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Fox and Wolf Collected

Jan 15th, 2013
by rodney.
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We’ve mentioned the anime and manga known as Kanokon before around here. If you need a refresher: “Innocent country boy Oyamada Kouta transfers to a big city high school in his freshman year, and from day one, his life enters a world of crazy . First, a beautiful second-year student named Chizuru professes her love to him, then reveals that she is in fact a fox spirit. Frisky and flirty, she suggestively teases naive Kouta in front of his classmates, embarrassing him to no end. If that wasn’t enough, a gorgeous wolf spirit named Nozomu suddenly transfers to Kouta’s class and decides she wants the hapless country boy for herself. As fox girl and wolf girl vie for his heart, does Kouta have any say in this?” Now comes the news that Seven Seas Entertainment will release the first Kanokon Collected Omnibus (Volumes 1 and 2) this April, written by Katsumi Nishino and illustrated in black & white by Rin Yamaki. You can pre-order it at the Sci Fi Genre web site.

image c. 2013 Seven Seas Entertainment

Foxy Lady! Wolfy Lady!

Jun 18th, 2012
by rodney.
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Gotta love the Japanese sometimes — especially their animation, of course. Kanokon is a direct-to-video animated series from Media Blasters.  It is decidedly adult in nature, though not pornographic. Here, we’ll let them describe it: “Kouta, a country boy who lives with his grandfather, is moving to the city to attend high school. Changes come with his new home and new school, but nothing could have prepared the gentle young man for girls, specifically a bombshell fox spirit named Chizuru! As if her aggressive advances weren’t enough, he also catches the attention of a frosty wolf spirit named Nozomu. Kouta is dragged into supernatural events as a result of his contact with the two girls, and his school life only gets more chaotic by the day. But with a girl who gives ‘foxy’ new meaning and another howling after him, things are looking up for his love life.”  Now Media Blasters have released all the Kanokon episodes in one DVD collection.  RightStuf.com has information on it and other special releases from the series.

image c. 2012 Media Blasters

Off to Meet the Wild Things

May 12th, 2012
by rodney.
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Your ever-lovin’ ed-otter was taking a work-related trip to Nashville, TN for a few days. Now it’s time to get caught up…

The literary world (heck, the world in general) was saddened recently by the death of Maurice Sendak on May 8th at the age of 83. By far he was best known as the writer and illustrator of Where the Wild Things Are, which revolutionized what a “children’s book” could be — and gave us all some cool monsters to befriend — when it was first published in 1963. But that is far from Mr. Sendak’s only legacy to Furry Fandom. Prior to Wild Things he was the illustrator of the Little Bear books by Else Holmelund Minarik. (Nelvana used his Little Bear designs when they created the animated Little Bear TV series and feature film in the late 1990’s.) In the 1980’s Mr. Sendak was often hired to be a production, costume, and art designer for East Coast opera productions, including the 1981 production of The Cunning Little Vixen by Leos Janacek — possibly the most anthropomorphic opera ever, and certainly the most anthropomorphic thing on stage before Cats came along. Most recently, Maurice Sendak had his works translated for the big and little screen: Where the Wild Things Are was adapted into a feature film by Spike Jonze in 2009, and that same year Sendak’s short story Higglety Pigglety Pop was adapted into a short film (starring the voice of Meryl Streep) using  a combination of live-action and puppetry. If you want to find out more about Mr. Sendak’s wide body of work, check out his Wikipedia page. But be warned: There are Wild Things there.

image c. 2009 Warner Brothers Pictures

A New Fantasy Series

Jan 20th, 2012
by rodney.
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Here’s an e-book we recently stumbled across: Legacy by Hugo Jackson is the author’s first book, and also the start of “The Resonance Tetralogy”, which presumably means there will be three books to follow. “Faria Phiraco [a fox ] is a ‘resonator’, a manipulator of crystals from the moon who wields control of the elements. It is a rare and secret power which she and her father, the Emperor of Xayall, guard with their lives. But they are not alone… The Dhraka, malicious red-scaled dragons, have discovered an ancient artefact, a mysterious relic from the mythical, aeons-lost city of Nazreal. Their plan already in motion, they besiege Xayall, launching upon the city to find Faria and tear more of Nazreal’s secrets from her. But she knows nothing, except that the powers hunting her threaten the entire world. With her father missing, Faria has to rely on her own strength and brave the world that attacks her at every turn. Friends and guardians rally by her to help save her father and reveal the mysteries of the ruined city, while the dark legacy of an ancient cataclysm wraps its claws around her fate… and her past. She soon realises that this is not the beginning, nor anywhere near the end. A titanic war spanning thousands of years unfolds around her, one that could yet cost the lives of everyone on Eeres.” The book is available for the Kindle on Amazon, at it seems to be getting good reviews from the readers quoted there.

image c. 2012 Hugo Jackson

Animorphs in Space

Jan 16th, 2012
by rodney.
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So, your humble ed-otter returns from the 2012 edition of Further Confusion in Northern California, with lots of stuff to report. Including such items as…

