Most everything being mentioned here today is from Japan, so I must start by telling you you can watch NHK live online, in English, to keep up to the minute on developments in what is the worst earthquake to ever strike that country. My heart goes out to everyone hurt or with with family killed in this disaster.
Today is the leading edge of Global Shinkai Day, the Fan-invented celebration of Anime creator Makoto Shinkai. In honor of this Crunchyroll is streaming three of his best works online: 5 Centimeters Per Second, Voices of a Distant Star, and The Place Promised in Our Early Days. These are amazing movies (one feature length, and two shorter pieces) that are quite different than you would be expecting if you haven’t seen one of his masterpieces before. His stories only ever have one subject; the human heart. The day itself is tomorrow, the 12th, but the viewing runs throughout the weekend. Trust me when I say you want to catch them before they evaporate off the server.
Also the Anime Network has added a lot of new content to their portal on Hulu. Some of the new titles include Hell Girl (Seasons 2 and 3), High School of the Dead, and Tayutama: Kiss on My Deity, to name but a few. On their primary site they just launched Akane Iro ni Somaru Saka, an Anime rendition of a VN Game (Visual Novel Game, think interactive semi-animated comic book game). The subject matter of the series is not what I usually track, but because of the source media type this one is developing in directions I had never expected, and so promises to be worth checking out.