Wednesday 2 December 2015

News roundup: Catching up on various things

There isn't much brand new information to report on at the moment, but there have been a lot of updates about previously-known projects. Here's a round-up to bring everything up to date. I'm not expecting much more news until Jump Festa in a few weeks since KobaP will probably want to save his updates for the stage presentation there.

Details for the upcoming Sengoku Basara radio show starring Hoshi Souichirou

Seiyuu Hoshi Souichirou (Sanada Yukimura) has been selected to host the Internet radio show which was first announced back in September. The main purposes of this series will be to promote the three new drama CDs and celebrate the tenth anniversary of Sengoku Basara, so they've picked a good person for the role.


Sengoku Basara -Nekketsu! Yose Raji!- ('Sengoku Basara: Hot-blooded! Variety Theatre Radio!') will begin its Animate TV broadcast run on 25th December 2015, then run on a fortnightly schedule with episodes every other Friday. There will be a special guest accompanying Hoshi each time, with Ishida Akira (Takenaka Hanbee) appearing in the first episode.

The preview information explains that there will be a 'Sengoku Basara's Ten Years, My Ten Years' segment which is for the listeners (and hosts) to reflect back on the last decade, and an 'Oyakata-samaa! I'm Coming Out!' segment where Hoshi will 'come out' on behalf of the listeners and say things they regret not having said themselves (please note that the English expression 'coming out' has a rather broader meaning in Japanese than it does in its original language).

Fan letters and contributions are being accepted at the official Animate TV page. If you want to send them a message, click the link with the orange background under the show's logo and fill in your pen name, e-mail address, location (the final option in the list is 'overseas'), sex (male, female), age, theme (normal letter, Sengoku Basara's Ten Years, My Ten Years, Oyakata-samaa! I'm Coming Out!) and finally, write your letter. The orange button will submit the form.

Fan club members can now purchase another batch of exclusive stickers

Members of the official BASARA CLUB fan club are being offered a new set of IC card stickers through the exclusive online store. Even though these won't be released for general purchase, they're cute so I wanted to share the news.

Win Sengoku Basara goods at Plaza Capcom locations across Japan

A second selection of gemstone bracelets is on the way in the form of amusement arcade prizes this winter. These follow the previous bracelets from February 2015. This time, there will be designs themed around Sanada Yukimura, Tokugawa Ieyasu, Chousokabe Motochika and Mouri Motonari.


Like before, there will also be another special prize available in the form of a metre-long toy replica of Mitsunari's blade Mumeitou: Haku ('Nameless Sword: White'). Customers can try to win the sword and bracelets from a selection of Capcom-affiliated arcades across Japan from mid-December 2015.



Sengoku Basara returns to the Namba Walk shopping centre in Osaka

Sasuke's secret mission in Osaka must have been a success earlier this year as the second half of the event has now been unveiled. This new 'episode' in the story is titled Osaka: Mysterious Rebellion ~Escape From Namba's Hidden Castle Town~ Side Story: Date Masamune And The Mysterious Fortress. As the title implies, this time Date Masamune is playing a central role.


Visitors will be tasked with solving the mystery in order to win the exclusive event cards shown below.


There will also be a photography corner, promotional videos and other fun activities at the Sengoku Basara booth. The event will run between 11:00 and 20:00 (last admission 19:00) on the following dates: 5th/6th December 2015, 30th/31st January 2016, 27th/28th February 2016 and 19th/20th March 2016.

Farewell, Mame Sengoku Basara 4

It doesn't feel as though it's been long since Sumeragi's Mame Sengoku Basara manga finished and then relaunched as Mame Sengoku Basara 4, but now it seems as though even that is coming to an end. A tweet from Sumeragi previewed the latest chapter from November's Dengeki Maoh magazine and quietly mentioned that it was going to be the final episode of the series. This will leave Dengeki Maoh without any Sengoku Basara manga at all, so I'm guessing that YamamotoD's character background column will be disappearing as well (it wasn't included in the latest issue).

I hope we get more news about the upcoming Sengoku Basara Dokugan manga to soften the blow. It's weird that the series now has no manga serialisations running at all.

In happier manga-related news, Dengeki Maoh included a tiny preview picture showing the cover illustration for the compiled book version of Wan-Nyan Sengoku Basara.


Prerelease information for next year's special Sengoku Basara vocal CD

The Sengoku Basara 10th Anniversary Warrior Themes Vocal Collection CD is now up for preorder on Amazon Japan, and as a result the singers can now be matched to their respective songs.

