Tag Archives: News

The Future

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The time has come to examine the viability of continuing this site. Domain and hosting costs keep rising on this and the sister site. Its approaching close to a thousand plus dollars a year. I seem to have two choices, let the current domains and hosting expire and go “dark” or find another way to drastically reduce the operating cost and the associated time required to maintain the sites.

Our visitor’s, as of late, are AI crawlers constantly scraping the sites and consuming excessive amounts of bandwidth and when our bandwidth limit is exceeded it cost even more. Keeping those sites at bay is becoming a ‘full time job’, plus my real life affairs, its taking more time than I find acceptable.

My current issue with the websites…..

Keeping the Web Up Under the Weight of AI Crawlers

With the passing 15th anniversary of the Haruhi franchise and no mention of new content, the decision that Bakacast would no longer continue and a general malaise in anime, don’t get me wrong there has been some good series released, but the themes have become quite repetitive, so maybe it’s time to move on.

I was thinking of sticking it out until Haruhi’s 20th anniversary but… Watch this space…

Note: This is not a request for funding, this has been my project from the start, to its finish. Thank you for your past, present and future support

 

Love Hina Manga Returns!

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The story that inspired a generation!

Nine years after finishing Love Hina, Ken Akamatsu has decided to publish a small one-shot of the romantic comedy manga in the next issue of Weekly Shonen Magazine. The one-shot will include six colour pages featuring Keitarō and Naru, however any details beyond that are sparse. This will also coincide with the 300th chapter of Negima!, another of Ken’s works.

If you are anything like me, then you too are now reveling in acute feelings of nostalgia. Savour them, and try not to feel old. Although Love Hina started back in 1998, I was first given it to read in 2005 whilst undergoing my first year of university. Up until then, I was completely ignorant and skeptical of manga in general, not to mention anime. To say that Love Hina turned my world upside down would be an understatement, as from that point on I was 100% addicted. So that’s where it all began for me, and as such the manga occupies a very special place in my memories.

But enough with the history lesson! What is your opinion of Love Hina? Have you too got a soft spot for it? Or have you moved on completely in your life and couldn’t care less?

Project Haruhi Has A Fancy New Comment System!

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It's so beautiful...

Project Haruhi is now using Disqus as our comment system. This adds a ton of new functionality, such as the ability to edit your comments, post them to Twitter, subscribe to comment feeds via RSS or email, and rate other people’s comments. You can log into the system using your Twitter, Facebook or Yahoo ID, or use the old-fashioned method by simply providing a username and email like before. However, the best method is to create a Disqus profile with the same email address you use to comment here. After you’ve verified your email and logged in to Disqus, follow this link and claim your old comments.

As always, we’re open to feedback. If you have any comments or suggestions, tell us below or e-mail them to ryoko[at]projectharuhi.net!

Announcing Project Haruhi’s First Anniversary Contest!

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One year ago today, Project Haruhi made the transition from generic Haruhi fansite to anime blog. Since then, we’ve expanded our focus from just Haruhi to anime in general, especially KyoAni’s works such as Lucky Star and K-ON!. However, many visitors to our site still believe us to be merely a Haruhi fansite. Since we have no plans to change our name, how can we let our readers know that we’re more than just Haruhi?

The solution is simple: we need a tagline.

Sadly, our staff isn’t very good at coming up with clever slogans. That’s why we’re turning to our loyal readers for help. We’d like for YOU to come up with a short, catchy tagline for us; something that lets visitors know we’re a fun, community-oriented anime blog dedicated to all things KyoAni.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a contest without a prize. Whoever submits the winning tagline will receive a $50 gift certificate to J-List.com, to spend on whatever you please! I recommend the Haruhi lemonade, but that’s just me.

Here are the contest rules:
1. If you are under 18 years of age, you must receive parental approval before entering this contest.
2. Submit your entry in the comments below. Remember, the tagline must be short, sweet and convey PH’s nature efficiently.
3. You may submit up to five taglines to the contest.
4. Entries with profanity or inappropriate content will be automatically disqualified, along with whoever submitted them.
5. Entries will be accepted until 11:59 PM Pacific Daylight Time on July 19th, one week from today. The winner will be announced a few days later.
6. The winner will receive one $50 J-List gift certificate, which can be delivered either electronically or by conventional mail.
7. Obviously, PH staff are forbidden from entering this contest.

