Chihayafuru – Season 2 Announced

Sometimes the good guys win after all.
Sometimes the good guys win after all.
Whether you’re appreciative of the service Crunchyroll provides or just hate them because you feel you’re obligated to “free” fansubs, it still doesn’t change the fact they’re trying to provide oversea viewers with legitimate access to the latest and greatest shows straight from Japan. In essence, you’re paying for an anime TV specialty channel, which for roughly five bucks a month isn’t all that expensive. In addition, some of that money goes back to the creators and supports the anime industry, which really needs all the help it can get. Anyway, Crunchyroll’s big thing started with Naruto and now they have Bleach after petitioning for it.
Dattebayo has already announced that they will cease their fansubs of it much like they did with Naruto now that there is a legitimate viable alternative. Personally, I think this is a good direction for both the industry and fans alike but hey, that’s just me. Crunchyroll says they’re trying to secure rights to stream to more regions, but for the launch of Bleach they already have North America (US, Canada, Mexico), the Caribbean, Central and South America, the United Kingdom, Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Iceland, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. Not too shabby.
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Who says there aren’t any surprises at the end of the year? At the conclusion of the K-ON “Let’s Go!” live concert in Yokohama yesterday, an announcement was made for a second season of the ever-so-popular light music anime. The official website has already been updated to confirm what attendees of the live event found out, along with an image of Yui looking inconspicuously over her shoulder. While the thought of a sequel in the near future never really crossed my mind, it was only a matter of time given the original’s popularity. It’s safe to say there’s already one series on my list that’s a guaranteed watch next year. I can already picture the new opening and ending themes (whatever they may be) taking the Internet air waves by storm. Speaking of which, I’d love to see what went down at that live concert. Anyone else looking forward to seeing more of Yui, Mio, Ritsu, Mugi, and Azusa in the new year? |
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So it looks like we can revive the discussion about whether Lelouch is dead or alive. According to a graphic on the mobile phone site for Code Geass, a new Geass project has been green-lit. Somehow, I’m not too shocked that this is happening, and really it was only a matter of time before Sunrise came back to this successful franchise. Two of the possibilities that came to mind are that it could be a direct sequel to R2, or it could be a completely different take, like Mai-Otome was to Mai-HiME. Astute observers will note that this announcement coincides with Lelouch’s birthday. There’s no word yet either whether it’ll be an OVA or full series or what, but apparently there’ll be more news in the new year. |
The Wall Street Journal posted an interesting article along with the video above about the current state of the anime industry. I’m sure everyone’s heard of the decline in sales for the past few years, but they also discuss the low wages of animators and competition from China and South Korea. There was a big online discussion a few of years ago about the unglamorous life of animators and seiyuus (which Riuva did a nice job summing up), so the ridiculously low paying wages and long working hours were really no surprise to me. Regardless, it’s still a worthwhile read, especially if you aren’t aware of how poorly things are going on the other side of your weekly anime fixes. The video also gives you a good idea of what Akihabara and the inside of a studio are like.
Note: If the video doesn’t start for you, try pausing it and pressing play again.
After the final episode (Someday in the Rain) of the current broadcast run finished today, it was announced that there would be a movie version of the next volume, the Disappearance of Suzumiya Haruhi, coming Spring 2010. No other important information is given, other than the extended shot of Yuki. I’m actually a bit apathetic towards more Haruhi at this point, but I guess we’ll see how it turns out.
More exciting to me right now is the first episode of Darker than BLACK Ryuusei no Gemini which just finished airing. I’ll have a full post up a little later, but it was as good as I’d hoped it’d be, and they did a nice job reintroducing the series and its concepts. It had a surprising amount of lighthearted moments in the first half, but then things got really exciting, building up to a great cliffhanger, and they even killed off some characters already (or so it would appear).
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Alice artwork courtesy of Dhiea on pixiv (account needed to access)
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Ulquiorra Cifer artwork courtesy of 餅和 on pixiv (account needed to access)
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Day Of Whale artwork courtesy of nnfsh on pixiv (account needed to access)
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Kyon artwork courtesy of みっちー on pixiv (account needed to access)