First Picture of Justin Chatwin as Goku

Well, here it is..the first picture of Justin Chatwin as Goku. I don't know what to say about the Live action DBZ movie in the works... I really hope it doesn't suck.

Thanks to Anime News Network.

Labels: anime, dragon ball, dragon ball movie, otaku

posted by princetrunks @ 1:54 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

Great Anime Gifs Site

Ever look at the bottom right of my pages and wonder what those little anime clips are? Well back when I first started the site back in 2002 I had them on the top left as just some amusement. I kept them on there because, well, I like them. Every time you refresh you'll see a different anime gif. I added a few more to the mix not to long ago so I hope you like them. Many people use them as their avatars on the forums and blogs so snag use them if you'd like. A great site for a whole slew of them is at otakugifs.com. I also would like to make a section full of them too, but until then, I recommend checking out that site. Once I fix the blog to show user's avatars in the comments, I'll hopefuly be able to see some interesting ones.

Labels: anime, anime gifs, updates

posted by princetrunks @ 7:00 PM 1 Comments Links to this post

Candy Boy Romantic Anime Now Streaming Online

If anyone hasn't gotten a chance to see some of this new anime, take a look at the clip below. Candy Boy is another romantic school comedy centering around twin sisters Kanade and Yukino Sakurai. Just after watching the first few clips I started to get hooked. Some people are getting their panties in a bundle over the fact that there is a slight bit of comedic incest and lesbianism. If you take it for face value and drop the religious idiocies, this series is a pleasure to watch. As per Anime News Network, the site, Nico Nico Douga started also streaming some clips of it.

Labels: anime, candy boy

posted by princetrunks @ 8:00 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

Crunchyroll to Host Anime Innovation Tokyo Works

This is great news on many levels. First off is that the Anime Innovation Tokyo event is coming soon. It's an event held by both THINK (Neko Rahmen, Synthesisa) and Tokyo Metropolitan Government that allows new talent in the anime world to be seen. Secondly, THINK is letting Crunchyroll.com host the event online. If some of you didn't know, crunchyroll used to get a bad rap like many of us that stream anime content online. To see them work with the industry this close comes to show that anime sites like here at Chuck's Anime Shrine and others are now finally being seen by the industry as viable sources of free advertisement that help grow the anime business, not hurt it as they originally thought. In other words, AMV creators can feel a bit less criminal since they are exposing great anime to fans without the companies spending a dime. Now as for the music industry getting into the 21st century...that's another story.

Thanks to Anime News Network for the info.

Labels: anime

posted by princetrunks @ 12:00 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

Viz and Naruto Mangas Top Sales in The US

Kudos to Viz for nabbing 16 of the top 20 spots for the sales of manga in the US. No surprise Naruto being the top seller. The manga is leagues ahead in the story (and less childish) than the edited episodes being played on Cartoon Network which can somewhat explain the spike in sales. For us hard core fans its a bit annoying to wait so long for the episodes to match up with the manga, but in the end its great business for their creators. At least there are uncut English versions of Naruto on DVD. Companies here finally realize the grave mistakes that they did when they watered down great anime in the past like DBZ, Sailor Moon and more recently One Piece. Check more out at Anime News Network. Above you can see the Naruto Shadow Box Manga set. This crazy bundle includes 27 books..lots of reading indeed.

Labels: anime

posted by princetrunks @ 2:00 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

End of April 08 Anime DVD Rankings

Check out the recent list of top anime DVDs at Anime News Network. Looks as if Evangelion: 1.0 You Are [Not] Alone took the top spot with Mobile Suit Gundam 00 taking second place. Some other titles on the list include the Naruto Shippuden movie which of course none of the series is here yet in America. Cartoon Network is still airing the filler episodes before Shippuden unless I'm mistaken.

Labels: anime

posted by princetrunks @ 7:00 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

Chucks Anime Shrine Aquires Anime.fm

No, this is not a late April fools joke. As of today I purchased the domain rights and the space for anime.fm. This site used to be an anime radio station but as one can expect, the bandwidth charges got too much for the former owner. Back before youtube and animemusicvideos.org when Chucks Anime Shrine was one of the very few places you would find amvs, I almost suffered the same fate. As much as I loved that everyone enjoyed our music videos, many people placed them in their forums, on the signatures in their forums and on their xanga (pre-myspace) page. Of course much has changed since 2003 and now web convergence, blogs, rss feeds and streams is the name of the game. The main goal for anime.fm is to make it an anime blog central location linking many anime blogs and the like and yes eventually as the site matures (and after making all the correct legal actions), I do wish to have streaming music from anime and video game titles.
If anyone has any ideas for the new site please pass them over to me. As for past fans of anime.fm, hopefully it is of some relief that an anime fan and site owner took over the site. Too many times I see sites get taken over by some loser domain purchaser who just turns the site into a bland sea of links that are nothing but google adsense links in order to profit from every click on the site. Misspell any popular site and you'll know what I mean.

