Bri

True, these company structures are often result from taxes and regulations. But in fairness this happens in every country. Mulinationals operating in the US or Japan adapt their stuctures to local legislation as well. Japan is know for it's conglomerates. A lot of companies, even small ones, outsource the financial administration to accountancy firms. A good ccountant can save you a lot of money and hassle. The EU VAT or taxes in general are not as a big an issue compared to the problems with the labor markets and it's regulations. In fact the EU vat is considered on of the areas of where harmonisation was rather succesful (member states are allowed to vary it within a bandwith of 15 to 25%) The difference in factor mobility makes the EU internal market hard to compare to the US. Differences in social security, language, culture and education make it a lot more costly for people (labor) to migrate to other member states. You need mobility in both capital and labor to have a functioning competative market like the US has. The current situation is far from optimal but you need harmonisation on social policy and education (which does not have popular support) or a US style competative market wont happen in the EU. Coming back to Haruhi, which is a more fun topic: Found an AMV that brought back memories. The old Tenchi Miyo opening just sounds like it was written for Haruhi even though it predates the series by more then a decade: wish there was a version with the Japanese original too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QG4kObq8y2Q

Anime virtual is the German daughter company of Kaze, which in turn, is a French subsidiary of BEEZ (European branch of Bandai Virtual). So you have the official Bandai discs on your hands. Got to love the transparancy of multinationals

Wonder what a small company with an 100 odd people can do with a manufacturer like Saab. Still Victor Muller is crazy enough to pull it off.

Sorry to get your hopes up, R2 is both Europe and Japan. I've bought mine from CDJapan as the Japanese version of season 2 has an English sub. For a while it was not certain there would be a US release, and tbh the difference in price after shipping and taxes would not make it much cheaper for me to wait for a US release. I've bought the Season 1 version from BEEZ in 2008 that's Bandai Europe which is also in R2 and can be ordered from quite a few UK vendors like Play.com. I'm still collecting the Japanese Limited Editions from season 1 but most are sold out.

I've ordered the last two boxes of the R2 release. If the Bandai release will be anything like it, your in for a treat, the quality is extremely good. Wonder if the extra's will be the same. On the R2s is a guided tour by the makers of the anime through the places that were the inspiration for the animation. It's a strange sensation to see that pretty much all the buildings and locations in the anime really exist.

Fortunately they did, apparently the new trailer contained so many spoilers that Lantis pulled it. A new spoiler free has been uploaded: The spoiler laden original trailer can be found on Sankaku.

Robotech is less niche then anime, even one as popular as NGE. I'm sure a lot of people picked up the RT set out of nostalgia or to replace their ageing videotapes. Macek is at least partially right in that the ADV and most of the US licensing market use poor bussiness models. In fairness the only real succesfull players is Funimation. They target the very casual audience with localised dubs and even new anime titles based on american franchises (wolverine etc). That's only audience that is still prepared to pay up. Also they are experimenting with streams which may have the future. As for the Western anime fanbase, they only buy season boxes at low prices (if they don't download that is). That's not a market you can live on. In fairness I don't think the Japanese producers will shed a tear for the death of the licensing industry, it's more of a threat to them then a blessing these days. Recently there was an article on ANN that Funimation stopped retailers to sell American DVD/Blurays to Japan Source ANN. As an example of how thin the base is that caries the industry: I've read that an anime is considered a financial succes if it sells 5,000 units (meaning the whole season) in Japan. Note that a 13 episode R2 season costs around 500$ on DVD,so the threat of imports is quite real.

There are some interesting parts: Accoring to Macek, HG was not allowed to use the name Macross from the original licensing agreement. Also according to him HG had no interest in anime at all untill the original videotape with four dubbed episodes of Macross sold between 25,000 and 40,000 copies at 40$ a piece. Robotech was orinigally not aimed at the kids market, that happened by the networks, the early advertisement had been done trough heavy metal magazine. The guy is pretty arrogant about his own "contributions".

Can't say there are many impressive anime sofar in the winter season . Sora No Woto is okay. Feel good slice of life in post-apocaliptic Switzerland. Backgrounds and music score are very good, but not impressed with the cliche characters. Bit to early to tell but this doesn't seem to be the less niche show originally announced. as for the rest: Durarara has potential. Tales from the big city mixed with some supernatural elements. Hedamari Sketch and Nodame Cantible for the slice of life fans. Was hoping Cobra would be entertaining but it fails pretty much. To bad, the only shows that could have added a bit of testosteron to the season.

Hehe, I know what you mean. The waiting time between tapes was so annoying back then. We got it so much better now with near instantaneous acces to the latest material from Japanese tv. For me in those days anime fandom was mostly an individual thing, closest thing to a forums were the letterpages of the fanzines In hindsight experiencing NGE alone and slowly was not a disadvantage at all. Got enough time to savor each batch of episodes and to digest them. Tbh I didn't even know the ending was so controversial till later. All I can say is that this show left a lasting impression on me. The one thing that infuriates me about NGE to this day is that Manga Video got the DVD release of the movies. The Manga Video disk had the most terrible quality. Bought two duds in a row that didn't work at all. The third set finally worked, and that pair gave out 4 months later. To this day the only disks I have that survived are the Hong Kong bootlegs...

Many thanks to VFTF 1 for selling a VF-0A Shin, good communication and fast shipping.

