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AIC Launches 2nd Megazone 23 XI Anime Crowdfunding Campaign

Anime production company AIC launched a new Campfire crowdfunding campaign to supplement its previous crowdfunding campaign to fund a promotional video for its Megazone 23 XI anime project. The staff revealed that the production schedule for the video has been delayed, and they are seeking to raise an additional 1 million yen (about US$8,980) to compensate for the delay.

Staff explained that the reason for the delay is that there is too much that they want to include in the final product. They are unable to fit everything in something the length of a promotional video, so they are considering a second promotional video, about five minutes long. The project has sponsors, but their support is contingent on the success of the crowdfunding campaign.

As of press time, the campaign has raised 50,000 yen (about US$450). The campaign will end on September 29.

The new project clarifies that Masahiko Komino (JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders) is the director, storyboarder, animation director, and main character designer on the project. Akio Watanabe (Monogatari series, The World God Only Knows) designed the main heroine Sakura.

The original campaign met its goal of 10 million yen (about US$92,000) at the end of May 2017. The project's staff hopes to green-light production on a television anime, and the staff hopes that the crowdfunded promotional video will help in preparing for that production.

The new project's story is set aboard the Megazone 11, a different space colony ship fleet from the Megazone 23 in the 1985 original video anime. Megazone 11's master ships are designed as realistic simulations of Earth cities such as Tokyo, and there is also a satellite ship that is designed to resemble a smaller Japanese provincial city around the year 2020.

The protagonist Sakura is an ordinary second-year middle school student who lives aboard that satellite ship. She leads a secret life as part of a singing duo with Eve, a friend she made online. One day, while visiting Akihabara on the Tokyo ship to meet Eve, Sakura is embroiled in the middle of a terrorist attack at the train station. As Eve remotely guides Sakura to safety, Sakura comes across Garland XI, a transforming motorcycle robot mecha that Eve tells her to use.

Megazone 23 began with a 1985 motorcycle robot anime that popularized the original video animation (OVA) market. The late anime director Noboru Ishiguro (Space Battleship Yamato, The Legend of the Galactic Heroes) collaborated with his Macross and Orguss character designer Haruhiko Mikimoto (Gunbuster, Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress), mechanical designer Shinji Aramaki (Genesis Climber Mospeada, Bubblegum Crisis, Appleseed films' director), and other veterans of robot mecha anime. There have since been two sequel OVA projects in 1986 and 1989.

Thanks to Adrian Lozano for the news tip

Source: Megazone 23 XI Campfire campaign