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Planetes (Vol. 1)
Anime often succeeds at hard-SF where live action fails. Gundam, Terra He and Royal Space Force were all stunning examples of true, literary-quality Sci-Fi. Here comes Planetes, which will join the ranks of these stellar anime to be one of the best SF series you'll get to experience in your lifetime.
Set in the near future, it's a blue-collar spaceworker tale of cleaning up orbital debris that is a hazard to navigation. The series does an outstanding job of realistically portraying life and travel in space, and the interesting characters and situations never let it get dull. For hardcore Sci-Fi fans or avid space nuts, this is the anime series to have!
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DearS - 1st Contact
A wacky combination of Alien Nation, Urusei Yatsura and Chobits, DearS are aliens who crashed in Tokyo Bay with no way to return home. Assimilated into Japanese society, they've been accepted. But Takeya thinks there's something sinister about their perfection, and yet, his life is turned upside down when he finds one of these aliens, saves her life -- and she becomes his slave girl!
Like Chobits, the first few episodes revolve around teaching her to speak and getting her clothing (while hiding her from his friends) with all the hilarity (and gratuitous nudity) that involves. A fun romantic anime comedy with some interesting plot twists!
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Thundercats
Season One, Volume One
While not strictly anime, we're sure everyone remembers this awesome animated series from their childhood. Besides, Cheetara was mad-cute! The pilot has an amazing plot with depth and characterization and offers incredible opportunity for the series. With its recognizable logo (available on many T-Shirts seen around NYC), and memorable "Thundercats-Ho!" battle cry, this series blazed a trail for other high-quality anime-esque animation to be produced.
This boxed set is worth having for the pilot (Exodus), and of course, for the extraordinary opening title sequence -- possibly the greatest opening animation ever made. Now, we just wanna know when that other fan-favorite, Voltron, will get the same treatment and come to DVD!!!
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Hammerboy
Based on a successful Korean comic (manhwa) by Youngman Hur, this film seeks to emulate the successful string of Miyazaki blockbusters and, in some ways achieves that goal. When Mangchi, an-overly muscular young boy armed with a hammer and some rope, saves the life of a princess-on-the-run from an evil rival, he must help her escape from her enemies and return to her homeland.
Director Tae kun An lifts elements from Laputa, Porco Rosso, and Kiki's Delivery Service, along with big-budget animation and lots of action as well as humor. Although rated 13 and older, this film is okay for all ages.
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Yu-Yu Hakusho: Dark Tournament
Retelling the famous Dark Tournament saga from the original television series, Yu Yu Hakusho enables players to select from more than 25 different characters including Yusuke, Kuwabara, and Kurama as they battle one another inside eight unique and destructible arenas.
In fact, it's in the two story modes where players will most likely spend the majority of their time. Offering up a ton of actual footage from the Dark Tournament anime as interstitials, the narrative follows the original animated series rather closely with a nice assortment of mission objectives in each chapter. So while one chapter may simply require you to dodge, jump, and duck your way out of the path of your teacher's projectile, another may force you into a team battle or survival match to progress the storyline.
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i.hack//AI Buster
This addictive NOVEL takes place in the well-known .hack// universe, and in a time BEFORE the PS2 game. Wonderful for newbies as it explains the universe and characters in a detail not available by the manga, anime or game, yet, it is still a good read even for experienced .hack'ers.
AI Buster captures the wonder of anime, the artistry of manga and the sheer thrill of gaming, and does so in a format that is -- so far -- barely used by the anime/gamer community. We hope to see more adventures such as this one from Tokyopop!!
Japanese the Manga Way:
An Illustrated Guide to Grammar and Structure
For those of us who dream of translating manga, or reading the originals before it was translated, comes this wonderful book. Abundantly populated with samples from a wide range of actual manga, the author disassembles the contents of the word balloons in terms of reading Japanese, understanding the translation of the words, understanding the grammar and structure of the language, and best of all, making it all make sense in terms of modern, conversational Japanese.
Learning with manga makes rules and structures easy to remember, and also lets you experience colloquialisms, contractions, interjections, and other elements of speech that get short shrift in more formal textbooks.
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Hanna-Barbera Cartoon Sound Fx
We here at anime.com have often promoted doing your own animation, learning to draw, making your own films. To sweeten any animation you create, music and sound effects are necessary. While finding music is easy, getting just the right effects, both subtle and obvious, are difficult for any budding director.
Although these are cartoony-sounds from the Hanna-Barbera collection, you'd be surprised how rife anime is with weird fx -- consider Lum's "squink" sound in Urusei Yatsura when she blinks in confusion -- it's just that the sound is so good, you barely notice it, but it brings the characters to life.
This CD will give you a good taste for FX sounds, and adding them to your animated works will greatly improve the impact of your work.
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