The Winking Owl have a new mini-album coming out in another two weeks called Into Another World, and the first track here is also the first song on it: Now What?. After that is their 2015 debut EP Open Up My Heart, and we finish with my favorite track from their 2016 first full album This Is How We Riot. Luiza’s voice has range and power as she switches effortlessly between Japanese and English, showing off her European/Asian heritage. The band’s music is tight, focused and very well produced, and with their record deal with Warner Japan they are finally getting the exposure they deserve. I have found CDs released by them going back to 2010, so I am pretty sure the phrases Debut EP and first full album refer to their current record contract, and not their actual musical career.
We have to wait until November for this one, but it looks like it is going to be a monster, and I mean that literally.
Sorry, little in the way of genre movies this week as near as I can tell, although I do tend to miss releases every so often. This would be a great weekend to catch a previous release you didn’t quite make it to the theater for, or to binge watch a show you are falling behind on. I particularly recommend checking out Class and Doctor Who Season 10 on VOD or Streaming. Speaking of Streaming, that link to Class will take you directly to the Pilot episode, streaming for free for anyone to watch. Remember that this is the school that the Doctors granddaughter Susan was attending in the very first 1963 episode, and if you keep your eyes open the episode is filled with Easter Eggs, which seems appropriate considering it aired Saturday night.
Everything seems to be animated this week. It is always a treat to get a new title from Studio Ghibli, Ocean Waves is available this week for the first time in the US. It was made in 1993 as a TV anime, but at 152 minutes long rates as a mini-series. In anime, My Hero Academia: Season 1 has a hoard of high school students with superpowers, and a guy who enrolled in the most prestigious school for Heroes with no powers at all. Undefeated Bahamut Chronicle: Complete Collection has mechanical dragons used for aerial combat, with the prince and princess from adjacent kingdoms battling it out to see who gets Top Gun status, at least at first. Aria the Scarlet Ammo AA is another season of those girls with guns getting into more trouble, and in Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid you cannot separate the women from the weapons.
It has been a while since we posted our last OreSka Band, and they have some great new tunes worth sharing. All of these are from their 3rd Full Album Slogan, which was released November 23rd, 2016. The first track is Free Now posted last November, the second is !Fiebre! from last May and pretty much the best example of Japanese Samba Ska I have ever heard, the third is NEXSPOT and includes a slice of Jazz I wasn’t expecting from them. This band has been growing into their talent nicely, with each album better than the one before.
This is an exciting weekend for Whovians; we get both the Season 10 opener for Doctor Who, and the series premier for Class, which I can’t help but think owes an awful lot to Sara Jane Smith. Liz Sladen may not have been the first teacher featured on Doctor Who (that honor goes to Ian and Barbara from the very first 1963 episode), but she persisted over the decades, until she became the teacher the new iteration of the series needed. BBC America is running all the Peter Capaldi episodes back to back, counting down the time to the Season 10 premeir and the fist episode of the new series!