Yet Another News Round-Up (Now With 100% More TYPE-MOON)

This week has been very exciting, especially if you are a fan of visual novels turned anime. This latest round-up proves that Sentai loves me very much and so does Dark Horse Manga.

• Crunchyroll: Preview videos for the Little Busters! anime are now up, thanks to the Warner Brothers' JP YouTube channel. We get to hear more of the voice talent, which is always a plus. The link includes previously posted preview videos.
• (Speaking of Little Busters!, awesomecurry at OASG has posted a review of the LB! visual novel and covers all of the routes, including the Refrain route. Go and read it!)
• Crunchyroll: Sentai Filmworks has licensed the Fate/Stay Night anime for Blu-Ray release; the first collection is scheduled for January 2013. Sentai has already licensed the Unlimited Blade Works film of the same series. Unsure if it will be a Blu-Ray/DVD bundle or just BR.
• ANN: Dark Horse just announced a handful of new manga releases, including a Trigun anthology and a new Neon Genesis Evangelion spinoff. The NGE spinoff is called Shinji Ikari Detective Diary and is a private eye AU featuring Shinji and Kaworu.
• Finally, Fantagraphics has given Wandering Son fans something to talk about: a subscription option for future volumes of the Wandering Son manga. Readers will get a discount for pre-ordering as opposed to buying them individually as they come out.

Servants and Masters: Relationships in Fate/Stay Night

Spoiler alert: Spoilers for volumes five through ten of the manga beyond this point! Please do not share any spoilers past this point in the series, please!

In my last Fate/Stay Night post, I cut it short to keep things simple and vowed to post about the wonderful relationships in this series later. So here I am, later, talking about the relationships in the Fate/Stay Night manga! I hope I do not bore you. Personal relationships in manga, whether romantic or friendship or otherwise, always intrigue me – and F/SN has been doing a really good job of keeping them developed and three-dimensional.

Especially Saber and Shirou. Oh, I adore them so much. But I’ll get to them in a second.

The Story So Far: Fate/Stay Night

Fate/Stay Night volumes 5-10

Original story by Type-Moon

Adapted by Dai Nishiwaki

Published in English by Tokyopop

The story takes place in an ordinary Japanese town, Fuyuki City. Hidden from society, there has been a deadly war going on in this town. Seven sorcerers known as "Masters" summon a powerful familiar called "Servants" and they all fight each other till the last one. The last one is said to attain the Holy Grail which will grant them a wish. Only a few knows when this War started and what the Holy Grail is, but the war was about to begin again this year. 

The main character is Emiya Shirou, who lost his parents in a fire and was adopted by a man who called himself a sorcerer. Admiring his step father, he has been training himself to be a sorcerer. However, he had no talent and he could barely use one type of sorcery. His step father has already passed away, and today he's a sorcerer without any skills or knowledge. He is involved in the War of the Holy Grail when he accidentally summons Saber, who is said to be the strongest servant of all... (Source: Wikipedia)

Spoiler alert: Spoilers for volumes five through ten of the manga beyond this point! Please do not share any spoilers past this point in the series, please!

Last time I blogged about my reading adventures with the Fate/Stay Night manga, I had just finished the fourth volume and the battle against Caster had ended - for now - while a new shift began to form in Shinji, Emiya Shirou's old friend who apparently has some dark secrets of his own. I was also wondering where the heck this Holy Grail War would go from here.

And boy did I find out. Because it seems like these five volumes really bring some serious story and character development, especially if one is a fan of Shirou and Saber. Which I am!

License Line: Save Our Saber

What is License Line? Put simply, it's a semi-regular feature on Nagareboshi Reviews in which yours truly posts about a certain anime/manga series that truly, desperately needs to be licensed and put on my shelves ASAP - from the obscure but well-deserving manga to the stream worthy but not yet DVD licensed anime.

I’m gonna keep this short. We’re all busy folks this time of year and I’ve got a god awful stack of homework to get to. So this is yet another request for a Tokyopop license rescue, this one a bit timelier considering what I’ve been blogging about lately.

If you have been reading this blog or following me on Twitter, you know I’ve been reading the manga adaptation of Type-Moon’s visual novel Fate/Stay Night – and totally loving it. I love the characters, the magic, the action, the world-building; even the fan service is good.

Problem is, it was released in English by the now defunct Tokyopop (I’m not counting their ‘comeback’ only a while ago as a proper return to business) and only came out with around ten books before closing. This means I’ll be soon running out of F/SN graphic novels to read and will either have to – gulp – turn to scanlations or wait for someone to rescue it for English release.

Really, I can’t see why any manga publisher would not want to bring out Fate/Stay Night. The F/SN film is set to come out on DVD and Blu-Ray later this year, and the prequel series Fate/Zero is a huge hit with fans. Someone could easily re-release the first ten volumes in omnibus format then continue from there with standard-sized graphic novels. And since the manga is still going in Japan, there won’t be an absence of material to release for Type-Moon fans.

And while I’m at it, Geneon and Funimation both hold the rights to the anime. Are y’all actually gonna do anything with that? Just saying. It would be nice to be able to buy the anime without shelling out over a hundred bucks for an out of print box set.

Feel free to agree or disagree with me in the comments! Or post links to sexy fanart of Rin and Saber, I can dig that too. Wink wink.

The War Of The Holy Grail

Or: First Thoughts On Fate/Stay Night

The day that Emiya Shirou's life changed forever...

Fate/Stay Night volumes 1-4

Original story by Type-Moon

Adapted by Dai Nishiwaki

Published in English by Tokyopop

The story takes place in an ordinary Japanese town, Fuyuki City. Hidden from society, there has been a deadly war going on in this town. Seven sorcerers known as "Masters" summon a powerful familiar called "Servants" and they all fight each other till the last one. The last one is said to attain the Holy Grail which will grant them a wish. Only a few knows when this War started and what the Holy Grail is, but the war was about to begin again this year. The main character is Emiya Shirou, who lost his parents in a fire and was adopted by a man who called himself a sorcerer. Admiring his step father, he has been training himself to be a sorcerer. However, he had no talent and he could barely use one type of sorcery. His step father has already passed away, and today he's a sorcerer without any skills or knowledge. He is involved in the War of the Holy Grail when he accidentally summons Saber, who is said to be the strongest servant of all...

Based on "Unlimited Blade Works", the second part of the game. (Source: Wikipedia)

Spoiler alert: Spoilers for the first four volumes of the manga beyond this point! Please do not share any spoilers past this point in the series, please!

Look, I've finally gotten around to checking out Type-Moon’s legendary series, Fate/Stay Night! Can I be one of the cool kids yet? Oh, okay. I have to admit, the Internet really hyped up my expectations. A lot of blogs I follow can't stop talking about it, especially after the premiere of the prequel series Fate/Zero (which I've luckily not paid attention to too much lest it ruin the original for me). I just happened to grab up an armful of books from the F/SN series while at the library and gave it a go only a couple of days ago.

And you know what? Fate/Stay Night is absolutely wonderful. I love it! It's not perfect but it's pretty darn near there. And it has Saber and Rin Tosaka, which also makes it very much close to perfection.

Anyone Up For A News Round-Up?

Why? Because.

Geez, I haven't done one of these in a long time! Well, here comes a most delicious link spam of news and like minded discoveries! Including news about a series I'll be reviewing come tomorrow, about a certain magic user and his sexy armored reincarnated saber lady friend - yeah, now it's kind of obvious, innit?

• I'm sure many people will be excited about this one. Little Busters! is finally getting an anime adaptation. So, LB! fans can stop flooding MyAnimeList forums about the lack of LB anime, right? 
• Even more Little Busters! news: the series will feature the original songs from the visual novels, sung by game artist Rita. Oh, and it'll be produced by J.C. Staff instead of KyoAni. Cue the entire fandom pitching a fit! Wah, why don't y'all make anime my way!
• One Peace Books (heard of 'em? Yeah, neither had I!) is going to re-release, of all titles, the Crayon Shin-chan manga - or at least the first three volumes. And the covers look pretty sweet!
• Wave Corporation is giving Fate/Stay Night fans something to really appreciate: a 1/10 scale figure of Saber in a swimsuit. Aww, yeah. And for 47 dollars? Why not?
• Yuu Watase fans and stage play fans can rejoice. Absolute Boyfriend is getting a stage adaptation, due to hit Japan early next year. Sadly, it's not a Takarazuka Revue production.
• For Haruki Murakami fans, SF Bay Guardian Online has a great interview with Jay Rubin and J. Philip Gabriel, Murakami's translators. Their most recently translation was Murakami's 900+ epic tale of parallel worlds, 1Q84 (which everyone should read!)