riari

So yeah, first off, here be spoilers for Innocent Venus. Lots of them. And I kinda recap the series...okay mostly re-cap the series. So yeah.

( Some mild spoilers, and series start )

( Mecha-like suits? Better check under the hood. )

Hmm, looks like NYCC was pretty good in terms of manga. :> And just the chance of Viz completing Hikaru no Go in DVD boxsets was mentioned, so I'm happy about that.

Looking forward to:

CMX: (Might be interested in these. But I would have to order because Borders doesn't carry CMX much)
-Lapis Lazuli Crown
-Broken Blade

Del Rey:
-Night Head Genesis (Yaaaaay!)

Viz:
-Natsumi's Book of Friends (Natsumi Yuujinchou)

Bandai:
-Gundam 00 manga properties
-Gundam 00 DVDs (supposedly being released in July-ish)

For those interested in Hayate the Combat Butler anime, apparently the decision was made to release it sub-only. Guess they are: hurting right now, or because of the economy, Best Buy not carrying much anime right now, or no way would a dub on a 52 ep series like this would make any money. Pick what you want.

Yen Press:
-Yotsuba&! (...maybe)
-Also maybe on Spice and Wolf (It's been hyped up enough I may give it a try.)

Maybe some more, but right now that's enough. ^_^

ETA: ehehe, I apparently missed this one: (from here. Good place to read up on panel reports and he goes to conventions and reports live.)

15:22:17 <bay|NYCC|Funi> d grayman
15:22:20 <bay|NYCC|Funi> season one, part 1
15:22:28 <bay|NYCC|Funi> available march 31st, ep 1-13, $60 MSRP

And this one:

15:29:30 <bay|NYCC|Funi> full metal alchemist ova collection... available late summer 2009
15:29:40 <bay|NYCC|Funi> dvd... it will be priced right..
15:29:50 <bay|NYCC|Funi> it will have all the stuff the JP dvd had

\o/

Nabari no Ou licensed by Funimation! It's part of their New Show A-Go-Go! announcements.

So looking forward to purchasing this one. sarcastic_elf and I have been watching it. I've rather liked it. Hopefully the ending doesn't suck, but its been rather good so far.

Now let's see if they'll announce Slayers Revolution or Evangelion 1.0 Movie. ^_^

Hahahah.

I have 74 episodes of D.Gray-Man. I didn't think I would go through all of those so fast.

Heh.

Yeah. I'm watching episode 68 right now. Hmm, I think I started watching these on Sunday too.

Though the latest set of episodes from 52 onwards has had an omake segment. Which they covered the spelling of all the characters (Shinsen started using the right spellings an episode or two after that), had Kanda's bad week (two times), fanservice, and things like that. And there was two episode omakes that were incredibly sad when ( spoiler ).

They're in the story arc around manga vol. 05+ when they hit episode 52. And they're drawing it out a bit. But that's okay. I'm still debating watching ahead of the U.S. manga release, but I think I'm going to with the way the anime is.

ETA: Heh. Episode 72 is exactly where vol. 09 ends. Exactly, with Kanda appearing. "And then, though a little late, Kanda will show up with that look of his." Hehehe.

Oh! I've been snapping pics of some of the episodes, which I'll put up on the gallery soon. Some of the ending pictures are pretty neat. Looks like they belong on a calendar.

ETA 2: Man, I have the worse luck with cliffhangers. THE WORST. Though I would have the worse luck in any part of this series at this point. It's just a full out battle, so any stopping point will be a horrible cliffhanger. So, episode 74. Awesome. Its a bit of an extended sequence of the Edo part ( spoiler ), but it has some awesome fighting sequences with Tyki Mikk and Kanda. Episode 73 is pretty good too. The look Tyki had on his face after Kanda told him "As if I would care about that beansprout" is hilarious.

Ah! Oh yeah, episode 74's omake was about Allen suggesting that Kanda cut his hair. And Lenalee saying that its not fair that Kanda is the only one with long hair. (That was in the manga somewhere, right?)

Heee. So, I just need to get episode 75 and on.

Ta da! The D.Gray-Man pictures I was talking about.

Since some of my friendslist might be reading Animeondvd.com, thought I would pass this along.

A while ago Chris Beveridge, the owner of Animeondvd.com, sold the site to Mania.com. (Chris' post anout it here.)

We, the forum users, all knew it was going to be merged into Mania.com's site, just we didn't know when. Well, apparently it happened last night. Going to Animeondvd.com will redirect you to an anime and manga page on Mania.com. Yeah, the design sucks. But, Chris is working on it. I hope he has enough control to maybe change the layout as well.

I must say, when I first visited the page I thought it had been hacked, or that the DNS entry for it was screwed up. But nope, after typing in the URL the forums link that Mania.com had on its page, in yellow, I found the forums. Phew.

The forums are alive and well and still are the same as ever. Even their design is the same since it was changed over to VBulletin. So, that's a big relief. Change is a bit of a shock to the system, especially since I've been visiting Animeondvd.com for years.

Its also a bit sluggish but that maybe just my connection.

