News

Hanabee Licenses BTOOOM! and Accel World

The announcements were made at their Hanabee Surprise Screenings during Supanova Expo and cross-posted to their Facebook page.

Btooom!

Ryōta Sakamoto is 22, unemployed and lives at home with his mother playing his favourite online combat video game, Btooom! However when he wakes up on a tropical island with no memory of how he got there Ryōta soon discovers that he's trapped in a real life version of Btooom! where he must survive against other players to make it off the island. Fortunately for Ryōta he's one of the top ranked Btooom! players and has allies to help him escape.

Btooom! is originally a manga by Junya Inoue that launched in Shinchosha's Weekly Comic Bunch magazine in 2009 and then moved to its current home, Monthly Comic @Bunch, in 2011. The series has been compiled into 12 volumes in Japan and the English translation is being published by Yen Press with volume 4 being released this month.

This 12 episode anime adaptation was screened on the 8th of October 2012 in Japan (and streamed on niconico and Crunchyroll) and was produced by Studio Madhouse. The series was directed by Kotono Watanabe (her first work as series director, episode director on Chihayafuru, Aoi Bungaku Series, Puella Magi Madoka Magica) with Yousuke Kuroda (Best Student Council, Hayate the Combat Butler, Hellsing, Highschool of the Dead, Mobile Suit Gundam 00) on scripts and Takahiro Kishida (Final Fantasy: Unlimited, Puella Magi Madoka Magica) adapting the character designs.

Sentai Filmworks licensed Btooom! last year and have released the complete collection in North America earlier this year.

Release Details

Hanabee will be releasing Btooom! on the 8th of February 2014 on DVD and Blu-Ray and contain both the English dub and Japanese audio with subtitles. You can pre-order Btooom! at Hanabee's website (Blu-ray and DVD) and view their press release here.

Accel World

Set in the near-future, Accel World follows Haruyuki "Haru" Arita who is constantly bullied at his school. Haru spends his time logged onto the school network playing virtual squash and avoiding the bullies but after Kuroyukihime, the most popular and attractive student at school puts a stop to his harassment things begin to change. Haru is quickly introduced to Brain Burst, a mysterious Virtual Reality Massively Multiplayer Online (VRMMO) Fighting Game where people can fight to gain super-human abilities in the real world and Kuroyukihime needs his help in order to defeat the "Six Kings of Pure Colour" and discover the secrets of Brain Burst.

The show adapts Reki Kawahara's original science-fiction light novel series of the same name and utilises the same voice actor cast as the drama CDs. This 26 episode adapation originally premiered on April 6th 2012 and was directed by Masakazu Obara at Sunrise. Accel World's CG work was by Orange with Hiroyuki Yoshino overseeing the series scripts and Yukiko Aikei is served as character designer and animation director.

Release Details

Hanabee will be releasing part 1 of Accel World on the 8th of February 2014 on DVD and contain both the English dub and Japanese audio with subtitles. Part 1 will contain the first 12 episodes and part 2 will be released at a undetermined point in the future. You can already pre-order Accel World at Hanabee's website and view their press release here.