The Animatsu Entertainment and Manga UK panel began with familiar face Jerome Mazandarani, current Chief Operating Officer of Animatsu and Andrew Hewson, Marketing Manager at Animatsu. They began by giving some background information on themselves, their previous work at Manga UK and their current company Animatsu Entertainment.
“For all those of you who aren’t aware of the current situation, for a long time Andrew and I worked at Manga but left the company the end of last year. We have now since formed a partnership with them and going forward we are handling their marketing and brand management with Manga fulfilling Animatsu’s distribution.” – Jerome Mazandarani
Andrew kicked off the announcements with an awesome sizzle reel of past titles that got the audience pumped up.
Knights of Sidonia
The first announcement comes from Animatsu and it is the Netflix original series Knights of Sidonia, after a rather awesome trailer we got down to the details. Featuring all the same content as the US Sentai Filmworks release, we will see DVD and Deluxe Blu-ray editions with a release date set for 17th August of this year.
Dead Rising: Watchtower
Dead Rising: Watchtower the only Live Action movie to be announced in this panel and possible the only one of the entire weekend. Based on the CAPCOM game series this release will see a DVD, Blu-ray and Limited Edition Steelbook set for 27th July 2015.
Puella Magi Madoka Magica Movies
The first announcement from Manga UK and met with great applause is the Puella Magi Madoka Magica movie series. Movies 1 and 2 that retell the events of the series will be release separately on DVD but as a collection on Blu-ray with a release date of 13th July 2015.
The third movie Rebellion, that features all new story and conclusion to the series, will be available on DVD and a Deluxe Blu-ray on 28th September 2015.
To introduce the next set of announcements Jerome and Andrew welcomed onto the stage the newest member of the Animatsu Entertainment and Co-Founder of Japan Curiosity, our very own – Fraser Overington.
Fraser, Andrew and Jerome then held up a series of clues for the audience to guess the next two series to be announced.
A Certain Scientific Railgun / A Certain Magical Index
Both series are to be Animatsu properties and will be release this summer on both DVD and Blu-ray. It has to be noted that once the series had be guessed, which took no time at all, the audience reaction was rather ecstatic.
Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection of F
An obvious announcement for Manga UK here but still awesome nonetheless, I’m sure many have already seen the trailer before it still got the audience a buzz. Set for release on both DVD and Blu-ray there is no schedule date yet.
Parasyte -The Maxim-
Another Animatsu release and while the details aren’t finalised it’s been pencilled in for a summer release and will be available of both DVD and Blu-ray.
Triage X, Black Bullet and Golden Time
Giving us a taste of some more title that have been licensed by Animatsu and Manga we were treated to a graphic containing images for these three series, more details to come in regards to release dates and formats.
That’s it for the anime announcement side of the panel which leads us into the Q&A section where a good range of topics were covered and deserves an article unto itself given the amount of things covered so look out for that over the coming days.