WHOOOOOOOOAAAAAHHHH this is amazing!!
And I'm late!
Wow. Just wow. That Japanese trailer! :O
It's more Shenmue than I ever could have imagined. I simply can't believe how many plot parts and even everyday things they've managed to keep in there! All the characters, even minor ones from battles, the telephone, the mirror, the BACKGROUNDS! Sakuragaoka looks like they've fused the game world and real Japanese suburbia! And it looks like we're getting Shenmue II in there too, with a beautiful urban skyline in that final Lan Di shot. My heart skipped a beat when we glimsed Nozomi on the motorcycle! And Shenua's there all cute waiting in the Chinese forest too!
It sounds like the original voice actor for Japanese Ryo! I must admit when I saw the English trailer I still thought cringe, even though it's an improvement on the games (I'm sorry for Cory, but it did need to be taken up a notch for the anime to have wider appeal!). It could be just that I'm used to seeing anime in Japanese though and I'm more used to the Japanese version of the games at this point. The Japanese sounds excellent!
The style! it totally exudes Shenmue but has somehow made it into an even more expressive anime form while still retaining its essence! With snapshots of Suka High it seems we're going to have all kinds of little bits of story filling in the gaps - the transition from school to training to the Dojo scene being just one example we see!
I have to watch this again, and again, but I couldn't be more excited from first impressions! More than anything, my first immediate thought was "I can share this with people I know who love anime, but who would never have played the original games!" Maybe we can dare to dream of this taking the series to a whole new audience after all and springboarding the fourth game we yearn for after all :O
And it's coming on 5th February?? In... two weeks? Huh! Whoa! I'm in shock - thought we'd be waiting until autumn at the earliest. Gotta watch this again! Guess I won't be sleeping tonight!
Apologies for the hyper post but I'm not even sorry!