John Van Stry is a science fiction author whose works tend to involve a lot of scientifically-created animal-people characters. Many of his novels and novellas began appearing in both paper and electronic form in 2011. A good place to start in his universe is Children of Steel, published for the Kindle last March. Here’s the description from Amazon: “Raj is just your average everyday genetically modeled and artificially created anthropomorphic worker for one of the many corporations of the future. Extensively trained and conditioned from birth he’s now indentured for the next fifty years of his life; assuming he doesn’t die first, or somehow manage to pay off his creation and training debts. Created by the corporations to deal with the harsh labor shortages of the twenty second century when humans will no longer take on the dangerous jobs Raj finds himself now in the harsh world of space exploration, trading, corporate maneuverings, and sometimes the even more dangerous fanatics that hate Raj and his fellows. No longer in safe confines of the training academies he must learn how to live and deal with both his fellow workers and the humans he encounters and not get saddled with extra bills or fines because he’s screwed up or worse yet, get ‘put down’ because he’s lost his temper one time too many. After all, it’s not like he’s human…” Other stories in the same universe include Danger Money; Lead, Follow, or Suffer the Consequences; and Dialene, the story of a female fox-morph who hooks up with the wrong crew. Here’s a current list of John Van Stry’s books that are available on Amazon in e-book format.

image c. 2011 John Van Stry

Furry Musicians on the Dance Floor

Jun 24th, 2011
by rodney.
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Word is just starting to get out about the band The Studio Killers and their song “Ode to the Bouncer”. If you haven’t seen it, the video is up on YouTube, along with several re-mixes. Yes, the thought of a cartoon band making dance music does bring Gorillaz to mind. But that band doesn’t feature a fox and a mink performing the music, like the Studio Killers do! Several other “interview” and “behind the scenes” videos are up on YouTube as well, where we get to meet the mink and fox as well as the band’s human singer, Cherry. And of course, the Studio Killers have their own web site too. While we were researching that, we came across this interesting video by Swedish House Mafia called “Save the World”. We’ll let you see it for yourself, but suffice it to say: If you’re a “dog person”, you’ll love it.

New Japanese CGI

May 6th, 2011
by rodney.
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Recently Cartoon Brew posted a new trailer for an upcoming Japanese animated film called Friends — Mononoke-jima no Naki (or Friends — Naki from Mononoke Island). According to various comments that follow the trailer, “the film is based on the Japanese fairytale “Naita Aka-oni,  or The Red Ogre who Cried”, where two ogres (or demons) – red ogre Naki and blue ogre Gunjo – find a human child, which starts off their adventure.” Various other creatures of Japanese myth and legend find their way into the adventure, including a kitsune. Though comparisons to Disney/Pixar’s film Monsters Inc. are obvious, according to reports the film is actually closer to Shrek — with a good amount of Duncan & Mallory and Dragonheart thrown in. The film was directed by Takashi Yamazaki, and it’s set to be released by Toho Studios this December.

 

image c. 2011 Toho Studios

A Farewell to Redwall

Feb 8th, 2011
by rodney.
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News has come out that Brian Jacques, creator and writer of the wildly-popular Redwall series of anthropomorphic fantasy novels, died on February 5th. He was 71. First published in 1986 (initially by Beaver Books), the Redwall series tells the tale of Redwall Abbey, a medieval monastery run by mice, which also includes a host of other species common to England and much of Europe (such as rabbits, otters, squirrels, and badgers). The main story arc follows the adventures of a young mouse named Matthias, who discovers that he is in fact the descendant of a great mouse hero known as Martin the Warrior. This knowledge comes in handy when Matthias learns he must help defend Redwall against all manner of “evil” creatures, such as rats, ferrets, foxes, and so on. (Species tend to be either “good” or “bad” in the Redwall universe, with little or no individual exceptions).  From that first book, the series has gone on to achieve international acclaim and awards, with a new book coming out almost every year. Brian Jacques was famous for his background as a member of the working class in Liverpool, England. Among his many jobs was driving a milk delivery truck, and one of his stops included a boarding school for blind students. It was during his visits there that Mr. Jacques began to tell the stories that would become the Redwall series — making the details especially vivid to entertain his young, blind listeners. The Rogue Crew, which will be the last Redwall book written and published by Brian Jacques, will be on the shelves this May.

The Gruffalo

Jan 20th, 2011
by rodney.
3 comments

Another in the “how’d we miss this?” category… The Gruffalo is an award-winning children’s book from the U.K., written by Julia Donaldson and illustrated by Axel Scheffler. It was first published in 1999 by Macmillan Children’s Books. It tells the tale (via a mother squirrel giving her children a bedtime story) of a mouse walking through the woods.  When he is threatened in turn by a predatory fox, snake, and owl, he scares each of them off by telling them he is on his way to meet his friend the “Gruffalo” — a monstrous creature who is much more dangerous than any of them. He’s making it all up, of course, and he thinks he’s so clever… until he runs into the real Gruffalo. After the book became enormously popular in the U.K. and elsewhere, Magic Light Pictures and Studio Soi made The Gruffalo into a 30-minute CGI film, which was broadcast on U.K. television for Christmas 2009. It featured (among others) the voices of Helena Bonham Carter (as the mother squirrel), John Hurt, and Robbie Coltrane (as the Gruffalo). The BBC has a trailer for the show on-line, and there’s also a making-of video from Magic Light.

image c. 2011 Axel Scheffler

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