The main film this week is The Jungle Book, the latest iteration of the Rudyard Kipling classic. The composited Live Action/CGI makes this the best looking version yet, and is an example of just how good the technology has gotten. The last time Disney told this story they did it with hand drawn animation, and that was the best anyone had seen up to that point, so this continues their tradition. While the most widely publicized, this isn’t our only choice this time around; Adam Green’s Aladdin will be making its way to a limited number of screens, and looks interesting enough to check out.
TV has Heroes Reborn: The Complete Event Series, and I was thrilled to discover it has 13 episodes. Somehow my DVR only captured the first 12, when I got to the end of my binge watching session I thought they left it like that to try to get the fans to pressure NBC to do another season. It turns out it does have an actual ending, and I am going to get to see it after all. Movies has the DC direct to video animated Justice League vs. Teen Titans; I am afraid I am not a fan of the animation style, it is reminiscent of bad Saturday morning cartoons from the 70s and 80s. Someone is also releasing all of the Alien and Alien vs Predator movies in a single bundle; if you don’t already have them, now is your chance to get the entire collection at once.
In Anime, Gugure! Kokkuri-san is about a doll girl who summons a Kokkuri-san, or fox ghost, by accident. He decides to haunt her and cook for her, because all she eats are cup noodles, and he can’t stand it. Maken-Ki! 2 is the second season of this school for magical combat, done as comedy with a large helping of fan service. While it isn’t genre, Tonari no Seki-kun: Complete Collection are short, fun little episodes about the Master of Killing Time. Each day he sits at his desk in school and creates complex diversions to entertain himself, driving the girl at the next desk out of her mind from the distraction. While he never manages to get caught, her reactions pull plenty of attention from the teacher. It is pretty amazing how they manage to fit so much tension and humor into a show only 7 minutes long per episode.
A less than subtle band, Contemporary Life is a blast of fresh air from Asia, an Alt Rock band from Osaka. The first track is Husky Girl, the second track is Yankee Girl, and they are both quite energetic and worth your time to check out. Then there is Let’s Go Gedo (Let’s Go heresy) Tour, also a tune of note. They might even have won some awards at some point, it appears. Enjoy.
The post-Armageddon series God Eater took a 3 month break between the biologic battles of episodes 9 and 10, now they are back to finish up the first season. Episode 10 just posted to Crunchyroll this past Monday, with new episodes each Monday. As with a number of other series, God Eater aired first on Daisuke, so you can watch 10 through 13 there already. Both sites have both free and paid accounts you can sign up for, and you can watch anything they stream with a free account. The paid accounts have some added benefits, like watching the shows a week earlier or getting them without commercials. Both streaming services also have free iOS and Android apps you can use to watch your favorite shows on your smart phone or tablet, and each service has pros and cons with different aspects of the account set up.
The most interesting thing about Daisuke is the titles they carry. They are a consortium of 6 Anime companies based in Japan, rather then a North American distributor like Crunchyroll, Funimation, or Viz. Which means they have a mix of some of the shows the other 3 carry, they show some titles a week or more before any of the others have them, and they even have some shows that aren’t carried by the North American distributors at all. Of course, there are more than 6 Anime companies in Japan, which means each of the others carry titles that Daisuke, nor their local competitors, have. Personally I can’t afford to have paid accounts with all of them, plus Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, Acorn, etc, on top of my cable company bill (best broadband bandwidth for the buck, bar none). So I am evaluating who has what, and which titles in each ones library I can not live without. If I can only afford a couple of monthly service fees, I want to make sure I end up with the best ones.
Using a combination of solid and liquid printing, MIT printed the first ever 3D Printed Hydraulic Powered Robot. No assembly was required, beyond popping on a motor and battery. Which means now our Evil Robot Overlords will be able to print up their minions themselves. The advance that made this possible was developing a technique to print both solids and liquids in the same printer, and I find it somewhat surprising that they got the best results for the liquid printing using a regular ink jet printer.
The animated short Jinky Jenkins & Lucky Lou is an adorable little video about two people who were always meant to be together. While there were a lot of folks involved with this one, it is predominately the creation of Michael Bidinger and Michelle Kwon. It has won dozens of awards, including the Best Student Project Prize at the 2014 SIGGRAPH Asia convention, which impressed the heck out of me.