The Warner Bros. releases Halo Legends today which includes eight anime short episodes created by many of the top directors and studios in the business. Studios involved in the Halo Legends project include Bones Inc., Casio Entertainment Inc., Production I.G, STUDIO4°C and Toei Animation. Directors include Shinji Aramaki (Appleseed), Hideki Futamura (The Animatrix), Daisuke Nishio (Dragonball Z), Hiroshi Yamazaki (Karas), Toshiyuki Kanno (Black Lagoon), Koichi Mashimo (Blade of the Immortal) and Koji Sawai (Patlabor); directors/action designers Tomoki Kyoda (Eureka Seven, Evangelion 1.0) and Yasushi Muraki (Macross Plus, Vampire Hunter D); and writer Dai Sato (Cowboy Bebop).
Halo Legends features eight animated shorts, each running about 10-17 minutes in length.
I am quite familiar with the works from Production I.G and STUDIO4°C. Batman: Gotham Knight, which is also released by Warner Bros. in 2008, is still in my collection and I enjoyed that very much. A bit darker from most anime, but enjoyable.
Halo Legends is available on DVD and and Blu-Ray. The standard edition is priced at $15.16, while the two disc special edition is priced at $19.16. The Blu-Ray version is $23.76. You can get it online from the official Warner Bros. Studio online store, but I think I will wait. I got the Gotham Knight two-disc special edition for only $12.00. It’s cheaper to buy original here than buying it online.
Here’s a new clip from the release, from the episode Prototype.
Would be great if they had the voice over from the game used in the anime but I doubt that will happen. Anyone see conan obriens skit Thursday night or Friday night when he went to the anime voice over company in California. It was hysterical.
[Reply]
The intro and music is beautiful. But the character models (armor, aliens) not so much. And I like that, of course, now Halo has women everywhere in it for the sake of the Anime series.
[Reply]
Hey, don’t judge it before you’ve seen it. They could do a good job with it. Looks awesome.
[Reply]
THIS MAKES ME SICK… I cannot believe that they let the sissy ass anime freaks get involved with the HALO franchise.. this is the absolute WORST idea I’ve ever seen… HALO meets POKEMON…. sickening… what retard approved this?
[Reply]
I can see why they chose Toei Animation as well. There are plenty of other studios that could have done a much better job artwise, in my opinion Toei excel at doing your standard long running tv shows with things like Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball, Saint Seiya and Digimon under their belt you can see that they don’t really try for new art styles in their shows.
[Reply]
I’m not saying this is going to be bad, i’m just saying it’s a bad fit. I’ll watch it, but from the announcement to the trailer there is no change in my anticipation.
[Reply]
Well this is not so far fetched as many companies would plan obsolescence into their products, but then again my old ps1 still works so this would be odd for Sony to stoop to such a level.
[Reply]