Short Anime to Adapt Sega's "Chain Chronicle"

Sega has announced plans for a short anime adaptation of Chain Chronicle, a free-to-play smartphone game card/RPG with a battle system that has been compared to Plants vs Zombies. Veteran director Takeshi Mori (Skull Man) helms the Sotsu/Jūmonji production with Hiromi Kato on character designs and a script from QUALIA.

Cast includes:
Akira Ishida
Ayane Sakura
Maaya Uchida
Kotori Koiwai
Junichi Yanagita

From the game

Learn to speak Japanese by playing Minecraft

Kotoba Miners aims to teach through play.

James York, an English teacher and PhD student researching language learning in virtual worlds, is teaching Japanese online by using Minecraft.

The class, which he calls Kotoba Miners, takes place on a dedicated Minecraft server which contains several structures built for different learning activities.

Different buildings off of “University Road” contain different exercises that encourage students to read and and speak Japanese together. For example, in the “Ice Palace,” players must communicate in order navigate a series of pressure plates correctly. If they take a wrong step a trap will activate and kill the player.

York told Tofugu in an interview that he became interested in learning languages in virtual communities when he joined a Japanese World of Warcraft guild in 2006. He started the Minecraft server as a tool to teach English to Japanese students by getting them to interact with English speakers, but when the class ended and the Japanese students left, the English speakers stayed and wanted to learn Japanese.

 

“I experimented with a number of virtual worlds and games as part of my research,” York told Tofugu. “I rejected MMOs for lack of control over content and their often extremely specialized discourse (e.g. ‘Prot Warrior LFG SFK pst’). I also rejected a lot of social worlds (i.e. Second Life) for their painful aesthetics, controls and distance between user and content-creator. Minecraft is simple. Controls, aesthetics, and gameplay. This means that you spend less time learning how to navigate the game and more time learning and focusing on language.”

You can find out more about the class and how to join on Kotoba Miners’ official site.

Psycho-Pass Anime Gets Xbox One Game by 5pb.

MAGES. game brand 5pb. announced on Tuesday that the Psycho-Pass anime will get a video game adaptation for the Xbox One. 5pb. also began streaming the game's first teaser movie.

 The game will take place during the time period depicted in the first six episodes of the original television anime season. Nitro+ will create an original story with Gen Urobuchi (Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Fate/Zero) providing the original plan and scenario supervision. The setting will change from the heart of a large city in the anime to a remote island in the game.

One new male and female character each will serve as the two protagonists who face off against a new enemy. Characters from the Unit 1 police team of the Public Safety Bureau's Criminal Investigation Division will return. The anime's Kyoji Asano (Attack on Titan, Tokyo Marble Chocolate) is also returning to design characters based on Akira Amano's (Reborn!) original designs.

Features that capture players' true movements by utilizing the Kinect peripheral and SmartGlass feature are planned. However, gameplay without Kinect and SmartGlass will be possible. The title will have a function that allows players to send data from their smartphones to characters in the game.

Release date and price are undecided.

Psycho-Pass takes place in the near future, when it is possible to instantaneously measure and quantify a person's state of mind and personality. This information is recorded and processed, and the term "Psycho->Pass" in the anime's title refers to a standard used to measure an individual's being. The story centers around the "enforcement officer" Shinya Kōgami (Tomokazu Seki) who is tasked with managing crime in such a world. Naoyoshi Shiotani (Blood+, Tokyo Marble Chocolate) directed the series, Urobuchi wrote and edited the scripts, and Amano designed the characters.

The original anime premiered on Fuji TV's late-night Noitamina programming block in 2012. Funimation streamed the 22-episode series as it aired last year, and then added home video rights last year. Funimation announced the dub cast in December and released the series on Blu-ray Disc in March. The Psycho-Pass 2 television anime series will debut in October, followed by the Psycho-Pass movie this winter.

Taiga & Miyuki Join Dengeki Bunko Fighting Climax

Dengeki announced on Tuesday that Miyuki Shiba from The irregular at magic high school and Taiga Aisaka from Toradora! will join Sega and ASCII Media Works' arcade fighting game Dengeki Bunko Fighting Climax as playable characters this summer. Miyuki's support character will be Tatsuya Shiba and Taiga's support character will be Takasu Ryūji.

Both Miyuki and Taiga will be played by the voice actresses from their respective anime, Saori Hayami and Rie Kugimiya.

Dengeki also added some screenshots: 

The game's current roster of characters includes:

Kirito with Leafa as support (Sword Art Online)

Tomoka Minato with her four teammates as support (Ro-Kyu-Bu!)

Asuna with Leafa as support (Sword Art Online)  

Shana with Wilhelmina as support (Shakugan no Shana)

Mikoto Misaka with Tōma Kamijō as support (A Certain Magical Index)

 Kirino Kōsaka with Kuroneko as support (Oreimo)

Shizuo with Celty as support (Durarara!!)

Kuroyukihime with Haruyuki as support (Accel World)

Other support characters include:

Holo (Spice and Wolf)  

Boogiepop (Boogiepop Phantom)

Sadao Maō (The Devil is a Part-Timer!) 

"Innocent Charm" (Hinata no Maboroshi, voiced by Yui Ogura) from Ro-Kyu-Bu!

Kōko Kaga (Yui Horie) from Golden Time

Kino (Aya Hisakawa instead of Ai Maeda) from Kino no Tabi: The Beautiful World

Mashiro Shiina (Ai Kayano) from The Pet Girl of Sakurasou

Erio Tōwa (Asuka Ōgame) from Ground Control to Psychoelectric Girl (Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko)

Akira of the Virtua Fighter fighting game appears as a boss, and the game has a Sonic the Hedgehog stage.

Publisher ASCII Media Works and game developer Sega announced Dengeki Bunko Fighting Climax, their crossover 2D fighting game, in September at the Tokyo Game Show 2013 event. The game is the fourth collaboration between ASCII Media Works' Dengeki Bunko imprint and Sega, and it marks Dengeki Bunko's 20th anniversary.

The game opened in Japanese arcades earlier this spring.