Welcome back to the UK Anime News Roundup! This very late edition brought to you by my coursework deadlines. So this month has been fairly busy for UK news, not helped by the fact that I'm also covering the first week of May as well, but I'm sure I'll muddle through somehow!!

So, in the past month, Funimation has started making it's big UK push, we've had a whole bunch of new and rescue licences announced and a ton more new cinema screenings have been announced. I also attended a screening of The Murder Case of Hana and Alice in Glasgow, where the director, Shunji Iwai, attended a Q&A session afterwards, which I've written up some of the more interesting points further on. For now though, lets start with this months news!

News

• This month saw the launch of Funimation Now, finally! My hot take is that the service seemed to work fairly well from what I saw of it, with the caveat that I've been really short on time the past month so didn't really have time to use it that much. While I was on, video quality seemed pretty good, there was little stuttering and everything seemed to work OK. I was only on for a day or two just after lauch though, and other users have mentioned they've been having problems with the player since then. (Thanks to /u/pclaver for updating me on long term performance.) This season seems pretty thin to be honest, their lineup last season seemed a bit stronger to me, and Crunchyroll still dominates in terms of how many simulcasts they have. Funimation's lead simulcast is My Hero Academia, and they've been pushing it hard, but it's the only thing they have this season that really seems to me like a big hitter. If you want to try it out for yourself, there's a 30 day free trial available, and after that it's £3.99pm for Sub-only, or £6.99 for dub and subs.

• Funimation also appears to be making plans to start distributing their titles in the UK themselves, rather than sub-licencing. This is a bit of a developing story. A few titles appeared on Amazon UK a few weeks ago with Funimation themselves listed as the distributor. Titles include Mikagura School Suite, Daimidaler: Prince vs Penguin Empire, Rainy Cocoa Seasons 1 and 2, No-Rin, Gonna be the Twin-Tail!! and High School DxD Season 3.

  Subsequently, UKA confirms that these are going to be releases designed and produced by Funimation themselves, with a UK distributor (confirmed as Anime Limited) managing the UK specific aspects like BBFC certification. This sheds some light on what's happening with Funimation titles in the UK, given the termination of Manga UK's sub-licencing arrangement a few months ago. This is still kind of up in the air so we'll need to wait and see how this is being managed, it may be that shows that are going to get collectors editions will still be sub-licenced, and Funi will only take on shows they think won't do well enough to justify that. An interesting story going forwards, I'll be interested to see how this all shakes out.

• Anime Limited have licenced two of the Project Itoh films, Empire of Corpses and Harmony. Empire of Corpses will be released as a DVD/Blu-ray combi set, with the first 1000 units being steelbook editions, due for release on July 11th. Harmony will be released in the same format in Q4 of this year.

• Anime Limited have also announced some licences for older shows which they'll be bringing back to the UK. First up is Your Lie In April (announced on April 1st, how appropriate!) which will be released on Blu-ray and DVD in Q3 of this year. Eden of the East will be released at some point before Christmas this year on Blu-ray, as a collectors edition of some kind. Lucky Star will be released on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK as a collectors edition set on September 5th.

• MVM have renewed their licence of Haibane Renmei, and will be reissuing the show on DVD on the 27th June.

• Updates on Gundam releases from Anime Limited. Part 1 of Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam will be released on 29th August and will include episodes 1-25 on Blu-ray. Includes English and Japanese audio as well as English subs. AL will also make Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt: December Sky available in the UK as an Blu-ray import. This is a pre-order for an international edition of the Japanese release. Packaging and any extra features on the discs are in Japanese. You basically pre-order to get it shipped from the UK and not have to deal with customs yourself. You can pre-order from them if you are in the UK, Ireland or Scandinavia. The deadline to order is the 22nd May.

• The AL release of Assassination Classroom Part 1 will be on May 30th. This will be a standard DVD and Collectors Edition Blu-ray release. You can have a look at everything that will be in the Collectors Edition here. There is also a pre-order offer in that linked post for nearly half off if you pre-order by 5pm on Monday 9th May. Still pretty expensive though. Rage of Bahamut: Genesis will release on June 6th on DVD and Limited Edition Blu-ray. Expelled from Paradise is currently slated for release on 27th June.

• MVM will release Tsukimonogatari on May 30th on Blu-ray and DVD, as well as Michiko & Hatchin Complete Collection on the 13th June.

