NEWS: 02/29/2K

Cover art: Animenation has up the cover artwork for Media Blasters big upcoming set, Magic Knight Rayearth. Click on the artwork to see a larger version. Curiously, they list the price as 149.95 while Amazon and Right Stuff list 129.99.

More new titles: In addition to the listings at the Right Stuf, Pioneer has formally announced the Sailor Moon S The Movie - The Uncut Special Edition DVD for 5/23 from it's original street date of 4/11. My guess is that this is due to their sell off of the Pioneer Video Manufacturing division and the outsourcing to various replication plants. 

Cats in the DVD deck: According to a post in the forum today, the Catnapped! The Movie DVD is dual language with English subtitles. All versions of Catnapped! The Movie are unedited. Extras include character information and slide show image gallery.

New titles: The Right Stuf site today updated with three new DVD listings. On May 9th, we'll see the 3rd volume of Nazca and on May 30th we'll have two more volumes of Pokemon. Vol. #18 is also the start of the second season, for those keeping track. Our upcoming pages have been updated accordingly.

Region 2: For those of you who look for import DVD's and are always looking for another source to try out, take a peek at Laser Exchange (a company local to me no less!).

Ask Ladycat: Presenting her leap year column, Ladycat continues to answer a wide variety of questions. This week? Gunbuster, Ghibli and more information on schoolgirl outfits makes its way to your screen.

NEWS: 02/28/2K

Fanime Manga tidbit: Ryan Gavigan sent in a bit of news from the con that seems to have slipped past a few people. "While in town for Fanime Con, Gainax president & Wings Of Honneamise director Hiroyuki Yamaga and former Gainax animator (and Princess Maker game designer) Takami Akai recorded a commentary track at a studio Friday morning of the convention (8am-12), which will be appearing on the Wings DVD."

More VHS doomspeak: At this weekends Fanime Con, there was another "hint" that VHS, and more specifically subtitled VHS, will begin disappearing from shelves. During the panel with Jerry Chu of Bandai came this tidbit: "Other changes might come from the gradual home video move from VHS tapes to DVD's, he noted. Bandai plans more DVD releases and expects to cut prices on some of them (Blue Submarine will drop from $25 to $20, he noted [Several online retailers already reflect this - Chris]). But, with subtitles and dubs both available on DVD, there could be fewer subtitled tapes in the future, Chu said." You can check this and more from that panel here at Fans View.

More UK DVD: Kiseki has made some announcements for more anime DVD's to hit in the UK. Rei Rei, unavailable in the US is already out there and Plastic Little and Black Magic will be joining it on March 27th.

NEWS: 02/27/2K

Fanime report: Andrew Tei has sent in some information on the Viz panel held this weekend. Ranma 1/2 TV on DVD? PSME almost dubtitled? Pioneer having more control? Hmmm....

Pioneer tidbit: Jonathan Klein of New Generation Pictures sent out a press release recently regarding the dubbing director that they've hired on to redo 3 X 3 Eyes for its release this fall and has sent along an addendum for DVD fans in regards to how the series looks to be packaged.

Top ten: We've updated our top ten list for 2000 as well as the February listing. Bandai and is definitely making some inroads into the market here....

NEWS: 02/26/2K

Firming up: DVD Express is now listing Perfect Blue from Manga for a 4/25 release. This is the first online retailer outside of an anime one to list one of the seven titles listed. The disc is listed as having both Japanese and English 5.1 soundtracks, theatrical trailer, photo gallery and interviews. The only troubling thing is that it's listed as 1.33:1 ratio while the tapes were released as widescreen. Hopefully this just wasn't listed on the information provided to them and since most anime is 1.33:1, they put that in as a default. Manga has a good track record for anamorphic transfers of theatrical movies and I would hate to see them not follow through on this one.

