Viz media has announced that it started providing digital downloads of the Naruto ninja action anime series on IGN Entertainment’s Direct2Drive online store on November 15. The first 25 episodes are available now in subtitled or dubbed formats for US$1.99 each, with more to be gradually added. Viz Media has been offering Death Note and Bleach anime episodes on the same service. The Direct2Drive store is restricted to United States residents and computers running Microsoft Windows operating systems.
Publishers Weekly’s Comic Week cover the first month of MangaNovel, the unique online service which displays licensed manga with translations provided by both end users and in-house staffers. Since its October launch, MangaNovel has added two more authors, three exclusive online titles, and translations in several languages. While the service still requires a Windows operating system, Executive Director Atsushi Kunimatsu said the service is planning to accommodate PDAs and the iPhone/iPod Touch portable devices, which are based on Mac OS X.
Episode Synopsis: In our fourth podcast, we bring you a special Evangelion packed episode where we give our review of the Neon Genesis Evangelion TV series, End of Evangelon film, and Evangelion toy models.
Twentieth Century Fox has officially announced that it signed director James Wong (Final Destination, X-Files, The One) And casted twenty-five-year-old Justin Chatwin (War of the Worlds, The Invisible, Lost television series) in the lead role of Goku for the movie adaptation of Akira Toriyama’s Dragon Ball Action manga. According to the Variety newspaper, filming is set to begin this month, and the film is slated to open worldwide on August 15, 2008. James Marsters (Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Spike, Smallville’s Brainiac) will play the antagonist Piccolo, and Stephen Chow, of Kung Fu Hustle and Shaolin Soccer fame, is producing the project.
Wong will not only direct the film, but he also rewrote an earlier script that was submitted by Ben Ramsey (The Big Hit). According to The Hollywood Reporter newspaper, the story centers around the alien Goku as an adult as he protects Earth — the very planet he was sent to destroy. Chatwin is training under the stunt firm 87Eleven (The Matrix, The Bourne Supremacy, 300). Other roles are still being casted. Previous reports have indicated that shooting will take place near Montreal, Canada and in Mexico, and that Heroes actor James Kyson Lee is auditioning for the role of Yamcha.
Between 1984 and 1995, Toriyama created 519 installments of the original manga for the publisher Shueisha and it’s Weekly Shonen Jump magazine. The manga’s 42 compiled volumes have sold over 150 million copies in Japan and over 300 million copies worldwide. Both the manga and its anime adaptations (Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z) have enjoyed success in countries in Asia, Europe, North America, and South America. The 17 animated movies in the franchise have been seen a record 49 million times in Japanese theaters. Fox first acquired the live-action film rights to Dragon Ball in 2002.
During his November 11 panel at Pacific Media Expo in Los Angeles, actor James Kyson Lee (Heroes television series’ Ando) said that he is trying out for the role of Yamcha in 20th Century Fox’s live-action adaptation of Akira Toriyama’s Dragon Ball manga. He says that the movie is planned for a 2010 release and that he approved of the script so far. He also said that he was a childhood fan of manga such as Dragon Ball and Takehiko Inoue’s Slam Dunk — of which he had read the entire run.
In an AnimeonDVD.com forum discussion on future titles that Media Blasters will be dubbing for North America, CEO John Sirabella said his company “will be dubbing shows like Kujibiki [Unbalance] and Genshiken 2 and Dojin Works […].” When asked whether he was referring to Doujin Work, which has yet to be announced for North American release, Sirabella declined to confirm or deny this. The 2007 Doujin Work comedy anime television series adapts Hiroyuki’s manga about a girl’s first foray into Japan’s d0jinshi (self-published manga and other works) scene.
Starting on November 15, and continuing until January 15, Microsoft will make the first two episodes of the Blue Dragon anime series available for free downloads on the Japanese version of Xbox Live Marketplace. This promotion is tied to the November 1 Japanese release of the budget-priced Platinum Collection version of the original Blue Dragon game.
The book and media store Borders is exclusively offering a collection with seven of the eight Studio Ghibli films that were directed by Hayao Miyazaki and are available on DVD in North America. The Miyazaki Collection contains DVDs of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Laputa: Castle in the Sky, My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle at a price of US$202.99. Until November 12, Borders Rewards members can use a coupon to take 30% off that amount.
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