The summer Anime season is winding to an end, and three clear winners have caught my attention. Gate remains my favorite, with the action and international espionage in the Special Zone and Japan torquing up with every episode. I really hope they are planning a second season of that one, there is a lot of story yet to tell in that universe. Charlotte kicked into high gear in episode 9, when the introduction of a new power completely changed the nature of the story. And while it still reminds me a lot of Attack On Titan, God Eater is very definitely its own story, and quite an exciting one. At this point those are the shows I am watching as soon as they become available, often checking several times during the day to see if they are ready yet.
Terrestrial Human
The Hallways trailer for American Horror Story: Hotel is slick, and they just announced adding Lady Gaga to the cast (or at least I just heard about it). It hits the small screen on FX on Wednesday, October 7th.
If you haven’t checked them out before, the folks at Humble Bundle are worth a look. They come up with various bundles of items and offer them on a pay what you want basis, then split the proceeds between the content creators and one or more charities chosen by that creator (if it is more than one charity, you can direct them to apply your money to just one of them, or give a specific percentage to each of them). If you pay more than a fairly low average payment, that unlocks some additional goodies in the same collection while increasing your total charitable contribution. As each bundle hits various total target amounts contributed, additional swag is added to the bundle, pretty much the same reward system used by Kickstarter, where both your individual contributions and the total group contributions up the ante on the deal.
Most often but not always the stuff Humble Bundle has on offer are games, books, and audio dramas. They have a couple of good ones this week, with their Books choice being Neil Gaiman Rarities. Besides his very first published story, it also has one of his Babylon 5 screenplays and a boatload of other rare tales and collections. As you noticed if you took the first link I posted here, the main package this week is about $200 of Tom Clancy classic games, while the Weekly Bundle and Mobile Bundle each have a selection of games as well. Every few days something gets added, or a selection changes, so you want to check back often. As for me, I am going to grab the Neil Gaiman bundle this week, going high enough over the base amount to both maximize my charitable contribution and make sure I get all the extra stuff as each target is reached. This is my kind of win-win, and they keep doing it, over and over.
Long time educational service Discovery Channel now has Discovery VR, and I am sure it is no accident that the first show at the top of the page is Mythbuster’s Shark Dive. Combining two of Discovery Channels audience favorites in this fully immersive 360 degree virtual reality environment is a great way to introduce it. And of you don’t have a VR headset you can enjoy it on any computer, tablet, or smart phone using a web browser or the App. They threw in some of their other Shark Week programming, as well as a number of adventure and environment shows. This is the first set of Network TV shows created specifically for Virtual Reality, but with more shows and hardware coming like Samsung’s Milk VR or Comcast’s AltspaceVR, you can expect to see a lot more of it in the future.
This week we get Listening, a film about some of the potential consequences of inventing mechanically induced telepathy. I assume it is an Indi film since I could not find a major distribution company associated with it, since it has won a number of awards on the film fest circuit, and since it will only be in a limited number of theaters. If you aren’t near one of those theaters it will also be available on demand from iTunes, so you can watch it anywhere you are. Another option is the non-genre Bollywood film Hero, about a Mumbai gangster and the police chief’s daughter. It is an action/romance film complete with dance numbers, for those looking for a change of pace.
'Hero' Hindi Movie Official Trailer 2015 Sooraj… by sohailshoukat2704
This week Movies bring us The Age of Adaline, the story of a woman who stopped aging around 1927, and fell in love in 2014. TV has Gotham: The Complete First Season and Supernatural: The Complete Tenth Season, both action dramas which are a bit on the dark side.
There is nothing new in Anime this week, but Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust has only been released on VHS in the US up until now, so this will be its DVD debut. It is based on the third novel in Yoshiaki Kawajiri’s Vampire Hunter book series, which has 27 novels so far. That is a bit misleading, since some of the novels take as many as 4 volumes to complete, there are a total of 40 books, with more expected to be in the works.Then there are two different spin off series of light novels; for the complete list, see the Wikipedia article about the franchise. Everything else coming out this week is a re-release, including the classics Patlabor Movie 3: WXIII and Ranma ½ – Set 7.