First Quarter Excitement

Hot on the heels of ADV's new re-release of Super Dimension Fortress Macross and the upcoming DVD debut of Central Park Media's Armored Trooper Votoms OAVs, Media Blasters announced the licensing and an ETA release of Uchuu no Kishi Tekkaman Blade and its dub counterpart Teknoman. These, coupled with new releases like the Hokuto no Ken movies and the Wings of Rean ONA as a return to 1980s and 1990s franchises in the anime industry. The release of Votoms (which was previously released on VHS by CPM in the late 1990s under Bandai's Anime Village label) is a welcome breath of fresh air to Japanese mecha subculture - mecha series that are popular in mecha groups but outside of the Gundam and Macross storylines, it seems. Most people who have watched Votoms end up liking it, but I found a lot of the problem is that getting the word out. I for one will be replacing my old VHS set with the DVDs and hopefully an attractive DVD set will bring in more viewers. Since these are only the Votoms OAVs being released, high sales and fan support of the seris could lead to the Votoms TV series also being released in North America.

The news that's had me really stoked since last week (partly because my last week was personally horible) was Media Blaster's announcement on 2006. Feb. 08 of the release of Tekkaman Blade and Teknoman. The initial reports have been murky, so wading through information has been rough (hence partly why it has taken me so long to get something together); however, this is what best I can confirm:

Teknoman and Tekkaman Blade will be released in two different units. Teknoman will have a similar dub to what ran syndicated in the US. The US version ran for 26 episodes, Teknoman DVDs will run 43 episodes over three box sets.

Tekkaman Blade will be a sub-only, uncut translation of the entire 49 episode TV series. The number of boxsets has not been determined. Tekkaman Blade will be released later in 2006; Teknoman is expected to hit street around 2006. May 30.

I really expect some good stuff out of Media Blasters. I absolutely love their release of Giant Robo: The Animation and the moment it becomes financially viable for me I plan on pikcing up their releases of Master of Mosquitionand Izcer-1.

It's really looking up for the Bubble Economy titles and we're barely through the first quarter. With con season coming up here in a few months, I hopefully will have more releases to talk about, review, and perhaps even grab an interview or two. Please look forward to it!