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Posts Tagged Anime

Win a Trip to Japan with ANN and PTJ, Win eCash with Netcomics

By Lissa Pattillo on Friday, November 19, 2010

Time for some winnings! A few interesting contests going on right now that are worth a gander and an enter.

Firstly, AnimeNewsNetwork has teamed with Aniplex (from whom they’ve licensed their two simulcasting series) and Pop Travel Japan (the tour-company of Digital Manga) to offer a contest where the winner gets a fully-paid trip to Japan!

There are two trip packages to be won – Tokyo Anime Fair Tour: an Otaku-centric tour of Japan including a trip to the Tokyo Anime Fair and Akihabara; and Fangirl Paradise Tour: a more boys’ love fan-central tour that includes the infamous Otome Road and a visit to an “authentic butler cafe”.

Entrants for the Fangirl Paradise Tour are required to take pictures of themselves in togainu no chi cosplay, with one of the two images having a sign proclaiming ‘ANN Please Send Me To Japan!’. For the Tokyo Anime Fair Tour contest, participants are to draw some Oreimo fanart and submit for the judges to see (with the ANN logo included somewhere in the picture all not-sneaky-like).

The winning packages include airfare, hotel accommodations, transportation while there, tour guides and customized guidebooks. Us Canadians (alas excluding myself) are able to enter the contest as well, though in place of airfare, there will be $500 given towards booking your own flight to Japan. Full guidelines and rules of course available over on the website.

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On their Twitter account, NetComics announced a fun little contest with the winner receiving $100 in e-Cash to go towards reading manga and manhwa on their website. With chapters for $.025, that’s a lot of reading!

1) Choose your favorite series.
2) Identify a scene/panel to recreate.
3) Do yer thang: bubbles, illustrations, etc.–the whole nine yards.
4) Q yourself whether or not your work is compelling/original.
5) Tweet it like there’s no tomorrow.

The deadline for NetComics’ contest is November 30th.

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RightStuf also runs numerous small contests, a current one being a draw for a random bag of swag. And though not really a contest but still for the artistically-inclined, a reminder that Yen Press’s current talent search is still on-going with a deadline of January 3, 2011.

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Categories: Contests
Tags: Anime, Boys' Love/Yaoi, DMP, Netcomics, Yen Press

Swag Bag – Anime, Anime and More Anime

By Lissa Pattillo on Sunday, November 14, 2010

6 Comments »

Not a whole lot of buying last week as I awaited a hefty RightStuf order to be delivered. And delivered it was! I prefer buying manga in-store and at conventions so when I make big purchases online, they usually consist primarily of anime.

Note to all Canadians: now is the perfect time to get together some friends, head over to RightStuf.com, fill up your cart with oodles of goodies (check out their clearance section for amazing deals), getting that free shipping and taking full advantage of our strong dollar. Save lots of money and get some awesome stuff!

In my box of shininess this time, I continued a recent buying spree of Funimation box sets which always impress with me low prices, great selection and amazing dubs. Their S.A.V.E line is really phenomenal – an entire series for $12? Try justifying to me how that isn’t affordable (advance note: you can’t).

My series of choice this time were Jyo-Oh-Sei, a sci-fi survival series of which I really enjoyed the manga; Baccano, an anime cominbing violent mafia wars and alchemy; Hell Girl (S01), an episodic series about a website where you can ask to have someone banished to Hell; and Eden of the East, which I’ve heard so many amazing reviews for from people I know, that I had to give it a go. Thus far I’ve watched Hell Girl, which was really good and had a continuing plot line I didn’t expect, and the first half of Baccano. The first four episodes made little to no sense but after that the story picks up pace and wow is it something else! Very fun.

The final boxset of the purchase was Media Blaster’s new release of Magic Knight Rayearth which is a digitally remastered version in celebration of CLAMP’s 15th Anniversary. I’ve already seen the series via VHS, but the quality I’ve seen of these remastered episodes is more than reason enough to finally upgrade that series to DVD. I look forward to the shiny nostalgia of this title.

