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The Girl Who Leapt Through Time Opens in Boston

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, the award-winning family adventure film about an ordinary girl who gains the ability to leap back in time, will open in Boston, Massachusetts this Friday and in Seattle, Washington next Friday. Boston's Brattle Theater will screen the film from this Friday to Monday, August 25. Seattle's Landmark Theatres Varsity will screen the film from Friday, August 29 to Thursday, September 4.

The film features Mamoru Hosoda (Digimon, Superflat Monogram), the director who was initially slated to direct Studio Ghibli's Howl's Moving Castle film. Evangelion's Yoshiyuki Sadamoto designed the characters that the veteran studio Madhouse (Ghost in the Shell, Paprika) animated. The film earned the Best Animated Film award at the 39th Sitges International Film Festival, the Animation Grand Award at the 61st Mainichi Film Awards, the Animation of the Year honor at the 30th Japan Academy Prize ceremony, the Animation of the Year honor at the 6th Tokyo International Anime Fair, the Best Animated Film award at the International Film Festival of Catalonia, and the Special Distinction for Feature Film honor at France's 31st Annecy International Animated Film Festival. The film's North American distributor, Bandai Entertainment, announced at Anime Expo last month that it licensed the rights to Ranmaru Kotone's manga adaptation of the movie. DC Comics' CMX Manga division licensed Gaku Tsugano's separate manga version of the original novel that inspired the movie.

Live-Action Blood to Open in U.S. in March

The Korean news website Star News reports that Universal Studios is planning to release Chris Nahon's live-action film adaptation of the Blood: The Last Vampire anime film on 2,000 screens in North America next March. South Korea's Gianna Jun (Ji-hyun Jun of My Sassy Girl) stars as the ageless girl Saya who hunts down a breed of blood-feeding demons in Tokyo in 1970. France's Pathé and Hong Kong's EDKO Film plan to distribute the film in other countries around the world simultaneously. Pathé lists a June 2009 release date for France, but the current Korean release date has not been announced.

Source: KFC Cinema

Code Geass R2 to Run on Adult Swim in U.S.

Cartoon Network's Adult Swim programming block will run the Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion R2 sequel series in the United States. The late-night block has been running Bandai Entertainment's English-dubbed version of the first Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion robot anime series since April 26. The 18th episode of Code Geass R2 just aired in Japan on Sunday, and the series is expected to end after 25 episodes in October when the second season of Gundam 00 will take over its timeslot. Code Geass R2 continues the alternate-history struggle between the Britannia Empire and the oppressed "Elevens" of former Japan, after the cliffhanger ending of the first series. Goro Taniguchi is directing the animators at Sunrise on this project with character designs by the popular manga artist quartet CLAMP.

Bandai Entertainment just shipped its first Code Geass DVDs as individually packaged discs, a two-disc set, and a limited-edition set.

New Fullmetal Alchemist Series Confirmed

The wraparound jacket band on the 20th volume of Hiromu Arakawa's Fullmetal Alchemist manga will confirm on Friday that a new television anime series is in the works. A new anime series was a topic of much fan discussion for several months, but it was thrust into a more public spotlight last month when a management document was purportedly leaked from the BONES anime studio. The document listed Fullmetal Alchemist animator Yasuhiro Irie as "Hagane 2 kantoku" (Iron/Fullmetal 2 director).

After the purported leak, BONES President Masahiko Minami posted an official statement that said that no file with this same formatted information existed within the company. When asked about the possibility of a sequel to Fullmetal Alchemist or Darker than BLACK (another BONES anime), Minami told ANN, "It hasn't been decided yet. We are interested in doing them. As original science-fiction works, they were extremely fascinating. With these kinds of dramatic story lines, I feel that there's a lot we could do potentially."

Viz Media will publish the 17th volume of the manga version in North America this October, while FUNimation Entertainment released both the first television series and its theatrical movie finale.

Source: 2ch, ANN

Madhouse Still Working on Ninja Scroll 2

Masao Maruyama, the co-founder of the Madhouse anime studio, revealed at his Otakon 2008 panel today that his company is still working on plans for a sequel to the Ninja Scroll action anime film. However, he noted that Ninja Scroll 2 project still needs a script that is acceptable to himself and franchise creator Yoshiaki Kawajiri.

The original movie opened in Japan in 1993, and Manga Entertainment released it in North America and other areas. Madhouse has since created a 2003 spinoff television series that Urban Vision licensed for overseas distribution. The American publisher WildStorm created its comic book take on the story in 2006.

