AstroBoy Online Forums

Anime Sols just opened up and they have THREE Tezuka series right now!

You can pledge to get a DVD boxset of the first three 24 Hour TV Specials from Tezuka: Bander Book, Marine Express and Fumoon. We all know that Astro Boy is a major character in Marine Express, but he also has a cameo in Bander Book. And Fumoon is based on Nextworld, a manga from Tezuka's classic sci-fi trilogy like Metropolis, so it incorporates a lot of Metropolis characters in a similar detective tale.

Also, in probably even bigger news, you can pledge on a set for the first 13 episodes (0-12) of the 2004 Black Jack TV series.

And finally, the first 13 episodes of Blue Blink, the last anime Tezuka supervised.

Each set has a 2 month and a half deadline to meet their goal. You can see in real time how much money a set has made out of how much it needs.

If a series doesn't reach its goal, any chance of it ever seeing an R1 DVD release has been lost! If you don't have the money to pledge, at least share the site everywhere online, on your blogs, Twitter, Facebook, etc. People outside North America can also have friends from there pledge in their place and refund them via Paypal. Only a limited amount of copies will be available on web stores after a series is funded, so it's best to pledge if you want to be sure to get yourself a very rare DVD.

I should also add that this is like Kickstarter, so the money of your pledge is only sent if the goal needed for the set is met.

Wow this is going to be tough I think... I will pledge but I think this is going to be tough...

Edit: If they do get to their goal will they be released on DVD outside of Japan? I'm a little confused on that part.

"Earthshine" wrote:Wow this is going to be tough I think... I will pledge but I think this is going to be tough...

Edit: If they do get to their goal will they be released on DVD outside of Japan? I'm a little confused on that part.

The goals are for US/Canadian DVD releases. But with the ease of acquiring region free DVD players nowadays, I hope that people all around the world will want to help contribute by finding a "middleman" to paypal who would then pledge in their place and ship the DVD set(s).

So AnimeSols is finally up, huh? Awesome!

I'm intrigued by the premise of this website, and I certainly hope it takes off. This is definitely a greta opportunity to get certain series out on DVD, but also a great chance to give older anime some more exposure.

And with that in mind, let's hope that we can get the 2003 series uncut at some point as well.

I hope I'm right in that the pledge for the Blackjack DVD's covers an entire set and not a single episode. I'll probably spring for a large enough pledge to earn a copy. Blackjack rocks!
BTW Fman, who drew your current avatar. It's wonderful!

"Tetsuwan Penguin" wrote:I hope I'm right in that the pledge for the Blackjack DVD's covers an entire set and not a single episode. I'll probably spring for a large enough pledge to earn a copy. Blackjack rocks!
BTW Fman, who drew your current avatar. It's wonderful!

When you select a "Core" pledge (the minimum pledge needed to get a DVD set), it tells you how many episodes would be included. For Black Jack, it says "You’ll get a collectors DVD-Box set of Black Jack TV 0-12, with English Subtitles. Other special features TBD. + You’ll get your choice of 1 out of 7 Tezuka wallpapers + You’ll get 1 month free subscription to Astro Boy Magazine + You’ll get a special Anime Sols sticker!" Or you can simply go to https://www.animesols.com/video_sets which also says which episodes are included in each set.

(My avatar is from a doujinshi, you can see more here)

Today I've advertised Anime Sols on Tezuka in English news, Tumblr, the Tezuka Facebook fan page, Blu-ray.com forums and on here.

What about everyone else? Don't hesitate to post it anywhere, even on not Tezuka-related sites. If your audience has geeky tastes, you just might get a few people become interested and help spread the word!

I also strongly suggest we reopen the site main page (http://www.astroboy-online.com) and make a big visible link to Anime Sols with graphics (something like on my Tumblr blog I linked to above). A lot of traffic comes to this site, so it should help a lot!

Eeeeh, I wish there was more I could do~! I'm using my Wii (my sister let me borrow her laptop so I could finish watching Marine Express on Youtube, ironically enough; but it wasn't fully charged, so it crapped out not long after- I guess I'll wait to watch those fansubs another time ), so I can't copy and paste links; the best I can do is ask someone to give me the address so I can write it down manually, on a sheet of paper, and carefully copy it down somewhere else- not that there are many places I can go on this thing, though.

Btw, I've been watching Blue Blink on Youtube (the buffering problem I've been having lately really gets on my nerves!). I've only watched, like, four or five episodes so far, but it's not so bad, though I sincerely wish Kakeru would SHUT UP whenever he starts to whine. I'm sad that I can't contribute to these pledges... and that the DVDs will be so limited-run. It makes me nervous, actually, to think that if the '60s and '03 series ever DID get proper subs and DVD releases... OH! That reminds me; what about all the unreleased Astro Boy OVAs? Like the '03 precursor? And the official movie release for the '03 series?

"Little Brown Fox" wrote:Eeeeh, I wish there was more I could do~! I'm using my Wii (my sister let me borrow her laptop so I could finish watching Marine Express on Youtube, ironically enough; but it wasn't fully charged, so it crapped out not long after- I guess I'll wait to watch those fansubs another time ), so I can't copy and paste links; the best I can do is ask someone to give me the address so I can write it down manually, on a sheet of paper, and carefully copy it down somewhere else- not that there are many places I can go on this thing, though.

Btw, I've been watching Blue Blink on Youtube (the buffering problem I've been having lately really gets on my nerves!). I've only watched, like, four or five episodes so far, but it's not so bad, though I sincerely wish Kakeru would SHUT UP whenever he starts to whine. I'm sad that I can't contribute to these pledges... and that the DVDs will be so limited-run. It makes me nervous, actually, to think that if the '60s and '03 series ever DID get proper subs and DVD releases... OH! That reminds me; what about all the unreleased Astro Boy OVAs? Like the '03 precursor? And the official movie release for the '03 series?

Those rare Astro Boy short movies are definitely things we might see on Anime Sols at some point! I hope their forums open soon so we can start making them requests...

By the way, if you ever get access to a laptop again, I suggest watching the Anime Sols streams over the Viki ones. The picture AND translation quality is worlds better!

Hopefully, I'll get my own computer someday (preferably a desktop- hey, I'm not going anywhere anytime soon, and I don't have to rely on battery power, which just so happens to be my sister's current problem- thing won't charge very well...). As long as it stays there, and stays free, I'm all for it (though Marine Express had a rather anti-climactic ending, IMO, and I didn't like their choice to kill off a certain character- you know who...). I sincerely hope to see high-quality, professional and official subbed episodes of both the 60's and especially the '03 series. It really has been a long time coming; even too long, honestly. The Mighty Atom deserves better- and he also deserves to be known by his proper name over in the US, regardless of how I'm feeling about it at one time or another. I mean, "Pluto" and "Atom Cat" are sort of getting the word out there, but "sort of" isn't good enough. I don't think copyright infringement will be an issue over here any more, right? Besides, both the 80's series and '03 series indirectly refer to him as both! (it's in the official name of the '03 series, for crying out loud...)

Btw, speaking of "copyright infringement", do you think that the episode "Eternal Boy" will ever see an official release Stateside? Or do you think Disney will kvetch, even after more than 10 years have passed since then? (Heck, I'm surprised that they didn't object even back then, considering that Disney DOES have a presence in Japan...) Of course, it could be countered with the whole, "Lion King= Jungle Emperor" fiasco, though that's a lot less substantial than the deliberate and knowing use of Peter Pan, even if it IS just the story... I really wish that Disney and Tezuka Pro. got along much better.