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Discotek Licenses Dororo, Offers Samurai Pizza Cats on SD Blu-ray

North American video distributor Discotek Media announced on Tuesday that it has licensed the Dororo television anime series. It will also reissue the Samurai Pizza Cats anime series on standard-definition Blu-ray Disc, and it confirmed its previously announced Blu-ray Disc release of the Shin Getter Robo vs. Neo Getter Robo anime series.

Dororo is a 26-episode black-and-white anime series produced in 1969. Tezuka Productions describes the story:

The setting is the middle of the Muromachi Period, during the 1470s after the Wars of Onin and Bunmei. The story begins in the Noto Peninsula of the Hokuriku District. The main character (Hyakkimaru), who lacks as much as 48 body parts, obtains a fake body and eliminates 48 monsters that were made from his body to retrieve his missing body parts.

The anime adapts the original 1967 Dororo manga series by manga and anime pioneer Osamu Tezuka. Vertical released the manga in a collected volume in 2012. A live-action film adaptation starring Kou Shibasaki and Satoshi Tsumabuki premiered in Japan in 2007.

Discotek will release the complete Dororo television anime series with English subtitles. Anime Sols held crowdfunding campaigns for two DVD sets for the series, but the service will shut down on May 1.

Discotek is offering the complete 52-episode Samurai Pizza Cats series on one standard-definition Blu-ray Disc with English dubbing. It previously released the series in a dubbed-only DVD set. It also released the original Japanese series, Kyatto-Ninden Teyandee, in a complete, uncut DVD set in Japanese with English subtitles.

The 1990-91 Tatsunoko "science-fiction historical gag battle anime" revolves arouund Nyankii (Samurai Pizza Cats), a secret ninja team that protects the robotic animal inhabitants of Edoropolis (Little Tokyo) from the evil ninja organization Karakara. Saban Entertainment licensed and released the series on television in the United States.

Discotek will release the complete four-episode original video anime (OVA) series Shin Getter Robo vs. Neo Getter Robo with English subtitles. It will be the distributor's first subtitled-only Blu-ray Disc release. It already released the 2000 series on DVD in 2013, and had announced plans for a Blu-ray Disc release in 2012.

Discotek describes the story based on Gō Nagai's super robot creations:

Years after the defeat of the Reptilian Empire, Getter Team has begun training on a new super robot, Neo Getter Robo. But a surprise attack from the Empire's revived leader forces them to recruit a street fighter named Go Ichimonji as Getter One's pilot. Faced with an enormously powerful foe, the new team's only hope for victory may lie in the resurrection of the lost weapon of humanity, Shin Getter Robo.

Update: Samurai Pizza Cats will be dubbed, not subtitled.