Generation Mech » Anime Industry

Voltron Movie: To make or not to make?

admin — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 05:13:01 +0000

Voltron.

Coming to a cinemas near you or not? That’s what some speculators from Variety are spelling when WEP were more interested in making the iconic series into TV format rather than its live-action film counterpart. But then a few days later, another source came up saying “Hang on a sec. We’ll scrap that scrapped idea with Voltron movie. We’ll planning to do it anyway?”

That’s very annoying after hearing for several months of hype for this. So why don’t we find out it’s true or from the this MTV interview with WEP’s thoughts for the blockbuster film.

MTV NEWS: So, right at the start, let’s clear up any confusion regarding the live-action “Voltron” movie. Where is it at, and what do you have planned?

TED KOPLAR: Well, Voltron is one of the great iconic brands from the ’80s, and a lot of people don’t know this but in its heyday it outperformed The Transformers. … We’ve had a lot of interest over the last couple of years in bringing back this franchise, and the movie has always been and still is the locomotive that’s driving our thinking. All this serves as a staging platform for the motion picture.

RICHARD SUCKLE: As a matter of fact, we’ve been working over the last several months meeting with various screenwriters, and we’re actually on the cusp of securing an A-level screenwriter who’s going to write the “Voltron” movie. That’s all part of the plan here: reintroducing the brand to the fans who’ve watched over the last 25 years and to a new generation. We are very close to securing a screenwriter who’s going to actually write the feature version — so that’s always been part of the plan.

MTV: This project has been in development for a long time now, with some starts and stops along the way. What have the difficulties been in bringing it to the big screen? Have there been some stumbling blocks, or a certain element of the project that you’ve really been taking your time with?

KOPLAR: The story’s been the critical part — that we come in with the right message for both the new generation and for the old generation. We’ve had some takes, but I think we’re getting close.

SUCKLE: In any situation when you have a famous piece of intellectual property, there’s always a responsibility and an expectation, but I don’t think there’s ever been a real stumbling block.

MTV: Well, there’s been some earlier drafts of the script, including one from Justin Marks that I know of. You mentioned that you’re bringing on a new screenwriter, so are you starting from scratch or building on an existing script?

SUCKLE: We are [starting from scratch]. As far as Atlas Entertainment, we’ve never been involved in any of the previous versions, so I can’t speak to them. We came in and said we want to talk about the property and build it from the ground up, because we have a particular way we want to approach it.

MTV: Can you tell me a little about that approach? Are you envisioning a big-budget, effects-driven blockbuster? 3-D, maybe? What’s your vision for the film?

SUCKLE: Those are all things we’ve talked about, but as much as it has a very strong robot element, this is a movie and a franchise that is driven by characters — these five people that in some or another are a representation of all of us. It’s really about how you have five different personalities working together in order to come together to form Voltron.

KOPLAR: The whole show is about teamwork — about a group of kids with various backgrounds who learn that the only way they’ll succeed is through the positive parts of each one’s background and bringing it together to make the robot work.

SUCKLE: It’s not like we’re doing anything far different from the source material other than to make it a character-driven film. The effects, the 3-D… The eye candy is the easy part. It’s got to be a movie that has really dynamic, interesting characters and a really strong narrative. You know the eye candy is going to be there, because it’s part of the fabric of the original material.

So that character-driven element is really what we’re focusing on, and that’s what the writers that we’ve been talking to have been told about what we want and what we’re looking for.

MTV: Do you have a timeline in mind for the live-action film? Are there certain marks you want to hit in the roll-out of the “Voltron” universe?

SUCKLE: You never can tell, but I think that if we’re lucky going into 2011, and in a perfect world, if we could have a “Voltron” movie sometime in the summer of 2013, that would be what I would consider a very likely timeline.

MTV: There’s mention of the new animated series receiving an “edgier” update, but what about the film?

SUCKLE: To me, you have to update it and give it a fresh coat of paint for 2010-2011 and beyond. At the same time, it’s important to have those certain nostalgic elements. It’s not that we have to hit those moments over the head, but there should be stuff within the visuals — if not also in the dialogue and the references — that make those people who grew up watching the show feel like we are taking great care to both satisfy you and introduce new stuff that feels like it lives organically in the 25 years Voltron has existed.

