News Brief
July 23, 2010Another interesting week. Here are the highlights:
Testuo Hara, the manga artist and co-creator of Fist of the North Star, has been busy in the music arena, doing the artwork for two upcoming albums.
The first, Still Alive by Tomoyasu Hotei, will feature an instrumental rendition of Ai Wo Torimodose, the original and most well-known theme song from the FotNS television series. The titular track from the album is an original piece, currently being streamed on the Japanese FotNS website. Japanese guitar god Tomoyasu Hotei is best known in the West for Battle Without Honor of Humanity, a song featured heavily in Kill Bill and many other movies.
The second album is by Tetsuo Hara’s goofy looking cousin, and it doesn’t seem to be related to Fist of the North Star, but at least the art looks cool!
Also, a final reminder that Discotek’s first FotNS boxset is coming out next Tuesday. I’ll be marathoning all 36 episodes the weekend it arrives at my doorstep, so look forward to an in-depth review as well as my live tweets of the experience!
Moving away from Fist of the North Star…
Cat Shit One, the CG-animated adaptation of the Cat Shit One 80 manga, premiered on YouTube last Friday, but only IP addresses in Japan are permitted to view it. The 25-minute episode is fantastic, distilling your typical action film to its bare essentials, and replacing the human characters with adorable but badass CG bunnies. It is unclear what the release schedule for subsequent episodes will be.
The Shigurui manga, which was adapted into an anime by Madhouse in 2007, will come to an end this August. The anime was terrific, continuing Madhouse’s proud tradition of animating the best manga around, but it covered less than half of the story. With the conclusion of the manga in sight, might it be possible that Madhouse does a second season to finish what they started? We can only hope.
And finally, Redline, the upcoming original anime film by Madhouse, is scheduled to come out on DVD and Blu-Ray early next year via Manga Entertainment. Awesome!
Screenshot Tuesday: World Record
July 20, 2010With yesterday’s news that the upcoming Redline anime may already be locked in for a US release, it seems appropriate to spotlight the directorial debut of Takeshi Koike this Screenshot Tuesday.
World Record is one of the nine anime shorts that made up 2003′s landmark Animatrix, and it was always one of my favorites. The plot is as visceral as it is basic: an Olympic-level sprinter manages to break free from the Matrix through sheer strength and willpower. Despite its simplicity, this short manages to carry quite a wallop, mostly thanks to Koike’s skills as a character designer and storyboard artist.
You’ve never seen sprinting portrayed this way in an anime, or anywhere else for that matter. Music, sound effects, and animation are all orchestrated perfectly in a coordinated demonstration of just how intense and maddening the sport of running can actually be.
Between the physical intensity of this short, and the extravagant adrenaline-filled trailers we’ve already seen for Redline, there can be no doubt in my mind that Takeshi Koike will hit the ball out of the park as Redline‘s director.
As always, click on the images for the unresized versions.
