Anime News - Funimation Adds Deadman Wonderland, Steins;Gate, More

The North American anime distributor Funimation announced at its Anime Expo panel on Friday that it acquired the anime titles Deadman Wonderland, Steins;Gate, Baka to Test to Shōkanjū Ni!, B Gata H Kei (Yamada's First Time ), and Asobi ni Iku yo! (Cat Planet Cuties). It also picked up additional rights — for DVD, Blu-ray Disc, digital, and broadcast — for the television anime series C. The Fandom Post website noted that Funimation's online copyright notice already listed Cat Planet Cuties and B Gata H Kei just as the panel started.

The Deadman Wonderland television anime adapts Jinsei Kataoka and Kazuma Kondou's manga of the same name. The story is set after the destruction of most of Tokyo by an earthquake, and it centers on Ganta Igarashi, a middleschool student framed for the murder of his classmates. Igarashi is sentenced to Deadman Wonderland, a bizarre privatized prison that is one part incarceration and one part public spectacle for tourists. The anime premiered in Japan in April, and Crunchyroll streamed it overseas as it aired in Japan.

The Steins;Gate television anime is based on the second "scientific adventure game" by the studios 5pb. andNitroplus, who also created Chaos;HEAd. The artist huke (Black Rock Shooter) designed the characters. The story of the original game revolves around the eccentric college student Rintarō "Okarin" Okabe and his "Mirai Gadget Kenkyūsho" ("Future Gadget Laboratory") circle of friends in a realistic version of Tokyo's Akihabara district. The friends turn a microwave oven into a machine that sends email messages to the past, and that attracts the attention of a mysterious organization called SERN. This anime also premiered in Japan in April, and Crunchyroll streamed the anime as it aired in Japan.

Baka to Test to Shōkanjū Ni! is the second television anime season based on Kenji Inoue's Baka to Test to Shōkanjū (Baka and Test - Summon the Beasts) comedy light novel series about students in the hapless F Class at a magical academy. Funimationhas the second television season — which will premiere on July 7 — and the original video anime releases for release in 2012.

In Yōko Sanri's B Gata H Kei four-panel school comedy manga and the subsequent anime, Yamada is a virgin high school girl who dreams of having 100 casual sex partners. However, she ends up targeting and pursuing only one boy. The anime ran during the Spring 2010 season. The Blu-ray Discs and DVDs will ship in 2012.

The anime adaptation of Okina Kamino's Asobi ni Iku yo! light novel series features an ordinary high school boy living in Okinawa — and the alien catgirl who appears before him and requires protection from a mysterious government agency.Crunchyroll streamed the anime as it aired in Japan last summer, and Funimation will release it on Blu-ray Disc and DVD in 2012.

Funimation also noted that it streaming over 5,000 episodes for free this summer on its official website.

Image © 2007 Kenji Inoue・Yui Haga/ENTERBRAIN, INC./Baka to Test to ShōkanjūProduction Committee
© Okina Kamino, Media Factory/Catia Embassy

(animenewsnetwork.com)

Funimation just pretty much grabbed the best anime of the past season, bar Ano Hana, Han Zemi and Denpa lol. Hopefully Steins;Gate gets a solid dub, which I doubt will be a harder task than most anime.

UPDATE : Yes, I know that Funimation does not do business with Navarre. That's the only picture I have, dammit.