Press Release 1/9/2012:

VIZ MEDIA SIMULCASTS THE NEW SCI-FI ANIME SERIES LAGRANGE – THE FLOWER OF RIN-NE ON VIZANIME.COM

Kinetic Action Comedy Series Created By Production I.G. Features An Arsenal Of Robots Designed By Nissan;

First Episode Available To Stream Now!

San Francisco, CA, January 9, 2012 – VIZ Media, LLC (VIZ Media), the largest distributor and licensor of anime and manga in North America, excites anime fans with the announcement of the U.S. online simulcast premiere of the brand new series, LAGRANGE – THE FLOWER OF RIN-NE, on VIZAnime.com, the company’s own website for free anime, as well as on the free, ad-supported Hulu service and in high-definition on the Hulu Plus subscription service (www.Hulu.com). The first episode (subtitled) is available now with new installments scheduled to debut each Sunday!

In addition, Kazé SAS will be the official partner in the United Kingdom for the simulcast of LAGRANGE – THE FLOWER OF RIN-NE. Episode 1 is now available on www.anime-on-demand.com, with new episodes debuting every Sunday.

LAGRANGE – THE FLOWER OF RIN-NE just launched on Japanese television on January 8^th, and is produced by Studio XEBEC (Broken Blade, Martian Successor Nadesico, Fafner), created by the famed animation studio, Production I.G. (Ghost in the Shell S.A.C Sengoku Basara: Samurai Kings), and directed by Tatsuo Sato (Martian Successor Nadesico, Ninja Scroll: The Series, Stellvia). The robots are designed in collaboration with Nissan Motor Co., LTD’s creative team, chosen from more than 60 designs from an internal Nissan design competition.

LAGRANGE – THE FLOWER OF RIN-NE (Rated TV-MA) depicts the adventures of a 17 year-old girl whose mission becomes to defend her city from invading space aliens. Madoka Kyono is an energetic girl who is full of passion. As the proud, and only, member of the Kamogawa Girls’ High School Jersey Club, she goes around helping people in need. But Madoka’s life is turned upside down when she is suddenly asked by a mysterious girl named Lan to pilot a robot. Motivated by her desire to protect the people and city of Kamogawa, Madoka agrees to pilot the resurrected Vox robot to fight against extraterrestrials that have come to attack Earth.

“LAGRANGE – THE FLOWER OF RIN-NE is a hilarious, action-packed story about a determined teenager that devotes herself to protecting Kamagawa City and its peaceful inhabitants against mysterious alien invaders,” says Brian Ige, Vice President, Animation. “The story features a stylish cast of lead characters, as well as an arsenal of sleek, battle ready robots conceived by a team of top car designers from Nissan Motors. The series plays an important part of our 2012 roster which will deliver near-simultaneous release of many top anime properties throughout the year.”

VIZAnime.com is a free-to-use web destination that is now the permanent home to some of the company’s best-loved animated series. Over 1,800 episodes are currently available, and new content is added on a weekly basis. Series currently simulcast on VIZAnime.com include TIGER & BUNNY, BLUE EXORCIST, NARUTO SHIPPUDEN and BLEACH. Other fan-favorite series available include CROSS GAME, DEATH NOTE, FULL MOON, INUYASHA: THE FINAL ACT, KEKKAISHI, NAOKI URASAWA’S MONSTER, NURA: RISE OF THE YOKAI CLAN, ONE PIECE, VAMPIRE KNIGHT, and more!

For more information on LAGRANGE – THE FLOWER OF RIN-NE and other VIZ Media anime titles, please visit www.VIZAnime.com.

Press Release 1/10/2012:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SQUARE ENIX ANNOUNCES FINAL FANTASY® XIII-2 PLAYABLE DEMO

AVAILABLE TODAY FOR XBOX 360 AND THE PLAYSTATION®3 SYSTEM

LOS ANGELES (Jan. 10, 2012) – Square Enix, Inc., the publisher of SQUARE ENIX® interactive entertainment products in the Americas, announced that a playable demo for FINAL FANTASY® XIII-2 is available today for the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft and for the PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system.

