Back after a while

I know earlier in my New Year's message I mentioned that I would be doing my best to update Akihabara Renditions more. I've honestly not done too good of a job in the past month. As Akihabara Renditions' purpose is dedication to anime and manga of the "Bubble Economy" (late 1970s to mid 1990s), there has honestly been little news about this era since I updated last. That, combined with personal issues, both have put AkibaRen on the back-burner for a moment. I apologize for this lapse and I will be looking forward to making amends for it.

As stated above, there has been little news regarding AkibaRen's anime-base recently. I've unfortunately been un-able to procure myself copies of CPM's new Votoms DVDs as well and Rean no Tsubasa/Wings of Rean, the latest edition of Tomino Yoshiyuki's Legend of Byston Well started in 1982 with Aura Battler Dunbine. Rean also has me excited because it is pioneering the distribution of ONA - Original Net Animation - as I've talked about briefly before.

Speaking of release over the net, and I'm surprised this wasn't making bigger waves, but since February 16th, the original Mobile Suit Gundam TV series has been released on Flet's Square, a broadband portal for NTT Flet's service. Subscribers are treated to one episode per week, with the next episode replacing the last. Info courtesey of AEUG's blogspot[aeug.blogspot.com]. Apparently, AEUG was the only one to pick up on this. Those one must wonder, if Bandai and NTT can release the original TV series via the internet, does that mean we might be able to expect a DVD port of the series soon? Are they comfortable using an older version of the footage for a "modern" release?

I'm personally not too much of a Ghibli fan as in I generally will not search out the newest and hottest release as soon as it comes out but I will typically enjoy Ghibli movies when I do watch them. Miyazaki, of all of the Ghibli creators, is probably one of the best of the anime medium, bar none. I'm still very late in seeing Howl's Moving Castle. But the next feature length film, Gedo Senki - Tales of Earthsea - I am exceptionally excited about. Perhaps between now and its debut, I should read the books, or some of them, to get a better idea of the setting (I did catch a little bit of the Earthsea TV drama on Sci-Fi a couple of years ago). While waiting for Earthsea though, I am also tempted to work through a Miyazaki filmography and rate his works from the beginning of Ghibli in 1984 with Kaze no Tani no Nausicaa up to (and most likely including) Gedo Senki.

Ghibli World[ghibliworld.com] has an interesting interview with Takahata Isao, the other Ghibli founder, concerning his films. Where as Miyazaki does fantasy like no one else, Takahata's realism in film brings a very opposite feel from his counterpart and allows Ghibli productions to find a wider audience.

On a final and very obscure note, reported by Slashdot [slashdot.org] today, anime fans who are also fans of import games have something to look forward to: Sony has decided to end Region-lock out on their PS3 games and the PS3 system. Now, will the PS3 be backwards compatible between PS2 and PS1? If so, I might get back into gaming... Anyway, with the plethora of anime games out on the Japanese market, I thought this was worth mentioning.