Year: 2007

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…

Garten over at Memento posted one of the DVD extras on the last Haruhi Suzumiya disc. It’s a full version of the Hare Hare Yukai ED dance!

I figured I’d go ahead and reencode it as a flash video thing. It’s not quite as pretty, but good for people who don’t want to deal with rapidshare and whatnot.

The new version sports new moves instead of the lame arm thing that Tsuruya et alia do. I actually kinda liked that move… I did like the weird frantic flailing that Haruhi does at the very beginning. The whole Mikuru walking thing seemed out of place, though.

I’m sure otaku around the world will be practicing the new official dance moves so they can make fools of themselves impress ladies at the cons.

Oh, and by “full,” I meant, full anime TV size ED. Now, an entire 3:37 of this would be awesome.

Apparently, Funimation has gone into some kind of anime licensing frenzy. They’re announcing a new anime license every day this week! So far they announced Ragnarok the Animation on Monday and Suzuka today.

As most people know, Ragnarok is that one online RPG that got turned into an anime. I think I saw the first episode (during a black out, when there was nothing else to do!) and it was really boring. I might have tried Ragnarok online (the game) for like 10 minutes. I don’t even remember. Ragnarok has a manga too, apparently. It looks kinda ugly though… So yeah, I’m not too excited about this one.

Suzuka is that one anime about the pole vaulter! This is one of the few anime series that I have watched to the end. The manga‘s been licensed by Del Rey for quite some time now, too. While the anime was sort of stupid, and the animation was pretty horrible, I couldn’t help but be interested in the whole love triangle thing. I wonder how Funimation is going to market this anime… Towards fans of anime pole vaulting romance? Also, the OP was pretty awesome. SUTAATO RAIN!

I’ll probably be giving commentary on the next few licenses this week, too. That is, unless the Wii doesn’t suck me in completely…

For this Winter 2007 season, I watched all of the anime that I wrote impressions on in raw format. That is, I watched anime without the subtitles. For some, I was completely fine, and for others I had no idea what was going on. I like to think that my Japanese is pretty good. I did earn a minor in it, at least! Mainly I have issues with vocabulary; grammar doesn’t confuse me for the most part.

I thought I’d go through each of the Winter 2007 anime that I’ve watched so far to do a “raw viewing index” on them. I’ll describe how easy or difficult it is to understand each anime without subtitles. I figure other people who might be at the same level might want to know which anime is easy to watch without the aid of subs:

I would totally play an SRPG version of Rozen Maiden…

That’s right, according to ANN, everyone’s favorite hikikomori-trainer Highlander-style doll fight anime has been licensed! With the license of this anime plus Pani Poni Dash and Nerima Daikon Brothers, it seems like no anime is out of the question for licensing. If an anime about a guy who plays with dolls can make it to the states, maybe Sexy Commando Gaiden Sugoi Masaru-san can too!

While I really didn’t expect Rozen Maiden to get licensed, I guess it wasn’t too big of a leap. I mean, Tokyopop already has the manga released up to Volume 3. That reminds me, I need to get that review of Volume 1 out…