The FINAL FANTASY XIII-2 demo takes place in Bresha Ruins, with new character Noel and returning character Serah pitted against a gigantic and powerful adversary called Atlas. Atlas has mysteriously appeared due to an anomaly in time and space. The demo allows the player to experience many gameplay features and enhancements made after FINAL FANTASY XIII, including cinematic action sequences in battles and environments with multiple areas and paths to explore. The brand-new Paradigm Pack System is also available in the demo, giving players the opportunity to enlist defeated enemies into their party and develop them alongside Serah and Noel.

“The demo provides an excellent opportunity for players to try out the evolved battle system and fully explore an entire area of the game,” said Yoshinori Kitase, producer of FINAL FANTASY XIII-2. “We are very pleased to give our fans the chance to see the multitude of game improvements for themselves.”

About FINAL FANTASY XIII-2

FINAL FANTASY XIII-2 is the sequel to FINAL FANTASY XIII, which has shipped 6.2 million units worldwide since its release in March 2010. The sequel has evolved beyond its predecessor, with an extraordinary level design encouraging exploration, an enhanced battle system allowing players to command monsters and a variety of options that support multiple playthroughs of various areas.

FINAL FANTASY XIII-2 will be available at North American retailers for $59.99 on Jan. 31, 2012. FINAL FANTASY XIII-2 is rated T (Teen). Please visit the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) website at www.esrb.org for more information about ratings.

Related Links

FINAL FANTASY XIII-2 Official Homepage:                    http://na.square-enix.com/ffxiii-2

FINAL FANTASY XIII-2’s Official Facebook® Page:        http://www.facebook.com/FinalFantasyXIII

Follow FINAL FANTASY XIII-2 on Twitter®:                     https://twitter.com/OfficialFFXIII

According to Ars Technica, and twitter. A Diablo III community manager for the game gave a resounding yes to the console question, even sighting the lead developer in his reply. Is this a community manager speaking out of turn? Or is this a possibly awesome truth?! The quote from Ars reads

In response to an inquiry from a fan via Twitter, which asked simply “can you confirm or deny Diablo 3 coming to consoles?” community manager “Bashiok” responded “Yup. Josh Mosqueira is lead designer for the Diablo console project.” More specific details have yet to be announced.

My mind snaps instantly back to the painful tragedy that was Diablo on the Playstation. I have to hope, however, that Blizzard being the prolific developer they are will learn from it’s mistakes. We could see a completely different version of the game for console similar to the Dragon Age differences. We can also find ourselves playing the exact same title with a modified control scheme. I can’t find myself believing that they’d release a mouse/keyboard combo strictly for this game. If released, it would be yet another quickly discontinued accessory sought after for years to come by the seven people that didn’t buy it at launch.

Unless I find no possible way to play this on a PC methinks the elitist route will stay on this one. True blue, PC or bust.

How about your fine internet selves?

IGN has the scoop of the week: Rick McCallum let slip that the working title of the Star Wars live-action television show is, in fact, Underworld.

McCallum: It’s called Underworld, so…
IGN: It’s called Underworld?
McCallum: Well that’s a working title

Sure, it’s just a working title, but it fits in so well with how he describes the show in the following video clip:

The story is still the same about when we might see it (when the price comes down) and it seems pretty consistently shelved until further notice.

The way he describes the show, though, makes it sound so incredibly cool. I mean, I know that’s his job as the producer, but he’s doing it right.

The Mission: Impossible series has been hit or miss over the years, but it’s been getting better since the last installment that JJ Abrams took the helm on. Between the last installment and the choice of director for this film, my expectations were sky high. Brad Bird has directed some of the best films I’ve ever seen, from The Iron Giant to The Incredibles, he has a lot of potential and a lot to live up to.

And I have to admit was that this film met my expectations.

Was the story as good as the rest of the films in Brad Bird’s filmography? No. But it was completely adequate for what this film was. They needed to stop a nuclear war and that’s the goal. Everything else is inconsequential.

