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Gundam Unicorn to Be 6 50-Minute OVAs (Update 2)

The Gundam Big Expo event in Tokyo and the official website for the anime adaptation of the Gundam Unicorn novels have confirmed on Friday that the anime will launch in the spring of 2010 in the form of six original video anime volumes of 50 minutes each. The anime will be presented on Blu-ray Disc and DVD, shown at events, distributed through unspecified means, and exhibited overseas.

The original Gundam Unicorn novels are set in the same Universal Century (UC) timeline as Yoshiyuki Tomino and Sunrise's first Mobile Suit Gundam science-fiction television anime series and its sequels. Fukui finished serializing the novel version in the August issue of Kadokawa Shoten's Monthly Shōnen Ace magazine in June. The final two compiled book volumes, #9 and #10, will ship in Japan on Monday.

Novelist Harutoshi Fukui had already confirmed in an interview on Wednesday that the first anime episode will incorporate material from the first two novel volumes. Although Fukui said that the anime will be a "reconstruction" with new ideas developed between himself scriptwriter Yasuyuki Mutō (Afro Samurai: Resurrection, Le Chevalier D'Eon, Persona -trinity soul-), he emphasizes that it is faithful to his original work.

The Sunrise anime studio had previously announced that the project will launch this winter. Sunrise had not specified the release format of the anime version until now, and Kadokawa Shoten had retracted two magazine articles which described the project as a television anime. The animeanime.jp news website reported in April that Sunrise is planning to release the Gundam Unicorn anime around the world simultaneously.

Source: 2channel

Update: More background and story information added.

Update 2: Bandai Visual's press release confirms that the worldwide simultaneous release will launch next spring. Kadokawa Shoten has published over 1.8 million copies of the first eight novel volumes. The story is originally set in the year 0096 of the Universal Calendar timeline, or three years after the Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack film which marked the final joint story of the original two main characters, Amuro Ray and Char Aznable. English is confirmed as one of the several languages into which Gundam Unicorn will be translated.