The Cartoon Network's highly rated late night Adult Swim block is adding some hip new series for 2005 and has acquired the final 62 episodes of the long-running Inuyasha TV anime as well as the broadcast rights for the first two Inuyasha movies. 

Samurai Champloo is the latest series from Shinichiro Watanabe, director of Cowboy Bebop, one of the key anime series that helped to define the Adult Swim ethos with its existential tales of intergalactic bounty hunters backed by superb Yoko Kanno scores.  An innovative blend of samurai lore and hip hop rhythms should provide a similar cachet to Samurai Champloo, while Paranoia Agent, a darkly complex tale set in the streets of contemporary Tokyo, should have a strong appeal to the hip Adult Swim audience which made Wolf's Rain a hit here in the U.S.  Both Samurai Champloo and Paranoia Agent, which is the work of Satoshi Kon (Millennium Actress, Tokyo Godfathers), are distributed in the U.S. by Geneon and are currently available on DVD (Samurai Champloo Vol. #1 just shipped in January and Paranoia Agent Vol. #3 is due in March).

Adult Swim has also acquired the rest of the long-running Inuyasha TV anime (episodes 105-167).  Based on Rumiko Takahashi's popular manga series, the Inuyasha anime has become one of the Adult Swim's most popular offerings, and both the Inuyasha manga and the Inuyasha anime DVDs (all published in the U.S. by Viz) are extremely strong performers in their respective categories.  The Cartoon Network has not yet announced when it will air the newly acquired Inuyasha episodes.