The way this film was assembled is second to none. While Brad Bird wasn’t necessarily flexing his story muscles with his live-action film debut, he was certainly showing off his understanding of craft. Each sequence in this film is so neatly fit together and each level of it raises the stakes on the action and the intensity so much that, at times, you can get dizzy if you’re not careful. Or afraid of heights.

This was just an incredibly well put-together film with action sequences that put the rest of the action sequences we saw in 2011 to shame. Particularly the fight scene in the automated parking garage in India. That was incredible to behold. And it was put together with the eye of an animator, someone obviously accustomed to putting together every single shot with care.

The other thing about this film was that it wasn’t just the Tom Cruise hour. There was an entire team of IMF agents on display and each of them brought something to the table, though none more hilarious or witty than Simon Pegg.

This movie is definitely worth your time and I have to say: See it in IMAX if you can.

One thing I only barely noticed in the film was the shoes.

The shoes? Yes. You’re as surprised by me saying that as I was when I got an email from Giorgio Brutini asking me if I’d like to review a pair of the shoes featured in the film.

I said, “Why not?” and they sent them right out to me.

I’ll admit that I didn’t notice them in the movie, but the shoes they sent me (pictured above) are way cooler than I deserve. They’ve been incredibly comfortable, stylish looking (as though I know what that is), and just all around solid.

I’m not accustomed to being complimented on my shoes. In fact, before this pair of shoes, I’ve never been complimented on my footwear. They seem completely durable and if you’re looking for a really solid dress shoe, these might be the ones for you. As I’ve worn them in over the last week, they’ve actually become more comfortable than when I first put them on, which was surprising to me.

You can check out their website and pick them up if you’re interested. They’re a steal at $65.

You can do what I did: wear the shoes to the movie. It won’t make the movie better, but it’s an odd and hilarious story to tell people.

How to Speak Wookiee is a fun little book published by Chronicle books that helps you learn to speak Wookiee.

“This helpful guide teaches citizens of the galaxy key phrases in the Wookiee language, eliminating near-fatal encounters with notoriously short-tempered Wookiees while smoothing the way to lasting partnerships and friendships. The handy sound module—recorded by Chewbacca himself!—demonstrates proper pronunciation of ten key phrases.”

We are giving away a copy to a lucky reader of Big Shiny Robot!, but it gets better! That lucky reader will also win a copy of Obsessed With Star Wars:

Obsessed With Star Wars combines 2,500 original questions covering little known facts, entertaining quotes, and tough trivia from all six episodes with an innovative scoring module, so a player can select questions by number or at random and keep score.

The contest will be open until January 13.

To enter, all you need to do is shoot us an email at editor (at) bigshinyrobot.com. Make the subject “LAUGH IT UP, FUZZBALL”. For an extra chance to win, post on your Facebook wall asking all of your friends to like our Facebook page. Or you can ask your followers on twitter to follow us @BigShinyRobot. Or both.

Just be sure to mention in your email that you’ve done it.

Tonight’s episode of The Clone Wars, the first of 2012, was the conclusion of the Slavers arc and had a lot to live up to after the strength of the last episode. When we last saw our heroes, Ahsoka and Obi-Wan were both held prisoner by the Zyggerians and the Queen herself was holding Anakin hostage as her bodyguard.

This episode brings Count Dooku into the situation, demanding the executions of the Jedi.

The first third of the episode felt very much like Indiana Jones, across the board. Obi-wan spent his time as the Short Round of this episode, slaving away in a mine (that was lit very much like the mines in Temple of Doom.) Anakin spent his time during this first break dealing with the Queen as though she was a fierce mix between Marion Ravenwood and Belloq, and the lighting and architecture of the Zyggerian palace was so much like Egypt in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Visually it was just stunning and, as a setup, it worked gangbusters.

My only complaint? In the first third, I felt like I was promised a Clone Wars version of the mine cart chase from Temple of Doom. Why else would they have a mine set and show mine cars and make Obi-wan Short Round if not to have a mine cart chase, right? Wrong.

