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NEWS: Range Murata Confirmed for Gonzo's 2011 TV Anime


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here-and-faraway



Joined: 21 Jun 2007
Posts: 1528
Location: Sunny California
PostPosted: Thu Sep 09, 2010 6:48 am Reply with quote
I love the way Range Murata uses color and draws eyes. I also like the soft lines on his characters' faces. I look forward to seeing his new designs.
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rinkwolf10



Joined: 05 Apr 2009
Posts: 750
PostPosted: Thu Sep 09, 2010 9:43 am Reply with quote
Finally Gonzo is back in the game, hope this show makes it big and put then back into producing more shows again.
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walw6pK4Alo



Joined: 12 Mar 2008
Posts: 9322
PostPosted: Thu Sep 09, 2010 10:43 am Reply with quote
Even if a show didn't use Range's direct designs, they still styled the characters, especially the eyes, in his fashion. Druaga, Witchblade, and several others were like this.
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Sailor S





PostPosted: Thu Sep 09, 2010 11:04 am Reply with quote
I've always liked his character designs, even if the show itself wound up being unwatchable for me (I'm looking at you, Shangri-La!) so I'll likely give this new show a try.
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firedragon54738



Joined: 24 Sep 2007
Posts: 3113
Location: wisconsin
PostPosted: Thu Sep 09, 2010 11:14 am Reply with quote
Cool I cant wait to see what they do
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Otaking09



Joined: 24 Feb 2009
Posts: 637
PostPosted: Thu Sep 09, 2010 11:34 am Reply with quote
Gonzo, has, and always will be, one of my favorite studios.

All they need is Mahiro Meada or Koichi Chigara(two directors who same able to bring out Gonzo's best) to direct this mystery, and.... us, U.S. fans will wait patiently.

Don't get me wrong, I love Range's stuff as much as the next one. The fact that he's been brought on, further convinces me that they're gonna pull ALL the stops for this.
With any luck, I hope it'll be the Inception of anime.
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daedelus



Joined: 07 Apr 2007
Posts: 743
Location: Texas City, TX (ajd: 6/11/05)
PostPosted: Thu Sep 09, 2010 12:23 pm Reply with quote
Double... no, triple win!!!

Gonzo is on the comeback trail, Range Murata, and a 3D anime!

My poor TV is starving for more 3D material. That is a drawback to being an early adopter.

Can't wait for more details!
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AyumiHamasaki



Joined: 17 Mar 2005
Posts: 219
PostPosted: Thu Sep 09, 2010 1:09 pm Reply with quote
Otaking09 wrote:
Gonzo, has, and always will be, one of my favorite studios.

All they need is Mahiro Meada or Koichi Chigara(two directors who same able to bring out Gonzo's best) to direct this mystery, and.... us, U.S. fans will wait patiently.

Don't get me wrong, I love Range's stuff as much as the next one. The fact that he's been brought on, further convinces me that they're gonna pull ALL the stops for this.
With any luck, I hope it'll be the Inception of anime.



OMG I second Mahiro Meada!! He's a genius and he hasn't directed any anime in years! I have enjoyed ALL of his shows that he directed so far. The best being Gankutsuou.

I hope Gonzo asks him to direct this.

Huge fan of both Mahiro Meada and GONZO. Glad they're coming back.
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tootbrush



Joined: 31 Oct 2009
Posts: 230
PostPosted: Thu Sep 09, 2010 3:18 pm Reply with quote
Yeeeaaahhh.. Even if this is the 3D thing, I doubt people are gonna see it in 3D before a BD release. Unless they plan to show their comeback anime to a really frakking small audience. Heck, is anyone even broadcasting in 3D in Japan?

They're probably setting themselves up for failure anyway if they focus on the 3D fad too much, since it looks like it's about to die. Again.

Quote:
Range Murata was the character designer for such Gonzo anime projects as [...] Solty Rei [...]

Only a freakin' motorbike.
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Ranmah



Joined: 27 Jan 2003
Posts: 294
Location: Stomp'n on Tokyo Tower
PostPosted: Thu Sep 09, 2010 3:37 pm Reply with quote
cool. I can't wait to see the new series from Murata-san and Gonzo. I met Murata-san a couple times at Comiket. Very classy person.
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skchai1



Joined: 12 Oct 2009
Posts: 33
PostPosted: Thu Sep 09, 2010 4:43 pm Reply with quote
I can see a potentially big problem here. Although Murata's art and character designs are great, they have a level of detail that is very hard to reproduce on typical TV anime budgets.

This brings up Shangri-La, the 2009 commercial fiasco that, more than anything else, nearly drive Gonzo under. Murata's promotional art initially got a lot of people excited. Furthermore, I thought it ended up being a flawed but decent series overall. Regardless, it was the commercial flop among 2009 anime TV series, with DVD sales (the life blood for late night anime) for most of the R2 volumes in the hundreds. Gonzo did not even bother to commission Murata drawings for the last few volume covers, replacing them with some generic pictures that have nothing to do with the anime. Furthermore, Shangri-La was largely a self-produced venture, so the financial impact was particularly great. While Gonzo also had two major hit series in 2008 (Strike Witches) and 2009 (Saki), these were contract vehicles for groups led by Kadokawa (who replaced them for Strike Witches S2) and Square Enix, respectively, and presumably didn't make up financially for the Shangri-La failure.

