Bonen No Xamdou has always sounded appealing to me since it was first announced being a mecha series and all, but now that the trailer has been released my interest has shot throught the roof. First of all it looks awesome not only because it’s in high definition and all, but also because it just plain looks incredibly well animated. This is a bit of a different scenario from Macross Frontier which is mostly CG animated and in space (meaning not a whole lot of colour), whereas Xamdou’s setting looks very much terrestrial and full of life and colour. The music is also very catchy and I kind of hope it’s the opening too.
Most importantly though the series just looks to be oozing with that trademark BONES style. Mecha soaring over a city with fancy camerawork, symbolic looking scenes, mecha aiming guns through scopes, Mecha running across water etc. There is just one problem though. Apparently BONES has taken a cue from Gonzo and this series may be headed for an exclusive PS3 service that streams anime over the consoles private network. I have to ask why? I mean this is asking a lot of the viewer in order to watch this series. First one would seemingly need to own a PS3 in order to gain access in the first place, and then they’d probably have to pay. It seems to exclusive and for no good reason. Hopefully this is just a regional thing for North America and it will still be airing on Japanese TV, otherwise not being a PS3 owner it might be difficult to actually see it. We shall see how this all plays out, but in the meantime it still looks like it’s going to be awesome.
When Anime Past Meets Present 
It’s most likely a regional thing for north america, since I don’t think BONES is stupid enough to realese something that has gotten a fair amount of hype in the past few months onto something that doesn’t have that huge of an install base either in japan or the US. Of This also means that the show is probably Pre-Licensed in a similer way Eureka Seven was…
Well apparently it’s worse then I thought with the PS3 exclusivity deal. It’s like $4.00 to rent an episode and then it expires after a certain amount of time. So let’s count the steps to actually be able to watch this anime:
– Buy a PS3 (399.99 at the cheapest)
– Get it hooked up to the internet
– Access the PSN service
– Pay $4.00 to rent the episode (which basically amounts to Pay Per View)
– Watch it and then wait for it to eventually time out
– Pay $4.00 for the next episode (I’m assuming)
Now if this series is 26 or 50 episodes then that’s like $100 to $200 dollars respectively, which is about the price it would probably cost to buy the whole damn series in the American Market going by average DVD prices. Though in this case they obviously want people to shell out again otherwise they’d make the files downloadable and permenant.
I’m sorry, but the country of Japan is just one big rip off market. They gouge for everything under the sun.
God forbid if they eventually do release it in another format because judging by peoples reaction to the FFXIII deal it’s the eighth deadly sin to break exclusivity with the PS3 so that more people might get to experience something. I’d laugh at the whole situation if I wasn’t already so upset about it.
Either Sony gave BONES a truckload of cash to make Xamdou a playstation exclusive or they are just trying to bury the show as deep as possible in one of the most obscure places possible. It makes no sense to release the show exclusively in North America and not even consider Xbox live. Nor does it make sense to not notice what another studio, GONZO, is doing with their releases into the rest of the world and not think about doing a similar release/pricing scheme. All this stuff they have done so far does is eliminate possible buyers.
Well, looks like Sony shot itself in the foot… again. 😛 Man, you’d think they’d have learned from the MiniDisc disaster… or the PSN store, which does offer some rather nice games for reasonable prices. Prices that include ‘buying’ the game, rather than just renting it for a few days…
Apparently it is also only available in the North America region which further restricts it’s availability. I don’t know why BONES and Sony are trying so hard to restrict this series viewability, but I can’t see this helping the profile of the series much.
And yes for anyone that is curious, that is indeed an anime in Japanese (with hard subs) available only in North America for the time being. Makes sense to me. Luckily with a little ingenuity it should be available in other formats shortly.
And by ingeniuity I of course mean someone daring enough to rig a cable through there PS3 to a PC with a video capture card. And no I don’t feel guilty in saying something like that because anyone with the means to do it has probably already done it by now.
oooo myyy fucking god……
Seeing this preview caught my eyes and look so great but one thing i didn’t like, it made me sad because the characters just look like eureka seven (which is my TOPPPPPPPEST FAVORITE SHOW EVER) and degsin like eureka seven and eyes look like eureka seven so those things remind me of eureka seven which ended. I loovvvvvvvvveeeeeeeee eureka seven than anybody could and this preview remind me of eureka seven and that eureka seven wil never be made again =(
OMG! IT’S FROM THE MAKER’S OF EUREKA 7! AND IT LOOKS BRILLIANT!! (i did some ETENSIVE RESEARCH) and you can even tell by the design (the eyes, facial expression etc) are the same as the one in euerka 7! OMG I LOVE THE WORLD RIGHT NOW!!