Fanime Con news: Jerry Chu from Bandai wrote in this morning with news that they've announced this weekend. Bandai Entertainment has acquired the license for "Jubei-Chan". From the executive producer of Ninja Scroll, comes Jubei-chan and the mysterious lovely eye patch. A comedy/action series surrounding the history of "Jubei", a young high school girl, comes across a dying a man who hands her a heart shaped eye patch.  Every time she dons the eye patch, the spirit of Jubei transforms her...into the high school ninja. Release is schedule for early FALL 2000 VHS/DVD are planned. You can check out some images (including the region 2 DVD cover) here as well as read a review about this 13 episode late night TV series here at EX.

But that's not all. Jerry also mentions that "Fans of Escaflowne...DVD's have arrived. Both the English dubbed version and the DVD will be simultaneously released." This is another big commitment to DVD in bringing a 26 episode series along with everything else that's in the works (Cowboy Bebop, Gundam Wing, Outlaw Star, etc). 

In regards to the Gundam Wing, "[May] Will see the release of Gundam Wing VHS/DVD. Dubbed 4 episodes per tape at $14.98, DVD 5 episodes per DVD at $24.98 - there will be no subtitled VHS, instead the subtitled version will be on the DVD itself. Bandai Ent stand on subtitled VHS will be forthcoming." A bit cryptic and possibly a sign of more things to come over the rest of the year. Many have seriously started speculating on the death of subtitled VHS in many forums and newsgroups and this discussion will only get more involved as more companies begin releasing Japanese language with subtitles on DVD only.

Astute readers will remember a rumor posting that cropped up back on 11/29 about several shows Bandai was licensing for release here. They were Fancy LaLa, Betterman, Angel Links, Juubei-chan, Crest of the Stars (Seikai no Monsho), Z-Mind and an unspecified Cyber Formula series. So, at least one of these has come to pass and the DVD side of it seems to be firming up real nice as well. It certainly gives more credibility to the rest of these series being licensed and released on DVD as the year progresses!

NEWS: 02/25/2K

Manga UK: On their news page, Manga UK is listing a few DVD's for Europe. Ghost in the Shell is due on 2/28, Perfect Blue on 5/8, "X" The Movie on 6/12 and Evangelion The Movie on 9/11. These are more than likely all region 2 encoded and in the PAL format, but it is interesting to see which titles will possibly hit there before they hit here in region 1.

New next week: Originally slated for next week, it looks like Best of Kitty, Vol. #1 from Media Blasters has been pushed back (again!) and is now listed for 3/10. And yes, it's a Friday. Several retailers are listing it this way. Hopefully Media Blasters will get these kinks worked out before their bigger titles, like Rayearth, hit this year. So there's nothing new in the anime DVD release department next week.

NEWS: 02/24/2K

Diamond updates: Diamond Comics, our street date unreliable friend for DVD's, updated this week and has mostly things we already knew about in it. What we didn't see previously was a listing for Blue Submarine 6 #2 and Cowboy Bebop #3, both more than likely planned for June. From what I've been able to figure out, for those wondering where Outlaw Star is, that when both it and Cowboy Bebop were released at the same time, Outlaw Star's sales didn't hold up well against it. So it will more than likely get a release after Cowboy Bebop is finished, sometime this fall. Also of interest is that the Vision of Escaflowne's dub will be out in June. Will the DVD be far behind? And they also do list a Gundam Wing subtitled VHS release, but hopefully we'll hear more this coming weekend from Bandai directly.

NEWS: 02/23/2K

Animeigo tidbits: Robert Woodhead of AnimEigo posted recently on his companies mailing list about several things DVD related. 

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The good news is, we are finally getting it up to speed.  UY TV 1 is locked down, TV 2 is all done but the final check disc, TV 3 just went into authoring today, and Shin has used the extra time well, and has re-checked every line in all the episodes to bring the early stuff up to our current level of translation.  We expect to be ready for replication mid March for the first set, and then we are going to be able to bang out a bunch of DVDs.  The packaging is just about done, and we've reformatted the liner notes in our new "recipe card" format.

