From volume six on forward Yen Press will be releasing Yotsuba&! They just picked up (bought) the licensing and the sixth volume will come out September 2009. This is a pretty interesting turn of events, but this just leaves one question, though. Without Yotsuba&!, is ADV Manga completely dead? They don’t really have much of anything unless they still have Gunslinger Girl, which isn’t really a popular read.

Wow, quite a mouthful of a title. Next month will be a great month for Gundam Kit fans who have a wad of cash to burn (me) with the release of perhaps the best looking Perfect Grade (PG from now on) so far. What’s so special about it you may ask? Take 1 part samurai, add it to the Strike Gundam kit, add a sleeker more battle ready look and you get something along the lines of these pictures. If you look closely you’ll also noticew that this seems to be the basic, unpainted, un-lined kit. And that is just downright awesome because 99% of kits shots you see are the finished product of someone who has all the gear ready to go. This is how awesome this beast will look seconds after fitting the last part together. 

Please excuse the small pictures but since there are a few, it’ll save you time opening them. 

 

However with all this awesomeness comes the only downside. The cost. While this isn’t an issue for me because i’m an idiot, at $170 US excluding shipping, it isn’t exactly something that everyone can afford. In Australian that equates to about $260 or so. If your interested, head over to HLJ.com and you can see how much it’d be for you.

As you may remember i’ve mentioned my Perfect Grade Strike Gundam a bit in some of my posts. This is usualy in reference to another gundam kit or just addons i’ve bought for it. Well about a 2 hours ago I was reposing my guy and stupidly put him on on my 7 foot high book shelf, standing on 1 leg, and went across the other side of my room to gather some parts for him to look his best. Some of you can no doubt tell where this is going. While I was picking out the parts for him to hold, there was a huge SMASH and sound of shattering plastic. Yup. My poor widdle Striker fell off the top of the shelf and smashed onto the floor. Sad face.

However despite all logic telling me that there is no way he could be put together after that, I am amazed that all that was wrong with him was that he lost the white armor parts on his shoulders, his head popped off and 1 of his butt flaps came out. All of which was repaired within 5 minutes with no  traceable damage. You really have to hand it to Bandai’s gundam division. Not only are they able to faithfully recreate the robots in all their 13″ glory, split them into 500 – 900 parts and then give instructions on how to build the damn thing, but they are able to withstand a 7 foot fall onto solid wood flooring and come out with the equivilent of a couple of scratches. And this is with no glue or screws at all. +1 for craftsmanship

Faint red outline is the white part that came off, which I like better without it on. The part with the X105 sticker on it also popped off but that was very easy to just press back on.

My Revoltech Eva-01 found himself a nice seat. Shame S.G’s fingers are all dumb looking. Didn’t notice that. Also didn’t notice that it looks like he is saluting the camera. 

The shoulder flaps make an exellent seat for other figures. Pay no attention to the brown water either, I assure you it’s just the light in the house playing tricks.

Well that title says it all. Spicy Wolf’s second season is coming this summer and I for one can’t wait. This was deffinatly a sleeper series a few seasons ago that never really gained as much attention as it should of. At least that I saw. Naturaly the same VAs will return, with most notably being Ami Koshimizu as sexy wolf god Horo. Just remember though that japanese summer is american winter (if I remember right).

While this post isn’t technicly anime related, it is refering to something extremely anime like and that is the brilliant movie from 2005, Final Fantasy 7 Advent Children. Chances are you’ve seen this, loved it and if you have a blu-ray dvd player maybe even wondered 

“When oh when will this movie come to blu-ray? It is a must!” 

Well put away your petitions because on April 16 the offical japanese blu-ray release of this will take place. If that alone isn’t enough to get you excited then perhaps this little bit of news will. Not only will the movie be in super high definition, but will also come with 20 to 30 minutes of extra footage. Thats a lot of extra awesome. On top of even that however is that the extra scenes will be dubbed into english for the japanese release.  Wether that means the japanese version will come with a total english track and subtitles is still unknown to me personaly but we can hope right?

However if those features don’t strike you as worthy of consideration then perhaps this will. In special copies (that you must no doubt reserve) will come the first demo of Final Fantasy XIII. That is right. The first playable demo of the incredible looking game for the PS3. But that is STILL not all. On top of all this extra stuff are the first trailers to Final Fantasy Versus XIII and Final Fantasy Agito XIII in all their High Def glory. However if all that doesn’t get you excited then there may not be any hope for you. Mabye Hello Kitty Online is more up your alley.

Update: As it turns out the so called announcement was a rather cruel play on words. Due to the rather open nature of the original air date, this only refers to a RERUN of the original anime series. Perhaps when that is completed they will air the continuing series. 

Just a small post to let everyone know that hasn’t already heard. The long overdue and awaited Haruhi season 2 will apparently begin airing in april.  However which april, this or next, is still left open for discussion. The news comes from a comercial for anime mag Newtype, which sports a “TV anime broadcasts commence in April” on the front cover. More will be known and updated on when the mag itself drops on the 10th of february.