Daily Archives: June 30, 2007

Nanoha licensed for the USA

June 30, 2007 – 19:26

According to the Anime News Network, Geneon Entertainment has bought the license for distributing Maho Shojo Lyrical Nanoha and Nanoha A’s in the United States.

Fans rejoice? I think not. Being outside of the USA market, I view things with a different approach. The companies here in Italy have all their problems, but to a certain degree they care about delivering to the user something more than just the episodes. Extras that can also be an incentive over downloading (illegally) over the Internet.

However in the USA market not many care about such things. Geneon has a bad precedent (but don’t get me started on ADV…) in this case, as they offered a “limited” edition of Fate/stay Night for $10 more… while the “limited” only meant a DVD box. Come on, where’s the value for the money? Most of those DVDs aren’t cheap, anyway.

I’ll be watching news for the releases, but as of now I’m more inclined towards R2 DVDs (I’ve already preordered the first StrikerS volume, by the way) than the USA version.

UPDATE: I just read that ADV Films has got the rights for Devil May Cry. Given their record with production quality (i.e. abysmal), I’m not going to spend a single cent on that one. Not to mention that announcing the license now will not speed up the process to get it into the West…

By Einar | Posted in Anime | Tagged , , | Comments (3)

Transformers

June 30, 2007 – 11:16

Looks like NRK beat me to it, but I’ve seen this film myself yesterday night.

To be frank, I wasn’t really expecting a nice result. That is, because most Hollywood “conversions” from other franchises often end up being terrible (Street Fighter, anyone?). Nevertheless, having watched the animated series when I was little (it was good, despite some shortcomings), I was set on seeing Transformers since its original announcement.

Despite not being related to the TV series, I found it to be rather good. The various CG effects for the robots are really well done, especially since they’re quite integrated with the rest of the scenes. I recognized the most famous robots (Megatron, Starscream, Optimus Prime, Bumblebee) but some others not, mainly because the Italian version used different names.

What about the story? Well, being a film by Michael Bay, you can’t expect the tiniest amount of depth in a very linear storyline. Aside the (long) action sequences there are some “funny” moments that sometimes are a little too out of context, and of course a certain self-celebration of everything USA.

Despite the shortcomings, the film is quite fun and watchable. The ending is rather open, so a sequel is likely to come up.

By Einar | Posted in General | Comments (1)