Negadon Captured on Disc

Having generated quite a buzz on the festial circuit, the animated featurette Negadon: The Monster From Mars finally makes its North American DVD debut today. Released by anime distributor Central Park Media, the CG-animated Japanese monster movie is only 26 minutes long, but comes packaged with enough extra features to give fans some bang for their buck.

Written and directed by computer animator and vfx artist Jun Awazu, Negadon pays homage to Godzilla, Mothra, Gamera and other atomic-age Japanese monster franchises. The film is the first entirely CG-animated entry in the ‘kaiju’ genre, which traditionally employs actors in rubber suits. The animation modeling were performed by Makoto Miyahara performed and Kenjiro Kato served as vfx supervisor on Negadon, which was released theatrically in Japan in October of 2005 and won a number of festival kudos. The pic got a very limited U.S. theatrical release on May 9.

DVD extras include an interview with Awazu (Japanese with English subtitles), a making-of documentary (Japanese with English subtitles) and additional short films Magara: The Giant Monster and Magara: The Final Showdown. There are also digital liner notes, an art gallery, a kaiju fan art exhibit, original Japanese trailers and the U.S. trailer. More information on Negadon: The Monster from Mars is available at www.negadonattacks.com.

Also ariving on disc today is Astro Boy: Greatest Astro Adventures. This Manga Ent. release offers seven episodes from thefirst Astro Boy series created in full color. Included installments are “Birth of Astro,” “Robio and Robiette,” “Liar Robot,” “Greatest Robot in the World Part 1,” “Uran’s Twin,” “The Robots Nobody Wanted” and “Astro’s First Love.” Created by Osamu Tezuka, the Astro Boy character was first introduced to Japanese manga readers in 1951. A black-and-white toon series emerged in 1963, and was followed by the color update in 1980. Yet another incarnation of the series was produced by Sony Pictures Entertainment Japan and Tezuka Prods. and debuted on Kids’ WB! in the fall of 2004.