Press Release

Count Down To New Year’s with CPM and Kakurenbo

Central Park Media offers fans 24 chances to win a copy of Kakurenbo: Hide and Seek on December 31, 2005

NEW YORK, NY (December 27, 2005) – Central Park Media today announced a special contest giving away 24 copies of CPM’s acclaimed Kakurenbo: Hide and Seek all throughout December 31st. From 12 AM EST December 31 to 12 AM EST January 1 2006, fans who visit http://centralparkmedia.com/kakurenbo/contest.html will be able to play a special Find Sorincha Flash game, and every player who wins will be entered into an hourly drawing to take home Kakurenbo on DVD.

CPM will be drawing a new winner each hour, and fans are encouraged to come back throughout the day, as every hour the game is played is another chance to win. All the winners will be announced on CPM’s Kakurenbo website on January 10.

“Kakurenbo: Hide and Seek was CPM’s big hit of 2005,” Peter Tatara, CPM’s Assistant Marketing Manager said. “From its sneak previews at conventions to its airing on Adult Swim, we’ve been very proud with how Kakurenbo’s been received. Now, as the year’s drawing to a close, we want to say thank you, and give those who haven’t yet discovered Kakurenbo this chance to.”

Kakurenbo: Hide and Seek is the first film by the new animation studio YAMATOWORKS, an independent computer graphics production house founded by Syuhei Morita, a veteran of the prolific Studio 4C (The Animatrix, Steamboy). Despite Kakurenbo being YAMATOWORKS's first project, Kakurenbo attracted some of the biggest voice acting talent on both sides of the Pacific -- its cast led by Junko Takeuchi (Naruto) in Japan and Michael Sinterniklaas (Alien 9, Fullmetal Alchemist) in North America.

Kakurenbo has screened at more than twenty of the most prestigious film festivals in the world including the Tokyo Anime Fair, Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival, and Fantasia International Film Festival, and has won awards including Best Short Film at Fantasia and the Exemplary Production Award at the Tokyo Anime Fair. Preview showings at Anime Expo, Comic-Con, and Otakon this past summer were standing room only, and Kakurenbo continually receives critical acclaim. Play Magazine, a leading anime and gaming periodical, called Kakurenbo “as timeless as it is beautiful.” Anime on DVD, one of the most-visited anime websites, said simply of Kakurenbo, “Haunting. Beautiful. Tragic. Brilliant. Recommended.”
About Central Park Media
Central Park Media is a 15-year-old Manhattan-based independent video and book publisher focused on Japanese and Korean animation and graphic novels. Central Park Media has been a leading supplier of anime in the United States since 1990, and a major publisher of manga since 1994. The company currently manufactures and distributes animated video programming under several label names, including U.S. Manga Corps, Be Beautiful, Software Sculptors and Central Park Media, as well as live-action Asian feature films under its Asia Pulp Cinema label.

With exclusive rights to hundreds of graphic novels, the company has become a leading North American publisher of Japanese manga and Korean manhwa. Among CPM's fan-favorite graphic novel titles are Lee Hyun Se's Nambul (the best-selling manhwa in Korean publishing history), and Kia Asamiya's Dark Angel. Under its Be Beautiful imprint, the company also publishes popular yaoi manga such as the best-selling Kizuna: Bonds of Love (the best-selling yaoi title in Japanese publishing history). Visit www.centralparkmedia.com, www.cpmpress.com and www.bebeautifulmanga.com for more information.