Meanwhile, Bandai also fleshed out two of their existing licenses: Gundam Unicorn and K-ON! The second volume of the 6-episode Gundam OAV series (entitled "The Second Coming of Char") will run slightly longer than the first episode at 59 minutes, and the Blu-ray will also feature 29 minutes of bonus footage. It will be available November 2010 in the Bandai Store (street date price $44.99, pre-order $39.98). At other online retailers it will sell for an SRP of $59.98 (barring those stores' individual markdowns).

On the moé front, K-ON! — the slice-of-life series about a group of high school girls in a light music club — will be receiving an English dub from Bandai's mainstays at Bang Zoom Entertainment, including Stephanie Sheh (who was present at the panel) as Yui and EDIT: Cristina Vee* (who showed up in-costume to sing a batch of K-ON!'s songs) as Mio.

* We originally referred to voice actor Cristina Valenzuela (also known as "Cristina Vee") as "Christina Zee." We apologize for the error.

Yen Press licenses Highschool of the Dead, Betrayal Knows My Name, The Bride's Stories, and Higurashi – Demon Exposing Arc: Manga distributor Yen Press announced a number of new manga at Comic-Con, namely Highschool of the Dead by Daisuke Satō and Shoji Sato, Betrayal Knows My Name, a.k.a. UraBoku, by Hotaru Odagiri, The Bride's Stories by Kaoru Mori, and Higurashi: When They Cry Demon-Exposing Arc by En Kitou. [Source: ANN]

Manga scanlation aggregator OneManga shuts down: It would seem that the coalition of US and Japanese manga publishers who joined together last month to fight piracy has actually struck a chord with fan-run scanlation sites. OneManga, one of the largest aggregators of manga scanlations, has announced that they "have decided to abide by [the publishers'] wishes, and remove all manga content (regardless of licensing status) from the site." The announcement has sparked widespread rage from manga readers who have relied on the site for up-to-date (albeit illegal) translations of their favorite series. I'm personally glad to see the site go, as it aggregated many licensed manga series, but it will be a shame to lose a source of obscure, unlicensed manga. [Source: ANN]

Square Enix announces e-manga distribution service: In response to the previously mentioned fight against scanlations, Square Enix recently announced their plan to legally distribute manga online, which will — in theory — help alleviate the perceived drought of online manga caused by the shutdown of scanlation sites. The Japanese publisher's site already features free downloads of the first chapters of Fullmetal Alchemist, Soul Eater, Black Butler, and O-Parts Hunter, while it lists The Record of a Fallen Vampire, Pandora Hearts, Sumomomo Momomo, and Spiral: Bonds of Reasoning as "Coming Soon." Square Enix has made it clear that the paid subscription service may not feature all of those manga series when it launches in fall 2010. [Source: ANN]

I'm as excited as the next guy (actually, way more excited than the next guy) about Bandai streaming old Gundam shows, especially since I'm currently playing catch-up, trying to watch a bunch of the old UC Gundam series. Nevertheless, the release strategy for the Unicorn Blu-ray is simply unforgivable. $50 for a single OAV episode means that the entire show (whose six 50-minute episodes bring its runtime to around that of a 13-episode series) will cost an American a whopping $300 for the Blu-ray release. For what amounts to a 13-episode anime!

Bandai's Unicorn release is following the same strategy of most Japanese anime DVD releases: very few episodes on a disc with a criminally high price point. Because of Bandai's notorious fear of "reverse importation" (Japanese buying the significantly cheaper American discs), they are simultaneously releasing identical Blu-rays, which will certainly stop the few Japanese fans who actually reverse import anime DVDs. Coincidentally, it will also stop most American fans from purchasing this release, which completely defeats the purpose, as it were.

Details regarding the standard DVD release of Unicorn (if any) and more information on the streaming shows have not been released yet, but I will get in contact with Bandai PR to try to iron out some of the finer points of the announcement.

FULL PRESS RELEASE:

AMAZON.COM TO EXCLUSIVELY DISTRIBUTE MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM UNICORN V. 1 BLU-RAY; OTHER GUNDAM SERIES AVAILABLE FOR STREAMING

January 14, 2010 – Bandai Visual Japan announced today that Amazon.com will release the Mobile Suit Gundam UC(Unicorn) Vol.1 Blu-ray with a two-month exclusive window in North America under the “Honneamise” label. Amazon.com will be taking pre-orders starting on January 10 with a street date of March 12, 2010 at a SRP of $49.98. Bandai Entertainment Inc. distributes this Blu-ray product for Bandai Visual Japan.

Since its inception in 1979, the Gundam franchise is considered the introduction of the giant robot or “Mecha” genre in the U.S. Mobile Suit Gundam UC is a series of popular novels by Harutoshi Fukui, which was originally serialized from 2006 to June 2009 in the monthly Gundam Ace magazine by Kadokawa. Ten volumes of the novel have sold over 2 million copies. The story is set in Universal Century, three years after the events of the film Char’s Counterattack. The series will be comprised of six 50-minute episodes directed by Kazuhiro Furuhashi.

