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Hanabee Announces New Acquisitions Including The Familar of Zero

For those who have not been reading ANN|AU, Hanabee Entertainment and ANN held a competition to guess the three new acquisitions hinted at in a weekly Hanabee Update. The announcements were made public to members of Hanabee's mailing list on Friday the 21st of February 2014 and now we have the full information from Hanabee on these three upcoming releases;

And congratulations to Mler who appears to have been the only person to correctly guess the three titles.

The Familiar of Zero

Louise Francoise Le Blanc de La Valliere has it tough, a poor little rich girl who has zero ability for magic which makes it incredibly difficult to study at the Tristain Academy of Magic. But when "Louise the Zero" summons her familiar, instead of summoning a fierce mythical creature she ends up pulling in Saito Hiraga, a normal everyday Japanese teenager. With no-other choice but to accept Saito as her familiar, Louise must learn to get along with him as he might just be the key to unlocking her abilities and saving the country.

The tv series is based on the late author Noboru Yamaguchi's light novel series "Zero no Tsukaima" which has went on to inspire four televion anime series. This first 13 episode series originally aired in 2006 and was directed Yoshiaki Iwasaki (Hayate the Combat Butler, Love Hina) off of Takao Yoshioka's (Ikki Tousen, Elfen Lied) scripts at J.C. Staff. The series stars Rie Kugimiya as Louise ad Satoshi Hino as Saito in Japanese and Cristina Vee with Jonathan Meza in English.

The series was originally released by Genon Entertainment (USA) Inc but later Funimation acquired the rights and finally Sentai Filmworks currently has the license in North America. Seven Seas Entertainment has been releasing Nana Mochizuki's manga adaptation in North America.

Hanabee's release will contain the first season of 13 episodes in original Japanese and English dub and be released on DVD and Blu-Ray on the 7th of May 2014. You can view the press release here.

Campione!

Godō Kusanagi went on a errand for his grandfather and ended up killing Verethranga, the god of war. In doing so Godō became a Campione, one who kills gods and is handed the responsibility to fight heretical gods who mess with the natural order of humanity and other Campiones to protect his title.

The series is based on a series of light novels by Jō Taketsuki that has additionally been adapated into a manga series. This 13 episode anime adaptation was directed by Keizou Kusakawa (Dog Days, Ro-Kyu-Bu!) off scripts supervised by Jukki Hanada (Princess Jellyfish, Rozen Maiden). Masakazu Ishikawa (Squid Girl) designed the characters and Tatsuya Katou (Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere, MEDAKA BOX) scored the music. The series originally aired in July 2012 and was streamed by CrunchyRoll alongside the Japanese broadcast and quickly licensed by Sentai Filmworks in North America.

Hanabee's release will contain the first season of 13 episodes and be released on DVD and Blu-Ray on the 7th of May 2014. You can view the press release here.

From the New World

Set 1000 years from today, From the New World follows five children, Saki, Satoru, Maria, Mamoru and Shun as they come to grips with their newly awakened curse of telekinesis in what appears to be a peaceful utopia. But like all utopias, a dark underbelly runs deep in the history of such a society and the five friends must throw themselves into a adventure to fight and protect a world on the brink of collapse.

Based on a novel by Yūsuke Kishi this 2012 series was directed by Masashi Ishihama (Read or Die animation director) at A-1 Pictures with head scriptwriter Masashi Sogo (Bleach, Fairy Tail, Gantz). CrunchyRoll streamed the series as it aired in Japan and SentaiFilmworks licensed the title and have recently revealed the English dub cast in time for their April 15th release date.

Hanabee's release of From the New World will be broken into two parts. The first 13 episodes will be released on DVD and Blu-Ray with English dub and Japanese subs on the 7th of May 2014. You can view the press release here.