Ask John: When Will We See To Heart and Orphen?

Question:
What is To Heart like and how many episodes does it have? What is Sorcerous Staber Orphen like? How many episodes is it? When will ADV release it?

Answer:
To Heart is a 13 episode life-sim TV series focusing on the daily lives of a group of high-school age friends. It’s based on a series of popular PC and Playstation video-games. The show is relatively slow moving but has charming characterizations and unusually good art and animation quality by TV show standards. I really like the show a whole lot, but it’s definitely not a show for people looking for typical anime action and adventure. For example, virtually the entire first episode is devoted to choosing seat assignments for home-room.

Orphen is a 26 episode humorous fantasy/adventure TV series with unusually good character design, art and animation quality. Think of Orphen as a slightly darker version of Slayers. Orphen also has a second 26 episode series titled Sorcerous Stabber Orphen: Revenge. Contrary to what the title suggests, from reviews I’ve read and TV commercials for it I’ve seen, the second series discards the darker and somewhat serious content of the first series entirely, focusing on absurd slap-stick comedy. AD Vision has not yet announced any information regarding their release plans for Orphen, so there’s no telling when we’ll see it in the US. To Heart has not been licensed for release in the US yet, nor do I honestly anticipate seeing this series brought to these shores anytime soon seeing as shoujo and life-sim anime, with a few exceptions, have not proven to generate and sustain a large mainstream consumer market base in the US.