Wednesday, November 12, 2008 – 9:42 am
It appears that Dentsu has sold control of most of it’s Geneon division in Japan to Universal Pictures Japan. Universal Pictures Japan is obviously the Japanese branch of Universal Pictures, which is the movie making and distribution arm of NBC Universal.
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.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008 – 6:38 pm
I finally got motivated today to do some new designs, and either my standards went way down today or I got really lucky cause I ended up pulling together quite a few that I was reasonably happy with today.
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.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008 – 12:22 am
It’s rather sad that, as someone who is a web designer by trade, that I can’t even find enough time to redesign my own anime blog. However, I’ve kept the current design for a time period which has to be approaching an all time record for just about any site which I have personally maintained that isn’t a wiki.
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.”
Monday, November 10, 2008 – 6:57 pm
It’s CLANNAD: After Story episode 4, and Mei decides to convince the soccer team to allow Sunohara back on the team, despite everyone telling her it’s a bad idea. To no one’s surprise, the plan turns into trouble.
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Monday, October 27, 2008 – 5:30 pm
It’s Nijuu Mensou no Musume Episode 20, and Chiko, Twenty Faces, Ken, and Kayama continue to pursue the professor as he attempts to reactivate the broken tower.
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Sunday, October 26, 2008 – 7:24 pm
It’s ef - a tale of melodies episode 3. Mizuki learns a terrible secret about Kuze, who is trying to stomp out their relationship before it goes too far. Meanwhile, Yuu finds out that Yuuko is being bullied.
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Monday, October 20, 2008 – 6:26 pm
It’s Maid Guy episodes 11 and 12. Naeka has to deal with the Leader of the boob fan club, and then has to face the first serious threat to her inheritance.
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Sunday, October 19, 2008 – 7:25 pm
It’s CLANNAD: After Story episode 2, and Sunohara has his fake date with Sanae while Mai’s worries about her brother are only deepened.
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Sunday, October 19, 2008 – 5:03 pm
After watching the first two episodes, this series looks like it has some potential to be a pretty good series, as long as it doesn’t fall into the trap of a predictable “monster of the week” type series.
In this series, humans and youkai have long lived together on earth, though usually not all that peacefully. As a result, the town of Sakurashin was established as a place where youkai and humans could live together harmoneously.
To keep the peace, the town has an organization called the Youkai Life Consultation Office which consists of 4 members: Hime, who some of the members call the “Mayor” (though I’m unsure whether she actually is the mayor of the town) and who is a powerful youkai, Kotoha, who is a youkai who can conjur up just about anything, Ao, a youkai who can read minds, and Akina, a human who is the only person in the town who can use “tuning” - a method through which bad or out of control youkai can be sent back to their dimension.
So far, it looks like some bad youkai dude is trying to cause problems with the Nana-gou trees around the town which are meant to keep bad things out, but what exactly his goal is, I’m not sure.
In any case, this series seems to have some interesting characters in it and the first two episodes look promising, so I’m hoping for the best with this series.
Friday, October 17, 2008 – 11:11 pm
It’s ef - a tale of melodies episode 2, and we learn more about Yuko and Yuu’s past while Mizuki continues to fall more for Kuze’s trap.
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