Recent 2009 Anime News

Posted Thursday, January 01, 2009 - Happy New Year! The Japanese studio Toei Animation has revealed that it will release a movie to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the One Piece pirate adventure anime in 2009. One Piece movies have traditionally opened in Japan every year during the academic spring break. (Japanese schools end their year in March.) However, James Wong and Twentieth Century Fox 's live-action Dragonball: Evolution film will open in Japan on March 13. The 10th One Piece film is tentatively titled just as " One Piece 10th." The Japanese publisher Shueisha celebrated the 10th anniversary of Eiichiro Oda 's original manga in 2007 by introducing commemorative books and a themed attraction at the Universal Studios Japan amusement park. FUNimation Entertainment released the eighth One Piece film, One Piece: The Desert Princess and The Pirates: Adventure in Alabasta , in North American theaters last February. The ninth film, One Piece: Episode of Chopper + Fuyu ni Saku, Kiseki no Sakura , opened in Japan last March.

Posted Friday, February 13, 2009- The Oricon entertainment news source posted a promotional video for James Wong and 20th Century Fox 's live-action adaptation of Akira Toriyama 's Dragonball manga, and Toriyama prefaced the video with a written comment: "As the original creator, I had a feeling of "Huh?" upon seeing the screenplay and the character designs, but the director, all the actors, the staff, and the rest are nothing but "ultra" high-caliber people. Maybe the right way for me and all the fans to appreciate it is as a New Dragonball of a different dimension. Perhaps, this might become a great masterpiece of power! Hey, I look forward to it!!" The film will open in Japan on March 13, and will then open in America on April 8, 2009

Posted Sunday, June 28, 2009 - The story follows the adventures of Aang, a ten year old successor to a long line of Avatars, who must put his childhood ways aside and stop the Fire Nation from enslaving the Water, Earth and Air nations. I included the link the the movie trailer: http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi4074832409/

Posted Sunday, June 14, 2009 - The North American anime distributor Funimation has brought back its web video player back online on Saturday. However, it cautions that the player "is undergoing maintenance operations. Please pardon any service interruptions." Most of the anime titles that Funimation 's website had been streaming before the outage are now available again. The notable exception is One Piece , which has been offline since May 30. Funimation CEO Gen Fukunaga acknowledged last week that his company's video player setup had inadvertently exposed episodes of One Piece and Phantom ~Requiem for the Phantom~ to potential leaks before their Japanese airing dates. Funimation said earlier this week that it brought its video player offline to implement "improvements that need to be made for security reasons and otherwise," and has since been testing its new video player setup.

Posted Friday, June 12, 2009 - One Piece manga creator Eiichiro Oda is personally supervising the production of One Piece Film Strong World , the pirate adventure franchise 's 10th film which will open in Japan on December 12. Oda created the film's original story and over 120 pages of rough drawings. This year's 24th issue of Shueisha 's Weekly Shonen Jump magazine published some of the rough drawings on Monday. Among the drawings is an image of the swordsman Zoro wielding a bazooka. According to the magazine issue, Oda put his own name on the movie's credits to indicate that he wants a film that is different from the previous installments. He added that the film is still in production and that he is creating still more drawings, on top of the 120 drawings he has submitted already. The actual director of the film is Munehisa Sakai , a director on the One Piece television anime series .

Posted Tuesday, June 09, 2009 - The North American anime distributor Funimation has confirmed on Wednesday that its Funimation .com website is streaming the Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood anime series again, "after successfully implementing additional security measures." Funimation removed its streamed episodes of the One Piece anime on Saturday (the same day that the first simulcast was to have started) and cited the leak of the latest episode before it aired in Japan. That same day, Funimaton.com temporarily stopped streaming episodes of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood . Episodes of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood continue to be available on the Hulu and YouTube websites.

Posted Monday, June 08, 2009 - You can bring home Goku, Bulma and the rest of your favorite manga characters brought to live on DVD and Blu-ray this July. Dragonball Evolution will be released on DVD and Blu-ray on July 28. The standard DVD "Z-Edition" will be priced at $27.98 SRP while the Blu-ray will be priced at $39.99 SRP. The film stars Justin Chatwin, Emmy Rossum, Chow Yun-Fat and James Marsters.

Posted Saturday, July 18, 2009 - This year's 34th issue of Shogakukan's Weekly Shonen Sunday magazine will announce next Wednesday that an Inuyasha Kanketsu-hen ( Inuyasha Final Chapter) television adaptation of Rumiko Takahashi 's manga has been green-lit. The anime will broadcast on Japan's YTV this fall and cover the story in volumes 36 to 56 of the manga — the final 21 compiled book volumes. The original staff and cast will reunite for the new anime adaptation. Shonen Sunday had promised earlier this month that it will be including a special news announcement about Inuyasha in issue #34. Takahashi had ended the Inuyasha manga in the same magazine last June. She has been serializing a new manga called RIN-NE ( Kyokai no Rinne ) in the magazine as well as on TheRumicWorld.com website for North America readers since April 22. Viz Media has been releasing the Inuyasha manga in North America, and it has also released the original 2000-2004 television anime adaptation.