Manga always needs to sneak its way in somehow though and I bought two books that I absolutely adored upon reading. First was the second volume of Bunny Drop from Yen Press. Following a man taking in a young girl and going through the realistic motions of caring for her is both heartwarming and impressively grounded. The other book was volume of The Last Uniform from Seven Seas, a positively adorable series about schoolgirls and their feelings for one another. Both books made me very happy.

In a disappointing follow-up to my last Swag Bag, the DelRey omnibus edition I bought of Mushishi fell apart into a pile of loose out-of-order pages when I sat down to read it! Looks like I got a bad bind. I hope it’s a one-off and not from a bad batch out there. If this is some kind of omen about DelRey manga then, well, it came too late.

So what’ve you bought recently? Anything you’d recommend or something coming up?

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Categories: Features, Swag Bag
Tags: Anime, Bunny Drop, CLAMP, Manga, Seven Seas, Yen Press

Super Savings: Media Blasters Sale at RightStuf

By Lissa Pattillo on Saturday, September 18, 2010

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New RightStuf sale this week and it’s for all Media Blasters releases – animes, manga, t-shirts and plushies, lots of goodies and pages and pages of it to choose from.

While Media Blasters has some fun manga titles though, especially for boys’ love fans (Crimson Spell, Yokai’s Hunger or I Can’t Stop Loving You, anyone?) , their real bread and butter is their anime and boy do they have a lot of amazing titles. I’d forgotten how many of my favourites were theirs until I started working my way through the list.

If there was an award for anime I’ve seen the most start to finish, it’s definitely the fantasy-epic Berserk which I’ve seen at least half a dozen times. Twelve Kingdoms is one of the best animes I’ve seen in years and I can’t wait to own a copy for myself after being lucky enough to have my local library in possession of the series. The anime Moribito is trying to challenge Twelve Kingdoms though, another gorgeous show.

Definitely on my nostalgic side, there’s Twin Signal, a funny and cutely quirky one-shot DVD about a super arrogant robot who turns into a chocolate-obsessed chibi when his human little brother sneezes – and a rerelease of CLAMP’s Magic Knight Rayearth, the definitive magical-girls-tossed-into-another-world series. You can also take advantage of the sale by picking up the complete series + OVA of Magic Users Club, which made me think I was watching a hentai at first when I first saw the OVA back in junior high – watch out for those pervy tentacles!

So much shininess here to be had – what Media Blasters releases would you recommend?

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Categories: Features, Super Savings
Tags: Anime, CLAMP, Manga, Media Blasters

Anime North 2010: Day Two

By Lissa Pattillo on Saturday, May 29, 2010

3 Comments »

After a good night’s sleep, day two of Anime North officially began. The registration lines began to form fairly early but paled in comparison to the line for the dealer’s room which stretched on hundreds of people down the sunny parking lot. A pleasant change from yesterday, a portion of the parking/line-up area had now been sectioned off from traffic meaning that cars were no longer able to drive inbetween groups of con-goers. Yay for minimizing the risk of getting run over!

And so – day two! (watch out, it’s a long one)
Read more…

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Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: 20th Century Boys, Anime, Canada, Conventions, Manga, Viz Signature

Anime North 2010: Day One

By Lissa Pattillo on Saturday, May 29, 2010

5 Comments »

Day one of Anime North has been survived! Mostly anyway. I will admit to unfortunately being careless to my two hours of sleep, limited food sources and sorching-in-the-sun heat that rendered me incompasetated by the evening. But a long nap followed by a hopefully full night’s sleep (pending the airplanes taking a halt on the constant very-close-over-head flying) and all shall be right as rain and ready for day two!

But how was day one you ask?
(Photos will be included in a future post as current server problems aren’t allowing me to upload them – sorry!)

