This Weekend: I choose you! Go Aquarion! featuring Yoko Kanno

Anime of the Week: Turn A Gundam

Email Content:

• This Weekend's Meetings
• Officer Positions (URGENT!)
  
• Blog Updates
• Anime of the Week

This Weekend:
Time: Friday and Saturday 7pm
Location: Maryland 110

Friday March 30, 2012
Sousei no Aquarion
Episodes 1-8
A 2005 original work by Shouji Kawamori (Macross Frontier, Basquash!) and animation studio Satelight (Fairy Tail, Shugo Chara!). Sousei no Aquarion has also continued with a 2007 OVA, a movie, and the current ongoing "sequel," Aquarion EVOL. Music is provided by Yoko Kanno (Ghost in the Shell, Cowboy Bebop).
The Great Catastrophe, an event remembered as the time when mankind lost 2/3 of its population due to the melting of Antarctica's ice. It is now year 0011 of the Holy Genesis Era and in the Lost Atlantis, which was believed to have been destroyed 12000 years ago, the Shadow Angels have been resurrected and seek to harvest the life energy of humans. Humanity is once again on the brink of annihilation...that is until the Godspeed Magician, Fudo Gen, discovered the legendary vector machines: Mars, Luna, and Sol. These machines, along with gifted pilots who utilizes element to activate them, allow for the summoning of the legendary Mechanical Angel Aquarion. Aquarion now becomes the hope to prevent the onslaught of humanity.

Saturday March 31, 2012
Darker than Black -Kuro no Keiyakusha-
Episodes 1-8
A 2007 original work by Tensai Okamura (Wolf's Rain, Ao no Exorcist) and animation studio BONES (Fullmetal Alchemist/Brotherhood, Eureka Seven) with music also done by Yoko Kanno and series composition by Shoutarou Suga (Rinne no Lagrange).
10 years ago the "Hell's Gate" appeared, which resulted in the appearance of humans with supernatural abilities: emotionless "dolls" that only do what they are programmed and "contractors" who are feared and hated by humans. PANDORA is an international research group that protects this wall and attempts to analyze the details of "Hell's Gate" while the government struggles to suppress the publics' knowledge and awareness of "contractors" and "dolls." However, "BK201" is known to be a strangely irrational yet deadly contractor and continues to elude his extermination by the government forces.


Officer Positions
As May approaches closer and closer, JHAC is looking for at least 2 undergraduates who will be willing to take on the President and Treasurer positions of the JHAC board for next year. While elections will not be held until the end of the semester, if you are interested or would like to learn more please email waw2@jhu.edu or come to one of our regular meetings to inquire. Do note, that if no one takes on these two positions, JHAC will lose its ability to fund our regular convention trips and other activities in the future and it will be difficult to regain status that has been lost.


Blog Updates
Spring preview is coming!
For those who are unaware, our website can be found at: http://jhu-anime.blogspot.com/
Comments are open to all for suggestions, recommendations and the like. We encourage members to share their thoughts on topics regarding the posts as well as anything anime, manga, visual novel, light novel, and video game related. Thoughts on current titles or past titles are also welcome. As usual, any suggestions for the blog itself or how meetings are run are greatly appreciated.

Anime of the Week
To make this section more useful, Image of the Week has been changed to Anime of the Week where a different anime title will be featured in each week's email. The point of this is to discover what may be lost gems, obscure titles, underrated titles, or buried treasure in the anime world. These titles may or may not necessarily be shown at future meetings. Each title will come with a brief background. 

 With the unintentional back-to-back showings featuring Yoko Kanno's music, might as well also provide something in the Anime of the Week section too. Turn A Gundam is the 1999-2000 Gundam title and thus the franchise's 20th anniversary project. Furthermore, it is the first and only flagship Gundam title that Yoko Kanno composed music for and is directed by none other than Yoshiyuki Tomino, the creator of the famous Astro Boy in 1964 followed by the original series of the long-running Gundam franchise in 1979. Turn A Gundam is Tomino's first work outside the Universal Century (UC) timeline of the Gundam series yet still dazzles fans and new audience of the franchise with his almighty story telling and direction. Unfortunately, it took US licensing companies over 10 years to finally pick up the series and even then it continues to elude distribution as Bandai Entertainment, who has the license, had suddenly decided to stop BD/DVD distribution, including Turn A Gundam. Therefore, Turn A Gundam remains as one of the main Gundam titles (if not the only one) to elude the US market.
The year is Correct Century 2345. There are two civilizations for humanity: Earth and the advanced civilization on the moon inhabited by the Moonrace. However, after 5000 years since the dawn of the space age, the Moonrace have become desperate for resources and sets its sights back on Earth.  A new war is brewing between the Earthlings defending their homes, the Moonrace looking to settle on Earth, and other members of the Moonrace who believe a return to Earth may revive a nightmare from humanity's forgotten past... Three Moonrace teenagers, Loran Cehack, Keith Laijie, and Fran Doll, are sent on a covert operation to ensure a possible return the humanity's original planet but are followed two years later by the invading Dianna Counter forces who intend to subdue Earth by force. In particular, Loran gets caught up in the middle of the fierce conflict and stumbles upon a mysterious artifact: a relic of Earth's forgotten space age entombed in stone. Will this ancient mobile suit enable Loran to avert the conflict and make peace between Earth and moon?