Day 3 of Anime Expo 2019 has wrapped up, and unfortunately, it will be the last day that Surreal Resolution is live on the ground covering panels at the convention, so let’s close things out by looking at the panels we attended on Day 3.
RightStuf/Nozomi Entertainment
The first major panel of the day was for both RightStuf Anime and Nozomi Entertainment, who were already drawing attention from the earlier announcements regarding their FUNimation partnership. They started off with some merchandise offers, as well as mentioning their released for the titles Please Teacher! and Please Twins!, Galaxy Angel A, and their upcoming release of Gravitation coming out September 3rd. Following this, they discussed a handful of releases and acquisitions they had coming down the pipe, starting with A.D. Police, the spinoff of the wider Bubblegum Crisis franchise. They then announced the acquisition of both El-Hazard: The Magnificent World OVAs as well as the TV series The Alternative World for release in 2020. Additionally, there is going to be a Blu-ray release of the series Boogiepop Phantom in Holiday 2019.
After this there was the announcement of an ultimate edition set for The Irresponsible Captain Tylor coming soon, and there were some brief updates on their recent crowdfunded titles Aria the Animation and Emma: A Victorian Romance, along with a clip showing a rough mix of the upcoming English dub for Emma. A brief reminder about their FUNimation partnership came up, and then afterwards we got quite a dose of Gundam talk, including an announcement that seemed to have everyone’s interested: Gundam SEED‘s upcoming home video release was delayed to 2020, but the ultra edition set will include both the brand new English dub being recorded *and* the original Ocean dub. Additionally, they are doing a Blu-ray release for Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket on October 1st, and they are doing a trade-in program for anybody who bought their original DVD release and would like the Blu-ray. And then there was one last thing…
As it turns out, RightStuf/Nozomi had rescued the license for the anime Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei and are planning a home video release for 2020. In the subsequent Q+A, it was stated that their desire is to release all of the franchise, meaning the 3 TV series and 2 OVAs, but it seemed unclear as to whether or not this was all actually happening.
Shonen Jump
The next major panel of the day was from the leading publication in the current manga industry: Shonen Jump. There admittedly was not much in terms of bigger announcements considering what was revealed in the general VIZ Media panel on the first day. There was mention of titles being added to the backlog, including the series Tokyo Ghoul and Tokyo Ghoul:re, and a brief trailer was shown for the upcoming video game One-Punch Man: A Hero Nobody Knows, which focused on gameplay of the playable villains Vaccine Man and Deep Sea King. Easily the most significant announcement was that Shonen Jump will soon print/be distributing the series Hell’s Paradise: Jigokuraku in graphic novels soon. After that, the panel received a special exclusive video from none other than JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure series creator Hirohiko Araki. After this, two voice actors were brought out on stage to answer questions and banter for a bit, and those would be Billy Kametz and Zach Aguilar, the voices of Josuke and Koichi in Diamond Is Unbreakable. There were some humorous interview questions and a lot of fun back-and-forth banter between the two voice actors that made for an entertaining segment of the panel.
Crunchyroll
The Crunchyroll panel kicked off with a lot of promotional material celebrating various milestones they mad, along with a reminder of some of their summer simulcasts such as To The Abandoned Sacred Beasts and Black Clover. Then came some Crunchyroll Games announcements, 4 in total: Grand Summoners (feat. tie-in content from Goblin Slayer), Attack on Titan Tactics, RWBY Crystal Tactics, and Mob Psycho 100 Psychic Battle. There were a handful of special announcements mainly pertaining to upcoming simulcasts, specifically naming A Destructive God Sits Next To Me (next Winter season), Isekai Cheat Magician (this month), and an “OAD” for the series That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime.
Following the announcements, there was a special guest brought out on stage: Mike Shinoda, vocalist and co-founder of the acclaimed band Linkin Park, came out to promote an upcoming project. Specifically, he is working on an anime-style music video for the song “World’s On Fire” off of his 2018 solo debut album Post-Traumatic. There was a good deal of discussion about the behind-the-scenes making of the video as well as several tangents about the history of Linkin Park’s presence in the anime fandom, primarily through the popularity of AMV’s back when they were first getting big. The panel wrapped up with a preview of the final music video, which depicted children fighting against a giant monster in a futuristic cityscape, and Shinoda said they are hoping to have the finished music video completed by the end of summer.
That was all the major news at the panels, but several surprisingly big announcements came out from elsewhere, especially Crunchyroll’s social media which mainly pertaining to the popular series Konosuba. It was announced almost soon after the panel that season 2 of the series will be getting a dub coming soon to the streaming service, and on top of that, the Konosuba movie and the 2 OVAs made for the series will also get brought over to the states sometime soon. There was one more major announcement for the day coming from the +Ultra panel, where Noitamina’s Yoko Matsuzaki had confirmed that, after much anticipation, the first 12 episodes of Shinichiro Watanabe’s newest anime series Carole & Tuesday will finally be getting released onto Netflix on August 30th, to the excitement of fans in non-Japanese countries! And so ends our live coverage of Anime Expo 2019, but stay tuned to our Twitter feed for any more news that’s breaking out of the convention.