…And it’s SideM, which is probably going to make a few Million Live fans a little salty.

Still, from a business expansion point of view, it probably makes sense at this point – it’s not like they particularly struggle to fill large venues for any of the other iM@S properties at this point (heck, there’s a Million Live event at the Budokan in a months time), and there’s competitors in the market like Uta-Pri are still shifting units that show there is an audience there. There’s a market to exploit there with a fairly high ceiling which isn’t going to cannibalise the audience from things this particular franchise are already selling to people. To a degree, Million Live would just be preaching to the choir.

Anyway, more details will be released about it next month. I’ll give the show a fair shake regardless, but obviously the most interesting thing about it will be the staff. The original aniM@S and Cinderella Girls both pulled in a bunch of stellar talent, and it’d be nice to see something of the same level for this. For as much as most of my bubble don’t really pay that much attention to the Guy Idol anime (though I’ve heard from more than one person that the SideM live events are a blast), there’s a surprisingly high bar in terms of doing unusual or interesting things set by shows like Shounen Hollywood in that market. As much as some folks like to look down on things they see as fujoshi-bait, it’s not necessarily a market you can be lazy about.

Also, real curious as to if, or perhaps rather how, they’ll approach the whole Akizuki Ryo thing.

(Although I’ll insert the usual disclaimer here that I don’t really follow Million Live, so I was never personally going to get salty regarding anything what goes on with that…)

Seven years of doing these end of year posts, and I have a shocking thing to reveal : I’ve now actually watched two entire episodes of Gundam Unicorn. This was partially down to motivation spurred on by the TV broadcast version (I watched an episode of it, and decided I’d rather just watch the original edits), and partially because I decided to not let myself watch Gundam Thunderbolt until I’d finished watching the thing.

Neither point particually stuck – as is obvious from the prior statements, I’ve not finished watching the rest of Unicorn yet, and I ended up breaking down and just watching Thunderbolt a week or so ago (and, man, Thunderbolt is good). Don’t take this as a statement on Unicorns quality mind you – I enjoyed what I’ve watched of it, I’ve just found it weirdly hard to fit into my viewing schedule, especially this last season.

On the other hand, mind you, I am totally up-to-date on The Origin!

Anyway, as per usual, here’s too many uninteresting words about cartoons from the last year that aren’t really worth reading. The usual caveats apply – spoilers ahoy, and these aren’t necesasrily the best shows of the year, or things I’d necessarily recommend watching yourself, more just stuff I somehow managed to summon Words about.
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For the sixth year running I must, once again, confess that I’ve yet to watch a single episode of Gundam Unicorn. This is particularly bad at this point, because I’ve actually some how managed to get around to seeing the first couple of episodes of Gundam the Origin this year, not to mention being fully up-to-date on Iron Blooded Orphans.

Seriously, I’ll totally crack open those BDs this year.

Anyway, here’s too many words to be actually worth reading about some cartoons from this year. Spoilers be lurking thar below!
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I don’t usually write about this kind of news these days, but, hey, I figure there’s probably an exception to be made for many a thing in life.

So, to presumably to tie in with the Cinderella Girls anime which is now airing, Daisuki have started uploading episodes of the original iM@S TV show. “Big whoop” is probably your reaction to that, but the specific interesting thing about this is that, unlike the North America-only stream of the series on Crunchyroll, the regional restrictions applied on Daisuki appear to be more inline with those they have on Cinderella Girls.

That is to say, this marks the first occasion that the show is available in the UK (and at least some parts of of the rest of Europe, I gather). Now, this isn’t the first iM@S material available over here, as whilst we were deprived of iOS Shiny Festa, Animax picked up the second (and only the second) series of Puchimas a couple of seasons back, but I guess it’s the most significant.

That being said, yeah, yeah, Daisuki. As someone who keeps a PC hooked up to the television for use as my primary anime delivery mechanism these days, I actually managed to watch through the first episode of Cinderella Girls and Tsukimonogatari flawlessly, which is a big improvement over trying to watch Hanamonogatari last year (I gave up). I understand that for those folks who like to stream their cartoons via their games consoles it’s not particularly useful (though Daisuki do have mobile/tablet apps), but, hey, it’s one less excuse I’m going to accept for having not jumped on the cartoon idol bandwagon in the future.

This is an obligation post, to a degree. I figure that people would think it would be weird for a new iM@S cartoon (or just a new late night otaku idol anime) to air without me passing some kind of comment on it, but, as I’ve previously mentioned, I don’t really DereM@S. This isn’t really my territory, and I can’t really tell anyone anything that they couldn’t pick up just as quickly by skimming the fan wikis instead. I mean, whilst I’m the kind of guy who knows about most of the surreal Uedo Suzuho cards purely by cultural osmosis, I’m really not equipped to pick up the apparent use of Nation Blue, instrumental or otherwise, in the soundtrack.
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