Ok, the only news here is that the official Heavenly Sword site is now open, and can be accessed here. So I eagerly checked out the U.S. page searching for new pictures, and was foiled to find only a boring blank screen. Remembering that the developers were somewhere over in Europe, I checked out the French page and successfully found more details and images. Here's the translated official story details: 

Heavenly Sword is a history of revenge, courage and discovered self. The members of the clan tell that also far they remember, prophecies always spoke about a son, descendant of their chief, which will have to lead them to their place, to the paradise. But when the chief of the clan becomes the father of a small girl, prophecy never seems to have to be carried out… It is in any case what everyone thought… After the assassination of his/her father by a assoiffé rival of blood, Nariko is likely nothing any more but one last to be able to modify its destiny and to avenge death for his/her father. To achieve this mission, it must find the sword Heavenly Sword, a weapon so powerful that each blow carried brings it closer a little more death… Whereas it fights with rage, Nariko only will not learn that revenge is useless, but it will be discovered and found its place in the world. It is only whereas it can hold up the sword, to control it, raise the curse and to achieve its destiny…

Far from being a simple delicately woven history of courage and punishment, Heavenly Sword ventures to propose absolutely fabulous graphics with the service of an experiment of play out of the commun run, linking with brilliance numerical creation and dramatic performance. By capturing the movements, the facial expressions and the voices of various actors using microphones without wire, of hundreds of beacons thinking the light and cameras of infra-red, Heavenly Sword is on the point of defining a new standard of emotional performance in the video games. You for a epic adventure prepare, an experiment as you never yet lived about it!

Sweet, a few gaps have been filled in, but nothing drastically new besides some new wallpapers in the gallery below. Then I decided to snoop around a little more and try out the good ol' "view page source" trick to see what I could find. Here's where the rumor comes into play.

As you can see in the picture above, the meta tags (key words to help get found by search engines) list both "anime" and "PSP". I rarely watch anime, but the style of Heavenly Sword, plus the action Nariko brings to the story, would be a great feminine Samurai Champloo-ish show that I'd love to see. And what about the PSP tag? They probably just slipped it in there to help get more traffic - I don't even want to think of how much extra work it would be for Ninja Theory to dumb down the graphics and physics for a PSP version, although we also didn't believe the God of War PSP game rumors either when they first started. Heavenly Sword is definitely looking like the woman equivalent of God of War so far, so even if none of these rumors are true, it's still good to see the site up and know the game is on track for a Fall release. Here's the four 1024x768 concept art wallpapers, some of which we've already seen. (Right click and save them to get the full resolution size.) I love the crazy king picture, I can't wait to attack his genitals.

Okay anime readers, this one's for you. Studio Pierrot's first episode of Blue Dragon airs in Japan this Saturday. If you're looking forward to Blue Dragon on Xbox 360 in America, then downloading this show online is your only way of getting a look at the story until the game comes to the states in August. This video is a preview of how much more annoying the show looks than the game. At least the lame characters keep their mouth shut while you run around in the game. Some of the show's graphics are done in 3D, like in the anime series Last Exile, except it still looks terrible. Don't worry if you miss the first episode, in typical anime overkill fashion, there's 51 episodes planned for the series, you'll have plenty of time to catch up.

If you're anxiously awaiting Blue Dragon's release in America, then you might want to check out its anime series overseas, which is starting in April. TV Tokyo will be broadcasting the Blue Dragon anime, and I'm sure there will be torrents up if you're willing to risk the download. The show was made by Studio Pierrot, the people who worked on Bleach and the famous Naruto series that went from anime fame to its own game series. The voice acting for the show won't be the same people used in the game, so that might upset some people, but at least it will give you something else to bicker about besides the neverending subs versus subs anime debate.