Tales of Festival Tickets are On Sale!

For those of you planning to be in Japan on June 5th and 6th of this year, you could have the opportunity to see Masaya Onosaka (Jadeite, pictured left) and Hikaru Midorikawa (Fiore, Ail/Alan, pictured right)! Tales of Festival 2010 tickets are now on sale, and those two seiyuu will be among a handful of stars from Bandai-Namco’s Tales RPG series appearing at the special 2 day concert. Hikaru played the characters Lion Magnus in Tales of Destiny, and Judas in Tales of Destiny 2. Masaya played Zelos Wilder in Tales of Symphonia and Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World. Tickets went on sale earlier this month and are going for anywhere from 4800 Yen to 7800 Yen ($53-86 USD). There aren’t too many details out about this event yet, but it looks like it will be a lot of fun for Tales fans!

Queen Nehelenia Turns Nice in Cobra: The Animation!

Yoshiko Sakakibara (Queen Nehelenia) reprised her role as Armaroid Lady, Cobra’s android sidekick, in a two episode Cobra: The Animation OVA which aired on Japanese TV just weeks ago. The entire Cobra: The Animation series which stretches all the way back to the 80s, is finally being released on Blu-Ray beginning this April in honor of Cobra’s 30th anniversary! Fans can learn more about the OVA from Mania.com, and also watch subtitled episodes on Crunchyroll!

Some Seiyuu Involved in Ghoulish ParaPara?!

Wataru Takagi (Rubeus, an MC, and Kobayashi), Daisuke Sakaguchi (various supporting roles), and Machiko Toyoshima (Palla-Palla and various supporting characters) are part of an enormous cast doing something special for popular Japanese ghost story franchise, GeGeGe no Kitaro. The cast happily volunteered for a special CD filled with their singing, and dancing – they are all going to be doing GeGeGe-themed Para-Para! They are all featured on the cover next to a monster with a giant eyeball for a head. This will be released on February 19th and looks like it will be a lot of fun!

New RPG Gives Characters the Chance to Have the Voice of Ryotaro Okiayu!

Square Enix’s Concerto Gate Forte, a sequel to the hugely popular MMORPGs Cross Gate and Concerto Gate, has a very special item in it that players can collect. For two weeks as part of a special lottery, players could collect the “Power of Words Candy” and their character would be able to speak with the voice of one of 3 seiyuus. One of those is Ryotaro Okiayu (Tiger’s Eye and various other supporting characters). The other two voices that fans could win are Jun Fukuyama (best known as Lelouch Lamperouge from Code Geass) and J-pop singer Nana Mizuki. Concerto Gate Forte has proven to be popular among Japanese game players for its very interesting art style: it combines 3D characters and maps with hand drawn map elements!

New Doraemon CD Features An Old Favorite…

Mitsuko Horie (Sailor Galaxia) is featured on a special Doraemon movie theme album! To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the first Doraemon movie, a special 2CD album is being released with the best-loved theme songs. Mitsuko Horie’s “Aozora-tte Iina” from 1988 is featured on the compilation. To hear the song, click here!

..As Does a New Gundam Album!

Or rather, old favorites! On February 24th, a limited edition boxset with 145 Gundam songs will be released as a nice touch to the 30th anniversary celebrations which began last year. Chieko Honda (Tellu) and Megumi Hayashibara (Himeko) will be singing Tokyo Boogie Night on Disc 10: Another Story. The Boxset also comes with a 272 page book with a Gundam timeline, interviews, and comments on the music. This is quickly selling out on many online stores so Gundam fans who want a copy of this should go find it quickly!

And To End, Lots of Kikuko Inoue!

Kikuko Inoue (Princess Rubina, Reiko Aya/Sailor Aluminum Siren) is sure up to a lot these days! On February 2rd, she will be appearing at a special “Kodansha Comics Afternoon Festival” for a radio interview that will later be streamed online through NicoVideo. For more information on this event hit the Afternoon Festival blog here! Kikuko’s voice can also be heard in a dating sim: Vector’s Book Of Love. Kikuko plays a high school student in this dating sim for men. This is a dating sim built just for the mobile market, and men who want to play this game can try it for free. We can’t find too much more about the nature of this game (if there is any hentai/ecchi themes involved). The last place that you can hear Kikuko this month is on a CD of music to accompany the popular Zero na Tsukaima series called Nemurenai Fantasy. This CD is full of character songs and dialogues, and is a must for any ZnT fans!

Ghost in the Shell Joins the Rehash Trend!

Following in the footsteps of Rebuild of Evangelion, the legendary Ghost in the Shell film from 1995 is going to be re-released in theaters in Japan with some shiny changes on July 12th! New computer generated graphics and digital effects will be added, as well as a brand new 6.1 surround sound recording. The sound mixing is under the helm of Randy Thom, who worked on GiTS 2: Innocence, and used George Lucas’ Skywalker Sound as his home base for this project. The re-release makes a lot of use of 3-D CGI technology pioneered in the years since the original. Unfortunately, the first film did not do very well in its limited release in US theaters, but observed a much bigger following on DVD and Home Video. Mamoru Oshii stated that he really wanted to give this movie another chance in theaters, especially since technology has come a long way since 1995. He was most happy that the technology allowed for them to have better control over the color, which was very hard to keep consistent with the cels they used in 1995. They call the re-release Ghost in the Shell 2.0 , not because it is a continuation of where the film left off, but an evolution given upgrades to technology. The biggest change in this movie, lies in their choice of Seiyuu. Yoshiko Sakakibara (Queen Nehelenia) will be playing the voice of The Puppet Master, who was played by a man in 1995! We are unsure if Shigeru Chiba’s (Kurumiwario) or Ginzo Matsuo’s (Sailor Police Cop) voices have been used or replaced in the movie at this time. Ginzo had a small role as an old man, and Shigeru played a garbage collector. Oshii has said he would like this to come out on DVD, but at this point he is unsure if it will. The limited release of this movie (only 5 cities!) precedes the premiere of his latest film, The Sky Crawlers.

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time Finally Makes North American Debut!

A movie we have been keeping our eyes on for quite a while now is finally being released to North America. Sadly, it’s only a limited cinema release for now. The Girl Who Leapt Through Time will be playing in Los Angeles, Seattle, and New York very soon – check the link for details! The website also features a short trailer of the English dub, but we are looking forward to seeing the award-winning subbed version. Bandai expects to announce more theatrical dates soon – now would be a great time to hound your independent cinemas to bring this film to your hometown! Tell your local indie cinema operators to give Bandai Entertainment or Kadokawa Pictures USA a shout for more information on getting this movie. For those of our fans a little rusty on this movie’s connection to Sailor Moon, this film was directed by Mamoru Hosada, who worked as a key animator on the Sailor Moon S Movie.