I awoke Christmas morning to find a flagging hard drive, and so 2005 arrives with me toiling away at formatting my new one. But Happy New Year all the same!

Hopefully it brings many awaited things, such as Kodocha finally making it to DVD, or the third volume of Tenshi Ni Narumon, apparently 'in stores now'. I'll believe it when they ship my copy.

--Leif

Very white, but perhaps too white. How do 20" drifts in the driveway sound?

There's only one thing to do in this kind of weather: Ski!

--Leif

If you missed it at Amazon, don't miss it at DVD Empire!

Okay, so this isn't really news, since I'm not in the habit of posting 'deals', but I was so bummed at missing it at Amazon, I thought I'd mention it here.

--Leif

Well, I was the 'victim' of an eBay account highjacking yesterday. Yes, indeed! I checked my email this morning to find several questions from eBay members regarding an Auction I knew nothing about. Apparently it was listed yesterday evening with my account. The listing requested anyone to email him before bidding. The email of course was not mine.

I'm not sure how he expected to collect payment, but he still had access to my account today, as indicated by answering a question in the auction! Quite disturbing. I expect he wanted to direct all listing and ending fees at my account, and likewise the fallout from the item not being delivered, if he was able to aquire payment.

No harm done though, he didn't change my password, probably hoping I wouldn't take notice until after the listing was ended. I have changed it of course, and hope that Santa took notice of this fiasco. No presents for you Mr. 'bobeljohn'!

--Leif

Don't eat too much. Many a person has injured themself from the over filling of their stomach.

--Leif

ICv2:

November 16, 2004

FUNimation has scheduled the first DVD release of the long-awaited Kodocha anime for June 26th, 2005. This 102-episode series, based on the manga by Miho Obana and directed by the maker of Fruits Basket (see "FUNimation Nabs Kodocha Anime"), was announced earlier this year. Tokyopop has already released all ten volumes of the manga.

And it's about time too. Let's all hope they don't screw up the cover, or the logo, or, well, anything for this most anticipated series.

--Leif

Yes finally, it's out! 1.0 of the popular Mozilla variant Firefox (Previously known as Phoenix and Firebird).

I've been using it for almost exactly a year now, never regretted it.

--Leif

To me, as well as the Marine Corps.

--Leif

Or All Hallow's Eve, take ye pick.

--Leif

Recently FUNimation has shown they can be as good of publisher as anyone of the other Japanese Animation distributors in America, but there's still one area where to lag behind I think: Cover Art.

Fullmetal Alchemist will undoubtebly be their premiere title next year, so it's important for them to do it right. So far it's sounding good, with four episodes on the first disc (Slated for a February release), as long as they keep giving us Alternate Angles. But the question of logo design is a big deal, and in my opinion it's feeling homogenized in regards to FUNi's properties.

Here is the cover art for FUNi's forthcoming release of Fullmetal Panic Volume 1:

It's not a bad cover by far, in fact it's almost identical to the Region 2 release, sans the logo. Unlike most releases though I wouldn't want a direct copy, as you can see, here's the Japanese R2 release:

No logo! It's odd though, because there is a Japanese logo for Fullmetal Alchemist, as you can see here in a limited edition release of volume 3:

Closer up:

Quite a nice logo isn't it? It even includes the title in English.

My problem isn't that the American logo is terrible. It even tries to keep with the general look of the original, with color and a metallic shine, but like FUNi's other English logos it looks like a Photoshop creation. Much less interesting than the Japanese, and frankly I think they cheapen their properties.

If American Anime distributors could suck in their gut and actually use the original Japanese logos when they have English lettering, I think they'd do a service for the whole industry. As it is they seem to change them just for the sake of it, even taking purely English letter logos and making new ones. Sometimes this could be the fault of the Japanese licensor refusing usage, but mainly I think it stems from condescension, thinking their buyer base will be turned off by Japanese letters on Japanese properties (Geneon is excluded from this of course).

--Leif