MTV: You said you’re about to name a new writer, but what about a director? How close are you?

SUCKLE: We’ve had a lot of inquiries, because there are a lot of fans who grew up with the show and see the potential like we do, but it would be premature for me to name any names.

MTV: Will there be any crossover between the animated series and the live-action film?

KOPLAR: Our hope is that the group of people we have are open to everybody sharing ideas, thoughts, whatever it is.

SUCKLE: It’s important that all these pieces are working together, because it is a specific plan that we want to realize. The cartoon, the new show, the Mattel deal — they’re just sort of springboards to ultimately what will be the feature. It’s always been about driving the feature.

KOPLAR: All these component parts are going to come together like Voltron.

So now we’ve been confirmed that the TV series remake and live-action movie works are in place, along with the host toy merchandise going about in place, we should be seeing more and more these developments coming into the horizon at a closer time. One would hope so!

Cause I would hate to see things just dropped out of the air like that, if nothing’s working out as it should be.

Source: Variety.com, SplashPage, Craveonline

Gundam Statue in Japan – Ready for Round 2?

admin — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 08:07:15 +0000

Hang on a sec. Had they not already done this in Odaiba back in September last year?

It sure wasn’t that long ago when it was constructed as part of the Namco Bandai’s 30th commemoration of the Gundam franchise. And they had to take it off after a couple months of display.

And now they’re doing it again for the second time? Well. I’ve no problem with that if you ask me being a mecha fan…

But I just wish they should make things transparent with these. I mean I don’t see how taking it apart and then putting on it again would make any sense when comes to making a strong attraction for overseas tourists to see what Japan’s pop culture lifestyle is got to offer. Especially when it’s already that good to appeal with IN THE FIRST PLACE!

I mean it just doesn’tt seem to add up! >.< And now we have one here constructed in the Shizuoka city, home of 710,000 Japanese citizens, 5th largest city in Japan.

Here’s the conceptual art of the proposed statue design over in Shizuoka city.

Proposed Conceptual Art Design of RX 78 Gundam Statue

As compared to this one at the Namco Bandai’s actual model at their headquarters, with the up-close shot of the light-saber burning through the blue brick.

RX Gundam 78 statue model in Namco Bandai's headquarters on display

I supposed no human casualty is part of the plan too?

Image sourced from Ngee Khiong

Since the project’s completed few weeks back at beginning of this month. Said to have more lighting and special effects during its opening. So this is all part of the hopes of translating more visitors coming into the city, both local and abroad (last year 4 million people came to visit before it got dismantled back in October 2009). And the only the key thing missing from the statue is the completion of the light saber upgrade.

Thanks for Ngee Khiong’s sources, it said to be opened to the public from 24th July 2010 till 10th January 2011, located at East Shizuoka Square.

Source: Ngee Kiong, Escapist.com, Geek.com, Bionicbong.com, Endgadget.com, All images are copyrighted and belong to the rightful sources.

Chinese Transformers raised in Chinese University

admin — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 07:30:57 +0000

A couple of university students from a local Chinese university went all this trouble to make their own life-sized Transformers as part of the graduation project, as far as what I heard. It’s a very interesting project for them to get into. And it’s a 4500 USD project too. That’s a great prize tag they put aside for this project’s funding.

Boy! They sure come out bigger than life, after looking at these amazing photos of 9-m tall monstrosity!

Such amazing detail of the character design based on one of the Chinese famous legends of “Romance of the Three Kingdom”. For those who are not familiar with the Chinese folklore legend, there’s this famous general from a Shu Army whose name is Guan Yu during Chinese ancient times. He’s one of the most powerful generals serving in the Shu army and many legendary tales have been fortold amongst the Chinese for many, many generations. Chinese have profound religious beliefs tied with him and you can find a lot of statues of him around China and other Chinese communities around the world. That’s probably why the Chinese students picked him as the favourite character.

