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Discotek to Release Kaiba TV Anime, Galaxy Express 999, Adieu Galaxy Express 999, Hells Anime Films on Blu-ray

Discotek Media announced at its panel at AnimeNEXT on Sunday that it will release Rintarō and Leiji Matsumoto's Galaxy Express 999 and Adieu Galaxy Express 999 anime films on Blu-ray Disc. The company also announced that it will release Madhouse's HELLS anime film on Blu-ray Disc and DVD, and it will release Masaaki Yuasa's Kaiba television anime series in a Blu-ray Disc/DVD combo pack.

The 1979 Galaxy Express 999 anime film, like the television series of the same name, is based on Leiji Matsumoto's original manga. Discotek Media released the film on DVD in June 2011 and describes the story:

Galaxy Express 999 is the name of a train which travels through space, beginning at Megalopolis Station on one end of the galaxy and ending at Andromeda on the other. But the Galaxy Express is more than just a train - it's also a metaphor for life itself, with passengers constantly boarding, debarking, and dreaming along the way.

Tetsuro Hoshino is a youth who'll give anything to board the Three-Nine, including a promise to accompany a mysterious woman named Maetel all the way to Andromeda, the planet where, she tells him, he can get a free machine body to avenge the cruel death of his mother at the hands of the villainous Count Mecha. But nothing is as easy as it sounds, and Tetsuro is about to learn the true price not only for boarding the Three-Nine and avenging his mother, but for leaving his childhood behind, falling in love, and becoming a man.

Discotek released the Adieu Galaxy Express 999 anime film on DVD in June 2011, and it describes the film:

Tetsuro Hoshino was once a boy willing to give anything to board the Three-Nine, including a promise to accompany a mysterious woman named Maetel to the other side of the Galaxy, if only to fulfill a vow to avenge the cruel death of his mother at the hands of the villainess Count Mecha.

Now, two years after the events of Galaxy Express 999, Earth has become a battlefield, and Tetsuro is summoned to board the Three-Nine once more. All questions will be answered and all mysteries revealed as Tetsuro embarks on a journey the destination of which is unknown even to the Galaxy Express Railways locomotive C6248 itself... a journey which will reveal a secret so awful, even Maetel herself can hardly bear speak of it.

The film debuted in 1981 as a sequel to the Galaxy Express 999 and Galaxy Express 999: Glass no Clair films.

Viz Media had once licensed the two Galaxy Express 999 films in North America, before Discotek Media licensed them in 2010. Both films debuted on the Viewster streaming service last year.

Discotek Media will release the two films on Blu-ray Disc in late 2017.

Yoshiki Yamakawa and Madhouse's 2008 Hells anime film adapts Sin'Ichi Hiromoto's Hells Angels manga. The "dark fantasy that is full of cynical gags" follows a girl's journey to hell and back.

The anime was first screened theatrically under the original manga's name in 2008. TC Entertainment released the film on Blu-ray Disc in Japan with English subtitles and under the title Hells in August 2012.

Masaaki Yuasa (The Tatami Galaxy, Ping Pong, Mind Game, Lu over the wall) and Madhouse's 12-episode Kaiba anime series premiered in Japan in April 2008. Siren Visual released the series in Australia in 2011, and it describes the show:

What are memories?
Souls? Spirits?

This is a world where memories can be turned into data and stored. Even if the body dies, its memories live on and can be transferred to another body. Bad memories can be erased and good ones downloaded. However, this is something only privileged can do.

In a world like this, our protagonist Warp (aka Kaiba) is travelling in another body while having no memories of his own...

The series starred Houko Kuwashima as Kaiba, Mamiko Noto as Neiro, and Romi Park as POPO.