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In terms of getting more titles out later this year considering the effort that's gone into their first in-house release:

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We are also bringing a second authoring house online to do more of our back catalog.  Starting with a couple of minor titles to test them out, then if they work, they'll stream out a bunch of product. We know where all the snags are.

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ADV Artwork: With big thanks to Adrian Brown for sending in the scans, we can now show you the cover artwork for ADV's DVD library as listed in their catalog that was passed around at Katsucon. I'm particularly pleased to see that Sakura Diaries and Princess Nine are all using the original LD cover artwork from Japan.

More on Mononoke: According to Anime News Network, they gained some information from a source at Studio Ghibli that Disney has sought out DVD rights specifically for Princess Mononoke, and not the other titles that they have from the studio. Hopefully if this one sells well they'll be inspired to do a solid presentation of Kiki's Delivery Service.

Bandai and Gundam Wing: From what I've been told about Gundam Wing from Bandai, they will have more information on the lack of a subtitled VHS version at this weekends Fanime convention. For those of you who will be going, be sure to let us know what the reactions are like!

Ask Ladycat: She's back this week with some thoughts on the Mononoke announcement, a bit about Gundam and a sharp right turn into schoolgirl outfits. Talk about a wide range of topics you folks send her questions about!

NEWS: 02/22/2K

More on Mononoke: According to a post from the Miyazaki mailing list, which in turn is from the Ghiblink mailing list, the following information was posted this evening: 

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The "Princess Mononoke" VHS and DVD will be released on June 13, 2000. The DVD will have Japanese and English language tracks.  English closed captions are also available. The VHS will be the English dubbed version. The bonus materials include the theatrical trailer and a featurette. The correct run time is approx. 133 minutes. BVHE is still developing the advertising/PR campaign. I have no information on the DVD rights of the other Studio Ghibli titles.

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Thanks to Lawrence Lin for posting the information!

Bandai bit: Pioneer Entertainment, which will be distributing Bandai's DVD's, updated today with the official word on Gundam Wing. As expected, the DVD will street on 5/16 for 24.98 with a running time of 125 minutes, or 5 episodes. This is 1 episode more than the VHS. What's interesting to note is that they do not list a sub VHS, just the dub VHS. Will the DVD be the only way to get it subtitled and uncut? 

Capsule review: Catching up on our viewing a bit, we have a new capsule review up for Dragonball Z TV Volume #14: Quest.

Contests: Today we're kicking off not one but two anime DVD contests for everyone. Check out this one where you can win a copy of A Chinese Ghost Story (Animated) or this one where Sailor Moon R Movie: The Promise of the Rose is the prize!

NEWS: 02/21/2K

New review: We've battled our way through several doctors appointments over the last week, but we squeezed in a view of Cybernetics Guardian from Central Park Media and have it up and ready for your reading pleasure tonight.

New dates: According to today's Right Stuf update, we've got just a few new dates for you. Check out the upcoming section for the dates of all eight Trigun releases from Pioneer. Media Blasters has also announced a new DVD, the Legend of the Last Labyrinth. This title is the newly dubbed release of Princess Rouge: Legend of the Last Labyrinth. You can check out a fan page here as well as the official word on it direct at Media Blasters. CPM also lists all 8 VHS volumes of Slayers Try, with the box sets on VHS due in August. If CPM does the DVD in a box set, we may see it around then as well, but that's purely speculation on my part. 

NEWS: 02/19/2K

Geobreeders: Central Park Media has updated their site with information on May's release of Geobreeders. You can check out the cover art, a couple of images and a trailer for the show here.

CPM announcements: With the release of Cybernetics Guardian, CPM has updated their online DVD production catalog. Garzey's Wing has a June date, Record of Lodoss War: Chronicles of the Heroic Knight, The Slayers and The Slayers Next are all listed as coming soon. One other title that's not anime but part of their Asian Pulp line that's listed is Weather Woman. Check out Mike Toole's review of it over at Anime Jump; it's not for everyone, but I laughed myself silly during a lot of it. Thanks to CityHunter for posting the information on the forum.