Well, there you have it. Good luck!

Crunchyroll on the Road to Profitability

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Earlier yesterday, ANN reported that Crunchyroll—the formerly illicit streaming anime site that went legit in January of 2009—broke even in May. This is huge news for advocates of on-demand and simulcasted anime like myself. It proves that Crunchyroll’s strategy can work, which hopefully means Japanese companies will be less hesitant to put their stuff online.

To put this in perspective, the enormously popular YouTube has yet to turn a profit, though this is likely because the service was largely ad-free for quite a while. Crunchyroll, on the other hand, supports itself by charging subscription fees for instant access to their newest shows and—for non-subscribers—including commercial breaks in their videos. It would be interesting to see what percentage of their revenue comes from each source, though it’s highly unlikely Crunchyroll will ever release that kind of information.

Whatever the monetary breakdown, Funimation and the Anime Network are probably feeling much better about the chances of their own streaming services. And if they succeed, us fans may finally get decent, legal alternatives to DVDs.

K-ON! is licensed by Bandai

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Are they laughing with Bandai… or at them?

I’m still in shock.

Despite their financial woes, Bandai Entertainment has just announced at Anime Expo that they’ve acquired the rights to K-ON!‘s first season. There’s no word yet if it will be dubbed or released on Blu-ray. Bandai also announced a series of live-action K-ON! marketing videos similar to the ASOS Brigade series for Haruhi. For these, they’ve cast Christina Vee as Mio, Karri Shirou as Yui, “Kix” as Tsumugi and “Briana” as Ritsu.

Hang on a second… Christina Vee as MIO? She’s got a great singing voice, but their personalities couldn’t be more different. This is going to be most interesting…

I think it’s likely that Bandai will give K-ON! a dub, probably recycling many of the cast members from the Haruhi and Lucky Star dubs. However, in my opinion, their English version of “God Knows” was ear-splittingly painful, especially when compared to the original Japanese song. Given how music-oriented K-ON! is, I’m hoping they can track down some voice actors who can actually sing. Of course, I’d also be perfectly happy with a sub-only release.

Oh, and Bandai? If you try to pull the same “no Japanese audio track” crap that you did with Kurokami, I’m not buying it. Period.

[Via ANN]

New Manga Series from Gunsmith Cats Creator

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According to Anime Vice, Kenichi Sonoda is creating a new manga series called Bullet the Wizard, which makes me very excited.

Why?

Because he also created Gunsmith Cats—one of my favorite manga series of all time. It had fun, fast-paced plots that often felt like episodes from a crime drama, great art, an impressive showcase of firearms and a charming team dynamic between Rally Vincent and Minnie May. Of course, it certainly helped that Rally appeals to my particular taste in women: a smart, athletic adult who spent her time beating up bad guys and enjoyed the sound and recoil of a gunshot. Now that’s sexy.

Like Jason Bourne, but with breasts.

The “bullet” part of the title of his new series implies that he’ll be going back to the gunslinging storylines that Gunsmith Cats did so well. As for the “wizard” part, maybe he’ll be taking inspiration from Outlaw Star‘s caster shells. Or, at least, that’s what I hope he’ll do.

Bakacast 6 – Robots in Hell

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That’s right, it’s the episode everyone I have been waiting for… we finally review Casshern Sins. But because even we can’t fill up an hour with Casshern discussion, we also review Venus Wars and tackle some important issues with the help of special guest Chris (aka Kagami on Project Haruhi): manga aggregation, absurd Haruhi DVD prices, the “loli bill”, Japan’s search for new creative talent and—of course—beards.

Truly, we are the pinnacle of moe- and beard-related content. And if my script for a new slice-of-life show about lumberjacks gets green-lit, we may finally get to combine our passions!

As always, you can download the episode directly, follow our RSS feed or subscribe to us through iTunes. Head on over to our forums to discuss this episode in detail!

The music at the end is “ROBOTS” by Dan Mangan and is available for digital download on Amazon.