Thursday, January 5, 2012

Adult Swim x G1988 Artists Named


I can't wait to see the Adult Swim x G1988 (Melrose) art show next weekend Jan 13

The names of whose arts going to be up are up. Here's some of the name that stood out
Brandon Schaefer, Chogrin( works on Adventure Time,co-founder of Autumn Society, interviewed), Glen Brogan( his video game work is all over the net, loved his recent Mario Bros map), Kevin Tong ( I loved his previous, Venture Bros piece, interviewed, and constant art force), Luke Chueh(hear about him all the time), Olly Moss( huge in the art world, can't wait to see what he went for, interviewed), Zac Gorman ( Legend of Zelda and video game work dominates the net, hope to interview)

Now I just wonder what Adult Swim personalities are coming.

full list of artists below

No Good Deed

I am utterly confused by the new play coming out Saturday, January 21 @ 8:00 p.m at the Ford Amphitheatre. No Good Deed is a dark comedy about peforming good deeds and then paying for them, with super heroes and time travel. It sounds like a fun romp into someone's nerd fantasy, but I'm not entirely sold on it

Tickets here


Here's the snyopsis

"
Furious Theatre’s award-winning writer in residence exposes the dark side of good deeds in this skillfully drawn, dark comedy about young Josh Jaxon, who is driven to ruin by his own act of bravery. Josh and two fellow “heroes” unite in the afterlife and vow to undo their courageous feats by adopting superhero personas and an unconventional brand of time travel. NOgoodDEED is a savagely humorous ride that is part play, part graphic novel, and part something utterly new and extreme."

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Sekirei 2: Pure Engagement Complete Season Review

Sekirei 2: Pure Engagement Complete Season (Limited Edition Blu-ray/DVD Combo) $40

So I heard you liked fan service. That should be the tag line for this series of blessed busty big chested babes fighting it out and flaunting it.

The second series takes places right after the first with the ever boring male lead who has a harem of hot girls wanting him for some insane reason. The city they're in is now locked down and MBI won't let any Sekirei's (fighters with special abilities on super human levels) and a Ashikabi's (Sekirei's masters that make them more powerful through a link established by a kiss) leave.

The Disciplinary Squad who works for the MBI  in charge of keeping Sekireis in line and from escaping the city have it out for Musibi and the other Sekiries that Minato has. Minato is the boring male lead. The number of Sekiries (hot babes) swells with more editions to his harem including Kazehana who like drinking and has wind powers and Homura the white hared fire guardian of unprotected Sekireis whose been hiding in plain sight in their inn.

The stories aren't that hard to follow with small arcs and titillating jokes throughout the new series.
There's a small arc with another resident at the inn there staying, the buxom Uzume who likes wearing different cosplay outfits. and has cloth powers. Another story is arc is about Homura joining the harem. You get the back story about how sekireis were created and some missing info youv'e been waiting for since the first season. The overall arc is that all Sekirei's must win at least one fight to stay functioning in the city or be brought back to MBI. The last arc focuses on the MBI headquatertes needing to be infiltrated. This has all of Minato's harem in full force going downtown.

You also get a very steady build up to see some other Ashikabis and sekireis, which have a massive fight outside MBI headquarters in the last arc. What was kind of annoying was just showing a few of the new sekiries like these tan girls in bikini tops, that you never see really get into a fight. It was kind of a let down not to see and all out battle between them and Mianto's team.
Boobs in this series are large. Very, very large for the sake of the viewer. There's moments of just pure fan service for no othe reason than your pleasure. There's a mud wrestling fight, naughty plant tentacles, bath scenes, and clothes ripping. Let's not forget the special ova  included on the extras disc with Sekirei Diagonstic Day , more like chance to see more boobs day. The fights themesleves are once again action filled boobs swaying all over the place. Some outfits are just the girls trying to look like prostitutes, prostitutes that want to be super heroes.