If you ever played one of Koei’s infamous action game series Dynasty Warriors and you used this character. (see below)

This is him and that’s why the transformer’s color resembles a lot as the picture above, along with the halberd weapon.

And here’s the footage of the CGI animation of its transformation as well.

Pretty neat huh? ^^

Source: Kotaku, Gadgetsin, ClonedChina, All images and copyrighted by the source owner

War for Cybertron Game Review

admin — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 03:37:59 +0000

Hey guys.

This just came in. It’s been a long while coming. Now it’s officially released yesterday and so I was eager to let you have a good read what the reviewers from TFormers.com have positively (thats right, positively)said about this game so far.

I wanted to express my own thoughts about this game too in this post… However due to the time constraint I keep having lately and realising how many fans are looking forward to what the game truly promises for the fans, I thought why not just let everyone have a quick peak what I’ve read in this review huh? ;)

Here’s the review.

At long last, Transformers Hypefest 2010 has come to a close as High Moon Studios and Activision have finally blessed us with the release of Transformers: War for Cybertron. No longer just the light at the end of the tunnel, War for Cybertron is on the shelves: ready to be enjoyed, judged, nitpicked to pieces, and reveled in by fans.

In a year filled with little other news than Transformers 3 eye candy replacement and the occasional webisode, Transformers fans, still licking the emotional wounds of Revenge of the Fallen and the cancellation of Animated, couldn’t get enough news about this new direction for the historically lackluster Transformers video game property. Until, that is, they had had too much, and hope gave way to hype. Now the question is: Can this game, this third-person shooter, live up to the mountain of publicity and speculation it has generated?

Honestly, it’s doubtful anything could.

That being said, this is a great game. Any gamer who enjoys a solid third-person shooter will have nothing to complain about here, and any classic Transformers fan should be overjoyed with the characters, context and dedication to the franchise that High Moon has shown our favorite bots. There has been no reason to expect to get Transformers games this good. It’s kind of a miracle.

The chief thing Transformers fans need to bear in mind here, though, is that this game is solidly placed within the context of the 1980s cartoon and movie. That is not to say there is 100% continuity with the original shows (like they had continuity…) but the characters, story, and feel of the universe simply ooze Sunbow. Homages to the film and show are everywhere.

Imagine this game as a revival of the Transformers made in a universe with no Transformer media between the end of Season 3 of the old show and today, and you’ll be on the right track. You can expect most characters to be almost exactly who they were on TV in 1985.

What color is Rumble supposed to be again? *Puts FIBRIR Helmet on.*

The Decepticon campaign is Megatron- centered, with the only significant deviation being a flying level featuring the original Seekers (Flight of the Repaints = Awesome). This is not the story of Megatron’s rise to power, nor the beginning of the war. It does feature some events that are formative to the story as we know it, but this is not an origin tale.

Neither so much is the Autobot campaign; as promised we do see Optimus take charge of the Autobots, but… it’s complicated. To say that you see him “become a Prime” here is overstating it as presented.

Characters meet for the first time, familiar items emerge and situations taken for granted are illuminated, but overall this game carves a comfortable place of its own near G1 cartoon Transformers lore, and makes it a more satisfying and compelling place. Frankly, the almost episodic nature of the story came as something of a relief – it left plenty of space for more game, more story, and didn’t offend any of my preconceived Transformers sensibilities.

Level design is linear, but no more so than average. The scenery is so detailed, intricate, and on occasion spectacular, that you never feel like you’ve been somewhere before. Your objectives are dynamic enough that you feel propelled forward by the story, never corralled by the level walls.

The “defend this area full of turrets” scheme is a common occurrence, but most instances feel story-driven, and turrets usually equal fun. There is, however, a “Defend the moving elevator! With turrets!” sequence that just feels like busywork.

Cybertron is a rich and varied environment which will be recognizable to any longtime fan, and will be enjoyed by any connoisseur of gaming environments. You can be sure of repeat playthroughs revealing details and Transformers references that you missed the first time.

The setting is one of the game’s greatest features, so be sure to enjoy it.

