SDCC: Halo the Anime Is Happening, People

 
Huh. I didn’t expect this. Microsoft has hired three five anime studios — Bones, Toei (of DBZ fame), Production I.G, Studio 4C and Casio (?) — to create an Animatrix-like DVD of seven Halo animated shorts to be called Halo Legends. From the L.A. Times:

Microsoft is financing and overseeing production through 343
Industries, its new internal division that’s in charge of everything
Halo. It’s planning to preview them on the online gaming service Xbox
Live this fall and has then enlisted Warner Bros. — the game companies
still need a little help from Hollywood — to release them on DVD,
Blu-ray and other digital platforms in early 2010.

[Appleseed director Shinji] Aramaki is directing his own short that tells the history of the
Spartans, a warrior class in the game’s fictional universe that main
character Master Chief is part of. Though Halo isn’t particularly
popular in Japan — most of its 27 million units sold have been in
North America and Europe — Aramaki said he’s a player and was
immediately interested in the possibility.

“I liked that this would be an anthology of human stories told from different characters’ perspectives,” he explained.

Frank O’Connor, creative director of 343, gave a peek at some of the
other Halo Legend shorts. Studio4 C’s project, tentatively called
“Origins,” is a two-parter that’s about 30 minutes long in total and
tells the entire 100,000 year history of the Halo universe. Another,
from Toei, is the only one outside of the official canon and pokes fun
at some of the game’s characters.

Within the general anime style, the visual look of the projects differs widely.

“It’s a wildly varied genre, but anime creators do things with
weapons and vehicles and technology nobody else does, and that marries
very well with Halo,” he explained. “It’s amazing to see some of the
new stuff they’re introducing and how neatly it maps to the visual
aesthetics in the Halo universe.”

A trailer’s going to be released at the Microsoft panel, so stay tuned for that. I hate to be a gloomy gus today, but I can’t help but be worried about what I mentioned the other day — that the Japanese desire to be artsy will have the shorts filled with unsmiling soldiers who say porentous Bible quotes all day instead of awesome shooting action, because there’s no American writer for these things. Sounds like Microsoft can tell them how to draw the energy grenades, but not make sure the shorts are actually exciting. I’m sure there’ll be a gem or two, though. I’m really not trying to be the biggest bastard at Comic Con. I swear I’m not.