Father Geek here once more... Well, Wednesday has rolled around again and its time for another heavy duty dose of Scott Green's AICN Anime Report. As always Scott's got it packed with facts, links, and pics on Games, DVDs, VHS, Comics, Cards, etc... First though I've got a small A-bomb that was dropped at Geek Headquarters here in Austin earlier...

Atomic Cartoons recently announced that their cutting-edge Flash Department has succeeded in combing art with science, a hybrid technique previously thought to be impossible.

“It’s well known that we’ve been doing Flash to broadcast with 2D and 3D elements since 2000, but this new process we’ve created is truly revolutionary,” Explained a breathless Trevor Bentley, who heads up the Atomic Cartoons Flash Dept. with Mauro Casalese, “We now have a proprietary product that delivers the best of both worlds: art and science!”

What makes this amazing process different from the traditional/flash/3D combination that Atomic successfully implemented back in 2000 is the addition of rocket science to the formula. This has the Atomic animators giddy with excitement.

“They say you don’t have to be a rocket scientist, which is why I got into this industry”, Blurted an ecstatic Ridd Sorensen, Atomic’s chief technical officer and Flash director, “But with this innovative discovery, we’ve proven the world wrong...now you really do have to be one [rocket scientist] to succeed in animation!”

After hours of grueling research and development, Atomic Cartoons has managed to meld together the traditional skill sets of their animators with the book-smarts of Vancouver’s best rocket scientists, creating an exclusive new animation process called Atomic Fusion.

Grand Flash master Mauro Casalese adds, “Each animator now works along side his/her very own rocket scientist. This is the epitome of teamwork. Atomic Fusion really helps us in the areas of timing, molting, gesticulating, and posturing; all crucial elements in animation”.

Atomic Cartoons has brought the future to the masses, today. Look for all Atomic Cartoons’ shows to be produced from now on using their sensationally fresh Atomic Fusion process.

Green Glowing PR guy Rob

Father Geek back... Now here's Scott with his regular weekly column...

Anime Spotlight: Ronin Warriors/Samurai Troopers volume 1: The Call

Released by Bandai

If you reminisce for the imported fighting robot cartoons of the 80's (Voltron, Tranzor, and a myriad of forgotten others), the live action equivalents (Power Rangers, or its one-offs), or want to introduce a younger audience to the like, Ronin Warrior is what you're looking for.

Ronin Warriors is the English dub version of the Samurai Troopers series. The series appeared on North American syndicated TV before bouncing on and off of Cartoon Network's Toonami block. Because chunks of violence were excised from the series, different video source are used for the English and Japanese language version of the series. The two sided DVD release features "Ronin Warriors", the English dub version on one side, and "Samurai Troopers", the uncut Japanese version on the other.

The best known example of the "sentai" genre is Power Rangers. Ronin Warriors is clearly one of the genre's anime adherents. Like most of the genre Ronin Warriors features characters in brightly colored armor, each of whom stand for some positive attribute (true, trust, and the like), who change into their armored for in frequently reused stock footage.

A once banished demon lord returns to torment the world with the help of his four armored lieutenants. The five young warriors prophesized to stop him appear during his invasion of Tokyo, but not before its population its spirited into the netherworld, with the exception of a the granddaughter of a researchers, and a young boy. The villain tops his opening gambit by scattering the five warriors across Japan, where they must find the elemental and personal power to change him again.

Like most, or possibly all, sentai series, Samurai Troopers is for children, and young ones at that. But who doesn't enjoy mysterious monks who can blow up city blows with their staff, or villains with bizarre weapons combinations, such as carrying six swords, or a spear and a chained chain weapons with a grotesquely large blade on one end, and a prong on the other. Older audiences can enjoy the action event if the plot and characters are for a younger audience.

The 1989 animation looks a bit dated, but is serviceable, but its not as bad as the pseudo-hype English dialogue.

Ronin Warrior is a good, mildly violent series for young boys. The long, continuous story is the type kids tend to remember as being fun and epic.

