Winter 2017 - just for you MikeD! - Sun 08/01/17 21:26 UTC
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Oh Sure ... get me all excited about great new anime ... but when will =any= of this be on NetFlix? <sigh>
Fine ... at the start, it looks like Winter 2017 is not going to be as strong as 2016 in terms of anime. There are some we are looking forward to, like the second season of Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku wo! (The continuing story of a skill less Thief, airhead Water Goddess, one spell Magician and a masochistic Paladin) and Youjo Senki (we've had good witch on the battle field with Izetta, now lets see what happens with one that is ... uhm ... okay, down right bloody scary)
And others I'll discover as the season progresses.
But the one that has me writing this post is Little Witch Academia.
This one is is a hoot. Fine, it's mostly harmless, about a girl's preparatory school for magicians (and yes it is a school for witches, not warlocks) and on the outside shares a lot with the traditional little girl witch stories and even Hogwarth lectures ... but as opposed to playing to sweetness or melodrama, it plays for fun. It revolves around three less than stellar students: Akko, from Japan, who is the starry eyed idealist, Lotte the quiet and soft spoken Scandinavian apprentice and the absolutely deadpan Sucy from Southeast Asia. The dialogue is sharp and snappy, the action fun, the character designs are great and the scenes, a combination of boarding school comedy and action succeeds mostly because of the interactions of all the characters, both our heroines and the other other students.
Little Witch in Academia has an interesting history. The original short was part of The Young Animator Training Project - where a Japanese animation labor group and the Japanese Government's Agency for Cultural affairs works with up and coming animators and teams them with an industry mentor, with the hope of helping them be part of the next generation of directors LWA is what happened when they put Yoh Yoshinari together with Studio Trigger.
Yoh Yoshinari had previously worked on shows like Neon Genesis Evangelion, FLCL and Gurren Lagann. This is the first time he has been the full - director, character designer, animation director - creator of a show. Trigger is a small studio founded by former Gainax employees and is responsible for Kill la Kill and Kiznaiver. Kill la Kill is really really hard to describe without sounding ridiculous and Kiznaiver is a very interesting psychological drama ... which I enjoyed because somehow they managed to start with a very strong first episode ... and then every episode thereafter ... just got better!
So ... back to Little Witch Academia. The first one aired, got great reviews, so they said, hey ... it's not in our production schedule and we don't have a budget, but tell you what - we'll do a kickstarter and when we reach $150,000 we'll do another film. They reached that goal in six hours. By the end of the campaign they had raised over $600,000 dollars ... leading to a second film and now a television series.
And here we go, MikeD! The new series is being done in with Netflix!
At the moment Netflix has the first two short films already available ... and I'm waiting to see when the series first episode will be released. It's supposed to be today.
Oh yah ... i fergot How can you not like a show that names the Star Student's two Hanger-Ons Hannah and Barbara!