The atmosphere was largely one of love for Gravitation; almost a continuance from the Gravitation screening the night before. One initial event involved the gathering of Gravitation cosplayers at the front of the room, and the distribution to said cosplayers of posters and some of the backstage pass extras included with the DVDs.
After some technical difficulties with the VCR (hah!), it was time for trailers. First up was Shingu: Secret of the Stellar Wars, followed by the live-action Boogiepop and Others film, Piano, and Boys Be.... Then, to make things interesting, short clips of music were played from two other titles, with prizes to whomever in the audience could guess the titles first. The two in question were To Heart and the Gravitation OAVs, the latter of which was received with much joyous screaming.
General product news was next. The Shingu dub is complete, and the show is on target for a spring 2005 release and will span 5 discs. The Irresponsible Captain Tylor Ultra Edition-boxes are also set for spring 2005, and will include 3 discs' worth of extras, including interviews and commentaries and more. One more spring '05 targeted title: Boogiepop and Others, which is currently in production. Other titles: Piano, Q2 '05; Gravitation OAV, summer '05; Boys Be... and To Heart, fall '05.
Three new Critical Mass announcements were made, all Vanilla Series titles: Gakuen no Syuryousya, Heisabyouin, and Onnakyousi Yumi no Houkago. Two more already-licensed titles, Hooligan and Slaves to Passion, are on target for October and November releases, respectively. And confirmations were given for two AX-announced titles, Bad End and Seisei. In non-Vanilla-Series-related news, Cool Devices is being remastered and dubbed, and will be re-released over 4 discs this coming spring.
Then it was time for more prize giveaways (volunteers to sing the OPs to Gravitation and Comic Party), before getting to the Q&A:
Gravitation:
No comment could be made regarding any licensing of the OSTs, or any other related merchandise. Stickers will be present on the discs to indicate if they contain one of the backstage pass extras or not (and no, the pass doesn't do anything but look really nifty). The show will be on the Anime Network, and most definitely will not be on Adult Swim. There will eventually be a full box set release.
Other product news:
Boogiepop and Others will not be dubbed, and thusly will have no director's commentary as the anime series did. The anime was solicited to a particular channel at one point, but was rejected because they didn't think a "high school drama" would work for them. TRSI has no intention to enter the print market at this time, so no comment on the Boogiepop novels. Comic Party Revolution is not yet being made available for licensing. The music videos will be included in the Tylor box set, plus one that did not make it onto the existing discs. No price has yet been set for the set. TRSI is in the process of gauging interest in a K.O. Beast box set.
Bill Rogers:
The common "how can I become a VA" question was asked to Bill, to which he responded from personal experience that being in acting and having that training and background was a big help. He was happy to sign stuff, but would not show off his singing skills. He doesn't really get to work with other VAs, due to the nature of the anime dubbing process in N.A., but they do meet each other outside the booth. When asked how much he gets paid, Bill responded with, "I've been meaning to ask for a raise, but now is not the time." All in all, he had a fun time with the audience, and vice-versa.
The panel finished with some more prize giveaways for those who could answer various trivia questions. Time was up pretty quickly, so everyone moved outside so the next panel could take over the room, where there was more stuff given out and some informal Q&A.
--
TRSI Interview
I had brought only one tape for my tape recorder, and had not managed to get enough time to transcribe previous interviews to free up tape space, so it was back to the basics for this one: the ol' pen and paper. This is not an exact transcript, but rather a brief summation of the questions and answers (apologies to Kris and Judy if the context seems a bit different in some cases, but I wanted to get all the info included!). I promise to bring more tapes next year, although maybe TRSI is glad I didn't get their each and every word recorded!
This interview was conducted with Kris Kleckner and Judy DeFrieze on the morning of Saturday, July 31.
Q: How have the boxes been doing for you?
A: Comic Party and Gravitation are both selling well. The response from all the fangirls on Gravitation has really been great. In regards to the boxes specifically, we recognize that there's a lot of demand for the art boxes, which is why we?ve dealt with many of the industry leaders to secure empty art boxes to sell through our online store. Thanks to their popularity, it is likely that Right Stuf will continue to do the DVD 1 + Boxes for all our future releases.
Q: Has TRSI secured all of the Vanilla Series titles?
A: No. Some of those titles were already licensed before started to pick up the series. The Vanilla Series is pretty much a collection of independent OVAs. They?re not really tied together which means they can be released independently without the series label. For example, Media Blasters has released some earlier Vanilla Series titles via their Kitty line. We do have more Vanilla Series titles scheduled in the future for Critical Mass Video.
Q: Do you only license Vanilla Series titles?
A: No, we actually look at a wide range of adult titles. For instance, The Mystery of Nonomura Hospital is not part of the Vanilla Series. It just happens that a lot of what has been picked up lately is from the Vanilla series.
Q: Why the decision to focus on the Vanilla Series?
A: It was Shawne's decision to focus on those titles.
Q: Any reason why Boogiepop Phantom box sets keep showing up at some Best Buys?
A: While we sold a number of these directly through TRSI's site, the rest were shipped to Best Buy as exclusives. From what we understand, Best Buy stores them at a central warehouse and then distributes them to individual stores. While we had sold out of the number of copies that we had, Best Buy still had some at their warehouse and so they were still shipping to the stores.
Q: I've noticed M-Locks being used for recent releases. Any chance we'll continue to see those?
A: It?s our preference to use the M-Lock cases. As both a retailer and a producer, we really understand the type of damage that can occur when discs fall off the hubs and get scratched up during shipment. We?ve found that the M-Lock cases tend to hold up the best and so we tend to try to use them exclusively. At the time we released His and Her Circumstances, the clear M-Lock cases were just starting to become available and we couldn?t get enough of them in to cover the entire run. So we decided to produce as many as we could in the clear cases rather than delaying the entire release.
Q: What criteria do you have in mind when looking for a studio to dub a TRSI title?
A: The primary goal is to find a studio and especially a director that will fit the show.
Q: There seems to be a preference for East Coast studios. Any chance we might ever see a TRSI release with a dub done by one of the West Coast studios?
A: Well geographic location doesn?t really matter so much as work load. The main reason that we don?t use the west coast studios is that a lot of the time they?re already booked with other projects ? not only anime but also dubbing on video games.
Q: So, why Iowa? How did TRSI end up in Des Moines?
A: That?s actually where the company was founded. Back in 1987, Todd, one of the original founders wanted to bring back his childhood favorite - Astro Boy. So Todd and Shawne (CEO today) established the company in order to resurrect it in the States. Since both of them were from Des Moines, neither really wanted to move so the company has remained in Iowa. It?s actually really helped to keep our overhead down because it would be much more expensive to have offices in places like LA or New York City.
Q: Any word on the status of TRSI's remaining VHS backlog ever making the jump to DVD?
A: It all depends on whether or not there?s a demand for those titles (Towards the Terra, Leda, etc.) it would depend on whether or not existing contracts covered DVD rights, and if not, then if it would be worth the cost of acquiring those rights to do a DVD release.
Q: Can we expect alternate angles to be a standard feature on TRSI releases?
A: It depends on the licensing agreement and the materials available. For example, if no clean video is given, then an English credits alternate angle can't be done. But an effort is made to do alternate angles when possible.
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