You know, few franchises have ever grown or gained as much notoriety as Pokemon. Especially for something that started as a 8-bit Gameboy game. I was fortunate to have grown up with the show and watch how it developed over the years.

You kids just don’t know what it is to be happy until you see Brock “use a frying pan, as a drying pan.” Ok so my Nostalgia Goggles can be cloudy at times.. point is that like most people I have a lot of fond memories of the series.

So it’s just mind blowing to think that OLM, Production I.G, and XEBEC are all teaming up to produce a TV special (not a series) adapted from the first two games Pokemon: red & green that started it all. Oh and for anyone who’s wondering what starter Pokemon the main character picks it’s Charmander, as far as I’m concerned that’s the only right decision!

The special will be hitting Tokyo TV on October 2, for the for the original press release click here. Have fun reading Japanese..

Shawn Cogswell is the Anime journalist for Big Shiny Robot! You can find him on twitter @Gaxbot

The trailer for the BlazBlue Anime just hit and it looks just like a preview trailer on a fight cabinet, what a shock.

Actually this looks pretty good, and if it’s successful it will mean some big changes for Arc System Works as a company. But be wary Fighting games as Anime adaptations have almost always been traditionally terrible, irredeemably so.

Street Fighter, King of Fights, Tekken.. not a good track record. Here’s hoping this shows them how it’s done.

So FUNimation now owns the rights to Cowboy Bebop, Fruits Basket and Akira? The three biggest and most well known IP’s in all of western Anime?

I for one accept FUNimation as our new lord and master. To appease their will I’ll show you this trailer for the new Cowboy Bebop Blueray and Digital Download. Brought to you by, my fear.

So.. Shinichiro Watanabe creator of Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo, and Macross Plus is working with my favorite studio,  studio BONES to make an 80’s centric space comedy about an over the top hero similar to Sweet JP from Redline.. The word “Fan-boner” comes to mind.

If anybody asked me today what my dream Anime would be I’d probably say, you know.. that. Good God its like someone took all of my favorite DVD’s of the self put them in a blender and severed to me with a side of Redbull.

If you think I’m being too generous well.. it’s because I am, but I’m not being unbiased either this really is about as fine tuned to my tastes as you can get. I like to think there’s some kind of Truman Show situation going on here where Watanabe is pinning all of my Amazon movie receipts to his wall.

Space Dandy will be coming sometime in 2014.

The announcement that my favorite game series, Guilty Gear is getting a new game after a five year wait came a little bit before I joined the site. My reaction was more or less as follows.. I also seem to remember declaring something about the existence of God. Out dated memes aside, Guilty Gear X2 is my favorite game of all time, and is probably one of the things that sparked my passion for Anime in the first place. The Extended Play review from Adam Sessler on Tech TV back in about 2003 is the thing that made me what to be a reviewer in the first place.  I can still remember the corn ball line he used after describing the instant kill moves “Never fails to impress” Even the first Anime Convention I went to I co-played as one of the characters, Johnny and had dinner at the Burger King next door to the hotel were my lesbian friend and I hit on some very cute Sailor Mars and Advent Children Tifa co-players. Life is fun sometimes… So with the Fanboy ramblings out of the way lets take a look at the new character redesign put out today. Potemkin – Yes, that is Potemkin under all of that Castle Crashers looking armor. Doesn’t make him any less dangerous, Fear the Potemkin-buster kids! May – oh May your redesign make you look younger, and now Johnny seem more like a pedophile.. Venom – Billiards sticks, shockingly good for assassinations turns out. Chipp – And the all American Ninja Chipp Zanuff, returns to triple jump his way back into our harts.   Shawn Cogswell is the Anime journalist for Big Shiny Robot! You can find him on twitter @Gaxbot

Funimation will be releasing an Akira – 25th Anniversary Edition blueray, later this year. No release date given from Funimation yet, but Walmart Currently has it listed for release on November 12, so I’ll take a wild stab and say it will be out about then. All we know is that it will be coming with both the Streamline and Pioneer English dubs. Both are awful, but subtitles are always an option. -UhLderbuGI So Funimation now has the rights to Akira, what does this mean? Well for one the blueray will no longer be rare as hell going for an average of $150.00 on Amazon, next I imagine this will give them some sway with Warner Bros. over the live action version. Warner Bros. Is currently in talks with Jaume Collet-Serra – Orphan, House of Wax 2005, about production on his version of the movie. But Warner Bros. Is not happy with the current price tag that Collet-Serra is pitching, wanting a more scaled down version. Is this a strategy for the future of Akira or just convenient timing, hard to say. But with any luck this may help (or hinder) the project in the right way and to get a more capable director with a proper budget for such a legendary film that changed how animation is seen by the world today. I don’t get on my soap box often, but Akira deserves better and I think that most of the people over at WB know that this is a dollar bill tied to the end of a grenade pin if they think they can half ass it.   Shawn Cogswell is the Anime journalist for Big Shiny Robot! You can find him on twitter @Gaxbot

It’s Geek Week on Youtube and that means people will be uploading videos at the same rate they always do but with “Geek Week” somewhere in the title. Manga Entertainment is no exception uploading Macross II episodes 1-6 today. But who am I to turn down free Robotech this is awesome! You can find the links to each episode below. Episode 2 Episode 3 Episode 4 Episode 5 Episode 6

If you’ve been following the Anime scene over the summer then I’m sure you been hearing non stop updates about Attack on Titan, and for good reason the show is fantastic! If anyone asks me what is going in Anime right now I tell them “go watch now!” Needless to say I’m becoming a fan, and for those of you who know me I have a rather sick sense of humor so this falls under that category of “ I want it, I want it, I want it!!!” This is the most adorable mass human extinction play set I have ever seen! The Titans just look so happy destroying human civilization and eating people. Can we give him just one person to eat, he just looks so sad. We don’t need Michael Bay, right? He may be a vicious man eating monster, but he has the cutest little tush! You can find the Attack on Titan Play Set on crunchyroll.com here. And the first episode of the series here.   Shawn Cogswell is the Anime journalist for Big Shiny Robot! You can find him on twitter @Gaxbot

With Shonen Jump’s 45th anniversary on the way Namco is making a Jump character themed fighting game.

The current line up is

– Goku (Dragon Ball Z)

– Luffy (One Piece)

– Ichigo (Bleach)

– Naruto

– Kenshin (Rurouni Kenshin)

– Toriko

– Gintama

– Kochikame

With possibly more on the way. All I wanna know is what a brother gotta do to get some some yusuke urameshi DLC!

No word on any release dates outside of Japan. I’ll be posting updates as they come.

Captain Harlock is now the movie I most look forward to seeing this year. I mean just look it, it’s Space pirates (who are in Space) fighting off Stormtroopers with Mech suits and gun-sabers. That my friends is what dreams are made of.

To be honest before the first trailer hit I barely knew anything about Harlock and asking my Anime watching friends both new and old alike not one of them had much to say. So I sat down to watch “Captain Harlock: The Legend Returns” to do a bit of research and I have become an instant fan.

Harlocks back story is more or less as follows: Some time in the late 21st Century mankind has become corrupt and lazy. Possessing the power to travel to and colonize other worlds but innovation is being held back by an over powered world government and lack of will of it’s poeple. Harlock and his crew are some of the last to fight on and explore the galaxy.

But due to their disobedience the world government has decided to use Harlock as a scapegoat for most of the problems facing earth, now the pirate ship Arcadia is under constant attack by military forces. But Captain Harlock has been able to out outmaneuver them at every turn with his brilliant crew and unwavering resolve forged from the loss of his friend that he deeply admired.