It won’t be out on this side of the ocean until June 22nd 2007 but this movie was released in Australia and many parts of Europe last year. Here’s a look at what we can expect from what will surely be this summer’s greatest blockbuster.

If you really can’t wait to check out this great movie you can go ahead and import the Dead or Alive DVD from Amazon UK. Note that this movie is region 2 and PAL encoded so it won’t work in all DVD players. If importing’s not your thing then you should just get yourself in the mood by buying a Dead or Alive video game from the normal Amazon and help support the site.

Learn about how Hitomi is technically a guy and other trivia about this movie after the jump.

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Toys based on video games is still a woefully untapped and underserved market. Even massively popular lines like Halo 2 from Joyride don’t make it much further than stores that sell video games (even Toys R Us stocked them near the Xbox games).

Metal Gear Solid 4 may not have a release date, but the 12″ Solid Snake (picutred) will be out in November. He’s pretty detailed, and employs some advanced action figure technology to keep his body in realistic posts, which sounds nice but its really a shady way of saying he’s not getting double jointed limbs. Couldn’t find a price point, and Medicom is a Japanese toy company so be prepared to pay brutal import prices.

NECA has a handful of figures already out based on Eidos properties: Tomb Raider Legend, Hitman, and Legacy of Kain. They also announced at Toy Fair they’ll have some Resident Evil figures out by September, and Castlevania in October. Simon Belmont will be based on the NES box art, but Alucard, Dracula, and Succubus will be styled after Symphony Of The Night.

First 4 Figures has a Metroid license, but seem intent on making statues too expensive to buy on a whim. Zero Suit Samus will retail for $109. An excellent likeness, and sure to be the pride of your basement collection. They’re also stamping out Zelda statues. Why not make me a proper 6″ Varia Suit Samus Aran action figure and some Space Pirates, F4F?

SOTA Toys will have some Darkstalkers to add to their Street Fighter line. Dimitri and Lord Raptor will be out late spring 2007.

Its really frustrating that theres still no line that conforms to a scale and offers more than the most obvious characters as figures. Getting ONLY Snake or ONLY Lara Croft seems odd. Even Mario brought some supporting characters to Happy meals.

I should really know better than to get excited about a video game based on anime, but Lupin is one of those characters and shows I have an endless supply of affection for. Look Inspector Zenigata is playable!

I should really grow my sideburns out again.

Probably not. Like 99% probably not and that’s me being optimistic. Regardless this unreliable source is reporting that there is an English live action Sailor Moon movie in the works and that “one of the major movie studios” is trying to get Joss Whedon to direct. The article goes on to reveal the most absurb cast including a mix of people who are too good for such a role to people I’ve never even heard of. This cast sounds just like any other random idiot’s “Who would you cast in a live action Sailor Moon movie?” list which I must admit I’ve read and written far too many of.

This is not the first rumour of a live action Sailor Moon movie. About 10 years ago you couldn’t go long before hearing about Geena Davis‘s Sailor Moon movie she was set to star in as Queen Beryl. Since then such rumours occasionally resurface in one form or another.

So why am I telling you this? Because someone said it. Because it’s probably fake but it’s of interest. Because when they first announced the Japanese live action series I was 99+% sure it was fake.

I guess now we just have to wait for some idiot to ask Joss Whedon about this before that < 1% bit of doubt is put to rest.

The Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commision has approved a request by YTV to have an anime themed channel in Canada. The target of the channel would be 18+ which is a change considering YTV stands for “Youth Television”.

A lot of numbers are thrown around in this broadcasting decision which serve only to confuse people but so much to say the channel will have to be exclusively anime and anime related shows. I suppose it remains to be seen exactly what the CRTC counts as anime. Interest in a similar French channel was mentioned though no details are included. As YTV does not have a French equivalent these requests likely came from elsewhere.

Still far too early to talk about when this may happen or what cable packages will offer it but this is promising for Canadian anime fans who are unable to watch many anime programs broadcast on US exclusive stations such as Cartoon Network. Equivalent Canadian channels such as Teletoon play a fraction of these shows often months to years later.

Of course the reason we can’t just watch Cartoon Network in the first place is because of the CRTC but hey just for today let’s be glad they’ve done something good for a change.

Thanks to Cybersnark for pointing out this post with the news.

RobotBling has produced a tribute to Gunpei Yokoi, probably the biggest influence on Nintendo as a company, predating even Miyamoto’s genius creations.

This entry largely deals with Game & Watch LCD games, though it also has some interesting tid-bits on Yokoi himself, and Nintendo’s early history. A second installment is promised, and I eagerly look forward to it.

You’ve probably seen the trailer by now. What you might not have seen is the Japanese version of the trailer. It contains mere seconds of additional footage, padded out with Speilberg and Bay introducing the movie to Japanese audiences. Check it out.

For those of us who wanted to see more than the back of Prime’s head in the trailer, he stands tall on the cover of Empire in the UK (see left)

And of course we have more toys. Barricade, Starscream, Bumblebee, Brawl, and Ratchet all in deluxe mode. Theres also some prototypes for tiny Barricade, Prime, and Megatron….
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TFW2005 points us to here, where there are new clear images of Revoltech Prime. I have attached them below so you can see for yourself. I believe that Prime will be number 19 in the Revoltech series.

Also an image surfaced here, showing an exclusive repaint of this figure as Ultra Magnus.

Its pretty much a guarantee that I’ll be hunting these two figures down.