Store Stuff, News, and Tab Clearing
I hope all of you had a great Memorial day holiday. As always, we're coming off a three day weekend to a short week, so we've been busy trying to cram five days worth of work into four. Even so, I've got a lot to let you all know about this week, so read on!
FUNimation confirmed this week that their home video and streaming rights for the
original 2003 Fullmetal Alchemist series will expire on July 31. Funimation will cease streaming the series and will no longer reprint the home video releases of the anime, including the Collector's Edition. The rights to the show will revert back to AniPlex after Funi's license expires.
The official blog for the Girls und Panzer anime franchise announced on Monday that the Girls und Panzer film has sold 1,264,313 tickets for a total of 2,136,832,984 yen (US$19,229,958) as of Sunday, May 29. The film has been in the theaters for 28 weeks. The film has surpassed the box office earnings of
Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie Part 3: Rebellion, which earned a total of 2.08 billion yen (about US$18.7 million) during its theatrical run in Japan when it opened in October 2013. It has not surpassed the
Love Live! The School Idol Movie, which earned a total of 2.86 billion yen (about US$25.7 million) after opening in August 2015.
No surprises there. It's a fun, fantastic series with a fantastic concept. Makes me wonder why there aren't already five or six additional seasons of
GuP already produced and released. Could have been the next Lupin IMO.
The Deadline entertainment news website reported on Friday that Fox has scheduled the planned live-action film of Yukito Kishiro's Battle Angel Alita (GUNNM) manga for a wide release on July 20, 2018. Film news websites Collider and The Hollywood Reporter stated earlier this week that the film has cast Rosa Salazar (Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials, The Divergent Series: Insurgent, Man Seeking Woman) in the lead role. Robert Rodriguez (El Mariachi, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, Sin City, Spy Kids) is set to direct the film. James Cameron and Jon Landau are producing the project, and Shutter Island's Laeta Kalogridis has penned a script. The film is currently titled Alita: Battle Angel.
Alita is one of my all time
favorite manga series. I hope they keep the movie true to form.
And, with the recent announcement of
Sailor Moon Crystal coming to DVD and BD this August, those of us that are trying to figure out when Viz might release Sailor Moon S, here is a little exerpt from a recent conversation on Viz's official Twitter:
Hmmmm, I wonder what 'rethought the whole process' means....
Featured - Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign
In a world overrun with vampires, humans have been hunted to the brink of extinction. The only way they can fight back is with a series of demonic weapons known as Cursed Gear. Reserved for soldiers with exceptional talent, these weapons require humans to form pacts with ancient demons in exchange for their power.YuichiroHyakuyais a young member of the Moon Demon Company, a prestigious army squadron armed with Cursed Gear and tasked with exterminating vampires.
After the blood-sucking monsters killed his family when he was a child, Yuichirovowed he wouldn't stop fighting until every last one was dead. But when a familiar face from his past appears sporting a new set of fangs, the line drawn between good and evil begins to blur. There's something special about Yuichiro-a dark power that the vampires call the Seraph of the End. When that power is unleashed, will he be the key to humanity's salvation or its complete destruction?
Available in both Standard and Limited Edition packaging.
Order yours today from RACS!
Get Social With RACS!
Like us on Facebook! We've made it easier than ever to get social with RACS! You can use the following easy to remember links to find us on Twitter, Facebook, or our official blog:
To find us on FACEBOOK just use:
www.animecorner.com/facebook
To follow our TWITTER feed just use:
www.animecorner.com/twitter
And you can find our (un)official BLOG anytime here:
www.animecorner.com/blog
Be sure to share these links with your friends too - THANKS!
New Licenses
FUNimation Entertainment announced on Tuesday that it has licensed the restored edition of the 1944 anime film Momotaro, Sacred Sailors (Momotaro - Umi no Shinpei) for home video distribution in the United States and Canada. The film is often considered the first feature-length animated film produced in Japan.
Shochiku's digital restoration of the film was screened at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival earlier this month. Funimation was among the financial backers of the restoration. The film was produced as World War II propaganda. The story follows Momotaro, who, according to the traditional Japanese fairy tail, was born from a peach and joins with three animal companions to defeat monsters. In this version, Momotaro is running a Japanese naval base and fighting the Allied Powers.
Mitsuyo Seo directed the 74-minute black-and-white film after first directing the 37-minute film Momotaro's Sea Eagle, which has a similar premise and is sometimes considered to be the first feature-length animated film in Japan based on different definitions of "feature-length." A crew of 70 staff members created Momotaro, Sacred Sailors using 50,000 animation cels on a budget of 270,000 yen (equivalent to about 600 million yen or US$5.5 million today). After the war the film was believed to be lost until a negative copy was discovered in 1983 and re-released in 1984.
The film is Axis war propoganda, so there is nothing in it about how honor, loyalty, team spirit, and grim determination can't ever overcome a capacity for massive industrial production, but it is also an artifact of Japanese colonialism as primitive tropical animals eagerly help the Japanese animals build an airbase and are educated in the Japanese language in a musical sequence. Not sure I would be interested in it but it is
historically important so Funi gets the prize this week for one of the most obscure R1 pickups in the Anime industry to date.