• A couple of release delays as well. AL have delayed Lord Marksman and Vanadis indefinitely due to a problem with the stock they received. Psycho-Pass 2 has been delayed by a week and now releases on May 16th. Miss Hokusai is also delayed indefinitely. Durarara!! x2 Shou has been delayed by a printing error until the 30th May. Psychic School Wars has been also been delayed until 30th May.

• Netflix UK has added both Ajin: Demi-Human and Cyborg 009 vs Devilman to their catalogue.

• You may recall that last month I posted a link to uk-anime.net's article detailing places which sell legal Digital Manga in the UK. As a bit of a followup to that, this past month has seen the launch of hidamari.moe, which provides a UK tailored manga search engine in the same style as because.moe. hidamari.moe is currently in it's beta phase, and does not have support for all storefronts yet, but it can currently search Crunchyroll Manga, Bookwalker, eManga, Kobo, Comixology and Shonen Jump, with more to hopefully be added in the future. Feel free to give it a try!

Upcoming Cinema Screenings

• This past month has seen the announcement of a nationwide programme of Studio Ghibli screenings. Studio Ghibli Forever runs for the next three months or so and participating cinemas will be showing a substantial programme of movies, 10-13 each in Glasgow and Edinburgh, and more or less depending on your location, a shit ton in London, naturally. You can use the website linked to find the cinema closest to you that will be holding screenings, as well as dates and times.

• The BFI Southbank in London will be running an Anime Weekend over the 3rd to 5th of June. On Friday, Harmony will screen at 18:00, followed by Empire of Corpses at 20:50. On Saturday, The Boy and the Beast will screen at 15:30, followed by the original Ghost in the Shell at 18:15 and Ghost in the Shell: The New Movie at 20:45. On Sunday, Garm Wars: The Last Druid will screen at 17:20, followed by Psycho-Pass: The Movie at 20:00.

  The director of Harmony, Michael Arias, will be present at the screening and will take part in a Q&A afterwards. This will be the UK premiere of Harmony, and the first time a few of the these other films have been shown outside of Scotland in the UK, so if you want to see them, make sure to go along!!

• MCM London Comic-Con will play host to the EU premiere of Mobile Suit Gundam The Origin III at some point over the weekend of 27th to 19th May, date/time tbc. Two guests will also be visiting from Sunrise, mecha designer Mika Akitaka and producer Osamu Taniguchi, who will host a panel and signing sessions on the Saturday.

• If you know of any other screenings that will be taking place, please let me know in the comments or by PM so I can add them. There may well be screenings organised by local independent cinemas that I miss. I can't keep track of every arts cinema that may screen anime by myself. If you have a local cinema, check their website and let me know!!

Q&A session with Shunji Iwai

On the 28th April, I attended a screening of The Murder Case of Hana and Alice at the Glasgow Film Theatre. The director was also in attendance and we got the chance to ask a few questions afterwards. The Q&A was led by Jonathan Clements, one of the authors of The Anime Encyclopaedia, and while there was a translator present, Iwai-san stuck to English for nearly the entire session except for once or twice to get help with the meaning of the questions.

I'm mainly including this because nobody else has written anything about this Q&A session as far as I know, and some of it was pretty interesting. That being said, I wasn't taking notes at the event, and didn't get the idea to write it up until a day or two later. While everything here is what I remember him saying, some of it may be out of order. I also may have missed some stuff that didn't stick in my mind so much. I think I got the most interesting parts though. Just bear in mind that this isn't an accurate transcription.

1. Why did you decide to make the movie this way?

   This is a movie based on his previous film, Hana and Alice. In that film, they had been in Junior High school, but he wanted to go back and take another look at their story before they met.

2. Why rotoscoping?

   He was looking to make the film, but since the actresses from the first film are older now (by about 10 years) he wanted some way to still include them. He feels that Japanese animation is too stiff a lot of the time and really likes the fluid motion in rotoscoping. He fell in love with it when he saw the film American Pop (1981). He also wanted to keep control over the direction of the movie. He was concerned that if he did a traditional anime, he would be frozen out by the animation team, that it would be too easy to just leave it all to the Chief Animation Director and he would have nothing to do. Rotoscoping let him take the lead on the live-action filming.

