Odd way to start my first blog here at t-ono.net, but the BoA concert was awesome! I did feel sorry for a lot of the fans, I believe the event was originally scheduled around 4-4:30PM but due to complications her performance didn't start until around 5:15PM or so. We were outside her tent for most of the time as she was ready to go. Unfortunately due to the usual mix up that a lot of event organizers end up having, our request for an interview with BoA did not go through but we did get in touch with BoA's people.
We'll try to set something up for the future, but rumor has it that BoA may be doing a few more American promotions and quite possibly return to San Francisco in the next few months. Again, this is just media rumor and speculation so take it for what it's worth. We'll let you know immediately we get any more updates on BoA, but again it is 5:54AM right now and I'm about to head down to LA to prepare for Anime Expo coverage!
So apparently we've been really out of the loop, and didn't hear about this until our associates asked if we would like to interview the band. Hyde from the hit J-Rock band L'Arc-en-Ciel, and K.A.Z from Oblivion Dust are holding an American tour starting in July 2009 as the group VAMPS. Feel free to reply here or send us in questions you may have for the band and we will try to have them answered.
Full tour schedule is inside including their tour announcement video!
During E3, it was announced that Final Fantasy XIII should be seeing a stateside release in Spring 2010. Square Enix was a little concerned about the number of discs required for the the Xbox 360 version of the game, and reiterates that the Playstation 3 version will be one disc long. As for retaining the original Japanese voices, Square responded only if it fits on the disc. Personally I am for the Japanese voices, as Vanille is voiced by Yukari Fukui, who also voiced Nia Tepplin from the anime Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann.
The English voice acting also is a bit shaky, which you can decide for yourself after watching the included trailer inside.
A quick update after FanimeCon 2009, those of us (t-ono.net staff) who went are exhausted and are not looking forward to a return of daily life as well as working on Fanime related stuff. We will be slowly releasing content over the next few weeks.
Oh, and for the Momoi fans who missed her at FanimeCon, we will be giving away 3 signed shikishi boards by Momoi herself to you the readers! Stay tuned while we work up the contest information.
Things to look forward for we are working on:
During the Masquerade at FanimeCon 2009, a group did a skit for the series The Familiar of Zero (Zero no Tsukaima) using an English dub of a popular Touhou related Nico Nico Douga song 'Tsurupettan.' We will simply call 'Tiny Flat Chest.' It was a hilarious skit and the bad news is unfortunately we did not film the Masquerade this year though we did take pictures of it as seen in the news image.
Good news is that a video of it should pop up within the next few days and a quick search on Google yielded an image board post containing the song in MP3 format. We have uploaded the song to our server, so get downloading!
Download Here (right click and save as...)
Update: Video is out, click read more for it!
So apparently we were completely fooled into believing that Trinity Universe would be the game announced at the NIS America press event; instead, NIS unveiled a new action orientated RPG in early development stages titled Last Rebellion. Players can free roam around the world but will enter into turn based combat when encountering an enemy. The interesting aspect is that players will be able to target different parts of the body which will affect the way enemies attack. Attacking the legs will slow an enemy down, while damage to the arms will weaken their attacks. From the brief gameplay footage we were shown, it looks like the game still needs some work, hopefully adding some more textures.
The game is currently a join project between Nippon Ichi Software Japan and HitMaker and is expected to be released in Japan around Fall 2009; no word on a stateside release yet.