Anime Spotlight: Dirty Pair Flash: Random Angels

Released by ADV

Despite its name, (its pervasive T&A), Dirty Pair Flash isn't porn, or close to it. "Dirty Pair" refers to Kei, and Yuri, a duo of trouble consultant for the World Welfare Work Association(W3A), a galactic peace keeping outfit. Their preferred code name is the Lovely Angels, but the swath of destruction their work tends to leave earned them the "Dirty Pair" moniker. Kei is the more brash of the two. She's a hot head woman who tends to solve her problems with excessive force, but she has a better battle sense than her partner. Yuri brings finesse to the partnership. She likes to think of herself as a bit delicate and hopes to marry well.

Dirty Pair Flash appears to be a prequel to the Dirty Pair movies, TV series, OAVs and Adam Warren's American comics, with younger versions of its heroines, Kei and Yuri (and their bear-like genetically engineered killing machine Mughi, now a bat eared fluff ball). According to Jonathan Clements, and Helen McCarthy's "Anime Encyclopedia", unbeknownst to many viewers, and series production staff, this is a new Kei, and Yuri living a century after the first pair.

The exact relationship of this Dirty Pair to the original does not have an impact on the series, but the differences are striking. The original had some footing in thought on science fiction, and some intelligent problem solving, but Flash has gleefully escaped the gravitational pull of logic, and thought, whether its fighting a giant missile launching teddy bear, or entering a bench volleyball contest to arrest a despot.

Despite the cleavage heavy uniforms of the original Dirty Pair, Flash out does it in terms of putting frequently putting the Pair in skimpy bathing suits, and otherwise displaying their bodies.

"Random Angels" is the third Flash OAV series, and consists of five stand alone episodes. The first episode is a comparatively serious take on the Pair in which Kei is in a plane that is shot down over a mountain in an attempt to kill the infant son of a senator. It features some "From Russia With Love"/ Jackie Chan's "First Strike" style skiing action (which seems harder to pull off in animation than live action), and some tense moments as Kei and the child are hunted. The last episode, which is more strictly actionm has the Pair protect their boss from a vengeful escaped convict who assaults the W3A offices with a power armor.

The intermediate three episodes feature the type of oddball situational humor Flash specialized in. "The Pink Assassins" pits the Pair against the youngest in a dynasty of assassins, a teenie bopper who attempts to dispose of them with razor sharp robotic birds that home in on a hair chip, a hair drying shaped blaster, and finally a giant robotic teddy bear. Next, they train with a zealot physical instructor for a beach volley ball tournament. In the most physically subdue episode of the series, Kei meets the grandson of a rich W3A contributor, and his robotic version of Yuri. After she accidentally destroy the robot, Yuri agrees to spend three days with the obsessed lad in hopes of saving Kei's job, and maybe landing herself a rich husband.

These three episodes take an absurd comment, and keep hammering away at it with ever increasing intensity until, even if you don't initially find it amusing, you end up snickering at it despite yourself.

Dirty Pair Flash is more basic "girls with guns" than prior Dirty Pair Flash incarnations, and it enjoys flaunting what it is, the humorous adventures of two scantily clad women blowing things up.

This Week's Anime and Manga Releases

After Easter weekend, and latest week's feast of releases, this week is a bit of a famine.

Anime:

• Cardcaptors - Times of Need Volume. 8
• El-Hazard: Wanderers Volume #4

Manga:

• Martian Successor Nadesico Book 3

Marvel Comics is also releasing the first issue of Ben Dunn's monthly Marvel MangaVerse title, and a collected edition of prior releases

Nadesico is the space opera/mecha action from Kia Asamiya (Steam Detectives, Silent Mobius, Dark Angel) about a private battle ship and its odd crew. The manga stays more true to the space opera feel than its anime adaptation, which jumps genre to genre, including parody, and drama.

El Hazard: Wanderers is the TV series retelling of the original OAV series about a student, his alcoholic/chain smoking teacher, his money loving would-be girl friend, and his machiavellian self-style mortal enemy who are transported to a mystical world, where they align themselves with its warring factions. In addition to stretching out the series, the TV version alters a several of the series' key characters.

