No manga, obviously.

Anime:
Maria-sama Ga Miteru, Season 4
Aria the OAV and Aria the Origination
Junjo Romantica, Season 1 and 2
Antique Bakery

Nicely divided; half yuri series, half yaoi. :)

Sorry about the lack of Shakespeare. I'll try to post about Caesar soon.

Catching up on DVD releases, Warner Bros. is releasing the first 6 Peanuts specials in a box called 'The '60s Collection'. If you get it on Amazon, it's under 20 bucks. It's mostly a re-release of stuff what's been out already, but hey, we loves the chronological. They're all unedited (bar the Coca-Cola sponsor refs in A Charlie Brown Christmas, which are cut for obvious reasons). You get A Charlie Brown Christmas; Charlie Brown's All-Stars; It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown; You're In Love, Charlie Brown; He's Your Dog, Charlie Brown (New to DVD); and It Was A Short Summer, Charlie Brown (new to DVD). As an added extra, you get a documentary on the late Vince Guaraldi, creator of the timeless jazz music that backs up Peanuts.

A reminder to MST3K fans that Vol. 15 is out next week, with The Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy; The Girl In Lover's Lane; Zombie Nightmare; and Racket Girls. (Racket Girls is in my top 5 MST3Ks, I adore it). There's also tons of extras.

And in August, Daffy Duck's Quackbusters gets a release from WB. It'll be great to see this movie again.

Now, AX is this weekend. There will likely be a few new manga licenses, and I'll try to note them here. Here's a panel schedule for manga and anime publishers, all times Eastern Standard):

Today:
Digital Manga Publishing (1pm)
Right Stuf (8pm)
EigoManga (10:30pm)

Friday:
Bandai (noon)
CMX (2pm)
Viz (6:30pm)

Saturday:
Yaoi Press (2pm)
Funimation (3:30pm)

Nothing on Sunday. Tokyopop isn't going this year, as they're still restructuring. Del Rey traditionally does its big licensing at NYAF; so does Yen. Wait for September on those.

Briefly...

Dark Horse had one new announcement:

Evangelion: Shinji Ikari Raising Project. Shonen. Kadokawa Shoten, serialized in Shonen Ace since 2005.

Right Stuf has announced the animes Gakuen Alice (one box for the whole series) and Toward the Terra (the old 1980s movie). They also plan to have an interview with Konno Oyuki, creator of MariMite, on a future DVD box. Fans can submit questions, more details later.

Bandai has licensed Gundam 00, which isn't a surprise, and Hayate the Combat Butler, which is.

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2008-07-04/funimation-picks-up-over-30-former-ad-vision-titles

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2008-07-03/funimation-agrees-to-distribute-select-geneon-titles


I, for one, welcome our new Funimation overlords.

I saw an article recently discussing current trends in anime lately, and one thing that caught my eye was the inevitable demise of the 'single DVD' release. It's going to be a slow demise, as it will be over Japan's dead body, but it's coming.

Most companies still in business these days know that the best way to market things these days for actual sales is the way they market US TV - via season sets of 20 or more episodes in a box. You won't see 'House Volume 1, Episodes 1 and 2' here. And in a declining market like anime's, it's especially important. Remember how Kodocha died halfway through its run here? That's because it came out in 4-episode-a-disc DVDs, and no one bought them as they wanted to wait for the box. I suspect ADV has put Sgt. Frog anime on hold for this reason.

Japan, though, still has fans willing to pay through the nose for anything. They still have the $60 30-minute one episode DVD releases, and cherish them. And they get very irritated when fans in Japan import the complete FMP box set from the US at something like 1/3 what they'd pay in Japan.

So licensors say 'you have to release this in single DVD parts first, so that we don't have pirates buying it all up'. This makes US companies sad, as it means the series is far likelier to fail.

I don't know how this is going to shake down. Geneon went out of business, and it would not surprise me to see ADV follow them by the end of this year. I think it's going to have to be up to Japan to save the US anime industry by giving in on a few things, really. And I'm not holding my breath.