The legendary animator Ichiro Itano was involved in a bike accident recently. Quickly hospitalized he appears to be okay but obviously we’re concerned for his well being. The above picture was an impromptu “get well soon” card of sorts from other anime luminaries. For those unaware of Itano’s work, he’s one of the foremost mecha choreographers out there and his signature missile flourish, the Itano Circus, has graced pretty much every Macross series to date. We’ve linked a video below of his greatest hits in case you’re at all curious about Itano’s creative output. Despite his prodigious animation work, his influence has had a palpable effect on gaming too. That aside, our thoughts are with him as well as his friends and family. Naturally, we hope he makes a speedy recovery.

What with the release of Masou Kishin III a few weeks away, we now finally have a nice long and juicy extended promo for the game (shown below). As you’d expected the battle animations are looking consistently fantastic but we’re still hoping winkysoft are involved in this, as they basically made all the Masou Kishin games to date. That aside, you can still pre-order both (region free) versions of the games here (PS3) and here (Vita).

There will be an Armored Core Convention held on the 7th September in Washington DC. Apparently LAN games will be supported as well as the chance to win Armored Core figures (plus the opportunity to drink booze). The convention also marks the series’ 16th birthday, which is nice. More details will be forthcoming closer to the time but you can go to the Facebook page to show your support and interest. Talking of Armored Core, there’s a pretty interesting interview over at 4Gamer about Verdict Day.

Courtesy of our good friends at HobbyLink Japan we’ve been sent the Riobot Orgun from the series Detonator Orgun. In addition, we’ve also included some game and anime footage of the mecha in action at the end of the review.

Following on from Bandai’s reveal of a Super Robot Chogokon Shin Getter-1, we’ll also be getting a Mazinkaiser too later in the year. Whilst this design was featured in an OVA, its origins stem from the Super Robot Wars games. Over the years we’ve bought all manner of toy variants of this design from the Aoshima figures as well as the Max Factory and even Revoltech versions. However, this looks like a great little toy and unlike the previous bigger releases this won’t cost crazy amounts either. Priced at a very reasonable 6,800 yen and released in November, this Mazinkaiser looks great. If you’re at all tempted you can also pre-order the toy here.

As many of you already know, a patch for the PS3 version of Zone of the Enders HD Edition has finally been released. This specifically covers the Anubis portion of the collection in case you’re wondering. Whilst this does improve the game noticeably it’s still not as good as the PS2 original, so in that sense our review of the collection will stand as is (as the 360 version remains unchanged as does the original game). However the studio behind the PS3 patch, that of the indomitable Hexadrive, have written a fantastically detailed post on all the improvements they made. It really begs the question why they weren’t hired in the first place for the port. There are also some great comparison videos too, so those are worth a watch. All in all though, it’s still sad to think that possibly the last ever release of Zone of the Enders was handled so badly.

Firebase Industries have announced a new game project, called Moonlight, that features a transforming mecha (as shown above) and very much ties into classic arcade shooters. The Beethoven infused promo video (shown below) looks very promising indeed too. No word on price or platforms as yet but we’re definitely curious to see how this turns out.

The second episode for Super Robot Wars Operation Extend is now out. If you’ve already bought the combined pack that you can download it for free, otherwise you’ll pay 200 yen. More units will be added to the roster, featuring that of Gurren Lagann. We’ve been enjoying the game thus far but without the freemium booster (which we bought) the game would be a motherless grind and in places probably quite unfair. Once all the episodes have been released we’ll likely review the game but thus far it’s pretty good.

Now with Wonder Festival 2013 Summer behind us, we have all manner of interesting reveals to ponder. From a fantastic Giant Gorg toy to the announcement of a new and brilliant looking Getter Robo series (with the toys shown above), it’s all been quite eventful. Especially as Arcadia showed their new 1/60 YF-19 toy and it’s clear that this is indeed using much of the new engineering seen in Yamato’s Fire Valkyrie. This alone is fantastic news. As always, AmiAmi has a nice selection of coverage here, here, here and here. Even more coverage is nicely collated here as well.

You can now pre-order the simply gorgeous Isamu Dyson YF-29 DX Chogokin via the Bandai premium online webshop. Priced at 17,850 yen it will be released in December of this year. This was a unique version of the YF-29 Durandal as seen in the recently released Macross 30. It even seems like this version of the YF-29 will come with a bayonet on the end of the gunpod, much like the VF-11B Thunderbolt that Isamu also piloted at the beginning of Macross Plus. Regardless, this is a toy that we will be getting and may even get around to reviewing too.