Don't underestimate the power of stupid. Mad Jack Churchill fought in world war II with a claymore. Quite succesfully. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Churchill

I think it's pretty much impossible to overestimate the impact NGE had on later productions. Unfortunately, and as you said, the influence has not always been positive. It's equally ironic and disturbing that a lot of drama and comedy anime created stock characters based on NGE's cast. Based on their behaviour and looks but often without any resemblance of their motivations. Rei Ayanami is widely recognised as the mother of all things moe. To think that those cute, clumsy characters find their origin in a personality as distorted as Rei's. Emo characters as poor copys of Shinji don't need further discussion. While there were plenty of tsunderes before Asuka, she redefined the looks and behaviour of the modern tsundere. Interestingly, Asuka is a rebel (or revolutionary if you please) without a cause. Fueld by anger, engaging in conflicts or fights she can't win, but this keeps her anger burning. A fire as it were, buring so intense while running towards that one final unwinnable fight to go out in a blaze of glory. What a difference with the cliche tsundere, that just gets warm and cold for the wimpy cliche harem lead. Maybe the high school dream sequence of Shinji was a vision of things to come in anime. I'm not quite sure about this but I think NGE was also the first anime to reintroduce a high school setting. While in NGE this school is hardly a place to nostalgic about, I get the impression this was the start of bringing back high school life in virtually every genre of anime.

That's a very interesting point. I've seen NGE get called one of three shows that were a "social phenomenon" in Japan: Yamato, Gundam and NGE. While I can see why these shows were innovative and changed the way people look at animation, but I don't know the ins and outs on why they had such a mainstream impact. NGE was very strong in dealing with depression. But wasn't NGE was also a social critique on the conditions for the youth in Japan in the nineties? The heavy pressures from the education system, cram schools and all that. I've read that Shinji was a novelty in Japanese fiction and broke social boundaries in the way he refused to do what was expected of him and not prepared to "act" (or put on different "masks", not quite sure how to put it into words here) differently in various social situations like at home, school and work.

First I could find on short notice.

Ok, 2000 dollar is a lot of money but in fairness, compared to high end garage kits and some Forge World projects it's not that crazy. Just stop thinking of it as a toy and see it as a model kit. If you want exclusive you gotta pay.

Chinese 3d animation video with several types of aircraft, hilarious. The A-10 just owns. The link was originally posted in an obscure thread.

Ah the very humble start of Protoculture Addicts. The bad old days when anime news was confined to mags like Animerica, PA and Anime UK and the catalogs of Diamond and Capitol. Thank goodness for the internet...

It aired in the eighties on Super Channel which was a UK based satellite channel, some cable networks also relayed that station. Not sure how early it was broadcasted in France, they were pretty early with bringing over anime. As a result RT is pretty obscure in most of Western Europe. It had virtually no impact here on anime. The really early stuff was things like Remi: Nobodies boy, Blue Noah, Candy Candy, Maya the Bee, Sinbad, Galaxy Express, Gatchaman, Albacore(Harlock) etc. Come to think of it Macross is actually better known then RT as Macross Plus was pretty much sold everywhere when Manga video started to sell DVDs.

RT has a place in bringing anime to the west, but I'm tempted to say it's largely due to shows like Pokemon, Dragonball Z and Sailormoon Shagging Kira earned the poor Flay the biggest deathmark in the history of Gundam. Off course for a gundam pilot to actually get some before dying a bitter young vigin upset the natural order of Tomino and Kira evolved to the next stage..wait Melanie McQueen isn't it? RT did have a good voice cast compared to even current dubs, but it's far from the quality of voice acting displayed in original anime. Voice acting in Japan is a real profession with years of vacational training and it shows.

By the power of google and youtube: Erik Satie - Gymnopédie No.1

So true, I've rewatched the Patlabor TV series a while back. Left me a bit melancholic that a show like this can't be made anymore. The characters just have it all. Noa's got cute down to an artform without moe cliches. Asuma is not a bishji emo twat. Goto just rules every scene, the mechanics are brilliant and Ota is well... Ota. Guess I'm getting old

Queens Blade and Ikkitousen are tournament anime with big breasted bimbo's slugging in out while getting undressed in the process. Think of superheroines and Streetfighter type videogames with nudity. Queens blade is connected to Hobby Japan, a modeling magazine. It's very popular over here with teenagers for obvious reasons. Doubt it's interesting for people in a less hormone driven stage of life. There is tons of great material out there, the more I see, the more I realise what I haven't seen and still want to see. There have been over 2000 anime made the last decade, even if 90% is crap that still leaves 200 great titles to watch out there and there is more before that. Why don't you buy a region free DVD player? Those things cost next to nothing and then you can order anime from the States (very cheap if you buy season boxes). Sites like Right stuff, DVD Pacific, Play and Deepdiscount all offer large selections and inexpensive shipping.

The main cast acts more like a high school harem comedy with all the fanservice and cliches attached. But I guess this is what current otaku audiences expect and want. MF is commerically succesfull so we may see more of it in the movies. I can live with it, as Macross as franchise is renewed by MF and it's movies and times will change again. I agree, unless the people to be introduced are into current anime, MF is likely to raise a few eyebrows. I wish BW/Satelight would take the Bandai approach and make three 90 min movies of SDFM like was done of MS Gundam and Zeta. Reanimate a couple of the weaker parts and streamline the story for introducing new fans. True, it's a good standalone story. The one thing against me using Plus as an introduction is that it's the edgiest and most serious of the Macross series. It may create wrong expectations. The positive side of Macross doesn't really show untill the resolution of the storyline.

Main Character: “It’s a trap!” Director: “Erm, this is the romantic interlude, not a space battle” Main character: “I know!”