3. What was working on the animation side of things like?

   They didn't really have a large studio of animators. Most of their artists were hired after he posted on twitter asking for people. They took a lot of amateur artists from Pixiv, approx 150. There was a small team of supervisors who were professionals, but most of the team was the amateurs. The art was managed using Google Drive to send footage out and get back completed drawings remotely.

4. Was the Nestle marketing team standing over him with a gun? (A reference to a prominent KitKat in the film that's the center of the shot for 1-2 mins.)

   They offered him $10,000 per frame! (Joking obvs) The other way around. The Nestle team actually thought he was going too far. In both the original Hana and Alice, and the Murder Case, there was a scene which involved food. In Hana and Alice it was an audition where one of the characters was eating over and over, and in The Murder Case, it was the gift giving scene. He just figured he would use the Nestle stuff there. They were both fairly long scenes though, so it stood out.

5. What were the main differences between shooting in live-action for a live-action film, and shooting in live-action for a rotoscoped animation?

   How long everything took. They had to do all the shots twice, once with the actors for the movement, and then again for the backgrounds. He also couldn't move the camera too much. Using different actresses for the motion and voices. The original actresses were unknown when he cast them in Hana and Alice (2004). Nowadays, they are fairly popular, so they were a lot more expensive to hire. He couldn't afford to book them for the entire film so he booked them for 2 days of voice work instead and hired unknowns for the filming.

6. Would he like to go back and remake Love Letter as an anime?

   It's an interesting idea, he might have a think about it!

7. A lot of people would say that your films have a very strong female perspective. They have female leads etc. Why is that, and how do you feel that perspective differs from writing for men?

   He finds that perspective quite interesting in how it's actually not that different. He doesn't really try to write them to be very different from men, but they come across that way because of societal expectations. For example, female characters can get away with things that would be creepy/perverted if he had written a male character doing them.

That's about it, a lot of the meat of the session was in the first 5 questions or so, which JC asked to start off. They were more technical and had a lot of interesting stuff in them, and I remember the last one pretty well too, but I think there were a couple of shorter ones that I missed in the space around about Q6, which were mostly shorter questions with one sentence answers. I just found it easier to remember the longer ones when I was writing them down afterwards. If any of the shorter ones come back to me I'll edit them in. I hope you found it interesting!!

Physical Releases in April

If you want to see what's inside a collectors edition before you buy it, you can check the uk-anime.net Youtube, for unboxing videos of most major collectors edition releases, usually around the release date. If they don't have a video for the set you're looking for you may find it useful to check the news section of uk-anime.net or check the distributors website and look through their posts. The relevant sites are blog.alltheanime.com, the Manga UK blog and the MVM facebook page.

Upcoming May Releases

• A Letter to Momo
• Baccano! Standard Edition
• Blade Dance Of The Elementalers - Season 1 Collection
• Ghost in the Shell: The New Movie
• Golden Time - Collection 2
• The Familiar of Zero F - Complete Series Collection
• Love Live! School Idol Project - Season 1 Collection
• Psycho-Pass Season 2 Collection
• Kamisama Kiss - Complete Series 2 Collection
• Aldnoah.Zero - Complete Season 1 Collection
• Durarara!! x2 Shou Complete Series Collection
• Kill la Kill - Part 3 (Standard Edition)
• One Piece Collection 13
• Psychic School Wars
• Tsukimonogatari

Season Simulcasts

The following tables include every TV Show and Short listed for Spring 2016 on Anichart. Entries are alphabetical, with preference given to the English market title approved by the distributors and streaming services, or otherwise to the Japanese romaji title provided by Anichart.

Next season, I'll be giving preference to the Japanese titles, it's a pain to have to rearrange the chart to account for English names when they're announced. I'll change the table to include both titles though, hopefully that will make next seasons a bit better.

Now that the line ups are all announced, Crunchyroll remains the top platform by a mile. Crunchyroll carries 27 full length series and 7 shorts this season. Funimation carries 8, Daisuki 4, Amazon 1, Netflix 1 and The Anime Network 1 short. Most shows excluding kids targeted stuff are now accounted for with only a few exceptions. RIP in peace, Animax.

I think that about wraps us up for this month! My apologies again for my tardiness, but we'll be back to our usual schedule on the 1st June. So probably a slightly shorter update next month. As per usual, feel free to correct any mistakes that I've made in the comments or via PM, and please do let me know about any screening I haven't covered so they can be included. I hope this has proven both interesting and informative for you all!!