I just finished watching the first episode of High School of the Dead on Anime Network. It was awesome. Sure there were a couple of problems, but the anime looks like it will live up to the bloody awesomeness of the manga. That’s saying a lot. The manga is a top-notch zombie story.

Update: Only the first 2 episodes will be available to registered members. To see the rest of the episodes you’ll have to pay.

Click through for the info.

Update on Pricing

To see episodes #3-onward you’ll need to buy a premium membership to The Anime Network or rent the individual episodes from YouTube. You’ll be able to rent episodes for $0.99 on The Anime Network’s YouTube channel 7 days after they stream on The Anime Network.

Of course, if you want to save money, you could just wait until the series is almost finished then buy a 1 month membership. It would be cheaper than a buck per episode on YouTube.

Story

A new semester of school has just started when the zombie outbreak begins. An odd assortment of students band together, accompanied by the school nurse. Can the group survive the strange and terrifying onslaught of the walking dead?

My Opinion

I’ve only seen the first episode, since it’s being simulcast, but I have high hopes for High School of the Dead. The manga is one of my favorites, and I was afraid that there would be drastic changes made. None so far, thankfully.

It’s gruesome and disturbing, a true horror anime. If you like zombie movies, there’s a very good chance you’ll love HSOTD as much as I do.

Of course, there are always problems.

Subs

The subtitles had a few errors, like substituting corps for corpses. I found that one pretty funny. I suppose you could say the zombie horde was a corps of corpses. That one stood out the most for me, the others were mostly composed of slightly odd phrasing.

You don't need to see her face. Don't her boobs look terrified?

Inexplicable Fan Service

Sure the manga has fan service, but the way the anime handles it was a bit strange. Panty shots for no reason, focus on boobs at the expense of seeing a character’s expression, that sort of thing was kind of confusing. Luckily the violence and blood made up for it.

Blood and Guts

The manga, yes I am making that comparison again, was a bit more detailed when it came to entrails. The anime makes up for that by pumping out impressive amounts of blood. You’ll know when someone gets bitten by the red geysers splattering everything within a 200 meter radius.

Verdict

It’s a bit too early to make any final judgements, but I can say that High School of the Dead is worth any zombie fan’s time to check it out.

I highly recommend signing up for the free Anime Network account so you can watch this show. It’s being simulcast, so it’s streaming over here very quickly after it airs in Japan.

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(Editor’s Note: For those of you unfamiliar with Fairy Tail, the story follows a rough and tumble wizards Guild that seems to have a habit of getting into trouble. They’ll save the day, but with plenty of destruction along the way. The manga art bears a strong resemblance to One Piece)

Fairy Tail Manga Volume 1 Cover

I believe there will be another anime added to that list soon. Fairy Tail. No announcements have been made concerning Fairy Tail, so this is just a guess. I do have reasons for making this prediction.

Reasons to Believe

Here’s the short list of reasons why I think Fairy Tail will be simulcast on Crunchyroll. Take a look and see if you agree with me or not.

1. Crunchyroll has said on the site that they’ll be featuring more than half of the anime titles currently airing in Japan, not counting children’s programming. If those numbers are accurate, then I have a better than 50/50 chance of being right.




2. One of the companies that Crunchyroll has made deals with is TV Tokyo. That company shows up on the wiki page for Fairy Tail.



My last reason is what planted the seeds of hope.



3. I saw Fairy Tail listed in the Crunchyroll anime index. It appeared only briefly, then disappeared again. Lucky for me, I got a screenshot.

Click for Full Size

I hope Fairy Tail is added to the list of anime being simulcast on Crunchyroll. It’s a great manga and I have high hopes for the anime.

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It’s been a while without an update from me.  Unfortunately things have been busy, but I did want to mention one thing, before it comes and goes without me even saying it.  I’m heading (slightly) south this weekend to go to the NY Anime Festival.

This will be my first “con” experience, and I’m looking forward to it.  Of course, I’ll be sure to take a ton of pictures and give an update on what happened when I get back.  But, if you are going to be there as well send me a note (in the comments or shoot me an e-mail to brandon[at]greengelstudios.com.)

More to come next week, after the big event is done.  If you’ve got any questions or suggestions I’m open to that too, just leave a comment and I’ll try to answer it next week.

Following that the regularly scheduled anime updates will continue.

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Cartoon Network announced Saturday September 20, at Anime Weekend Atlanta, that Saturday night’s broadcast was the final bow for Toonami. After eleven years, the network was cancelling the programming block.

Fans of the programming block were given little time to recover from this sudden and unexpected announcement. It was followed by a short, bittersweet announcement made on air following tonight’s Naruto episode. You can see it for yourself here. It didn’t end with a bang, despite their feeble attempt. It ended with a gasp and a whimper.

This was an unnecessary death caused by out of touch program directors and impatient marketing pros who enjoyed Toonami’s success but wouldn’t give it a chance to flourish again. The ones who chose to move it from different time slot to different time slot. Each time courting a different age group. There are so many wonderful animes out there, not to mention the large number of action cartoons, that CN could have chosen to revamp Toonami. Naruto is a great anime but it’s not enough all on it’s own.