The Blu-ray will feature Episode One with Japanese and English TrueHD 5.1 and Japanese and English Dolby Digital 2.0 audio with a 16:9 / 1080P High Definition transfer. Subtitle tracks will include Japanese, English, French, Spanish, and Chinese (in both Cantonese and Mandarin). The English voice cast features the talents of Steve Cannon, Stephanie Sheh, Rachael Lillis, Tara Platt, and others.

Additionally, to celebrate Gundam UC's Blu-ray release, Bandai Channel will begin streaming classic Gundam series starting February 1. This is a long-awaited opportunity for existing fans to revisit their favorites or for newer fans to become familiar with the world of Gundam before watching Gundam UC. Six TV series of Gundam (Mobile Suit Gundam, Mobile Suit Z Gundam, Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, Mobile Suit Gundam SEED, Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny, and Mobile Suit Gundam 00) are planned for free streaming in North America and Europe for limited time only on AnimeNewsNetwork (www.animenewsnetwork.com), Crunchyroll (www.crunchyroll.com) and YouTube (www.youtube.com/AnimeChannel). More series are to be added later.

For streaming schedule and more information, visit Gundam UC's official site: http://www.gundam-unicorn.net/en

*streaming information will be available on February 1.

For more information on Bandai Entertainment please visit: www.bandai-ent.com
For more information on Amazon.com please visit: www.amazon.com

Athrun Zala, a ZAFT recruit working on the mission, comes face to face with his childhood friend Kira for a moment, but only before each of them is thrust into the G Units: Athrun to take it back to Creuset and Kira to stay protected from the weapons fire outside. In little time, Athrun and his comrades have taken their Gundams back, and Kira and his friends are stuck as runaways on the new Earth Alliance spaceship Archangel. Kira is pressed into battle as the only one who can pilot the sole remaining G Unit, beginning once again the classic boy-pilots-mecha scenario.

There is a reason why the main fanbase for giant robots is in anime, not manga. There is also a reason why shojo and mecha are two genres that have rarely been mixed. The painful reasons for both of these facts are clearly illustrated in the Gundam SEED manga, a hit-and-miss attempt to extend the Gundam fanbase to those who prefer paper over pixels.

SEED is Mitsuo Fukuda's re-envisioning of the original Mobile Suit Gundam, and its preliminary story is quite similar. Even as a return to an old story, SEED still has an interesting plotline. The conflict between Coordinators and Naturals is a deep and very modern concept, one that causes us to ask questions that many mecha do not try to pose: What if we lived in a society of natural people, threatened by radical geniuses? What if we had to trust our lives to one of them, because he was the only one who could save us?

We begin with a very uninteresting everyday life story of Kira Yamato as he talks with his friends and blushes in front of girls. Luckily the attack on Heliopolis quickly destroys this relative peace, launching Kira into a mobile suit and his friends into danger. The frenetic feeling held up throughout the middle section of the novel should keep even the most cynical manga art critics interested as the Archangel and its crew try desperately to escape the embattled Heliopolis. By the end of the story, not only are a plethora of opportunities for more adventures left in front of you, but a mysterious blonde-haired girl who knows more about the Gundams than she lets on is now a refugee on the spaceship.

The Gundam SEED anime is well-known for discarding the shonen (boy's comics) character designs of previous Gundam series in favor of a more shojo (girl's comics) approach. This should be immediately noticeable to readers of the manga as well, since it continues to utilize those radically different designs. However, from the little I have seen of the SEED anime, I can say that the manga version of the character designs is much more irritating than anything I saw in the anime.

Characters' eyes are far too large and spaced out, and most of the time it seems that they are only capable of registering a single emotion: shock. A similar point can be made about the mouths, which are always in one of two positions: closed or wide open. By the end of the manga, the identical shape of everyone's mouths when they scream becomes a painful bore.

Like many mecha series, Gundam SEED at least partially makes up for its character mistakes with mecha action. The action is well-drawn, and can be really exciting at times. Additionally, the ship and mecha designs are detailed, cleanly drawn examples of how to make good mecha art. (My personal favorites are Mu La Flaga's Swordfish II-esque space fighter and Rau Le Creuset's modified Ginn)

Even so, many of the Gundams look far too similar to be distinguished from each other. The grayscale print format does nothing to help this, making it a chore to figure out which Gundam is on which side in a fight. It's a shame that some great battle scenes and mech designs could be ruined so quickly by the simple lack of color.

Del Rey is usually very effective with their translation and extras, and SEED is no exception. There are honorifics explanations, detailed translations notes with descriptions of other ways words could have been translated, and even a history of both the Gundam franchise and the manga creators. To make Gundam fans drool even more, Del Rey also included character studies drawn by artist Masatsugu Iwase with full notes about how he draws each character and mech. Finally, an untranslated preview of Volume 2 is also included at the conclusion of the graphic novel.

The Gundam SEED manga is a noble attempt to move the Gundam story to the printed page, but the black-and-white manga format does not favor giant robots. Mech designs and story remain dutifully intact from the anime, and it is these two elements that provide the mediocre redeeming quality in SEED. In truth, Gundam SEED was built for anime, and like many series past and present, the original format is almost always superior. As an introduction to the Gundam universe, SEED is a thrilling and effective tale, but the television series, with its full-color art and more bearable character designs, provides a far more entertaining experience.

Art:		1.5		Average: (2.167 stars)
Plot:		3.0
Overall:		2.0