Benu got the chance at Anime Expo 2009 to interview Yosuke Kuroda, Seiji Mizushima, and Yun Kouga. They are the creative minds behind Gundam 00.

The Anime Gen podcast is back to kick off season four of the show! On this episode we have Dancing Queen of How A Girl Figures, Freelance Blogger Jimmy Blocksom, Jon Ingoglia of JanaiBlog, and Daniel Wong. We take on the topics of “moe” friend or foe, things we hate and/or love about fandom, and characters we love and/or hate.

Anime Gen is celebrating its 5th anniversary on Feb. 18th! If you want to send in a sound clip to play on the show send an mp3 to animegen@gmail.com before Feb. 17th!

Crunchyroll finally has released an Iphone/Ipod Touch app! Is it everything you could ever hope for? Is it nothing but pure anime watching bliss? Is it the best anime watching experience on the Iphone/Ipod Touch? Read on to find out!

I have been waiting the longest time for Crunchyroll to finally release an app for watching anime from the site on my Ipod Touch and it finally happened! I just found out about the new Crunchyroll app today and quickly downloaded it to check it out. When you first boot up the app you are greeted with a login screen to login if you have a Crunchyroll account. After you login you will see a summary of your profile and a guestbook tab to the right. Logging in doesn’t really give you any advantages even if you have a Crunchyroll subscription which I will explain later.

So after the profile tab if you click on the “Videos” tab you have two choices to pick either Anime or Drama. Pick Anime and you will be presented with a list of shows that you can pick from.

Pick the show you want and you will see a summary of the show and scroll down to see episodes of the show that are available to watch. Click on the episode you want and then you will see a summary of the episode and a play button. Hit play to watch the episode.

Before the episode starts playing a notice pops up that tells you how to turn on the subtitles. I found it odd that the subtitles aren’t automatically enabled as most of the shows on Crunchyroll are sub only. I hope they fix this in future updates but it isn’t a big deal as the subtitles are very easy to turn on. All you need to do to is just click the icon that looks like a speech bubble on the bottom bar. Then click English and press done and that is all!

The picture quality is great shows look clear and sharp as can be. I also like how the subtitles are on a light black background on the bottom. The subtitles are easy to read they are clear and sharp as well. You can also watch the video in wide-screen or you can zoom in so the picture fills the whole screen and it doesn’t effect the subtitles at all.

Were you thinking I was going to write this whole post without sneaking in some pictures of Hinagiku?

There are some things about the app that I think should be improved upon. Mainly logging in doesn’t really give you any advantages unless you have a subscription and even then the only advantage you have if you have a subscription is that you won’t see any ads before an episode starts. Even if you have a subscription you don’t have any access to subscriber only episodes which I do hope gets fixed in future updates. Also from what I know it only works over WiFi even on the Iphone. All in all the Crunchyroll app is great and I think it’s the best experience you can have watching streaming anime on the Iphone/Ipod touch. Download it now!

Striking back like the empire, it’s the long awaited 7th episode in the epic season 3 saga of the Anime Genesis Podcast! We have a great line up of co-hosts for this episode which include Jimmy Blocksom freelance blogger at GosuGamers, Anime Vice, Orange Lounge Radio, and Project Lore, Johnny (a.k.a. Hontaiyo), Sean Russell of Anime 3000, and last but not least your host as always Benu! We run through some news and we take on the topics of Anime Music Being A Novelty, The Use Of The Word Otaku, and Hayate no Gotoku!

Benu got the chance at Anime Expo 2009 this year to chat with the talented Kari Wahlgren! Best known for her role as the English voice of Haruko Haruhara in FLCL.

Anime Genesis has 5 copies of the Suguri Perfect Edition DVD-ROM’s to giveaway! What do you have to do to win a copy of this fantastic doujin game? All you have to do is comment on this post! Yes it’s that easy! I will pick 5 commenters at random. The contest starts now until Friday, August 7th when I will announce the winners! Only one comment per person will count! So get to commenting!

For more info on Suguri check out Rockin’ Android.

The contest is now over! Thanks to all who entered! Now to announce the winners! I assigned a number to each of the names that entered and used a random number generator to pick five random numbers. Congrats to those who won!

