Sunrise, Bandai celebrates GUNDAM's 20th with Big Bang Project
Sunrise and its distributor and owning company Bandai announced the Gundam Big Bang Project, a multi-part commemoration of the first MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM's twentieth anniversary. From March to May, the two companies will organize an All-Gundam Popularity Contest. On 1 August, Sunrise will hold a special event and short film screening in Yokohama, and Bandai Visual will release the MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM Memorial Box Part 1, the first home video release of the original television series in Japan. The laserdisc box set will contain the first 22 episodes for Y36000, while the second half will follow in December.
The same summer, the NEW MOBILE WAR RECORD GUNDAM W: ENDLESS WALTZ SPECIAL EDITION film will double-bill in theaters with MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM: THE 08TH MS TEAM MIRROR'S REPORT, the tentatively titled compilation of the video series' first eight volumes. Sunrise also plans to re-release previous GUNDAM animation in theaters with re-editing and new footage. In 1999, Sunrise plans to release a new television series that will be a compilation of the Universal Century saga. It also plans to air the 20th anniversary TV special G-SAVIOUR, a live-action and CGI collaboration between computer graphics talent in United States and Sunrise's G-S Team.

POCKET MONSTERS to resume airing after epilepsy reports
TV Tokyo plans to resume broadcasting of POCKET MONSTERS in mid-April, according to the company president Ichiki Yutaka in a 30 March press conference and release. POCKET MONSTERS is a popular animated series inspired by a successful Nintendo Game Boy title and featuring a yellow mouse-like creature named Pikachuu and its young human Pocket Monster Trainer, Satoshi. TV Tokyo and stations across Japan put the series on hiatus when over 600 people reported visually-induced epileptic symptoms after watching a 16 December 1997 airing of episode 38. The "CYBER WARRIOR POLYGON" ("DENNOU SENSHI PORIGON") episode contained a sequence that flashed 105 alternating red- and blue-lit images in five seconds. After announcing the National Association of Commercial Broadcasters' report findings and the 11 April POCKET MONSTERS INVESTIGATIVE REPORT television special, TV Tokyo plans to move POCKET MONSTERS from Tuesdays at 18:30 to Thursdays at 19:00 starting 16 April. (The former timeslot for POCKET MONSTERS is currently held by HARE TOKI-DOKI BUTA.) Summit Media plans to bring the Pocket Monsters television series to United States this fall after removing episode 38 and editing flashing sequences in other episodes.

Hayashibara Megumi announces marriage
Character voice Hayashibara Megumi (RANMA 1/2's female Saotome Ranma, NEON GENESIS EVANGELION's Ayanami Rei, COWBOY BEBOP's Faye Valentine) announced that she had married on 30 March. On 1 April, Hayashibara appeared in a wedding dress at a public recording event for her Tokyo Boogie Night radio program and said, "Although today is April Fool's Day, this is not a lie: I married on my birthday, the 30th of March." She reiterated her announcement on Heartful Station, another radio program which aired at 25:00 on 3 April [01:00 on 4 April]. 31-year-old Hayashibara reportedly married an unnamed company employee 3 years her junior after a five years' aquaintance.