FUNimation have a new version of their Kiddy Grade site up at http://www.funimation.com/kiddygrade/. It is again 100% flash but has a nice splash page and also features the first two episodes streaming in a (very small) window. The downside, and it is a big one, is that they have removed all the actual content related to the series (much of it fairly unique as they had access to translations of the Japanese material that all I can do is squint at.. luckily I have a copy of it all on my harddrive still). They have also nixed the domain (intentionally or not I'm not sure) - http://www.kiddygrade.tv/ is currently returning a 404 error however http://www.kiddygrade.tv/index.html works. I suspect it is because the two sites are served from the same physical location and they have renamed the index file without updating the config for the domain.
Kiddy Grade: January 2008 Archives
The DVD has finally made it though the post, so Here's some photos and screencaps. Not really a great deal to say since there's really no new scenes or dialog, just the new stills I mentioned earlier. The's a couple of short scenes of Chevalier in his office (the first one watching the news from the end of ep18 and the second monitoring the construction of the Deucalion while holding the key) I can't place exactly so I need to check back through the DVDs at some point. The ending theme (Anata no Yō desu by Savage Genius) starts playing during the epilogue, in the reception scene with Fleur after the scene with baby Che. The original ending montage of Eclair, Lumiere and Armbrust on the Calliope has been dropped and replaced by another montage of all the major characters like the one in the first movie. The short scene of Epilogue-verison Eclair in action has also been dropped. The on-disc extras is a "long" interview with Gotoh on location at a radio telescope array or something similar.
Anyway, a breakdown of how everything was squished down this time:
0:00:00 - 0:00:06 Presented by gímik & KADOKAWA SHOTEN PUBLISHING CO.LTD
0:00:07 - 0:00:15 Chevalier
0:00:16 - 0:14:37 Episode 19 (14m21s)
0:14:38 - 0:14:52 Chevalier
0:14:53 - 0:30:17 Episode 20 (15m26s)
0:30:18 - 0:42:51 Episode 21 (12m34s)*
0:42:52 - 0:57:26 Episode 22 (14m35s)
0:57:27 - 1:11:56 Episode 23 (14m30s)
1:11:57 - 1:26:37 Episode 24 (14m19s)
*there was some overlap between the end of ep21 and the start of ep22 but neither epsiode has exactly the same scenes in exactly the same order and some more were cut for the movie so it was really hard to place the cutoff point. It is defnitely somewhere between 0:42:23 and 0:42:52 (which are the positions of the last and first scenes that are only in one of the episodes respectively) and the bits in between have more in common with ep21 (the "Deucalion ga!" line being in a slightly different place) but there is no natural cutoff, FTB or musical break.
links:
Kiddy Grade: Truth Dawn (NyanNyan anime blog)