Your weapons consume ammunition and not just for show, you’ll need to conserve ammo and place your shots wisely, lest you find yourself hip deep in laser-fire with out a pistol.

Those who played the multiplayer demo on Xbox Live may not have gotten the right idea about the game as a whole, nor even the scope of its online play. The multiplayer aspects were significantly more fun after gaining an organic understanding of the character abilities, weapons, and effects of alternate modes on combat in the single player campaigns. For instance, the ability to fly at the drop of a hat significantly affects strategic game modes, but leveraging that advantage takes practice.

Control for the most part is tight; aiming in particular feels well tuned. Transitioning from robot mode to alt mode can take some getting used to. Once you get the hang of it, though, it becomes a fluid and natural part of play that influences your strategic decisions and offers opportunities rarely explored in this genre. High Moon, rather that basing their game around the classic Transformers gimmick, have used that gimmick to add something dynamic and fresh to a tried and true game format. After all, adding “Hit them with a truck” to your list of solutions in a tense firefight is nothing to sneeze at.

In a move that I’m sure will worry many players, the transformation button is located at the L3 position initially, with the melee on the R3. Thumbstick buttons are not always our friends, but in this case, High Moon’s reasoning is sound. A player, using these buttons as placed, will be able to skillfully move, fire, steer, transform, accelerate, and utilize each character’s two special skills without moving a thumb off the controller.

However, “heavy stickers” (one of which the reviewer happens to be) will quickly want to switch to the second controller layout. It re-maps the button to the position formerly occupied by the weapon switch, moving that function to the D-Pad. If you can master the first layout, the advantage is clear, but if you’re one of the many who find themselves unexpectedly crouching when you mean to make a break for it in Call of Duty, you may want to save yourself the trouble and just change this setting at the outset. Sadly, the melee remains as-is.

More flexible are your Y-axis options. The Y-axis inversion can be toggled on or off for each individual alt mode separately, including your robot mode.

Teamwork is the watch word in non-deathmatch War for Cybertron multiplayer match. High Moon has crafted a set of customizable character types whose balanced interaction is remarkable. A team skilled in utilizing the unique talents of each kind of character to support one another is nearly unstoppable.

The characters have a limited selection of weapons, and upgrades for each class. The color scheme, while customizable, only provides a limited palette for each chassis. Online play allows your characters to level up as they are used, and the upgrades you receive rapidly make palatable differences in play.

This encourages play with multiple classes, which is worth mastering. Being a versatile player within this character set can be a great asset. Each character type has valid offensive and defensive functions. The victorious player will at least understand them all.

The most disappointing aspect of the multiplayer mode is the manner in which flying characters are limited. When a flier goes too high, they are simply stopped by an invisible ceiling. Invisible walls are always fail. Perhaps in future games when fliers affect multiplayer balance, it could be addressed more subtly, possibly through airborne weapon range limits or vertical visibility control.

War for Cybertron is the best Transformers game ever, and it’s a slaggin’ good game in general. While the base play is derived from some of recent years’ favorites, in sharp contrast with most licensed games (which are hobbled from the outset by a mountain of preconceived kibble, superfluous, or flat-out contrary to the play needs of the game), its subtle innovation comes from a masterful utilization of its license’s gimmick.

Perhaps the only like franchise to have video games conceived within it that were not intended to be tie-ins or a redux of existing media is Star Wars – a franchise which can claim some of gaming’s greatest achievements under its belt. War for Cyberton was built from the ground up to be a game; written, directed, designed, populated, rendered, and tested to be played; and it shows.

High Moon’s distinguished treatment of the franchise in and of itself is a distinct leap in the right direction for all of Transformers media. They’ve created one of the few, perhaps the only, piece of Transformers in motion media that could have stood on its own without the power of its name and history to justify it.

This game has what makes the Transformers great.

Source: TFormers.com

Towards the end of the review, they gave the game rating 9 out of 10. So that sounds good! Wouldn’t you think? ^^

Here’s the video review as well for those who like to get better idea via the visuals if words above cannot convince why the game is fantastically fun!

So what are your thoughts Transformers fans? Is this spectacular or what?!?!?

