To all Wii U owners: Crunchyroll has given you a gift

They finally released an app for the Anime fans and with this Crunchroll has made sure that no matter what current gen console you are on,You will be able to watch/stream Anime and Asian Drama content. It was actually released on Christmas Day. Official announcement post on CR website.

Hulu helping us remember some of the Christmas themed Anime episodes

It's only 5 days away from Christmas Day and Hulu video streaming service is helping Anime fans like myself remember that there are Christmas episodes in some series.

http://www.hulu.com/browse/picks/tis-the-season-for-anime

What's on their list:

• Mahoromatic - Season 1 Episode 5
• My Santa - Season 1 Episode 1 
• My Santa - Season 1 Episode 2
• YuriYuri - Season 1 Episode 7
• Minami Ke  - Season 4 Episode 12
• School Rumble - Season 2 Episode 19
• Vandread - Season 1 Episode 10
• Shakugan no Shana - Season 2  Episode 22
• Toradora - Season 1 Episode 19

Personally I have only watched the Vandread episode and it was so memorable because if I remember correctly the song "It's a Wonderful World"  or a cover of it is played during that episode.  

There is show that is also on Hulu but the curator of this list forgot about...

Ah! My Goddess  Season 2  Episode 3 - Keiichi/K1 even dresses up in a reindeer costume. 

Pinball pack for a weekly Bundle

A cool collection of digital pinball tables for fans of Star Wars and Marvel Comics. There are only a 3 days left from the original 7 to pick this up.

Zen Studios developers of Pinbal FX2 are offering up pretty much all of the Star Wars and Marvel related tables they have released so far. Going for around 6 USD at the time of this post.

If you pay for the 2nd tier minimum you also get....

• More Marvel tables ( X-men, Thor, Deadpool) 
• More Star Wars ( based on the Prequel trilogy)  

If you can get past the "floaty" ball physics then you will be treated to tables that have some great action sequences that a physical table just couldn't really pull off all that well.

Of course you will need a Steam account and Client to redeem the Steam Key codes to play and install the game on your computer. the other cool thing about buying from this site/sale is that you can choose which groups involved should get more of your money.  Zen Studios, The charities or Humble Indie Bundle. 

Games I'm currently playing: Aliens versus Predator for The PC

Not the remake but the old-school one. Released around the same time as the original Half - Life if i remember correctly.  Aliens Versus Predator is a First Person sometimes shooting other times clawing, other times stealth action game from the 1990s. Just look at the rendered computer setups in the screenshot! I got the game for free by supporting and testing the online multiplayer.

Screenshot taken with Graphics settings maxed out. Haha

 In order to take this screenshot I was playing as a Marine/Human with the Pulse Rifle at the ready.  The game runs even on the most current releases of Windows at Max graphical quality.  I want to talk about the map seen in the screenshot...

Mario Kart 8 - Nintendo changed the post-race menu at some point

Mario Kart 8 is the most current version of Nintendo's cart racing series that started back in the 90s.

Before: When Mario Kart 8 was launched

When I watched initial gameplay video  I was one of those people that wondered why you would put "View Highlight Reel"  as the default selected action when playing Gran Prix modes. Most players would want to get on to the next new track. 

After

Quite a few other gamers also voiced this opinion and Nintendo seems to be listening and able to patch/update the game to make various tweaks. Moved the menu around.   The game was released at the end of May this year and I just noticed the change now since the release of the MK8 DLC release.

Comixology having a sale on Takeshi Obata works

Takeshi Obata is the Japanese Manga Artist responsible for Death Note
Other series included in the sale are

•  Hikaru No Go
•  Bakuman

I don't know how long the sale is going to last but It's going on right now (as of this post). For those of you that don't know Comixology is a digital download service for  mainly American Comic Books from Marvel, DC, and other publishers. Viz media has been slowly putting their most popular series (such as Bleach, Naruto, One Piece) on the service.

