A little late to the game on this one, but that doesn’t make it not worth talking about. It’s not surprising that they were going to, but Funimation has planned to release Attack on Titan in English in 2014. They announced it back on Saturday at Anime Central, so we can all look forward to a nice, official copy.

That makes me wonder if they’re going to dub it. It’s Funimation. This isn’t like ADV when they were back in their death throws. So who do you think will be picked to voice who? Yuri Lowenthal would be a pretty good Eren. I’m not really sure about anyone else. Maybe Laura Bailey for Mikasa. The most important pick being Sasha of course. The audition is entirely based around the question of, “What would you do to this loaf of bread?” This is fun to guess at.

(Image of the Attack on Titan Vol. 1 Blu-ray cover. © Hajime Isayama, Kodansha, Production I.G., WIT Studio, and the Attack on Titan Production Committee.)

Some anonymous individual has begun translating ONE’s original Onepunch-Man/Wanpanman. He started at the bizarre Chapter 32, probably because that would start with the arc directly after the one we’re in currently with Murata. You’ll now have access to the whole Saitama story all the way up to its current run with the most recent chapters.

If you’re interested. I know a lot of, maybe most, people are coming in for Murata’s super art and will be turned away by ONE’s scribble style. I don’t blame you for that at all. The action scenes don’t have the same level of, if you’ll excuse the phrasing, punch as when Murata draws them. It’s still amusing to get a peak ahead at where the story is going. We’ve even got a peek at the top of the Hero’s Association. The person considered the most powerful being on the planet.

And the next great threat to humanity that has come to destroy us all.

It’s something to consider if you’re dying to know what happens next. You never know. You might find a new action scene to change your anticipation from, “I wonder what the next action scene will be like” to “I can’t wait until this gets remastered what’s takingsolong WHYNOTHEREYET.”

You can read the chapters as they are translated at Batoto.

Most of them, however, use these. These particular ones are pictures of the mini-towels, but these designs are also used for the tiny pillow chains and fan phone straps. You might recognize the Chimi Chara designs as being the same ones used in the little bonus 4koma included with some of the episode synopses. There’s a credit on that one that links it to Studio Moriken and some guy named Yuupon who I think is this guy who happens to work for nitro+.

If you happen to be interested in an official way to rub an adorable Rivaille all over your face in the morning, you can find all the products on Brain Palace’s Titan section. Preorders are being accepted until the 26th, and orders will ship sometime in late June.

(Images from Shingeki.tv. © Hajime Isayama, Kodansha, and the Attack on Titan Production Committee)

Well, if they’re going anime with BlazBlue, we should get ourselves a new Guilty Gear too. This is the trailer for Guilty Gear Xrd -SIGN- released during Arc System Works’ self named festival. Daisuke Ishiwatari will be directing, and there’s a video of Sol Badguy and Ky Kiske kicking the shit out of each other. Good day.

Now all we need is an announcement for Super Persona 4 Arena where they undid the mistake of not including Junpei and Koromaru in the first run to make the announcement cycle complete.

The official site for BlazBlue: Alter Memory has launched. I mean, the site is up and you can go to it. Most of the pages haven’t been made yet, but you can still see them in the menu. Just don’t try to go to the “Caracter” page just yet. It isn’t ready at time of writing.

The pages that are ready are the “Introduction” and the “Cast and Crew” page. The intro is simple enough and explains BlazBlue at its most basic. There’s a bad dude named “Ragna the Bloodedge” who keeps destroying sites run by the evil super government in the year 2199AD. Because of his destructive prowess, he’s been nicknamed “Grim Reaper” (Shinigami) and given a tremendous bounty. He now finds himself in a place called District 13 “Kagutsuchi.”

The cast is entirely self consistent. Everyone from the games are back for the show.

Ragna the Bloodedge – Tomokazu Tsugita
Noel Vermillion – Kanako Kondo
Jin Kisaragi – Tetsuya Kakihara
Rachel Alucard – Kana Ueda
Hazama – Yuichi Nakamura
Taokaka – Saito Chiwa
Litchi Faye-Ling – Chiaki Takahashi
Iron Tager – Kenji Nomura
Tsubaki Yayoi – Asami Imai
Kokonoe – Chie Matsuura
Makoto Nanaya – Tomomi Isomura

And also the entire crew.

Original Work: Arc System Works
Supervision: Mori Toshimichi (Series Producer)
Series Director: Hideki Tachibana
Cooperating Director: Seiji Mizushima (Director – Fullmetal Alchemist, Gundam 00)
Series Composition: Deko Akao
Screenplay: Deko Akao, Tatsuya Takahashi
Character Design/Chief Animation Director: Tomoyuki Shitata (Key animation – Paranoia Agent, Chief AD – Toradora!)
Art Director: Shigemi Ikeda (Art Direction – King Gainer, Turn A Gundam, Planetes, 1000 other things)
Color Design: Haruko Nobori
Director of Photography: Hayashi Kojiro
Editor: Masato Yoshitake
Sound Direction: Masanori Tsuchiya
Sound Production: Studio Mausu
Music Production: Lantis
Animation: teamKG, Hoods Entertainment (In Between Animation – Attack on Titan, Production Assistance – JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure)

We’ve got an interesting bag of people. You can see that there are some who’ve worked on some high profile, good pedigree stuff, but there are also some like Deko Akao who did the series composition for Mysterious Girlfriend X. That may not have been her fault though, so I’ll hold out some hope. If Hoods brings half the game they’ve brought to Attack on Titan, then these fight scenes are going to be pretty good. And, really, that’s all I ask.

(Image from the Official Alter Memory Site. © Arc System Works and the BlazBlue Alter Memory Production Committee)

There’s something about titans looking through windows that I find amusing. They just look so innocent, like curious children or something.

