Yes, you read it right, and you’ve probably read it all over the “intarwebz” already. Still, this is one of the biggest and best licenses this year. One Piece needed to be rescued from 4Kids, that’s all there is to it. Regardless of how long it takes to get the first episodes out on DVD, or what edits they make to the TV version, it’s in better hands now.

First off, Haruhi season 2 was announced! Unfortunately, the animation will be handled by C&S, the same studio responsible for Gundo Musashi, and directed by Mitsuo Fukuda, with character designs by Hisashi Hirai. Kadokawa officials were unavailable for comments.

In other news, JAM Project will be signing the opening and endings to the new, hot-blooded Kyo-Ani epic “Lucky Star”. Lead signer Hironobu Kageyama reported that it will be their “most hot-blooded, intense, song ever!”

Speaking of Kyo-ani, after the series “Lucky Star” is completed, Kyo-Ani will go out of business. Anecdotal reports from Japan say that the OVA quality animation cost so much that they needed more revenue, but due to American fansubers, they lost every yen they had, and couldn’t feed their children. In bloging news, Impz has renounced his hatred of Mech and Shonen anime. He reported that he has already amassed a collection of Gundam models worth $2000, and has Naruto’s portrait plastered around his house.

A few tid-bits of news have come out in the past few days. First off, Blood+ has formally been announced for AS, and was given the 12:30 A.M timeslot on Saturdays, starting March 10. It was obvious that Blood+ would be airing as soon as one of the current series ended. However, Eureka 7 will be finishing soon as well, so that leaves another time slot up for speculation. Most likely E7 will be replaced with the Witchblade series that premiered in Spring ‘06 in Japan. Witchblade has been mentioned by sources unrelated by CN as acquired by the network. However, this doesn’t really mean anything until CN actually confirms it. I liked what I saw of the Witchblade series, but I really hope that Haruhi will get acquired. The show needs all the exposure it can get, so airing it wouldn’t hurt at all. Guess we’ll just have to see.

Next up, Karin was licensed by Geneon today for distribution in the R1 region. I’ll definitely buy this, though, the final episodes left me feeling empty. Good to see that the R1 market seems to be recovering now.

Finally, the Manga-ka of the Jinki: Extend manga reported that he has received over ten offers from various magazines in Japan to continue publication of the series after it was dropped from Comic Blade Magazine. While I haven’t been following the Japanese run of the Jinki: Extend manga, it is good to know that it will more than likely continue. Now it has a better chance of being picked up (again) by a English language manga publisher than it did a month ago. Very good news indeed.  

It’s Saturday night, so I thought I might post my thoughts on CN. Because lately, they’ve been on my bad side. Yeah, they have done a few things right. Airing Naruto near uncut, airing Eureka 7, etc. However, they still continue to royally mess things up.

My current problem is that they are airing Prince of Tennis and MAR out of order. I’m going to buy both anyway, but I still wanted to see what PoT and MAR are like. It ticks me off that they are wasting an hour on airing random episodes. It just doesn’t make sense.

Another problem is the fact that Adult Swim airs nothing new (anime-wise anyway) on weeknights. I liked it back last year, when something new would air almost every night. Now, we have nothing but reruns of FMA and Inu-Yasha. Granted, I’ve seen almost everything (with the exception of prelicensed stuff) that has come out of Japan since summer ‘05. Still, it would be nice to see something new on weeknights.

Those are just two of the many anime related problems I’ve had with them. They seem to be airing less nowadays, which in the end, will hurt the R1 anime market in terms of exposure.

For me, the only way they can redeem themselves is if they air Haruhi of Gunbuster (including Daibuster). Yeah I know, fat chance, but I can dream, right?