This year’s Crunchyroll Expo (September 1-3, San Jose Convention Center) is right around the corner and they’ve got some pretty good looking guests and events as is befitting one of the major names in English anime streaming and production. They've even gone as far as being the principal driving force behind a few series. Read on for some of the things we think are must-sees at the upcoming CRX:
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.
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.
Read more: Flavors of Youth: Time and the Yangtze Do Not Flow Backward
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.
Read more: Kase-san and Morning Glories: (Asagao to Kase-san) After the Confession
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.
Read more: Liz and the Blue Bird: (Liz to Aoi Tori) Parting Now is Truly Their Fate
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