Anime News / CLANNAD / CODE GEASS / Daily Dose / Suzumiya Haruhi

The Daily Dose

  • Welcome to the first edition of the Daily Dose! One of the things I’ve always wanted Random Curiosity to be is a reliable source of news. I’ve tried to do this a little in the past with my Random Musings posts, but that hasn’t really been consistent, and hopefully this will be. The goal is for this to be a daily news digest of what’s going on in the anime world. I’ll be pulling from a lot of sources, and with luck, there’ll be stuff here that you won’t necessarily find from other places (though admittedly that can be hard in this day and age). So without further ado…
  • The 2nd CODE GEASS R2 opening song has been officially announced to be FLOW’s WORLD END. As most of you may remember, FLOW sang the first OP to the original CODE GEASS series, so it’s nice to see this come full circle, especially since ALI PROJECT is also doing R2’s new ED. The WORLD END single is due out August 13th, 2008.
  • The official CLANNAD site is now hosting a short preview video for the Tomoyo-centric episode 24 of CLANNAD. If you listen until the end, you can hear Mr. Ubiquitous Fukuyama Jun. In any case, the episode takes place in an alternate universe where Tomoya and Tomoyo are dating and will be released on July 16th with the eighth DVD. eggplant has a spoiler-filled report of the special screening from last week.
  • Canned Dogs has compiled together some images from the newest issue of Newtype that features Suzumiya Haruhi.
  • Amazon.co.jp is streaming the first five-minute episode of the animated version of Detroit Metal City. This comedy story involves a shy guy who becomes the lead singer of a death metal band, and there’s a live-action movie version coming out in August.
  • Oh and I almost forgot to mention: if you find anything that you think I should mention on any particular day’s Daily Dose, please send me an email with the words “ANIME NEWS” somewhere in the subject line.

    • Image at left courtesy of Ixy on pixiv (account needed to access).
    Anime News / First Impressions / Macross / Random Musings

    Random Musings – Raindrops on Roses

  • I’ve been listening to the Macross Frontier soundtrack, and it’s every bit as wonderful as I hoped it’d be. I’m loving the tracks What ’bout my star (both versions), Big Boys (reminds me a lot of the Pirates of the Caribbean theme), and Innocent green. Oh and the Nyan Nyan song is as cute as ever. It’s going to be hard at the end of the year deciding whether this OST is better or the true tears one is – probably this because of all the vocal music (which isn’t to say that Yoko Kanno’s instrumentals aren’t great too). And that’s assuming the next Macross Frontier OST won’t be better.
  • I also managed to scrape together some time this weekend to watch a few episodes of the currently-running drama Zettai Kareshi. For those of you unfamiliar with it, it’s about a girl who gets a robot as her ideal boyfriend, and the love triangle and troubles that this leads to. That might sound silly, but it’s actually really entertaining. I was curious about this adaptation because I read the manga a long time ago, and though a lot of things have changed in the story, it’s still very very good. It has that same spark that I found in the Hana Yori Dango and Yamada Tarou Monogatari dramas – the perfect mix of comedy and romance drama. It can be very funny at times (especially the actor who plays Namikiri), and the romance and drama elements are slightly over the top – just the way I like it. I wish I were blogging it, but sadly I just can’t make the time commitment for a drama series right now (though I may try to next season or the season after that). On a side note, I had the theme song of this series, Okaeri by ayaka in my head all the way until today…when I started listening to the Macross Frontier soundtrack.
  • Also in the news, the official Mai-HiME/Otome website announced a new project. No details about it other than the name and character design of the new heroine, Mao (see the link). While I do wish Sunrise would develop more new original properties, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t curious what this one will be like, especially since S.ifr’s first episode was better than expected. Speaking of which, the second volume of S.ifr is due out July 25th.