next year's anime
Aug. 23rd, 2009 02:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rushthatspeaksThis started out as an email to the housemates, and then I realized that I know other people who might care. So I have pasted and annotated the email.
In which I pay attention so no one else has to: I did my twice-yearly crawl through the announcements of upcoming anime, and concluded that we are all going to catch up on the backlist; it looks worse by far than last year. I mean, wow.
Some things that may eventually be worth looking into (and by eventually, I mean that release dates vary but none of this is scheduled before next January):
1. Deadman Wonderland. This is the first anime news that has genuinely excited me in a while, as it is a manga I read in scanlation and I assumed it would never be animated because it is too insane. Psychological horror gorefest set in a prison which holds gladiatorial combats. Enough of the manga exists to make me think an anime may have an ending, not just a thing they come up with to allow them to stop.
2. The new CLAMP thing is being animated. It says something about the upcoming picks that this makes second place on my list of notable things, given how CLAMP anime usually turn out.
3. Someone has given Koyasu* the money to make another anime what he is writing. No, really. It is called Velvet Underworld** but other than that has no story elements in common with Weiss, apparently. There is no scheduled release date, but it has a website, and the website has character designs, which indicates at least a fifty percent chance of this actually happening.
4. The people who adapted Baccano!*** from a lot of light novels are adapting the other series of light novels that author wrote. Apparently they are about vampires. The name of the show is in Sanskrit and I can't spell or pronounce it, so if you see that sort of thing come up on a download list, that's it. This is this low on this list only because I would rather they work on Baccano! S2.
5. One of the otherwise generic shonen Fullmetal Alchemist ripoff things claims to be set 'within the administrative complex of the Russian Orthodox Church'. This made me laugh so hard I thought everyone ought to know about it. Apparently the protagonist can summon St. Cyril. I am not making this up. We may have to watch this thing. The title has a Q in it, but is otherwise unremarkable.****
6. The only thing that is happening before next January at all in any way is Kuroshitsuji S2. I cannot believe I just counted that as a thing that is happening in anime.$
And next year's Dishonorable Mention-- I can tell already-- is the show about the young lady who tries to set up an official club for people obsessed with underwear at her high school. The promo art caused the people on the animesuki forums to start wincing and whimpering, and those people liked Queen's Blade and the thing with the melon soda girl.$$
* Koyasu Takehito, one of the most prolific and versatile Japanese voice actors, and almost certainly the most famous. He's been in a lot of really great shows, and a truly amazing quantity of crap.
** ... and some time ago-- not quite the Paleozoic; the early nineties-- Koyasu and three other male voice actors were in a singing group together. It's not a bad group by any means. They can all sing, as indeed most voice actors can. And they toured, and so on, and then Koyasu wrote and directed an anime which they all starred in. It is called Weiss Kreutz, and it is about a group of very pretty assassin florists who use the code names of kinds of house cat and have no fashion sense. Weiss is either so bad it's good or so bad it's bad, depending on who you ask, and has elements of genuine awesome in it. It was one of the foundational shows of Western anime slash fandom. Its theme song, 'Velvet Underworld', is quite good... apparently good enough to be reused.
Basically what I am saying here is that this has about the same potential for hilarity and wondrousness as if Steven Spielberg were to announce that he intends to make a musical called 1942.
*** By far my favorite anime of last year.
**** I REPEAT: HE CAN SUMMON SAINT CYRIL. TELL ME THAT IS NOT THE SILLIEST GENUINELY BADASS THING YOU HAVE EVER HEARD.
$ It's a Goth show about a demonic butler.
$$ I am not going to tell you about Queen's Blade. I am not a strong enough person. I recommend not looking it up at work, or if you value your sanity. I just-- I try not to think about it very much. The melon soda thing is called Akikan and is about a guy who gets a can of melon soda out of a vending machine and then when he opens it it turns into a scantily clad woman. ... I'm sorry, but that really is what it's about. No, I did not watch it.
In which I pay attention so no one else has to: I did my twice-yearly crawl through the announcements of upcoming anime, and concluded that we are all going to catch up on the backlist; it looks worse by far than last year. I mean, wow.
Some things that may eventually be worth looking into (and by eventually, I mean that release dates vary but none of this is scheduled before next January):
1. Deadman Wonderland. This is the first anime news that has genuinely excited me in a while, as it is a manga I read in scanlation and I assumed it would never be animated because it is too insane. Psychological horror gorefest set in a prison which holds gladiatorial combats. Enough of the manga exists to make me think an anime may have an ending, not just a thing they come up with to allow them to stop.
2. The new CLAMP thing is being animated. It says something about the upcoming picks that this makes second place on my list of notable things, given how CLAMP anime usually turn out.
3. Someone has given Koyasu* the money to make another anime what he is writing. No, really. It is called Velvet Underworld** but other than that has no story elements in common with Weiss, apparently. There is no scheduled release date, but it has a website, and the website has character designs, which indicates at least a fifty percent chance of this actually happening.
4. The people who adapted Baccano!*** from a lot of light novels are adapting the other series of light novels that author wrote. Apparently they are about vampires. The name of the show is in Sanskrit and I can't spell or pronounce it, so if you see that sort of thing come up on a download list, that's it. This is this low on this list only because I would rather they work on Baccano! S2.