Tyrant Who Falls In Love Listed for OVA Release

By Lissa Pattillo on Sunday, April 11, 2010

11 Comments »

Hinako Takanaga’s Tyrant Who Falls In Love boys’ love series has been officially scheduled for an anime adaptation! The news was released in the May edition of Japan’s Gush magazine (where the series currently runs). There are no further details yet on the company producing or the release date. (via AnimeNewsNetwork)

But really, the news itself is impressive enough in itself isn’t it? Seems there’s been a good streak of boys’ love series being adapted into animes in Japan lately and the popularity of Tyrant is sure to have this news serve as music to many a fans’ ear. It’ll be entertaining in itself seeing Hinako Takanaga’s art brought to the screen for the first time as well and will allow her fans to ponder what other series would look like animated (a one-shot OVA of The Devil’s Secret anyone?).

The Tyrant Who Falls In Love follows the trials of Tetsuhiro Morinaga whose fallen hopelessly in love with his senpai – unfortunately this ponytailed, steely-eyed man who has won Morinaga’s affection also happens to be homophobic and bearer of a wicked temper. The series is currently up to five completed volumes in Japan and was originally a spin-off of one of Hinako Takanga’s older works, Challengers.

Though the real question in light of this news is… will we see this anime get licensed for English release so we can actually buy/watch it? With the way license-trends for boys’ love material have been in recent years, eyes should likely be looking in RightStuf/Nozomi Entertainment’s direction as they prepare for their upcoming release of the anime adaptation of Junjo Romantica.

News of the series’ adaptation also comes at a great time for Digital Manga who announced at YaoiCon 2009 their acquisition of the manga for English release. The first volume is due out September 2010 and pre-orders are currently available via Amazon.

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Categories: Boys-Luv.com, News
Tags: Anime, Boys' Love/Yaoi, Hinako Takanaga

Media Blasters Lays Off Staff After Decrease in Sales

By Lissa Pattillo on Sunday, March 14, 2010

4 Comments »

News that was a little lost in the fray this past week in the mangaverse, Media Blasters has recently laid off a number of its employees. According to a post on AnimeNewsNetwork, the lay-offs include at least 13 employees across all departments of the company. With a staff of about 50 before the lay-offs, that equates to about a quarter of their workers.

Media Blasters is a company that releases anime and manga licensed from Japan. This includes their imprint, Kitty Media, which releases an assortment of mature-only anime and manga, including a number of popular boys’ love titles such as Ayano Yamane’s Crimson Spell. Some of Media Blaster’s most popular anime releases include Princess Princess, Loveless, Kite and Girls High.

The company’s president believes this move will not cause any delays in their book releases but some readers have already noticed a change to release dates. There are two books due out from Media Blasters at the end of this month: You Higashino’s Drawn To Him and Naoka Kasuga’s Because of Love.

It’s too bad to see this happen to a company who releases so many niche titles and has been around for as long as Media Blasters has. Reasons cited are predomiantly the decrease in orders from large vendors. This could include recent declines in the American market of buyers such as Borders and the semi-recent changes to Diamond Distributer’s policies.

Personally I’ve always found Media Blaster titles to be some of the most difficult to get a hold of, and more so the most hard to find accurate information on. Many of the books quickly go out of print and suffer from inconsistant release date information from different sources. Unfortunately this issue is made worse by Media Blasters’ websites which are rarely updated and utilize a very glitchy 30%-of-the-time-functioning Flash interface. While conventions often prove the best source to acquire their products, in my experience the booths aren’t manned by any employees of the company itself. Not to mention that license acquisitions are nearly always outed by discoveries via online sites such as Amazon with no official announcements to confirm until order information for the books appear in Diamond Previews.

While my sympathy goes to the employees who were laid-off, I would like to see some future attempts by Media Blasters to better outreach to their consumers. Something as simple as a functioning website with current information about their titles would make a huge difference in not only informing current buyers but also influencing new ones.

