This seems to be the time for big anime news around the world. From the always great source Anime News Network, we get info on the screenings of several choice anime names in Dublin:

The Irish Film Institute in Dublin will be screening Hideaki Anno and Khara’s Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance (Evangelion Shin Gekijōban: Ha) movie and Mamoru Hosoda and MADHOUSE’s Summer Wars movie during a two-day festival next month. Evangelion: 2.0 will run on March 20, and Summer Wars will run on March 21.

Other films to be shown at the festival include Anno and Khara’s Evangelion: 1.11 You Are (Not) Alone (Evangelion Shin Gekijōban: Jo), Makoto Shinkai’s 5 Centimeters Per Second, Hosoda and MADHOUSE’s The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, and Hiroyuki Kitakubo and Production I.G’s Blood: The Last Vampire. Blood: The Last Vampire will share a double-billing with a “mystery film.” Jonathan Clements (author of Schoolgirl Milky Crisis and co-author of The Anime Encyclopedia) and industry guests Hugh David and Andrew Partridge will host a panel on the future of anime during the festival.

Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance is the second film in the theatrical film remake of Anno and Gainax’s Neon Genesis Evangelion television
anime series. The film continues the story of a group of 14-year-olds entrusted with giant biomechanical units to protect Earth from mysterious Angels. It opened in Japan in June 2009. It then ran in Spain’s Sitges, Scotland’s Glasgow
Film Festival, Canada’s Waterloo Festival for Animated Cinema, and France’s Lyon Asian Film Festival. Funimation had released versions of the first film, Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone, in North America in 2009 in theaters and on home video.

The light-hearted “action entertainment” story of Summer Wars revolves around a modern-day family on a midsummer adventure. The project reunites many of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time’s staffers, including scriptwriter Satoko Okudera (Angel, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Miyori no Mori) and character designer Yoshiyuki Sadamoto (Evangelion, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, FLCL). The film opened in Japan on August 1, 2009, and has since been scheduled in Spain’s Sitges, England’s Leeds Film Festival, Germany’s Berlin International Film Festival, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and in the New York International Children’s Film Festival.

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From the The Hollywood Insider, we get news on the Tron Legacy viral event. This should be coming to Salt Lake soon, so keep an eye out. For now, here’s what they say about it:

The new “Tron Legacy” trailer doesn’t come until March 5, when it will be seen prior to Disney’s “Alice in Wonderland,” but some lucky people were given an advance look Saturday in select cities around the world.

Diehard fans of the movie (Tronheads? Trononites?) had to look for clues and go an scavenger hunt in cities like Sydney, Berlin, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, then work together via the Internet to piece together what would eventually tell them where the sneak peek would occur.

And they did not leave disappointed.

The trailer starts off on the slow side, building a mystery. Bruce Boxleitner, reprising his role of Alan Gartner, is telling Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund) about his missing dad, Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges). He had discovered something that was going to change the world two days before he went missing. Now Boxleitner gets a phone call from a phone from Flynn’s Arcade…a line that should be dead! Soon enough, Hedlund, with an appropriate chip on his shoulder from not having a dad in his life, is at the arcade (he gets there by motorbike, speeding down late night streets and jumping his motorbike from the highway to an off-ramp) and…

…before long, he’s in the computer world. Here the trailer’s pace jumps up a notch, giving us a series of quick and very teasing images of the world fans have been waiting to come to since 1982: a massive city, a blocky transportation machine, Olivia Wilde lounging sexily in a glowing suit, gladiator games, more gladiator games with sexy sirens, Bridges with a retinue of underlings, a blink-and-you-missed-him Michael Sheen, maybe a meeting of father and son, and the kicker ending, a lightcycle race with an explosion (the last image eliciting whoops and hollers).

The trailer still feels more on the teaser side than a full blown trailer (but what do you expect from a movie that doesn’t come out until December 17?) but the packed theater in Los Angeles was definitely into it. This was not a surprise since these were the diehard geeks who came dressed in “Tron” or Daft Punk (the band is scoring the music and made music especially for the trailer) T-shirts.

The Los Angeles crowd was treated to a Q & A with director Joseph Kosinksi and original producer Steven Lisberger. The fans were literally jumping out of their seats to ask questions, some putting not one but both hands in the air in their efforts to ask questions.

One asked if actress Cindy Morgan from the first movie was going to be in the movie. Kosinksi said she is not in this movie but it does not mean she is not in the world of “Tron.” (”Ahh,” went the crowd.) How long was the shoot? (70 days.) How did Daft Punk become involved? (Kosinski had an in with the band.) Is there going to be a Tron ride at Disneyland? (”Many things are coming,” said Kosinski.)

