This year’s Otakon had a great Sailor Moon showing with 2 fan panels lead by Lilly-chan. One was for “Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon”, the live action series from a few years ago, and the other was for Naoko Takeuchi, the creator of the Sailor Moon manga, among other things.

I was asked to record both videos to share with the Sailor Moon fan community over at Genvid.

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Fan Panel:

Panel features Lilly-chan, Yoshinex and Sakura with Kungpow and Moon Jump doing the game demo.

Naoko Takeuchi Fan Panel:

Panel features Kungpow, Lilly-chan, Yoshinex and Moon Jump.

Also at this year’s convention were two Sailor Moon animators Kazuko Tadano and Hiromi Matsushita who did a great panel but my camera ate the footage.

Links to various pages mentioned in the two videos appear below.

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Bleach, shown Saturday nights on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim, is one of the most watched anime shows among adults and teens. If not for its late night time slot and liberal amounts of blood and cleavage, it would be popular with younger viewers as well. Based on Shonen Jump’s manga of the same name, the series centers around Ichigo Kurosaki, a teenager who has the ability to see the spirits of the dead. When a mysterious woman visits him, he is attacked by a creature known as a hollow. To defend himself and his family, he takes his strange visitor’s power and uses it to become a Soul Reaper, (or Shinigami as they are known in the Japanese version) who are samurai-like warriors who have special abilities they use to defeat hollows. While the series has nearly reached 200 episodes in Japan, it recently returned to U.S. TV last March after a brief hiatus, and at the time of this writing, it’s only at 77 episodes, so North American fans who don’t watch the online fansubs still have much to look forward to. While it may not be as huge and popular as Naruto, Dragon Ball Z, or Pokemon, Bleach has devoted a fairly large fanbase, and there is a decent variety of merchandise available for fans. There have been action figures, a collectible card game, English translations of the original manga, and most importantly, video games. Thus far, Sega has published two Bleach games on U.S. shores, one of which, Bleach: The Blade of Fate for the Nintendo DS, is this week’s $20 game of the week. As a special bonus, we’ll take a look at the other game, Bleach: Shattered Blade for the Nintendo Wii. Both of these games are fighters, and both vary in degrees of quality. Die hard fans of the series probably already have these two games, but more moderate fans will probably be on the fence about them. So if you want the word on how well these games play, continue forward.
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Great news for Sailor Moon fans hoping to attend Otakon 2008 this August 8th to 10th in Baltimore. Two Sailor Moon animation directors, Kazuko Tadano and Hiromi Matsushita will be appearing as guests. They both acted as animators for a number of Sailor Moon episodes, and were even featured as characters in one episode.

Fans will remember episode 21 “Protect the Children’s Dreams! Friendship Linked by Anime” or “An Animated Mess” as it was known in English. The episode takes place in an animation studio, and centers around the characters of Hiromi Matsuno and Kazuko Tadashita, references to Hiromi Matsushita and Kazuko Tadano. No doubt the parts about them being targeted by the villainous Nephrite and being turned into the monsters Castor and Pollux of the Gemini constellation were slightly exaggerated.

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It would seem like the recent revelations of “Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe” isn’t the only oddly-matched versus title in the works. In an interesting twist, “Tatsunoko vs. CAPCOM: Cross Generation of Heroes” is in development for an arcade release in Japan in winter of this year. A article in the upcoming issue of Weekly Famitsu Magazine will reveal more tidbits about the game.

For those who might not be anime buffs, Tatsunoko is an anime production studio famous for classic animes such as Speed Racer, Gatchaman (Battle of Planets), and also provided animation work on Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Whether Capcom means to include a lineup similar to it’s “Marvel vs.” games or not has yet to be confirmed, but one can simply imagine the thought of Speed attempting to beat Ryu senseless with a tire iron. Or maybe that’s just me. Regardless, it’s hard not to think that such a game isn’t grasping at straws in terms of good versus material, but given the aforementioned MK vs. DC game, I suppose nothing is out of the question for game developers these days.

I wish I knew how to begin this review. I usually enter with some common thing a reader can relate to, then go into my opening statements and opinions about the anime I’m reviewing. However I can’t seem to come up with anything meaningful this time around to properly describe exactly what the anime “Papuwa” is, except this:

Crack.

Pure awesome and silly crack.

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I hadn’t intended to write a review for this particular DVD, and in fact hadn’t originally sought to watch it at all. However as fate would have it, I was given the opportunity to view this exotically eye-catching anime through a sheer twist of fate, and boredom of myself and a friend.

I had no idea what to expect going into the anime, except that I’d seen commercials for the DVD release on the Sci-Fi channel whilst in-between my bouts of Ani-Monday. (which is, I can only guess, a newer version of the older Saturday Anime the channel used to show) The visuals represented by said commercial were, to say the least, incredibly pretty and were enough to pique my interests. A few weeks later, I manage to get my hands on a friend’s rental copy of the 2-disc feature, and plopped down.
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Last weekend, many poweteers attended the ever exciting Anime Boston convention. (and subsequently became engrossed in the massive line waits for registration and pre-registration alike, but that’s neither here nor there) After the convention having come and gone, to keep my little brain from going into withdrawal after being thrown back into the mediocrity that is normal everyday life, I began thinking of just exactly what life lessons anime and manga have passed on to geeks like myself. (and are sometimes taken way too much to heart by more “enthused” geeks of the genre, in which case they should be put out of our misery)

So of course, I had to write a compilation of such thoughts, and share with the world. Slight spoilers for some series.

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As seen on Anime News Network, Leonardo DiCaprio has been announced to produce Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira manga into two live-action films; one set for a 2009 release, and another that has yet to have it’s release date projected.

“Each film will cover three volumes of the renowned science-fiction manga about a governmental genetic project and a teenager’s attempt to save a fellow biker gang member.

The manga set in Neo-Tokyo, a city rebuilt after being destroyed in a mysterious explosion. Otomo directed his own animated film adaptation that premiered on July 16, 1988 — the same day that the story has the fictional Tokyo being destroyed. The first live-action film is scheduled for release in the summer of 2009 and will move the story’s setting to “‘New Manhattan,’ a city rebuilt after being destroyed 31 years ago.” “

So, it looks like not only will we be getting DiCaprio as a producer, they’re also going to try and adapt the original plot and premise to suit American ideals. Because that’ll go over well with fans of the anime movie and manga, I’m sure.

Warner Brothers originally had rights to the movie, until Executive Vice-President Greg Silverman (300, Batman Begins) had to re-acquire them from Kodansha after a large bidding war ensued. Ruairi Robinson will be making his feature directorial debut with this project, and Gary Whitta (Book of Eli) is taking the reigns of script-writing. Nothing has been mentioned about casting as of yet. Looks like we’ll all have to keep our eyes on this one, though I wouldn’t hold out much hope.