The Panda Kopanda (Panda Baby Panda) films, if as the result of some horrific incident you don't already know, are two 30-something-minute cartoons directed by Takahata Isao from an original screenplay by Miyazaki Hayao, with Miyazaki also on art direction, layout and key animation, and are perhaps the cutest ever, as any still involving titular kopanda Pan-chan or the second film's Tora-chan, let alone both together, will demonstrate (the image I've used here comes from the official Web site for the Ghibli Museum Library re-release, by the way). It comes just between the initial Lupin Sansei series and Alps no Shôjo Heidi in the Ghibli-posse chronology: more specifically, it was made on the rebound from Astrid Lindgren turning down their request to make a Pippi Långstrump animation and, as these excepts from Miyazaki's imageboards attest, incorporates numerous visual ideas originally conceived for Pippi (still others would go on to influence their adaptations of Heidi and Majo no Takkyûbin).The reason I bring this up now is that I recently discovered, though a combination of procrastination and happenstance, that Manga Entertainment, of all companies, and not Optimum Releasing, as one would expect, are bringing Panda Kopanda, as Panda! Go Panda!, to the British Isles in DVD form. It will be out on 6 July 2009: here's a link to it at Find-DVD. Judging by the cover, it will be identical to that released in Australia by Madman Entertainment in 2005 and doesn't make use of Ghibli's recent re-release of it, though it remains an incredibly delightful surpirse to have something like this reach the UK at all (and with Japan being an NTSC territory and UK anime licensors not being ones to have things mastered for themselves, there's little to no way that they could in any case). A trailer for the re-release I mentioned can be found over here.
Current music: The Yeomen of the Guard, or The Merryman and his Maid – "I have a song to sing, O!"
