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ONE OK ROCK: US Release in September, North American tour

Pretty much my favorite band out of Asia for the last few years, ONE OK ROCK has the chops, the attitude, and the skill set to own the rock world while based out of Japan. They started out around 2005, proving yet again that it takes about 10 years to become an overnight sensation in the music business. The first live track is called Decision, the second is Mighty Long Fall, then the official studio version of the latter song follows those. The live tracks are both from their recent Mighty Long Fall at Yokohama Stadium release, their 5th live DVD which they posted to their You Tube Channel. You have been able to get these tracks and others from them on iTunes for your permanent collection for a while now. But they signed with Warner Bros. Records recently, in a deal that includes releasing their work on CD and DVD in the US, starting with “35xxxv Deluxe Edition” in September. All songs will be in English, and the US version of the album will include two bonus tracks not on the Japanese version. They will be doing a North American tour in support of that release, with stops including Chicago, New York, Toronto, Silver Spring, and Houston.

Previous ONE OK ROCK posts, with music embeds: One OK Rock: Cry Out, Against The Current, More One OK Rock, Please!, One OK Rock: Taka!, Still More One OK Rock!, More Alt J-Rock, More J-Rock, and One OK Rock.

Associated: Rurouni Kenshin 3 trailer (movie), My First Story (band), RUROUNI KENSHIN 2 trailer (movie).

Something to Stream: Actually, I Am…

One of the more amusing Anime’s this season is Actually I Am… , in which Kuromine is a high school student who supposedly cannot keep a secret. I know that doesn’t sound like much of a premise, but the writers take it and run with it, with quite funny results. This is about all I can say without needing to post a Spoiler Alert: A bit over the half way mark through the first episode he discovers the girl he has a crush on, Yoko Shiragami, has a secret. She will be yanked out of school and he will never see her again if her dad learns that anyone knows about her, so he spends the rest of the episode going to great lengths to help keep her secret. Things just keep getting funnier from there, episode after episode, at least through the first half dozen of them. I have no idea if they can keep up the momentum and the humor all the way through the series, or first season, or however long it ends up being, but I really like the show so far. Check it out and see what you think.

Something to Do: Movies

The clear winner this week is the reboot of The Man from U.N.C.L.E., bringing the 1960s best Spy TV series back to life again. The premise is slightly different from the original, or perhaps this is an origin story, since Napoleon Solo is a CIA agent while Illya Kuryakin is a KGB operative rather than both of them working as spies for the UN. It has been quite a while since we have had a new U.N.C.L.E. story to watch, so I am looking forward to it. Also in limited release this week is Walt Before Mickey, the story of the young Walt Disney and how he got started.

Something to Watch: Discs

Movies have no genre this week, but they do have the latest in Jackie Chan’s breakout drama series Police Story: Lockdown. Police Captain Zhong Wen is seeing his daughter for the first time in many years, and meeting her fiance in his nightclub. But the fiance has plans to take her, him, and the entire club hostage; plans which the Police Captain has to defeat if he wants to save his family. The original 1985 film Police Story was the movie that went beyond anything his comedy’s had done, making him a major star once and for all. The Walt Disney Animation Studios Short Films Collection has some excellent animated short features, including Frozen Fever and Tangled Ever After. They have been previously released as extras on various Disney feature film blue rays, but this is the first time that a number of them have been compiled together.

TV brings us Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, based on Susanna Clarke’s award-winning novel of the same name. The battle between these two magicians over who was the more powerful was fought while the Napoleonic Wars raged around them.

In Anime, Captain Earth: Collection 2 has things looking grim for Earth’s defenders. The Planetary Gear’s direct attacks have been beaten off so far, but the numbers against them slowly get worse as the enemy strips off various layers of their defenses and allies. Kawai Complex Guide to Manors & Hostel Behavior may be a slice-of-life type Anime rather than Sci-Fi or Fantasy, but it has a ton of humor built in and is quite entertaining in its own way.

Then there are a few re-releases; the Kite Collection tells you the whole story about this pint-sized assassin, and just how bleak her situation is, while Basilisk: The Complete Series give detailed information about the rivalry between the Ninja clans who saw to the end of the Samurai era.

Sense Clown

The band is Kankaku Piero (Sense Clown, approximately), and their first album Break came out at the beginning of June. They aren’t as new as that statement might make you think, because they put out 5 mini-albums before this latest release. The first track is A-Han!, new on their first full album. The second song is Mary from their 2013 mini-album, or Mary-san as they say at the beginning, and it was re-released as part of the new full album. Likewise the third song, O P P A I is also both from 2013 and the new album, I am not even going to try to guess what that tune translates into. The final track is 2014’s Japanese-Pop-Music, also on the new album.

Something to Watch: Streams: Rin-Ne

The series Rin-Ne is about Sakura, a girl who accidentally crossed into the spirit world as a young child, and ever since she sees all the ghosts around her. It is about Rinne Rokudo, who is one quarter Shinigami, a group of Japanese supernatural creatures occupying the same spiritual niche as the Grim Reaper. Some of them help lost spirits pass on to be reincarnated, while others try to lure people to their deaths. And the show is mostly about all the trouble those two get into any time they are hanging out together. The show started last season, and Crunchyroll is currently simulcasting episode 18, with new episodes airing each Wednesday at 3AM EDT. It is based on the Manga of the same name written and drawn by Rumiko Takahashi, the hardest working, richest and most famous female Mangaka in Japan. Pretty much everything she has ever done has sold millions of copies and been turned into iconic Anime classics. One last detail; the closing theme for the series is the song TOKINOWA by Passepied, one of my favorite art-rock bands from Japan.