So there it is. Chris just got an anime news feed working again here for those who would like to keep up but want to avoid the Mania.com AoD site until it settles down.

YES!

Best news all morning!

FUNimation Entertainment and Geneon Entertainment Sign Exclusive Distribution Agreement for North America

I knew Hellsing Ultimate would get picked up eventually, but they got all of the unfinished titles and a few finished ones. My particular ones I have uncompleted is Kyo Kara Maoh 2, Shonen Onmyoji, and Hellsing Ultimate. Hellsing is going to be the first released this summer.

Oh man. And Anime Expo just started. Funimation already announced Heroic Age, which is another series that I've been wanting to watch. Details on this press release should be talked about this weekend. Hopefully.

Now we just need a release date for Ouran.

ETA: And while there's excitement for this, it looks like frustration for ADV. Apparently they just put most of their new titles on indefinite hiatus according to one reputable online distributor. Their re-release thinpacks seems to be going on fine right now, but discs like the last volume of Kanon, Red Garden's final few volumes, Tokyo Majin, Welcome to the NHK and a couple other of the last new licenses they own have been stopped. Looks like it might be possibly licensing issues.

Yesterday I got to find out why people like using Vent or Teamspeak with MMOs so much. It's a lot faster to relay information. If you're getting hit hard, commands to pull back are happening as it occurs. It's pretty neat.

I played City of Heroes for several hours yesterday with a friend on the phone while we played. It made it much easier for me to let my teammate know that my connection needed time to settle and for them to go ahead and do stuff. We also coordinated our attacks on the Elite Bosses we took on. Though holding the phone like that while playing got a bit uncomfortable after a while. I should get a headset if this occurs more often. ^_^ Though talking with friends is probably a lot more fun than random strangers.

Man, the Mistress of Madness was really tough. We ended up digging through our temp powers in hopes of finding something to help us. Thankfully, we both had a Build Snowbeast pet from the Christmas gifts. Without those, I don't think we could have taken her down last night. Unless we went to get Shivans...

So it was a lot of fun. And I'm further along the path of level 44. ^_^

Oh! I forgot. Today for Random:

-My throat's been bothering me today. This worries me, because my throat bothering me is one of the symptoms I have before I get sick. It started a little bit late last night, but its worse today. I'm drinking peppermint tea to help a bit. The funniest thing that helped was some sweet tea from Sonic.

-I wonder what that flower tea from Yum Yum Cha is called. That was good to drink with honey when I was sick at work.

-Speaking of sweet tea, my university's Sonic has a nice deal on. A 36oz drink of sweet tea with ice for a dollar.

-Death Note volumes take a while to read. Words, words, words... I think I'm reading it mainly to see what Light does next and how will L capture him. I'm almost finished with volume two. Though I don't think I can marathon read this series. One book at a time is enough. ETA: Woah, social engineering. Works rather well really. So, L's getting closer, someone figured out most of it, but she's now dead. Sad thing about this series is that you start getting to know characters, then Light offs them. Huh.

-Pumpkin Scissors is interesting. We see bits and pieces of the corporal's history. The blue steel lantern tale...

-An anime series that has been rather odd but rather interesting at the same time is Library Wars. No, really. Two organizations going to war of sorts with guns and battles, over books. Give a try.

For some reason, I really like this image.

Fullmetal Alchemist Season 2 Part 2 Boxset

In the "oh damn that freaking sucks" category:

From AnimeonDVD.com:

"Geneon Entertainment Exits (10:46 AM EDT): Though the finality of things is still up in the air, Geneon Entertainment has sent out information to retailers regarding their 4th quarter plans. According to the information, Geneon will be shipping all releases they have in the queue for street dates through 11/05/2007. All orders placed after this coming Friday is non-returnable. As of 12/31/2007, they will be shutting down, apparently completely as AnimeNation is listing everything past 11/11/2007 as canceled. Plans for beyond 12/31/2007 are still up in the air but what little is being said indicates that they're intending to focus on their own properties in a similar way to Kadokawa Pictures USA is doing things. "

Rightstuf.com also has a message on their front page about it, in concerns of customers' orders.

This means I need to scramble to get the rest of Gankutsuou. I only have volume one, but from the looks of it, unless I try e-Bay, I should just go ahead and order the boxset as it will be cheaper than trying to buy five volumes.

I'll probably drop by BestBuy or Fry's this weekend to pick up Shonen Onmyoji vol. 02 as well. Erg. But there is also Kyo Kara Maoh... Oh man. I'm up to vol. 04 and it's at Season 2 vol. 05... Wonder if someone is going to have a liquidation sale for older releases. Now to think if there is anything else I wanted from that company that I can't really wait now on... And dammit I haven't finished watching Zipang. I was waiting for a collection.

Geneon had such gorgeous DVDs. Beautiful covers, and a quality of video to match. I heard from "iffy" sources that Geneon wasn't doing well, but I didn't trust that source.

Farewell, Geneon. Too bad you couldn't make it in this market.

(Which, btw, is very worrisome.)

ETA: Forgot Kyo Kara Maoh and Zipang.

Funimation has OURAN!!!

TONIGHT! We have book!