(I'll also make sure to get a better logo soon too)

Labels: anime, anime.fm, chucksanimeshrine, updates

posted by princetrunks @ 8:47 PM 2 Comments Links to this post

Horton Hears A Who Anime Scene

Yesterday I got a chance to see the new Horton Hears a Who Movie and I'll have to say that it was the best G rated movie I've ever scene and one of the best overall! My favorite scene as you can guess is the quick animeish cutscene they did. Go search for it on youtube or just simply go out and see the movie. The scene is that of Horton pretending to be a ninja and yes, as the picture shows, he's doing a DBZ style Kamehameha. The scene and the whole movie is funny. If you haven't seen it yet, go see it. I definitely recommend it.

Labels: anime, Dr. Suess, Horton Hears A Who

posted by princetrunks @ 8:31 PM 1 Comments Links to this post

Disney and Madhouse To Make Lilo & Stitch Spinoff

Madhouse has gained themselves yet another deal in American animation. As of Thursday Anime News Network announced that Disney is set to create a spin-off of Lilo and Stitch but this time using the help of Madhouse anime studios. For those of you that might not know much about Madhouse, they are responsible for some of the biggest hits in anime and even here on the American coast too. Past works by Madhouse include Ninja Scroll, Death Note, Last Order: Final Fantasy VII and the ultra hilarious Boondocks. It might actually be a Disney sequel/spin-off worth watching since lets admit it, many of those recent sequels where not the best of Disney's work. Disney started what anime perfected and now more and more the original teacher is taking notes from its past students.

Labels: anime, Disney, Madhouse

posted by princetrunks @ 6:54 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

Dragon Ball Movie Delayed Till April 09

Can it be true? It appears that the Dragon Ball movie that was set for an August 2008 release will now be pushed back to April 2009. Was starting to fear this since there was no trailer yet. This could be a good thing so they can fine tune the film. Lots of big names are in this film so who knows who might be next on the cast. Speaking of which, P. Diddy recently was rumored to be signing up for a role in an action film. Which up-coming movie has yet to be noted but it could actually be this one. That though is strictly a rumor left for discussion. More info at Anime News Network.

Labels: anime, dragon ball, dragon ball movie

posted by princetrunks @ 5:16 PM 1 Comments Links to this post

Cartoon Network to Run Blue Dragon

Some of you might be familiar with the Xbox game Blue Dragon; I've yet to play it but many otaku have two strong reasons to play it. First reason is that the game's character designer as you can guess is non other than Akira Toriyama; a quick look at the picture above and you'll easily tell. Secondly, the music composer for this game is the legendary Final Fantasy composer, Nobuo Uematsu. A combination like that really can't go wrong so I'm eager to pick up the game now. As one can expect, there has been an anime series based on the game that's been running in Japan since April 2007 and as of yesterday it was announced that Cartoon Network will run the series with Viz taking the helm...so expect some good voice actors for this one. For all those who are eager to see more from the DBZ creator, this is the chance to. It's set to be on the air here in April 08. More info at the Anime News Network

Labels: anime, blue dragon, otaku

posted by princetrunks @ 11:05 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

Great Guardians - Ikkitousen's Third Season Announced

Oddly enough I've only seen only a bit of this very popular series and the little I've seen easily begs for more. Of course I have almost all the figures since practically every figure that comes out of Kanu, Sonsaku, Ryomou Shimei, and Ryofu Housen are the top sellers for obvious reasons. This anime has probably caused the most nosebleeds with the enormous amount of almost-hentai fan service. Great Guardians is the name of the new third season coming out in a few months and there will be more characters, fighting and panty shots. More info at Anime News Network
and also at DannyChoo.com.

Labels: anime, Ikkitousen

posted by princetrunks @ 9:03 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

New Anime on the Hollywood Block, Live Action Akira

The list keeps growing on anime titles that are to get the Hollywood makeover. Whether that is good or bad is up to the fans but looks like the next anime to be a live action movie is Akira. What's even more interesting is the person who is going to produce the movie...Leonardo DiCaprio together with Warner Bros. I didn't know he was such a big anime fan... anyways, would have to agree with Danny Choo's take on the series, that of it being very gloomy.
Set to come out during the summer of 09, add it to Transformers, Evangelion, Speed Racer, and Dragon Ball as the current list of anime titles turned into Hollywood movies. Expect even more once the American comic movies eventually lose their thunder.

More on this via Dannychoo.com and Japan Probe. Thanks to Japan Probe for the picture.

