News
Madman Entertainment New Acquisitions at Supanova Expo Adelaide 2012
posted on by Jon Hayward
The following announcements were made at Supanova Pop Culture Expo Adelaide 2012 during the Madman Panel. We were not in attendance but if you would like to view the official news you can do so on Madman's website.
Acquisition Summary
- Kamisama Dolls: 2013 release on bilingual DVD, Blu-Ray and Digital.
- Blood-C: The Last Dark: Sideways announced last weekend in Brisbane alongside the Blood-C TV series, 2013 release on bilingual DVD, Blu-Ray and Digital.
- Battle Girls - Time Paradox: 2013 release on bilingual DVD, Blu-Ray and Digital.
- Appleseed XIII: 2013 release on bilingual DVD, Blu-Ray and Digital.
Acquisition Details
Kamisama Dolls
Kamisama Dolls is based on the supernatural manga of the same name by Hajime Yamamura. Kyōhei Kuga (Nobuhiko Okamoto) has moved into Tokyo to attend college and escape the pressures of traditional life in his small home town. However some responsibilities you just cannot escape and when Kyōhei discovers a dead bloodied body he's pulled back into his previous line of work. In the past, Kyōhei was a "seki", a person who can control an ancient wooden doll called "kakashi" with the power of his mind. Now a kakashi is loose in Tokyo and it's up to Kyōhei and his sister, Utao (Misato Fukuen) to stop the person responsible.
This 12 episode series was originally broadcast in 2011 on TV Tokyo. The series was produced by Brains Base with series composition and scripts handled by Makoto Uezu (Is This a Zombie?). Direction by Seiji Kishi alongside character designer Kazuako Morita and art director Ayumi Miyakoshi have since worked on Persona 4: The Animation. Kamisama Dolls was previously streamed on Crunchyroll and has just been licensed for the US by Sentai Filmworks.
©2012 Production I.G, CLAMP/ Project BLOOD-C Movie
Blood-C: The Last Dark
"Tokyo has enacted the Youth Protection Ordinance, minors are forbidden to be out at night, and the internet is policed however, Sirrut, an underground rebel organization, has declared war on Fumito Nanahara. Sirrut uses the internet to try and find information in cyberspace, and they discover something more gruesome, TOWER, a mysterious organization behind Fumito that is rumored to be conducting experiments involving human beings, and alluding to people being…eaten." - From Madman Press Release
Madman Entertainment will be releasing both the 2011, 12 episode anime series and the 2012 film continuation Blood-C: The Last Dark. Both the television series and the film had Manga creator team CLAMP handling the story and original character designs alongside animation character designer/chief animation director Kazuchika Kise (Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone). The television series was directed by Tsutomu Mizushima (XXXHOLiC) with creative supervision by Blood: The Last Vampire planning assistant and Blood+ director Jun'ichi Fujisaku. The film was directed by Naoyoshi Shiotani (Tokyo Marble Chocolate, key animator on Blood+ and Blood-C). Both projects were produced by Production I.G.
Blood-C is the latest addition to the Blood vampire franchise. Started in 2000 with Hiroyuki Kitakubo (Golden Boy, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure) and Production I.G's Blood: The Last Vampire film, in which Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell, The Sky Crawlers) and Kenji Kamiyama (Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Eden of the East) created the story and screenplay. The franchise continued with Jun'ichi Fujisaku's Blood+ in 2005 and Chris Nahon's live-action adaptation of the original movie in 2009 alongside several manga spinoffs.
Battle Girls - Time Paradox
Battle Girls - Time Paradox is based on a Pachinko game developerd by Heiwa. In this adaptation a modern middle school girl named Hideyoshi (Rina Hidaka) is suddenly transported to a mysterious land where she meets Oda Nobunaga (Megumi Toyoguchi), Akechi Mitsuhide (Eri Kitamura), Data Masamune (Yuka Hirata), Imagawa Yoshimoto(Rei Mochizuki), Tokugawa Ieyasu (Satomi Akesaka), Takeda Shingen (Sachi Kokuryu), Uesugi Kenshin (Mariya Ise) and other sengoku warriors. Nobunaga is assembling the "legendary crimson armor" to unify all of the people of the land.
Hideki Okamoto (D.C. II: Da Capo II, Nagasarete Airantou) is directed the anime at TMS Entertainment and Touko Machida (Ōkamikakushi, GA: Geijutsuka Art Design Class, Lucky Star) supervised the scripts. Koji Yamakawa (chief animation director of Strike Witches, Strike Witches 2) adapted Shirogumi's original game designs and oversaw the animation process. This 13 episode series was originally screened in 2011 and was previously streamed on Crunchyroll. The series has just been licensed for the US by Sentai Filmworks.
Appleseed XIII
Following a world war that killed half of the world's population, the city of Olympus has become the control center of the world. Olympus inhabitants include the bioroids (cloned humans) that run the city, the special military forces that protect the city and the Human Liberation Front and Argonauts terrorist organisation that threaten to un-stabilise the delicately balanced peace. Former LAPD SWAT member Deunan Knotts (Maaya Sakamoto) and her cyborg partnet Brialeos (Kouichi Yamadera) are members of ES.W.A.T when the city comes under assault from Al Ceides, an Argonaut leader long thought dead.
The series is a new retelling of Masamune Shirow's original Appleseed manga and separate from Kazuyoshi Katayama's previous original video anime and Shinji Aramaki's two computer-animated movies. Takayuki Hamana (The Beast Player Erin, Chocolate Underground, Library War, Moshidora, The Prince of Tennis) directed the animators at Jinni's Animation Studios(Fireball) in cooperation with Production I.G. Jun'ichi Fujisaku (The Beast Player Erin, Blood+, Moshidora, Real Drive) supervised and co-wrote the scripts and Takayuki Goto (The Beast Player Erin, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd GIG, Hunter X Hunter, Video Girl Ai) designed the characters based on Shirow's original work. Atsushi Takeuchi (Ghost in the Shell, Yukikaze, The Sky Crawlers, Reideen) returned from Aramaki's first Appleseed film to draw the mechanical designs. This 13 episode series was released in 2011 on home video and online streaming. The series was planned to additionally be broken into two films, only the first of which (Appleseed XIII ~Yuigon~ ) has been released.
