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Something to Watch: Online

The streaming schedules for various Anime programs from Japan have been broken up by the disaster continuing to happen there, in no small part because all the TV channels have been doing emergency response information and disaster news coverage. Since all the contractual agreements with places like Crunchyroll stipulate that the programs air in Japan before streaming anywhere else, this is understandable. Even though the emergency is still ongoing some of the regular programing is returning to the airwaves, so new episodes of some of the programs are once more becoming available. NHK World is still doing full time disaster coverage, which you can watch online at that link. It is also available on Ustream for those in the Americas, over at Nico Nico Live across Asia, and on their own iPhone/iPad App. Once the emergency is over and they return to regular programing, I have 3 shows to recommend:

1) Imagine-Nation, a weekly edutainment program covering the Manga, Anime, and Gaming news out of Japan.

2) Digista which is running this season as Digista Teens, the high school version. This is all about learning how to create your own media to express yourself, with guidance from industry professionals, and most of the media being created is one flavor or another of animation. This one gives you insights and useful tips for building your own, so it is worth your time if you are considering creating something. Digista was a Japanese program for adults, but Digista Teens has expanded to become part of the Asia-Pacific Broadcast Union helping kids from multiple countries grow their skill sets. If this sounds kind of familiar, perhaps you read my Build Your Own blog entry a few days ago, when I gave the link to download some of the free animation software they are using for this project.

3) J-Melo, the weekly music program covering J-Rock, J-Pop, and all other music formats. They play both video tracks and run their own live concerts from the studio/club, this is a great place to learn about new bands and see some old favorites.

New Torchwood Date, Red Nose video

Starz has announced that the air date for Torchwood: Miracle Day will be July 8th, 2011. On that day we will get to see the premiere episode of season 4, which will get a 10 episode run. That run will bracketed by season 6 of Doctor Who on BBC America, which starts the first half of the season on April 23 and breaks a few weeks before Torchwood starts. After Torchwood runs, Who returns! I wish I could say that we will be getting Sarah Jane Adventures after that, but I don’t believe they have run in the US since season 1; I have had to wait for the DVDs to see them.

But you can see this year’s Red Nose Day Doctor Who episodes online; enjoy!

Build Your Own: TV Show Animation Software

This is a definite Build Your Own kind of project. The folks over at the NHK have launched a new set of tools, all to make children’s ability to create their own animations easy and educational. Being their countries equivalent of Public Broadcasting, all of the software is free, and they also throw in a lot of video resources to help folks build from. The core group developing all this is the Software Technology Research Laboratory, which has been building new toys and tools since at least 1995. The specific software package we are talking about today is the TVML, or TV program Making Language, a software package you should download now. You can get all the details at the TVML Applications site. You really do want to add this free software to your build-your-own collection, even if you don’t speak Japanese. The TV4U software suite might also be useful for your development…

Something to Do: Movies

I have been waiting for, and blogging about, Sucker Punch for close to two years now. The wait is over, because it hits the big screen this weekend, and I will guaranteed be there.This animated short, The Trenches, is a bit of a spin-off from the project. There is also a movie coming out this weekend called The 5th Quarter, but sadly it is not based on the book written by Tanya Huff.

Something to Watch: DVDs

Skyline was not well received in part because Earth lost to the alien invaders. To me that wasn’t the point of the movie, but just part of the backdrop; the story was abut never giving up, even when they rip the spine and brain out of your body to use as spare programmable automation parts. I also thought that having humans be one of the resources the invasion was plundering the planet for was a realistic touch. It wouldn’t be cost effective to attack across interstellar distances if you did not maximize your return by utilizing everything you could from the target, and the processing power in the human brain still outstrips any computer we have managed to build so far. Odds are good their programming techniques would use far more than the 10% of the brain that most people are stuck with. A related film coming out on DVD this week, Battle of Los Angeles, I believe is the version from the Syfy Channel TV Movie production team, and not the one that hit the theaters a few weeks back.

This weeks documentary pick is the Walking Dead Girls, with George A. Romero, Lloyd Kaufman, and Bruce Campbell telling all about the rise of sexy bimbo zombies in America’s film culture. Even though I am not a horror fan, I had to mention this one for the silly factor alone.

For the younger crowd, Adventures of a Teenage Dragonslayer includes a wicked vice-principal, an evil dragon, a magical troll, and a 12 year old protagonist. Despite the title, the target audience appears to be noticeably younger than teenagers. Targeting that same audience, Arthur and the Invisibles 2 & 3: The New Minimoy also gets released on disk this week. It can be no surprise that the latter production is the superior product, since it comes from Luc Besson.

In anime, Bleach Uncut Box Set 8 comes out this week, bringing the US releases of the mostly human soul reaper team up to episode 151. One that looks like a lot of fun is Melancholy of Haruhi-Chan Suzumiya & Nyoron Churuya-san. This one started life as a Dojinshi, or fan-created manga, usually put together by a small team of fans, printed in limited runs, and sold at the huge Manga fests they run in Tokyo. This particular series was a parody of the original, done in small 4-panel single page segments, and it became so popular over there that it got picked up by Kodokawa and turned into an Anime series. Fair warning, the characters in this series are done in that terminally cute little-people Anime style known to cause kawaii overdoses in the sugar sensitive.

Also out this week, Ghost Sweeper Mikami Collection 3 continues the story of the money-hungry exorcist and her perverted sidekick as they use their considerable talents to satisfy their own personal desires. Finely, Kanokon: The Complete Series will finally become available. This one was supposed to follow the normal distribution path, first releasing three DVD volumes over the course of 6 months to a year (last year), and then coming out with the box set. But the second and third volumes were delayed to the point where Media Blasters finally announced they would just release the whole thing in a single package and price it low enough that those of us who bought volume 1 separately would not be punished for it. The story line is simple an familiar; boy (Kouta) transfers to new high school, meets girl Fox Deity (Chizuru) and rival girl Wolf Deity (Nozomu), both of whom want him for their own. Trust me when I say the normal high school male is helpless before two human girls in this kind of situation. When the women in question are both goddesses I give no odds on the boy surviving, let alone making a coherent decision about which one to be with. Obviously, this one is a comedy.