News
Weekly Wrapup 11/Sep - 17/Sep
posted on by Georgia Blair
The final stage for a Japanese national high school light music competition will be held at the real-life model for the setting of K-ON!. The former Toyosato Elementary School campus in Shiga Prefecture was used as a reference for the anime adaptation of K-ON!, based on a manga about an all-female high school band; the school was moved to newer premises and the building refurbished for other uses at the time of the anime's production. The success of the anime has made light music more popular in high schools around Japan and the former campus now displays goods related to the anime and is visited by 50000 fans every year. Five bands will perform in the final round of the competition at the campus and the winner will perform at the Toyosato Anime Song Live concert in the same location the following day.
Model shop Akiyamakobo is constructing a official life-sized model of the vanship piloted by the main characters of the new Last Exile -Fam, The Silver Wing- television series. Akiyamakobo has previously built several large models, including robots and characters from Neon Genesis Evangelion, Fireball, Tetsujin 28 and Astro Boy. Model shops Hara Paint Works and Taps Bell are collaborating on the vanship, which will be displayed at the Kichijōji Anime Wonderland 2011 event in Tokyo from October 8 to October 10. Last Exile -Fam, The Silver Wing- will begin broadcasting on October 7, with Madman Entertainment to simulcast the series.
The theme song for the upcoming film Berserk Ōgon Jidai-Hen I: Haō no Tamago, to be the first in a series, will be composed by electronica artist Susumu Hirasawa. Hirasawa, who is also known for his work on animation directed by the late director Satoshi Kon, scored the soundtrack for the original Berserk television anime series in 1997. The rest of the film's score will be composed by Shiro Sagisu, a long-time anime composer who recently won the Best Music award at the 2010 Tokyo Anime Awards for his work on Evangelion: 2.0 You Can [Not] Advance.
Finally, Hirasawa's music was also featured in a video slideshow released of the Millennium Souvenier exhibition, a gallery of Satoshi Kon's artworks held in Toyko's Shinjuku Ophthalmologist Gallery during August. The slideshow contains photos of works featured at the exhibition and the Satoshi Con Artwork Box, a collection of prints personally selected by Kon shortly before his death which sold out at the exhibition. In an accompanying post, Satoshi Kon's wife Kyoko thanked more than 6000 people for attending the exhibition.
