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In Movies this week we get The Man with the Iron Fists 2, which is a kung-fu epic fantasy that takes place in a 19th century Chinese village. The villagers and mine workers are the oppressed, while the mine owners and their enforcers are the evil overlords. The stranger in town teaches the villagers how to protect themselves and fight back. We also get the animated Batman vs. Robin, the latest entry in the DC Universe Animated Movies catalog. I didn’t find any North American genre TV shows this time around.

In Anime a single title of note: The Pet Girl of Sakurasou puts all 24 episodes in a single box set. Banished from regular housing for adopting stray cats, Kanda finds himself in Sakura Hall, along with every other weirdo and genus from the campus. There he is assigned to keeping a completely dysfunctional but acclaimed artist from forgetting to eat, clothe, or groom herself, on the assumption that he is used to taking care of the easily confused and distracted animals he has taken in. The fun in this series is in the various characters, who include a manga artist, an animator, a script writer, and a voice actress, otaku all.

BBC Radio 4 is airing the first ever dramatization of Ursula Le Guin’s award winning and groundbreaking The Left Hand of Darkness beginning today at 15:00 UT. That’s right around 11AM EST, or 8AM Pacific, and besides airing in real time it will be available in their Listen Again mode for the next week or three. The one hour program is the first part of two, so make sure to catch them both so you can enjoy the whole story. It won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards as 1969’s best novel (one voted on by fans, one voted on by authors), and I can’t wait to hear it as a radio play. Another of her works is being aired beginning on the 27th of this month on BBC Radio 4Extra; Earthsea will be airing at 18:00 UT, and is a series of 6 episodes, 30 minutes long each. I’m not even going to try to tell you how many awards it won.