News
Giovanni's Island Released Monday
posted on by Andrew Osmond
On Monday January 12, Anime Limited will releasing the film Giovanni's Island in three editions: a standard DVD, a standard Blu-ray and an Ultimate Edition, pictured, which includes both a DVD and a Blu-ray. All versions include a Making Of featurette; the Ultimate Edition also includes special packaging and a UK-exclusive softback book containing artwork, historical information and interviews.
Production I.G's Annecy-winning hand-animated Giovanni's Island film tells the story of two brothers living on the island of Shikotan. Their family and the people of the island hear of Japan's loss in the war and are told not to worry. However, their island gets caught in the middle of the continuing conflict in the west and is invaded by Russian soldiers. Giovanni's Island received the Satoshi Kon Prize for Excellence in Animation and tied for the Audience Award at the 18th annual Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal.
Anime Limited will also release a standard Blu-ray edition of the first season of Space Dandy. This is the science-fiction comedy series from director Shinichiro Watanabe (Macross Plus, Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo, Kids on the Slope) and studio BONES. The story revolves around Dandy, an alien-hunter. His job is to seek out new aliens never seen before, and receives a reward whenever he finds a new species. His mission is to find those new species faster than anyone else as he travels the galaxy. Together with the bucket-of-bolts robot QT and the dimwit alien Meow he picked up along the way, he comes into contact with new planets and their inhabitants.
MVM is releasing a collected edition of Arakawa Under the Bridge, containing both the first and second seasons (the second is called Arakawa under the Bridge × Bridge). The release is subtitles only. Originally broadcast in 2009, the television anime is adaptated from Hikaru Nakamura's Arakawa Under the Bridge gag comedy manga. An upper-class young man named Ko "Riku" Ichinomiya meets a beautiful homeless girl named Nino from the banks of Arakawa River in Tokyo, where many of Tokyo's most unusual residents live. There was also a live-action television and film adaptation of the manga.
