A day that won’t live in infamy…. unless the pre-orders sell out before I get online that morning. Forget the frenzy for an Xbox or a Nintindo… the stampede of Christmas 2006 will be when Haruhi becomes available in Region 1
Update:
Domain Name: ASOSBRIGADE.COM
Registrar: SCHLUND+PARTNER AG
Whois Server: whois.schlund.info
Referral URL: http://registrar.schlund.info
Name Server: NS3.HE.NET
Name Server: NS2.HE.NET
Name Server: NS1.HE.NET
RRP Status: ACTIVE
Status: ok
Updated Date: 15-Dec-2006
Creation Date: 14-Dec-2006
Expiration Date: 14-Dec-2007
Schlund is a domain registrar and hosting service in Denmark. Nothing to be learned there.
However, AnimeOnDVD seems to have developed a glitch in their latest news stories… one that renders every S and O in red. Or blue, depending on your browser — linking to the above site. Do they have advance word?
From the ANN Forums:
Keonyn wrote:
So what’s the deal with AnimeonDVD’s main page and the page that the colored s’ and o’s link to? It’s obviously Haruhi related, but doesn’t really detail much on how, as in licensed or possibly or a fansite or what.
The response:
NGE1113:
There’s a discussion about AoD’s front page going on in their forums:
http://www.animeondvd.com/forum/showtopic.php?tid/15609/tp/1/The first post in the AoD thread queried whether the current layout is a subtle hint of licensing, to which Chris Beveridge replied:
Quote: I am the master of subtlety.
At the current moment, the impression I got from all this is that it could be a (not so) subtle licensing stunt.
Is this series possibly the most anticipated license in the last 10 years? Well, bear in mind that the above messages are on the seventy-seventh page of this thread on ANN’s forums. In the words of the immortal Bugs Bunny: “Mmmmmmmmmm….could be!”
The obvious question is, “If someone did license it, who?” My money’s on ADV, mostly because I don’t think any of the other R1 studios would engage in a viral marketing campaign like this.
Funimation and someone else who has access to the ADV VA’s were mentioned as possibilities, but no one really knows. Sigh. I just can’t see Chris Patton as Kyon. He hasn’t got the chops for it, IMHO.
What really irritates me about ADV is that I LIVE in Houston and never knew they were in town until I got back into animé seriously a year ago, and then my buddy Master Plan tells me, “Yeah, don’t you remember, I told you about this group of guys from the NASA-area animé club I hung out with, that decided to form their own company? It was right about the time you started with the city, and I said you ought to try to get a job with them; I’d offered to intro you, but you didn’t want to get involved in ‘some fly-by-night startup’…”
“Oh was THAT who you meant?”
Argh. Damn. Damn. Damn. No, it doesn’t mean you’d have heard my voice if things had worked differently. I don’t have the chops either. But dammitall anyway.
I’m sure this has already been discovered by the forum posters, but there’s a neat joke in the page’s source. A comment at the bottom appears to be gibberish, but setting the character encoding to EUC-JP–overriding the page’s specification of ISO-8859-1–produces the following:
ç¦å‰‡äº‹é …ã¯ï¼‘２月２２日ã«å…¬è¡¨ã—ã¾ã™ã€‚
“The classified information will be revealed on December 22.”
“Classified information” here is ç¦å‰‡äº‹é … (kinsoku jikou) in the Japanese. Kinsoku jikou desu~
As for who licensed it, I’m guessing Kadokawa Pictures USA, with the adaptation and distribution being handled by ADV or Funimation in the same arrangement as with The Second Raid. The Japanese on the teaser page is kind of a giveaway–not only the above tidbit, but the copyright information as well. Possibly there’s a legal issue where the copyright info has to be in its original language or something, but that doesn’t explain the mis-encoded comment. Probably the strongest evidence, which I noticed writing this comment, is the domain name itself. asosbrigade.com? Was that the best they could do? ansosbrigade.com and thesosbrigade.com are better English and both still available. Does the A stand for ADV? The Japanese and Engrish point to whoever threw this together being a native Japanese speaker.
ADV has been on a licensing binge lately and pulled a similar crazy stunt to announce their license of Sergeant Frog/Keroro Gunsou, another series whose wild popularity in Japan may not translate into DVD sales in the States.
Eh, whoever licenses it, I’ll be sure to buy the DVDs. Pre-order them, even. This series deserves it.
Is it possible to pre-pre-order? Y’know, they could probably almost get away with getting people to pay for PSL’s like the sports teams do… “Only owners of the exclusive Premiere Release License can pre-order MoHS for the first seven days… and when the exclusive first run, with the SOS-Dan armband is gone, it’s gone forever! Get yours today, for only three easy installments of only $24.95!”
Jebus, I should shut up before I give them ideas. That one’s worthy of the Ultra-Director herself. Why do I suspect there’s going to be an absurdly low episode count per DVD?
Sgt. Frog might not translate. I have a strong suspicion Haruhi will.