The purpose of advertising a new game or anime titles is to promote it to the widest possible audience through whatever means a company deems necessary given time-frame, resources and the target audience. While with most games, in-game footage or scenes from the episodes are able to easily win over new and old fans alike…. heck if you were to show a bit of gameplay footage of Halo 4 it would most probably spread like wildfire across the gaming media and community alike. However, when it comes to advertising, I generally like to see them work a bit harder to win over my buck. Therefore I would like to take the opportunity to compile my list of Top 5 anime and video game companies that have gone past the norm and promoted at least a couple of their titles in a creative way. (Do note, this is in no particular order and as I obviously havent watched every game trailer released over the last couple of decades – is not an exhaustive list).
Nippon Ichi Software America
I start with Nippon Ichi Software America because they have produced several trailers which over the last couple of years which I would consider unique and targetted their J-RPG fan audience well. Take last years release of Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten… they extended well past what was delivered when promoting the Japanese release and parodied not only the bland trailers some games have but then showcases all the games improvements with catchy music and an out there narrator. The same can be said with other trailers for Prinny 2: Dawn of Operation Panties, dood! (Obviously focusing on the slavery endured by Prinnies and their quest to find Etna’s panties) and Zettai Hero Project (Think… Super Hero show narration x 10 in regards to awesomeness).
A few examples of these are below:
[youtube zMEqIzM843U 530 335]
Zettai Hero Project
[youtube dV2CAcgvLY0 530 335]
Prinny 2: Dawn of Operation Panties, dood!
[youtube bh1cdWOK9DA 530 335]
Disgaea 4
Given that only a few of NIS America’s titles could be considered mainstream games and instead are J-RPG’s based towards fans of the genre, I think these trailers while not being able to win over everyone would easily capture a viewers intention and at the very least encourage someone like myself to read more into the game.
ADV Films
While the company has not been releasing anime titles for several years now, I don’t think any anime distributor to date have met the passion they had when it came to thinking up clever trailers for their titles. While not all of their titles received the same treatment, there were several of them which remain highly memorable in my mind – including their trailer for Puni Puni Poemy that parodied censorship through their removal of “Content offensive to viewers” and one more people would have seen – their Azumanga Daioh trailer which was dubbed by Luci Christian and summed up the show perfectly.
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Azumanga Daioh
[youtube JY3ex5BXqys 530 335]
Puni Puni Poemy
[youtube o-0R23gEIko 530 335]
Happy Lesson
If you are interested in checking out their titles, most are now being republished by Section23 or I believe in a few cases Funimation. Some of the titles may also be available in Australia from Madman Entertainment.
Sony Computer Entertainment
While we have unfortunately not seen a Kevin Butler advertisement in numerous months now, the Kevin Butler line of ads for SCE’s Playstation 3 console and line of games was undoubtedly very successful even if it was initially based on a simple idea that grew…. and grew…. and grew. Portrayed by actor Jerry Lambert, Kevin Butler was a Vice President of many fictitious positions within SCE from VP of Fanboy Relations to (According to Gabe Newell) VP of Sharpening Things.
[youtube Xb-8OoZ5jpE 530 335]
Dance Star Party
[youtube nmLdD1m46k8 530 335]
LittleBigPlanet2
[youtube 71zDrqpKXRs 530 335]
VP of Getting to Know Your Wife…. Uh…. Family Activities Director
Square Enix
Square Enix have provided us with two different forms of trailers over the last year – the first while only a few in number come from their smaller game releases such as Elevator Action Deluxe which turned something like moving up and down elevators into something that looked legitimately fun (and while nothing special wasnt actually half bad). The second comes from visually impressive Final Fantasy trailers that actually look like they would make an awesome game – take the recent Luminous Studio Engine tech demo…. was I the only one who felt a little twinge of excitement when watching it? Of course it comes with a bit of disappointment that we will not be seeing the storyline behind the tech demo “Agni’s Philosophy” take the form of a real game.
[youtube UVX0OUO9ptU 530 335]
Agni’s Philosophy
[youtube 5VLpnVRBPOU 530 335]
Elevator Action Deluxe
Funimation Entertainment
While at this moment the company has not been able to reach what I would consider the standard set by ADV Films when it came to advertising, Funimation as a company have put across some really unique trailers. More recently has been their trailers for Strike Witches. While the series is focused on a group of girls fighting against the threat of unidentified flying objects named Neuroi they identified what the main “unique” factor about this series is (The fact that none of the females wear anything but underwear/bloomers etc on the bottom half of their bodies and posed trailers focusing on the “War Against Pants” rather than the “War Against Neuroi”. While some might call it creepy, it actually seemed to work quite well for the company.
Unfortunately as many of the companies trailers are behind region lock, it is a bit difficult to showcase many of their clever trailers so if you are interested in some of them you might have to dig around a bit. However here are a few I think were particularly well done in the context of this article.
[youtube n1VGn68QvNk 530 335]
Strike Witches
[youtube 6nKzlkQrpAQ 530 335]
Kodocha
[youtube FziRvdhhbd8 530 335]
Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple
Warner Bros Interactive Entertainment / Grasshopper Manufacture
You may recall a few days ago I wrote up a review of Lollipop Chainsaw. During the review I mentioned several times that it was not necessarily the storyline that pulled the game across the line but it was the clever writing. This clever writing also carried over to the trailers with several of them being released pending launch and all showcasing what the game had to offer well – clever comedic writing, over the top cliche characters and violence…. lots and lots of violence. Below are a couple of examples of why Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment deserves to be on this list for this game alone:
[youtube pFNCDTkE-_U 530 335]
Nick & Juliet
[youtube Nt-t8OF6vcA 530 335]
Lollipop Chainsaw “Special Edition” Live Action “Trailer”
[youtube OGSQiC-zRLg 530 335]
Zom-Be-Gone Live Action “Trailer”
