Otaku News: Riding Bean smashes $30,000 Kickstarter goal in 2 hours!

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Riding Bean smashes $30,000 Kickstarter goal in 2 hours!

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Date: 2016 March 16 19:06

Posted by Bryoz

The Riding Bean OVA Anime Blu-Ray Kickstarter has now surpassed $100,000, proving that their is indeed a market for the high octane action of Bean Bandit and his 1967 Shelby Mustang GT500.

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Sadly, Bean Bandit didn't have a very lengthy outing. After his initial anime debut in 1989, his creator Kenichi Sonada moved on to his more well known project, Gunsmith Cats!

Thankfully, Bean doesn't stay down for long, as fans of the Gunsmith Cats series will no doubt recognise the character (and his iconic muscle car) from his cameos as a freelance driver and body guard throughout the series.

Despite the film’s runtime of only 48 minutes, it is plenty entertaining, and the animation quality is high throughout It has a very 80's anime feel to it. The physical copy, including shipping, will set you back $40 if you’re in the UK (around £28.50), and is expected to ship at the end of this year.

The campaign is being presented by AnimEigo, who have previously found Kickstarter success with Otaku no Video and Bubblegum Crisis re-releases, with both projects achieving more than twice their required funding targets!

Have you backed this classic blu-ray release yet? If not, why the hell wouldn’t you want this slice of anime history in your collection? I genuinely can't wait to receive my own copy. The DVDs are like gold-dust, as I've hunted for a legitimate version of this rare title since I discovered it 8 years ago.

I've included snippets from the project release copy below:

One of the classics of the original Anime OVA boom, Riding Bean is acclaimed character designer SONODA Ken'ichi's gasoline and gunpowder-fueled 46-minute joyride around Chicago, featuring original music by Phil Perry & David "Creatchy" Garfield.

The plot begins to thicken when ace courier Bean Bandit drives getaway from a robbery (score: 6 police cruisers and 1 18-wheeler). The crooks are a little ticked off to find out that Bean's flat rate fee accounts for almost all of the proceeds, but business is business. The next day, Bean and his heavily-armed assistant, Rally Vincent (deadly with both gun and frying pan), receive a visitor with a young girl in tow. The visitor barely has time to beseech them to return the girl to her father before a hit-team swiss-cheeses Bean's apartment. Unfortunately for him, he doesn't have Bean's taste in clothes (all Kevlar, including his underwear!). Bean and Rally bundle little Chelsea into the car and make tracks. Alas, what they don't know is that the kidnappers have already made off with the $2,000,000 ransom, leaving them to take the rap. Will Bean discover the ruse in time and get the money for himself? Will he be able to evade the relentless pursuit of Inspector Percy? And most importantly, how much will the Chicago P.D.'s insurance company raise their rates?

This limited-edition Blu-Ray release is a "High Octane Edition" for a reason. We will be using the same uncompressed HD transfer as the recent Japanese release, but using a BD50 instead of BD25 for a higher bitrate. It will contain both the original Japanese soundtrack and the English dub, plus English subtitles in multicolor, greyscale and SDH variants (or you can watch with no subtitles if you prefer). The disc will not be region-coded, and we can ship it anywhere in the world except for Japan, China and Taiwan.

Other bonus materials include a 9-panel insert sheet with mini-poster, printed program notes and other cool stuff, as well as color artwork, line art (settei), after-recording script, and more. As much as possible, everything will be available both on the disc and online. And of course, all backers will be credited on the disc!

The High Octane Edition will only be sold via crowdfunding and direct sales on our website. It will never be available for less than the crowdfunding price. While we currently do not intend to release a regular commercial version of Riding Bean on Blu-ray, if we do it will be in different packaging and will not include any extra physical stretch-goal bonuses.

Source: Kickstarter: Riding Bean High Octane Edition Anime Blu-ray

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Riding Bean smashes $30,000 Kickstarter goal in 2 hours!

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