Illumitoon Entertainment and Westlake Entertainment have jointly acquired North American distribution rights to Toei Animation's BOBOBO-BO BO-BOBO anime series. Based on the manga by Yoshio Sawai (published in
Illumitoon and Westlake announced that they are 'rolling out the first 50 episodes' (out of a total of 76) of the series, which is currently airing on the Cartoon Network's Saturday night Toonami block at 10 pm (ET, PT), with the first DVD set to street here as early as January, 2007.
The Illumitoon announcement did not indicate the fate of the other 26 episodes of the series, which ran on Japanese TV from 2003 to 2005. In spite of the fact that much of the humor in the series comes from difficult to translate puns (specifically Japanese cultural references and Chuck ('Duck Amuck') Jones self-referential playfulness with the nature of the animated medium itself), the BO-BOBO series has found an audience on the Cartoon Network, perhaps because its quirky subversive tone matches the Cartoon Network's own snarky late night network persona.
Viz Media has released one volume of BOBOBO-BO BO-BOBO manga, which has reached 22 volumes in Japan -- and, rather than publishing the first volume in the series, the book Viz brought out here took elements from the 9th and 10th volumes of the Japanese series. If the anime series does well, perhaps Viz Media will decide to issue the entire manga series.