Monthly Archive: August 2008

Michael Pinto, who is a bigger Star Blazers fan than you are, reports on Fanboy.com that Yoshinobu Nishizaki has come to a legal agreement under which he can revive Space Battleship Yamato, better known in this country as Star Blazers.

Here’s the official press release (which is from here and here), quickly translated by Ed Hawkins at spacecruiseryamato.com:

"In 2220 of the Christian Era … A crisis is approaching Earth, it is seen as the expansion of a moving black hole. An operation of immigration as progressed with moving over 300 million people from Earth … The latest transportation fleet is attacked during the immigration effort, yet is counter attacked by Space Battleship Yamato, now commanded by Susumo Kodai (38). Aboard, is daughter Miyuki … Child of Susumo and Yuki."
 
The animated masterpiece “Space Battleship Yamato”, last seen in theaters 25 years ago, 73-year-old producer Yoshinobu Nishizaki, who worked on that film and the original anime series, declared that he wants his last work to be a new "Yamato" film. He said he hopes to surpass Hayao Miyazaki’s latest effort, "Gake no Ue no Ponyo." To achieve that, Nishizaki has founded Yamato Studio, based in Nerima, Tokyo.

Studio Open general superintendent, Masuda Toshio gave toast to the revival project now that the copyright litigation is over, which was originally announced in July 2004. According to Mr. Nishizaki “This time it’s a fresh start, all is clear.”

In 1999, Mr. Nishizaki was arrested for violating sword and gun laws, who served time and was released December 19th 2007. Meanwhile, reconciliation between Leiji Matsumoto concerning each others work has gave way to allowing each to pursue their own works.

The movie IS currently titled “Fukkatu-hen" which Nishizaki has been planning since the mid 1990s.

Toshio Masuda (81) superintendent of Studio Open, is Chief Director of the Rival Movie. Toshio Masuda (81) has been directing films and TV since 1958, including “Life at the Showa Era” (1968), “Tora! Tora! Tora!” (1970), “Space Battleship Yamato” (1977) and “Arrivederci Yamato” (1978).

Tomonori Kogawa (58) will be Chief animator for the Revival movie. Tomonori Kogawa has animated such works as; “Space Runaway Ideon” (1980), “Aura Battler Dunbine” (1983), “Super Dimensional Cavalry Southern Cross” (1984) and “Heavy Metal L-Gaim” (1984).

Announced for 2009 release.

 

In an interview for Australian news outlet The Courier Mail, Justice League live-action film director George Miller recently reported that production of the troubled project will move offshore, and that filming will begin anew in 2009.

This information comes at the very end of the article, which mainly focuses on Aussie model Megan Gale’s "blitz" of the competition when she read for the role of Wonder Woman in the film.

Miller said Gale had only a few hours of acting training with famed NIDA acting coach Nico Lathouras before her audition. "I told him to spend a couple of days with her but he spent three hours with her and came to me and said, ‘look, she is a natural’.

"It’s one of those things – some people can run fast without any training and acting is the same. And Megan is one of those people who can just act."

(via io9)

Dirk Schwieger’s Moresukine is different from other series I’ve focused on in these weekly webcomic creator interviews for a few significant reasons — first and foremost of which being that it’s no longer updated. The last comic was posted more than two years ago, back in in June 2006. However, when I saw that the German creator was a guest of NBM Publishing at this year’s Comic-Con International, I jumped at the chance to include a Q&A with him in this series.

For anyone unfamiliar with Moresukine, the 24-part webcomic chronicled a year’s worth of "assignments" Schwieger undertook at the request of readers while living abroad in Japan. Fans would send him tasks to accomplish — anything from "meeting a traditional swordsmith" to "spending a night in a pod hotel" — and he would write, illustrate and post a new comic each week based on his experience trying to complete that mission. The aim of the project, according to Schwieger, was to make the most of his time in Japan by offering himself up as someone through which his readers could live vicariously. The title of the series, Moresukine, came from the Japanese pronunciation of "Moleskine," the type of notebook he used to record his experiences.

A few months ago, NBM Publishing announced that it would be collecting Schwieger’s online comic and publishing it in print form, complete with extra material contributed by webcomic veterans James Kochalka and Ryan North. Now that the paperback Moresukine collection has hit shelves, I spoke to Schwieger about the origin of the series, his favorite assignments and what we can expect to see from the talented creator in the future.

COMICMIX: Can you start from the beginning, Dirk? How did this project happen and what did you want it to be when you first conceived of it?

DIRK SCHWIEGER: Well, I was in Japan for one year. You could say that it was a travel-logue kind of thing, but the catch is that it’s not just about what I deem is important or what i want to tell, but people were invited to send in emails with requests of places that i should go to in Tokyo, where I lived, or certain people I should get in contact with. And I couldn’t refuse. I had to do all of the submissions in the order of their arrival.

It started very mundane. There is a webcomics portal in Germany, where I come from originally, and it’s called Electrocomics.com. I had some stuff up there and they said, "Oh, you’re going to Tokyo. Maybe you should do some sketches regularly." So they created this blog. I never had a blog before, and never intended to have one. I was kind of naive about the whole thing… but now I know. There are interesting blogs.

At that time, it was very important to me to get around the navel-gazing thing. This was one of the reasons to invite others and have this community effort of exploring the country — to have me sort of remote-controlled from outside the city. (more…)