アニ・ノート

A vendor of (what appears to be) a flash game “TinierMe” is offering Miku merch in their in-game shop (”for a limited time”, of course).

This is getting out of hand. I understand that more people play Farmsville than WoW, but still.

UGH.

Crunchyroll announced, verbatim:

Thanks to the good folks at Media Blasters and Anime Works we will launch the first four episodes of MORIBITO: Guardian of the Spirit today!

The first four episodes of MORIBITO, directed by Kenji Kamiyama and produced by Production I.G., will be available to premium anime and all-access members, while only the first episode will be available to free users. The other three episodes will become available one month later on September 7 for free users. MORIBITO will be available to everyone in the US, Canada and all outlying US territories.

Looks like they are going to show 4 episodes only even for paying subscribers. What is the point of doing this? When ANN engaged in such stunts, it made sense because they were building up their capacity and learned to get into agreements. But for Crunchy it is just retarded.

P.S. My first thought was “What Will Beveridge Say”. He is a self-styled expert in the supriority of streaming, so surely he’d have something to say about this erzatz. As it turned out he have said his peace, and there is absolutely nothing there. Just no opinion at all.

UPDATE: Tim Peters e-mailed with a suggestion that it’s “a basic business practice for Media Blasters” that aims at selling DVDs. Obviously. The question is, what is in it for Crunchy? How much did MB pay them? ANN was desperate, Crunchyroll is not.

According to John, Bandai licensed Sorakake (which has just opened at Ani-nouto a few days ago — talk about coincidences). This makes me very happy. Also, it may be a good opportunity to buy a Blu-ray player at last. And a decent TV (I heard OLED was the way to go).

According to John, Funimation announced a bunch of new licenses at Otakon, and surprisingly, there are a few that I could possibly watch. SW2 and Ookami-san are by no means masterpieces, but they can be watched if nothing else is available (there’s also Campanella of which I know nothing personally). Funi is also to be commended for picking Hetalia. If they keep going like that, the “FUNi only licenses shit” slogan will have to be retired.

A couple of weeks I was marshalling Youtube links to troll Miku-haters at #animeblogger, when, entirely by accident, I noticed that Sososo posted a promo for an upcoming album “Reboot“. It popped up on Amazon today and I immeditealy grabbed a few tracks. It’s quite nice, if you’re into this kind of thing. DTO FTW.

Also… Actual tracks sound better than the previews at either Youtube or Amazon. Not sure why. At first I passed upon a bunch of them because they sounded like “been there, done that”, or, frankly, rejects from i.Next. But after buying a couple of them, I returned for more. Fortunately, there are no per-transaction fees.