Toonami & Production I.G Team-Up For More FLCL

Now here’s a sentence I never EVER thought I would write: There are more episodes of FLCL on the way. 12 more episodes, to be precise. I’ll let the official press release explain the critical details:

“Adult Swim, a division of Turner, is proud to announce an official sequel to one of the most beloved anime series of all time – FLCL (pronounced Fooly Cooly). Created in 2000, FLCL told the tale of Naota, a 12-year-old boy who met a woman that would forever change his life…whether he liked it or not. 16 years later, Adult Swim and legendary animation studio, Production I.G (Ghost in the Shell), are creating two new six-episode seasons to continue the tale, which will premiere in Adult Swim’s Toonami block. Known for its surprising and unique content with high fan engagement, Adult Swim has been basic cable’s #1 Network in the U.S. with 18-24 and 18-34 year olds for eleven consecutive years. The new season of FLCL adds to Adult Swim’s ever expanding portfolio of original programming.

“The original FLCL is an anime classic and has been a fixture on Adult Swim since we first laid eyes on it,” said Jason DeMarco, senior vice president/creative director, Adult Swim On-Air. “I’m beyond thrilled to be able to produce a sequel with the original creators, for Toonami, where it belongs.”

Back for the new season is FLCL series creator Kazuya Tsurumaki, serving as supervisor with director Katsuyuki Motohiro (Psycho-Pass) and character designer Yoshiyuki Sadamoto (Neon Genesis Evangelion). Also joining this season is writer Hideto Iwai (Last Dinner).

Established in 1987, Production I.G has since produced a number of acclaimed feature films and TV shows, and has also partnered with Mamoru Oshii on every one of his animated films since Patlabor: The Movie (1989), thereby earning an international admiration which eventually led to the visionary collaboration with Quentin Tarantino for the animation sequence in his hit, Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003). They are most known for the Ghost in the Shell franchise, and for the acclaimed animated TV series Psycho-pass and Attack on Titan.”

And here’s the official synopsis of the new story:

“In the new season of FLCL, many years have passed since Naota and Haruhara Haruko shared their adventure together. Meanwhile, the war between the two entities known as Medical Mechanica and Fraternity rages across the galaxy. Enter Hidomi, a young teenaged girl who believes there is nothing amazing to expect from her average life, until one day when a new teacher named Haruko arrives at her school. Soon enough, Medical Mechanica is attacking her town and Hidomi discovers a secret within her that could save everyone, a secret that only Haruko can unlock.

But why did Haruko return to Earth?
What happened to her Rickenbacker 4001 she left with Naota?
And where did the human-type robot ‘Canti’ go?

All of these questions and more will be answered in the new season of the series, which is set to premiere in late 2017/early 2018 on Adult Swim.”

There were some rumblings last year about how Production I.G had purchased the rights to FLCL from co-producer Gainax and that the new purchase gave  Production I.G the options necessary to transform FLCL from a 6-episode spiritual journey into a franchise machine. I had never even considered the possibility of more FLCL until I had heard about the purchase. Fast forward to today and more FLCL isn’t just the ramblings of a tripping high school student but actual reality.

It’s very exciting to hear that Kazuya Tsurumaki and Yoshiyuki Sadamoto are back on the new project but what about all those other animators who made the original series so incredible? and what about The Pillows? One could make the point that FLCL was just a very long music video set to an excellent set of their songs.

It’s hard for me to believe that this is really a thing that is happening and it’s far too soon to cast judgement on whether or not this is a worthy endeavor. I can’t really make the argument that we needed more FLCL but I certainly hope these 12 new episodes are as insane as those first six.

Source: Turner Press Release

Evangelion Manga to Return in April

After being on hiatus for over a year Yoshiyuki Sadamoto’s manga adaptation of Neon Genesis Evangelion is set to resume in Kadokawa Shoten’s Young Ace magazine on April 4th. Sadamoto had previously announced that the manga would return sometime this winter.

Viz Comics also recently published the 12th and most recent volume of the series here in America. Sadamoto is currently in the middle of adapting The End of Evangelion movie finale of the series for his manga.

Although a ton of different promotional projects for Evangelion have been going on in Japan since the release of Evangelion 2.22 on home video last summer, there still has been no word on the upcoming third film that is currently in production.

The last word was that Evangelion 3.0 is currently in the key animation stage and has a tentative release date for sometime in 2012.

FLCL Blu-ray Box Cover

Here we have the box art for Funimation’s upcoming re-release of Studio Gainax’s FLCL on Blu-ray and DVD.

Due out on February 22nd, Funimation actually outdid themselves on putting together a rather snazzy cover for the series.  The box art for their home video release of Summer Wars isn’t bad either although they went for a shot of the characters in their computer avatar forms rather than the nice poster character designer Yoshiyuki Sadamoto did for the Japanese release (who also designed the characters for FLCL as well as drawing the art in the image above).

This is a nice change at least from the atrocious image Funimation picked to use as their cover art for their Blu-ray release of Evangelion 1.11 last year. I wonder how they’ll do on their upcoming release of the sequel 2.22?

Japanese FLCL Blu-ray Box

Animation Studio Gainax released their FLCL Blu-ray box set last week in Japan. This limited edition set features all six episodes of the 1999 Original Video Animation series and also includes some new art from character designer Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, such as the box cover above.

The box set is available off of websites such as CD Japan and will set you back $173.61.  Now unlike the Blu-ray release of the most recent Evangelion movie, the FLCL box set includes english subtitles. The collection also includes a number of music videos by The Pillows as well as commentary by director Kazuya Tsurumaki and production footage.

Funimation announced several months ago that it would be re-releasing FLCL here in the United States on DVD as well as Blu-ray. No other information pertaining to the release is available at the moment but hopefully Funimation will be just bringing this new edition of the series stateside and not creating some sort of upscale from the old American DVD’s.

So until the American release by Funimation sometime in the future this Japanese edition is looking pretty great.

There was also a little celebration for the Blu-ray release of FLCL which included a talk with the director as well as a screening of the episodes. I’m including a cool sketch by director Kazuya Tsurumaki that was present at the gathering last week.

Evangelion Manga Volume 12

The cover and release date for the 12th volume of Yoshiyuki Sadamoto’s Neon Genesis Evangelion manga has just been recently announced. This volume continues its adaptation of the End of Evangelion film and is set to be released on April 3rd in Japan. Hopefully Viz’s english version release won’t be far behind.

Blu-Ray FLCL

The DVD’s for the joint project by animation studios GAINAX and Production I.G. ‘FLCL’ have been out of print in the American market for several years now, but Funimation has just announced that they have aquired the rights for the series and will be re-releasing it as a DVD boxset sometime in 2010 and then a Blu-Ray release in ‘late 2010’. Hopefully that means that we will finally be seeing the stateside release of the most recent box set which came out in Japan a few years ago with some awesome new box art by character designer Yoshiyuki Sadamoto.