Recent News Thoughts

Instead of the usual separate posts about different news articles, I am going to combine this time.

Akimbo Goes out of Business
hurt the industry for this service to be shut down, it will certainly effect other companies who are doing the same thing. With major Cable/With all my recent interest in streaming anime, this one caught my interest. While Akimbo didn’t provide services similar to Crunchy-Roll, that is web based streaming of content, it was a service to let viewers pick and choose what shows they wanted to watch, and get them on demand. I think while it wont necessarily hurt the Industry, it may effect providers of simular services, good and bad. With the already many Cable/Satellite carriers offering there own on demand services (including the one I use myself), it’s hard to be a small company that wants to find a niche market. Akimbo did sign contracts with various anime licencing companies to make their content available to there users. One of these companies was ADV, a subsidiary of AD Vision who also happens to own the Anime Network. The Anime Network is available on quite a few major cable services; so while the thought of a service that provides anime to the mass market sounds like a good idea. Consumers will opt for the same service included in a package deal.

Vertigo Entertainment Developing U.S. Death Note Remake
Vertigo Entertainment has plans to develop a Death Note Remake for America. Vertigo who has worked on many of the Japanese-to-America horror films has set its sight on this animated series. After reading the article it is unclear if they plan on remaking the show, or if they plan on making a movie out of the show. I am split on how I feel about this. For the most part I appreciate the effects that go into American remakes, the stories tend to loose something in translation. If anything I hope that its going to be made into a movie, and not a TV show. This will allow for a higher budget for the film, (much higher then the average Japanese film) and for the most part be less of a risk then trying to make a television series. Viewers are fickle, and for the most part I don’t think that the average viewer will stay tuned to a Death Note remake week after week.

Gurren Lagann Mayhem

Keeping with news stories, Bandai entertainment has announced that it would be airing Gurren Lagann on the Sci-Fi channel. This actually surprised me, not because the show would be shown on American television, but because Bandai is the one doing it. I first watched the series as it was being aired on Japanese TV. By the end of the series, ADV had it licensed and was making it available to watch on there website. After that I pretty much stopped keeping up with the news.

Today on the other hand, I read that Bandai Entertainment (There will soon be no Bandai Visual USA) has licensed it. While the show will be shown in a dubbed format, they have yet to reveal who the voice actors will be, but they promise that Simon will be pronounced correctly with a short i.

In other Gurren Lagann News, Gainax has announced that they will make two (yes thats 2, not 1) Gurren Laggan Movies. The reason is that they cant fix the entire story into one film. I am assuming that the end of movie 1 will include up to the defeat of the Spiral King, and the second movie will conclude the story.

Good job Gainax. Unlike the new Eva movies that Gainax has made, I am sure that I would love to re-watch the Gurren Laggan story. More on the Eva Movies in a future post.

“Death Note” style threats in American High Schools

I just read this article on Anime News Network about 4 high school students and there “Death Note”. Apparently they had written the names of teachers, fellow students and even celebrities into the notebook. I’ll let you read the story yourself for details but for now I am going to interject my opinion.

Expelling  a student based on a notebook is going  little too far. This being said, these students should not be let off scott free. I say let the parents decide the punishment, weather it being a grounding, or in severe cases, therapy. I am unsure if the school faculty was aware of the show, which shows late night on Cartoon Networks Adult Swim. To me, this is on the same level as writing cryptic poems, albeit going a bit farther. This also raises the question as to weather these students actually did anything wrong. While its pretty obvious that actions can be illegal, this is public morals sliding its toes into determining weather thought and ideas are illegal. Making a notebook that lists the names of people you want to off is one thing. Actually doing them is another.

I do feel sympathy for the school though. Recently there have been student attacks in high schools and in universities as well. But this is a fad within the anime fandom that will eventually die down, just like when i was a kid and my friends likes to make believe they were Goku.