Here's the link to the comixology page

Two Mobile Suit Gundam shows premeired in October

October 2014 has been a really good month for Gundam fans because we got not one but two new Gundam titles.  "G-Reco" seems to be a classic War time Gundam series. From the clips I've seen that they reference Universal Century mobile suits/Mecha.

Sadly G-Reco isn't officially being streamed with English Subs yet. It would be cool if Crunchyroll would pick it up but I've don't think that's likely as the Gundam related listings on their seem to be mainly for info/database info and user reviews.  There are already some Youtube reviews of the show.

 Could be a Japan-only release so far.

The Walking Dead (Game) Season 1 and Season two on sale on Steam

The Walking Dead Episode Season 2 Episode 5 was released this week via digital download services like Steam. The Season finale for Clem and company.

For the next "day" Season 1 (5 episodes) and Season 2 (5 episodes) will be discounted on the service. Part of the "Midweek Madness" sale that Steam regularly has. Each season is going for $10.00 or less.

Defintely worth playing if you are a fan of Point and Click, story focused games.

Season 1 $6.24
Season 2 $9.99

Sword Art Online: Hollow Fragment has so many errors in the translation

Sword Art Online (SAO) : Hollow Fragment is a video game (based on a popular Anime series) that was recently released in North America for the Sony PlayStation Vita. The game was developed and released by Bandai Namco Games.

Look at the screenshot above where the player-character Kirito (not shown) is talking to these two female characters. Here he says "Let me Know anytime if there are something that you want to know." Pretty easy to spot the glaring error.This is just one example of the issues with the English script in the final game.

Still not as famous as "All your base are belong to us".

Someone was selling a Transformers flash drive online

I was browsing the Internet doing some research on USB flash/pen drives when I came upon a particular listing.

 Probably one of the few Anime-themed USB Flash drives that I have seen. To be fair sometimes I get confused if Transformers is even Anime. While Hasbro is an American toy company, there have been Japanese produced TV shows like Transformers: The Headmasters.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reminder - Dragon Ball Z: Battle of the Gods movie in theaters today

It's the 5th of August and that means that Battle of Gods  starts that limited release run today. It seems that all shows no matter the theater you choose will be at 7:00 PM Central US time  tonight. Some places have already sold out so yeah.


Most likely way to order available tickets seats is via Fandango.

Serendipity is very close to not meeting the funding mark

Back around the 10th of the month a new crowd-funding  website popped up on the Internet, It's focused specifically on Japanese Animation/ Anime.   Their very first project  is called Serendipity. 

Anicool seems to borrow quite a lot from the more well-known Kickstarter. The most obvious similarity is the various rewards offered to people that give a certain amount of money to the funding goal.

 Anicool  funds projects in Yen as opposed to USD.   In order for Serendipity to be fully funded "they" need a total of 1,000,000.00 Yen. I ran this through Google and it converts to around 9,818.84 USD. Valid exchange rate at the time of this post.

Only hours left until the 2nd episode of Sailor Moon Crystal

It will be released by the time you read this but  Tomorrow is the third Saturday of the Month and that means the next episode is going to be released onto Crunchyroll and Hulu.

If you saw episode 1, we're going to meet the next key character. Hopefully the chosen voice talent is able to do the role justice.

An old Barenaked Ladies music video is linked to Digimon?

So I was hopping around Youtube listening to a selection of my favorite songs from the 1990s and I got to "One Week" via the official Warner Bros. records channel. For some reason  the track artwork for the "buy this" song  section has a (small) image of the Digimon Anime.

The song itself has mentions of Sailor Moon, but not Digimon. Some other Japanese related things like Sushi, and film director Akira Kurosawa. I never really watched Digimon/ Digital Monsters growing up. So was this song played during the series?  You can watch the music video on Youtube

Dragon Ball Z: Battle of the Gods to be screened in Illinois

 Very limited screening days and the information below is based on  Funimation's own website listings .

 
 August 5th to the 9th of this year.

