The First Voice Acting Comes Installed, but all Additions will be ~$6

This is a little webshow run by Asami Imai called “Sing Song Gamer.” Imai is a voice actress and you may remember her name mentioned as the actress for Sex Pistols in ASB. This little show was a few minutes of her flipping out listening to the voice acting as the game is being played. For us who don’t speak much if any Japanese, it acts as more “gameplay” footage. It’s still CPU battles, but more footage is at least something, and the voice acting is pretty good.

Speaking of, there’s some news from across the blog ocean in Japan. I was right in my guess that Fatty was going to be DLC, and he’s the first of many. Some news came in from mikestrider on the JoJo Forums. Directly quoted:

Shigekiyo is voiced by Kappei Yamaguchi
Shigekiyo DLC will be purchaseable on launch for 600 Yen

The opening movie of the game is reportedly great. It reproduces scenes from the manga, with the in-game engine. It’s hard to tell sometimes if it’s in-game models or anime art. They apparently took about 4 months of production time to make the opening movie.

The article focuses a bit on the Secret Missions of Story Mode as a new gameplay element.

There will be more characters to announce in the near future.

They plan to have many more “tricky” and “technical” characters to balance out the variety of gameplay.

So Diego isn’t out of the running yet, CC2 is probably just keeping him in the DLC box that can only be unlocked with the money key. I don’t know if every character that they plan will be $6, but if you wait long enough, you may be able to get them all as a package deal. That, or there will be a All Super Star Battle with all the new characters. Foreign DLC is a beast, I’ve heard, so settle in for the long haul. Or, whoever knows or figures it out please post a tutorial. Either or.

On top of that, there are other parts burning about character count. The JoJo F2C mentions a conversation about there being an intended 8 representatives per part as the character roster, save for JoJolion for obvious reasons. There’s another note that says the full package, DLC and all, will have 50+ total characters. At eight per part up to seven parts, that’s fifty-seven when including JoJolion Josuke. Sounds like a plan to me, though who they can pull out of Part 1 to make a full on eight I’m not sure. Oh well. If they fall short, they can always dip into the deep reservoir of stand users in Parts 3 – 7. I know there’s a distinct void in the cast waiting to be filled by someone who will then become a void again.

More news soon, I’m sure. ASB League did something recently, but I haven’t seen any footage of it yet.

BlazBlue Alter Memory Official Site with Cast, Crew, Caracter, and Intro Now Live

The official site for BlazBlue: Alter Memory has launched. I mean, the site is up and you can go to it. Most of the pages haven’t been made yet, but you can still see them in the menu. Just don’t try to go to the “Caracter” page just yet. It isn’t ready at time of writing.

The pages that are ready are the “Introduction” and the “Cast and Crew” page. The intro is simple enough and explains BlazBlue at its most basic. There’s a bad dude named “Ragna the Bloodedge” who keeps destroying sites run by the evil super government in the year 2199AD. Because of his destructive prowess, he’s been nicknamed “Grim Reaper” (Shinigami) and given a tremendous bounty. He now finds himself in a place called District 13 “Kagutsuchi.”

The cast is entirely self consistent. Everyone from the games are back for the show.

Ragna the Bloodedge – Tomokazu Tsugita
Noel Vermillion – Kanako Kondo
Jin Kisaragi – Tetsuya Kakihara
Rachel Alucard – Kana Ueda
Hazama – Yuichi Nakamura
Taokaka – Saito Chiwa
Litchi Faye-Ling – Chiaki Takahashi
Iron Tager – Kenji Nomura
Tsubaki Yayoi – Asami Imai
Kokonoe – Chie Matsuura
Makoto Nanaya – Tomomi Isomura

And also the entire crew.

Original Work: Arc System Works
Supervision: Mori Toshimichi (Series Producer)
Series Director: Hideki Tachibana
Cooperating Director: Seiji Mizushima (Director – Fullmetal Alchemist, Gundam 00)
Series Composition: Deko Akao
Screenplay: Deko Akao, Tatsuya Takahashi
Character Design/Chief Animation Director: Tomoyuki Shitata (Key animation – Paranoia Agent, Chief AD – Toradora!)
Art Director: Shigemi Ikeda (Art Direction – King Gainer, Turn A Gundam, Planetes, 1000 other things)
Color Design: Haruko Nobori
Director of Photography: Hayashi Kojiro
Editor: Masato Yoshitake
Sound Direction: Masanori Tsuchiya
Sound Production: Studio Mausu
Music Production: Lantis
Animation: teamKG, Hoods Entertainment (In Between Animation – Attack on Titan, Production Assistance – JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure)

We’ve got an interesting bag of people. You can see that there are some who’ve worked on some high profile, good pedigree stuff, but there are also some like Deko Akao who did the series composition for Mysterious Girlfriend X. That may not have been her fault though, so I’ll hold out some hope. If Hoods brings half the game they’ve brought to Attack on Titan, then these fight scenes are going to be pretty good. And, really, that’s all I ask.

(Image from the Official Alter Memory Site. © Arc System Works and the BlazBlue Alter Memory Production Committee)

All-Star Battle Trailer Number 3

Remember how I mentioned that CC2 was bringing out a new trailer for ASB at Jump Fiesta?

Here it is. I’m mostly just going to let it speak for itself because me speaking for the trailer would pretty much just be, “AH. DID YOU SEE THE THING WITH THE BASEBALLS AND THE STEAMROLLER AND-” and so on. What I will tell you are the voice actors.

Jolyne Kujo – Miyuki Sawashiro (Celty Sturlson in Durarara!!, Fujiko Mine since 2011)
Hermes Costello – Chizu Yonemoto
Giorno Giovanna – Daisuke Namikawa (Bat in Legends of the True Savior, both Italies in Hetalia)
Guido Mista – Kenji Akabane (Koji Kabuto in Shin Mazinger, I’m not even writing anything else, he was fucking Koji Kabuto)
Sex Pistols – Asami Imai (Kurisu Makise in STEINS;GATE)
Josuke Higashikata – Wataru Hatano (Largan Drace in Gundam AGE, Rufus in Street Fighter 4)
Okuyasu Nijimura – Wataru Takagi (Eiikichi Onizuka in GTO, pretty much every anime character like that and Okuyasu)
Mohammad Abdul – Masashi Ebara (Might Guy in Naruto, Andy in Cowboy Bebop, Andy in Cowboy Bebop because it bears repeating)
Hol Horse – Houchu Otsuka (Yazan Gable in Zeta Gundam, Gen in Giant Robo: The Day the Earth Stood Still)
Noriaki Kakyoin – Kouji Yusa (Shadow the Hedgehog, Urataros in Kamen Rider Den-O)
Jean Pierre Polnareff – Hiroaki Hirata (The Japanese dub actor for Johnny Depp, Sanji in One Piece, Wild Tiger in Tiger & Bunny)
Dio – I’m going to give you enough credit to assume you already know.
Jotaro Kujo – Daisuke Ono (Kenji Kusanagi in Kotetsushin Jeeg, Snow Villers in Final Fantasy XIII)

And that’s the new PV. It’s looking fantastic, the sense of humor they’ve got with the little Josuke and Okuyasu moments, the casting is really good. Now all we need is the characters from Part 1 and hopefully more from Part 7. Then we’ll be set.