Marvel’s Runaways is being made for TV, specifically Hulu, and will probably be ready to watch at the end of this year or the beginning of next. The story is simple (at least for a Marvel comic series); a group of teenagers who get together once a year at their parent’s annual party discover one year their parents are actually running a massive criminal organization. They all run away together, vowing to bring that organization down. I love that James Marsters gets to play Victor Stein, the mad scientist (or a scientist who gets really mad sometimes, at least). So they have now announced the cast members playing the Runnaways: Rhenzy Feliz, Lyrica Okano, Virginia Gardner, Ariela Barer, Gregg Sulkin and Allegra Acosta. And the latest announcement (at the initial link) gives us The Pride, the parental bad guys of the series: Brigid Brannagh, Ever Carradine, Brittany Ishibashi, James Marsters, Angel Parker, Kip Pardue, Ryan Sands, Annie Wersching, Kevin Weisman, and James Yaegashi. I can’t wait to see this one come to the small screen!
Terrestrial Human
On March 9th, for one night only, Sword Art Online The Movie -Ordinal Scale- will be on the big screen, this time with a story based on AR, rather than VR. This is another Fathom Events special transmitted digitally to theaters across North America, with the distribution rights going to Aniplex. It appears to be booked in more theaters than these things usually are, so there is a good chance it is somewhere nearby. The Anime are based on a series of light novels by the same name written by Reki Kawahara, who also had his Accel World series of books turned into Anime. Both series have also become Manga and Video Games, of course.
Miss Hokusai is a film by Keiichi Hara about the daughter of Katsushika Hokusai, one of the most famous artist’s of Japan. You may not know his name, but you have seen his work, like the iconic Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, of which this is one:
He was also the man who made Manga a household word meaning a picture book with words and sometimes a story, although that wasn’t his intent. Starting at the age of 55 in 1814, he wrote a series of Manga which were published every week or two as an instruction manual for his disciples and apprentices (pretty much the same thing in Japan at that time). There were only around 220 of them, so the publisher put the magazines up for sale to the public, in hopes of recouping at least part of his printing costs. Sales took off; working class people used them to to educate themselves and become more cultivated, craftsmen used the illustrations as models for their work, and the nobility and wealthy classes collected them avidly. Hokusai produced well over 1,500 of the volumes, and Manga became a mainstay of the Japanese culture. This anime is obviously a loving tribute of one artist for the work of another; I am sorry I missed it in the theaters, and will have to track down the disc or streaming service it resides on, because I really want to see it.
The LEGO Batman Movie should be the same silly fun as the last LEGO movie, and my choice for the one to see this weekend.
Correction: Justice League Dark and Dreamwork’s Trolls both come out this week rather than last. Anime has Young Black Jack: Complete Collection and the truly absurd (to the point I count it as a fantasy and therefore genre) Nichijou: My Ordinary Life Complete Collection coming out this week. In addition, the complete collections of both D-Frag! and Danganronpa are coming out in S.A.V.E editions.
The wonderful voice of Yūko Suzuhana has been driving the Wagakki Band for years, a band blending traditional Japanese musical instruments and Western rock in ways never heard before. This past November, she finally got her first solo mini-album, Cradle Of Eternity, with a different musical sensibility but that same powerful voice. Here is a taste of each, first the song Cradle Of Eternity from the album of the same name, then the track Strong Fate from the Wagakki Band, and finally the more mellow Wagakki Band track Okinota yu, just posted Tuesday. Enjoy!