Cover art: Jonathan Klein over at New Generation Pictures has sent us the cover artwork for the second volume of Nazca: Blood Rivals which is due out on 3/14. This is of the VHS cover, but the artwork is identical for the DVD case except in dimensions. I have to say, it looks gorgeous! Kudos to everyone involved for the design!

Lupin in region 2: Fabio Bartalini, the webmaster of AnimeDVDItalia, wrote in with some good news for Lupin fans in Europe. The first world release of Lupin III TV series will be on 5 DVD's due out on 03/15/2000. The second series TV is Lady Oscar (Versailles No Bara) on 8 DVD's for spring 2000. The two series are produced by Yamato Entertainment. The cover pic of the first Lupin III DVD is available on his site under the Anime News.

Alternate angle: Providing another view, Tero Karppinen has sent in a review of the recent release of A Chinese Ghost Story.

NEWS: 02/18/2K

Due out next week: DVD Express is listing Pokemon Vol. 15 and Vol. 16 as being available. Best of Kitty Vol. 1 looks like it's been bumped back a week to 2/29 and the Cool Devices DVD's are being listed as 3/7 now.

More Mononoke: More information is surfacing on the Princess Mononoke release from Miramax. Image Entertainment updated with a release date of June 13th, though every other retailer is listing 5/9. They do list it as a dub, but this does not mean there will be no sub or Japanese track. Many Pioneer anime DVD's end up being listed the same way. Naturally, hundreds of Ghibli fans are emailing all kinds of sources, so when something more firm becomes known, we'll pass it along. As a reminder for those of you writing to the studios, remember, always be polite. Nothing gets trashed faster than rude all caps emails. After all, at least DVD File confirmed it will be anamorphic.

Making news: Yep, that's right, time for me to talk about my favorite show again. Nazca was mentioned in this week's issue (Feb 25th) of Entertainment Weekly on page 87. This show is getting exposure everywhere these days!

Region coding challenged: According to this piece of news that came across the wires today, Warner is being challenged on the region coding of DVD's. 

NEWS: 02/17/2K

DBZ DVD: GameProWorld has an interview up with Funimation president, Gen Fukunaga. In it, there are some details regarding their DVD plans. The relevant quote, which can be found along with other information at Anime News Service, is "On Dragon Ball and DVD, the article mentions FUNimation is looking closely at DVD technology as a dedicated format solution for fans. "Video stores will generally not take the pure Japanese language tapes. And with videotape, you have to choose (between the originals or the Americanized shows) because you can only fit so much on one tape. But on DVD, we can release both (versions) on the same DVD."

Ranma DVD: In addition to yesterdays first look pictures of the Ranma 1/2 OVA Box, Pioneer Entertainment updated this week with the retail side info for it. It should start showing up at retailers soon. We've also corrected the date of 4/18 as originally listed here to 4/25 as Pioneer lists it.

NEWS: 02/16/2K

First look: A huge thanks to forum and chat room regular Krellion who snapped these exclusive first look pictures of the Ranma 1/2 OVA Box Set due out in April!

Ask Ladycat: There's a full column today answering many questions as well as some follow-ups to earlier questions. Check it out!

CPM hints: According to the latest AniMail from Central Park Media, there was a question in the fan mail section that asked about a (presumably) VHS box set. The response:

"Record Of Lodoss Wars: Chronicles Of The Heroic Knight will be finished in April and the box set will soon follow. Maybe if we're lucky, we might even see a DVD before the year's up, but no official word on that as of yet."

So this is the first non-official word we've gotten from anyone even remotely related to CPM. Frankly, CPM's DVD policies are really starting to bother me. Granted they do have a release every month and there have been a couple of great shows (Utena, Overfiend), but the overall commitment and lack of their newer shows making it to disc in a timely fashion is very poor. Lodoss TV should have been released alongside the VHS tapes. Photon should have been announced with the VHS tapes. Where's Aika or the rest of Area 88? And let's not even mention the new Slayers show that got announced without any corresponding DVD. I'd really like to root for CPM since they've been in the game since the beginning, but the lack of stronger support isn't promising.

