Hi there! I'm a regular reader of your website, so I thought I'd drop you
a line on what was announced at SakuraCon. I don't know how much of this
stuff (if any) you can use, so feel free to pick and choose.
Unfortunately, there was precious little announced. Bandai was the only major
studio represented, and the sole bits of news that Jerry Chu, the Bandai
representative, had was that the Escaflowne movie, in addition to being shown
at Anime Expo, would also be shown at Otakon.
Also, Jerry mentioned that "Jubei-chan" has been undergoing a couple of name
changes. Apparently they are currently calling it "Jubei-chan: The Secret of
the Lovely Eyepatch."
The closest thing to the announcement of a new title was that Jerry hinted
that he had an announcement to make, but couldn't quite yet...expect something
in just a few days.
He mentioned re: Escaflowne on Fox that somebody at Fox "jumped the gun." He
didn't make any official comments, but he gave the impression that Fox had
made the announcement without actually acquiring the rights to the show.
(Don't quote me on that, however...I might have read between the wrong
lines...)
He talked about the disappearing VHS sub market and said the things we've
heard already: for the most part, people who buy sub VHS also own DVD, so it
is only logical that those sub sales are going down, thus making the phasing
out of sub VHS economically necessary.
He had a thing or two to say about Gundam. Apparently Bandai is VERY happy
about Gundam Wing's success (as well they should be). Although he didn't give
specifics, he indicated that we will be seeing more Gundam series before too
long. He didn't mention if these would be DVD.
Unfortunately (because I'm a big fan of the show), the Saber Marionette series
seems to be on the back burner currently. SM J to X will probably have to
wait until next year, and there seem to be no current plans for a dub and/or
DVD of SMJ.
One funny moment: one lady had a question about the translation of SM J to X.
"Will the same person who did Saber J be doing the J to X translation?" It
turns out the lady who asked this question was Anna Exter, who actually was
the translator for SMJ. Jerry laughed and said "I hope so."
Earlier, the guys from Multimedia 2000 (who handled the BGC DVD's) spoke.
Unfortunately, I don't have too many details to report about the remastering
of those disks (except to report that the remastered version will likely
contain a lot of extras). They did encourage fans to report any quality
problems they have with their disks to them at
pr@m-2k.com. They said that fans are the best quality control people they
have.
Oh, by the way, during the "Anime on DVD" panel, you might be interested to
know that AnimeonDVD.com was cited as THE source for anime DVD news and
information.
Anyway, that's pretty much all the news from the Pacific Northwest. I only
wish the convention were a little bigger: that way they might convince more
industry people to drop by...
Again, thanks for putting together such an informative and valuable site.
Dale G. Abersold
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