News

Hanabee Announces Additional Releases for May

The news was made as part of this morning's public announcements of the impending release of The Familiar of Zero, Campione! and From the New World. Both Accel World and Little Busters! were announced on facebook (announcements one and five).

Both titles will be part of this morning's announcements and hit shelves on the 7th of May 2014. Accel World Part 1 will be released on Blu-ray for $64.95 AUD and Little Busters! Part 2 will hit Blu-ray and DVD for $59.95 and $64.95 respectively.

_{©REKI KAWAHARA / ASCII MEDIA WORKS / AW Project}

Accel World

Set in the near-future, Accel World follows Haruyuki "Haru" Arita who is constantly bullied at his school. Haru spends his time logged onto the school network playing virtual squash and avoiding the bullies but after Kuroyukihime, the most popular and attractive student at school puts a stop to his harassment things begin to change. Haru is quickly introduced to Brain Burst, a mysterious Virtual Reality Massively Multiplayer Online (VRMMO) Fighting Game where people can fight to gain super-human abilities in the real world and Kuroyukihime needs his help in order to defeat the "Six Kings of Pure Colour" and discover the secrets of Brain Burst.

The show adapts Reki Kawahara's original science-fiction light novel series of the same name and utilises the same voice actor cast as the drama CDs. This 26 episode adapation originally premiered on April 6th 2012 and was directed by Masakazu Obara at Sunrise. Accel World's CG work was by Orange with Hiroyuki Yoshino overseeing the series scripts and Yukiko Aikei is served as character designer and animation director.

Hanabee's original announcement of Accel World was at Brisbane Supanova Pop Culture Expo in November 2014. The Part 1 DVD release will hit shelves in April.

_{©VisualArt's/Key/Team Little Busters!}

Little Busters

Riki Naoe has had a tough life, left orphaned at a early age he grew into a depressed young boy who shunned contact with the outside world. However after finding a group of friends called the Little Busters, Riki been able to deal with the grief of losing his parents. The series opens on this group including Kyousuke Natsume and his sister Rin, Masato Inohara and Kengo Miyazawa, wanting to field a baseball team but they don't have enough members, so Riki and Rin are tasked with finding students to join the team. But talking to so many students won't be easy with Riki's narcolepsy and the crippling shy Rin having to discover the cryptic secret of their world.

Little Busters! is based on Key's romance adventure visual novel of the same name, Key also being responsible for Clannad, Kanon and Angel Beats. The game was originally released on PC in 2007 and was followed with an adult remake called Little Busters! Ecstasy in 2008. Both games have been ported to PS2, PSP, PS3 and PS Vita. The games has also been adapted into 13 manga series, 2 internet radio shows and countless other short stories, light novels and other media.

This anime adaptation was directed by Yoshiki Yamakawa (Baby, Please Kill Me!, Hatsukoi Limited) at J.C. Staff with Michiru Shimada (Jewelpet Twinkle, Shugo Chara!) on scripts and Haruko Iizuka (Inu X Boku Secret Service, Ōkami-san & Her Seven Companions) handling the character design. The most of the game's original cast returned for this game with Yui Horie (Ayu Tsukimiya in Kanon) voicing protagonist Riki Naoe.

The first 26 episode series premiered in Japan on Tokyo MX on the 6th of October 2012 with Crunchyroll streaming the series from January 2013 and Sentai Filmworks picked up the rights in North America. The series has been followed with Little Busters! Refrain that has just started screening in Japan and will be followed with an anime adaptation of Little Busters! Ecstasy titled Little Busters! EX at some point in the near future.

Hanabee's original announcement of Little Busters! was in October 2013 and Part 1 hit shelves in January 2014.