On the plus side, hopefully by the time that they get the rest of Revolutionary Girl Utena going, they'll release it at the same time as the tape, now that Kodocha has indicated that it's been fully licensed. If we have to go nearly a year between the disc next month and the next one, I'm sure a lot of us are going to snap.

NEWS: 02/15/2K

Which one are you: Presenting the not-quite-exhaustive-but-we'd-like-to-pretend-it-is reference guide to identifying the wondrously Anime-obsessed otaku out there. Complete with warnings, character traits and odd little bits of information that are probably hearsay, but we don't really care if they are. And just a reminder: eating this rant could be hazardous to your health.

Alternate angle: Justin Emerson has taken the Slayers DVD to task and sent in this review of it.

It's becoming more real: In addition to the various retailers like DVD Express listing Princess Mononoke now, the DVD File is listing it as a May release and confirming that it will have an anamorphic transfer. 

NEWS: 02/14/2K

Is it real?: DVD Express is now listing Princess Mononoke available for preorder. Release date is 5/9 for a MSRP of 32.99$ (one of Disney's new price structure plans). Reel also has this information.

Newly reviewed: Let's talk about dueling reviews here! We sat down this weekend to watch a Chinese Ghost Story, the first release from Viz on DVD since Fatal Fury last February. And then I find out that Roman Martel has sent in his review of it as well. Be sure to check them both out for the latest on this release.

New petition: We've added a new petition today, this time for the site that's hosting the Ys OVA petition.

Macross Plus worldwide: Kevin Cook of DVD Animania has found that the Macross Plus swapout program is definitely available for international customers. 

Talking about t-shirts: No, not the Anime on DVD t-shirts (but we'll have news on that sometime soon hopefully), I wanted to let folks know that the University of Manitoba anime club is producing their first t-shirt for the club, and it looks great. A lot of the folks in the club are regulars here and on the chat, so I definitely want to give them a bit more exposure. Check out this page for a picture of the artwork and information on how to get yourself one of these cool shirts.

Viz DVD News: Krellion had a bit to pass along from what he learned at Katsucon this weekend from Viz. The Ranma OVA DVD Box Set will be 3 disks, 4 episodes per disk. Extras will include all of the DoCo music videos, an interview with Rumiko Takahashi, line art drawings and more. Release set for May. Please Save My Earth DVD release is set sometime in June or July. And Key The Metal Idol will be released on 3 DVDs sometime this summer. Thanks to DVD Animania for posting it.

ADV Kenshin DVD News: Megan Brosius got a nifty bit of info out of the ADV panel this weekend regarding how the Kenshin OVA's and movies will be released. There will be three disc's from Kenshin from ADV. The movie, OVA 1-2 first disc and 3-4 second disc

ADV DVD News: MegaZone has posted on the forum some new ADV information to come out of this weekends Katsucon convention. The following titles are listed in ADV's new catalog (where's my copy?), and no, there are no dates listed: Battle Angel, Blue Seed 1 & 2 (4 eps each), BGC Tokyo 2040 1 Genesis & 2 Crusade (4 eps each), Burn Up W (all 4 eps), Cutey Honey (4 eps), Destroy All Monsters, DP Flash: 1 Angels in Trouble & 2 Angels retribution (3 eps each), Gamera, Gasaraki 1-3 (4-3-3), Gunsmith Cats (all 3), Eva 1-3 (4 eps each), Legend of Crystania: The Motion Picture, Lost Universe (4 eps), Martian Successor Nadesico (4 eps), Ninja Resurrection, Plastic Little, Princess Nine 1st Inning (3 eps), Queen Emeraldas, Ruin Explorers (4 eps), Sakura Diaries 1-4 (3 eps each), Sakura Wars (4 eps), Rurouni Kenshin (no ep count given), Slayers: The Motion Picture, Sonic The Hedgehog: The Movie, Sorceror Hunters (4 eps), Tekken: The Motion Picture.

