A while back, my boss called me into his office to watch an odd little
show from Japan. My Japanese is more than a little rusty, but it seemed to
be about a bunch of homeless kids living in a tent, eating onion soup and
shooting each other with marbles (not exactly accurate...). I remember there
was a really
cute cat and some funky western music. Steve decided this was
a great opportunity to create an anime spaghetti western. Instead of six-
shooters, these kids settled the score with B-Daman Blasters. Little did I
know how that idea would change the course of my next year and possibly my
career...
     Fast-forward slightly to Fall 2004:  I found myself in Los Angeles,
meeting with the folks at Disney about show placement and delivery
requirements.  We began production on the U.S. version of Battle B-Daman
in October of 2004 and my life has been a whirlwind ever since.  Over the
course of the next 13 months, we completed 52 episodes of Battle B-Daman.  
51 of those episodes aired on ABCFamily Channel and ToonDisney before the
show was cancelled at the end of 2005.  With one episode left.   
Unfortunately, that’s just the way the TV cookie crumbles sometimes.   But
Yamato and the gang were not going to be defeated that easily – B-Daman
has found a new home on Cartoon Network (woohoo!) and is also currently
part of the line up of Action Blast! on the G4 network.
     I learned so much from my work on this show.  It was a great
experience, and I finally got my name up there in the lights.  You can check
it out in the end credits of every episode,
AND I made it on to imdb.com!
(In case you haven’t been there, the internet movie database is a great
resource for technical and fun info on just about every movie ever made and
a lot of TV shows, too)  I’m also on tv.com and a bunch of anime-related
websites.  How cool is that?
           
Associate Producer     Denise Marie Knuff
     If you haven’t seen the show, and shame on you if you haven’t :-), you can
read the PR sheet (which I wrote)
here.
     Now on to the next big challenge!