It was sad, but I got over it.

Then Dooku arrives to cancel the party. The first thing I noticed about Dooku, though, was how improved the facial animation was. I think facial animation was one of the last frontiers The Clone Wars had to explore and they’ve just started knocking it out of the park in this episode with Dooku. It was so noticeably amazing that I was taken aback. And there was something in his eyes… They were black eyes, a dolls eyes… It was very creepy.

The rest of the episode plays out as a rescue mission with the Jedi involved all having to make very hard choices about how they’re going to proceed. This is all part of Sidious’ plan to weaken and ruin the Jedi. Obi-wan spends his time not helping anyone because he simply can’t, he’s broken. And he can’t make the hard decisions to end the conflicts quicker. If Obi-wan were more like Anakin, willing to force choke some guards and get out by force, there would have been far fewer lives lost.

Should he have succumbed to using the Force for attack in that way?

It’s a difficult choice and it’s writing like that that makes this show the best one on television.

This episode also brought us Plo Koon and his Wolf Pack, which put a smile on my face. I know how much Dave Filoni loves Plo Koon and the Wolf Pack, so when they jumped out of hyperspace on Anakin’s mark, it was as cool as that moment in Serenity where the Agent realizes that there are thousands of Reaver ships coming in out of the distortion cloud. That’s how satisfying that moment was for me.

The music in this episode told a story that was at once beautiful and tragic, but somehow at odds with the events we were being shown. When Ahsoka is looking to find her people that had been sentenced to die with electric walls and a disappearing floor, the music slowly told us that the Jedi were losing and it never got better from there. Though they win and save the day, they lost here. And there was something sad and tragic about it that the music conveyed perfectly.

I also want to specifically mention one shot that completely took my breath away: After the action was over and the camera cuts to the space above Kadavo, there is a beautiful establishing shot of Plo Koon’s fleet and the planet behind. That single shot was a work of art and should be framed. Though that can be said of most shots on this show, it’s doubly true of that particular shot. It was just incredible.

Though I felt a little cheated that there wasn’t a mine car chase, I was intensely satisfied by this episode. It was exactly what I needed after this too-long break from the show. This is certainly one of the standout arcs of the entire series and I think it might be my favorite arc of the season so far. The Umbaran arc was incredible, yes, but there was something about this one that just worked much better for me.

Well, we knew this was coming. The effects look a lot better than I would have expected.

And did this trailer seem to imply a sex scene with the Tonnika sisters?

I’m not sure how I feel about these “parodies” and I wonder how much has been going on behind the scenes to prevent these from coming out. But it looks pretty inevitable.

The trailer itself is safe for work. I’m guessing the film won’t be.

Updated: 12:52 PM PM 01/05/2012

I’ve just heard the awful announcement from Bandai Entertainment. The company has said that they will no longer localize and distribute anime and manga titles in North America.

Japanator reported today: “They will continue to sell and even re-order the titles they currently distribute until the respective licenses expire, but planned titles they have yet to release have been subsequently cancelled. This includes:

Anime:

• Gosick
• Nichijou
• Turn A Gundam

Manga:

• Code Geass: Renya
• Kannagi volume 4, 5 and 6
• Lucky Star: Boo Boo Kagaboo
• Mobile Suit Gundam 00I
• Nichijou
• Tales of the Abyss: Jade’s Secret Memories
• Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann volume 7

Novels:

• Code Geass R2″

This news is absolutely devastating for the anime and manga community, and apparently this decision was made several months ago in Japan. It seems as though Bandai has suffered some serious management problems over the years with U.S. distribution. Furthermore, it’s now being said in many articles around the web (and in a comment at the bottom of this one) that Bandai simply wasn’t making all the right decisions when it came to localization of their titles. Anime News Network published a fairly informative article in which Bandai representative Ken Iyadomi discusses some of the problems between licensing and distribution.