Millennium Actress Coming From Dreamworks

Dreamworks SKG has acquired the rights to Satoshi Kon (Perfect Blue)'s new movie Millennium Actress.

The movie tells the story of a woman who was once a star of Japan's cinema, who started prior to World War II, but who has lived the life of a hermit for the past 30 years. The president of a small film company convinces a large studio to help him make a documentary about the star for the studio's seventieth anniversary, and takes along a young camera man to interview her.

The magazine Protoculture Addicts reported on the film at its world premiere at Montreal's Fantasia 2001, and describes the film as as challenging and emotionally satisfying as Satoshi Kon's Hitchcockian slasher "Perfect Blue".

Guillermo del Toro on Domu

Mega Coolness Just Around the Corner... Maybe?

Comics2Film reports that after the success of Blade II, director Guillermo del Toro has become a self-professed comic book addict. Currently projects include Wind in the Willows, Werewolf by Night, The Coffin, Hell Boy, and Domu.

For years he's been attached to direct a live-action version of Katsushiro Otomo's Domu. However, the efforts have been hamstrung by international legalities. "God damn it, we haven't even got the rights. We've been negotiating the rights for four years. Which goes to prove Japanese lawyers are even more complex than fucking American lawyers," Del Toro said. "The moment we have the rights I would go ahead and write it."

Domu is Katsuhiro Otomo's thematic precursor to Akira. The manga starts off as a mystery about strange killings in one of Japan's giant claustrophobic housing projects, and quickly becomes a physic showdown between a young girl, and a wicked old man.

Dark Horse's collection of the mega hot manga series is highly recommended for all horror fans.

Pioneer Announces X TV Acquisition

Pioneer has announced that they hold the rights to the recent X television series. The fact that an American company had licensed it was known, but prior to their announcement it was not known which one. X is the manga teams CLAMP's apocalyptic clash of a tragically destined young man, and two groups with their hands on each other's throat, one wanting to save the Earth, the other wanting to save humanity.

Jubei-chan Manga To Continue - Anime Not Currently In Sights

From Anim News Service Akitaroh Daichi (Child's Toy/Kodomo No Omocha, Now and Then, Here and There) has relayed via his website that the manga version of Jubei-chan: Secret of the Lovely Eyepatch will continue with Jubei-chan 2 which is anticipated to start from May. The original manga series was published by Sony Magazines, with art by Mucchiri Muunii. However, Akitaroh pointed out that there is no talk of a second anime series .

Armitage Dual Matrix Site Opens

Pioneer has opened an Armitage Dual Matrix site at Armitagedvd.com. The original Armitage III (and movie edit PolyMatrix) successfully mixed police action, withscience fiction about a model of robots known as thirds, which where intellectually indistinguishable from humans, and biologically compatible.

Big O 2 Confirmed

Toonzone.net has confirmed that the sequel to the detective noir/giant robot, Big O is on Cartoon Network's fall schedule.

Japanese Lupin III OAV Site

A site for the new Lupin III OAV Return of Pycal, released on 4/3 can be seen here.

The cast an animation looks like it may have taken a page from Cowboy Bebop's book, which Lupin III at least partially influenced.

Lupin III is the grandson of French literary gentleman thief Arsène Lupin. He is accompanied in the series by his accomplishes, the somber gunman Jigen, the stoic samurai Goemon and his love/rival Fujiko, as well as the Interpol agent tracking him, Zenigata.

Kare Kano Dub List

Quoted from a post by Jeff Thompson to the American Anime Dubbing ML:

• Yukino Miyazawa Veronica Taylor
• Tsukino Miyazawa Jessica Calvello
• Kano Miyazawa Megan Hollingshead
• Miyako Miyazawa Rachael Lillis
• Hiroyuki Miyazawa Pete Zarustica
• Soichiro Arima Christopher Nicholas
• Hideaki Asaba Liam O'Brien
• Mr. Arima Bill Rogers
• Mrs. Arima Kristen Nelson
• Maho Isawa Carol Jacobanis
• Sakura Tsubaki Lea Lane
• Sena Rika Angora Deb
• Sawada Aya Rachael Lillis
• Tsubasa Shibahime Lisa Ortiz
• Toshiharu Shibahime Ed Paul
• Hiromi Ikeda Kelli Shane Butler

Some of the more well-known voices include:

Veronica Taylor has previously played Ash Ketchum and his mother from Pokemon, as well as Amelia Wil Tesla Seyruun from Slayers.