All right, maybe not that one.

This is the episode about closeups on dramatic or shocked facial expressions.

Except for Sasha. I mean, this is a tough situation, but it’s not like someone’s eating bread in front of her.

You can check out the rest of the images at Yaraon.

The Official Shingeki.tv site has announced that there is an Attack on Titan visual novel now in development. The VN is being co-produced by Production I.G. and Nitroplus, a Japanese VN game company. The game will be released in two volumes as a bonus packed in with the Vol. 3 Blu-rays/DVDs, launch date September 18th, and the Vol. 6 Blu-rays/DVDs, launch date December 18th.

They released a staff list. There are two scenario writers, Hiroshi Seko who’s name I’m sure you’re used to by now from the preview and synopsis sets, and a person who’s name I can’t read: 砂阿久雁. I’m not really strong in my name kanji, and it’s hard to find any information on them. They only thing I find reliably is that they are the author of the book Guilty Crown: Princess of Deadpool. Character designer is a person named Namaniku ATK. If you’re interested, you can check out their Pixiv account here, but… well, there’s no nudity on the landing page, but the images are distinctly erotic in nature, so click with care. There’s also a “Participation” credit for Jun Hagane. That ANN page will only list his credit for Demonbane, but he’s also known as an Adult Game Maker and, like the other two, works with nitro+.

You getting that same odd feeling that I am? That it’s weird they’re pulling in people known for making eroge to work on this? Each one of them has a little intro in the Shingeki.tv article that pretty much all boil down to, “Excited about the project, Titan is so cool, will work hard on this,” and it’s all under supervision by Isayama. I guess I just feel like it’s a weird precedent we’re going into this game with.

Vol. 1 of the game will have two episodes, and Vol. 2 will have three:

Vol. 1
1. “Lost in the cruel world” (Mikasa Gaiden)
2. “Choose without Regrets [Advanced Notice]” (Rivalle and Irwin Past Chapter)

Vol. 2
1. “Choose without Regrets” (Rivaille and Irwin Past Chapter)
2. “Title To Be Announced” (Eren and Rivaille Gaiden)
3. “Wall Sina, Goodbye” (Annie Gaiden)

The Blu-ray/DVD with these are a while’s off from being released, so this is a little something to stew over. I wasn’t talking about the Titan blu-rays like the JoJo’s ones because I didn’t think there was as much reason to with the official streams and all that, but you’ll hear about them if they come with big name bonuses like this. Titan’s got a lot of attention, so maybe we’ll get a translation script for them.

(Image from the Shingeki.tv. © Hajime Isayama, Production I.G., WIT Studio, Nitroplus Co., Ltd., and the Shingeki no Kyojin Production Committee.)

They’re making a BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger anime. Who would have thought?

BlazBlue is sort of like Persona for us in that it’s something we only became acquainted with fairly recently, picking up Continuum Shift  somewhere a little less than a year ago. If you’d told me back then that someone was going to make an anime based on it, I’d immediately laugh and say that’s dumb because fighting game is usually, maybe always, that extra special level of bad. Having played it now, though, I know that BB has a monstrous story mode that essentially is an anime acted out with still images and dialogue boxes. I don’t know that that’s enough to make a successful anime, but at least there is a story to use. Also, the I.G. produced opening of CS was pretty nice looking.

The only information is this little magazine page. The URL there isn’t cut off; it’s just the URL for the BlazBlue official site. The picture there is the same one used for this ad which I’m pretty sure is for the novelization of CT. New information will come down. This is just something to ponder for now.

Is it just me, or is Armin’s hair getting bigger?

The signal to retreat is sounded, but Jean, Armin, and Connie are all out of fuel for the 3D gear, so it’s not possible for them to scale the wall and escape. Mikasa catches up to them and they form a plan to head for where the resupply unit was last, but the building is being swarmed by titans. Mikasa begins trying to recapture the area, but…. And the synopsis just sort of ends there.

Screenplay is once again Hiroshi Seko. At this point, it’ll be a surprise when it’s not him all of a sudden. The other crew does change though. Our storyboarder and director this time is Yuzuru Tachikawa, episode director on a number of things including her full creative control of the anime Death Billiards that is her own concept. She also drew this cute Titan picture for her Twitter. Animation direction is by the pair of Takaaki Chiba, Cheif animation director for episode 3, regular AD for 1, and key animation for the OP and episodes 1 and 2, and Kyouhei Tezuka, the Main Animator, fellow key animator to Chiba for the OP and 1 and 2, and AD for episode 2.

I wonder if my favorite, by which I mean the scene that disturbs me the most, will make it into this episode. I hope so because if people are still posting reaction videos, it’s going to be fun to see people looking…

Well, like this.

(Images from Shingeki.TV. © Hajime Isayama, Kodansha, Production I.G., WIT Studio, and the Shingeki no Kyojin Production Committee.)

It is as glorious as you imagine.

You can read the whole chapter from TF’s gallery or over here on Batoto. The post about the translation comes with an important translation note about Huff-Puff (Puri Puri) Prisoner. Directly quoted:

A small note to Huff-Puff Prisoner (original: ぷりぷりプリズナー, Puri-Puri Prisoner). It’s still not clear to me what the Puri-Puri part stands for. Here are the possibilities:

1. Puri-Puri as in huff-puff, he loses control and gets angry easily.
2. Puri-Puri as in firm butt, stiff muscles, commenting his bodyline.
3. Puri-Puri as in Pretty-Pretty. This one is the least likely imo.

If new information comes to light, that name my change, so hold off on the tattoos I’m sure we’re all planning for now.