5. One of the otherwise generic shonen Fullmetal Alchemist ripoff things claims to be set 'within the administrative complex of the Russian Orthodox Church'. This made me laugh so hard I thought everyone ought to know about it. Apparently the protagonist can summon St. Cyril. I am not making this up. We may have to watch this thing. The title has a Q in it, but is otherwise unremarkable.****
6. The only thing that is happening before next January at all in any way is Kuroshitsuji S2. I cannot believe I just counted that as a thing that is happening in anime.$
And next year's Dishonorable Mention-- I can tell already-- is the show about the young lady who tries to set up an official club for people obsessed with underwear at her high school. The promo art caused the people on the animesuki forums to start wincing and whimpering, and those people liked Queen's Blade and the thing with the melon soda girl.$$
* Koyasu Takehito, one of the most prolific and versatile Japanese voice actors, and almost certainly the most famous. He's been in a lot of really great shows, and a truly amazing quantity of crap.
** ... and some time ago-- not quite the Paleozoic; the early nineties-- Koyasu and three other male voice actors were in a singing group together. It's not a bad group by any means. They can all sing, as indeed most voice actors can. And they toured, and so on, and then Koyasu wrote and directed an anime which they all starred in. It is called Weiss Kreutz, and it is about a group of very pretty assassin florists who use the code names of kinds of house cat and have no fashion sense. Weiss is either so bad it's good or so bad it's bad, depending on who you ask, and has elements of genuine awesome in it. It was one of the foundational shows of Western anime slash fandom. Its theme song, 'Velvet Underworld', is quite good... apparently good enough to be reused.
Basically what I am saying here is that this has about the same potential for hilarity and wondrousness as if Steven Spielberg were to announce that he intends to make a musical called 1942.
*** By far my favorite anime of last year.
**** I REPEAT: HE CAN SUMMON SAINT CYRIL. TELL ME THAT IS NOT THE SILLIEST GENUINELY BADASS THING YOU HAVE EVER HEARD.
$ It's a Goth show about a demonic butler.
$$ I am not going to tell you about Queen's Blade. I am not a strong enough person. I recommend not looking it up at work, or if you value your sanity. I just-- I try not to think about it very much. The melon soda thing is called Akikan and is about a guy who gets a can of melon soda out of a vending machine and then when he opens it it turns into a scantily clad woman. ... I'm sorry, but that really is what it's about. No, I did not watch it.
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no subject
Date: 2009-08-23 07:25 am (UTC)THAT IS BEST.
Please tell me if St. Cyril, once summoned by the protagonist, does anything badass with his alphabet.
It's a Goth show about a demonic butler.
Would Flora laugh at it?
no subject
Date: 2009-08-23 07:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-23 12:38 pm (UTC)You mean Dhurarara? I don't think that's the one with vampires--according to someone from ANN it's about an "ancient Irish spirit working as an underworld courier in Ikebukuro, plus an Anonymous style game formed and operating via chat rooms." :D
no subject
Date: 2009-08-23 01:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-23 02:12 pm (UTC)HE CAN SUMMON SAINT CYRIL
Ahaha that is hilarious. I may have to watch that just for the insanity value.
Kuroshitsuji: I was watching that, but stopped when I got busy with grad school. I cannot in any way claim that is is good, but I'm still tempted to go watch more of it. After all, he's a very pretty demonic butler with a warped understated sense of humor.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-23 04:46 pm (UTC)Don't know if I'll follow it well, though, as Cross Game is still running, and I'm finding following one current show at time my limit.
---L.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-23 04:51 pm (UTC)I am trying so very, very hard not to cackle insanely in the middle of this Starbucks' I am using to hide from the heat.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-23 04:58 pm (UTC)Thank you for the recap!
no subject
Date: 2009-08-24 03:22 am (UTC)(Eventually someone will animate Onani Master Kurosawa, and then someone else will license it in English, and then GOD WILL KILL US ALL.)
no subject
Date: 2009-08-24 03:43 am (UTC)---L.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-24 04:35 am (UTC)Inherent "DO NOT WANT (to see/hear moving)" aspects of the story aside, I doubt I'd like colored animation half as much as the manga's skritchety grayscale art.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-24 02:36 pm (UTC)(For, ah, definitions of "perfect" that includes "profitable".)
---L.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-24 04:04 am (UTC)VUW has manga, radio, drama CD, short animated music videos, and character songs out. The second round of CDs are coming out in a few months. Since Koyasu-san has his own staff (he is the CEO of T's Factory) as well as close relations with Animate, no one had to offer him money to start it. There have been no official plans announced for an anime series yet. There is a LJ community for VUW called velvet_crack.
Unit Weiss began as a radio program that quickly morphed into something more like a cult franchise; offering drama CDs, manga, light novels, radio, artbooks, photo collections and posters of the seiyuu, an official fan club, concerts, music CDs, etc. Although the anime series itself had more than its share of wtf moments, Weiss was a forerunner during the movement in the 90s when seiyuu turned into idols. The song "Velvet Underworld" has nothing to do with Koyasu-san's new project. He just likes to reuse names.