Toonami is largely responsible for my, and many others, discovery and love of anime. I have
followed Toonami from it’s humble beginnings in 1997 to it’s slow, painful death Saturday night; from Moltar to all of Tom’s incarnations. It started with such classics as ThunderCats and Voltron. Then moved on to anime favs like Robotech, Sailor Moon,Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, Tenchi Muyo, Yu Yu Hakusho, Rurouni Kenshin and Astro Boy. It hit it’s peak with Dragonball and Dragonball Z. At the end, the cartoon block was only anchored with one program, Naruto.

And so we mourn the loss of a true friend. A companion that helped spark imaginations and brought some of the best entertainment out there straight to our living rooms five days a week. Thanks for the memories and fun. You will be missed.

“…bang!” The parting words of both Tom and Spike Spiegel.

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AnimeFansOnline.com is holding a giveaway to celebrate the upcoming release of the English dub for Ouran High School Host Club. You could win an Ouran High wall scroll autographed by Vic Mignogna, the English voice of Tamaki Suou.

I saw the English premier at DragonCon. Vic hosted and talked about the show and we got to see the first 2 episodes. The dub is great. The casting was good, the voices all fit and everyone did a fine job. All of that on top of a darn good anime series. This is going to be good.

(On a side note… The other cons showing it that weekend got to see three eps, we had extra time with Vic. I’d call it an even trade, Vic is very entertaining. Besides, Anne McCaffrey had the room next and you do not want to make the Pern fans angry. Trust me on that.)

Spread the Word!

Spread the word any way you can, forums, blog posts or comments. Tell your friends about the giveaway. They’ll be thanking you if they win something.

The more people that enter, the better. Seriously, let people know.

Prizes

The wall scroll pictured is mine. Vic was kind enough to autograph 2 of them, one for me and one for the site. The one being given away is the same, but not signed “to Jason” and it’s on the flower on the other side.

If you don’t win the wall scroll, don’t feel left out. I’m also looking for sponsors to donate other small prizes for the giveaway. If I can’t find any I’ll put something together myself.

How to Enter

Head over to the giveaway post and read the rules, then leave a comment. It’s that easy.

Ideas?

Got any ideas for this giveaway? Leave a comment and let me know. I could use all the help I can get.

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As I mentioned in my last post I am a fan of Love Hina. I’ve had the series collection of 24 episodes for several years and have watched it numerous times, but I only recently picked up the set of three movie sequels to the series. Given that the series ending gives no real resolution to the series picking up the movies is long, long overdue.

Since I’ve now had a chance to actually watch the three movies I just wanted to go over a slight gripe I had with them. Keitaro breaks his leg falling off a building (twice.) Now, if you are coming into this post without having seen the series you are probably wondering what exactly is wrong with that. I mean…the guy fell off a building, it shouldn’t be any surprise he would break a bone.

You would, of course, be correct in that assumption if not for the fact that in the series he was (usually multiple times per episode) falling from high places, getting punched hundreds of feet or in some other way getting the stuffing beaten out of him. And aside from taking a warm bath to ease the aches he has he is seemingly unaffected. (It is probably important to note here that this bath is also a constant reason he is getting beat up…but I digress.)

I understand, of course, that for the sake of the story it helped to have Keitaro incapacitated (twice in the same way, really?!) but they could have at least made it believable. Let’s be honest for a moment here, if you are going to break this guy’s bones (and Naru seems to try pretty hard every episode) the least they could do is make it more believable. Falls from ridiculous heights have no effect on him. If you are going to crush him you need a parade of elephants trampling him for several minutes, or perhaps a 747 crash lands into him as he is taking a bath (if he was wearing clothes chances are it would only sprain, but naked a bone may break.)

That said, aside from that one minor gripe the movie collection is the perfect wrap-up to the series. The Christmas and Spring movies are good and exactly what you would expect from the show but the real winner here is the final movie, Love Hina Again which is simply the best 90(ish) minutes you will spend with the show. Not only does it wrap things up rather nicely but it manages to take everything that is great about the series and put it in there, without ever feeling forced.

Maybe I’ll write up a full review later, but I just wanted to get that out. As for other anime, I’ve got the first disc of Chobits coming from Netflix today. I don’t know much about the series, but I’ve heard good things so I’ll have to wait to make any sort of judgement. Also I recently purchased the full series (after getting a few discs from Netflix to check out) of Ai Yori Aoshi. After having watched discs one and two I can honestly say it has quickly reached it’s way into my must see anime list but I’ll pass final judgement on that when I get to see the rest.

Now…I guess it’s back to work the one place that always seems to interfere with my anime watching. Oh well.

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Well, what should I say?  I think the title may give it away but if not, I’m here to write about anime.  I’d love to sit here and write out a long (and beautifully written I might add) post about how I came to be an anime fan, where it all started, and when, but frankly I don’t think any of you could read it without actually becoming catatonic, so I’ll just go with the short version.

I saw my first anime on a Saturday morning when I was young enough that I don’t remember how old I actually was.  It’s a fair guess that I was probably just entering the double digit ages though.  That anime happened to be Sailor Moon.  I’m only mildly ashamed now to say that I was hooked after seeing only one episode (and it was most certainly not the first episode of the series either.)  From then on I would always try to catch the show each week.

