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Terrestrial Human

Something to Watch: Online Pt. 2

I am still at the point of organizing my thoughts for this thread; which means I am retaining the limits of yesterday’s post on this topic, just to keep it somewhat under control.

The new Anime season has started in Tokyo, which means Crunchyroll has some new shows, and new episodes of some old favorites available to watch online. Besides watching on your computer, they have apps that play episodes on both iPhone/iTouch/iPads and Android tablets/phones, and many other devices. I watch mine on my iTouch, Cruz Tablet (Android), and Roku box, but I haven’t installed the disk on my Wii yet. All the Apps and software are free, and while you need a premium membership to watch the episodes the same day they air in Tokyo, you can watch them free a week afterwords. You do have to sign up for a free account if you want to comment, post, or review anything, but to just watch you don’t even need that.

One of the new titles that looks like it could be interesting is Kore wa Zombie desu ka?, about a high school kid who is snuffed by a serial killer and wakes up as a zombie servant/bodyguard to the beautiful necromancer who brought him back to undead (I couldn’t exactly say back to life, now could I?). This one gets my vote as the silliest show of the new season, in a good way. In the opening episode we find out the dead protagonist is searching for his killer to stop him from killing others, and we meet a second magical girl who’s magical transformation sequence is short-circuited by the presence of zombie boy. She winds up naked, he ends up wearing the dress and wielding the magical chainsaw; between them, they can just about defeat the monsters she normally battles. Gosick takes place in Europe in 1924, the story of a Japanese exchange student and a brilliant girl who attends no classes but lives in the library reading all the books and solving mysteries that baffle officials. I found the first episode very interesting as to characters and story line, and the teacher urging the protagonist to study ghosts and alchemists was a nice twist, but there is nothing about this that locks it to that year. The costumes are mostly from the 1860’s or the 1940s depending on the character, but nobody actually wears anything from the 1920s, and a few of the comments were also temporally displaced. Despite the story being unbound to its time, I fully intend to watch this series to see where it goes next; the first episode drew me right in.

I am not sure that Rio Rainbow Gate is genre or not, but the Blackjack Dealer and Roulette spinner known as the Goddess of Victory does seem to have supernatural powers and Ninja skills, so I will be following it beyond the first episode as well. And then there is Dragon Crisis!, which so far is the most fun out of the set (except the set is only a single episode per series at this point). In the opening half hour our normal high school student is pulled out of his summer school class by a beautiful second cousin just returned from America so he can help her steal a mysterious case from the Yakuza. In the ensuing chase and gun battle the case is shot open, and out tumbles the girl of his dreams who promptly torches the bad guys; it seems she is a dragon with all a dragons powers. She also has a vocabulary of one word, that being the protagonists name. It appears she has been dreaming of him as well. I look forward to seeing where this one goes.

Finally, I should say that Beelzebub did not impress me, despite having a wacky origin story. There are just too many things to watch to spend time viewing something that did not grab me; perhaps if I hear good things about it later I will give it another shot.

Something to Watch: Online Pt. 1

This is a huge topic, so to begin I will break it down to a tiny subset with a very limited scope, so it doesn’t run away from us right out of the starting gate. Since this is my introduction post to the topic, it will be confined to:

1) Anime
2) Generic Servers
3) Free Sites

There are a lot of places online to watch Anime, which is a great way to pick out the good ones before laying your money down for the DVD’s. I spend so much time watching great animated sci-fi and fantasy this way, I figured it was about time to make it part of my Blog entries. To begin, I just want to mention a few of the generic video servers, and I should also mention the updated Anime Nation App with all new functionality for watching through your iDevice.

Hulu is of course now running Hulu Plus, but it also has just added several new titles to its free Anime Network section, including Xam’d, Blue Drop, Ghost Hound, and the second season of Hell Girl, to name just a few. Outside of that company there are a ton of classic titles, like Full Metal Panic (including all series), Vandread (both seasons and the OVA), Gad Guard, and Kaze no Stigma, and the inevitable whole lot more. There is an entire additional range of recent works, including D.Gray-Man, Sands of Destruction, and Birdy the Mighty: Decode. Those titles are just the tip of the iceberg, and don’t even begin to impinge on whats available in the premium section of the video service.