Apparently, All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku - The Movie and Golden Boy are also listed, but according to conversations with ADV Films reps there, these should not be on the list due to various issues. Hopefully they will get a release at some point. Click here for more discussion on these titles. A huge thanks to MegaZone for posting this information!

NEWS: 02/13/2K

Reviews: We've got a pile of new reviews for you today as we make our way through the backlog. Check out Slayers, The Motion Picture, Midnight Panther, You're Under Arrest Regular Edition region 2, Ninja Cadets and the Urotsukidoji Perfect Collection.

Spot of French: Perfect Blue has been announced for release in France. Check out this page (all in French) for more information. Thanks to Yannick Pollart for the tip.

Petitions: We've added a new petition today for Child's Toy, or Kodomo no Omocha. This is one hilarious show and one I really hope gets picked up here. Hana Yori Dango has also been added. Check out the petition page for more information about it.

You Rate It: Cybernetics Guardian has been added to the user ratings page. From the feedback I'm getting, these are proving to be helpful to others to get a general consensus of what people think of a particular release. So if you have a free moment of two, why not stop there and put down your thoughts and maybe even a mini-review? We've also added Kenshin TV to our Anime Hype page.

NEWS: 02/12/2K

Late night con report: Following up on his day 1 overview, Marc Yu has sent in what he's learned from ADV and Media Blasters today. Kenshin fans, this is then news you've been waiting for!

Con reports: The convention season began yesterday with Katsucon, and we've got two new reports up for it now. Check it out!

NEWS: 02/11/2K

New title announcement: We had the word earlier on this title, but yesterday the Pioneer Entertainment site updated with the official word on Sol Bianca: The Legacy - Lost Treasures for release on 4/25. In addition to the near standard day and date release with the VHS, DVD fans will be treated to the Dolby Digital 5.1 track for both the Japanese and English language versions. It also looks as if each volume will contain a unique 5 minute plus special music video edited to Sol Bianca footage. This is something similar to the Animetronic stuff that Pioneer will be rolling out this year.

Overall, I'm pretty psyched for this release with one exception; region 1 fans are being excluded from getting the already made DTS 5.1 Japanese track. Of course, DTS is a niche with the DVD format, and anime is probably bigger than DTS, but I truly think that this would be an excellent selling point for any anime company with access to such tracks. After all, the only other animated DTS releases are those horrid looking ones from DVD Limited that are mimicking Disney titles. DTS tracks would be a way to pull in non anime fans to try something out. And for those wondering, I've been on a DTS kick for anime since long before I even had a DTS capable receiver or DVD player. 

Speaking of sound: DVD Angle has a great interview up with Dolby Laboratories Director of Technology Strategy Roger Dressler. It's definitely an interesting read and worth checking out.

New next week: There's only one new title out next week, Cybernetics Guardian, and it's the monthly release of a Central Park Media title. Hopefully sometime this year they'll be able to up their production schedule to get a few more discs out a month.

SiNful anime again: IGN has up a pretty good article on the upcoming SiN anime and what was involved with it and the hows and whys of it all. 

Alternate angles: Justin Emerson has taken his hard look at Pioneer's latest release, Sailor Moon R: The Promise of the Rose!

Region 2: Taking a look at one of my favorite early Pioneer releases in the U.S., Wayne Douglas provides the cover artwork and some comments on their release of Phantom Quest Corp in Japan.

Slightly off topic: For the most part, I've avoided the furor over the lack of a DVD release for the Phantom Menace movie. There are more than enough sites out there that can take up this cause. But for the old timers out there like myself who want to keep their LD collection up to date with these movies, the folks at Animenation dropped me a line that they're carrying it and at a bit of a better price than a lot of other U.S. retailers out there.

NEWS: 02/09/2K

New title announcement: According to the Right Stuf, May 16th will see the release of Geobreeders from Central Park Media. This title has received some good buzz so far from several forum and chat regulars, and will definitely start beefing up a growing May release list.