Not long after being introduced to the Sailor girls they were moved to showing every weekday morning, following DragonBall Z, my second, and longer lasting obsession with anime began there, each morning before school.

Moving on several years we have Toonami on Cartoon Network, which I was watching pretty much as soon as they started showing anime.  There I was introduced to what would become one of my favorite series of all time (and yes, it does remain so to this day) Gundam Wing.  It was around that same time that I started buying some anime on my own (and by “on my own” I mean I used my parents money because I was young and poor.)

Not long after that I started looking for stuff outside of the Toonami/Cartoon Network set of anime and, through the powerful tubes of the Internet, I was introduced to a second series which still stands as one my favorites of all time, Love Hina.  Originally I watched this show looking at my computer monitor with the subtitles on.  I don’t recall ever laughing so much as I did first watching that show.  The 24 episode collection would be one of my first purchases when I started earning some money of my own.  Around that same time I also found out about and saw a few episodes of a little gem called Kare Kano, in english, His and Her Circumstances.  Though a long time coming I actually just recently purchased the series box set and am now working my way through watching every episode rather than the handful (out of order) that I had seen before.

From there we move on to a point in which I didn’t really watch much anime.  Oh, I wouldn’t avoid anime, and if something caught my attention on TV I’d usually watch it and think to myself that I should really start watching it all the time, but I would forget and life would go on.  I think the primary reason for this lull in anime watching was the simple fact that anime was an expensive hobby.  Video rental places (of which I live near none) didn’t carry much of anything (with the possible exception of DBZ) and buying them was prohibitively expensive (because in my day a single DVD with (if you were lucky) five episodes was $25 or more (and box sets were closer to a couple hundred, I know, because I bought the GW box set at that price.)

Fast forward even more years to the present, specifically the last couple of months and I have now begun building a collection of anime because my vast wealth allows me plenty of money for such frivolous ventures.  Okay, not really.  In reality I have a job that lets me pay the bills and sometimes with spare money I pick up box sets of anime (now significantly cheaper thanks to thinpaks.)  I also have a Netflix account (well, a family one at any rate) and I’ll sometimes stick some anime on there to watch and see if it is worth buying.

My collection of anime, while certainly not the largest has a good variety of shows for people of almost any interest.  If you’ve got something you think I should cover, or just want to recommend somtehing for me to check out, just leave a comment, I’m always open to watching something new.  I am far from the most knowledgeable about anime, and my manga knowledge is limited even more so, also, I watch the shows in english, not japanese, with subtitles, so for some I’m probably not enough of a purist, but that’s okay.  If you, like me, don’t really care what other people think of your personal taste in anime, and just really want to enjoy some physics defying, clothing tearing, mecha exploding awesomeness than grab yourself a comfy chair because we’ve got a lot to talk about.

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This is a pretty darn good AMV. I found this one when I was looking for a different one. I’m posting it here because it doesn’t quite fit with the ones I’m planning to post on AnimeFansOnline, but I wanted to share it anyway.

Speaking of Angels.

I was going to post this later, but since I’m talking about Angels I’ll post it here.

Angel over at WorldOfAngel.com is giving away $100. That could buy a lot of anime. Well, it could buy some anime. As expensive as it’s getting an extra $100 would help. So go check out the contest rules and enter. If you win, feel free to send a little thank you this way. *L*

: Anime, AMV, Send me an Angel, Real Life, Ah! My Goddess, Blogging, Blog Contest, Youtube, Internet, Fandoms

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If you want to win the Conqueror of Shambala special edition, then head over to AnimeFansOnline. I’m giving away 1 special edition, 1 regular DVD and 1 music CD by Vic Mignogna, the guy who plays Ed in the English dub. All three are autographed.

The rules are simple. Just leave a comment there about your favorite character or episode from Fullmetal Alchemist. In a couple of weeks I’ll pick the winners.

Win the Conqueror of Shambala Special Edition.

: Anime, Fullmetal Alchemist, Fullmetal Alchemist Movie, Fullmetal Alchemist DVD, Conqueror of Shambala, Vic Mignogna, Contest

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As will happen from time to time when attending conventions, I came home sick. I have the Con Flu. Mine is really more of a cold, but Con Flu sounds better. I suppose it’s bound to happen when you get that many people together.

The last I heard, Dragon Con was estimated at 40,000 people this year. Sounds about right to me. There were about 12,000 people trying to squeeze into the anime track panels. Well, maybe not that many. Though it does seem like Dragon Con severely underestimated the anime track’s popularity.

Even though I spent a lot of my time in the anime panels, I don’t think I caught this bug in there. I blame the elevators. Small boxes that a high percentage of convention goers are packed into at one point or another. Yep, the elevators seem the most likely candidate to me.

I believe I’ll pack a few cans of lysol next year. Maybe even a few surgical masks. Think if I dress like Adrian Monk I’ll seem less crazy?

: Cons, Dragon Con, Con Flu, TV, Adrian Monk, Anime, Personal, Fandoms

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