Tokyopop announced today that it will add the Marmalade Boy anime series to its growing lineup of anime and manga titles(see 'Tokyopop Plans Major Manga Expansion'). At this point, the DVD series is planned to include the first 24 episodes of the 76-episode series.  Details about the Marmalade Boy DVDs, including the list of bonus features, will be released shortly. 

Marmalade Boy was a surprise hit in the 1990s, when it benefited from its bizarre premise and quirky humor.  Told largely from the point of view of the teenagers involved, Marmalade Boy is the twisted saga of two families who swap spouses and then decide to live together in a sort of 'Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice Meet the Brady Bunch' scenario.  Needless to say much of the humor involves a crush between two teens, who suddenly find themselves stepbrother and stepsister.  The anime series became so popular that it soon used up all the material from the original manga title and went off on its own with a seemingly endless procession of love triangles and complications, so the plotlines of the manga and anime series diverge as American fans will discover as Tokyopop issues more volumes of the manga series and gets deeper into the anime offerings.  Marmalade Boy's quirky plot has earned it worldwide attention from anime devotees and there are more than 1,000 websites, newsgroups, and forums dedicated to the series.

 

Brigadoon
Tokyopop also announced that it has acquired the rights to Brigadoon, a 26-episode series produced by Sunrise Animation, the studio responsible for Gundam Wing, Cowboy Bebop, and Outlaw Star.  Brigadoon, which aired in Japan in 2000, is very different sort of series.  It follows the adventures of a young orphan girl who is the first to notice a city floating above her village.  Alternating comedy with adventure, the series owes more to Miyazaki's Laputa than to Sunrise's edgier series like Outlaw Star and Cowboy Bebop.