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Sunday 29 May 2016

Industry News: MCM London Comic Con (May 2016) Announcements (Part 1)

MCM Comic Con is back again for London this month and there's been a whole lot of new announcements brought up. Anime Limited is on a roll but they haven't finished theirs just yet so for this part I'll be covering what Animatsu, Manga UK and MVM have to offer.


Manga Animatsu


Both Animatsu and Manga UK are pretty much one brand now (according to one report, they're now called Manga Animatsu) and ran by the same people, so the only difference is that the US-based content and Sentai titles are with Animatsu while the live-action asian films and the rest are with Manga.

Before the convention, the two publishers were building up anticipation for their panel and stated there would be exciting announcements. I was curious since they've lost Funimation and their only source for new licenses are with the Japanese licensors (like Toei & TBS), Kaze and Sentai Filmworks. During Saturday's panel they unveiled their new announcements with some surprises. Personally I didn't think it was as strong as their October 2015 announcements but it's still a warm welcome overall.

Starting with the Animatsu brand they have plans to bring more Sentai Filmworks titles to the UK.

HaNaYaMaTa
Licensed straight from TV Tokyo, this series will be available in English & Japanese. Sentai handled the authoring in the states for Blu-ray and DVD.

Haven't You Heard? I'm Sakamoto
Licensed straight from TBS, the series is still simulcasting but it's not available to stream in the UK. Jerome comments how he's seen the latest episode and asks if anyone has seen it, oh how ironic.

Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions! Heart Throb
Licensed straight from TBS, this series will be available in English & Japanese. Sentai handled the authoring in the states for DVD at the moment (the Blu-ray is held back for the time being for reverse importation reasons).

PUNCH LINE
Licensed presumably from Sentai, this series will be available in Japanese. Sentai handled the authoring in the states for Blu-ray and DVD. This is a solid pickup and one of those 'don't judge the cover' type situations. It's written by the Zero Escape author as well.

Trinity Seven
Licensed straight from TV Tokyo, this series will be available in English & Japanese. Sentai handled the authoring in the states for Blu-ray and DVD.

For Manga Entertainment they also picked up a solid variety for both the fans from back in the day and newcomers.

Death Note (on Blu-ray; TV series + Relight compilation films)
Death Note was referenced a couple weeks back as a survey to see if there were demands for one. Looks like it paid off now they will be bringing the entire series and compilation films on Blu-ray. They should be using the Viz Media masters which were handled much better than Sailor Moon did.

Digimon Adventure (Seasons 1 & 2)
Digimon Adventure is probably the biggest surprise from them. Digimon has recently getting more attention now thanks to the new Digimon Adventure Tri series and Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth video game. Manga UK clarified they currently plan to release the first two seasons and is estimated to be based on the same US masters that New Video Group (who also released Yu-Gi-Oh! which Manga UK got the masters from) were using - i.e. the English dub and TV edit version.

Naruto Spin-off: Rock Lee and His Ninja Pals
The Rock Lee show was also referenced every now and then by Manga UK and now they are officially coming. Viz Media have yet to release theirs but the show is already dubbed so what's left is the discs to be complete. The series will be available starting this Autumn on DVD.

Soul Eater Not!
Soul Eater Not! was unexpected, given this was already released by Funimation in the states but this was licensed from TV Tokyo from a package deal.

In addition to all of these titles, Animatsu will be releasing steelbooks for Red vs Blue Seasons 11-13 and also distributing the Chinese live-action/CG film Monster Hunt.

UPDATE: Here's the panel that AnimeBlu-rayUK managed to record:


MVM Entertainment


Much like the previous conventions, MVM doesn't have panels but instead announces their new titles on Twitter. They brought up 17 titles with a combination of both new and already announced over the course of both Friday and Saturday.

Already announced titles include Busou Shinki: Armoured War Goddess, Gate, Monster Musume, Owarimonogatari, Photo Kano, Re-Kan! and Sakura Trick.

With the exception of Owarimonogatari, the rest were licensed by Sentai Filmworks. Busou Shinki, Photo Kano, Re-Kan! and Sakura Trick all belong to TBS who as I mentioned have been placing Blu-ray holdbacks on a number of titles including Beyond the Boundary and My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU. Busou Shinki currently only has a DVD release while the others (with the exception of Re-Kan! which is still not yet released) received a Blu-ray release. All released titles are subtitle only.

And without further due, here are their new titles:

11 eyes
An older title from the Sentai Filmworks catalogue. This series will be available on DVD in Japanese.

Girls Beyond the Wasteland
A new show from the Winter 2016 season, this was made exclusive to The Anime Network by Sentai Filmworks.

Norn 9
A new show from the Winter 2016 season, this was made exclusive to The Anime Network by Sentai Filmworks.

Nurse Witch Komugi R
A new show from the Winter 2016 season, unlike the other three this title was available on both Crunchyroll and The Anime Network by Sentai Filmworks.

Skip Beat
The surprise license for the UK distributor. The show was put on a crowd-funding campaign by US distributor Pied Piper as the Japanese licensor TV Tokyo wanted the series to receive an English dub as well as ensuring there is an audience before releasing it in the states. The campaign was successful with enough funds to make a Blu-ray version (it will be an upscale though). I was expecting Anime Limited to acquire this show as they also handled Time of Eve (which Pied Piper also kick-started) but either way we now have this show heading to the UK.

Undefeated Bahamut Chronicle
A new show from the Winter 2016 season, this was made exclusive to The Anime Network by Sentai Filmworks.

That's it for these three distributors. Stay tuned for the next part where I cover Anime Limited and Universal Pictures.

2 comments:

  1. Skip Beat is the standout for me from this list. As someone who obviously buys more US than UK releases most of the rest of the shows I will likely be importing if I get any of them. Punch Line and Death Note BD mostly. But with Skip Beat I may keep watch on what MVM do with it, I'm not sure right now if I would go for a CE or anything like that and I expect the US release to be semi expensive so may end up with a more standard UK release eventually I think.

    Nice Round Up and thanks for all the updates on Fandom Post which as habit I used to keep up with this weekend so thanks for that :D

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I feel the same when it comes to Skip Beat. My only issue with MVM is that their releases are rather barebones and the covers are very hit or miss for the shelf. With Skip Beat I'm going to go after the Pied Piper release even if it's Region A only. The Sentai titles (like Punch Line) announced I'll just get the Sentai release regardless especially as they're geolocked so it'll work on my consoles/players regardless.

      And thanks for replying! This blog post needs re-wording, thankfully I'm not a professional writer. This weekend has been nuts. It's funny because you would think the US distributors could top this all off but so far none of them have announced as much as Anime Limited in quite some time (well then again, the best place to hear that kind of stuff is over at Anime Expo which is something to look forward to).

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Member of the Anime UK News forum, and also once part of the Sheffield Hallam Visual Arts society throughout 2013-2017. Been collecting anime since 2012 and supported the anime distributors ever since. Also been hanging around on the Blu-ray forum and Fandom Post forums.

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