Anime Expo 2009

Aniplex

Representatives: Hiroe Tsukamoto

Aniplex's panel began with representative Hiroe Tsukamoto alone at the table - nobody from Aniplex flew in from Japan, so she ran the panel by herself, announcing that she'd cover some relatively new series as well as a brand new show.

The panel began with some trailers and clips from Aniplex's recent works, including Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Gurren Lagann The Movie: Childhood's End (the second of two films recapping the series), Guin Saga (the trailer for which had been dubbed into English), Kuroshitsuji (translated as "Black Butler"), and Kannagi (subtitled "-Crazy Shrine Maidens-").

Hiroe then introduced The Garden of Sinners, based on a story created by Type-Moon, with animation production by ufotable.The trailer showed off a decent chunk of the film, which looks like a horror-thriller mashup with heavy supernatural elements and some psychedelic imagery. The fil is currently set for release in August in Japanese theaters.

Finally, the trailer for Cencoroll was shown, created by independent animator Atsuyu Uki; the series is in production right now, being hand-animated without CG assistance by Uki himself. It's scheduled to be a 30-minute short film and will be released by Aniplex later in 2009. The film follows the surreal adventures of a boy and his bizarre white alien blob thing, which was first noticed by fans (and Aniplex) in 2007 when Uki's original trailer showed up on YouTube.

The panel then concluded with a brief Q&A session.