Been a lot of things going on, so I haven’t had time to review the manga or anime titles as normal. Sorry about that. But I have a few minutes before I see the doctor so here goes some thoughts on recent anime events (or maybe not so recent).

Item 1: ADV has the 2nd Ah! My Goddess TV series as everyone has long known. What I was blissfully unaware of is that instead of using the name “Everyone Has Wings” (which is the translation of “Sorezore no Tsubasa”), ADV is going with “Flights of Fancy.” I was peeking in on some A!MG boards and folks aren’t too happy with this. While I won’t be buying this series (I was sorely disappointed with the anime adaptation of the manga), I am wondering what thought process was going through the folks at ADV’s head. The title of the DVD’s aren’t much better. Oh well.

Item 2: Most anime fans hate 4Kids and their treatment of anime titles they’ve licensed. Gone are the days of Pokemon where they could do what they wanted and who knew the difference. Every time the head of 4Kids would open his mouth about anime or manga (Khan), fans would scream. Every time they licensed an anime, fans would scream. When One Piece was licensed by them, the screams were the loudest I ever heard. Further, I’ve never heard such passion, even among casual anime fans, wanting 4Kids to lose the license.

A while back, 4Kids dropped all references to One Piece from their website, including the official site they’d created. Fans were all a buzz about this, wondering what had happened. Even when folks would say, “Yes, 4Kids has lost the license,” fans were afraid to believe it. Then FUNimation comes out and says, “We have the license.” Mato will be translating it and while there is uncertainty as to where in the series FUNimation will start releasing the unedited DVD’s (for the Toonami TV release, FUNimation has to start dubbing with episode 144, picking up where 4Kids left off), fans are ecstatic. With the unedited DVD’s, fans are happy with Mato saying how things will be in the subtitles, and mostly happy with how the dubs will be done.

I’ve never seen the series, but with Mato doing the subtitles, I may be checking it out now (assuming FUNimation releases the early episodes on DVD sooner rather than later). I believe 308 episodes have been released in Japan so FUNimation has another “unending” series in their library. I suspect this one will do better than Detective Conan though.

Item 3: Despite Viz’s horrible treatment of the Maison Ikkoku manga (and my dissatisfaction with the subtitles for the anime), I still love the series from Takahashi-sensei and feel it is her best work. The Japanese have felt this as well, so I suppose it is only natural that a live-action version was next on the agenda. I don’t know how many live-action adaptations of manga/anime you guys have seen, but I’ve seen a few. The Sailor Moon live-action series made me cringe. The You’re Under Arrest! live-action series was just awful. The original Maison Ikkoku movie wasn’t very good to me. BUT, the live-action Honey and Clover movie was pretty good. So, while I am uncertain as to how this series will be, when it airs on May 12th, I plan on catching the raw (maybe we’ll see some subtitles for this). I’m not sure about the casting for Ichinose-san. She doesn’t have the short, stocky look of the anime. Yotsuya-san looks way too old for the role, but again, we’ll see how things play out.

Well, that’s it for this installment.