Source: TFormers.com, All images sourced and copyrighted by TFormers.com

Star Driver: Nagayaki no Takuto

admin — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 10:31:45 +0000

I posted this no long ago on our Facebook fan page no long ago.

But basically, it’s a new robot anime show that’s going to come up this year. Rumours said it’s expected to fall in October 2010.

Not much info to reveal at this stage. But here’s what I managed to find online in the last couple weeks about this show.

In the director’s chair is mounted Taku Igarashi (Takuya Igarashi), has worked on the series Soul Eater, but the scenario will work Edzhi Enokido (Yoji Enokido), in the past giving birth to Revolutionary Girl Utena. For the design of the characters meet and Hiroki Midzuya Misa (Misa and Hiroka Mizuya), as well Eshiuki Ito adapt designs and is responsible for overseeing the animation. The music also write Satoru Kosaka (Satoru Kousaki), speaking earlier in the composer Bakemonogatari, Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumia and Lucky Star.

Anime will narrate about a boy named Takuto, control the robot with the name Taubaan (Taubaan).

Source: Animemaga

Exciting!^^ So watch this space!

Source: AnimeNewsNetwork, Animemaga, Imaged sourced and copyrighted by AnimeNewsNetwork

Votoms Producers: On Promo Video

War for Cybertron – Further news

admin — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 00:26:57 +0000

Image sourced by GameTrailers.com

With the all the latest hype going on with the upcoming Transformers: War for Cybertron that went on for a few months or so, I decided to go and snap what great juicy news we got with this crazed gaming development for the past few days of this month. (And I’m sure many of you Transformers fans out there are keen to see what’s going on^^)

First stop, it’s the introduction of Trypticon into the gaming mix.

Trypticon making his behemoth debut

TFormers.com’s been slowly releasing some incredibly nice visual footage of Autobots and Decepticons, along with our usual favourite heroes (and villains). You know, Optimus Prime, Bumble Bee, Megatron, Starscream and what nots. And now we have Trypticon making its huge explosive entrance to give us fans what we’re craving for when getting the game.

Here’s Trypticon’s main entrance.

And here we have extra visual footage of the game itself (Images are copyrighted by TFormers.com)

A video footage of Transformers War for Cybertron on XBox360, commented by one of its lead game designers at High Moon Studios, explaining their inspiration making the game, especially giving us fans intriguing storylines about this game is a actually prequel to the classic 80’s cartoon classic Transformers G1.

Check it out!!

And finally, do you know that (besides XBox360, Playstation 3, Wii) they’re planning to release this game on Nintendo DS platform too?

Here are some screenshots of the DS version of the game.

And here’s the video coverage one of the lead Nintendo DS game designer for War for Cybertron on DS.

Thanks for TFormers.com for providing these excellent coverage of the game. My blog post would have made without their supplied input on this.

For those who are interested (and THOSE WHO CAN’T WAIT!!) to get your pre-orders of the game , you can check out on my site, on the right handside of page and you will see a couple of ads showing picture links of War for Cybertron games.

Available on all platforms. Playstation 3, Xbox360, Nintendo Wii, DS, PC etc. Currently, priced at US $59.99.

Oh man… I feel like I should grab this game as well.

Source: TFormers.com, All images are copyright by TFormers.com

Miss Voltron?

admin — Sat, 22 May 2010 02:17:03 +0000

Many of you guys still missed the good ole days of Voltron? Do you used to get the cool robot toy like these?

(Sorry about the video quality. It’s not my video. I just found this on Youtube when searching for old school Voltron toy commercial, and it sounded pretty bad in the beginning…)

Well. Not anymore! Cause you can get them on collectibles now.

At least that’s what collectible game manufacturer, Monsterpocalypse, are giving us high school fans of robot toys.

The company offers this interactive board game.

Image Copyrighted by Monsterpocalypse

Gameplay works with a huge mat thats has all the square marks the Voltron and Lotor’s forces collide in seeking the ultimate conquest of the universe. These square marks comes with many special abilities that grants the player to do many things. Some of them can be good for you to get far in the game. And some of them can be bad for you to let your enemies beat the game ahead of you, depending which side of the force you choose to play.

