It's Not All Japanese Animation

Nick — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 16:25:50 -0500

The Anime News Network had a small mention of this, but it looks like Piers Anthony's Split Infinity is to become "an Anime movie", according to his newsletter. I enjoyed the few books I've read of Anthony's "Xanth" series, so I find this interesting. No details if it's going to be made by a Japanese studio or what, though.

This reminds me of the Dragonlance animated movie that's in production right now. Frankly, after reading Tolkein's classic, I remember enjoying the Dragonlance series of books much more. Sure, The Lord of the Rings had astounding world building and some wonderful made-up languages and word usage, but the story and characters created by Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis were much more enjoyable, much more dramatic, and their inner turmoil was presented better.

I'm not entirely thrilled that the movie will be using Korean animators for the 2D and Indian animators for the 3D work, but I am glad to see that the creators are not going with a Japanese manga character style (And anyways, Koreans have been doing Japanese animations for a long time now...). From the early concept artwork of the characters, it looks like they're going for an American comic-book character design style, which I would approve.

It may or may not come out in theaters, but at least I'll be giving it a watch. And I'll have to keep an eye out for the adaptation from Piers Anthony's books too.

Update: Check out the level of detail in the early concept art of Sturm armor! Wow... I wonder if the movie will still keep that detail!