During its October Town Hall livestream, AnimEigo announced that it has licensed Kitaro Kosaka’s 2003 anime film Nasu: Summer in Andalusia. The film will be released for the first time on North American home video in March 2025.
The new home video disc will include several bonus features such as a 37-minute interview with Kosaka, as well as trailer and teaser videos of the film.
Kosaka directed and wrote the screenplay for the film, as well as worked on the character designs. He had previously served as an animation director on Hayao Miyazaki’s Howl’s Moving Castle and The Wind Rises. He most recently directed the 2018 anime film, Okko’s Inn.
Other staff members involved with the production of Nasu: Summer in Andalusia include Naoya Tanaka (Only Yesterday, Pom Poko background artist) as art director, Hisao Shirai (Millennium Actress, My Neighbor Totoro) and Katsuyoshi Kishi (Rozen Maiden) as photography directors, and Toshiyuki Honda (Metropolis, Tokyo Babylon) as music composer. Madhouse was the animation production company.
Nasu: Summer in Andalusia was also the first Japanese anime film to be selected to be screened at the Cannes Film Festival. A sequel titled Nasu: A Migratory Bird with Suitcase was released in 2007.
The film itself is based on Io Kuroda’s three-volume slice of life comedy manga that was serialized in Kodansha’s Monthly Afternoon magazine from November 2000 to October 2002.
The film’s story follows Spanish cyclist Pepe Benengeli, who works as a support rider for the Vuelta a España multi-stage team cycling race in the Iberian peninsula. One day, he learns that his sponsor for the race plans to fire him from the team after the upcoming race. To make matters more complicated, the course he is set to go through is his hometown in Spain’s Andalusian region, while Pepe’s older brother Ángel is getting married to Pepe’s ex-girlfriend Carmen on the same day. These stressful events motivate Pepe to push himself to the fullest to win the race for himself, as he realizes he has nothing left to lose.
AnimEigo also announced that it will release a new two-disc set for the Bubblegum Crisis OVA series in February 2025. The new set will include lossless audio with both Japanese and English audio, as well as a new interview with character designer Kenichi Sonoda.
It will also include the Hurricane Live music videos, the Holiday in Bali video (which features the voice actresses singing songs from the anime while in Bali), and brand new packaging. AnimEigo is offering an upgrade program for previous buyers of the anime.
Source: AnimEigo Official Twitter, Anime News Network
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