Archive for the English Anime Category


Good deals on Bundles of Yuri on RightStuf.com!

December 5th, 2012

Courtesy of 8broswithoutme on Twitter, owner of the blog GAR GAR Stegosaurus, we have a lovely list of all the bundles of Yuri RightStuf is offering for the holiday season. These deals range from good to amazing. This is a great chance to fill those holes in your collection on the cheap!

Aoi Hana/Sweet Blue Flowers – $23.99  (and if you pre-order, you get something cool)

Strawberry Panic Complete Series – $14.99

Kashimashi Girl Meets Girl –  $12.99

Blue Drop – $11.99

Simoun bundle – $12.99

Simoun thinpack (Endless Melody Collection) – $14.99

There are of course many other series available on TRSI’s website, but these deals are pretty sick,  and  these make great stocking stuffers for yourself, or a friend who is Yuri-curious. ^_^

 





Nozomi/RightStuf Announces Princess Knight Anime

October 24th, 2012

The amazing news just keeps coming this year….

Anime producer and distributor Right Stuf, Inc. is pleased to announce its acquisition of the classic Princess Knight animated series.

Also known as“Choppy and the Princess,” Princess Knight television series will be released via Right Stuf’s Nozomi Entertainment as two limited-edition DVD sets. This will be the first time the series will be available to North American audiences on licensed DVD. The DVD sets will feature its original English-language dub, as well as a Spanish-language audio option.

Due to the availability of materials, these DVD releases will utilize the edited and cut, broadcast video footage from  Princess Knight’s television syndication during the 1960s and 1970s. (Japanese audio will not be included on these sets because it cannot be synched to the video.)

Princess Knight follows the heroic adventures of Sapphire, a young princess born with the hearts of both a boy and a girl and who is also being secretly raised as a prince so she can eventually succeed her father as king.

The 52-episode anime adaptation of Princess Knight is based upon the best-selling manga by legendary creator Osamu Tezuka ( Astro Boy, Kimba The White Lion) and features animation from Tezuka’s own Mushi Productions. It originally aired on Japanese television from 1967 through 1968, and its English-language adaptation was syndicated throughout the United States in the 1970s and 1980s.

In both anime and manga forms,  Princess Knight was among the first titles geared specifically toward a young female  audience. The original comic was serialized in Kodansha’s Shoujo Club anthology magazine, from 1953 through 1956, and its sequel series,  Twin Knight, was serialized in Kodansha’s Nakayoshi anthology in 1958. The two collected volumes of the  Princess Knight manga are currently available to North American readers from Vertical Inc., which also plans to publish the sequel series in 2013.

For more information about the series, visit princess-knight.rightstuf.com.





Dear Brother Anime (English)

October 22nd, 2012

It was 2004. Fansubs were already phasing out of the elegantly clunky VHS tape-exchanges by snail mail and were shifting towards the passionless and infinitely faster transmission of IP people had no right to share by digital means.

Oniisama E was already a relic of a former age even then. Fansubbed by a bastion of Victorian worldviews, each volume of the anime came with notes on culture, references and a full set of what we ought to be feeling and understanding. It wasn’t enough for us to know that the rain, the wind, the trains and the flocks of birds were symbolic, we were to be told exactly how to interpret them. ^_^ As the end of this series heralded the end of anime fandom as I had entered it, I finally wrote a review, if only to say goodbye to it.

Now we have a chance that I could never ever have expected – a free, legal, multi-language option for people to watch this oh-so-shoujo series, streaming on Viki.com. I hope every single one of you who loves Maria-sama ga Miteru will watch Oniisama E/Dear Brother based on the manga by Riyoko Ikeda.

This is a series fraught with fraughtness. In the poisonous hothouse of an elite girls’ school, a nice girl named Nanako will encounter insanity, obsession, emotional manipulation, friendship and love.

Kaoru-no-Kimi, the athletic masculine type, Miya-sama without whom we would never have had Juri in Utena and the beautifully tragic Sainte-Juste, who makes homicidal depression and drug use look…sexy. You cannot tell me that kids books today are too dark. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 9
Character 9
Yuri – More than you expect (and more than Technogirls would admit)
Service – 4 for girls in suits, but nothing more salacious than that

Overall – 9

This stuff is made of awesome. Give me until Episode 7, and if you hate it, you can stop. But then, we can never be friends. ^_^





K-ON! Anime Season 2, Disk 3 (English)

September 21st, 2012

If you watch Episode 24 of K-ON!, Season 2 and aren’t just a teeny little sniffly when the Light Music Club sings “Touched by an Angel!” to Azusa, you are no longer a friend of mine.

Ratings:

Overall – 9

Superhero Eric P., who sponsored today’s review is definitely a friend! Thanks Eric, every moment I spend in the company of Houkago Tea Time reminds me of friends like you. ^_^





K-ON Anime, Season 2, Disk 2 (English)

August 31st, 2012

The second disk of the Season 2 of the  K-ON! anime, continues as it began, with wonderful moments of real life interspersed with absurd moments that only could happen in an anime…except when they actually happen in real life.

Houkago Tea Time enjoy their final high school school festival, play their final concert at school, pass their final final exams as high school students, take college exams and celebrate Valentine’s Day with their adoring underclassman, Asuza.

Time passes, as it does. I can barely remember my high school years, to be honest. Not all of what I can remember is good, but I find that my mind strays more to the moments that were good as I get older. Because K-ON! is about fondly recalling high school I will share a story with you from my high school years.

I’ve mentioned previously that I was in marching band and that I played clarinet. I was exceedingly mediocre, but when you’re playing that many hours every day…(band class, compulsory music lessons, marching band practice, football games, competition and individual practice) I was tolerable. My sempai in band was the woman who became my wife some years later.

One day we returned from an away football game to find that the band room entrance to the school was locked and that no one had the key. The band director went off to try and find someone to let us in and we stood there, bored, tired, ready to get out of our uniforms. To keep ourselves amused, we started to jam. One of our songs that year was a jazzed-up version of “My Favorite Things” – not a song that too many of us had any fondness for, but it did play well in the show. So we started to play that. The sun was getting low, it was getting dim out on the side of the school we were on, and we just…played.

For the first time it all meshed. The trumpets and the trombones got along, the soloist actually hit his notes, the drummers suddenly learned to count to 4. The woodwinds were in tune and on.

It was the best performance of that song we did all year.

If I never remember another thing about high school, I want to always remember that moment.

This disk of K-ON! made me remember that moment.

Ratings:

Art – 5
Story – 9
Characters – 9
Yuri – 1
Service – 4

Overall – 8

Thanks to Okazu Superhero Eric P. for sponsoring this review…and for bringing that memory to mind. ^_^