Today NIS America released their second trailer for Criminal Girls: Invite Only and in this trailer not only do we get a glimpse of how the game will look with the English translation but also a look at how some of the scenes have been censored.
The trailer can be seen below and while it does feature some gameplay footage showing off how battles will take place and partially introduce us to the cast, most of the video focuses on the “Motivation Time” mini-game that has been censored. As previously mentioned, all dialogue and voice work has been removed from the mini-game and the amount of fog appears to have been increased drastically in many cases.
That being said, Criminal Girls: Invite Only is currently set to be released on the PS Vita in North America on February 3rd and in Europe on February 6th.
Today Square Enix released a new trailer for Final Fantasy Type-0 HD that is designed to be a news report that is meant to introduce us to the various members of Class Zero, the group of characters that players will be controlling in the game. In this trailer we not only are given a brief look at some of the characters and how they will control but also a small sample of their English voice work.
You can check the trailer out below and as for the game itself, Final Fantasy Type-0 HD is currently set to be released on March 17th in North America and March 20th in Europe. Those who pre-order the game will be able to obtain an exclusive demo for Final Fantasy XV.
When Gearbox and 2K announced a Season Pass for this year’s Borderlands: the Pre-Sequel, not only was nobody surprised but most of us knew that it wouldn’t be too long in between content packs. Earlier this year we got the Handsome Jack Doppelganger pack that let us play as the infamous villain of the series and now we get the Ultimate Vault Hunter Upgrade Pack: The Holodome Onslaught. The latest pack is a doozy and gives us a level cap increase (raising the base level to 60, and giving players access to 10 additional skill points) and a new challenge area in the Holodrome Onslaught.
The Holodrome Onslaught serves a similar role to Mad Moxxie’s Underdome Riot from the original Borderlands game as an arena where players will fight wave after wave of new enemies while earning new awesome loot, including weapons, class mods, and heads and skins. It also adds all-new narrative content with appearances from veteran Vault Hunters Gaige and Axton. The Ultimate Vault Hunter Upgrade Pack: The Holodome Onslaught is available now on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC for $13.95 on its own, or as part of the Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel Season Pass.
The 18th Japanese Film Festival has finally ended in Australia and New Zealand with applause as the event celebrates a total attendance of over 33,000 cinema goers. Additionally, the 2014 Audience Choice Award has been given to the final film in the Rurouni Kenshin trilogy.
The JFF program stretched across 16 cities, including Auckland, New Zealand for the first time, with 67 Japanese movies screened over 312 sessions. An estimated 33,000 people attended the 93-day event, a 32% increase over the previous year.
“To our delight this year’s growth surpassed our expectations with the number of Brisbane attendees doubling compared to 2013. New cities Adelaide and Auckland also gave us warm welcomes, which is very encouraging…we look forward to returning with an even more exciting program in 2015.” – Festival Director Masafumi Konomi
Fan-favourite Rurouni Kenshin – The Legend Ends scored the Audience Choice Award, determined from 8,500 surveys in Sydney and Melbourne. Additionally, the Festival attracted seven high profile guests from Japan including Director Masayuki Suo and actress Mone Kamishiraishi. The JFF is set to return in October-December 2015 with an all-new program.
Overview
The original Mobile Suit Gundam started a franchise that’s still going to this day, spawning sequels, alternate timelines, OVAs and movies. The classic Universal Century timeline is considered to be the pure Gundam experience, with more grit and less pizazz than the Western-favourites like Gundam Wing. Madman has graciously released a whole bunch of Gundam box sets recently, namely the original series and its direct sequel Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam.
Story Zeta Gundam takes place in the year 0087, seven years after the conclusion of the original series and the One Year War. Director Yoshiyuki Tomino brilliantly turns the series on its head by holding a mirror up to the good guys. The dictatorial Principality of Zeon, who fought for the independence of the “spacenoids” from Earth, all but collapsed. With virtually no opposition left, the Earth Federation now rules with an iron fist and cracks down on Zeon remnants using the elite yet cruel counter-insurgency unit called the Titans.
