January 2007 Archives

My copies of Gocky Club vols. 19 and 20 arrived today from SMJ.

Volume 19, "Groundwork of Variety", features random pieces of conte from series that Gotoh has worked on, including Blood+, School Rumble 2, Nana, Aria etc. Also included is a fold-out colour poster of Éclair (2nd TV version) and B+W sketches of Éclair (1st TV version), Cocoon, and Ucchii. There's a page with a block of text that mentions K-G.2 (as 『キヂィ２』), Gigantic Formula and Gemini Knives, along with an illustration I've not identified yet. The final section has a bunch of settei, that look like Gotoh original designs, under the titles 『ラビィ☆ディテクティブ』 (Rabbie Detective, a game I believe) and 『いきなり はっぴぃベル』 ("Ikinari: Happy Bell", definitely a game; cannot get the makers site, Terios, up at the moment but it's on gamefaqs.)

Volume 20, "Shadow Case Design Works", has rough versions of a number of Gotoh's illustrations, many of which were in Kinetic Girls.

I hope to have a few scans, from volume 19 in particular, up online soon.

Update:
Got one image up. Took a long time to get it to stick cleanly (I can never get two half of an image to scan at exactly the same angle and it takes forever to line them up properly, at least with Photoshop Elements). Not finished touching it up yet as fold lines are something else I'm not very good at fixing. You're also going to have to live with that blurry bit near the spine as I'm not going to flatten the book any more than I already have without a backup copy.
http://www.kiddygrade.info/scans/gokikura/index.php?image=gokikura19_poster.jpg

Now got that B&W drawing of Cocoon:
http://anime.thenexxus.org/gemini_knives/scans/gocky/index.php?image=gokikura19_pg03.jpg

The Kiddy Grade site has been updated with a K-G.2 splash page. No new news so far, just stuff we already know about the pilot DVD and single.

New/updated links:

Kiddy Grade Gets Second Season (ANN)
Kiddy Grade 2 (ANN Encyclopedia)
New season of Kiddy Grade’s single announced (Japanator)
Kiddy Grade 2 Official Presite (Animekon)
AnimeNfo

I found out from Kano, who has updated her site for the first time in a while, that the theme song for Kiddy Grade 2 (the pilot DVD at least) will be sung by Minori Chihara (Yuki Nagato's seiyuu) as announced on her blog.
From what I can gather, the song will be Snow White Sanctary (純白サンクチュアリィ Junpaku Sankuchuarii), the single for which will be released on the 24th (CD Japan have already sold out of the first press, a slipcover, and Yesasia are yet to list it as far as I can see)

[update=20070129]Had a email from Yesasia to say they it is available there now[/update]

My copy of the second novel has arrived. As usual I can't make much of it, but I have managed to upload some scans of the new colour illustrations (which, to my knowledge, have not previously been published elswhere). I was using a different computer and scanner and the results are even worse then usual so I'll have to try and rescan sometime. There was a characters section at the back detailing the other GMB agents, I hope to have scans of that up soon also.

The Gigantic Formula site has gone live now. Can't decipher much at the moment as not on a machine with Kanji support, but the lead male character has now been named as Shingo Suwa. Still no mention of gímik so I guess they have been employed as imdividuals to work on this, rather than this being something they invisioned and pitched themselves as a group.

Some more details were reported by Anime News Service on the 6th (corrections and amplifications by me):

The rollout of K-G.2 (tentatively titled Kiddy Grade 2 although the title Kiddy Generation has also been spotted) will kick off with the release of a Pilot DVD scheduled for sale in Japan at the end of March. Production details are as follows:

Original Story: gímik / Kadokawa Shoten
Director, Storyboards, and Producer: Keiji Gotoh
Character Designer: Megumi Kadonosono
Scenario: Hidefumi Kimura
Mechanical Designer: Kanetake Ebikawa (FMP, Vandread, Bakuten)
Art: Studio Easter (Uta∽Kata, Trinity Blood, Brave Story, Witchblade)
Animation Production: asread (Shuffle!)
Planning Producer: Atsushi Ito (Shuffle!, D.N.Angel, FMP)
Executive Producer: Kiyonori Hiramatsu (Shuffle!, D.N.Angel)
Official website: www.kiddygrade.com

Story Open: Focus on KG1 leads Eclair and Lumiere who were doing special duties as ES members. The war was won and crisis was evaded. The two go on their own way out into the Milky Way. Stage and world outlook are basically unchanged, it's uncertain how many years in advance of the previous work the new story occurs. Two new characters appear and form the basis of K-G.2. "Kufiiyu" and "Asukuuru" become the heroines of this work. Retail on the Pilot DVD is 2,940 Yen and the running time of the main preview is about 7 minutes.

Looks like the primary source was again Moonphase, but there are also scans of a double-page spread in Newtype (don't know which issue yet, but when I do I'm ordering it..)

As of 10th Jan there's still no update to gotokei.com, indeed no updates since early December (she's not added a working link for the 2nd Gemini Knives book eitehr), so I hope Kano is OK. There's also been no updates to Gotoh's site or blog, but I believe his last update said something about not being able to update the site much at the moment, I guess he's pretty busy right now.

New/updated links:

Moon Phase
FUNimation forums
Animesuki forums
MelonBread (blog)
Neko Mimi Mode (blog)
Ramblings of DarkMirage (blog)
LJ KG Community (older entry I missed before)
LJ KG Community (think you might need to be a member to read this one)
Megatokyo Forums
Animekon (blog)
Anime Obsession
Lu Perry
Ningen's Wallpapers

(last updated 2007/01/26)