Chicago, IL
Studio Movie Grill Chatham 14




Rosemont, IL
Rosemont 18

Elgin, IL 
Elgin Fox Theatre 15

Addison, IL
Addison Cinemas

Gurnee, IL
Gurnee Cinemas

There are a few more listed theaters for Illinois. Just use Google or Bing map services to get exact addresses and directions.


They  are using something called Open Street Map  to show the theater location markers on a US map. TThe Get tickets buttons don't seem to work. Perhaps it is too early in July for the links to be active? More likely better to just call and ask the Theatre. 

Anime Midwest 2014 - A convention going on right now in Rosemont IL

Anime Midwest 2014 is actually going on today (Friday) July 4th until (Sunday) the 6th. Seems like a fairly new fan convention because they have this thing about limiting the attendance to 10,00 people.  I'm guessing so that's the magic number for the staff to be able to manage things at the moment.  According to their attendance tracker, they've only sold half of their maximum capacity. Good chance you can go there during the weekend.

Seems like if you are a fan of drinking Mountain Dew soda, than this is a good place to hang out as Attendees get free soda and Ramen ( have no clue if it's instant or an actual ramen shop setup. )



It is being held in the town of Rosemont, IL, at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center and Hyatt Regency. Now if these to venues sound familiar then you're thinking of the other Anime Con that happens in Illinois, Anime Central. "Acen" took place in May of this year.


Some notable attendees :

• Nostalgia Critic (Doug Walker)
• Linkara
•  Johnny Yong Bosch
• Sonny Strait
• Chris Patton
•  Caitlin Glass

Link to their website
Link to their Facebook page 

Finally getting around to watching the Sailor Moon Crystal trailer

It's going to begin airing in Japan in 4 days. This trailer was originally uploaded to a Japanese Youtube account back in the beginning of June. Features the character,  Usagi Tsukino/Sailor Moon.  looks so much cleaner/sleeker than how she was in the early 1990s.

The original Japanese voice actress for Sailor Moon is back to reprise her role. Which is awesome that she can still do the high pitched "Whinny" sound from the 1990s. Kotono Mitsuishi has since gone on to play other notable roles such as Misato Katsuragi (Neon Genesis Evangelion)  and Marrue Ramius (Gundam Seed/Destiny.) I'm really hoping that there is more to this iteration of Sailor Moon than a crybaby Usagi-chan.  Come  on lead writer for the show, hope you can do something


We get quick still shots of the other 4 Sailor Senshi. Wonder how many of those actors are returning? Looks like Viz Media already picked up the rights for it in North America.

 Here's a link (redirect to Youtube) for those who can't see embeded flash video

Naruto Shippuden game part of the Steam Summer Sale 2014!

It's so rare for PC gamers/ Windows OS users get actual ports of Anime games.  Naruto/Shippuden fans are the lucky ones as Ultimate Ninja Storm 3: Full Burst 3  was ported and released last year. It's 50% off as of this post. The Steam Summer Sale is going on until the 30th of June.

Box Art for Naruto Shippuden Ultimate Ninja Storm 3

The original list price on Steam is $39.99 but thanks to the sale it is currently going for $19.99.
You can watch the trailer on Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfPtddaiWp8 (via Gamespot channel)

Steam store page

I honestly don't know if the PC port of the game is any better or worse than the 360/PS3 releases. If you were interested in picking it up but found the price too high before, now is a good time.

An online Gundam game names its servers after Gundam Seed episodes

There are a lot of games under the name Mobile Suit Gundam from The Arcade to the Sony PlayStation Vita.  I'm currently playing this online turn-based strategy game. With chat, and with clan/group aspects.  Enjoying it mainly due to theme and community. 50/50 stats and luck of random rolls.  Much better than the old "Pen and Paper" Gundam games I used to jot down. Yes used to be a Gundam super fan.