Anti-Titan sentiment builds to form the core resistance, the Anti-Earth Union Group or AEUG. Paradoxically, this insurgent group are now the heroes of Zeta Gundam. The members? Among other familiar faces, former Earth Federation captain Bright Noa who now helms the AEUG’s Argama flagship and Char Aznable himself who goes by the alias Quattro Bajeena.
But Kamille Bidan is our star pilot this time, a troubled civilian on space colony Side 7 who hates the brutal Titans with a passion. Soon enough he ends up in the latest Gundam model, the Mk-II and later in the series he manages to get his hands on the titular Zeta Gundam itself. Legendary pilot Amuro Ray makes an appearance too in a more modest mobile suit and this is where Zeta Gundam becomes unique. We have two generations of pilots fighting, bonding and arguing together. Kamille is a fierce main character. I actually like him a lot more than the typical hero pilot like Amuro.
The usual cat and mouse game begins between the AEUG and the Titans, with the Argama ship led by Bright Noa fighting on Earth and in space. Already viewers will notice this series is so much tighter and darker than its predecessor. The whole tone is one of a proper space opera. No one is smiling, this is war after all. It becomes even more darker during the turning points of the 50 odd episodes.
The appearance of genius villain Paptimus Scirocco from the Jupiter Energy Fleet (that’s right, this guy comes from Jupiter) throws a fascinating spanner in the works that becomes even more sinister when Haman Karn, the leader of a resurgent power known as Axis Zeon, starts a three-way war. She plays a much larger role in the next installment which strangely hasn’t been released in Australia as of yet.
Although it is a little bit slow midway and at times depressing, the narrative of Zeta Gundam is a treat to follow especially towards the end when you have no idea who is going to win between the AEUG, Titans and Axis forces.
Visuals
The animation here is quite typical of an anime from the 1980s, a little dated and smeared when you’re viewing it on your brand new 50-inch HDTV. Although I found it was a huge improvement over the original series with its very crisp art. It’s clear that the budget increase helped make Zeta Gundam a huge success all those years ago, especially considering the original had its broadcast cancelled and the episode count limited to just 43. Zeta can be considered to be the first, properly made Gundam TV series that garnered critical success.
The colour palette is a lot darker this time around as a large portion of the show is set in space and the atmosphere is grim and, at times, depressing. That’s not to say we don’t get vibrant mobile suits and stark character designs, though. Zeta Gundam is still interesting to watch thanks to the art and character design.
Audio
By far one of my favourite aspects of this series was the classic, almost retro music and sound effects. The soundtrack oozes of atmosphere; orchestral melodies and synth tunes set to dark space opera mixed with glory and tragedy. A huge contrast to the pop-centric soundtracks these days. It’s all very typical of the 80s too which is a good thing.
Rather than using the original Japanese songs, the first opening theme is a grand instrumental piece with sound effects included. Surprisingly it works very well as the music is part of the sound track and fits show perfectly. The ending piece is a laid back instrumental tune which is a little boring. It is a shame we don’t get to hear the lovely songs from the original Japanese release but it must have something to do with licensing issues overseas.
Voice acting is spectacular from the Japanese dub while the English voice actors do their best to make a pretty good localisation, helping set the serious-business tone of Zeta.
Extras
The 50-episode series is packed onto 8 discs which are unfortunately without any extras. However, considering Madman previously offered this series (along with their other Gundam titles) in two halves priced at $59.95 each, these new complete collections are a welcome move and an absolute steal.
Overall Say what you will about the original 1979 Mobile Suit Gundam, but this is a rare case when the sequel excels on all fronts. Zeta Gundam is an intense voyage where the moral line separating good from bad is all but erased. Depicting the Earth Federation acting just as bad as Zeon did in the original series was a genius move by Tomino. This is how war should be depicted where, at the end of the day, everyone is seeking to gain power.
It’s a lot more intense, action-packed and emotional than the original Mobile Suit Gundam and, quite frankly, a superior product overall. However, you need to have an understanding of the original show and what happens during the One Year War and it suffers from dated animation by today’s standards. But there are hardly any decent anime space operas around these days and this just happens to be one of the better ones.
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
On the eighth day of Christmas, Madman announced the license to A Good Librarian Like A Good Shepherd (Dai Toshokan no Hitsujikai). AnimeLab will stream the series in 2015, and a home video release will follow at a later date.