ADV talks anamorphic: With the release of two theatrical anime movies onto DVD this week and the questions regarding it's lack of an anamorphic transfer, ADV has made a few comments on it. I've been given permission to add it as an addendum to our Slayers review, and it's worth checking out. It definitely gives me a warm fuzzy for future theatrical anime coming to DVD, namely Spriggan.

Con season: While the full con season isn't upon us, the 2000 convention circuit is starting up with Katsucon this weekend. As always, interesting information crops up all over the place (notably at such great sites like Fans View), but with us having such a narrowed scope of things, I'm hoping that people will send in their own thoughts and views of the conventions as related to DVD. How well represented is it? Any new announcements? Company reps talking good or bad on it? With every convention this year, I'll be taking whatever reports people want to send in that are related to our favorite topic to share with everyone. 

NEWS: 02/08/2K

Philosophy in a Teacup: "Just when you thought this guy's ego trip couldn't get any worse, His lordship Chaos has just bought himself a round-trip ticket to Evil Anime Overlords Inc!!  ^^ This was rather fun to write, I must admit. While before I talked about how I would take over the Anime world, this rant probes what the Anime world would be like afterwards.

Massages with a whip-wielding nurse, Elmo vs. Ryu, and magical girls frozen in carbonite (or the next best thing!) are what to watch for. Not to mention your step; there's Sake bottles all over the floor."

If that doesn't say it all, the full piece will!

Tenchi Universe Ultimate Edition: With the upcoming release for the Tenchi Universe series (still not solidified to my knowledge), regular Tenchi in Tokyo alternate angle reviewer Steve Brandon has written a piece on how to make this a truly ultimate edition.

Animetronic lives: Mike Toole over at Anime Jump has gotten in the promo kit for the Animetronic idea that was put forth by Pioneer during the middle of last year and then seemingly disappeared. Mike goes into the idea a bit and then caps off with some great stills of the upcoming Sol Bianca series!

NEWS: 02/07/2K

Newly reviewed: Tonight we got the home theater all tweaked out and ready to rumble. What was the object of our viewing? None other than the first commercially available subtitled Sailor Moon R Movie DVD. And just in case you think we're behind in our game, check out our early reviews of the Legend of Crystania and Slayers movies!

Manga makes it right: According to a posting in the rec.arts.anime.misc newsgroup today, Manga is making things right with those experiencing problems with their Macross Plus discs. The announcement comes roughly at the same amount of time between the Ninja Scroll release and swap-out announcement in 1998. Kudos to Manga for making things right for their fans. 

NEWS: 02/06/2K

Top ten updated: Our overall top ten has updated, and only a few minor changes there. Sailor Moon has made it's mark on it and Chinese Ghost Story jumped higher into it as well. The top four have stayed relatively the same though. Is there competition ahead? If you go by the February numbers, there will be. All of the Bandai Entertainment titles have surged into the list.

Reviews: Continuing through our backlog, today Jason Glasco has sent in his exuberant feelings on the Fushigi Yugi: Suzaku box set. Jean-Sébastien Sullivan has also sent in a review of the Eden's Bowy Vol. #1 with a link to several pictures for those curious about knowing more of this show.

NEWS: 02/03/2K

Bandai Bits: A couple of morsels of information have come out regarding a couple of the known titles. Cowboy Bebop 2 will have episodes 6-10, so the final 4 discs will have 4 episodes each. I'm also very pleased to say that the U.S. DVD release will be using the same artwork used for the Japanese releases (though a couple won't be used, due to the smaller number of volumes here). You can check out the great artwork for disc 2 here. Gundam Wing: Operation 1 now has a date of 5/16. And if you want to see large promotional pictures of Blue Submarine 6, Cowboy Bebop 1 and Eatman 98 collection, check out this page! Thanks to Jerry Chu at Bandai for the images.

