The Yurikamome line is short, and its elevated train cars are completely automated. And the announcements at each station are voiced by anime voice actors. First column, first row: Masumi Asano. First column, second row: Maria Yamamoto. Fourth column, third row: Mikako Takahashi.

For quite a while now, a fair percentage of tv anime series have been based on porn games, sometimes scaled down into a simple harem comedy, sometimes left raunchy. I’m thinking that this one (NSFW! NSFW!) will end up going straight to DVD, with no attempt at a tv-safe version.

Anime producers have managed to tone down “screw the schoolgirl” stories before, but when the declared bust sizes range from A to P Q and a number of them are equipped with 母乳, well, I don’t think it’s destined for television.

[and, yes, it comes from a company called SQUEEZ (NSFW! NSFW!)]

[I think the title 炎の孕ませ同級生 should actually be translated as “inflamed knock-me-up classmates”. By the way, the subtitle makes it clear that you’re supposed to impregnate all of them, which means that the 母乳 is just there to add a bit of flavor to some of the sex scenes.]

[no, after waking up, it’s not the imperative -mase, it’s the stem of the causative -maseru, so “knock-them-up”]

[Update: the promo videos (1, 2, NSFW! NSFW!) are hilariously awful. As are the theme song lyrics.]

[Update: Apparently you’ve got your work cut out for you…

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So, there’s an upcoming tv anime series based on the manga Rosario + Vampire, and they’ve put up a promo site that makes it look like a fan-service comedy with schoolgirl vampire hunters. This has a certain Buffy-esque appeal to it.

Except that I own one volume of the manga, and it’s filled with blood and murder. Also fan-servicey schoolgirl vampire hunters, but the bad guys aren’t at all cute, and neither is what they do to their many victims.

Even if they tone that down for the anime, I don’t think I’ll be looking forward to this one.

[Update: nice trailer]

In the commercial for your upcoming live-action show, you say “I’ll use my magic to make my students happy”. Having read the comic, I’ve got to tell you, it ain’t your magic they’re after.

If the Haruhi-fan dance video hurt your eyes, this should help them recover. The actual voice actresses doing the song:

via Japan Sugoi

[Update: Nice t-shirt, Haruhi.]

Via Samurai Soapbox.

This series appears to be a pure fan-service vehicle, with only the flimsiest excuse for a plot, and likely no depth to the characters at all… :-)

[and I’m too lazy to plug in the scanner right now, so you get a cropped snap from a digicam]

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I found G-On Riders amusing, and I’d like to own a legitimate copy. The problem is, it’s not $333 amusing, and that’s five years after release. Even online, Japan just hasn’t caught on to the concept of discount pricing.

The only way to get a good deal is to buy used, and Amazon Japan has plenty of dealers eager to sell used manga and anime… if you live in Japan. I haven’t found any yet that will do international shipping.

I’m still planning to spend two weeks in Japan this fall, so it looks like the thing to do is order a whole bunch of stuff a few days before I leave the US, and have it all shipped to my hotel in Tokyo. After I get there, I can repack it all into a single box and put it on the slow boat to home. The savings on just a few items should cover the shipping costs.

Not all Japanese DVDs are quite as ridiculously packaged or priced as anime, though. Where an anime disc typically has an hour of content for around $50, live-action series do a lot better. A show like 銭湯の娘!? gives you two hours for $32, and Amazon does discount the box set, bringing the total cost down to $261, a merely painful $14 per hour.

…but I could get it for half that price, if I had an address in Japan to ship it to.

Sadly, while buying used products feels better than downloading them for free off the Internet, it’s not really any better at rewarding the creators for their work. Legitimate digital distribution would do a lot to solve that problem, but so would discounts, thinpaks, direct sales, etc.