Jessica Calvello has voiced a number of characters, ranging from work in Dirty Pair and Cutey Honey to Mink in Dragon Half.

Megan Hollingshead plays Nurse Joy and Officer Jenny from Pokemon.

Rachael Lillis plays Misty and Jessie from Pokemon, and also voiced Utena and Chu-Chu from Revolutionary Girl Utena.

Pete Zarustica previously portrayed Wagnard throughout most of Record of Lodoss War: : Chronicles of the Heroic Knight.

Carol Jacobanis voiced Nurse Harumi from Captain Tylor.

Angora Deb's list of credits include work for Maze and Agent Aika.

Lisa Ortiz is the voice of Lina Inverse of Slayers, Emi and Yumi of Captain Tylor, and Deedlit from Record of Lodoss War.

Ed Paul worked as Lt. Katori from Captain Tylor, and also did work in Pokemon the Movie 3.

Kare Kano is the upcoming shoujo series from Evangelin creator/director Hideaki Anno, to be released in the US by Right Stuf.

Trigun Game From Sega

According to MadMan Cafe (Gamespot Japan) Announced today at Sega's "Game Jam" festival in Tokyo Japan, RED Entertainment - popularly known as the producer of the "Sakura Wars" series, has been revealed to become a part of the Sega Group.

Sega COO Tetsu Kayama revealed that Sega has already acquired 67% of Red Entertainment's stocks from last year. Kayama comments "[I] hope this will strengthen the weak aspects of Sega- project designs and collaboration power." RED president Yasuaki Nagoshi comments "(RED) will continue tie-up projects with other game makers and toy producers, even after becoming a member of Sega.".

Sega has announced three titles in which RED Entertainment will be producing. The first is "The Planet Gun Smoke - TRIGUN", based on the manga "Trigun" by Yasuhiro Nightow. Sega subsidiary SmileBit will be developing the game, headed by producer Tooru Kubo. The game will take advantage of Sega's network technology, and also feature their own new unique presentation technique called "Manga Dimension". The platform for the title is unannounced.

The second - already announced previously with its opened web site, is "GunGrave", a gun shooting game for the Playstation 2. Likewise to "TRIGUN", the game is developed under RED Entertainment and Smilebit. Character designs of the game is handled by Trigun's Yasuhiro Nightow as well, and the mech / robot designs are done by "Sakura Wars" / "Ah My Goddess" artist, Kousuke Fujishima. GunGrave is scheduled for release on the Playstation 2 in July.

See Gun Grave Site

IGN has posted a trailer of Planet Gunsmoke here

Patlabor Mech Designer Creates Real World Mecha

From Anime News Service Following the lead of other anime creators designing real life application mecha such as Macross designer Shoji Kawamori's recent contribution to the design of Sony's latest AIBO, Rahxephon director and Patlabor mecha designer Izubuchi Yutaka has recently aided in the design of Kawada Industrial's human type robot HRP-2 prototype. Unveiled in Japan on the 19th, HRP-2 prototype stands at the height of 154cm, with the weight 58kg. Shoulder length is 60cm with a chest thickness almost the same physique as a woman at 34cm. HRP-2's design has been compared to Honda's ASIMO, the physical appearance of some areas are similar and in some areas HRP-2 ws designed to surpass the Honda design such as degrees of articulation in key joints. Intel's Pentium III 1gHz chip (FC-PGA) serves as a key brain component with storage being handled on a silicon disk of 1GB. Networking is possible via radio LAN, as for the OS, ART-LINUX is adopted. In September it is expected that the first production model HRP-2 will be created incorporating a number of the physical asthetics in the original Izubuchi Yutaka design. With the number of advanced human type robots increasing in Japan, it was hoped that bringing the animation mecha designers touch onboard this project would lead to a radically unique and popular looking design. HRP-2 will show at ROBODEX 2002 in Yokohama from March 28th-31st.