“…the broader reasons are quite clear from the outside. The physical anime business in North America has shrunk substantially over the last five years, and shows no sign of returning to its former glory. “A couple of times we were hit with huge returns, and the financial result was pretty bad,” Iyadomi admits. Still, he believes the division might have been able to keep going for a few more years, had the SBU allowed it.”

Iyadomi also went on to say, “The pricing range for our products kept dropping in Western countries, and people tended only to buy sets with very reasonable prices, which we understand is what fans want, but it lead us to a different strategy than what Japanese licensors wanted,” he remarked. “So we always had a problem [with licensors wanting something different than what consumers wanted].”

Kotaku writer Charlie Maib also makes an excellent point that speaks to another possible reason that may have greatly influenced Bandai’s decision (and it’s one I believe is affecting the anime industry as a whole, so I want to discuss it in depth). Piracy of anime in North America is simply out of control. Let’s be honest here – we all know people who regularly pirate anime and who probably haven’t bought a single title in years – and therein lies the problem… Nobody (very few of us, lets face it) is supporting the industry.

Maib writes: “‎Bandai Entertainment isn’t going out of business. They’re a pretty big company and have a market far beyond that of the United States; but their actions do serve as a red flag as to what’s on the horizon unless the fan community stops it’s selfish and destructive behavior. If we examine the actions of the last 20 years, and put our own selfish desires to the side we can see that the only thing fan translated anime, manga, and games serve to advance is our own desire of want. It does not help the industry, it does not call positive attention to our hobbies, and while it may attract a small number of new consumers, more often than not these new faces will continue to feed on free pirated content because that’s how they were turned on to it in the first place.”

Personally, I’m pretty sad about the news. Bandai has brought us some fantastic anime and manga over the years like the various Gundam series and Haruhi Suzumiya – but perhaps they have been too expensive compared to the other distributors out there. I remember paying somewhere around $130 for a Gundam Wing Complete DVD Collection back in 2005 (in retrospect, this was a bit pricey), and I had spent all semester saving up for it (while living on my own and paying for college by myself – but video games and anime were the purchases I occasionally splurged for. Everybody needs something, right?). Honestly, I like having an anime collection (it includes lots of VHS since I began collecting in the 90’s, but I’ve also added quite a few DVDs and Blu-rays over the years). Whenever it came up in conversation that someone had just downloaded a really rad series – I would try to get it through a legal streaming site or purchase it if I could (This is sometimes impossible, I know, but we can try at least.). Now that I really think about it, though, Bandai really was quite a bit more expensive than most of the other suppliers. It doesn’t give us the right to steal their work, but it’s also too bad they didn’t start seeking out cheaper ways to distribute materials in the US or focus on streaming content for some series like Funimation and Viz Media did.

When I spent my first semester living in Japan in 2006, it became apparent to me that very few people I met were pirating anime. For one, it was on broadcast television so I suppose you really didn’t need to, but also, it just seemed to be only the American students I knew who were going about pirating anime. Most of my Japanese friends seemed to gladly pay for anime the day it came out and were really excited to add something new to their collection. To be fair, I know there are plenty of people in countries other than America pirating anime, but this still forces me to ask the question, “Is piracy a cultural phenomenon that’s gone completely out of control in America?”

I certainly hope this isn’t a sign of things to come…if more Japanese companies choose to make these decisions, (and believe me, they definitely can) or continue to fall by the wayside like ADV Films, Geneon, etc., it will just continue to hurt all the hard work that’s been done to bring anime and manga to America over the past thirty years. Seriously, give Maib’s article a read and look at just how much effort it took to bring us to where we are today! And you know what? As much as I love watching anime in Japanese, I often love watching it in the English dub, too! There are tons of awesome voice actors here in America, along with tons of employees at Funimation and Viz Media who could just disappear from the anime scene if we let the import industry crash and burn here. (And there were employees at Bandai America who I assume are losing their jobs, too. Not cool!)

I’ll miss you Bandai. Hopefully I’ll be seeing you around next time I’m in Japan, or maybe, (if we’re lucky) you’ll come back to stream your product on sites like Crunchyroll or Hulu?