Thursday, May 7, 2009

ADV picks up a mixed bag from CPM's corpse

So CPM's official dead now (as opposed to just in a coma, like they've been for the past few years) and the looting as begun. Apparently ADV has announced that they're picking up four of CPM's classic titles:
  • Grave of the Fireflies
  • Now and Then, Here and There
  • World of Narue
  • MD Geist
It's great to see Grave of the Fireflies and Now and Then, Here and There (the latter being an oft-overlooked gem of the unrelentingly depressing take on the typical alternate world story - a Disney or Miyazaki movie gone bad, in a sense) but the other choices are a little more confusing.

World of Narue looked nice for its time, but ultimately never amounted to anything. And MD Geist published by anyone other than CPM will be not only surreal but inexplicable. That's something CPM could have just taken with it to the afterlife.

4 comments:

  1. Awesome news about NTHT. Now that I'm actually expecting this, but it would be great if ADV could remaster that and release it on bluray.

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  2. I agree, though I'm still somewhat torn on Blu-ray.

    On the one hand, I've seen what hi-def can do for anime and it's tempting, and it would be nice to get so many more episodes on a disc...

    But on the other hand, I'm hesitant to buy it on a format that's even more locked than DVD (and that I can't play on my Mac yet).

    Plus there's the fact that so much relies on authoring/mastering/whatever (some DVDs still look great, others are full of noise in the blacks) and the eternal promise of digital distribution around the corner.

    I keep thinking I'll hop into it and then rethinking.

    I'll probably take the plunge when Macs get Blu-ray support and a few more complete series are released as a relatively cheap Blu-ray set.

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  3. World of Narue struck me as one of those ok manga that somehow lost whatever charm it had in adaptation.

    Fireflies and NTHT of course deserve to still be in print, but there is no reason whatsoever for MD Geist to still inflict its terror on an English-speaking populace. Maybe if they get a commentary track by John O'Donnell explaining at length what he sees in the goddamn thing.

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  4. In hindsight, I have no idea how we avoided the "US Manga Corpse" pun.

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