What is happening, as far as I can tell, is that Geneon is merging with Universal Pictures Japan to create a new company, which UPJ’s parent, Universal Pictures International Entertainmnent, will own a 80% stake in.  All of this is supposed to take place in February.

Now, I should stress a couple things here.  First, this is Universal’s foreign branch buying a foreign company.  What does that mean for what’s left of Geneon’s US branch?  I don’t know (wouldn’t it be odd for a US company’s foreign branch to then…sell products back to the US?  I’m guessing that’s not a unique situation, but just seems odd).

Second, the primary motivation for this appears to be that Geneon is the distribution for Universal Pictures Japan’s media, so this move has more to do with UPJ wanting to combine their production/licensing with their distribution and not necessarily has anything to do with anime (remember, Geneon Japan does a lot more than just anime).

It would be nice if this meant that Geneon USA got rebooted, but I wouldn’t necessarily get my hopes up about that until you actually hear something, especially given the economy.

The default new design right now is for CLANNAD, though you can change your theme or choose to have it randomized whenever you load a page at the Choose Your Theme page.

Overall, there are 14 new themes on top of the Haibane Renmei one from before:

• Ah! My Goddess
• Angelic Layer
• Chobits
• CLANNAD
• Code Geass (Lelouch)
• Code Geass (C.C.)
• ef
• Evangelion
• Fruits Basket
• Haruhi Suzumiya
• Kanon
• Last Exile
• Samurai 7
• True Tears

I’ll try to expand this list, but sometimes good images that I can use for my header are hard to come by for certain series.

Now, a lot of this is time, and a lot of it is that I just can’t come up with a design that I like and that works.

However, tonight, I had a crazy idea, though I’m not sure I’ll go through with it.  Maybe the indignity of threatening to go through with it will be enough to motivate me to redesign the site myself lol.  However, that idea is this: hold a contest for a new blog design, with the selectee getting, say, Amazon cash.  Like $50 of it or something (the amount is changeable, but if I did it, I’d probably do at least $50).

I wonder how much attention that would get, and how many responses I would get for that.

Like I said, this isn’t a commitment to run such a contest, but just throwing the idea out there.

Update: It looks like based on today so far, the answer is “the indignity of threatening to go through with it will be enough to motivate me to redesign the site myself.”

Mei is determined to ask the soccer team to let Sunohara back on the team, even though they’re well known bullies. Their first attempt fails after the team just insults Sunohara, Okazaki, and Nagisa. After talking to Yukine and telling her why the soccer team doesn’t like Sunohara – he fought back after they tried hazing him, basically – Mai decides to go back to the soccer team. However, despite being their ball boys for the day, the soccer team still doesn’t give in, and starts harassing Mai herself. Okazaki is about to start a fight when Sunohara arrives out of nowhere to protect Mei, and Sunohara and Okazaki duke it out with the soccer team.

Afterward, Okazaki picks a fight with Sunohara for not looking over Mei, and for not caring that they lead him to believe that she was dating Okazaki. However, Okazaki said that he thought it would be fine if she dated Okazaki, but he still watched from the side. However, by the next day, they simply laughed off the whole matter and make up.

So this appears to wrap up Sunohara’s arc as he shows himself to not be quite as worthless as he appears, and after some good fights, he and Okazaki make up. We also got to see some of Sunohara’s history, such as his falling out with the soccer club and how he first met Okazaki.

Sunohara also finally finds out that Sanae is Nagisa’s mother, though only after trying to ask Akio for permission for him to date his “daughter.”

Overall, this was a pretty good arc – and now that I know that this season is a full 24 episodes, I don’t particularly care about them spending time on this now. Next up it looks like it will be Misae’s turn to have a story arc.