Robot + swimsuit episode = ???

Stan Lee’s Heroman continues to march on in anime form. While many of you probably dropped it after its plodding-but-necessary origin episodes, the official site now contains a trailer for the second half of the show that promises nonstop greatness in the near future.

The fusion of American comic and Japanese animation looks ready to kick itself into a higher gear, with an anti-hero standing in opposition of everything Heroman represents as well as a hero who now does a whole lot more than just shout and press a button to save the day.

If you’re not familiar with Heroman, I highly recommend watching it – but skipping to around episode 8. It has way more potential than its kiddie look and time slot would suggest, and once it gets rolling, it’s a huge blast to watch.

So, we now have a few more names to attach to the increasingly attractive-looking Kami Nomizo Shiru Sekai (“The World God Only Knows”) project. Rising star Itou Kanae (Amu from Shugo Chara!) will voice the clumsy devil Elsea, while Shimono Hiro (Akihisa from BakaTest) will be voicing the Capturing God, Katsuragi Keima. The tiny snippet of animation doesn’t show much, but it is definitely enough to pique the interest.

I’m trying not to hype myself up too much for this anime, since it’s months away and I still have the summer anime slate to deal with, but Shonen Sunday anime make me feel warm and happy inside. At this point in the anticipation cycle, it feels like Kaminomi will be a huge disappointment if the anime doesn’t blow me away. That’s not a good level of expectations to maintain.

It’s been five years after the first iDOLM@STER game took over arcades, which led to two highly successful Xbox 360 games, 4 portable versions, and a whole ton of concerts and CD releases. Last weekend, Namco Bandai announced the newest installment of the famous music-producing simulation: The iDOLM@STER 2.

Interestingly, the sequel is going straight to console this time, skipping the coin-op business entirely and jumping straight into the world of console sales and super-profitable DLC. The character designs and rendering engine have been updated and characters from the PSP version have replaced old favorites; most notably, though, the trailer includes the all-new song “The World is All One,” which has successfully wormed itself into my brain.

Oh, and extra love for the Namco 30th anniversary bumper. I could watch that all day.

Remember, kids, don't stick it in the crazy.

Famed middle school murder manga Mirai Nikki (Future Diary) is getting an OVA, and publisher Kadokawa has given us a one-minute trailer over on YouTube. As you might expect for a show based on the heartwarming story of a middle school boy, his axe murderer stalker girlfriend, and the people they have to murder to survive and have a wish granted, it’s a bit crazy and creepy.

Just the way you like it, right? Check out the trailer after the jump.

I’ve read the manga for this one, and lemme tell you, it’s at least six flavors of messed up. But that makes it a breath of fresh air in a world full of breast-sucking, sister-banging TV anime rides the airwaves while plotless merchandise-shilling is a way of life.

The OVA comes out in December. Are you excited?

Look at this picture, and you know exactly what to expect.

No one was surprised when Enterbrain announced that their popular PS2 romance game Amagami was getting an anime this summer. It was more of an inevitability than a dark horse, based on an age-old formula for creating harmless and profitable anime. Take a popular game full of cute girls, turn it into a harmlessly cute anime with a moderate budget, lie back, and roll around in merchandising money.

A trailer for Amagami SS is now available on the anime’s official website, and it’s everything you think it would be. Kind of cute, mostly harmless, and destined to be really popular with one segment of the population. Oh, and there’s ear-biting. That’s the big hook of this one, or something.

You know, as much as I enjoyed the movies, I can’t get excited about this trailer for the latest Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann music video collection. Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann Parallel Works was nifty and all, but at this point, I want someone to wake me up when Gainax decides to make something new. 5250 yen for 7 music videos, no matter how nifty they are, feels like franchise milking of the worst sort, the kind that leads to ten years of Evangelion rereleases and miscellaneous pieces of merchandise for a series instead of spending all that effort to create something new.

Maybe I’m wrong, and they’re just using the money from these releases to pay for their next big hit. I really hope that’s the case.

Chinka, the anime created by famed Tokyo blogger Danny Choo, now has a trailer! It doesn’t have production values that’ll shake the world, but it looks good for a new studio. I’m not really into the whole “cute girls doing cute things and not much else” genre of anime, but I’m excited to see a fresh face in the industry. Who knows, maybe this is going to be wildly successful and usher in a new generation of anime makers! Okay, let’s not get carried away, but you get the point. New face in the anime business = interesting.

Thanks to Kadokawa’s YouTube channel, you can now see a sneak preview of the zombie series Highschool of the Dead, due to come out later this year. Based on the survival action manga by Satou Daisuke and Satou Shouji, the anime has a pretty solid staff already, with director Araki Tetsuo (Death Note) and screenwriter Kuroda Yousuke (way too much to list) anchoring the production. Old reliable Madhouse is taking care of the animation, and while a date hasn’t yet been announced, I’m tentatively tagging this one for a summer air date.

From the trailer, it looks like this is pastiche B horror with a mild Japanese twist, between the T&A shots and the copious amounts of blood flying around. If that’s the case, even a horror wuss like me should be able to have fun with it!

Sarai-ya Goyou starts airing in mid-April in the noitaminA time slot, but if you want to know more about this fascinating story about the steady descent of a naive samurai into the underworld, you can read eight chapters of the original manga for free over on VIZ’s IKKI site. I highly recommend it – it’s a far from your standard samurai chanbara fare, and it really makes me want to see what they can do with it.