 For the most part the server names follow the episode titles from Gundam Seed.14 Servers/realms as of this post. In an interesting move they skip Episode 2 - "It's Name: Gundam"  and just go to 3 and onwards. "Endless Time" is the name of a recap episode from the show.

I made arrow notations on the specific servers that glaringly change the actual source Title.

• Flat Decision / Flay's Decision 
• Vanishing Sense/ Vanishing Gundam

 Some of the other server names just shorten the titles...

• Enemy Force / Songstress of the enemy force 
• Phase Shift / Phase Shift Down

 Gundam Seed had a total of 50 episodes from the TV show and plus 3 from the Special Edition movies so around so this dev team still has room to add more server/realms.

I just Signed up for a DBZ mailing list

The latest Dragon Ball Z movie, Battle of the Gods is having a limited Theatrical release in North America. The good news is that we have  the screening dates for this coming August, 2014

The Days are...

• 5 -Tuesday
• 6 -Wednesday
• 7 -Thursday
• 9 -Saturday  

I got the dates off of Funimation's site. The bad news is that we don't have any city or specific movie theater information (where and when) as of yet.  Funimation only has a countdown timer to the dates above. There is also a notification signup form for e-mail and/or text messages.  Has a button to view the trailer and an inactive button to purchase theater tickets later down the line.

http://bit.ly/1qeH0MY link to Battle of the Gods page

Anime Music Covers #1 -Slam Dunk

So from time to time I hop around Youtube looking for covers of Anime theme music and on a few occasions I have found videos of interest. This first one is of a Young Woman doing a percussion cover to Slam Dunk's OP theme song.  Out in public

Here is the redirect link  to "view on Youtube.com"

I believe the rough translation of the song title is "I want to shout I love You!" The first op song for a Basketball/Sports Anime.

SDF Macross - Those skull Squadron markings are real!

So I was watching a 1980s movie called "The final Countdown" (read my post here) which is about a US Aircraft Carrier. Majority of the fighter jets seen in the film were F-14 tomcats. Every Super Dimensional Fortress Macross fan knows that the VF-1 transforming units have a mode called Fighter where they take on the form of advanced F-14 fighter jets that can move in outer space.     

During one part in the movie a whole bunch of fighters were launching and I noticed the Black, gold and skull markings on some of the fighters.  The Final Countdown came out in 1980 while Macross was aired in 1982 in Japan. I did some research on the net and the US Squadron is the VFA-103 aka "Jolly Rogers". This squad has been in service since the 50s although I don't know then they started using the Skull and crossbone markings. Kind of cool to know that the Japanese Anime production team was inspired by a real and active fighter jet squadron 

There's actually more live-action Great Teacher Onizuka

Sometimes simply called "GTO" Teacher Onizuka was originally a Manga or Japanese comic about a tough, biker guy who dreams of being a School teacher.  The Manga originally began in the late 1990s and a 43-episode Anime was made soon after.  I did watch the Anime way back in the mid 2000s. I remember enjoying the story and characters.   Sadly it ended prior to the Manga being completed. In 2012 A live-action, abbriged, adaptation aired in Japan. Now it's 2014 a short 4-episode sequel or side story.

GTO Taiwan stars "Akira" of Exile in the titular role. By the time you read this post all episodes can be seen on Crunchyroll. The video streaming site. Just a heads up to any of you GTO fans out there.

Anime Still Airing on Local Broadcast TV in 2014

As far as my local TV stations are concerned. For better context I should say which area I live in.  I live in a suburb outside of Chicago, Illinois. We have local channels from 2 to 32. plus or minus if you add the digital sub-channels.

Well on channel 9/9.1 (WGN/CW) there is Anime shown on Saturday morning. A mix of older shows and newer shows. The Block is called "Vortexx" None of the titles will surprise you...




All times are in Central United States time and the shows are aired English-dubbed


Sonic X  8:00 AM
Yugioh 11:00 AM
Dragon Ball Z Kai  10:00 AM
Yugioh Zexal 11:30 AM
Digimon Fusion 10:30 AM