Convention News (150)
Anime Expo has announced the Love Live juggernaut once more. The members of Aquors will grace Los Angeles live on TWO days this July.
One thing Anime Expo is known for is its great numbers of high-quality guests. It's a topic that is speculated about every year. Anime Expo has finally announced what is the first of a flood of guests to come.
Ulysses Anime Q&A Panel Transcript at CRX 2018
Written by Theodore Mak
Check out our Q&A transcript of the Ulysses: Jeanne d’Arc and the Alchemist Knight panel featuring Yuko Ono who voices the main character Jeanne d’Arc, and Sound Director Ryosuke Naya at the 2018 Crunchyroll Expo.
Tsume Art is a high end collectible statue company from Luxembourg. Fans of popular series such as One Piece, Dragon Ball, and Naruto will definitely recognize their iconic showcase pieces that features an insane attention to detail. Most of Tsume Art’s products are made to order in super limited production runs and can only be obtained from their online webstore akin to other high end manufacturers such as Sideshow Collectibles. Due to the exclusivity of their products, Tsume Art is not as well known in the United States.
Learn a little more about the company in our video of their booth at Anime Expo 2018!
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 Chōshoku (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 (衣食住行) 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.
Kase-san and Morning Glories: (Asagao to Kase-san) After the Confession
Stanley Fung
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.
Anyone who has grown up in the last decade and spent some time watching anime on Cartoon Network/Toonami/Adult Swim knows the name FLCL. It's one of the GAINAX greats right up there with Neon Genesis Evangelion and Gurren Lagann and you'd be hard pressed to find someone who hasn't seen it. About a month ago Adult Swim announced a tour by The Pillows in support of the new season of FLCL (FLCL Progressive) and this tour will include a special appearance at San Diego Comic-Con.
Liz and the Blue Bird: (Liz to Aoi Tori) Parting Now is Truly Their Fate
Stanley Fung
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.
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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!
If you ever wondered what a pure, unfettered Mari Okada anime would look like, Maquia would be the first chapter in a work that is undeniably her own. For those who have never heard of Mari Okada, she is a longtime series composer/screenplay writer that often refined or assisted in the stories of others. Notably, Okada worked on Anohana and Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans, but Maquia marks her directorial debut while retaining control of the script.
FanimeCon 2018 is finally behind us and I have taken a few days to reflect on the festivities. The fact of the matter is this year's FanimeCon was pretty weak overall. That's not to say I didn't enjoy myself. FanimeCon has something for everyone, whether it be cosplaying with your friends, going to panels to meet your favorite guest of honor, or even rocking out at Music Fest. So it wasn't that I was surprised there was nothing exciting going on, I was more surprised that they didn't surprise me again. Because they have been full of surprises for the last two years or so. If anything FanimeCon 2018 points to an even more exciting FanimeCon 2019.
With Anime Expo 2018 just a few days away, Aniplex USA has gone up with a massive list of events, panels, guest meet and greets and gatherings. Are you excited? I'm Excited!