Browsing: Anime

The trailer for the Blade: The Animated Series anime style television has arrived, and we present it here for your consideration. No word on when we’ll get to see the show in the U.S. but here’s hoping?

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Press Release Fans of the world of anime rejoice as celebrated directors and character designers Akihiko Yamashita and Miho Shimogasa join this summer’s most anticipated anime, manga and music convention, AM2, this coming 4th of July weekend as official guests of honor.  More info can be found at www.am2con.org.

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Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai is an extremely influential piece. It has spawned hundreds of other works. Some, like the Magnificent Seven are practically the same movie, transposed to a different time and place. Others like Oceans Eleven and the Three Amigos are send-ups or riffs on its structure. So when I first heard that an anime series had been made based on Seven Samurai my head filled with questions. How faithful would this be? How can you take an two-hour-long film and stretch it over twenty-something episodes? These were all intriguing questions. Of course as you can see from the…

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Dirty Pair fans will have a spring in their step this morning after word of a new animated movie is in the works.  According to It’s On The Grid, a new spec script by Daniel Antonlazzi and Ben Shiffrin have delivered a screenplay based on the popular Japanese series. Dirty Pair (ダーティペア, Dāti Pea?) is a series of sci-fi comedy light novels written by Haruka Takachiho that was later adapted into anime and manga versions. The stories take place in the years 2138-43, by which time humanity has spread across some few thousand star systems. A corporation called the World…

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Press Release Publicist Susan Soares of SJS Comic Promotions announced today the upcoming appearances of several notable creators in Boston. With convention season in full swing, Boston is bustling with anticipation for AnimeBoston 2011 and Boston Comic Con.  Each event hosts close to 200 small press and mainstream creators and Soares is excited to have representation at both events.

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I’m pretty sure I remember some time ago that there was X-Men Anime series being produced for G4TV.  With the Marvel/Animax series getting ready to kick off on Japan on April 1, it seems like a good time to see the characters in all their glory.

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A few weeks ago, Critical Hit’s very own Rob Rasmussen (a.k.a. Smith, and Ket) headed to Nebraska to attend the 2010 Anime Nebraskon, and filed this report.

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A trope is a recognizable theme used in storytelling. The kidnapped princess, the final battle, the training montage, these are all tropes we have seen again and again. Usually recognition of a familiar trope is a good thing, it lets the audience know how they should feel about things and sets them up either for a satisfying conclusion or an excited twist. But what happens when a trope goes stale? When you can’t watch two hours of TV without seeing the same situation over and over, like the wriiers just emptied their cliche bladders all over the place? Some themes have suffered this fate, through excessive use now they accomplish the opposite of what the writers want, to take the viewer out of the experience. What follows is a list of tropes that I find tiresome, troubling and most of all trite.

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When I first got into Anime, the recommendations from my colleagues was longer than anyone could realistically watch in a lifetime.  The one series that kept surfacing was Star Blazers, or as it is known elsewhere – Space Battleship Yamato. While I’d like to think the United States of America has the market cornered on animation and comic book movie adaptations, the trailer for SB Yamato looks like it has everything a fan of the series could want.

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For quite some time I have been meaning to combine my interests in comic book heroes, ancient Japanese poetry and strawberry milkshakes. I really couldn’t work the last one in but if you and I are ever at Sonic together remind me to pick some up. Anyway, here’s some stuff I wrote while I was supposed to be paying attention to a presentation during my day job:

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I think I was in second or third grade when our teacher introduced us to The Borrowers, a family of tiny people that “borrow” things and have to deal with the full-sized people of the world.  I really liked the tales, but pretty much forgot about it until today we I discovered Studio Ghibli, the animation house behind Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, and Castle in the Sky will be turning the book series into an animated movie. Studio Ghibli have transferred their version to Tokyo Koganei in 2010 (Koganei is where Studio Ghibli is settled) and tell the story of…

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