It gets a bit blurry when you try to follow a given production house, even when they are importing and converting, rather than creating, their works. As an example, Funimation Online Video can point you to their own internal company servers, or the Hulu Servers (that last link was to the feature film Vexille: 2077 Isolation of Japan), or to their YouTube Site where you can watch some great new titles like Birdy the Mighty: Decode and classic recent additions including Vandread and Witchblade. The title duplication was not an accident, just serves to indicate that the edges of what is available from various sources does include a lot of overlap, and rightly so. The more formats and servers supported, the wider the potential audience becomes for a given program; which works very well for the content creators long run, since it helps create the largest possible market for their product. But at its heart, their product is stories about the human condition, whatever the media they use to present them, as all stories must be.

Another great source is Anime News Network, which maintains its own set of streaming servers. This site has a unique set of programs you won’t be able to see anywhere else, and my personal favorite series in their current collection is Oreimo. You get woken in the middle of the night to discover your little sister is an Otaku in so deep she is creating her own Manga’s which are now being turned into Anime’s. As the honorable Big Brother, you do everything needful to protect her.

Finally for today, this link is the winner: you can click to watch the US premiere of Fractal, when it becomes available.

Singularity Music: 6

The first video is from a band that lost their instruments but refused to stop playing. New York Cities Atomic Tom took music creation apps from their smart phones, hit the subways, and recorded another version of their local hit. If you like the song, you can download it free on iTunes. I am sure Steve Jobs thinks it is another advertising campaign generated by his company. The second track is from Future Music Camp Mannheim 2009, and features 2 conductors direction 12 people running the Brian Eno music app Bloom. They ran the camp again in 2010, and I wouldn’t be surprised at all if it was coming around again this year.

Something to Do: Movies

This Friday, January 14th, the movie to attend is The Green Hornet, a tribute to the 1960’s TV show starring Bruce Lee, and referred to as The Kato Show all throughout Asia during that time period. This version is NOT directed by Stephen Chow, who brought us such masterpieces as Kung Fu Hustle and Shaolin Soccer, as I previously reported. He had been involved with the project, but walked away from the Director spot in 2008, and the Kato roll in 2009; I really need to check web pages more carefully for story dates so I am not reporting expired information. This has come a long way since 1940, when it was produced as a movie theater serial of 13 episodes or so, itself based on the original Radio Plays of the early 1930s. Unlike most of its contemporaries The Green Hornet was a radio play first, not a pulp or comics series, and every episode ended with the newspaper boy hawking his wares by shouting out the headlines for that story (bad guys in jail) ending with the phrase The Green Hornet Still at Large!!

Something to Watch: DVD’s

A whole lot of titles being released, or mostly re-released, this week hoping to ride on the coattails of the new Green Hornet movie. The Green Hornet: Movie Edition, The Green Hornet: Original Serials, and Kato & The Green Hornet are all repackaging of the 1940 Green Hornet serials from Universal Studios. Note that the one that starts off with Kato’s name is coming out of South Africa and being sold predominantly across Asia. I find it disappointing that I have located no reference to the 1960s Bruce Lee TV show being re-released this week, as existing editions are a bit pricey if you can track a legal copy down at all. However, The Jade Tiger is going on the shelves Tuesday, so martial arts fans will have something new to watch.

The animated feature film this time around is Alpha and Omega, which has some quality animation work and an excellent vocal cast. It is targeted at the younger set, so don’t expect anything too profound out of the plot line, but a good choice for sharing with the family.

Interestingly enough, 2010’s Piranah 3D is actually being released on 3D Blu-Ray this week, while 1989’s Alien from the Deep seems to have neither a Blu-Ray or 3D version. Personally, I won’t be seeing either one, not being a horror fan.

On TV, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea: Season 4, Vol. 2 finishes up the final episodes of that series, so you can now have the entire thing in your collection. As with almost any other TV program from the 60’s (Star Trek and Twilight Zone being the notable exceptions) it is a bit campy, but still fun.

In Anime, 11 Eyes: The Complete Collection tells the story of two friends who are transported into the strange world of Red Night, and must vanquish evil spirits and other foes in order to escape. The other selection is Black Butler – Season 1 Part 1, about a boy who trades his soul for revenge on those who murdered his parents, and the Demon Butler who dismembers his enemies. You can watch it on Hulu to help you decide if you want it in your collection.

If you are looking for something lighter than those two, there is an anime series about an Otaku girl who’s secret hobby is gradually revealed to her friends and family I can recommend: Oreimo. It is currently streaming online for free over at Anime News Network, and every Sci-Fi, Manga, Anime, or Gamer Fan will recognize a bit of themselves in this one. They just posted the final episode the other week, so you can watch the whole thing in one go if you like; it is almost addictive enough that you might even if you don’t intend to.