By James Robert Shaw (The Wind up Geek)
Discotek Media is looking to muscle in on North America’s tight anime market by offering a new streaming service that will see anime that was a major hit in Japan, but never saw licensing across the Atlantic, get a second chance. This means older anime series like Yaiba!, High School Kimengumi, Candy Candy, and the ever popular Dragon Quest (based off the Japanese video game series) could find a whole new audience. Discotek will offer the anime in a subtitled format with the possibility of releasing such series on DVD should there be enough demand.
The first series Discotek will make available will be Studio Perriot’s Miss Machiko, based off the manga by Takeshi Ebihara. Originally serialized in Shōnen Challenge from 1980 – 82 Machiko debuted as a animated series a year and a half later on TV Tokyo. It ran for a total of 95 episodes:
Continue reading “Discotek Gives Obscure Anime Second Chance at North American Market”
The Japanese application company LINE, a subsidiary of Naver Corporation has released a set of Akira chat stickers based on Katsuhiro Otomo’s 1988 film of the same name. The stickers are licensed through Bandai Namco Entertainment Inc, display many of the characters from the film including Shōtarō Kaneda (Japanese seiyū: Mitsuo Iwata) and Tetsuo Shima (Nozomu Sasaki).
When it came to promoting store-bought noodles to the Japanese public, using characters created by affluent manga artist Rumiko Takahasi (creator of Maison Ikkoku, InuYasha, and Rin-ne) is a no brainer. In fact we here at Otaku no Culture think the meeting at Aceccok to agree to such an idea would’ve taken about as much time as cooking one of their instant noodles.