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Something to Watch: DVDs, 3Jun14

In Movies, the RoboCop reboot becomes available this week. This one goes all the way back to the original 1987 film for its story line, bypassing the sequels, TV shows, animations, video games, and graphics novels that have come along since. Also this Tuesday, the 10 foot tall RoboCop Statue is being unveiled in Detroit. Parts Per Billion is the story about the choices people make at the end of the world, and follows three couples through those events.

In TV, True Blood: The Complete Sixth Season keeps the South’s horniest supernatural creatures whipsawing back and forth through all the radically shifting plot twists. In addition, Falling Skies: The Complete Third Season brings the next round of Alien Invasion adventure to the shelves.

Western Animation has The Adventures of Batman: The Complete Series, which is a compilation of a bunch of shorts done in 1967 and 1968. While dated, the animation work was quite impressive for it time.

In Anime, we finally get Attack on Titan: Part 1, one of the most intense and critically received shows of 2013. Amnesia is the tale of a girl who wakes up in the hospital with no memory of how she got there, with the ghost boy who seems to know warning her not to let her visitors know she has forgotten her life. The Hentai Prince & The Stony Cat: The Complete Collection is the story of a Cat God who grants wishes, but not in the way you expected… or wanted. Finally Bleach: Season 21 brings us episodes 292 through 303.

Androp Music

This time a few tracks from the band Androp out of Japan. The first song is One from their third full length album, Period. The other track is Voice from their 3rd single. They have a lot of other good music worth your time to check out.

SAO Series 2 coming in July

The folks over at Crunchyroll have announced that they will be streaming the new Sword Art Online II beginning on July 5th. As usual, that pretty much means you get to see it an hour after it airs in Tokyo if you are a premium member, and one week later for everybody else. This is a great show with a large audience, I am looking forward to finding out if they keep up the quality level in the new series.

Sailor Moon Done Right

The folks over at Viz have licensed not only the new Sailor Moon series, but all the original series as well. They are bringing the classic ones back, uncut and unedited for the first time to North America. You will be able to buy them on DVD/Blue Ray combo packages put out two box sets per series, or you can watch them streaming on Hulu and Neon Alley. with two more episodes each week. By the time they are done, they will have put out a full 200 episodes of the various original series, and without editing out any of the dialog or relationships deemed not appropriate for a Saturday morning cartoon show. Heck, they are even keeping the character’s actual names this time, rather than changing them to something American. The first handful of episodes are already on line, with more coming every Monday. Thanks to the folks at Otaku USA for the heads up on that one, who got it from Anime News Network.

Big Hero 6 trailer

OK, maybe just the teaser-trailer, but Big Hero 6 does look like a fun ride. The 3D modeling/animation software the boy is playing with to create his robot looks like the kind of interface the animators used to make the movie, which makes sense. You use what you know to create, after all, and today’s animator certainly knows 3D modelling software. This has to have one of the first uses of 3D Printing I have seen in a cartoon, but that should happen more often now that the technology has gotten cheap enough that ordinary hobbyists can afford them for casual use. I should mention the Big Hero 6 Game, and the fact that there are Anime tropes embedded all over this feature, putting it solidly in the J-Pop Culture category. I find that kind of interesting for a Disney project; perhaps they are missing the recently retired Miyazaki. Then again, the film is based on the Marvel Graphic Novel of the same name, which takes place in Japan and is itself a non-stop tribute to Otaku culture and sensibilities. The premise is the Giri (a secret consortium of government and private sector interests) decides it needs its own set of superheroes, and sets out to create them. A 13 year old super genius they try to recruit wants nothing to do with them, until his mother is kidnapped by Everwraith, the spiritual remains of everyone killed in the 1945 nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, acting as a kind of group poltergeist.

As far as I know is the first Marvel property to get the full Disney Animation treatment. I don’t count Motion Comics as full animation, no matter how many of the same tricks are used in Anime to make the productions less expensive to create. I am looking forward to this one, which should be in theaters on November 7th.

Something to Do: Movies, 30May14

It get’s its world premier in L.A. on Wednesday, but on Friday Maleficent is on big screens everywhere. Another Disney prequel, this time about the evil witch who cursed the newborn in Sleeping Beauty, only to realize later she may have made a mistake. If you are looking for something funnier (notice I didn’t say lighter, since it is just as dark) there is A Million Ways to Die in the West. The trailers have been funny as hell, and the theme song is an instant classic. I am thinking I need to see both of them this weekend, although if I only have time to see one, I think the comedy is going to win out.