Kosinski got in a question of his own, asking if there were any girls in the room. He got huge laughs and a response from over a dozen geek girls.

But just because there was “Tron” love in the room doesn’t mean Kosinski got away scot-free. One fan asked, “Why you? Why now?” worried that the film will turn out to be just another Hollywood retread. Lisberger stepped in, saying, “We should all be glad that this happened, ’cause that was a miracle.”

Saturday’s event builds on Disney’s “Tron” event at last year’s Comic Con, where it held a scavenger hunt leading to a small warehouse where the movie’s Light Cycles were unveiled. It’s interesting to see how the studio, not known for handling genre and geek properties like some of the other studios, is slowly building the awareness for a movie that will be courting those who fondly remember the original and still attract an entire new generation of filmgoers.

So from this we learn some pretty exciting bits of what to expect from the film. Things are shaping up for this to be amazing, and topping that off with a soundtrack composed by Daft Punk places Tron Legacy solidly on my movie radar. Keep reading for more updates on the local viral campaign.

According to the A.V. Club, San Diego’s contract with Comic-Con expire in 2012. This means very soon, there will be a huge venue change. More on the details here:

San Diego simply may not be large enough to hold all the Twihards and Iron Man fans out there. Comic-Con, the massive convention for all geek-friendly media, may be leaving its home base come 2012, when its contract with the San Diego Convention Center expires.

According to The New York Times ArtsBeat, Comic-Con organizers are looking to Anaheim as a potential new host, given its proximity to Hollywood and larger facilities that can accommodate some 126,000 attendees. In response, tourism officials in San Diego are launching a campaign to remind Comic-Con how much the city appreciates hosting the convention. San Diego hotels are increasing the number of rooms reserved for the convention and offering the organizers ample more meeting space, free of charge. The Comic-Con board is expected to respond to the bids from the cities of Anaheim and San Diego within the coming weeks.

Comic-Con not only brings plenty of revenue for local businesses, but has also evolved into a requisite stop for film and television studios that hope to foster a loyal fan base for their fantasy and sci-fi related projects.

Comic-Con has been synonomous with San Diego for thirty years and I haven’t had a chance to go yet… I’m not sure it would be the same if it were in Anaheim. What do you guys think? Would you feel the same way?

From Anime News Network, we have news about the premiere of the Trigun movie:

Sakura-Con has announced that it will hold the world premiere of the Trigun: Badlands Rumble film during the April 2-4 convention in Seattle, Washington. The convention is three weeks before the April 24 opening of the film in Japan.

Like the television anime series that came before it, the anime studio MADHOUSE is basing the film on Yasuhiro Nightow’s popular Trigun manga. Director Satoshi Nishimura, character designer Takahiro Yoshimatsu, mechanical designer Noriyuki Jinguji, and musical composer Tsuneo Imahori are returning to the franchise after having worked on the television series. Nightow and Nishimura conceived of the story concepts which Yasuko Kobayashi (Claymore, Shakugan no Shana, Witchblade anime) turned into a shooting script. Masaya Onosaka, Sho Hayami, Hiromi Tsuru, and Satsuki Yukino are reprising their roles of Vash the Stampede, Nicolas D. Wolfwood, Meryl Stryfe, and Milly Thompson, respectively.

Nishimura and Yoshimatsu are appearing as guests of this year’s Sakura-Con. In addition to Trigun, Nishimura directed Hajime no Ippo (Fighting Spirit) and Shin Cho Bakumatsu Shonen Seiki Takamaru, and he storyboarded episodes of Black Lagoon, Card Captor Sakura, Monster, Paradise Kiss, and Revolutionary Girl Utena. Yoshimatsu designed the characters in several Slayers and Future GPX Cyber Formula projects, Basquash!, Kiba, Desert Punk, and the two Jubei-chan – Secret of the Lovely Eyepatch television series.

Sakura-Con has always been the premiere anime convention in the country, and it seems this year, they won’t disappoint. For more info, or to register if you plan to make the trip from Salt Lake City, visit their main page here.

Earlier this month, Studio Ghibli released a teaser trailer for their new upcoming film “Karigurashi No Arrietty”, adapted from Mary Norton’s “The Borrowers”. Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata have actually considered the novel for an animated feature for the past 40 years, making the adaptation a very long time in the making. The film is the directorial debut of Hiromasa Yonebayashi, who served as a key animator on classics like “Princess Mononoke” and “Howl’s Moving Castle”. Yonebayashi, at the tender age of 36, is the youngest director in the studio’s history.

