With 2 sucessful Iron Man movies and his participation in the 2012 Avengers movie its about time to release the obligatory anime since he already has a kids show and an American animated movie.

As part of a four-series collaboration between the Japanese Madhouse animation house and Marvel, Iron Man will star in a 12 episode anime that will premiere in Japan on Animax in October.

Madhouse – the studio behind Ninja Scroll, Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust and Trigun to name a few – is doing the animation based on a script from British comic book writer Warren Ellis – but its gone through a lot of changes since the first trailer was released:

but here is the original trailer:

Interesting change in animation style. We’re not sure if its because of cost or that someone thought that Iron Man should be rendered in CGI as much as possible but while they both look good we would have loved to see the original version.

Last Saturday Chiaki Kuriyama was in Hong Kong to promote her upcoming debut single “Ryusei no Namida” (Tears of Meteors).

Kuriyama became a modern movie icon in director Quentin Tarantino’s 2004 film Kill Bill, Volume I as Gogo Yubari, the schoolgirl yakuza bodyguard of Tokyo mob mistress O-Ren Ishii.

Kuriyama’s has scored a major coup by having her first single used for the new Gundam Unicorn movie series that premieres in Japanese cinemas on February 20th. A number of artist have seen their singing careers rocket into the next galaxy thanks to the Gundam anime franchise. The Gundam Unicorn movie is based on a popular light novel series written by Harutoshi Fukui. Directing the big screen anime adaption is Furuhashi Kazuhiro who directed “Rurouni Kenshin” and “Hunter X Hunter” and many others.

Chiaki Kuriyama’s CD single will be released on February 24 in Japan and should appear on Hong Kong store shelves a few days later. Fans of the actress can check out her Sony Music artist page here.

The date for the new Space Battleship Yamato movie has been set for December 12th in Japan. No date yet for Hong Kong but we’ll see how it does and it will no doubt be here by Chinese New Year 2010.

It started with The Animatrix, took a turn to Batman Gotham Night and now it goes downtown as Marvel introduces Iron Man and Wolverine with a Japanese style. Madhouse, the studio behind such recent anime hits like Death Note, Claymore, Trigun and so many more, will be handing the complete animation on these 2 films (the first of 4) will be airing in Japan early in 2010 and no doubt on DVD soon afterwards for the rest of the world:

Not enough Giant Robot posts you say? Well, before you start pre-ordering your tickets to next week’s Transformers; Revenge of the Fallen we suggest a quick peek at the 25th anniversary DVD set of the classic animated show from the 1984 to show to you what Transformers is really more than just Peter Cullen’s voice as Optimus Prime.

Get the first 16 episodes on a 3-DVD set and remember the cool boxy Transformers and how the story used to be about, y’know, the Transformers and not the human characters.

Bonus features for this set include:

• Restored to the original broadcast versions with a new stereo soundtrack created from the original audio
• Triplechanger: From Toy To Comic To Screen: The Origins Of The Transformers
• Printable Transport to Oblivion Script
• Rare PSAs
• Archival Hasbro toy commercials
• Limited edition Autobot magnet inside

It’s at HMV for a very affordable HK$255. We’d have loved a Blu-ray version of this, but its not in the cards just yet.

And here is the video for the theme song for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen by Linkin Park, who incidentally will be transforming The Venetian Macao on August 16th:

From Tomopop, new Revoltech figures are coming our way soon with new versions of Gurren Lagann and 2 new Evangelion’s in June for about 2400 Yen each/ but the big news is:

The big announcement comes from the new Queen’s Blade line, as Leina will see her release on June 1st for 2900 yen. When we first looked at the prototype, it appeared that there might be a cast-off gimmick. This is now not the case, as the figure will have what’s known as the “S&M modes.”

If you know Queen’s Blade, then you know how sexy these figures are going to be and with their new TV anime airing now in Japan you can see the demand for these figures getting very hot. If you don’t know Queen’s Blade, have yourself an eyeful here: