In an effort to explore new article ideas for the blog we have decided to test the waters reviewing various anime related web sites seeing what they provide the fandom and maybe give some suggestions of what they could provide their audience in the future. We have done this once before in a similar manner when we looked at the Crunchyroll website and are trying it again with The Bandai Entertainment Manga website.
With the growing popularity, need, and proliferation of official anime and manga websites, it seemed only fair that we add it to the repertoire of reviews we do here. There are a lot of sites out there providing all kinds of services to this will be used to highlight (or chastise when appropriate) some of the great resources out there.
The first thing I always look for is how easy is it to find the site? The offical site for Bandai Manga is the 4th on the list in a Google search and 2nd on the list in a Bing search for “Bandai manga.” The first site that comes up in both searches is the main Bandai Entertainment site. This would be fine except there is no easy link between the two pages. Some where in the manga section of the main Bandai page should be something informing me that I can learn more at the manga site. On the flip side there was an ad for the Kurokami anime led to the main Bandai Entertainment site but there should have been something more substantial to link the two pages on this side as well. The website itself was easy to navigate and pleasant on the eyes. There is no real flash or pizazz to it but this also made it very easy to find what you were looking for which is always one of my highest priorities. My major complaint is none of the series have overall descriptions. A quick paragraph or two saying what Gundam ooF is about instead of having to click on individual books to learn about the series as a whole would be most helpful.
I have to agree that I thought finding the site was a lot harder than it should be. The first thing I noticed was that the main page isn’t very welcoming, nor does it have anything to unique to it. The top is the news section, which is appropriate, but not if it is only going to be updated so sparsely (the last, and only, update is from February 22). Navigating around is quite easy as it all lies on the left-hand side. However, if you click Contact there is no page or option, it just tries to send an e-mail (but if don’t have a program like that operating you have no idea that anything has happened) and just brings you back to the home. Though it impressively sends the e-mail directly to Robert Napton. The manga section is very simple and while the manga series would really benefit from descriptions, each manga has a lot of information about the books themselves. The novel section is slightly better as each has a story description without needing to click to see it. However, none of the books link directly to their previews if they exist, you have to go the previews section separately. I think adding either a shop or atleast linking to places to purchase the books (which they do on the main Bandai website) would be a good idea.
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This year the industry news out of Otakon was a bit light but that is hardly shocking considering it came right after both Anime Expo and San Diego Comic Con in tough economic times. The leftovers are mostly saved for Otakon. There were several announcements of which dub actors were being used it upcoming high profile dubs. It was good to see that broad spectrum appeal shows were still getting dubs and a bit of fanfare. That being said I could care less about such news and just suggest that anyone who is interested pop on over to ANN as see who has been cast as who.
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