Dante’s Inferno: The Animated Movie street date confirmed
9th December 2009: Anime, gaming and animation fans can venture into the nine gates of hell not once, but twice this February as Starz Media’s Film Roman company unleashes Dante’s Inferno The Animated Movie, a ferocious companion piece to Electronic Arts’ forthcoming Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PSP title.
Both the game and animated movie are based on part one of Dante Alighieri’s classic poem, The Divine Comedy, better known as “Dante’s Inferno.” Each takes players and viewers on a stunning journey through the nine circles of Hell. Dante’s Inferno The Animated Movie also follows Dante as he travels through limbo, lust, gluttony, greed, anger, heresy, violence, fraud and treachery in search of his true love, Beatrice.
Dante’s Inferno The Animated Movie is a visually stunning project from the creative teams behind some of the boldest animated films of all time – including Ghost in the Shell, Blood the Last Vampire, Tales of the Black Freighter, Ergo Proxy and Samurai Champloo – it provides a breathtaking new version of Dante Alighieri’s medieval classic, and the perfect way to delve deeper into the subjects covered in the interactive action adventure.
To give added distinction among each of the nine circles, EA and Film Roman are taking the innovative step of commissioning unique visions from multiple studios with experience creating some of the top anime in the industry to tell this classic story. Film Roman’s Joe Goyette (“Dead Space™: Downfall”) is the producer on the project, Victor Cook (“The Spectacular Spider-Man,” “Hellboy Animated: Blood & Iron”) is directing and Brandon Auman (“Iron Man: Armored Adventures”) is writing. Each episode hails from the best animation studios within the USA, Japan and Korea.
As well as providing more insight into the characters and story adaptation featured within the Dante’s Inferno game, the movie explores aspects of the poem that Visceral’s thrilling action adventure does not.
Dante’s Inferno The Animated Movie marks the second such collaboration between EA and Film Roman, following 2008’s Dead Space collaboration – which saw Dead Space: Downfall released on DVD to huge critical and commercial success.
Dante’s Inferno The Animated Movie will be released on Blu Ray and DVD on February 8th 2010, shortly after the game itself. For more information on the game and film, please visit www.dantesinferno.com.
Some of you might already know the song “Tsunaidate” as the 3rd ending to Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood anime. Well the artist Lil’B has released their newest album entitled ONE today in Japan and you can buy it tomorrow from yesasia on 12/9/2009. If you get the linked version, you are looking at 13 tracks + Bonus DVD disc.
Go to Lil’ B’s official website to learn more about Mie on Vocals and Aila (rap artist) and their upcoming tour.
Well I was late to the PV party, but if you are interested in yet another sad video, check out Lil’ B’s “Tsunaidate.”
As many of you may know… or prolly the 4 people who have read all my posts… i have not been watching anime… AT ALL. This also is the cause for me not having ANY posts recently… and by recently i mean like 2 months. Meanwhile my good friend Eye Sedso has been making steady posts for a year…. Over 400 in a year? your a nut.
Anyways, I have watched no anime in about 6 months. I have tried watching an ep or 2 here and there and got bored and left. I dont know why this is happening considering I used to LOVE anime. Like seriously… The weird part is, i still love to talk about anime, but just don’t watch it.
“Well mike if you love talking about it why haven’t you made any posts?”
Shuttup dickfore, Im not gonna write posts about irrelevant shit from the past i dont even care about anymore.
Anyways, my request is that one of you suggest a show that will get me back into anime. I will watch at least one episode of whatever shows are suggested, and if your responsible for the show that gets me back into it… i dunno ill do something to reward you… what? i dunno what can i really do… ill think of something.
I’m guessing either Eye Sedso or Baka-Raptor will give me the best ones, because they seem to have the best opinions about anime shows.
Oh, and you can read my list so you dont recommend something that I already watched.
Well, hopefully you can get me back into anime, because i can’t seem too.
Nice to see NAO somewhere on the radar. After she “graduated” from fripSide in March, I haven’t seen a whole lot of anything. The track isn’t bad at all. Moar, please.
According to an image on the Code Geass phone website it certainly looks like it is. According to the alien language japanese in the image there is a new Code Geass Project in the works. Is it a sequel to R2 or a spinoff, who knows, I do know however that I would love to see more from this series.
Aqui el 9 de esta serie y porfin estamos al dia si!!!, aunque ya pronto sale el 10 ¬¬ pero bueno mas vale tarde que nunca y aqui veremos como cae un personaje tras otro triste… triste pero disfrutenlo…
It feels like there are two simultaneous definitions of “otaku”. One of them means “enthusiast”. If you freakin’ love everything about trains and model trains and trainspotting and train trips and whatnot, you would be a train otaku. The other definition defines otaku as being socially withdrawn, often creepy anime obsessives that don’t have “real lives”.
The first definition often gets conflated with the second definition in English. This is what leads to people outside of Japan labeling themselves as otaku because they like anime a lot. They are fans of anime, and in the same way that they would call themselves fans of a band or a sports team or a movie, they call themselves fans of anime. The tinges of the second definition come in when the term gets used a bit as a badge of pride, since many of the same descriptions are stereotypically applied as well to “nerds” or “geeks”, however those concepts in America are not remotely as negative. This lack of negativity with the seemingly equivalent English words like “nerd” and “geek” arise from radically different social and economic conditions in both American and Japan, which are what I will outline in this post.