Date Masamune's Theme Song (YOFFY from Psychic Lover)
Sanada Yukimura's Theme Song (m.c AT)
Tokugawa Ieyasu's Theme Song (Miyazaki Ayumi)
Ishida Mitsunari's Theme Song (Shin Min-Chul)
Kasuga's Theme Song (Raychell)
Maeda Keiji's Theme Song (m.c AT)
Oda Nobunaga's Theme Song (Miyazaki Ayumi)
Tsuruhime's Theme Song (Ikio Ayaka)
Takenaka Hanbee's Theme Song (Shin Min-Chul)
Sen No Rikyuu's Theme Song (YOFFY from Psychic Lover)
Kyougoku Maria's Theme Song (Akita Chisato from KAMEN RIDER GIRLS)
Ashikaga Yoshiteru's Theme Song (Miyazaki Ayumi)

My guesses weren't very accurate... I hope we get some previews of the songs soon as I'm curious about how they'll sound (though I'm buying the CD even if they're terrible, of course).

The latest stage play DVD has been delayed by a few weeks

In case anyone is waiting for the Butai Sengoku Basara vs Devil May Cry DVD, which was supposed to be released a few weeks ago on 11th November, there has been some kind of unspecified production delay and it should ship soon. It hasn't been cancelled!

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My copy of the Sengoku Basara 10th Anniversary Eiyuu Taizen: Kiwami encyclopaedia arrived earlier than expected and it's not quite as massive as I feared! It came in an unnecessarily cute box.


The book is loaded with pictures and staff comments, which are going to take me a while to go through. I'll read it properly when I'm more awake.


Hey, there are some familiar-sounding names in the selection of fan comments...

10 comments:

  1. @_@ I'm still amazed I'm in an official Sengoku Basara publication. Going down in the annals as a KenKasu fan. And nice, Yo-Kai Watch box!

    Cool that Raychell's covering Kasuga's theme, I was incidentally listening to a lot of her music lately, she definitely fits! And yay, Wan-Nyan Basara publication! \o/

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    1. Congratulations on being quoted in the book, Mewshuji!
      Foreign fan representation!

      (I hope they didn't publish any of my drunken crappy Japanese comments for lolz)
      Still alarmed by the vocal version of the themes but looking forward to samples....

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    2. Yes, big congratulations :D

      Mewshuji's name stood out (and if I'm honest, it was quite easy to guess which characters' sections to check) but I wonder how many other non-Japanese fans snuck into the book. It was quite surprising seeing some of the fan comments; Itsuki received quite a few, and lots of female fans chose Kanbee as their favourite character. I liked how two separate people nominated Anegakouji Yoritsuna's weird boss introduction scene as the scene which left a strong impression on them, too.

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    3. The weird tree guy's intro definitely made an impression! I voted for the Battle Heroes opening, though.
      What did you think of the book, was there any other interesting info in it?

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    4. Yeah I can't blame anyone for being amazed by that intro. It's something else... Took me a while to understand why Anegakoji was even based on trees, then I realized Hida had a decent sized lumber industry. Now I wonder what Hirotsuna's deal with tigers is. Probably someone among the Utsunomiya was regarded as being fierce as a tiger or something.

      I'm still using translation programs and dictionaries as crutches so Raindrops can probably give some more in-depth info, but I just recently got it. Based on what I bothered to try to translate for myself... Seems like each member of the cast got a mini-interview (save for Itsuki's new seiyuu, I imagine they wanted to pay a sort of rememberance to Tomoko Kawakami), which is nice. Romi-san seems VERY interested in discovering Kenshin's gender and Natsuko-san seems to be rooting for Kasuga to be with Kenshin, or something like that.

      Also one fan commented that they like Kennyo and Kenshin's relationship. I thought that a VERY interesting choice. Something about comparing the two Buddhists (even though Basara Honganji doesn't seem to even care about the Buddha) and how they respectively act.

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    5. Thanks Mewshuji!

      Since I have quite a few Sengoku Basara books at this point the book isn't as useful to me as it could be, since it collects a lot of material together which has already been published before.

      However, as a fan I really like having everything together in one place and seeing all of the fan messages (from both regular fans and staff members) is weirdly really exciting. I'll try to find some time to summarise anything interesting I spot - though I'm not sure when that will be ;_;

      (I should really do one big mega-post explaining the difference between some of the vast number of similar-looking reference books for this series. After I finish my last magazine translation and my in-progress reviews for the last stage play/event DVDs and manga... oops.)

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    6. Haha, sounds like there's a lot you want to post about. Please take it easy. I'm sure any of that would be interesting. Mewshuji, that's weird about Kennyo - I didn't know that they had any type of relationship!

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  2. wait, so the "character theme" songs are basically their in-game BGM+vocals? that's going to sound weird, i mean i have heard the one for Blaz Blue characters and they sounded, well, rather terrible

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    1. I suspect that at least some of them will sound awkward, but I am encouraged by the success that the Takarazuka Revue had adapting instrumentals like Yukimura's theme to their stage musical style before (samples via iTunes). I think I'll have a rather high tolerance for cheesy songs if they combine hot-blooded lyrics with the instrumentals I already love.

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    2. i see, well, i'm familiar with the singers that will perform the songs, so that's a plus, though i'm still a bit on the fence about the song quality...

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