Labels: anime, hollywood, Leonardo DiCaprio, live action akira, otaku

posted by princetrunks @ 5:20 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

More Dragon Ball Movie Actors but Still No Trailer

Keeping everyone up to date with the upcoming Dragon Ball movie that comes out in August.. here are some more actors confirmed last month for the movie; still no trailer yet though.

Grandpa Gohan - Randall Duk Kim
Carey Fuller - Texas Battle
Emi - Shavon Kirksey
Agundas - Richard Blake

Ernie Hudson- Popo?

Other than Grandpa Gohan and Popo, I don't even know these characters. It appears that this movie takes place during the end of the Dragon Ball saga when the young Piccolo appears after King Piccolo dies. One scary thing though is the MovieFone description where they messed up by saying that Goku first love is Chi-Chi and then loves Bulma...which is completely wrong in many accounts and lets hope thats not there or there will be many pissed off DBZ fans. The picture above and more descriptions of the movie can be found here at the official blog.

Labels: anime, dragon ball, dragon ball movie, dragon ball z, otaku

posted by princetrunks @ 5:14 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

More DBZ Movie News: Master Roshi and Others Cast

To keep everyone up to date with the Dragon Ball Z live action movie; today it was announced that Chow Yun-Fat will play Master Roshi in the Dragon Ball Z movie coming out on August 15th 2008. Originally I spoke to about the roles when Goku and Piccolo where announced. Here's a list of the roles that are confirmed if you haven't already heard.

Justin Chatwin (Goku)
James Marsters (Piccolo)
Jamie Chung (ChiChi)
Emmy Rossum (Bulma)
Eriko Tamura (Mai)
Joon Park (Yamcha)
Chow Yun-Fat (Master Roshi)

Nothing on Vegeta or others as of yet and from the looks of it, the story line will be the end of the Dragon Ball Saga when Goku marries ChiChi and fights Piccolo in the tournament. So we might not see Vegeta and they haven't called me yet for Future Trunks so we might have to wait on a sequel for that.

Labels: anime, dragon ball, dragon ball movie, dragon ball z, otaku

posted by princetrunks @ 11:53 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

Speed Racer Live Action Movie Trailer

The list of anime-based Hollywood movies keeps growing with Speed Racer as promised in the most recent ComicCon. If you haven't seen the sick trailer yet, check it out here. Anime fans have alot to look forward for in 2008 with Speed Racer coming out in May and Dragon Ball in August.

Labels: anime, otaku, videos

posted by princetrunks @ 2:07 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

New Death Note Movie to Feature Theme Song by Lenny Kravitz

It appears that the popularity of Death Note continues to grow in the mainstream media. As of the time of this post, the Death Note anime has been airing on Cartoon Network now here in America and has already come out with two full length movies. In those movies, music has been used by the Red Hot Chili Peppers and now for the upcoming spin-off movie, "L change the WorLd," Kravitz's "I'll Be Waiting" single will be the theme song. L's own spin off movie comes out in Japan in Febuary.

More on this at the Anime News Network.

Labels: anime, otaku

posted by princetrunks @ 11:09 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

Manga/Anime Industry Growing and Making Waves

Labels: anime, otaku

posted by princetrunks @ 4:54 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

Back in the News; Dragon Ball Z Live Action Movie

A few years back there was a whole bunch of hype about a Dragon Ball Z Live Action Movie. 20th Century Fox was in the plans to make a big budget movie about everyone's favorite Manga and Anime, Dragon Ball Z, but then the project got scraped.

As of recent news, the project is back in the works with roughly a 100 Million dollar budget and already some roles being cast. This news comes from both Variety magazine and from one of my product dealers from my anime store, Diamond Comics. Here's what they had to say:

"As reported by Variety, Justin Chatwin, the actor best known for his role in Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds, has been cast as protagonist Goku, the powerful Saiyan warrior dedicated to protecting Earth from alien threats and evil tyrants. The actor that formerly portrayed Spike on TV’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, James Marsters has signed on as Piccolo, the villainous green fighter with hopes of world domination and one bold enough to take on Goku. The film will be directed by James Wong, produced by filmmaker Stephen Chow and has been assigned the tentative worldwide release date of August 15, 2008."

This is obviously big news if you are a DBZ fan. Diamond comics and I are excited about this since a few new cast figures will be coming out next year now. Personally I feel that a CG film would do better but I'm excited either way. Hey, maybe they'll find my New Faces Comp cards and I'll get the role as Trunks ^_^... well, I can dream.. but stay tuned as I get more info on this.

Labels: anime, dragon ball, dragon ball movie, dragon ball z

posted by princetrunks @ 11:15 AM 1 Comments Links to this post