Thursday, September 19, 2024
Category: Convention News

Cells at Work! is a manga series from Kodansha that has been adapted into its own anime series by Aniplex. This series is unique in that it takes the work cells inside the human body and reimagines them as human characters. The cells are shown doing their daily task but in the manner, humans would do such tasks. The talented Kana Hanazawa, and Tomoaki Maeno lend their voices to Red Blood Cell and White Blood Cell respectively. During Anime Expo 2018,  Aniplex held a panel for Cells at Work! to premiere the first episode of the series days ahead of its official release. Aniplex also invited special guests Tomoaki Maeno, Yohei Ito (Kodansha Producer), Nobutaka Kasama (David Production), and Yuma Takahashi (Aniplex Producer) for a Q&A at the end of the panel.

Category: Convention News

Anime short films are a rare breed but while there can be too many cooks in the kitchen, in the case of Flavors of Youth it works. Much like a three-course meal, the first film Hidamari no Ch?shoku (Rice Noodles) is a great appetizer. The main course Chiisana Fashion Show (A Little Fashion Show) serves as the strongest peak by far, and Shanghai Koi (Shanghai Love Story) is a sweet little dessert to finish off. The Chinese idiom (????) that states the four basic necessities of life: food, clothing, housing, and transportation serves as a tagline, and to be fair, each of the three shorts does a good job of sticking to their assigned part. However, the theme that weighs most heavily all three shorts is the inexorable passage of time.

Category: Convention News

Anyone familiar with anime has encountered the yuri genre at some point. For the most part, Yuri is about girls being in love and falls into three categories. First, there is the kind of yuri that merely hints at lesbianism as a sort of phase for young girls. The second is the kind that exists for male titillation. The last is the rarer kind of yuri that actually tries to portray true-to-life lesbianism. Kase-san and Morning Glories falls into this third category. It had existed as a manga before a chance encounter with director Takuya Sato, who was so impressed with the work that he spent two years making Kase-san and Morning Glories his passion project. The result is a film that is faithful to the original work of Hiromi Takashima and a revelation for anime films.

Category: Convention News

It’s been three years since Sound! Euphonium (Hibike! Euphonium) aired, but thanks to the magic of anime, no one has aged aside from the folks behind the scenes. Coming off the wonderfully executed A Silent Voice (Koe no Katachi), director Naoko Yamada and composer Kensuke Ushio team up once again to fashion a new ballad. The US premiere and panel at Anime Expo gave a lucky few a musical treat.

Category: Convention News

It’s been a year since the US release of Fate/Grand Order, the highly successful mobile phone game based on the Fate/Series. The game has taken the country and world by storm with a daily revenue estimate of $1.3 million dollars in the US alone and is ranked the #1 Top Grossing Role Playing game on Google Play. What better way to commemorate than with a 1 year anniversary panel at Anime Expo 2018 with special appearances by Ayako Kawasumi, the voice of Type-Moon’s poster child Altria Pendragon, Satoshi Tsuroka, the voice of Arash from Fate/Grand Order and Gil de Rais from Fate/Zero, and Yosuke Shiokawa, the Creative Director of Fate/Grand Order!