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Discotek Licenses Barefoot Gen, Yowamushi Pedal Films, Photon OVA
posted on by Karen Ressler
Discotek Media announced on Monday that it has licensed Barefoot Gen, Barefoot Gen 2, Yowamushi Pedal the Movie, and Photon: The Idiot Adventures. All three are slated for home video release in December; the Barefoot Gen movies will be on Blu-ray Disc and DVD, Yowamushi Pedal will be on a Blu-ray Disc/DVD combo pack, and Photon will be DVD only.
Discotek will release the two Barefoot Gen movies together in Japanese with English subtitles. The release will also include the English dub for the first film. Discotek describes the story:
Hiroshima, August 1945. Gen is a cheerful elementary school student living in Japan during World War II. After years of living with difficult wartime rationing and impoverished conditions, Gen and his family have managed to maintain a relatively normal and happy life. All that is about to change when an atomic bomb destroys their city in an instant. While Gen and his mother manage to survive the attack, the rest of their family is not so lucky. In the face of adversity, Gen manages to maintain his cheerful spirit and never loses hope that things will get better for him, and for the entire nation of Japan.
The 1983 and 1986 films adapt Hiroshima survivor Keiji Nakazawa's semi-autobiographical manga from 1973. Streamline Pictures and Orion released the first film on an English-dubbed VHS tape and Image Entertainment released the dub on DVD in 1999. Geneon Entertainment later released both films together on a subtitled DVD in 2006.
Like Discotek's DVD releases of the Yowamushi Pedal and Yowamushi Pedal Grande Road, the Yowamushi Pedal film will be in Japanese with English subtitles.
The film is a sequel to Yowamushi Pedal Grande Road, and features an original story not in Wataru Watanabe's original manga. Discotek describes the film's story:
After the Inter High finishes, Sakamichi and the other Sohoku team members receive an invitation to compete in the “Kumamoto Hi Province Mountain Range Race.” The top-tier teams from around the country participate in this race, including Sohoku's rivals Hakone Academy (who yearns to take down Sohoku), Kyoto Fushimi, and Hiroshima Kureminami - as well as Kumamoto Daiichi High School's team led by Shin Yoshimoto, the “climber of fire.” On the stage of Kumamoto Prefecture's Mount Aso, the curtain rises for the "final race" of the Sohoku team led by Kinjo!
The film premiered in Japan in August 2015 and Crunchyroll streamed the film in May 2016.
Discotek's release of Photon: The Idiot Adventures will have the original English dub in addition to the Japanese language track.
Discotek describes the series:
Photon, a young man with a kind heart and superhuman strength, leaves his village on Sandy Planet (a desert world) in search of a runaway friend. During this heroic quest, he is accidentally engaged to a renegade space pilot! Now they're on the run from the evil emperor of the galaxy and his bumbling henchmen. But even worse than the incompetent bad guys are the disastrous cooking contests, exploding spas and cheerleading aliens!
Central Park Media previously released the 1997 original video anime (OVA) with an English dub in 2000.
Thanks to jlaking for the news tip.
