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Kids on the Slope Released Monday
posted on by Andrew Osmond
On Monday June 24, MVM will release the 12-part TV series Kids on the Slope (pictured right) on both DVD and Blu-ray. The series follows the lives of two contrasting boys - a pianist and a drummer - who become friends in Nagasaki prefecture in the late 1960s. The project reunited Cowboy Bebop's director Shinichiro Watanabe (Macross Plus, The Animatrix's "Kid's Story," Samurai Champloo) and composer Yoko Kanno (Macross Plus/Frontier, Escaflowne, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex).
Kids on the Slope adapts Yuki Kodama's coming-of-age manga Sakamichi no Apollon. Nobuteru Yuki (Record of Lodoss War, Escaflowne, Space Battleship Yamato 2199) designed the characters, and Yoshimitsu Yamashita (Hyouge Mono, Phantom ~Requiem for the Phantom~) was the chief animation director at the studios MAPPA/Tezuka Productions. The series was broadcast on Fuji TV's late-night Noitamina programming block in Spring 2012.
Manga Entertainment is releasing the first of a two-part Complete Blu-ray edition of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood (pictured above left), carrying the first 33 episodes of the series. (The second half of this edition is due to be released on October 14.) Manga is also releasing the fifth and final standard Blu-ray volume of the series on Monday (pictured right), which carries episodes 53 to 64.
Manga is also releasing the thirteenth box-set edition of Naruto Shippūden, carrying episodes 154 to 166 of the series; and a Blu-ray/DVD combo edition of the Studio Gainax scatological comedy series Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt. The latter collection will contain three DVDs and two Blu-rays, with some extras only available on the Blu-rays.