As I’m sure you all know from watching Annie May, most of your potential for future success in Japan is decided early on in your life. If you didn’t pass your exams to get into the “right” middle school, you probably won’t be able to get into the “right” high school, and in turn the “right” college (LIKE TOKYO UNIVERSITY LIKE IN LOVE HINA! And which is often ironic in that Japanese colleges are often treated like a vacation compared to the rigor of high school and the entrance exams to get into those colleges), and in turn get a full-time job upon graduation as a full-time (seishain) salaryman (which is English for “sarariiman”). Otherwise, you’re going to be a freeter stuck with an endless stream of low-wage, temporary, part-time jobs. If you’re lucky, you’ll be a permatemp at an office job with no job security and get paid a fraction of what you’re worth.
This whole system of going to the “right” schools and whatnot makes it so that Japanese otaku can’t do what American nerds/geeks do where they can just show an employer their mad skillz and turn that into a job at some interweb company like Google or whatever. After all, as explained above, in Japan they really didn’t even learn much of anything in school so it’s not like there are any skillz to show in the first place! It’s all about the networking. I’ve even read stories where people in Japan couldn’t do basic business things like order a shipment of computers for their company without first cultivating a deep enough business relationship with the sales rep at Dell first.
So you’ve graduated from college, but the only job you have right now is working 12 hours a week or so at a Lawson or something. Or maybe you got one of those anime in-betweener jobs. Regardless, you might not even be making $1,000 a month. If an apartment costs more than that (and let’s not forget all the insane fees that you have to pay when you sign your lease!), obviously you can’t live on your own. We haven’t even accounted for other essentials like food, utilities, clothing, and transportation yet! Hopefully, you’re part of that 50% or so of the country that lives in or around Tokyo/Yokohama, Osaka/Kyoto/Kobe, or Nagoya so that you can just live at home with your parents, rather than ending up as one of those net cafe homeless.
Remember, the Japanese economy has been in pretty bad shape for almost 20 years now. It’s also worse than the numbers appear. In America, we’re pretty happy when the unemployment rate is around 5%. In Japan, that’s a bad number. Part of the reason is that that 5% number doesn’t consider underemployment, which is a huge issue in Japan. In America, we have the U-6 unemployment number to calculate underemployment. It’s at 17.5% right now for America. Furthermore, also remember that women aren’t really supposed to work in Japan, especially if you’re married. That in turn also massively decreases the number of people looking for work, and in turn the unemployment rate. Combine that with living at home (meaning that living expenses for many are nonexistent, allowing for lower wages), and it becomes easy to see just how much worse the economy there is.
But now there’s a kind of a bind. Yes, you probably have next to no living expenses now, but you still don’t make remotely enough to live, for lack of a better term, “real” lives. In a sense, it could very well cost them basically all of your income to live a facsimile of a “real” life by doing things like dressing well and whatnot. Yet even though you look the part, it’s still basically pointless, so why bother trying to be part of society? Might as well at least attempt to have some kind of a simulacrum (whoa! things are gettin’ kind of pomo in here!) of a “real” life through your anime obsession. Maybe you can fill that gaping hole in your soul with some consumer goods? Americans love doing that too! Not only do girls know that you don’t have a future, you couldn’t even pretend to even if you wanted to. Looks like you’ll just have to settle for your waifus instead. Nene Anegasaki only requires a one-time cost of $50!
Yes, that sounds sexist on the surface. Oh, those meaaaaaaaan girls only care about money! Well, women are even worse off economically. They may have been in the same situation as you where they didn’t get on the right track in 6th grade, so they’re stuck working at 7-11 or at best, being an OL. Even if they got one of those real full-time jobs, Japanese society is so sexist that women are still really not “supposed” to work. Just look cute, be clumsy enough that you will appear simultaneously non-threatening to men and so that a man (maybe he’ll be that special someone!) can come over and fix things for you (making him feel more masculine!) and hopefully he’ll decide that he wants you to be all dependent on him forever and ever.
I remember a story earlier this year, for example about a woman who sued her company for firing her because he had a baby. Their reasoning? You need to take care of the baby, and you couldn’t possibly be able to take care of it properly while still working. And of course, if the women is one of those top candidates that IS able to have a real career and a real life, she can have her pick of men. So basically, their options are either to end up like you (living at home and spending all their money on expensive consumer goods) or to marry someone with more potential than you.
What’s the point of this wall of text here? It’s to make the distinction that while being an otaku outside Japan is a choice, in Japan it’s often more of something thrust upon you, or of trying to make the most of a bad situation. As an alternative lifestyle, it’s basically all or nothing. Just as the otaku can’t buy both dakimakuras AND non-990Y jeans from Uniqlo (assuming of course that their parents aren’t buying their clothes for them), those on the rat race treadmill don’t have time to camp out overnight in Akiba in between working long hours, then drinking with colleagues, then working out, and so on. Nor perhaps, would they even want to partake in that socially debased lifestyle when they could be living the societal ideal. Perhaps even with their own harem of 3D women, paid for by their keiretsu!
Further reading, and by further reading I mean a bunch of posts at Neojaponisme that I got a lot of these concepts from:
Everybody’s Fujoshi Girlfriend What Kind of Otaku are You? Can Otaku Love Like Normal People? The Friend Tax No Chances in the Early Days of the “Second-Chance Society” Japan creating sub-class of poorly paid