Animated by Hoods Entertainment (Mysterious Girlfriend X, Fantatista Doll, If Her Flag Breaks and more), this is an adaptation of the eroge visual novel of the same name by August. FUNimation has been simulcasting the series with English subtitles for audiences in the USA, and the final episode is due to air on Christmas Eve. The series is described as follows:
Kyotaro Kakei is a shy student at a prestigious academy known for its massive library. The sole member of the school’s library club, Kyotaro’s always been better with books than girls – until a text message from the mysterious “Shepherd” hints that his fate will soon be changing. Life gets wild in a hurry after a vision allows Kyotaro to rescue Tsugumi, a beautiful girl who also received a text message from the “Shepherd.” Soon, Tsugumi announces her intentions to join the Library Club and, with Kyotaro’s help, make school life much more interesting! It doesn’t take long for a host of other pretty girls to follow Tsugumi’s lead and join the club in the hopes of spicing up their boring academy lives. But just who is this “Shepherd,” what does he or she have to do with the Library Club’s sudden popularity, and how in the world will Kyotaro survive being surrounded by all these girls!?
For the previous announcements from Madman’s Twelve Days of Christmas, read the article about them here.
Today Idea Factory International released a new gameplay trailer for Hyperdevotion Noire: Goddess Black Heart and this trailer happens to focus on the battle system of the strategy based RPG. As you can see in the video below, players will need to take advantage of the various unique stages and also work together with their team mates to create Lily Boosts to deliver large amounts of damage.
Also released are some new screenshots which show off various skills that some characters in Hyperdevotion Noire: Goddess Black Heart will be able to unleash. as for the game itself, currently Hyperdevotion Noire is set to be released on the PS Vita in North America and Europe in early 2015.
Sony Clause is bringing some early Christmas gifts to PlayStation 4 owners in Australia. The services range in price, with several being absolutely free. The following fourteen new entertainment services are now available for PlayStation 4:
PLUS7
ABC iView
Quickflix
SBS ON DEMAND
Foxtel Play
YouTube
MUBI
Plex
Dailymotion
Gamereactor
IGN for PlayStation
Qello HD Concerts
VidZone
WWE
Michael Ephraim, Managing Director, Sony Computer Entertainment Australia said, “Not only is PlayStation the best place to play this Christmas, it’s the home of leading on-demand content and entertainment services. We are delivering our players a host of exceptional home grown and international TV programs to catch-up on as well as additional ways to enjoy music and movies, just in time for the holidays!”
Earlier this year Viz Media announced that they had acquired the license to release Jaco The Galactic Patrolman in North America and now they have announced when fans of the legendary Akira Toriyama can expect the first and only volume of his latest manga to be released in English.
Viz is planning on releasing Jaco The Galactic Patrolman on January 6th on both digital marketplaces and in print. The volume will be printed under Viz’s Shonen Jump imprint and will cost $9.99 U.S. / $12.99 CAN while the digital versions will be priced at only $6.99.
For those unfamiliar with the one volume series, Viz has provided the below story description:
Retired scientist Omori lives alone on a deserted island while continuing his research into time-travel. His quiet life is interrupted when galactic patrolman Jaco crash-lands and decides to move in with him. This agent from space claims to be elite, but sometimes it can be a little hard to believe. Can Jaco get along with the old man long enough to save the earth from a dangerous threat?
Sentai Filmworks has just announced that they have rescued the license to She, The Ultimate Weapon. The TV series was previously released across four volumes in 2004 and in a complete collection in 2005 by Viz Media. The two OVA episodes were then released by Viz Media in 2006. Sentai Filmworks will be releasing the series on home video release sometime in the future.
It is not clear if there will be a Blu-ray release for the series, but given that there is no Blu-ray release in Japan, there is a possibility that this will be a DVD-only release. It is also unclear if the existing English subtitles and audio will be used or if an all new translation and English dubbed version will be produced for this release.
Adapated from Shin Takahashi’s manga and animated by Gonzo, “this post-apocalyptic anime series details the hardships of war, fighting one’s inner demons and the true nature of the human spirit.”