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Categories: News
Tags: Anime, Boys' Love/Yaoi, Manga, Media Blasters

Super Channel Adds Naoki Urasawa’s Monster to Schedule

By Lissa Pattillo on Saturday, February 27, 2010

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In a press release this week, Canadian television station Super Channel announced that they’ll be played the anime series of Naoki Urasawa’s Monster. The first episode of the 74 episode series will play on March 15 at 10pm and continue playing each Monday evening at the same time. The episodes will be available on both Super Channel’s standard channel and in high definition. (Source: AnimeNewsNetwork)

Super Channel is a specialty channel available through most digital cable services across the country. Along with the pay-to-view channel, they also provide a subscription feature that allows viewers to watch episodes and movies previously played on the channel at their leisure. This also isn’t the first time Super Channel has added anime to its line-up. It currently has Descendants of Darkness and Gurren Lagann on its programming schedule.

After last week’s disheartening news regarding YTV’s removal of Bleach and Naruto, it’s great to see that Canadian TV still has room for anime on its digital-waves. Though I haven’t seen the Monster anime myself, I have read the manga and it was fantastic so I look forward to the opportunity to watch the series on a weekly basis on Super Channel.

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Categories: News
Tags: Anime, Canada

Animinitime Announces Midnight Showing of Cowboy Bebop Movie

By Lissa Pattillo on Saturday, February 13, 2010

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Click here for full promotional poster

A little plugging for my hometown event – as a part of our Animinitime convention in Halifax, Nova Scotia, we’re excited to announce that we’re now selling tickets for a special midnight showing of Cowboy Bebop The Movie: Knockin’ On Heavens’ Door.

The movie will be played on the big screen at downtown’s Parklane Theatres on the evening of April 24. The showing falls between the two events planned for that weekend – one is a picnic the day before while the convention itself follows the day after. Each ticket is on sale for $5 (taxes included). You can currently buy tickets for the movie event at Strange Adventures and upcoming Anime@Large (a local anime club) events.

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Categories: News
Tags: Anime, Canada, Movies

YTV Removes Naruto and Bleach From Schedule and Website

By Lissa Pattillo on Thursday, February 11, 2010

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According to YTV’s website, Canadians will no longer have episodes – new or old – of Naruto and Bleach to look forward to on cable TV. Both anime series have been removed not only from the channel’s daily schedule but also entirely from their show database. (Source: AnimeNewsNetwork)

Their website section AnimeMaster, where information and blog-style posts were shared from their resident of the same name has also been removed. Both these changes came without advance warning from the station.

YTV has seen a distinct drop in the amount of animated shows it plays in recent years, in favour of playing a line-up of predomiantly live-action comedies and dramas aimed at a younger teen audience. Anime on the station has been in decline for some time and its shaky future on the channel had the final nail in the coffin for most fans when their evening Bionix line-up was moved from its primetime slot on Friday to Saturday mid 2009.

YTV’s OnDemand service, a special feature available on digital cable stations, has also removed episodes of Naruto and Pokemon while limiting the available episodes of Nickelodeon’s Avatar the Last Airbender.

Canadian television in general is a far cry for anime from what it was only five years ago when there were over 15 different anime series playing on television at a time. This included the beginning of YTV’s Bionix line-up which at the time played weekly episodes of many newly English broadcasting series including Inu-Yasha, Naruto, Fullmetal Alchemist, Witch Hunter Robin, Gundam Seed and Bleach. At one point the station was even in talks over an anime-only channel, which though approved at the time, was never launched.

Anime currently still playing on YTV is Dinosaur King, Pokemon and the more recently added Pretty Cure. Teletoon, another Canadian station, currently plays episodes of Bakugan and Domo-kun and Friends. Some digital cable users in Canada also have access to the subscription-based AnimeNetwork service which allows subscribers to watch weekly updated lists of anime series at their leisure.

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Categories: News
Tags: Anime, Canada, Fullmetal Alchemist