The plot revolves around Arrietty, a fourteen year old member of the Clock family who make their own home and living borrowing items from a household of normal humans. Everything changes for Arrietty when a human boy discovers her existence. A fun fact about the setting, the film is based in the same western district as the studio is located in Japan.

Personally, I’m excited. Ghibli is the Japanese equivalent to Pixar. Both companies’ films never fail to be at least above average quality, and always carry an important message for the children that see them. This film will probably be no exception, but only time will tell if it will be a classic, or an entertaining diversion. “Karigurashi No Arrietty” is set for a Summer 2010 release in Japan, and will follow probably a few short months here in the States.

Trailer after the jump to my page on Examiner.com

It was recently announced that the adaptation of “Akira” would be handled by Allen and Albert Hughes for Warner Brother’s take on the now legendary manga by Katsuhiro Otomo about a post apocalyptic Tokyo.

The new film will be based in Manhattan in a similar setting, with the leader of a bike gang attempting to save his friend from a medical testing facility. No other set news has been revealed, but rumors abound of Leonardo DeCaprio playing the role of Kanada have yet to be confirmed. This news comes after this movie has been floating around since Legendary Pictures acquired the rights in 2007 from Kodansha Publishing.

The Hughes brothers are attached after finishing work on “The Book of Eli’ and of course, when any other info comes out, we’ll make sure to have it to you. So, what’s your opinion on this? Should we really have a live-action Akira?

Yeah, I got a little giddy when this came across my email. Mecha, futuristic technology, and zombies? I’m already sold on this title, but I wouldn’t be doing my job without telling all of you about it.

From Viz Media:

Zoichi Kanoe plunges into the depths of 9JO, a sprawling island city in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, in search of Eon Green, a girl with the power to transmute the N5S virus. The deadly contagion is spreading across the world, turning humans into disfigured, zombie-like “drones.” But he’s not the only one looking for her. Agents of the Public Health Service’s Compulsory Execution Unit are also in hot pursuit, with sinister designs of their own. Zoichi and his trans-human allies have no time to waste; the countdown to the apocalypse has begun!

“Tsutomu Nihei created BIOMEGA with a jaw-dropping, intensely powerful art style that reflects his background in modern architecture,” says Leyla Aker, Editorial Manager, VIZ Media. “The main characters—the “enhanced” human Zoichi and Fuyu, the AI in his rocket of a motorcycle—navigate this apocalyptic landscape in a story that offers pure speed, action, and suspense. Both manga and American comics fans won’t want to miss this exciting debut!”

Tsutomu Nihei debuted with the acclaimed manga short story BLAME!, which was nominated for North America’s Harvey Award and won the Shiki Award in Japan. The artist also created NOiSE, a manga prequel to BLAME!. His visually striking Wolverine tie-in SNIKT! was published by Marvel Comics along with a commission by Bungie Studios for the HALO graphic novel.

To pre order your copy, you can find it here.

All images are copyright of Viz Media.

Funimation and Cybergraphix are starting a collaboration on an animated film, “Guardians of Luna”. Why should you be excited about this? Well, this movie is written by Michael Reaves, famous for Batman: The Animated Series, Gargoyles, and other bits of 90’s nostalgia, with character designer Cindy H. Yamauchi (Naruto: The Movie, Black Lagoon, Akira) adding her unique look to it.

The movie tells a dark story which revolves around an ancient race of shape-shifters with the ability to change into powerful creatures. Four unlikely heroes descended from this once-great race are charged with protecting an ancestral power source from a ruthless mogul. If you want more details, subscribe to the updates here.

Stay tuned for more next week!

(source: Funimation)

Yamazaki’s Halo Legends episode, “The Duel,” goes back to ancient
times, at the dawn of the Covenant. A shamed Elite defies his role as
an “Arbiter” – an honored but suicidal role that would regain him a
shred of honor—to take a path of revenge against those that stole the
only thing that matters to such an amazing warrior: His true love.
This ancient Arbiter must fight his way through ever-growing groups of
his former allies (grunts, elites, hunters, etc.) until he finally
stands face-to-face with the elite who betrayed his trust.

