This Weekend: JohnCon + From the creator of Puella Magi Madoka Magica and Kara no Kyoukai ~The Garden of Sinners~ (NOTE LOCATION)

Anime of the Week: Kara no Kyoukai ~The Garden of Sinners~

ANNOUNCEMENT: JOHNCON IS ALL WEEKEND LONG STARTING AT 5PM FRIDAY TO 5PM SUNDAY. JHAC WILL BE SHOWING ANIME NON-STOP ALL WEEKEND. REGULAR MEETINGS WILL STILL TAKE PLACE AT THE SAME TIME BUT PLEASE NOTE LOCATION CHANGE BELOW!

Post Content:

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

JohnCon:
JHAC will start showing titles at 5pm on Friday April 6 non-stop until 5pm Sunday April 8. While we have not yet finalized the list of what we're showing, we encourage everyone to come on out and see what they may be missing. Admission is free...or so I am told. If you have difficulty getting in, say you are with the Animation/Anime club. We are located in Sherwood Room in Levering Hall.

Regular Meeting:
Time: Friday and Saturday 7pm
Location: Sherwood Room in Levering Hall

Friday April 6, 2012
Sousei no Aquarion
Episodes 9-17
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 April 7, 2012
Fate/Zero Season 1
Episodes 1-7
To coincide and chime in the premier of Fate/Zero Season 2, welcome to JHAC's second major showing of the semester! The first part of Season 1 will be shown on April 7 and the second part will be shown on April 20 and possibly followed by the first few episodes of season 2 at our Spring Preview Night later on in April! Fate/Zero Season 1 is acclaimed to be one the best titles of 2011 and the most anticipated title among the anime community for the Spring 2012 anime season. Brace yourself for what may be the best series in anime history, possibly surpassing that of Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood (by general community standards).
Fate/Zero is based on a novel by Gen Urobuchi (Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Phantom ~Requiem for the Phantom~) and Kinoko Nasu/Type-Moon (Shingetsutan Tsukihime, Fate/Stay Night, Kara no Kyoukai ~The Garden of Sinners~). The setting is the 4th Holy Grail War in Fuyuki City, 10 years before the events of the 5th Holy Grail War in Fate/Stay Night. It is a death-match between 7 magi (masters) and 7 heroic spirits (servants) where the prize is the legendary Holy Grail, an omnipotent wish-granting device. The three preceding wars had ended without a clear victor, but now all the magi will resort to any means to obtain the Grail regardless of rationale. Ei Aoki (Kara no Kyoukai ~The Garden of Sinners~, Ga-Rei -Zero-) will direct, Yuki Kajiura (Puella Magi Madoka Magica, .Hack//Sign) will provide music composition, and ufotable (Tales of Symphonia The Animation, Kara no Kyoukai ~The Garden of Sinners~) will provide animation.


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.

Since this title has been mentioned so many times this week, may as well introduce it: Kara no Kyoukai ~The Garden of Sinners~ was released in Japan as seven separate theatrical films between 2007 and 2009 before being released on Blu-Ray and DVD. It was licensed and released by Aniplex USA in 2011 for a limited time at a whopping $620 list price though discounted at Right Stuf to about $300 per set (currently you can find them on Amazon for $750 and up). With that said, I doubt many people bought this given the price, so I thought it may be worth mentioning. Whether it's worth the $300 or even the $600 is up to you to decide. Based on a novel written by Kinoko Nasu between 1998 and 1999, Kara no Kyoukai is set in a parallel universe of Shingetsutan Tsukihime. It eventually became an inspiration for Type-Moon's Tsukihime visual novel in 2000. Ryougi Shiki was involved in a car accident and fell into a deep coma for two years. When she came to, she had gained the "Eyes of Death Perception" allowing her to see people's lifelines but believed that she also had lost something else within her simultaneously. Nevertheless, she had gained the power to kill anything with just a knife and this lures Shiki into a completely different world. Over the 7 movies, she encounters the murderer from two years ago, a swarm of floating ghosts, a girl who bends things just by looking at them, a spiral construction that collects people's death, all of which eventually lead to the reawakening of her lost memories.

The movies premiered "out of order" similar to The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. To watch in chronological order, the order is: 2, 4, 3, 1, 5, 6, 7. However, it is entirely possible and also sensible to watch it in the order it premiered.