Did Funimation actually announce that they licensed Serial Experiments Lain, Haibane Renmei, and Texhnolyze? Yeah, I already have these from the now defunct Geneon USA, but it's really good to know that these ABe series are being revived! Funimation also announced that they picked up other shows that might interest people like Black Lagoon Season 3, Toaru Kagaku no Railgun, Toaru Majutsu no Index, and Hellsing1.

Now if only someone rescues Someday's Dreamers and picks up the second season, Someday's Dreamers: Summer Skies.

1. 1. I'm personally interested in picking up the first three of these

Looky looky what I have!

You can read me fanboying all over the Promise CD on twitter, if you choose, but yeah, the CD has some very good "reimagings" of some very familiar music.

The 5 Centimeters Per Second Blu-ray was something I've planned to get for some time, and the Sora no Woto OST CD was the trigger for me to make the order off of cdjapan.

Sora no Woto music

I've been making this claim elsewhere, and it might just be me, but parts of the Sora no Woto soundtrack really reminded me of George Gershwin's An American in Paris. I'm no music expert, but compare the following:

Sora no Woto OST - Track 2 - Ciel bleu

and
Sora no Woto OST - Track 3 - Flànerie

with Gershwin: American in Paris (I) (Rattle, Berlin Phil)

I'm not seeing much press about this series, but I am personally curious about the upcoming Heroman anime. The original story was created by Stan Lee1, and I'd like to try out his take on the "Boy discovers/builds a giant robot" genre. I was going to pick up the manga to check it out, but now I'd rather see the anime; BONES' work on it looks pretty slick as usual, as can be seen in the trailer floating around:

I'll probably give the first episode a look (as with several of the other anime series coming out this season).

1. 1. for those that don't know and too lazy to click on Stan Lee's name to go to his Wikipedia page, the one of the original co-creators of Marvel titles like Spiderman or the X-Men

Author, during a post about Netflix halting streaming of several anime titles, recalled that I had watched Kurau on there, and he's right. I had also watched Noein through the Netflix streaming service, and I ended picking up both series and their artboxes during one of Rightstuf's 25 DVDs for 100$ sales.

Well, have the following anime and manga inbound or pre-ordered from Amazon:

• Berserk manga - Volumes 21 and 22.
• The Twelve Kingdoms Volume 4 - Skies of Dawn novel
• My Neighbor Totoro (Two-Disc Special Edition)
• Ponyo (Two-Disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo)
• Evangelion: 1.11 You Are Not Alone [Blu-ray]

It's been a year, and it's time to hold another one of these:

Crunchyroll had released their press release on the event, but the Cherry Blossoms Falling site has their own press release on the event, which I'll copy here:

ANIME FANS WORLDWIDE TO CELEBRATE GLOBAL SHINKAI DAY 2010

Fans of the Japanese anime creator Makoto Shinkai are gathering worldwide in cyberspace March 5th-7th for the Second Annual Global Shinkai Day 2010. The Makoto Shinkai fan site Cherry Blossoms Falling, is celebrating the event with contests, forum discussions and a live Shoutcast. Cherry Blossoms Falling is calling upon fans from every part of the globe to show their appreciation and support for the works of this highly acclaimed director. Contests will be held for inspired fan-made works in art, AMV, film and essay. This year’s prizes are Makoto Shinkai autographed movie posters from his most recent film, 5 Centimeters Per Second. Crunchyroll.com will be hosting the films for free, for a 48-hour period beginning on March 5th at 5pm PST.

For further information and a schedule of events please check out Cherry Blossoms Falling or contact laz_long87 [at] yahoo [dot] com for more information.

There is a planned schedule of events and several contests with some nice prizes running, and I'll be hosting a teamspeak server for people to join in a talk and a shoutcast feed for those who want to just listen in. My impromtu commentary was apparently a hit last year, so I'll be doing my best to host and inform people again this year on Shinkai's work. Maybe I'll get drunk and start playing guitar this year too...

Basically, come on by, relax, and enjoy yourself. We should have better instructions to connecting to the voice chat online when it gets closer to Global Shinkai Day 2010.

This was too amusing not to pass up:

Shamelessly stolen from the AnimeSuki forums.

In any case, I'm enjoying Sora no Woto so far. Despite how people are comparing the designs to K-ON!, I am with some others seeing some hints of Haibane Renmei and Now and Then, Here and There in the first couple episodes. Hopefully, Sora no Woto lives up to those hints, but even at two episodes in Haibane Renmei was basically still a slice-of-life series with some vague hints of darker things to come.

Fuyumi Ono is best known to me as the original writer for The Twelve Kingdoms, the series that really got me seriously watching anime and laid the foundation for me to discover Haibane Renmei and Berserk1

I had discovered the anime adaptation of Ono's Ghost Hunt and enjoyed the heck out of it. It doesn't have the epic scope that The Twelve Kingdoms had2, but Ghost Hunt did feature some great characters and some really memorable scare moments3. In the end, I liked the hell out of it, even if it didn't get "top ten" rating.

Well, just got news today that another manga that Fuyumi Ono written the original novel for has been green lit to be adapted into an anime:

1. 1. Yes, two very divergent anime; one day, I'll have to write how they link together with The Twelve Kingdoms thematically.
2. 2. And not many anime did and handled that level of scope nearly as well
3. 3. Especially the one that featured the doll. I still get the creeps watching that scene!

I have continued to watch anime lately, just haven't been talking about it much1. I could talk about several series I'm watching currently, like Nyan Koi!2 or The Sacred Blacksmith3, but both of those are largely "filler" for me to pass the time. I could rave about Kimi ni Todoke, and yes, I am finding it pretty good. I also could praise the recently ended (hopefully first of many seasons of) Guin Saga, and it deserves it.

But no, I am addicted to the series presented in the included image; a contemporary romance with baseball. I mean, there are quite a few of those, but Cross Game has been the only one to have me hooked from the beginning. No other recent series has me rabidly waiting every Sunday night for a new episode to be released. No other series has me so sorely tempted to read the manga behind the series, yet I don't want to be spoiled before I see how the anime treats the material4. No other recent series has me so infatuated with such excellent characters. And I don't even mind the baseball in it, too5!

And I could say more, but that will have to wait... I need to get back to work. 6

1. 1. here or even on twitter
2. 2. Amusing harem
3. 3. Amusing fantasy-(pseudo?)-harem
4. 4. I have read the Cross Game manga to compare, but only up to what was covered by the anime. And so far, the presentation has been nearly perfect; a few things were changed for the adaptation, but they were changes that made sense
5. 5. Actually, I enjoy it quite a bit!
6. 6. So, apparently, my title is a lie... I didn't say anything noteworthy in this one (do I ever?)