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Tesla Noir, French Animated Steampunk, and turning people into animals against their will; this is an interesting week for disc releases. April and the Extraordinary World is French animated Steampunk at its finest, and I can’t wait to see it. The Lobster is already coming out on disc, even though it is still in its limited run of theaters. If you don’t partner up and couple down by a certain age, you are transmogrified into an animal and turned loose in the wild to fend for yourself. The American Side has the protagonist drawn into a race to find a secret device designed by Tesla with unknown powers and potential, hidden somewhere near the power plant that Tesla also designed, but which was built by his adversary Edison at Niagara Falls. There is also another DC animated release, Batman: The Killing Joke, which might have been better if they hadn’t brought it to the screen.

In Anime, Gundam Build Fighters: Complete Collection looks like a good choice, as does The Rolling Girls: The Complete Series, kind of a superhero road trip. Plus World Break: Aria of Curse for a Holy Swordsman is the complete series in one box, about reincarnated warriors going to school together, and Jormungand looks at illegal arms dealers out to save the world. For once I haven’t seen a single one of these, so I am going to flip a coin and start streaming the winner.

METAFIVE has a new release about to hit the shelves, METALIVE, a two disc set. The first disc is a Blu Ray with 18 live videos, and 3 songs recorded as studio live sessions including Don’t Move. The second disc is a CD with 14 of those same tracks in audio only format. Like their first album, these are only available as imports at the moment, but CDs play the same all over the world, and although Japan is in Region 2 for DVDs, it is at least using the NTSC format for its videos. The first tune presented here is Gravetrippen’ from the purely live videos, the second is Don’t Stop from the studio live sessions, the third is Maisie’s Avenue also from the studio live sessions.

Alderamin on the Sky is told as a history of a legendary tactician and general, who became great because he was lazy and had no interest in fighting. It is set in a very steampunk universe, with compressed air rifles and airships, and a technology base from around 1820 or so. It opens with our protagonist traveling with a childhood friend he is escorting on her journey to a military academy. They meet new friends on the ship they are sailing on, which runs into trouble leaving them stranded behind enemy lines. I was hooked by the end of the first episode, and every episode since has been better than the one before. We are up to the 4th episode, with a new episode popping up every Friday.

We have 5 movies to choose from this time around, 2 of which will be playing everywhere, the last 3 will be more limited. Nerve is not only first out of the gate with a release on Wednesday the 27th, but it also has a Pokemon Go tie in, I guess because the edge-of-your-seat story line just wasn’t enough. Jason Bourne is the other out-everywhere title, and like most spy books/movies it includes science fiction elements in its plot, premise, or gadgets, if you were wondering why I count them as genre.

In more limited release we get Monkey King: Hero Is Back, an animated fantasy starring Jackie Chan as the Monkey King. The last Monkey King movie Jackie Chan was in was the live action Forbidden Kingdom, and Jet Li got to play the famous demigod in that one. Both movies include the Monkey King’s release after 500 years from his prison of ice, a rather pivotal moment in his legend. League of Gods is based on the 16th-century Chinese novel Feng Shen Yan Yi, in which King Zhou becomes evil after a spirit disguised as one of his concubines twists his mind around. And finally the description of Dishoom sounds like a fantasy adventure premise to me: John and Varun go on a suicidal mission to rescue Jaqcueline, the princess, from her evil fiancé. Everybody’s already seen the trailers for the first two movies, here are the ones for the other three.

Monkey King: Hero Is Back – Official Trailer from Viva Pictures Distribution, LLC on Vimeo.

There is no actual genre I could find for western Movies and TV, but I will mention Hardcore Henry because it has such a unique visual style. Too bad they didn’t do it as VR. We did much better with Anime, where Arpeggio of Blue Steel brings the warships of the Fog into direct contact with the humans they isolate and attack. Log Horizon: Season 2, Collection 2 has the next dozen episodes about the trapped gamers, who are following up on some rumors about a potential way out while continuing their quest. When They Cry: Rei is the OVA collection with a few comedic episodes and a few more in keeping with the vibe of the main series, dark and chilling. One Piece: Season 8 Voyage 2 brings episodes 469 through 480 home (they are currently running episode 762, to put that in perspective). There are also a couple of shows being released in a S.A.V.E. edition, Date A Live: Season 1, and Code:Breaker; Complete Series.