Several creators (Ko Matsuo, Naoyoshi Shiotani, Tatsuya Oe, Asae Onishi, Hiroyuki Morita, Naoto Yamazaki, Fuminori Kizaki, Taka Kato, Toshiyuki Yasuda, Manabu Ono) share their thoughts on cherry blossom viewings.
Director Kobun Shizuno talks about how much freedom he had on the Evangelion Rebuild movies, working with hall-of-famer Yasuhiro Imagawa, and directing the GI Joe Sigma Six.
Director Manabu Ono talks abotu his work on Dragonaut.
A short interview with US industry vets Peter Fernandez and Corrine Orr.
A short interview with US VA Rachael Lillis.
An article talking about how cheaper boxset releases factored into the future of the US anime industry (circa 2008).
Media Blasters’ Sean Molyneaux talks about the company’s decision to get involved in games.
A short interview with Japanese band Unicorn Table where they talk about their work in writing anime theme songs.
Just though I’d toss this up here. I had a lot of fun writing/researching stuff this year, and I hope people found the content here useful or at least fun. Here’s an icymi list of links to some of my personal favorite 2014 pieces:
Fun With Numbers: The (Relatively) Predictable Light Novel Adaptation Market
Fun With Numbers: Do Elements of Ecchi Content/Fanservice Provide a Boost for Blockbuster Shows?
Fun With Numbers: The Non-Cancellation of Popular Manga Post-Anime
Fun With Numbers: The Big Range of Big Underestimates in Oricon Weekly Manga Totals
Active Engagement Through Timed Comments: Ping Pong The Animation
And also, if you haven’t read the first magazine article I scanned this year – Amos Wong’s Satelight piece – I highly recommend you do so. It was pretty informative regarding the politics of early CGI in animation, still probably my favorite one I scanned. I count myself as lucky I happened upon that particular page of that particular NTUSA issue while browsing a used bookstore; odds are the other 250-something scans of articles on this site don’t happen otherwise.
First-look US Amazon anime release data for the upcoming month of January 2015. Nothing interesting in the high-ranking titles right now, but for the first time in a while there’s a release (the A-Channel BD) that’s starting out at 66% off. All initial rank data was taken on December 29th, 2014.
Also, a rarity, I had no releases to track for the final Tuesday in December, so that rank data is done and available here. Cowboy Bebop spent a long time in double digits, and would have a good chance of charting against normal 10k-ish thresholds. It’s up against 40k-80k thresholds, so we’ll see how it does.
Animetics 