ANNCast talking with FUNimation.

Zac Bertschy and Justin Sevakis of the ANNCast crew (Animation News Network) just uploaded their latest podcast interviewing Adam Sheehan and Lance Heiskell, marketing manager and Director of Corporate Strategy at FUNimation, one of the biggest importers of Anime in the US.

In the hour and half long interview, Adam and Lance talk about Toei Animation's bestselling 'Dragon Ball Z', the long wait for the second season of Tensai Okamura's 'Darker than Black' and the the much anticipated HD releases of 'Hellsing Ultimate' and Ryutaro Nakamura's newly restored 'Serial Experiments Lain'. If you want to know everything FUNimation is up to and stay on track with their plans for the new year, make sure to check that stuff out.
Funimation Entertainment was founded in 1994 by Gen Fukunaga who's uncle, being one of the producers of 'Dragon Ball', was looking for a way to distribute the anime series in the US.

Small girls with big guns: 'Phantom: Requiem for the Phantom, the  Complete Collection' is one of the high def releases planned by FUNimation for January 2012. This Anime series created by Koichi Mashimo's Beetrain is based on the 'Phantom of Inferno' PC game developed by Nitroplus and is currently being ported to the Xbox 360 with new and improved graphics. Also scheduled for a US release next year Februari, '.Hack/Quantum' (pronounced 'dot-Hack Quantum') is the latest installment of the popular Japanese franchise. This three part OVA (direct-to-video) anime series, based on the Playstation video games series developed by CyberConnect2 is the first in the series animated by Kinema Citrus instead of Beetrain, who created the five earlier series between 2002 and 2006.

In the .Hack anime series the characters live inside a virtual role playing game world. The first animated series .Hack//SIGN was created by character designer Yoshiyuki Sadamoto (known for his work on Evangelion) and Kazunori Ito (writer of 'Ghost in the Shell'). A 3D CGI animated movie titled '.Hack//the movie' has been produced by CyberConnect2 and is slated for theatrical release on January 21, 2012 throughout Japan.





Above: A typical days work at Tokyo based CyberConnect2, who beside working on a beautifully animated CGI movie, also delivered stunning work on their soon to be released action packed game 'Asura's Wrath' which is developed for both the Xbox 360 and the PS3 using Epic Games' Unreal Engine 3 and is scheduled for release in februari 2012 (trailers for both collected below).