The Hidden Speedwagon. Designs from the Phantom Blood Movie

Who remembers the Phantom Blood movie? A lot of you probably remember that it exists, the song by SOUL’D OUT, and the rumors about Araki hating it so much he blocked it ever getting a DVD release, but I imagine not many of you have had the chance to see it outside maybe this YouTube video with 16 minutes of clipped out footage.

So did you ever want to know more about it? Tumblr is here to help.

These are all the character designs for how everyone looked in the movie. These are mostly useful for comparing the designs for what was a potential movie compilation to the current anime run we’ve gotten. The designs here, Johnathan and Dio aside, are a lot more normal. Characters are dressed fairly normally and the art style has a generally more realistic feel to it. I’m not sure how to describe it. I’m not a fan because there’s something about the style that makes everyone look like they have a really fat face, especially Johnathan and Dio.

There’s also voice. All the voice actors are listed there. Here’s a rundown for any you may not have known:

Johnathan Joestar: Katsuyuki Konishi (Kamina from Gurren Lagann)
Dio Brando: Hikaru Midorikawa (Lancer in Fate/Zero, Heero Yui in Gundam Wing)
Will A. Zeppeli: Rikiya Koyama (Currently Yoshikage Kira in ASB)
Erina Pendleton:Nana Mizuki
Tonpeti: Yoshisada Sakaguchi (Briareos in Appleseed, tons of dubbing roles)
George Joestar I: Tsutomu Isobe (Runge in Monster, again, tons of dubbing roles)
Dario Brando: Kazutaka Ozawa
Wang Chun: Jun Itoda
Tarkus: Yoshinori Sonobe
Bruford: Toru Nara

Two of those names are of very special interest, and I’m not talking about Yoshikage Zeppeli or Kamina Joestar. I’m talking about Kazutaka Ozawa and Jun Itoda. One of the things you may have also remembered about the Phantom Blood movie is that it was so condensed they [Edit: supposedly] forgot to put in Danny and Speedwagon. If you look next to Ozawa and Jun’s credits on the sections for Dario and Wang Chun, it says “Speedwagon” next to their names. This confused me to no end until I was able to look them up on Japanese Wikipedia and found out they they’re part of a comedy duo act called “Speed Wagon.” So, you see, the movie always had Speed Wagon. Just not Robert Edward O. Speedwagon.

Yeah, learning that didn’t make me any happier about the movie either.

(Thanks to JoJo’s Tumblr for reblogging the pictures from here)

Persona 3 The Movie Preview Video and Cast List

Persona is pretty new to us, as I’ve mentioned before. Only just finished P3 and haven’t finished P4 because of this and that. Because of that, I haven’t seen the P4 anime, and this movie will be done by the same team and studio. I’ve heard good things, typically, but the two or so out of context scenes I have seen looked well directed but lacking for money to really make the animation good. Hopefully, with this being a movie instead of a series, they’ll have more overall money to pump in to making Akihiko boxing shadows as pretty as that deserves to be.

Yaraon also managed to get a hold of the cast list.

• (Hero Character) Makoto Yuki – Akira Ishida (Athrun Zala in Gundam SEED and Destiny, Kaworu Nagisa in Evangelion)
• Yukari Takeba – Megumi Toyoguchi (Revy in Black Lagoon, Winry Rockbell in Full Metal Alchemist)
• Junpei Iori – Kosuke Toriumi (Inui in Shinsekai Yori, Kiyotaka Ishimaru in Dangan Ronpa, Yuri Lowell in Tales of Vesperia)
• Mitsuru Kirijo – Rie Tanaka (Lacus Klein in Gundam SEED and Destiny, Yomi in Azumanga Daioh)
• Akihiko Sanada – Hikaru Midorikawa (Heero Yui in Gundam Wing, Masaki Andoh in Super Robot Wars)
• Fuuka Yamagishi – Mamiko Noto (Tsukiko Sagi in Paranoia Agent)
• Igor – Isamu Tanonaka (Mucha in Mazinger Z, Loki in Cyborg 009)
• Elizabeth – Miyuki Sawashiro (Jolyne Kujo in JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All Star Battle, Fujiko Mine since 2011)

All of these actors and actresses are consistent with their video game appearance, as you probably imagined. To that end, Isamu Tanonaka, who passed on in 2010, will be acting again from archived clips like in the P4 anime.

I’ll actually watch this one since I’ve already experienced the game. Looking forward to giving it a try.

2nd Super Robot Wars OG First Videos.

With all this Jojo’s news going around lately, It’s almost like we’ve forgotten about our favorite super robot genre. Can’t have any of that, so I’m glad to announce that 2nd Super Robot Wars Original Generations has been released today.

As some of you may know, the Original Generations was a spin off series made entirely about the original characters that Banpresto has made in the Super Robot Wars series. It was basically Banpresto saying, “Liscense Getter Robo? Nah. We have all the robots we need.”

A lot of important headliners are returning for OG2 including personal favorite Kyosuke Nanbu (voiced by Toshiyuki Morikawa) piloting his Alt Eisen.

I don’t think anything will ever top the way he segues into Revolver Bunker a the end.

With the game released today, we have a whole mess of new gameplay footage. Unfortunately, we can’t embed them because the site doesn’t have the code and they’re up to a massive 11 hours long. Each.

http://twitch.tv/teakdoc/b/343578271
http://twitch.tv/teakdoc/b/343858007
http://twitch.tv/teakdoc/b/343678613
(Thanks to the Super Robot WarZ blog for the video links.)

These behemoth videos do have a lot of downtime in them, but they do show a large part of the game. Most gameplay aspects are kept intact, and the battle system works the same way as it did in OG Gaiden. But do you come to Super Robot Wars for the intense strategy? Well, maybe, but I think we can all get behind Banpresto’s awesome battle animations.

The best method of attack, never stop hitting the enemy.

This is the G Compatible Kaiser’s Rival, G Bankaran. He sure knows how to Fist of the North Star his way through a robot. It helps that he does it while holding the other robot up by the neck, making it even more awesome.

If you want to keep up with the all attacks videos that are sure to come out, you can follow their release at BassGSnewtype’s youtube channel.