And here we are – having finally arrived at our third and final installment of the Summer 2010 Anime preview – although, in truth, it has become more of a review at this point, since many of the shows have already started airing. What’s more, because of deals struck by such online entities as Crunchyroll, Funimation and AnimeNewsNetwork, a number of these shows are already available to watch online.

Which is great if you have a nice broadband connection to play with. But I’m not here to discuss the internet – moving on, let’s take a look at three or four more shows I have an interest in.

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I’ve been wanting to get to this for a while now – but various factors (moving the blog, time, and other things) has been preventing me from actually getting around to it.

Firstly – I have in the past posted some of my own fan-art on the blog – but it’s rather undistinguished – I trace, shade and colour. Hardly the most complicated thing on the planet, for all it earns me some compliments (always nice – thanks guys). Of course, there are some guys and girls out there with true talent – and I figured it’s time that I introduce you to some of them.

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I saw this coming in as a search to Animated Meanderings, and I decided that I’d take a look around and see what info I could dig up about it. Earlier this year, I did a post about the Vocaloid concert held in Tokyo on the 9th of March – and thanks to Vocaloidism, I have learned that Sega have announced a release of the concert.

The concert will be available in 3 formats – BlueRay Disc, DVD and CD – and the release is scheduled for the 1st of September this year. This is great, since it is just the week before my birthday (*hint hint*). Here’s the eye-candy Read the rest of this entry »

Before we continue on with our preview of anime series being launched in Summer 2010 – I thought I should make mention that the creators of ToLove Ru has announced a second series of the anime based on the manga by Hasemi Saki and Yabuki Kentaro. No details on the possible release date yet, but I’ll keep an eye out for more info. What we do know, is that the director is different, but studio, seiyuu and the majority of the staff are the same as the original series – thanks to Mangajet for the info.

Finally, since there is quite a few series coming – I’m going to focus on those series I’m looking forward to more – so I can actually get this covered before the Autumn releases :P

And now, back to our anime preview, the next set of series: Read the rest of this entry »

Since we’re approaching the end of June, this post technically comes a little late, but, I’ve decided to give a quick list of the anime series we’re expecting to hit Japanese screens from June to August this year.

The guys over on T.H.A.T Anime were nice enough to compile a list of the series expected for release, some of which have started their runs already. Notedly, they go into a lot of detail about each series, with each of the writers giving a short comment with their thoughts on the series – I’m just going to provide you with the list and a short summarised synopsis of the series; for the details, as well as some pretty pictures and links to trailers, head over to T.H.A.T Anime’s Summer Preview.
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You might find the title for this post a little odd, but trust me, it has bearing on the series. I don’t think I’ve actually really slated an anime on this blog, but there’s a first time for everything.

While watching Aika, you’re probably going to have a fair bit of trouble figuring out what the series is actually about. I’ll give you a brief run through the list of possible options:
1. It’s about Aika
2. It’s about a plot to destroy the world
3. It’s about panties.

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Well … it’s about time. After a lot of fussing about and hard work (and tearing my hair out because things were taking too long), Animated Meanderings is finally back up and running in its new home.

As you can see, we have an entirely new theme going – looking, in my personal opinion, a lot better than it used to. Of course, with a big move like this there are bound to be some teething pains – with any luck I’ve managed to do what’s needed to avoid most of them – but there might still be a broken link or two – if you find one, contact me and let me know. Read the rest of this entry »

You’ve got to hand it to the Japanese. Nothing seems to be beyond these guys.

There’s a whole history behind this, which I intend to cover at a later date. But basically -  we had a bunch of virtual characters stage a live concert. Using the voice/music synthesis software, Vocaloid, to sing their songs, the 4 Vocaloid characters appeared live, on stage, in front of a crowd of about 2,500 adoring fans on the 9th of March, 2010. The concert was intended – if I understand correctly – as a thank you to the Vocaloid community; hence the date on which it happened (3/9 can be pronounced as sankyuu in Japanese – which is similar in pronunciation to “thank you”)

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All of those who know me, and those of you who have been following Animated Meanderings for any length of time should be familiar with my extended love affair for those anime series derived from Key’s games. These are, of course, Kanon, Air, and more recently Clannad, of which I did a review in the not too distant past.

So, finally, I managed to get my paws on Clannad ~After Story~, and this managed to sit for my shelf for quite a length of time before I finally got around to watching it. You might find this odd, but I was actually scared to watch it. One of the reasons is that it would finally bring to a close a much loved series, and the other, more significant reason is the fact that I knew what was coming. Read the rest of this entry »

After five weeks of running voting, the community at Animemusicvideos.org have announced the winners of the 2010 Viewers’ Choice Awards. I haven’t been following the competition as closely as I would have liked to, but I daresay there were one or two surprises in the results.

Or maybe I’m the only one that thinks so?

Anyways, without further ado – the winners, by category, of the 2010 VCA: Read the rest of this entry »