“Ni No Kuni” Gets a January 22nd U.S. Release Date! Everybody Dance!

I’m up at 5am and there’s no way I’m going to sleep after having just seen this story and PS3 gameplay trailer for Ni No Kuni, the videogame collaboration between Level-5 (The Professor Layton series) and Studio Ghibli (Princess Mononoke, Howl’s Moving Castle, Spirited Away and so many more incredible movies it’ll make you crazy) coming to both the Nintendo DS and PS3. And included at the end of the trailer is a Western release date for the game of January 22nd!

Unless The Last Guardian suddenly gets a release date (and gets finished), this looks like it might be my favorite game of 2013 already. Yes, I’m still a GTA fanatic, and we’ll see what GTA 5 holds in store, but this game looks like a complete and fresh opposite to that experience so I’m going to start it off in my “Most Anticipated Game of 2013” slot (and I’ll only have 22 days of 2013 in which to wait for it!

It was the summer of 1995 when I first went with a friend to the UTexas Anime Club screening of Studio Ghibli’s Laputa: Castle in the Sky and I have been a Studio Ghibli fanatic ever since, still owning all of my fan for fan made VHS tapes of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind and My Neighbor Totoro and everything else Studio Ghibli that I could feverishly get. This trailer brought many of those feelings that I was discovering a new form of masterful storytelling right back. And after last weekend, in which Laura spent both plane flights back and forth to Mexico playing one of Level-5’s Professor Layton games, this household is prepped and ready! I’m still excited to see more details on the DS version of the game and hopefully I’ll return from E3 next week with more to share!