In the Emerald City

Wow.

So Bandai Entertainment will now be releasing Gurren-Lagann instead of ADV. While I'm glad that it's been rescued, I'm still a bit disappointed for a couple of reasons.

First, I really like ADV's dubs and I was looking forward to seeing this one. I have no idea what Bandai's dubs are usually like, but I hope it'll be good.

Second, it's really starting to seem like ADV no longer has Keroro Gunsou. All of their titles came back after disapperaring except GL and KG. If GL's gone, it seems likely to me that KG is as well. I guess it could be rescued, I certainly hope it will be, but it's still disappointing.

Well, at least now I can look forward to seeing GL in English sometime soon.

And now for something a bit more cheerful!

The new ending theme to Keroro Gunso is made of complete and utter win. It's called 'Kero-Neko no Tango' and, as you might guess, involves Keroro's platoon, as children, dressed up in kitty outfits, doing a cute little dance, complete with cat-paw movements. It's the most adorable thing ever. Sadly, I couldn't find it on Youtube, but hopefully it'll be up soon.

I did find, however, a trailer for the English language anime. I'm not keen on Keroro's voice. Apparently it's Vic Mignona. I do think he's a very good actor, for all that he doesn't know how to talk to fans, but I just don't think he's the right guy for a mini alien frog originally voiced by a woman. It does amuse me to think about all the times Keroro's crossdressed though. Will Vic be staunchly defending the heterosexuality of the frog?

I quite like the animes based on Key's bishojo games: Kanon, Air and Clannad (though I haven't actually seen the new Kanon yet, but I intend to). There's a couple of aspects, however, that make my skin crawl. I watched episode 13 of Clannad today, and I'm appalled.

( Spoilers for Clannad )

( Spoilers for Air )

( Small spoiler for Kanon )

I've watched the first couple of episodes of the Toonami version of Eyeshield 21, and I'm amused to note that it's been edited to remove every instance of Hiruma with his guns. As you might imagine that's a lot of material, which meant they've had to compress two episodes into one. So episode 2 on Toonami actually covers episodes 3 and 4 of the Japanese version.

I totally get that a teenager playing with machine guns willy-nilly would be unacceptable for US children's programming. And a sports anime with over a hundred episodes is unlikely to be successful anywhere else, so it had to be done. But I have to wonder, how well is it going to work? Might they let a gun through now and then for an important scene, or will they be strict to the point of missing crucial scenes?

Oh well, it doesn't really bother me as long as there are uncut DVDs, and since it's Viz, hopefully there will be. And I do like the dub. The writing's good and I like the voices, especially Sena (it turns out he's played by the English voice actor of Kyo Kara Maoh's Yuri, Yuri Lowenthal. And until I looked that up I never realized he shared his name with the character!) and I think Hiruma and Kurita will be good too. The one thing I'm really annoyed by, though, is that I've yet to hear 'Ya-Ha!' If it doesn't turn up, along with its catchphrase cousins 'Catch MAX!' and 'A-HA-ha!' I will be exceedingly disappointed.

Meanwhile, I've been totally out of it since New Year's. I wanted to get some things done, but I've ended up just lazing around. Hopefully I'll get back on track when work starts again, since I'll have my routine back.

ANN says Kyo Kara Maoh is back!

Woohoo! Season Three, here we come.

It'd be great if they go back to basing it on the novels rather than making up their own story as they've been doing.

I'm kind of shocked to discover that I now understand what Konata of Lucky Star was talking about when she complained about baseball getting in the way of her anime. Eyeshield 21 is supposed to be on!

This Buffy quote occurred to me today that I thought might apply to certain Gurren-Lagann characters after seeing the final:

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So Geneon's cancelling their DVD sales. This really sucks. I'd gotten behind on Kyo Kara Maoh, but I was planning on starting my collection again in a few months. They'd also started releasing Saiunkoku and Shonen Onmyoji, both of which I was thinking about getting. They'd recently licensed Seirei no Moribito, so there's no telling what will happen with that one. I really hope another company picks them up, or Geneon is able to start again in the future.

I think I made a fool of myself in front of my flatmates watching Gurren-Lagann today, but whatever. ( Read more... )

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I've finally caught up on Gurren-Lagann. I missed it last week because of Comic City, the week before that because of Comiket, and the week before that because I just forgot. Right now I'm watching episode 23.

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( Episode 23 reactions: )

I decided to check out the Anime on DVD forums to see if I could get any issue on the Saiunkoku Ko/Hong change. It looks like it was indeed due to a request from the creator. Geneon is still cool! \o/