Well, they say good news comes in threes, and that has very little to do with this chunk of good news about free stuff. In an attempt to show their love for the fans, Bandai Entertainment is both relaunching their AnimeVillage website, and offering up a free, streaming episode of Eureka 7. This is all part of their grand plan to start up a digital distribution service. You know, like Steam or iTunes. Anyway, the Eureka 7 episode will be up for a week starting April 16th, and will also be available for purchase and download during that time. Wouldn't it be awesome if they used a Matroska wrapper so that they could get multi track audio and subtitles? And then, fairies would come down with cake and lollipops for everyone.

>>A full press release waits in the dark corners of the After the Jump club.
>>Examine grue
>>The grue is a sinister, lurking presence in the dark places of the earth. Its favorite diet is adventurers, but its insatiable appetite is tempered by its fear of light. No grue has ever been seen by the light of day, and few have survived its fearsome jaws to tell the tale.

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Akibajin has put up a pretty detailed figure review of the recently released Ropponmatsu figure that's being produced by Yamato. All-in-all, the figure looked like it could be headed for greatness, and possibly my shelf, right up until I saw the giant seam along the arm that's holding Menchi. See, this is why I say things like this are a good idea. You get a chance to see that seam and then maybe you don't want to drop your 5,040 yen on her. But then. from frontal angles it can be a bit harder to pick up on the seam, so maybe you do. There's also a bit of speculation that it's a robot joint, but I think the jury is sort of out on that one. It's safe to assume it's not an accident anyway. Either way, head over to Akibajin and check out the review.

Oh, and before you do that, look after the jump and see some pretty production shots of the figure. You know you want to… The last picture after the jump shows the seam too. Or… joint? Who knows.

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The official station based website for the upcoming TV series Onegai My Melody Kuru Kuru Shuffle is now up and online. The series, to begin airing on TV Osaka on April 2nd, will be the second series in the Onegai My Meoldy world. Currently the site is pretty spartan, but I'm sure it will fill out pretty quickly leading up to, and slightly after the airing for the first episode. It's strange to me that all of these girls seem to be pretty scantilly dressed just for singing. Hmm, it's almost like their singing won't matter at all.

Edit: They changed the link. It's fixed now.

More of that sweet trailer lovin'. The proble with these things is that they get you all hyped up for a good show and then make you wait a month or more. Anyway, in that same light, Coyote Ragtime's official site has a lovely trailer up for prospective fans of the show[WMV] to check out before the show airs. Again, I am sad for my Mac using readers, as they may have some trouble playing the Windows Media Video ONLY trailer. See, one of the things I find weird about that, is that a good half of the Japan based visitors that I get to the site are running Macs. Oh well, someone will clue them in one day. Until then, dig that groovy trailer, cool cat.

Strawberry Panic has been a while coming, so then it's not surprise that the official site for the show has a 1:30 trailer online to help promote the series. The Yuri-riffic trailer is available in both Windows Media and RealTime formats, so… well, I'm not sure if Macs can play real time, but either way, Windows users are covered. The show is set to broadcast starting April 3rd at 26:45. I'm not sure of the channel though. WOWOW? Maybe? Oh well, I guess it doesn't matter too much, you'll find it if you want to see it. Check your local listings.

According to CandySoft, their game Tsuyokiss[NSFW] will be getting it's very own TV series. You might have noticed that eroge have been churning out some pretty good anime lately. Fate/stay night, Magikano, Shuffle!. Hopefully, Tsuyokiss will end up in much the same manner. The Studio Hibari animated series is set to begin airing in July and will feature the directing talents of Shinichiro Kimura (Karin) and the screenwriting talents of Yasutomo Yamada (Mahoraba). Hopefully, this pairing will bring us another great show.

More free manga previews? How is it even possible? Taking a cue from Seven Seas Entertainment, Del Rey Manga has put up a free preview of Pichi Pichi Pitch, the first volume of which is set to be released April 25th. I can't express enough how much I think that this is the proper way to get manga fans in America to come around to your side. Of course, Del Rey has made the right decision in the past, like their decisions to leave in honorifics, not change cultural jokes to tacky American similarities, and to not censor such manga as Negima and Gacha Gacha. Honestly, Del Rey has my blessing for how they've handled their licenses so far. They're on of the few companies I will buy manga from without hesitation. Anyway, look at their preview if you're interested in Pichi Pichi Pitch.

A few annoyances on this page that I wanted to note. The main preview link links to the end page, and they disabled right clicking. Futile for Firefox, but still annoying. I linked to page one.

The May issue of Megami Magazine has some interesting information on the cover. Apparently, there is going to be a Mai-Otome OVA coming soon! Sadly, that's just about all the information that you can divine from the cover of the thing. Happily, however, you don't need to get anymore information than that, because you can simply mosey on over to Moon Phase and get all the good details, like the fact that the OVA will be four episodes, and will see a July broadcast on UHF TV before being released on video in the fall.

Normally, this would fall outside of the typical realm for ikimashou, but since they are the company peddling the Anime Encyclopedia, I figured I'd go ahead and post the updated information that was sent out in this press release (which they didn't send to me. I'm a little disappointed.).

Anyway! According to the press release, sent out yesterday, the new, updated version of the Anime Encyclopedia will be coming out sometime in November. They've set the price point at $29.95 and the final page count is 850 pages. The 7-by-9 inch book will contain 150 black and white illustrations and you can search for it at your favorite book seller with the follow ISBN: 1-933330-10-4

Full press release, with information about some other Asia related books after the jump.

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Somehow I missed this one in the long line of new figures from the weekend, but an extremely fine piece of modeling from Kotobukiya has hit the streets. The theme of said modeling is Tonami Yuma from To Hearts 2, you may remember she was mentioned in a previous Weekend Rollup. Anyway, she went on sale on the 25th (which helps explain how I missed it) and she will run you 3,990 yen, which is pretty much the status quo for a 1/8 scale figure.

A picture after the jump, you damn right.

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