The only part I don't like is the excessive violence that leads to what looks like death .The anime seems all in good fun and then goes to far when a Sekirei gets stabbed in the the stomach. This happens only a few times, but breaks the mood of the series where most fights end with the opponent knocked out. The Sekirei Karasuba does the only dirty work that's lethal and I'm not sure if a sekirei can be killed by mortal wounds, but still it lowers down the fun.

Another stange part of the story is that Minato's Mom works for MBI and he didn't even know. How I hate Minato's lack of personality, he's just saw boring. I like his dad more, who is obviously the CEO of MBI, it wasn't that hard to figure out with his Mom working their.  He's kid sister is also going around with her own Sekirei boy.

Once again, I don't know why these girls are into Minato Sahashi, your average Japanese bachelor about to enter college. It goes back to Tenchi Muyo and other harem comedies, where the main dude has nothing that special about him, but he has some fine ladies chasing after him. Super fine ladies that is. Just like Tenchi, he doesn't act on his male ambitions and seemingly goes nowhere with his harem who fawn over him.

The quality of audio and video was superb to enjoy the ladies of this anime. Extras include the OVA mentoned before( it comes with a hot springs visit too), textless opening and endings and commentary for episode 5.

For the current price of $40 you can't go wrong with this Harem anime comedy, you just might have tough choice between choosing which one best suits your taste from Funimation with Heaven's Lost Property and Rosario all out now.


The DVD's were provided by the publisher for review.

Welcome Back Week

Battle Royal Extended Engagement



If you missed the bloodshed and had your own in your family this holiday saeson it's time to check out Battle Royal

Thursday, January 5th - Wednesday, January 11th

The Cinefamily

611 N Fairfax Avenue // Los Angeles // 90036



Wham Blam Blamo

"Toy Art Gallery is proud to present “WHAM BLAM BLAMO” by Blamo Toys. It’s always a cause to celebrate whenever these toy art pioneers hold a show, and this one is no exception! Blamo’s fusion of natural and found objects, cloth, fur, imagination, whimsy, and exceptional craftsmanship combine to create wonderfully unique pieces "

Satuday, Jan. 7th, 2012 and runs through Jan. 28th. There will be an opening reception from 7-11 PM on Jan. 7th at Toy Art Gallery’s new showroom located at 7571 Melrose Ave. Hollywood CA 90046.







Anime Los Angeles 2012

Kick off the new years with anime and cosplay with fellow otaku.

Jan 6-8 at LAX Marriot
Kotohajime: The First Performance of the New Year


"Join the JACCC on this fascinating New Year Celebration featuring performances by the Kim Eung Hwa Korean Dance Academy and Performing Arts School, The Professional Training Program students of The Colburn School’s The Trudl Zipper Dance Institute, and Nagautaby Katada Kikusa, Jyorokusho Kineya and Yasoyo Kineya II.
The ritual shooting of the arrow – a purification ceremony – will be performed by IKKYU of the Los Angeles Kyudo Archery Group"

Sunday, 01.08.12, 1pm
The JACCC is located at 244 S. San Pedro Street

Free


Secrets and Confession

Opening Reception: Friday, January 6th; 8-11 PM
4633 Hollywood Boulevard Los Angeles, CA 90027














The Room

Possibly the worst movie I've ever seen.

Fri and Sat, Jan 6 and 7 at Midnight
at the Regent Theatre!
Writer/Director/Star Tommy Wiseau In Person


Midnight Son LA Premiere

A indy on the Vampire genre and twich has free tickets

 Midnight on January 13th and 14th at the Laemmle Monica 4 Plex in Santa Monica

Cast and Crew, damn I guess I should e-mail them those vampire flyers I made.

LA premiere is also being presented by FEARnet at one of the Laemmles on January 11th at 7:30 pm, which you should try and win tickets to.



