The good news: Akira Kurosawa’s final script, a film based on Poe’s short story “The Masque of the Red Death” but set in Russia, will be getting the anime treatment in 2010. Kurosawa was working on getting the script produced when he died in 1998, but it was shelved after he passed away.

The bad news: Hollywood is planning a remake of Rashomon. What the fuck? How do you remake perfection?

To wrap it up: Kurosawa goes anime, Hollywood screws up a great story AGAIN. Seriously, are you even surprised anymore?

Link

OK, this is one of the weirdest things I’ve seen in a while (and I am on the Internet almost every day, so I have seen some weird shit).

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Fist of the North Star, the creators of the New FotNS film held a wedding for Kenshiro and Yuria (she’s the girlfriend he supposedly spent 100 + episodes looking for…not like anyone read it for the plot. Exploding heads, baby!).

Anime News Network has posted several links to pictures from the ‘wedding’. Guests included fans, the original creators Buronson and Tetsuo Hara, and people involved with the new movie.

The happy couple was represented by…statues of Kenshiro and Yuria. At least Yuria dressed for the occasion.

I don’t know if I am more disturbed by this or by the revelation that there is apparently a Fist of the North Star stage musical.

ANN\’s Report

Wedding Photo Album

Remember howafew months ago I reviewed the first live-action Death Note film, which was shown in U.S. theaters for two nights (and how I bitched about the fangirls?)?

Well, it’s happening again (and I’ll probably be seeing it again, and bitchng about the fangirls some more), only this time the movie is the second Death Note film- Death Note: The Last Name.

The nights are October 15th and 16th-appropriately close to Halloween- and here is a link to a list of participating theaters:

http://www.deathnotefilms.com/home.php

Rating:  

The fact that there are lesbians in Kannazuki no Miko shouldn’t be a big deal. This is the 21^st century after all, and I live in America, a >cough< enlightened country. And if sales of yaoi manga are any indication, anime fans are especially enlightened concerning homosexuality.

Unfortunately, the girl-on-girl love in Kannazuki no Miko is a big deal- but only because the unusual love triangle is the only thing the show has going for it.

The series opens in one of those fantastic, elite prep schools that doesn’t actually exist outside of anime. Himeko, one of a vast legion of orphaned anime characters, stays in the school dorms. She is the sort of girl we’re supposed to love: quiet, kind, timid, unbearably sweet. Except to a jaded old lady like me, it’s all too easy to see why her classmates feel contempt for her; she simply won’t stand up for herself. One of Himeko’s classmates doesn’t participate in tormenting her, however. Chikane is beautiful, kind abd good at everything, from archery to playing the piano. She’s the object of every girl-crush in the school, and is expected to marry Ohgami, her equally perfect male counterpart. But Ohgami actually likes Himeko…and so does Chikane.

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According to the New York Times, American comic company Marvel is teaming up with Japanese animation studio Madhouse (creators of Ninja Scroll and Highlander: The Search for Vengeance) to create 4 anime series featuring Marvel superheroes. The characters will be anime-ized in Madhouse’s unique style. The only character specifically mentioned in the article is Iron Man. Who do you guys think the other 3 will be?

Link!

Oh noes!!! A father is shocked, shocked, that his son checked out dirty manga from the library (the titles aren’t mentioned, but from the picture of the book’s rear cover I can deduce it was Battle Club).

Link

Seriously dude, your son is 12. Of course he wants to read porn. And sometimes you just can’t do anything about it. Probably the librarian just scanned the back when he checked it out and didn’t look at the cover, probably the kid hid it in a backpack so his parents wouldn’t see it, etc. etc. Shit like that happens; hell, what 12-year-old boy hasn’t surreptitiously read his dad’s tittie mags? I bet Mr. Rezabek did himself.

I don’t know anything about Battle Club, but maybe there is rape and bondage in it- which I wouldn’t want a kid to get the wrong idea about, but chalk it up to a lesson learned. Talk to him about it. Explain why rape and abuse is wrong (though I’d hope he already knows this). Keep a tighter rein on what he’s checking out for a while.

Or, I don’t know, you could threaten to get a lawyer. Though I don’t know what lawyer would be stupid enough to go up against the 1st Amendment and the library system. >sigh<

So has anyone actually read Battle Club? How bad is it, anyway?

The boys are off to GenCon, and there’s not much going on in Asia today, so here is a repost of a review I did a while ago!

Familiarity can be a comforting thing. Children drag their favorite stuffed toys everywhere. Family pets are disturbed by changes in routine. Even adults have their favorite bathrobe, mug or recliner. But familiarity isn’t always good. Take, for instance, the anime Venus versus Virus. Every element of the show has been done before, not once but multiple times in other anime series. V3 is a blend of well-worn ideas, and the result is worse than bad- it’s mediocre.

Sumire is a typical anime schoolgirl- meek, sensitive to the point of near-constant hysteria, kind, apparently orphaned etc. She has recently moved from the dorm of her Tokyo prep school to an apartment behind the antique shop where she holds a part-time job. She lives with Laura, a little girl whose sole joy in life seems to be acting as annoying as possible, and her ice queen boss Lucia (pronounced Loo-see-uh), a beautiful but cold woman with a dark and mysterious past, deeply-buried traumas etc.

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Not much happening in the world of Asian news today, so here’s some reviews from the old site. Hopefully you’ve forgotten them so they’re like new!

Japan’s Studio Gonzo has something of a reputation (whether it is deserved or not) for creating visually impressive anime with weak stories and flat characters. Using one of Western literature’s most enduring tales as a basis for a new show is probably one of the smartest things they could have done. Gankusuou is a sci-fi retelling of Alexandre Dumas’ classic novel The Count of Monte Cristo and, somewhat surprisingly, it works.

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So, being a big Osamu Tezuka fan, I have to say I”m a bit excited about Legend of the Forest. It’s the legendary manga creator’s final film, and was only partially completed when he died in 1987. Now his son has finally gotten around to finishing the thing, which is an experimental piece based on Tchaikovsky’s Symphony # 4 (similar to Disney’s Fantasia).

Right, that explains how freaking trippy it looks. And is that Kimba in the right hand corner?

http://www.animenation.net/blog/2008/08/13/macoto-tezka-to-complete-legend-of-the-forest/

Rating:  

Before you read this review, in the interest of full disclosure, I should point out that I am not a vampire person. I think they’re way overdone these days. However, there are lots of vampire fans out there, which is why I’m a little surprised that Black Blood Brothers has slipped under the radar in America.

In Black Blood Brothers there are two kinds of vampires: the regular kind (think Anne Rice) and the Kowloon Children. The Kowloon Children are a recently-emerged bloodline; their point of origin is the now-deceased Kowloon King. Kowloon children differ from regular vampires in two significant ways: they can convert humans and other vampires to their bloodline simply by biting them (regular vampires have to convert people the old-fashioned way: by feeding them some of their own blood, and they can’t convert other vampires) and they exert mind-control powers over their ‘children’. Also, while the earliest generations of Kowloon Children (direct descendants of the Kowloon King) seem relatively reasonable, later generations are raving lunatics with one impulse: to chomp whoever is in sight and turn them to Kowloon Children as well.

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