I didn’t see any movies, and TV has a single title, Game of Thrones: The Complete Fifth Season. In Anime, C³ as a complete series with an OVA tells the tale of a cursed object who morphs into human form, and wants to escape her condition. With her personality learning to do positive things (the way to break her curse) will be a real fight, though. When They Cry: Season 1 has a boy moving to a small town, where he makes four friends. Not long after, people start dying, and he needs to figure out why and how to stop it before it is his turn.
In English Wagakki Band means a band playing traditional Japanese instruments, and that much is accurate. But it doesn’t give you any idea of the energy these people bring to the stage, or of how amazing the fusion of rock and traditional Japanese music can be when in the hands of masters like these. On Monday they will be doing a concert at Irving Plaza, NY, NY, and then they will swing south for a stage at SxSW in Austin, Texas. This is in honor of/promotion for their new album Yasou Emaki, which I am already looking forward to. And then there is the Anime they are involved in this year.
Here are a few tunes to get you ready for the concerts. The first track is Hangekino Yaiba, which means something like Blade of Counterattack, and was posted on Aug 14, 2015. The second is Akatsukino Ito, or The Intention of the Akatsuki, and is wonderfully visually dense with the Dragon. Finally, weighing in at 36+ million views and still climbing, is Senbon-Zakura, roughly A Thousand Cherry Blossom Petals, the first song by them I ever saw. If you have even a small chance of making one of these shows, do yourself a favor and be there. This is one of those bands the world will remember for decades, don’t let yourself miss this opportunity or you will be kicking yourself about it 50 years from now. Oh, and did I mention they were involved with an Anime production?
Want to catch up on some books you might have missed? The TOR web site has some excellent series going on, one of my favorites being Rereading. It introduces new readers to excellent stories they can fall in love with (and lets them know why they are worth their effort to check out). It also reminds long-time fans why they became fans in the first place, and connects the dots on aspects of the story that only became apparent some volumes later, so you get to experience the foreshadowing you never knew was there. The fact that they keep choosing some of the best series ever written keeps me coming back, if only to get some one else’s take on the plot, characters, and twists these tales offer the reader. This time around the offering is Lois McMaster Bujold’s masterpiece The Vorkosigan Saga, starring Miles himself, and sometimes his mother, and every now and then his cousin. Rereading the Vorkosigan Saga will definitely take you places you didn’t expect to go, but will no doubt enjoy. I hope you like them as much as I do, if you are not already a fan!
The silly animated short Print Your Guy was quite enjoyable; if you like it, check their web site for all the details.
Zootopia was amazing, and Shakira’s official video of Try Everything gives you a little taste of how fluid and detailed the animation was. I don’t think I have ever seen this many animated characters on the screen at the same time before, and they managed to bring a number of them to life as individuals in the course of this film. I am sure the singer enjoyed the experience of being one of those characters throughout the presentation, and her song at the end was the perfect way to close the story. If you haven’t seen this one yet it is still in theaters, and it is detailed enough that you really need to see it on the big screen at least once.
One of the best Star Wars Fan Films I have seen in the last decade, DARTH MAUL: Apprentice tells a lot of story for being less than 18 minutes long. Pretty much the best Fan Film I have seen so far this year, as well. Enjoy!