This board game comes with a couple of nice Voltron figurines, mostly mecha, that featured in the TV series.

Very nice!

Great fun for all ages (from 14+ plus as the pic above says :-/). Expected to arrive in stores in July 2010. Selling for US $49.99. Check with your local retailers when they’re expected to come out!!

Source: Scifijapan.com

400,000,000 reasons to like Gundam

admin — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 10:38:57 +0000

Japan's samurai mascot for 30 years

How’s this for an amazing fact? Bandai released their total figures of Gundam plastic toy models in its 30-year franchise business.

Around 400,000,000 Gundams were sold! That’s like…. A LOT ZEROS to count!!!

Talk about insane numbers that give local Japanese accountants to stay up all nights and days to reach this final figure!^^

Most of the sales come from 1/144 scale model range, and the first one (in 1980) sold was for US $3.20 or 300¥.

Now. That same model selling in today’s price is US $28.20.

Nine times the original price.

If Bandai were to sell that many toys at today’s price, they would be about $12 billion richer worth of its merchandise!! Guess there was a lot of public reason why Bandai really took the trouble to make their Gundam statue over in Odaiba last year! Just to commemorate this major special occassion.

When I was browsing the links of the news source, I found a couple of great Gundam plastic model (1/44) pictures on display, such as these ones.

It’s the exact model of the giant statue in the Odaiba park before they dismantled it. . ^^

It was interesting to gather understanding how everything works behind the scenes of making these robots in the mass production lines. They said how Gundam sales was ballooning so well towards mid 80s and suddenly it nearly died off completely thanks to the increasing but vast competition of electronic goods and video games swamping the youth market of Japan, from early 90s till now. It was thanks to new and innovative business ideas by Bandai Namco’s business leaders and renew faith by Gundam fans from elder generation that gets their children to get active in accepting Gundam (and other mecha) toys as part of the mainstream entertainment. Just as much as latest video gaming console from XBox, Nintendo, PS3, Wii etc. They’re equally as popular as the rest of today’s youth enterntainment, fun and games.

Good on them for persevering to the very end^^. And wish them for another great success for another 30 years!!

Source: ANN.com, Asahi.com, GameWatch, Images provided are owned and copyrighted by Gamewatch.

Anybody up for Evangelion burgers?

admin — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 10:32:09 +0000

If you ever feel like grabbing a quick bite in town, be sure to give this place a stop if you are around in Tokyo.

A fast food chain company called Lotteria are selling a combo meal box using all of your favourite Neon Evangelion characters as the main theme. As depicted on this billboard ad above

This new lunchbox set Lotteria has in store is called ‘Eva Burger and Chicken Box’, which you will have french fries, a burger, fried chicken and a soft drink of your choice. Price is around 980 ¥.

Hmm… Yum. Yum. ^^

Would love to give this one a nice try. But bear in mind, this offer is not going to be around for long as the offer ends on 31st May 2010. So you have 30 or so days to give this a go for your usual lunch breaks.

I want to say my big thanks to Ngee Khiong, our Gundam blogger extraordinaire for this wonderful post.

Source: NgeeKhiong

PS3 Evangelion News Game no more…??

admin — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 10:24:45 +0000

The end of Misato Katsuragi's anchor career?

Almost a year ago, I made a post about Gainax’s ambitious plans to have a news running game featuring Misato Katsuragi as the news anchor, working for a ficitious television network company called Nerv News 24. The whole concept behind of the game is giving the user that level of ‘real-life’ update of actual news being delivered by Misato Katsuragi to the TV audience, as if you’re watching the real TV news network. The game covers everything from politics, economics, sports, education to, yes, anime industry. Just like you would when sitting in front of ABC or CNN news for eg.

Misato Katsuragi, here. Signing off

And sadly, after it’s disappointing run for a year since the Misato Katsuragi news project began, has its curtains drawed to a final close to the Japanese gaming public.

Here’s an video clip of the game for those who’s yet to follow up what the whole concept of this game involves.

Source: Kotaku