The Daily Almanac: The War on Pants
FUNimation’s convention guy Adam Sheehan has been teasing on Twitter about some big promotional video they filmed in the FUNimation office yesterday. The project was originally going to involve Sheehan going onto the roof of the office building, but weather conditions forced them to move the filming indoors. He supplied this photo of their state-of-the-art camera system earlier today, and says more details on the secret project will be revealed earlier next week.
What exactly will the video be about? Well, following the release of their hilarious trailer for the series, FUNimation began writing a series of posts about the Strike Witches “winning the war on pants” on their blog. FUNi Brand Manager Charlene Ingram made a connection to the series by tweeting some pants-related jokes towards Sheehan and his secret project.
Sheehan has indicated that the company would be promoting the upcoming release of Strike Witches at next week’s Katsucon convention, and there is a “FUNimation Promotions” panel scheduled the Saturday evening of the convention. So I’m going to bet that this secret project will somehow involve Katsucon and pants… or the lack of them.
As a strong advocate of the War On Pants movement, you can expect The Anime Almanac to provide round-the-clock coverage of all events next week both prior to and during Katsucon weekend.
Give ’em hell, ladies!
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ANN is reporting that the live action Evangelion movie is still on and is expected to finally move further into production in the near future.
In related news, the weather forecast is calling for subzero temperatures in Hell around the same time the Eva movie is made. Monkeys are also expected to be flying out of my butt on the night of the premiere.
I’m not saying that it’s never going to happen. I’m just saying that it’s never going to happen. All my hopes for that project ended back in 2004.
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Black Butler debuts at #1 on the New York Times Manga Bestsellers List this week. This is the first time that Yen Press has ever overtaken the big three (VIZ, Del Rey, and Tokyopop) to take top spot on the list, and to celebrate, they broke out the champagne.
Yen Press released their first book a little over two years ago and they have been quickly growing in a market that has been in decline during that time. I believe that this is going to be the first of many big launches for the young publisher. With their debut of the Twilight manga next month, I’m going to predict that Yen Press will quickly overtake Tokyopop for a spot in the big three of the American manga industry. Heck, they could possibly be bigger than Del Rey by the end of the year.
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And finally, I just want to thank everyone for your support and encouragement over Twitter for the Daily Almanac feature in this first week. While I’m still playing around with the format as each day goes by, I think it’s becoming clear that this is becoming more of an editorial feature than a news report, and I’m fine with that.
It’s been a while since I’ve done some serious opinion pieces on this blog, and people have been asking when I would get back to doing it. I feel that this new format allows me to give out the little bursts of the commentary you’ve come to expect of me, and I can do it without having to devote myself to long, wordy essays.
So to celebrate the end of the first week, enjoy yourself some Neko Nyan Dance!
Have a good weekend, peeps! (^_^) See you on Monday.