Categories
Anime

More Funimation Anime Licenses: Aquarion, Shuffle, Tsubasa Chronicle, and Itsudatte My Santa

So Funimation went ultra berserk today, announcing three licenses in addition to the one that it announced yesterday.

I’m not too excited about Aquarion, because I’ve never really heard of it before. Plus mechs? Blegh. It’s supposed to “hit the streets” in Fall 2007. At least one person is excited about this.

I thought Shuffle! was an interesting choice. Can hentai game conversions do well in America? I don’t know if I’ve heard of one h-game conversion that’s been popular (or even released) in the US off the top of my head… Shuffle! is set for a Summer 2007 release.

I guess that with the somewhat high popularity of CLAMP, Tsubasa Chronicles is an okay license. The only CLAMP anime I’ve watched more than one episode of was Chobits. I thought Tsubasa Chronicles was boring, but maybe that’s because I wasn’t familiar with all of the characters. Tsubasa Chronicles is being released very soon: May 22nd, 2007.

EDIT: I guess Tsubasa Chronicles had already been licensed, and today they were just putting a street date on it. Whoops.

Finally (for now), Itsudatte My Santa is probably the weirdest license in this whole Kick Off thing. I reviewed this a while back when it was fansubbed. I guess with the popularity of Love Hina, people might be interested in My Santa. But the OVA was so incredibly weird and schizophrenic… I mean, seriously, who has a beach episode in a Christmas special? My Santa is scheduled for a Fall 2007 release.

With three licenses being announced today, you’d figure Funimation has something big up their sleeves for tomorrow…

17 replies on “More Funimation Anime Licenses: Aquarion, Shuffle, Tsubasa Chronicle, and Itsudatte My Santa”

It’s also weird how Funi will release a Christmas themed anime during Fall. Wouldn’t it be better to hold off the release until Christmas?

Regarding H-game adaptions being released in the US, KimiNozo is currently being released by… Funimation. I can’t think of any others though.

Tsubasa isn’t really a new license as such, as everyone has known they’ve had it for ages (I think they have actually announced it previously as well) – the only real news there is that they’ve actually decided when they are going to release it.

Still, them announcing two new licenses today makes me wonder what they’ll announce tomorrow. I mean, I was expecting one license today and one tomorrow, one of which would be Mushishi. This throws things up in the air a little.

@zanarchy:
I think that December is technically included in Fall, so it would make sense to release it then. Like Winter starts in January right? As far as quarters go…

I’d wager they’d release the anime sometime in early December.

@DiGiKerot:
Oh yeah, Kiminozo! It’s not really your typical h-game harem though, which is what I was trying to think of…

I’m hoping Mushishi will be part of the announcements tomorrow. They probably just want to save the best for last.

Oh, fair enough. There has been plenty of non-H harem-type anime released in the US, though (Love Hina, Ai Yori Aoshi, Happy Lesson, Sister Princess, Girls Bravo, etc, etc) – I don’t really see what difference being based on an H game makes here, as it doesn’t really matter much as far as the actual show goes.

@DiGiKerot:
Okay, you win! I guess there really isn’t anything different about a non h-game harem vs. an h-game harem in the context of a tv series that doesn’t have any hentai in it…

Though I think they main reason that h-game conversions are popular is due to the large fanbase that already exists for the game. Or maybe I’m wrong yet again, and DiGiKerot will call me on it again…

Hmmm, thats true in Japan. At least mostly, anyway – the reverse, that anime promotes interest in the original work, is probably also true looking at how light novels like Zero no Tsukaima and Shana have jumped in popularity in Japan recently. I’d imagine thats probably true of game anime outside of Type-MOON, Key and Age works.

I fail to see how this is relevant to the US market though. Its just another show with cute girls for them to sell. Most anime shows don’t really have any recognition beyond fansubs when they hit the states, so I really see it being based on an H-game as being neither here nor there.

Oh, and I guess Fate/Stay Night and Tsukihime count as H-game anime released in the US. Thats three I’m up to ^^;

I’m surprised no one’s mentioned Utawarerumono as one of the H-game adaptations now getting a US release…

It may be possible to count Aquarion’s fans on the fingers of one hand, but I freely admit that I’m one of them. It’s quite possibly my favourite mecha show, and I love the music.

omg They are licencing aquarion? Its hard to believe… especially the orgasmic unification scenes(Im serious, they really moan and stuff and they say orgasm sometimes too)…

re: Fall/Winter

At least in the US, winter starts on the
solstice…around Dec. 21. This means that
over 2/3 of Dec. is part of the fall.

>Shuffle!’s licensing was pretty surprising for all of us I guess…

I was guessing that would be one of them, even before it (along with My Santa and Mushishi) was leaked via active websites on Tuesday.

Other H-game adaptations released in the U.S. include Popotan and the soon-to-be-released To Heart.

Re: Aquarian
Were you raped by a mech as a child? Did you ever WATCH Gundam? In numerous blog posts and podcasts you manage to say “eww, mecha” – but never; “yeah I watched the first 26 episodes of Zeta and found that explosions, fictional politics, and superflat female characters were just NOT_MY_THING”

Zig Zeon.

It’s more like I feel like I can’t get into Gundam because of the crazy complex storyline with series upon series of history. Like which side is which again? And this bleeds over to all mecha.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *