Also to help cut losses, and to maximize their value, Bandai will simultaneous release both their DVD and Blu-ray discs and on-demand distribution. Finally, Bandai plans to start a new company that will handle live entertainment in relation to their toys, games, videos, and music. Bandai Visual will provide 51% of this new company’s startup capital, and Sunrise will pay the rest. This business will start in April of this year with the tentative title of Bandai Namco Live.
What does this mean for us? Well, perhaps we will get a new convention out of this sometime in the future. Though it wouldn’t surprise me if this new convention was in Japan only. Good luck with everything Bandai and to all those who lost their jobs.
[Via ANN]
Namco Bandai sounds cooler to me but I always think it's Bandai Namco when I look at the logo.
Also they better not mess with the Tekken/Soul Calibur team. Though I doubt they would.
I have to say I'm mostly loyal to Namdai for most of my games (though I don't buy so many as I want nowadays...), so a lot is riding on their success for me personally. ^-^;;
This happened to me as well.
Ah how I miss ReBoot.
I guess kind of spoilers if you didn't watch ReBoot season 3.
Oh and for anyone wondering what ReBoot is but don't care to skim through the Wikipedia article. It was the first full-length completely computer animated television series about the perils of a civilization located in a computer system called Mainframe. The studio who created it also made the Beast Wars television series and was formerly named Mainframe Entertainment.
They could also make their games region free so I could actually give them my money; or actually release titles over here in NA that many fans are always waiting for. They just don't seem to want money though.
Everyone loves ReBoot though. Well those who watched it.
Maybe when we fill 2 small buses they'll consider a complete collection, or an HD release.
Well on YTV they still showed reruns of it during Bionix.* There was also reruns on Teletoon, although the Teletoon reruns have been moved to Teletoon Retro. (seasons 1 to 3) Although after severly destroying Bionix (for the last couple years it was moved to Saturday @midnight and cut to back to back Bleach and Naruto reruns) they finally pulled it. However they still had an on demand Bionix although it recently was cancelled. There is still good news though the reason they did this is because Corus (the company who owns YTV and Teletoon among other televison and radio stations) is soon to be launching a channel dedicated to anime aptly called The Anime Channel.
The channel itself is supposedly going to be 85% anime and related programs with at least 65% of it being anime and no more than 35% anime related programs and up to 15% of it being news type stuff. Oh and the best part is it's going to be primarly targeted at adults, which hopefully will mean showing stuff that is actually good but something you probably couldn't get away with showing on a station oriented more to kids. Instead of the other possibility of just showing porn. Although they did a pretty good job with Bionix in the day so I'm sure they know that something being adult doesn't necessarily mean uber violence and porn. Plus if you look at the rest of Corus' properties it's pretty obvious that when they know the audience they are going for.
Anyway back to the topic of getting the complete collection well that's tricky. Mainframe Entertainment was aquired by Rainmaker and turned into Rainmaker Entertainment, and they stopped selling the 4th season through their site so it is pretty much impossible to aquire in North America anymore. Although I hear a PAL version is still in print in Australia and seasons 1 to 3 are also in print as a PAL release in Russia. Seasons 1 to 3 are out of print in North America although Universal still owns the rights to seasons 1 and 2.
There is some kind of good news Rainmaker is apparently going to release another film (supposed trilogy) in the near future and they currently have a teaser on their site. There is also a webcomic (it's over now but you can still read it) that Rainmaker developed on the official fansite. So check that out as well as the fansite that has over 20,000 members (since summer 2007) on the bus that you can gush about ReBoot with. (I actually just learned about the fansite part fairly recently and probably will check it out myself tomorrow)
So I guess the advice I can give to you is either find a way to get a few select Canadian television stations, import a PAL TV and DVD player along with the DVDs or the more dubious ways that will not be referenced by name if you are super desperate and than to atone go buy a bunch of copies of Barbie in a Christmas Carol to support the creators. What you do with those copies I have no clue though.
*A late Friday night program block dedicated to anime and the occasional domestic sort of anime show usually developed by a computer animation studio from Vancouver, B.C. like ReBoot or more recently Storm Hawks.