Kurogane’s Anime Blog

Spotted over at Canned Dogs, it seems that Lucky Star OVA will be made by KyoAni (thank god the naysayers saying that Toei was gonna do it are wrong) and it will be airing this summer.

As for Haruhi S2, June’s Newtype has a teaser for it, with further information forthcoming in the July issue next month. Gotta hate it when they do that.

According to sources, August Newtype contains what possibly might be an official announcement of Suzumiya Haruhi II. Not much info now, since I can’t read the articles, but the best hint comes from Konata jumping at joy at the text on the monitor which reads “Haruhi two”

The official site will be updated on the 7th with this news, and possibly with more info. No idea on the airing date yet, but bear in mind that CLANNAD’s airing date is also unconfirmed yet.

First it was ADV failing, and now it’s my local TV station. Why can’t they spell the “Haruhi” in the “The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi” correctly? It’s like the easiest word to not screw up in the whole line apart from “the” and “of”. Sigh…

And for my fellow Malaysians, yes, Haruhi is coming to TV near you. Tune in to ntv7 at 12:15am tonight. I still wonder if they will be following the broadcast order or the chronological order.

Haruhi in Wonderland! Starring Yuki as Alice (what?), Mikuru as the Red Rabbit, Imouto-chan as the Cheshire Cat and somewhat fittingly, Haruhi as the Queen of Hearts.

I must admit that it’s good to see Megami progressing towards lesser overtly T&A fanservice and more towards “concept” situations like this Haruhi in Wonderland poster. Moe is definitely more than just exhibiting body parts.

More news again, this time about our favourite dancing anime.

2-14-07 (8:20AM EST)—- 2nd Haruhi Suzumiya Anime Announcement Pending?
A few days back the official SOS Brigade Japanese website at www.sosbrigade.com scaled back on content volume significantly and rather unexpectantly. There now, one can view only a single page place holder. This occured around the same time that a blurb was made at the official Haruhi Suzumiya series site, mentioning members would be contacted about some “activity schedule” to occur in February. All this comes as a large sold out 4 hour event is scheduled to occur in Saitama, Japan on March 2nd featuring the entire main cast including Hirano Aya (Haruhi), Sugita Tomokazu (Kyon), Gotou Yuuko (Mikuru), Chihara Minori (Yuki), Ono Daisuke (Itsuki), Yuki Matsuoka (Tsuruya-san), Aoki Sayaka (Kyon’s imouto), and Shiraishi Minoru (Taniguchi). Hirano Aya recently posted a picture of herself practicing God Knows on the guitar to her blog. It’s speculated Chihara Minori play guitar live there with her. There’s a great deal of specualtion in Japanese fan circles that a large announcement on the future of the anime may be made here.

Looks like they seem to be employing the viral marketing tactic the gaijin’s used and parodied to much comedy earlier. And no, the source code doesn’t have hidden comments this time round. I wouldn’t really speculated it’s 2nd season announcement yet though, since it’s a little too early to say.

Source: Anime News Service

I realize it’s a bit late for “Year in Review” posts, but some inexplicable urge just compelled me to write this out. Possibly attributed to my current holiday I guess. In anyways, I suck at ranking things, so this is not a “Top Ten” styled post, but more of a focus list of shows I thought best represented the year that was 2006 for me.

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…and she doesn’t like children getting killed. If I were those terrorists, I’d give up my guns and sign that long overdue peace treaty before she gets mad at the dead before she can costume-rape them lolis.

Remember, Haruhi supports peace!

Link to original news article.
Original Animesuki forum post.
Original pic.

Thanks to Skane for pointing it out.

Browsing around, I found an interesting Haruhi website here. From the source code, title bar and NIC check, could it be Haruhi getting licensed? Would be an awesome early Christmas present for the Americans.

Still… “asosbrigade.com”? Looks like all the nice domain names have been taken by fans :].

＞ハルヒ第二期がどんどん遠ざかっていくなあ・・・orz

ハルヒ第二期は、再来年予定だったのが、スケジュール前倒しになって、来年秋で確定だそうですよ。ちなみに 、ゼロの使い魔第二期も来年秋スタートで調整中らしい。

追記. 大きく取り上げたわけではないのに、ハルヒ二期の噂に対する反応が大きすぎて驚く。ちなみに情報元は、前に 新劇場版エヴァの速報を寄せてくれたのと同じ方からのタレコミです。

Moon Phase reports that the second season of Haruhi (long believed to exist and only needing confirmation) will debut in the Fall of 2007, instead of in 2008 as planned. This is, of course, good news for all of us Haruhiists. Stay tuned for official confirmation.

Yeah, because he’s afraid that Kyon-kun will take over his harem.

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Nah… just joking, it’s all due to the weirdness that is America, from Anime News Service:

10-18-06 (5:53AM EDT)—- What’s Holding Haruhi Suzumiya’s USA Release?

Arguably, in 2006, the top new anime which has gained the most ground in the hearts and minds of grass roots North American anime fans is Kyoto Animation and Kadokawa’s The Melancholoy Of Haruhi Suzumiya. The TV series only debuted in the spring in Japan but quickly became a viral phenomena in the English speaking world mirroring it’s rapid popularity explosion in Japan. By the time only a handful of episodes had aired and been fansubbed, if you happened to tap the pulse of online fandom you’d have every indication the property was going supernova in America. It then penetrated anime cons nationwide in the US, the American media and continued to enjoy strong support online. It’s around this time that one would expect alarm bells to be ringing in some offices in Texas and California to start making phonecalls and booking trips to Japan. A license announcement was anticipated by AX at least and certainly at one of the major anime cons of the summer. But it never came. Meanwhile fansubs saturate file sharing networks on the internet and the whole series shows up on YOUTUBE.

So What’s the hold up? There are several continuities of thought. Firstly, these days when an anime reaches the buzz level of a show like Haruhi you can bet several companies will be locked into a bidding contest for a period of time. A monetary figure is eventually put on the table that can’t be surpassed by the others and that company gets the license. It’s very possible this process could be going on right now. It’s also been postulated that licensing Haruhi Suzumiya for the American market could come with a snag…….. in a bunny girl outfit. Some are saying it may be very difficult to work around the issue of a major character whose trademark sexy bunny costume appearance is litteraly already trademarked in the United States and other countries as well. To the uninitiated, Hugh Hefner’s Playboy empire happens to own the registered trademark to the traditional bunny girl costume in America. Acquiring permission to use the bunny image is admittedly what kept Gainax’s American division General Products USA from selling the Daicon animation shorts there in 1989 (although it’s interesting that Otaku No Video and even more recently, the videogame Dragon Quest 8 both feature bunny girls and did make it to release in the market). It’s possible the costume frames could be retouched (or completely replaced with something new) as was done for US release Dirty Pair manga several years ago. In that case, Kei and Yuri ended up with cocktail-waitress dresses. For Haruhi, this kind of compromise sounds even more likely if one takes into account the fact that the entire TV series is right now being massively retouched with over 1,000 pieces of animation being added (including new scenes, props etc..) in Japan for the DVD release. It would make sense that new scenes sans bunny girls could be easily created with the artists already in the studio at this time churning out the new material. Perhaps when this process is complete international licensing activities and releases can commence.