The episode showcases the richness and depth of the Halo universe, and
gives fans a glimpse of one of their favorite protagonists, The
Samurai-style mythos of the Elites is framed in an animation style
that branches away from many of Halo Legends’ CG and traditional
animation approaches to present the anime via a unique filter – giving
the episode the look of a moving watercolor painting. Yamazaki and the
artists at Production I.G were responsible for this singular artistic
vision. So stunning and different are the tones and forms that
multiple viewings offer new insights on each pass.

A rising star in the anime community, Yamazaki has developed a loyal
following as he has grown his career from sound direction and
storyboarding to a celebrated run as an episodic director of
innovatively-blended visual action on the critically acclaimed hit CG
anime series KARAS. Similarly, Production I.G has been responsible for
numerous acclaimed feature films, television series and video games,
including the cyberpunk classic Ghost in the Shell, Jin-Roh, The Wolf
Brigade and parts of Batman Gotham Knight.

Warner Home Video will distribute Halo Legends on February 16, 2010 as
a Special Edition 2-disc version on DVD and Blu-Ray™, as well as
single disc DVD and available On Demand and Digital Download. The DVD
anthology of episodic films based within the mythology of the popular
game Halo is produced by 343 Industries, a unit within Microsoft Game
Studios.

Yamazaki answered a few questions in regard to his participation in
bringing Halo Legends to animated life. Here’s that Q&A …

QUESTION:
What made you think Halo would lend itself to anime/animation?

HIROSHI YAMAZAKI:
I believe that the suitability (of a property for animation) depends
upon each story. This story definitely worked well in animation, and
in this style.

QUESTION:
What was the inspiration for your artistic vision in your episode of
Halo Legends?

HIROSHI YAMAZAKI:
I have been a lover of viewing the Halo art /illustration collection
books and such for some time and the entire collection of Halo
properties inspired me.

QUESTION:
Were there any particular images within the Halo realm that helped
shape or drive your creative vision?

HIROSHI YAMAZAKI:
When I was contacted by I.G about the project, I imagined that the
project would be very Sci-Fi in taste. However, when I met Mr. Frank
O’Connor (of 343 Indutries, Microsoft Games Studios) for the first
time, his requirement was to create a Samurai episode featuring an
Arbiter, and I was considerably and happily surprised.

QUESTION:
What did you set out to accomplish in this episode, and why do you
think you achieved or exceeded your goals?

HIROSHI YAMAZAKI:
What I was aiming for in this project was to make audiences understand
there should be other styles of animation beyond the existing two
primary kinds of animation presented – precisely cel-drawing 2D style
and CG 3D style. I wanted to show that creators are not limited, that
they have many options for different (animation) styles to create
stories.

QUESTION:
Did you feel you had the proper Halo experience to to bring the world
to life in anime?

HIROSHI YAMAZAKI:
I have played Halo 1 and 2 all the way through to the end. As I was so
busy in this project, I could not play Halo 3 but instead I watched
the gaming movie many times from the beginning to end.

QUESTION:
Did you include any “Easter eggs” for the devout Halo fans in your episode?

HIROSHI YAMAZAKI:
I employed the phrase “Akuma-da!” (“He is a devil” in English) as part
of the dialogue of a grunt soldier for fun for game lovers. I’m not
certain whether everyone will get to enjoy that treat, though, as I
understand the English version and Japanese version differ
considerably and I am not sure how this dialogue by the grunt is
treated in the English version.

For more details, check out the website here.

Source: Anime News Network

Producer and former Studio Ghibli head Toshio Suzuki revealed on his Ghibli Asemamire radio program that the anime studio will announce its next film on December 16. He added that Oscar-winning director and studio co-founder Hayao Miyazaki is currently animating a television commercial.

Suzuki had previously confirmed in October that the studio’s next project is from a new director, and a July 10 entry in the official Studio Ghibli blog had already revealed the studio’s plans to open its next theatrical feature film next year. Suzuki predicted in October that Miyazaki’s next feature film might open in four years.

Studio Ghibli revealed during a February 2008 press conference that “directors [Isao] Takahata and [Hayao Miyazaki's son] Goro Miyazaki are both developing works” for release after Hayao Miyazaki’s Gake no Ue no Ponyo (Ponyo on a Cliff), which opened in Japan last year. Studio Ghibli President Koji Hoshino added in July of 2008 that there is a likely chance that Ghibli will promote one of its own animators to direct a film or recruit a director from outside the studio. Miyazaki himself told his studio’s staff in November of that year that they will start two feature-length works, with young staffers at their core, over the next three years.

Movies from both Takahata and Miyazaki? This is going to be a great couple of years.