leaked from other companies over this licence. However, FUNimation never made anything official the entire year. I predicted that the issue came out of the legal issues for the many songs, and I was planning to ask them about it. Well, they answered my question before I even asked it, and sure enough, that was indeed the problem. But they said that they worked out all the legal issues, so all the music and logo’s are completely worked out. This is going to be one awesome release!

I’ll write more about my thoughts on that later as well as the other news from FUNimation later.

So ADV finally got the call from legal, so here comes some major announcements. The first new title is Jinki Extend, and we were treated to a screening of the first episode. It’s the story of a normal Japanese school girl who somehow stumbles upon battling giant robots. While the main girl is pretty cute, and there were a couple of funny bits here and there, there was nothing that really set this series apart from all the other mech series out there.

They did announce a new direct order service they will be offering on their website for custom made anime t-shirt. You pick the image, size, and color, and they’ll print it and ship it to you. Cool idea. Maybe I’ll give it a try when they put it up.

The 10th Anniversary Edition of Evangelion will include a limited edition jacket with a black-on-black Eva image on the back. I guess when you hold it up to the light, it looks cool. But other then that, it just looks like a plain black jacket.

They finally got the rights for the Elfed Lied OVA episode. Since they have already put out the entire series, so they are unsure as to how to release it.

Once again, ADV is stressing the possibility of having downloadable content in the near future for them. They really think that will solve a lot of the problems with DVDs not being so profitable for most of the series that are imported here. As far as pricing goes, it would be depending on the resolution. They are currently offering downloads on cell phones for $3 / episode.

But the biggest remark came about when the CPM bankruptcy came up. Dave got really angry over the idea, and has very strongly declared “We have been spending the past two years positioning ourselves to come out on top.” I don’t doubt them for one second. I really think they are going to the company what will keep the industry alive.

One thing that Dave stressed is that the reason why ADV has been so quite lately is that they are working on some major, ground-breaking stuff. These innovated ideas like the custom made t-shirts and downloads may be hit-or-miss, but if something hits, it will create something big. So not only will they stay on top, I predict that they will the force behind whatever the next stage of anime in the USA.

So my day starts off with going to the FUNimation panel “Breakfast at Negima’s”

So they said,
“What about
Breakfast at Negima’s?”
I said, “I
Think I
Remember that show, I
Yes, I recall actually
It was disappointing.”
And they said,
“Well that’s
The license we got.”

Okay, all jokes aside, this was the world premiere of the English dub. They screen for us the first and fifth episodes of the series, so that we could get a taste for the Ermine character. The dub was fantastic. They took many liberties with adapting the script, but what they wrote worked so well with the animation that it brought a new sense of humor to the series. Fans of the manga might be really confused at to why the anime seems even more isolated from the manga, but as a huge Akamatsu fan, I feel that this dub actually does more justice then the original Japanese script did.

Gripes did some with the voices, though. Ayres was casted for the lead with this one, but I would really doubt you could tell it’s him. He seriously changes his voice for this role, and not in a good way. When Negi is speaking in a normal voice, Ayres weak British accent is decent. But then Negi becomes timid, which happens very often, Ayres squeaks way too much, and often becomes inaudible. I also felt that Nodoka’s English voice wasn’t timid enough for her role.

But the ermine character steals the show.. They make him a very hard, tough, and perverted individual. This brings back some of the edge and raunchiness that went missing when the anime was originally made.

So you heard it here, folks, not only did I find this dub to be pretty good, I think it might actually be better then the original Japanese version! It still seems very different then the manga, but when you try to turn shit into gold, you gotta make those kinds of sacrifices. Great job, FUNimation!