Earlier in the year, Animeondvd.com was bought up by Mania Entertainment. When the announcement broke, it was determined that the site would retain its staff and design. This was changed earlier in the week.

AoD is now linking directly to mania.com/anime with a whole new, and rather clunky looking interface.

One can only hope that the original vision and enjoyment of the site holds through the change in interface.

Since we think Digital Distribution is the wave of the future, we thought we’d point out some of the latest anime offerings on the internet.

Viz-

Joining Funimation and Manga Entertainment, Viz has put up some of their series for download on iTunes. Bleach, Death Note and Naruto are the first of the Viz series to show up.

I think it’d be fun if we could see other Viz series that are classics(such as Ranma 1/2 or Inuyasha) or something cutting edge(such as Eyeshield 21 or Hikaru no Go). Hopefully there will be expansion on this.

Funimation-

The big Funimation announcement actually comes from Sony out of E3. Sony announced the opening of their Sony Entertainment Playstation Store. The store allows you to download videos for their Playstation 3(PS3) and Playstation Portable(PSP) platforms.

No specific titles were mentioned however, we’ll be updating this post with them once one of our PS3 enabled contributors is available.

Overseas, BONES studio will also be releasing exclusive content specifically for the Playstation Store.

So the internets are here yet again to prove that people have WAY too much time on their hands and here’s the proof:

Thanks goes to Drew for sending the link along!

Just in case you didn’t already have 8 reasons for why you think the Dragonball live action movie is going to suck, Topless Robot gives you a nice long article on why you should hate the Dragonball Movie.

Some reasons are good such as “Goku looks more like Gohan”, “Creating New Characters. Some reasons are negligible such as “Americanized Music vs. Japanese Music” and some are stupid like “No Gratuitous Bulma Flashing” and “Making Yamcha and Yajorobie Cool”. It makes me think the original writers of the article have only watched Dragonball on Cartoon Network… with the Ocean Group dub.

(Article Link)

Hope you already picked up the following, because if you haven’t, ADV has discontinued their release:

* Best Student Council
* 5 Centimeters Per Second
* Innocent Venus
* Robotech

Its sad since things seem to be going from bad to worse for ADV.

It seems the rumors have now become FACT! Established Geneon titles are now going to officially be handled by Funimation as of today. This is also going to include titles which were actively produced but not released on DVD including, Black Lagoon Second Barrage, Karin, Kyo kara Maoh! Season 2, and Lyrical Nanoha.

This is huge news as a large amount of anime will soon come back to the North American market once again. Did series you were collecting get cut off by the downfall of Geneon? Are you excited for the prospect of collecting series that were no longer available to you? Let us know! Contact us and let us know what you think!

(Press Release)

UPDATE(July 4):

Coming one day later after gaining a serious back log from Geneon, Funimation has acquired 30 titles previously licensed by ADV. These titles are from ARM Corporation in Japan and hold the original licenses. The majority of the titles are ones that were removed from ADV’s website back in January, and were later restored… only to be moved off again. The only title conspicuously absent from the list is 5cm per Second.

This is huge news for Funimation who has almost doubled their catalog of titles and bad news for ADV who has had nothing but set backs since the ADV/Geneon merger went sour. ADV is reporting out of AX they are in negotiations for a large amount of new titles however with news like this acquiring new titles may be easier said then done.

(Press Release)

Those of us here at SHAFT are fans of Witchblade and its creator, Michael Turner. However, it was sad to see that on Sunday that Mr. Turner had passed of complications due to cancer. The anime and manga versions of Witchblade were inspired from the original graphic novel work.

Its always sad to hear of news like this.

Three Sources: (Extralife, Major Spoilers, ANN)

Just out of curiosity, is there anyone lucky enough in our listener base going to AX 2008 this year? Its coming up in about one week and its exciting here, despite the fact that we’re stuck where we are. As always, the big con of them all seems exciting as always.

But let us know what you think going into Anime Expo!

And if you’re are unable to go to Anime Expo, how many of our local New England crowd will be heading over to Port Con Maine to live it up in the cool Maine air? Since both cons are taking place the same weekend, I thought it’d be interesting to ask.

So here’s Funimation’s podcast that we were talking about last episode. Looks good and they seem to have planned the updating process well (monthly). Let’s just hope they keep it up.

You can check out their podcast page at www.funimation.com/podcast

Thats right the always popular anime series that defiantly hasn’t gotten its US rise is certainly getting a US game, as early as September.

Case Closed: The Mirapolis Investigation will be available for the Nintendo Wii only and will feature gameplay pumped up from versions you may find on the Nintendo DS.

Big thanks to Nintendo Wii Fanboy for the news clip and obviously the original article.

(Original Article)