Azure Flame Reloaded

Hello and welcome to another edition of Sunday News Bites! This week we prepared a sunny spot in the studio for a very special guest- the feline Mao from Darker than Black. Mao may have lost his body, but thanks to a wireless network connection, he hasn’t lost his opinions, which he will be glad to share with us.

Sword of the Stranger
Studio Bones fans, start getting excited, because their Sword of the Stranger movie will be opening in Japan on September 29^th, and if you just can’t wait, then head on over to the official website to catch another new clip from the film. Continue Reading »

Hello and welcome to another edition of Sunday News Bites! This week, we’re joined in the news room by Hakuoro from Utawarerumono, here to give us his expert opinion on what it’s like to stay well behind the battle lines and let his harem fight for him.

Kanon Trailer from ADV
The clues were all in place- the domain name registration, the Kanon girls cameo screenshot on the Air website- but now ADV has put together trailers for the series. Apparently, said trailers are unavailable now, but it seems to be the last in a long line of confirmations that, whilst they are unwilling to openly admit it as yet, ADV has indeed licensed Kanon 2006. Continue Reading »

Hello and welcome to another edition of Sunday News Bites! Under the cover of darkness, we brought vampire Pachiru from Magical Pokan here to help comment on this week’s news, which admittedly is as slow as you’d expect from the hot and lazy summer days (not that it’s entirely hot and lazy here in rainier than usual Britain).

Gundam 00 Music

Anime music fans, listen up, for whilst L’Arc en Ciel will be handling the theme for the new Gundam series, background music will be handled by none other than Kenji Kawai. With the likes of Fate/Stay Night, Vampire Princess Miyu, Otogi Zoshi’s Tokyo arc, Windy Tales and of course the GITS movies under his belt, Kawai is no stranger to setting the tone with his atmospheric themes, but how will his style fit in with the space wars of the typical Gundam series? Whatever the case, I’m looking forward to hearing the results.

Pachiru says: The men in this new Gundam series look nice- I’d like to suck their blood sometime! Continue Reading »

Interested in yuri manga and other obscure titles? Since I don’t have much to say about the vast majority of the Comic-Con licenses, just make your way over to ANN instead.

This week, we are joined in the newsroom by El Cazador’s LA, who takes time out from talking Ellis to offer his unstable and often quite disturbing opinion on the events of the week. Continue Reading »

Welcome to another edition of Sunday News Bites! This week we are joined in the news room by Laharl of Disgaea, specifically here to comment on our first story.

Disgaea 3…for PS3
First it was Laharl, then Adell- but now Disgaea fans can look forward a whole new adventure with the announcement of the third instalment in Nippon Ichi’s popular SRPG series. The only blot on the horizon for some of us is that the new game is coming out on a new console- the Playstation 3. Given that the series will be maintaining the same graphical style as the first two, there hardly seems any point putting it on a console whose processing power it doesn’t even need, but no matter how it pans out, I must play this game no matter what measures need to be taken (here’s at least hoping for a PSP version). For those who like their announcements official, here’s Nippon Ichi’s pdf on the matter; just don’t ask me what Prism Red is doing as a homeroom teacher. Continue Reading »

This week on Sunday News Bites the feature celebrates its one month anniversary by inviting a very special guest into the newsroom…or at least we would have done if we could find one. Instead, we had to settle for Cid from Final Fantasy Moneymaker VII.

New Moneymaking target for Gundam
Thought you’d never get the chance to own Gunpla for every single generic Zaku? Think again, because Namco Bandai is looking to rake in 60 billion yen from Gundam merchandise by the end of the financial year, and if they want to meet this target, they may well have to pull out all the stops. Will we see models for each and every mobile suit, pointless upgrades in 00 to justify new models, or just more of those ridiculously expensive platinum Gundams? Maybe they can make it all just by commissioning a 1:1 scale platinum Gundam with ruby and diamond encrusted detailing.
Cid says: Godammit, I’d love to pilot one of those Gundam things and go out into space!

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Can you believe that we’re onto the fourth edition of Sunday News Bites already? This week, we’re joined in the newsroom by Kira Yamato of Gundam Seed and Destiny fame, who takes a break from saving the universe to chime in with his opinions.

Fanboys rejoice
Yes, everyone else posted about it already, but why dedicate an entire and more timely blog post just to tell everyone that yes, a second season of Haruhi is on its way? Those who can still remember all the way back to 2006 will recall that I wrote not one but two rants about how Haruhi had disappointed me- and that my blog was so unpopular at the time that it provoked no comments or fanboyish rantings whatsoever. With that in mind, will I follow the crowd and tackle seaon two? Possibly, but I only hope that it covers the events of the fourth novel, which was the only one I really enjoyed.

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Before we get started on news from the anime world, there’s some Azure Flame-specific news to announce- after Romeo X Juliet, no new parody series will be picked up for the foreseeable future. The reason for this is that I have been writing parodies for nearly a year now, and both I and the parody scene needs a break to refresh and recharge. There are still some series on the cards to be tackled in the future (to be detailed below), but for now I’ll be keeping up with the current list of ongoing series and leaving it at that.

Getting back to the wider news world, this week we are joined in the newsroom by Final Fantasy VII’s Red XIII. Continue Reading »

Hello and welcome to another edition of Sunday News Bites. This week, we are joined in the newsroom by Romeo X Juliet’s Tybalt, who kindly took a break from riding his HORSE to offer insights on this week’s breaking and not-so-breaking stories.

Do you hack .hack?
.hack fans should be pleased to learn that Tokyopop has picked up three of the four new manga series- GU+ (a companion to the GU games), GnU (a tale of minor characters in The World:r2) and 4Koma. Whilst GU+ was reasonably enjoyable and 4Koma ranged between the dire and the amusing, I haven’t read enough of GnU to form a proper opinion on it, although overall these three series don’t stand out enough for me to want to buy them. I may have once been a .hack fangirl, but with the coming of the second generation material, I’m more wary of buying every piece of merchandise with the .hack name on it. Continue Reading »

This Sunday, Azure Flame has a brand new feature, which is absolutely not an excuse for me to write fewer real articles for the blog. Since the one thing we tend to lack here is news, Sunday News Bites has arrived to let me redress that balance, and since there’s no point my trying to compete with blogs that actually offer up-to-the-minute and relevant news, I’ll just pick out the most noteworthy pieces every weekend.

Each week, the Sunday News Bites team (aka Karura) is joined in the studio by an anime or game character to give their opinion on the week’s news. To kick off, we have gone to the Netherworld and brought back Generic Prinny.

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