Seiyuu (Voice Actors) Selected For Next Ghibli Film Lead

Anime News Service reports, the seiyuu who will voice the leading role of Haru in the upcoming Studio Ghibli movie Neko no Ongaeshi (The Cat Who Returned a Favour) has been announced: the multi-award winning 20 year old actress Ikewaki Chizuru. In the movie, scheduled for release in the summer of 2002, when 17 year old high school student Haru saves a cat (which cat turns out to be a cat prince), she's invited to the land of cats. There, Haru declares that she wants to be a cat, and a cat baron appears before her. Initial pictures can be found in this Zak Zak report. Click on the pictures for an enlarged graphic. The top picture shows some of the characters from the new movie, including Muta and the Baron from "Mimi o Sumaseba". The bottom picture is a photo of Ikewaki. Neko no Ongaeshi, directed by Morita Hiroyuki, will be a 75 minute movie, to be screened together with the 25 minute long "Ghiblies - episode 2". A Yomiuri report can be found here.

Weiss Kreuz Singles Cancelled - New TV series Broadcast Uncertain

According to Anime News Service, Japanese music retailers have informed customers who have reserved forthcoming Weiss Kreuz Opening and Ending theme singles that their release has been cancelled due to the fact that release date has yet to be announced. Meanwhile, the latest Weiss Kreuz TV series has hit a broadcast snag in Japan with the Kids Station network listing the premiere last month. Each listed air slot was filled with the Sakura Wars TV series.

Weiss Kreuz is about four angst ridden boys who are flower shop workers day, and assassins by night.

R. Talsorian To Do Gundam RPG

ICV2 reports R. Talsorian has acquired the rights to publish a U.S. edition of the Gundam role-playing game. The RPG is based on the earlier Mobile Suit Gundam series (pre SD Gundam). The Japanese company Mekton published the Gundam RPG in 1986, making it the first anime-based role-playing game ever created. The venerable Japanese game, which is published in one large volume, will be broken up into two books for release in the U.S. Volume I, to be published in August with a $35 retail, contains the definitive history of the early portions of the far-ranging Gundam saga including the history of the evolution of the mobile suits themselves. This first book will contain about 65% history/source material and about 35% role-playing rules and procedures. Initial plans call for R.Talsorian to publish a translated version of the original Japanese game -- no new material will be added.

The second volume will be primarily made up of scenarios and tabletop combat guidelines. R. Talsorian plans to publish Volume II in March 2003 and sell it for $25 retail. Given the number of Gundam models and figures available (see "Bandai to Expand Anime Collector Sets"), there should be no shortage of props for Gundam RPG conflicts. With one or the other Gundam series running on the Cartoon Network to create demand, a steady stream of DVD releases, plus graphic novels from Viz (see "Viz to Publish Two Gundam Trades in March") to go along with the Bandai toys, retailers have plenty of Gundam product options. The arrival of the R. Talsorian version of the original Gundam RPG provides yet another way to profit from the most successful science fiction anime franchise of them all.

Upcoming FUNimation Releases

Right Stuf posted the following schedule for FUNimation releases:

• Lupin the 3rd: Pursuit of Harimao's Treasure .09/24/2002
• Yu Yu Hakusho Vol. #5 10/08/2002
• Yu Yu Hakusho Vol. #6 10/08/2002
• Blue Gender Vol. #4 10/15/2002
• Yu Yu Hakusho Vol. #7 12/10/2002
• Yu Yu Hakusho Vol. #8 12/10/2002

Blue Gender is about a young man cryogenically frozen in modern time, and reawakened in the future where humanity is loosing a war to the Blue, giant insect about to metabolize both organic and inorganic matter. The series features some strikingly harsh violence, and strong character interactions.

Yu Yu Hakusho is a fighting anime, like FUNimations key stone, Dragon Ball.