Anime Hype: Goodbye Bandai

I'm sad to see one of the major anime companies in North America going. Anime Expo in LA will never be the same. Anime Los Angeles might be a little bit sadder this weekend, not just because of bad cosplay.  You couldn't tell anything was going bad for Bandai last Summer as they showed The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya multiple times and gave away free posters at their booth at AX . Ah- there booth won't be there this year.

It's tragic, I can say I enjoyed K-On!, Haruhi, Code Geass and the triumph that was Gurren Lagann. Even though they didn't create them, they got them here and on major networks. Even though Sci-Fi channel ruined Gurren with constant ads during the show. That mattered little when the box set came out from them.


I remember just a few years back Bandi being more active online and their site showing what DVD's boxes would look like. I wish that format and community and out reach to fans continued. I don't know why it stopped and it puzzles me. There website and store should have been updated a long time ago with more info and the abiltity to watch episodes or have a community.

I also remember a special Haruhi launch at Anime Jungle here in LA going down. With some other events like the Tekken Blood Vengeance showing and some sneaks of the Haruhi movie.



I think the gent directing the people in is my Banda press contact.

Looking for what went wrong, I've already stated I didn't get the 4 episode per DVD system which screwed fans out of money, especially when special editions came out where you could buy all the episodes together.

Secondly, it seems Bandai Japan screwed over Bandai Entertainment America by making them buy shows the already owned, which makes little sense being the same company. It reminds me of how Bandai Namco games here was destroyed a few years back for not doing well and I think all games are now made in Japan, none here. To be honest a lot of those games weren't great and retreads, but Bandai could have taken the time to making a good one , sitting down and trying harder.

I only assume, but it seems there was very little support from Bandai Japan just to make a connection to the company here, helping it in some way. I don't know why you want to strangle your market out here, but it seemed like the view England had with it's colonies.

What about Nichijou you ask , well it's rights go back up like in a month, and as I said Funimation likes holding news until the Summer, if they pick it up at all.

I'm sad to see another anime company go, there really only five now in North America. That means smaller distributors might pick up anime or they might not get picked up at all.

It's going to be a different AX this year.

Goodbye Bandai Entertaiment,

And shame on you Bandai Japan for your mismanagement and poor business practices internationally.

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Bad Morning Bandai

Bandai Entertainment announced this morning they won't be realising new titles on DVD and Blu-ray as well as manga. This news comes closely after there other announcement of their online store closing.

The worst part to me is what this means for Nichijou or translated Everyday Life. I loved this anime and Bandai bought the rights for American Distribution. Bandai says it's now cancelled, so that means another anime company needs to buy the rights or be the distributor while Bandai still holds the rights. It really means it could never be dubbed or come out stateside. I hope someone picks it up, but that probably won't happen until this summer at Anime Expo at the earliest.

I feel one of the main reasons might have been Bandai's strange model of keeping the 4 episode per DVD or Blu-ray habit instead of an entire season might helped it's downfall. Charging customers high rights for 4 episodes seemed unfair and other anime companies took note.

Other problems

-Website was hard to navigate, never updated

-Lack of support of Bandai Japan

-Lack of support of Bandai Namco, they just seemed to share the name. the two divisions seemed to know nothing about the other, which seems odd being both Bandai owned companies


From the press release:



The company will continue to sell catalog titles and shift its operation to licensing which will include
digital distribution, broadcast and merchandising.As a result of this change in strategy for the North American Market, Bandai Entertainment’sorganization will be restructured at the end of January 2012.

The following previously announced anime titles have been cancelled:

TURN-A GUNDAM,
NICHIJOU and GOSICK.

Similarly, the following manga titles have been cancelled:

KANNAGI 4-6, CODE GEASS:



RENYA, GURREN LAGANN VOL. 7, GUNDAM 00I, LUCKY STAR BOO BOO KAGABOO,


NICHIJOU MANGA, CODE GEASS R2 NOVELS,

and TALES OF THE ABYSS: JADE 1 and 2.



Additionally, Bandai Entertainment’s facebook and twitter will be shut down.