NEWS: 02/03/2K

New next week: While January had 5 anime DVD releases in total, the 8th of February has 4 releases in itself. Due out next week is A Chinese Ghost Story (Animated), Legend Of Crystania: The Motion Picture, Sailor Moon R: The Movie:The Promise of the Rose and finally, Slayers: The Motion Picture.

Ask Ladycat: Christy has gone to great lengths to answer this batch of questions, so check out what's new in her latest Ask Ladycat column!

Hardware: Marc Yu has sent in a detailed report on those fast moving Apex AD-600A DVD players that are out there. These are the ones that disable Macrovision, region coding and can play MP3 encoded CD's. Where's mine, Marc? :)

Alternate angles: We've got a couple of new alternate angle reviews up, with more to come over the weekend. For now, check out Karen Cross' thoughts on Ninja Resurrection while Matthew McGinn sends in his first review on Wild Cardz.

Region 2 reviews: Luca Beltrame has sent in a review of a show I'm very much looking forward to and is rumored to be acquired by Anime Village for a release this year. Check out the review for Edens Bowy: Episode 1 and then stroll over and check out the review of Cowboy Bebop Vol. #5 by Carlos Salgado!

NEWS: 02/02/2K

New dates: DVD Express updated earlier today, adding in two Bandai titles. Contrary to earlier reports of Haunted Junction coming out on 4/18, it's now scheduled for 5/2. Also due on 5/2 is the second volume for Cowboy Bebop.

Bandai DVD details: In addition to yesterdays news about Bandai reducing the price of Blue Submarine #6 to 19.95, www.ex.org is reporting a few more details. Bearing out their ambitious schedule, Cowboy Bebop does look like it will be released monthly. In addition, Gundam Wing will also receive a monthly release schedule and apparently the discs will be priced at 24.95 with 5 episodes on the first disc and 4 on the subsequent volumes.

NEWS: 02/01/2K

Anime price reduction: Bandai Entertainment has apparently reduced the price of Blue Submarine #6 Vol. #1 from 24.95$ to 19.95$. This now matches the sub VHS release of the series.

Newly reviewed: Talk about a hard to find disc. Most online retailers have hardly any in stock. Several Suncoast and Sam Goody stores in my area don't even list it in their computer systems. But I finally tracked down a copy in Electronics Boutique of all places. So a week after street date, I can finally review Ninja Cadets, the freshman effort from Media Blasters.

Oops, my bad: I mistakenly had the wrong address for the New Generation Pictures website earlier in today's news, as well as calling them New Gen Pictures. Click here to check out their site as it should be seen.

You Rate It: With most of next weeks titles already shipping to some places, we've added in two more of them so people can get their votes in on them. Check it out!

More confirmed titles: After posting the list of rumored Pioneer and Viz titles last night, I received a confirmation on one of them. Nanako, a six part OVA series that's apparently rather hot in Japan and is nearing completion, will be hitting our shores later this year. Since it's not completely out yet in Japan, I would assume this will be a year end release. Check out the Pioneer Japan site for pics and more. The production for this disc looks like it will be done by the great team behind the Nazca series, New Generation Pictures. After that one release, they've got me looking forward to dubs.

The good folks at New Gen Pictures also sent in an extra bit of info that will get many of you completely stoked. It appears that they will be handling the production for the 3X3 Eyes series that Pioneer acquired last year as well. Not only will they be redoing the original OVA series dub that Streamline did, but they'll also be doing the newer three part OVA that came out. From what I can tell, they really intend to show the love for this series, since it deserves it after the disservice done to it over the years from Streamline. That'll be a sub/dub DVD I'm sure a lot of us are going to be looking forward to this year.

Kimagure Orange DVD: On the KOR Mailing List in the past few days, AnimEigo CEO indicated that the popular romantic comedy Kimagure Orange Road will eventually see a DVD release, possibly as early as later this year or early next year. Hopefully once the first Urusei Yatsura box set gets out and their production methods get streamlined, we'll see a lot more of their properties this year.