Sakura-Con 2002

Sakura-Con Saturday report

The s were more numerous and more informative today.

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Pioneer

Pioneer announced their projected release schedule as follows:

June - Armitage: Dual-Matrix.

July - ADV had a response which I will cover in their section.)

August - I, My, Me, Strawbery Eggs, retitled Strawbery Eggs for the US market.

September - X TV plus the Episode 0 Vandread Second Stage (4 volume release).

Additional tidbits. Pioneer has no interest in selling empty boxes for series that have already been released. While they are offering box sets they have no intention of making those boxes available to those who have already purchased a given series. Other companies are not following suit.

Bandai

The big announcement from Bandai was the acquisition of Earth Girl Arjuna though Bandai will title it Char's Counterattack.

Bandai is pushing for a theatrical release of Char's Counterattack as well as a Fall broadcast on Kikaider anime has been postponed indefinitely due to the higher priority of Bandai's current projects.

Bandai has also signed some merchandising agreements around Jerry Chu cited that Cowboy Bebop has scored exceedingly high in the 6 - 11 year old demographic. So much for Adult Swim being for adults. Among the merchandise scheduled to hit the shelves this Fall are character busts, a Faye resin kit, Cowboy Bebop Zippo cigarette lighters, an Ein plush and an Ein dog dish. Oddly enough all of this merchandise is already available in Japan. Also Bandai is relaunching their website at www.bandai-ent.com with a new look, streaming content and current information on their current and future projects.

David L. Williams. The man is bizarre. But he had lots of news. Williams discussed a number of titles including:

• The New Samurai X" and "yes", the DVD covers will be reversable.)
  
• Sakura Taisen
  
• Dai-Guard
  
• Wild Arms
  
• Zone of the Enders
  
• You're Under Arrest movie and Specials
  
• Full Metal Panic!
  
• MazinKaiser
  
• Najica
  
• Angelic Layer
  
• Noir
  

The release of Noir will also include the R2 DVD extras. ADV is also working on converting the rest of its back catalogue over to DVD and they hope to have this completed by the end of this year or early next. Nuku Nuku would come to DVD. Though there were no specifics given ADV is also in negotiation with several outlets for possible broadcast of ADV properties.

In addition to video, ADV will be releasing anime soundtracks as a part of their TRSI. Among the titles confirmed are:

• Kenshin OVA
  
• Ninja Ressurection
  
• Princess Nine
  
• Nuku Nuku
  
• Nadesico
  
• Yamamoto Youko
  
• Slayers
  
• Boogiepop Phantom
  

Also ADV announced that 6 discs will be the standard release format for their 26 episode TV series and will be making 3 discs the standard for 12 and 13 episode series. Their reasoning was that selling a 13 episode series over 4 discs was the same as selling a 26 episode series over 8 discs. So in the interests of consistency they're reducing the disc count of their short series as well. It will be interesting to see how the other anime companies respond to this move that will undoubtedly make ADV very popular among fans. It will certainly give JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. ADV also announced that they will be making empty boxes available to series owners through an outside vendor.

[Update]
We previously reported that ADV had announced s-CRY-ed. David Williams of ADV informed us that this is not the case. We apologize for the error.

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Kyle Pope