Lain Style OS

An operating system modeled after the one in the anime cyber-thriller Serial Expirments Lain is in development as a modification to FreeBSD 4.5. It can be seen at LainOS.org

ADV Releases Date Announcments

David William of ADV Films announced a number of new release date on Anime on DVD's forum, including volume 5 of Orphen, and Princess Nine: Strike Zone on 05/28/ 5/28, Soul Hunter volume 5: City of Fire on 6/18, and the 7 episode Airbats OAV on 06/11/02.

Legend of Himiko from CPM

Anime on DVD reports Central Park Media will be releasing the first volume of the recent TV series Legend of Himiko ("Himiko-den") on July 9th.

Tench Muyo! GXP Starts

After a delay Tench Muyo! GXP started April second on Japanese TV. The new trailer with the show's theme song can be seen at www.tenchi-web.com/

Anime on UK TV

According to Anime News Service The final episode of Strange Dawn has wrapped broadcast in the United Kingdom, the Japanese version of the theme song was used during the final sequence.

Utena Director Opens English Site

Kunihiko Ikuhara, best known as the directory of Revolutionary Girl Utena has opened his English language site at here

Strange Dawn Volume 2

Urban Visions will be releasing the second volume of Strange Dawn on April 30th. Strange Dawn is the story of two school girls without any special powers or skills, who aren't even too fond of each other, who are transported to a land populated be strange knee high people who expect them to make piece in a border dispute.

April Online Periodicals

The new AnimeFringe takes a look at the popular online manga MegaTokyo, TOKYOPOP's new Samurai Girl: Real Bout High School, and Viz's upcoming release of Osamu Tezaku's Phoenix: A Tale of the Future. The new issue also features reviews of Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade Special Edition, Cowboy Bebop: Knockin' on Heaven's Door, Marionette Generation Vol.2 and Jet Set Radio Future/

The new Sequential Tart features manga reviews including Phoenix: A Tale of the Future, The All-New Tenchi Muyo! # 1, Fushigi Yuugi Vol. 6: Summoner, Dragon Ball Z Vol. 1, Cowboy Bebop #1, Eagle Vol. 1: The Candidate, and anime reviews including Astro Boy Volume 1, Sherlock Hound: Case File 1, Soul Hunter -Vol 1: Taikoubou's Mission, Legend of Crystania, and the Utena movie.

The issue includes a lengthy look at the shounen (boy's) genre of anime and manga, and a run down of popular examples in addition to articles about X/1999: Duet, Dragon Ball GT, Evangelion, and sports anime and manga.

Vagabond Site Opens

Viz has opened a site for the new samurai manga series Vagabond at here

Scary Godmother Animated Update

In non-anime animation news Jill Thompson, creator of Scary Godmother, told Comics Continuum progress continues on a Halloween television special at Vancouver-based Mainframe Entertainment.

"We're preparing a new animation clip for the MIPcon and still working on the Halloween special," Thompson told The Continuum. "The animation is rockin'. It's really wild to see this come to life in 3D. "I've been doing set design, writing, painting and various other cool forms of art direction. What the animators and modelers have done is wonderful."

Thompson said that she has written and drawn a new promotional sales piece for the sales conferences with which she is very pleased. "Hopefully that will help us sell a series after the Halloween Special and get the special a U.S. broadcaster," she said.

Some voice talent for the special has been chosen.

"We've chosen some voice talent for Hannah and some of the kids and it looks like we'll be using the talented young lady who portrayed Scary Godmother in last fall's play as our Scary Godmother," Thompson said. "I don't have final say in such things and Mainframe is tied to Canadian content rules, but it looks like we'll be able to use Renee Prince, who I really feel is the perfect voice for Scary Godmother. I'd use all of the actors who were in our play if I had that kind of control, but I'm happy that I'll get one of them, to be sure."

Once the MIPcon is over, Thompson said she expects to be going to Vancouver for voice recording.

"It's fairly difficult working on this long distance, but we're making great progress," she said. "I'm very excited about what we have ahead of us and what we're producing. I can't wait to have a clip to show the fans of the 3d, movin', talkin' Scary Godmother!"