Bandai Adds .hack//G.U. Trilogy Anime

The North American distributor Bandai Entertainment has announced at its "surprise" Otakon 2008 panel on Saturday night that it has acquired the feature-length .hack//G.U. Trilogy anime film. Cyber Connect 2 (.hack//SIGN, .hack//Legend Of The Twilight) adapted the story of the .hack//G.U. role-playing game trilogy for this newly animated feature in high definition. The project was first screened in a Tokyo theater in December of 2007, and Bandai Visual released the project on DVD and Blu-ray Disc in Japan, after an initial delay, just this past March. Bandai Entertainment and the other Namco Bandai group companies have released the earlier game and anime installments in the franchise, including the .hack//Roots prequel.

Second Death Note Special to Air

The Japanese broadcaster NTV has announced that it will air the Death Note Rewrite 2: L o Tsugu Mono (Death Note: Rewrite 2: L's Successors) special on August 22. Like the first special, this new compilation will summarize a part of the 2006-2007 television anime series. Specifically, it will recount the final half of the supernatural suspense story, including the investigators Near and Mello's confrontations with the vigilante Kira. For those who have not seen the first special (Death Note Rewrite: Genshi Suru Kami) last August or the television series, the genius detective character L and his assistant Watari will provide exposition of the story leading up the second special.

Viz Media published Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata's original manga in North America, and Cartoon Network's Adult Swim programming block just completed its first run of the television anime series from Viz this summer.

Source: Saishin Anime Joho, and ANN

Live-Action Cowboy Bebop Film in Development

The IFMagazine.com entertainment website reports that film producer Erwin Stoff (The Matrix, A Scanner Darkly) is developing a live-action adaptation of Sunrise's Cowboy Bebop multi-genre action anime series for Fox. Stoff told the website that the project is "in the really early stages" since the parties "just signed it the other day." Shinichiro Watanabe's original anime follows the motley crew of the spaceship Bebop as it travels throughout the solar system in search of the next job. Stoff promised "a real degree of faithfulness," and added, “When I met with them in Japan, one of the first things that I brought up was the experience that we had on A Scanner Darkly, and how hard we worked to remain faithful to Philip K. Dick, and that was our big concern here.”

The anime distributor Bandai Entertainment and Cartoon Network's Adult Swim programming block released the original 1998 television series in the United States, and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment released the subsequent 2001 animated movie. The anime was also adapted into two separate manga series, and Tokyopop released both manga series in North America.

Funimation Picks Up Over 30 Former ADV Titles

The North American anime distributor FUNimation Entertainment and Japan's ARM Corporation have announced that ARM has transfered the rights to more than 30 of its titles — all previously held by A.D. Vision — to Funimation. Those rights include the home video, broadcast, digital, and merchandising rights in North America and other regions. The complete list of transferred titles is as follows:

009-1, Ah! My Goddess: Flights of Fancy, Air Gear, Air movie, Air TV, Blade of the Phantom Master, Comic Party: Revolution, Coyote Ragtime Show, Devil May Cry, Guyver: The Bioboosted Armor TV, Jing, King of Bandits: Seventh Heaven. Jinki:Extend, Kanon, Kyoshiro to Towa no Sora (once titled as Shattered Angels by ADV Films), Le Chevalier D'Eon, Magikano, Moeyo Ken TV, Moonlight Mile, Murder Princess, Nerima Daikon Brothers, Pani Poni Dash!, Project Blue Earth SOS, Pumpkin Scissors, Red Garden, Sgt. Keroro 1st & 2nd, Tokyo Majin, UFO Princess Valkyrie, Utawarerumono, Venus Versus Virus, The Wallflower, Welcome to the NHK, and Xenosaga.

These are most of the titles that had been removed from ADV Films' catalog in January. A majority of them were relisted in ADV Films' catalog in February, only to be gradually removed for a second time. ADV Films also once planned to release Gurren Lagann, but Bandai Entertainment announced in May that it had acquired the series. 5 Centimeters Per Second is not on Funimation's list of transferred titles, but copies of ADV Films' release remain available at retailers.

The joint Funimation/ARM announcement comes the day after Funimation announced it will also manufacture and distribute select titles that Geneon Entertainment (USA) had planned to release before it ceased in-house DVD distribution. Funimation indicated that the new titles from ARM will be significant to its efforts in "social networking, the FUNimation Channel, and Internet VOD."

Possible Sequel to Fullmetal Alchemist?

In an interview, ANN asked Minami (Bones Studio President) about the possibility of a sequel to Fullmetal Alchemist or Darker than BLACK. Minami told ANN, "It hasn't been decided yet. We are interested in doing them. As original science-fiction works, they were extremely fascinating. With these kinds of dramatic story lines, I feel that there's a lot we could do potentially." The rest of the interview will be released on the ANN website after Anime Expo.

Souce: ANN