A Channel – A Big Splash For Studio Gokumi! (OR, What Happens When the Staff of Saki Watches K-On)

A Channel had a superb first episode with a lot of potential to be my favorite show of the season. Amazingly, it plays the field of Kyoto Animation shows and comes out ahead of the season’s Kyoani series, Nichijou (albeit Nichijou is hardly one of Kyoani’s major productions).

A Channel is the second of the only two things Studio Gokumi has made, the first being last year’s Koe de Oshigoto—one of the funniest OVAs I’ve ever seen—and so far their catalog is all high quality. A lot of what I saw in A Channel episode one was the studio announcing “here’s who we are, here’s what we can do,” and they did so with a lot of confidence.

2010 Acadime Awards: Best Actress in a Supporting Role

For anyone who doesn’t know what this is about, I tried to run a 2010 Acadime Awards series back in February, but because I’m a huge flake, I failed miserably. However, I didn’t want to let all the contributions I’ve received go to waste, so I’m posting up the categories that already had writer contributions.

From this point on, there aren’t any posts that I’d done work on already, so I’ll just be posting the nominations and the winning write-up for each category. First up, one of my favorites, the award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role.

Gosick – What to Expect

There are two Gosick light novels available in English, and they’re likely to be the only two unless fans get to work on the others. I bought the first when it came out because it was translated by Andrew Cunningham and he enjoyed it—two things that guarantee it’s good. After that book, Tokyopop cancelled the series, and it looked like there’d never be any more Gosick in the US. Imagine my surprise when two years later I see volume two on the shelves at Barnes & Noble. The second book has no translator credit (it literally says “Translator:          “). I asked Cunningham about this, and he said that he’d translated the second book already before they cancelled the series, but had heard nothing about the release. I can’t imagine that they’d continue with another translator (nor do I think it’d be a good idea since Cunningham is the best light novel translator).