Rurouni Kenshin History - Mitsuhisa Ishikawa Production I.G. Interview - Animercia September 2000

This month’s highlight are a few articles on Nobuhiro Watsuki’s Rurouni Kenshin. The first goes over the OVA series released as Samurai X: Trust and Betrayal in the US. I haven’t watch this series, but I have seen well over 10 anime music videos encapsulating the drama at various anime conventions. Samurai emo. The second article goes over the historical context. Rurouni Kenshin takes place in the late 1870s after the fall of the military government and the restoration of the Imperial family. It’s a great read on the Meiji Restoration.

Review Time!

Media Blasters released Rurouni Kenshin in the 3 formats of a slowly transition time from VHS to DVD. Thankfully the VHS Subtitled and VHS English Dub were the same price, no subtitle markup. DVD was only $5 more. 3 to 4 episodes per DVD volume are getting to be standard at $30.

Here is the Animerica voice actor spotlight on Mark Hildreth, most known for the voice of Gundam Wing’s Heero Yuy. I like to go to IMDB to see what these actors have been up to. Mark played a Vistor named Joshua in the V TV show remake as was a main character in the first season. Read about it here.

This is an interview with the co-founder and CEO of Production I.G. Mitsuhisa Ishikawa. I like the explanation of the ING group, in which Ishikawa explains that Xebec is “an otaku studio for adults” Hellow Martian Successor Nadesico. I.G. stands for Ishikawa-Goto. Takayuki Goto being the Vice President.

“a company of otaku, headed by otaku”

I love that this interview references Blood – The Last Vampire movie and FLCL. The Animerica staff were shown working parts of the first episode of FLCL before the interview began. Awesome.

Convention Cosplay Time!

I am very tempted to email the addresses on animessages this month.

Early 2000s extreme sports craze. Skateboarding at its peak.

Anime That Time Forgot: Apocalypse Zero.

I’ve been waiting to see if there was a Fox Kids promotion for Escaflowne. I saw a couple of the episodes on Fox and then later watched a couple of my sister’s fansub VHS tapes. I would later get the giant box set.