Winners

1. Jesus159159159

2. Ecks

3. Reactive

4. Luna

5. Math

If you won, please contact me at animegen@gmail.com with your address and I will ship out the game to you as soon as I can! Thanks to all who participated, and thanks to Rockin’ Android for providing the copies of Suguri! When you get your copy of Suguri please let me know what you think of the game.

So with the last podcast officially kicking off the Anime Expo 2009 coverage, here is the panel everyone that went to AX can’t stop talking about! The Indecent Otaku Comedy Hour in it’s full HD glory with Benu from Anime Genesis, Dancing Queen from How A Girl Figures, and Mike, Jeremy, and Ray from Anime Diet! You can now see the panel that was so full people had to be turned away at the door! See what you missed!

The long awaited Anime Expo episode is here! Benu and Dancing Queen from How A Girl Figures disscuss the epic happenings of the biggest con of the season! They talk about all the crazy things that happened, the guests, the panels, the excitement and more!

Here’s a video of Dancing Queen Singing at the Macross Frontier Cosplay Gathering!

Here is a report on The Indecent Otaku Comedy Hour from The Fan’s POV!

You can also now see The Indecent Otaku Comedy Hour in it’s entirety!

Remember that we do want to hear from you! So leave your comments below or send your comments to animegen@gmail.com

In this hillarious video Conan O’Brien visits Bang Zoom Studios and dubs some scenes from Ghost In The Shell. If you haven’t seen it yet watch it! I would love to see Conan and Andy do some real dubbing for anime though.

Should Conan O’Brien Dub Anime For Real?

Anime Gen was able to get an interview with HYDE and K.A.Z.’s new band VAMPS who are currently touring the US. HYDE is best know for being the vocalist of L’Arc~en~Ciel and K.A.Z. is best know for being the lead guitarist of Oblivion Dust. Anime Gen was able to ask them a couple questions about the band, their musical influences and styles, and what they are looking forward to on the US tour.

Anime Gen: How did you come to choose the name VAMPS?

HYDE: It’s from vampire. I like mysterious women, too [laugh]. I love vampires. I’m intrigued by its never-ending life. I like horror.

Anime Gen: Do you think that VAMPS differs musically from anything else you have done before?

HYDE: I think I am making the music that I used to dream of making in my teens. When I started the band, I liked hard-core bands with some horror taste. I feel like I am expressing the stuff I felt back then—maybe not really hard core.

Anime Gen: Who are some of your musical influences?

HYDE: Probably, Mötley Crüe.

K.A.Z.: I used to watch and got inspired by King Crimson, Cheap Trick, and TOTO.

Anime Gen: What message do you want people to take away from your music?

HYDE: We made the album that includes songs used effectively in our lives—many songs that create excitement in lives and a couple of songs that the audience can listen to rest a little bit.

Anime Gen: Do you compose the music first or do you write the lyrics first or a little of both when you write songs?

HYDE: K.A.Z. plays the guitar and I do the singing.

Anime Gen: Hyde, I read an interview with you awhile back when you released your solo album Faith, that you were trying to do spiritual rock. Will there be elements of this in any VAMPS music?

HYDE: There is not much difference from my solo album “FAITH,” in terms of musical pieces, but we created music especially for cool lives as VAMPS, so we have a lineup of good live songs.

Anime Gen: What is your biggest inspiration for writing songs?

HYDE: We consider how to involve the audience into our songs.

K.A.Z.: We both went through the golden age of Rock n’ Roll in the 80s and 90s, so we have absorbed various tastes. I think we created our own mixture by going though that era.

Anime Gen: What are you looking forward to the most during the American tour?

HYDE: I’m excited to visit cites for the first time and try new things. First of all, I look forward to lives in front of the American audience. Our objective is to show that we have such a cool band in Japan, even more amazing band than American ones. There is no point of doing the same things that American bands are doing. I believe our band will be appreciated—judging from my own sensibility.

Anime Gen: Do you have anything you would like to say to the American fans?

HYDE: Can’t wait to see you. Wait for a little bit more; I will bite your neck!

K.A.Z.: Let’s have a fun party!

Check out the offical website for VAMPS here for more info on the US tour and where you can see them live!