There were a number of reasons people have criticized Shangri-La, but the thing 2ch posters (who after all are fairly representative of the main target market) focused on the most was the quality of animation, particularly the character animation. It's obvious that budget didn't match the ambitiousness of the project. The backgrounds range from gorgeous to fairly rudimentary, but the character animations are pretty consistently low quality, particularly for poor Kuniko, the main character. Her facial features vary noticeably from episode to episode, and in any of her screen version is at best a very sketchy distant relative of the Murata design. Since love for the (usually female) characters typically drives R2 DVD/BD sales for late night anime nowadays, this pretty much doomed Shangri-La to oblivion. BTW, poor Takahashi Mikako, Kuniko's voice actress. This was her first lead role after over a decade of constant activity in the industry . . . only for this to happen.

In their current state. I don't see how Gonzo can budget a full TV series that does justice to Murata character designs. So I hope this is an OVA they're planning. And though you have to respect Gonzo for always being willing to experiment, the 3-D TV thing honestly just makes me feel queasy.
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mckg1



Joined: 24 Dec 2009
Posts: 287
Location: From Puerto Rico living in Japan
PostPosted: Thu Sep 09, 2010 4:51 pm Reply with quote
This one looks promising, should be interesting, and teh design should be plain awesome. Can't wait until this baby comes out Smile
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penguintruth



Joined: 08 Dec 2004
Posts: 8458
Location: Penguinopolis
PostPosted: Thu Sep 09, 2010 5:05 pm Reply with quote
I hope it's as good as Last Exile was. That's one of my favorite shows.
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Sam Murai



Joined: 01 Dec 2006
Posts: 1051
PostPosted: Thu Sep 09, 2010 6:22 pm Reply with quote
skchai1 wrote:
I can see a potentially big problem here. Although Murata's art and character designs are great, they have a level of detail that is very hard to reproduce on typical TV anime budgets.

This brings up Shangri-La, the 2009 commercial fiasco that, more than anything else, nearly drive Gonzo under. Murata's promotional art initially got a lot of people excited. Furthermore, I thought it ended up being a flawed but decent series overall. Regardless, it was the commercial flop among 2009 anime TV series, with DVD sales (the life blood for late night anime) for most of the R2 volumes in the hundreds. Gonzo did not even bother to commission Murata drawings for the last few volume covers, replacing them with some generic pictures that have nothing to do with the anime. Furthermore, Shangri-La was largely a self-produced venture, so the financial impact was particularly great. While Gonzo also had two major hit series in 2008 (Strike Witches) and 2009 (Saki), these were contract vehicles for groups led by Kadokawa (who replaced them for Strike Witches S2) and Square Enix, respectively, and presumably didn't make up financially for the Shangri-La failure.

There were a number of reasons people have criticized Shangri-La, but the thing 2ch posters (who after all are fairly representative of the main target market) focused on the most was the quality of animation, particularly the character animation. It's obvious that budget didn't match the ambitiousness of the project. The backgrounds range from gorgeous to fairly rudimentary, but the character animations are pretty consistently low quality, particularly for poor Kuniko, the main character. Her facial features vary noticeably from episode to episode, and in any of her screen version is at best a very sketchy distant relative of the Murata design. Since love for the (usually female) characters typically drives R2 DVD/BD sales for late night anime nowadays, this pretty much doomed Shangri-La to oblivion. BTW, poor Takahashi Mikako, Kuniko's voice actress. This was her first lead role after over a decade of constant activity in the industry . . . only for this to happen.

In their current state. I don't see how Gonzo can budget a full TV series that does justice to Murata character designs. So I hope this is an OVA they're planning. And though you have to respect Gonzo for always being willing to experiment, the 3-D TV thing honestly just makes me feel queasy.


IIRC, GONZO was already in financial trouble before doing Saki and Shangri-La (Slap-up Party was another, but that was a co-prod.), not that S-L helped pull in revenue. That, and I'd also attribute the show's problems to the heady economic topics it was trying to tackle and the ill-fitting mix between Murata's style (conceptual design) and Kumi Ishii's (Red Garden, Kure-nai) own distinctive style (animation design). It was a noble experiment, but it just didn't work (and you didn't need to see the anime itself to tell you that if you ever saw any of the printed promo material). It's not a bad show, but not particularily graceful, either. However I, too, have to give credit to GONZO for always being willing to do something bold and experimental--that's what the studio was practically built upon (Blue Submarine No. 6).

Now you see GONZO return right back to its roots for its "rebirth" of sorts with their foray into 3D. It sounds much like what they were aspiring to with Mardock Scramble before they realized their technical limitations at the time. And, of course, Murata's gotta be involved for a signiture project. I'm really happy to see that they didn't throw in the towel and are raring to go again. Though hopefully this time, they will put a better effort in keeping their character animations on model and consistent, given the Gundoh-level discrepancies in LINEBARRELS, and to a lesser extent, Shangri-La. Regardless, I'll be pulling for them.
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ikillchicken



Joined: 12 Feb 2007
Posts: 7272
Location: Vancouver
PostPosted: Thu Sep 09, 2010 8:22 pm Reply with quote
Good to hear. I liked his work on Blue Submarine #6.

Quote:
Gonzo told ANN during March's Tokyo International Anime Fair (TAF) that it was developing a potential Spring 2011 project that would take advantage of the new stereoscopic 3D televisions now entering the marketplace.


Hooray for gimmicks! Rolling Eyes
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