I Can 「オラオラ」 with My Feet Now!

 

I feel like all the recent posts have followed this pattern: Do you remember the collaboration between Converse and Bandai that gave us the JoJo hightops? Actually, more appropriately, do you remember the announced Jotaro Shoes? Well, it’s time to expand your shoe closet with a little product from Premium Bandai.

This is one of the most Jotaro things I’ve ever seen. The shoe is the classic blue, the top lace rings are stars, the back has the hand plate as a patch, the bottom of the shoes have Jotaro on one foot and Star Platinum on the other, it comes in that fancy box with them both, and if you look closely at the body of the shoe, it is patterned with 「オラ」 on any part that is blue except the laces and the toe cap. It’s a bit hard to see at a glance because they are the same color, but it’s clear on a good look.

The shoes are currently available for preorder from Premium Bandai and are going for ¥11,880. They come in sizes ranging from 22cm – 30cm, about a Ladies size 5 to a Mens size 15 in U.S. terms. You can even order it in a nice pink or green gift wrap for an extra ¥200. Be quick, though. The preorder period will close in one month on June 15th. The shoes are expected to launch in the latter third of December.

(Image from Premium Bandai. © Bandai, Converse, Hirohiko Araki, LUCKYLAND, Shueisha, and the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders Production Committee)

Ninja Storm and All-Star Battle Special Event with a Shocking Announcement!

Oh, man. CyberConnect2’s twitter finally has something interesting again.

That link will take you to the special BandaiNamco page for the event, and you can follow that to the JoJo specific page here since I imagine that’s what most people reading this are after.

The information at this point is very vague with no concrete content announcements. This is a small venue by tickets only, obviously held in Japan. There will be press, so we should be getting video footage of the goings on soon after the 16th. The big, teasing blurbs locked away in there are that ASB will have a new playable character, I’m not sure if that’s a new playable character that hasn’t been announced in V-Jump or if it’s a new character from the demo we saw however long ago that was, and that there will be a “shocking announcement.” It’s such an important “shocking announcement” that it gets mentioned four or so times. I have no idea what that could be, but a big, surprising announcement about ASB released at a special event a few weeks before launch? We could be getting a western release announcement.

It’s tentative now, but that special announcement is in 11 days. Hope for the best! We’ll keep you posted.

Bandai Channel Streams Phantom Blood

Bandai Channel, Bandai’s anime streaming service, is doing us an interesting favor as part of an interesting service.

I’m demonstrably no expert in the Japanese language, but when three tweets in a row have the same link, it’s probably a pretty notable link. That link leads to the promotional page for Bandai Channel’s service to stream the Phantom Blood anime.

According to what I can tell from the page, it looks like streaming of the whole Part 1 including Episode 9 is set to start on December 6th before the first episode of Battle Tendency airs. It will be a live stream starting at 21:00 until 1:30 on probably Japanese Standard Time.

The promo page also mentions a promotional video for Part 2, but looking around for it hasn’t given me anything, even on the JoJo’s Official Website where you’d expect there to be such a thing, especially on the Special page where they have the promo video for the series and Part 1. It’s possible that it’s talking about the first episode being free as a promotion, that favor I mentioned, where you have to pay for each episode after that. If you follow the last blue link on the promo page, you’re taken to a JoJo’s video page on Bandai Channel.

You can see the Free Episode 1 there towards the bottom of the page. Unfortunately, Bandai Channel doesn’t offer its services States side, so I can’t actually watch this video. It may be the promotional Part 2, but if you click the largest button there, it brings up the synopsis of Episode 1 and you can cycle through all the episodes up to Episode 8, so I’m guessing that’s just the streaming service for the show. All the other buttons are Characters, Cast, Story, external links, and a mailto.

For all of you reading this in a country that supports Bandai Channel, there you go. For the everyone else, I think it’s cool that Bandai is getting to do this and is offering this service since the Blu-rays are hugely expensive for two episodes a pop. From what I can see, this doesn’t have the English subtitle option, though that may be in the video once you’ve got it playing. If you feel up to tricking a website into believing you’re from Japan, then you might just dodge those Blu-ray prices.

(Non-Twitter images from Bandai Channel, © Bandai Visual, Warner Bros., davidproduction)