Hey Guys. As you may already know (it says so in the title), I am at Anime Boston. Right now, I'm over at the Apple Store in Cambridge for a bit (checkin' out the neatness in Tiger & checkin' email), so I figured I'd check in. It's going pretty well so far; aside from the management of the karaoke being grossly incompetent, the con has been quite decent. Been running in to number18 here and there, and mingling with the crowds. The dealers' room is pretty nice, too. While the only Japanese bookstore in attendance is Sasuga Books (so there's no wallet-friendly state of competition with Kinokuniya like at AnimeNEXT last year), I managed to get a number of neat things, which I may / may not explain in a less off-topic spot. Now then...
This morning, I attended the FUNimation industry panel, with Lance whatshisface and something Sheehan (forgot the names, and I don't have the notes with me at the moment to check). Not a whole lot of news regarding DB, other than continuing with the ultimate uncut stuff. They skipped past the Fake-Japanese DBZ trailer to get to the other stuff.
They showed trailers to a few series I didn't know that they had, like Gunslinger Girl, Samurai 7, and Baki the Grappler. And the big announcement of the day was that they're picking up SunaBôzu (to be called "Desert Punk" in English). Actually, those all surprise me, frankly. but the trailers were pretty well done. Less surprising, but still interesting-looking, were the trailers for Kodomo no Omocha (officially abbreviated as "KodoCha"), where dub-Sana did an overview of her life/series in the form of a song/rap, and Bakuretsu Tenshi ("Burst Angel"). Guess I might have to check a few of these out.
After that, they showed a brief clip of the 3rd Tenchi Muyô! OVA, showing most of the cast (except for Nobuyuki and Yosho's wife). Surprisingly, the replacement for Ryoko blends right in; the glaringly different one is actually Tenchi's VA, who is either seriously out of practice or playing the character in all the wrong ways. Or both. The rest of the cased sounded as they always have, though I think Mihoshi was closer to her TV-series rendition than the voice the VA used in the OVAs (I could easily be wrong though; it's been years since I've seen any Tenchi property). But anyways, those who have been worrying about how the dub of this show would be handled, be not afraid (too much).
Then, it was on to the Q&A section. The big topic of the moment was that of whether One Piece and Tokyo MewMew DVDs would be released uncut in the near future. The reps had no straight answer for that, as they said they hadn't yet made any such arrangements with 4Kids. However, they did say that they, like the fans, are certainly hoping so. (4Kids' considering the uncut releases "low priority" certainly doesn't help matters...
)Another question (which I swear was asked by the real-life counterpart of Milton from the movie Office Space) was about the possibility of getting the games Advance Adventure and Sparking to come to the US. While we already know the answer to that, they didn't. So, that's Daizenshuu EX: 1, FUNimation reps: 0.
The one I got to ask (out of several I'd wanted to) was why the movies were being marketed as part of the "Ultimate Uncut" line, when there were uncut releases of the movies previously (with the insinuation that I wanted to know what neat extras there'd be, so it didn't sound like I was insulting their thinly-veiled marketing ploy). Their answer: they didn't know much, as DB wasn't their special focus at the company, but that Pioneer's releases weren't really uncut (which is BS, unless you consider credit overlays to be enough to make it "not uncut"). When I pressed further, they were more upfront, saying that it was mainly a way of differentiating it from Pioneer's release (which is true). I spoke to one of them informally after the panel, asking about music / extras, and he said that the Japanese music would be intact... on the Japanese track (so they aren't going Pioneer's route there; expected, but disappointing), and that there'd be a 5.1 mix of the dub (which is the norm now anyways). So not much news there.
The other two questions I wanted to ask were if we would see DVDs of the first 13 episodes and/or 2 movies of DB anytime soon, plus whether the "Captain Ginyu" discs would be re-released, but from the answers they gave me at the panel, I didn't really expect them to know. I might still ask at their booth if I decide to head back to the dealer's room tomorrow morning, so I'll keep you guys updated as to what I find out.
Anyhow, it's back to the con for me. Right after I finish playing around with all these Dashboard widgets.
Julian, out.
