Anime Pilgrimage RTT

New Giant Robo anime in 2007?

Giant Robo is easily one of my favourite anime series, so I was surprised today when, courtesy of Big Big Truck, I saw a link to this site:

In 2007, the “LEGEND” will come out.

I personally feel that Giant Robo has one of the most satisfactory endings ever, a series with a second half composed entirely of guts and adrenaline, and I have no idea what could possibly happen in this.
I am expressing a definite interest in these developments.

You get licencing!

Funimation have licenced School Rumble, although one may ask what took so long. It will be great to see people getting it confused with “Rumbling Hearts”.
Someone, possibly ADV, has in all likelihood licenced The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi. Can the obsession strike twice? Already the ADV hate has kicked into high gear, which gave me another idea about the status of fandom which I won’t go into here. Kadokawa has said that there have been offers.
Most “important” is the announcement that Utawarerumono has been licenced by ADV. With the name “Shadow Warrior Chronicles”. They may as well have called it “GENERIC TITLE!” if they were going down that path. It means that I won’t be covering it any more, which isn’t a big hassle to me as it was just a bunch of moe anyway.

More licencing comments as I see them.

Update: I was hoping I could get around my phrasing. The Suzumiya news was just a rumour, and I didn’t confirm it in what I said, but … “in all likelihood”? Oh dear. The panels have come and gone with only the news from Kadokawa that several countries have made expressions of interest.

WETA Workshop: Richard Taylor talks about Evangelion movie

Richard Taylor, co-owner of the WETA Workshop, announced tonight at the Supanova Pop Culture Expo that pre-production has resumed on the Evangelion film.

In May 2003 John Ledford, CEO of ADV Films, approached WETA and asked them to start development work for a Neon Genesis Evangelion film. Taylor was glad to accept, and work progressed for six months.
At that time, in Taylor’s words, the project “fell off the face of the planet”. With no word of production, WETA was forced to cease work.

About four months ago, at ComicCon in San Diego, the producer who had been working on the Evangelion film was flagged down by Taylor at the WETA booth. They went out to drink. Someone at the bar recognised Taylor, and posed the question “What’s happening with the Evangelion movie?”
Taylor agreed, and asked the producer the same question; for every one Lord of the Rings or Kong email WETA receives, they receive 25 about Evangelion.

A short while later, Taylor and Ledford made their way to Tokyo, to visit Studio GAINAX. Taylor said that GAINAX is known for being fiercely protective of their properties, and they were somewhat nervous. The work that had been done on Lord of the Rings and the “filmic phenomena” that ensued counted in their favour, and Taylor had prepared a six minute example of the design work that they had done for the film. As it turns out, WETA had continued to work on Evangelion “in their spare time”.

GAINAX were quite impressed with the pitch that had been made, and thusly Evangelion was put back on track. Taylor added to the story that on his way out of GAINAX, he saw Anno Hideaki, Evangelion’s director, eating his lunch and watching dailies.
They got to talking, and it turned out that they have a shared passion: steam trains. This sense of camaraderie bodes well for the project; short of The Hobbit, tangled in its legal rights, Taylor says that this is the project that he is most excited to work on.

Ledford and Taylor spent the remainder of their trip pitching to financiers. Matt Greenfield, co-founder of ADV Films, is presently in Oceania on holiday and reportedly to meet with WETA.

Taylor says that WETA’s full scale role in Evangelion production should follow soon after work on Halo is complete.