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Something to Watch: Discs

In Movies we have Hot Tub Time Machine 2, a movie I haven’t seen but which was panned by just about every critic I have read. My thoughts are to watch this one when it comes to one of the streaming services I am already paying for anyways. We also get the animated fantasy Strange Magic from Disney and George Lucas, which looks like it could be quite fun (yep, I haven’t seen this one either).

TV gives us Beauty & The Beast: Season 2, which sadly only seems to be available in Standard Def. But it is in time to be able to binge watch it before season 3 kicks off on June 11th.

There is a single new entry in the Anime category this week, in the form of .hack//Roots: The Complete Series. One of this seasons shows which I am really enjoying, Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?, is up to episode 7 on the anime series, but its Manga only becomes available in the US this Tuesday; I mention it because it usually works the other way around.

Something to Watch: Discs

In movies, The Cobbler is a story about a shoe repair man working in the same shop his family has run for generations who is granted the ability to live his customers lives by walking in their shoes… literally. The premise has a lot of potential, but the critics paned the movie brutally, and is is coming out on disc only a month after it was in the theaters for very little money, not a very promising sign. These Final Hours is a film about the last 12 hours before a meteor wipes out all life on Earth; but even though its theatrical run was limited to a handful of screens in Australia, it has received acclaim from the critics and a 78% rating from Rotten Tomatoes. While not genre, Blackhat does star Thor’s Chris Hemsworth, but that may be about all that can really be said for it. In western animation we get Batman Unlimited: Animal Instincts, a new Batman vs. Penguin story.

In Anime, Muv-Luv Alternative: Total Eclipse, Collection 2 the fight to save humanity from alien invaders continues, but mankind may be its own worst threat. The leaders of several nations are willing to sabotage each other in an attempt to gain power, allowing the invaders to conquer still more of the planet. The Familiar of Zero: “Rondo” of Princesses brings season 3 of Louise the Zero and her magical misadventures with her human familiar and newly undead husband Saito. Finally, Michiko & Hatchin is having the complete series released in a S.A.V.E. edition, meaning you can now pick it up for somewhere in the neighborhood of $20.

Something to Watch: Discs

I didn’t find any genre movies or TV shows this time, but there are still a few worth mentioning. Spare Parts is a true story of the four undocumented Mexican-American high school students who went head to head with the team from MIT in the National Underwater Robotics Competition, using robots made from spare parts. The TV series Halt and Catch Fire: The Complete First Season takes place the year after IBM came out with the Personal PC, with a fictional company comprised of renegade engineers reverse engineering it and improving on it, as the computer race got off the ground. While the characters are fictional, the engineering issues they face and the solutions they come up with for them are the very ones the entire industry was working on at the time. The personality mix of the engineers will look very familiar to anyone involved with any cutting edge engineering project; thinking outside the box and radical innovation are not done by ordinary engineers, but by the exceptional. Masters of Sex: Season 2 is also a story about real-life cutting edge science which actually took place in the past, as doctors Masters and Johnson did the research that would change our understanding of the most basic aspect of human nature.

In Anime Natsume’s Book of Friends: Season 4 follows our protagonist as he continues to give the yokai their names back. He is learning how to deal with the yokai and humans that surround his life and now must learn about himself as well. The World God Only Knows: OVA Collection finds the girls forming an Idol band among other wacky goings-on, now that Keima has become something of a wizard. I should also mention that the classic Patlabor: The Movie, previously available only in SD, is coming out on Blue Ray this week.

Something to Watch: Discs

I didn’t find many genre Movies or TV shows this week, although Paddington is a fantasy as well as a children’s tale, so should be included in this list. Certainly it has some of the best CGI effects playing the part of its title character I have seen in a while. There is a live action Japanese movie that fits the genre criteria coming out this week, in the form of 2013’s Arcana. When you watch the trailer see if you can spot the actor who played the primary villein in the Korean sci-fi TV romantic dramedy My Love From Another Star. While not genre, Inherent Vice is based on the Thomas Pynchon novel of the same name, so should be both darkly funny and appropriately twisty.

We do much better in Anime this time around, starting with D-Frag!, where Kazama’s plan to rule the school using violence is tanked when he runs into the pretty psychopaths of the Game Creation Club. Now he will be lucky just to survive the whacked out games these girls play. In Nobunaga the Fool: Collection 1 the giant mechas were built by Leonardo Da Vinci, and Joan d’Arc needs to convince Nobunaga Oda to use them to unite both planets under a banner of peace. Then there is Hayate the Combat Butler: Can’t Take My Eyes Off You, another 12 episodes forming season 3, continuing the epic fight for Hayates life, and his charge’s freedom and well-being.

World conquest has been a dream of would-be dictators for centuries, but has never actually happened. At least not until one girl pulled it off in World Conquest Zvezda Plot, possibly the strangest tale of world domination ever told. I should also mention a couple of classics being re-released for another generation this time around: Fushigi Yugi (a book transports 4 friends into a parallel universe, giving them 52 episodes of adventures before they can escape) and Saiyuki (4 reluctant heroes are just as concerned about having a good time as they are about saving the world for 50 episodes). My super-short description of the two tales may sound similar, but they are far different than you might suspect. Plus, they are both absolute classics of their kind, and well worth your time to watch and enjoy.

Something to Watch: Discs

There is one actual disc in the Movie category that I saw, Walter, an Indi film that blends ghosts, religion, and mental illness to create a story in which a ticket taker at the local Cineplex is responsible for determining whether the people he meets go to heaven or hell. This one looks pretty quirky, and if it came to a movie theater near me I missed it. Also, Jupiter Ascending is out on streaming and digital download; if you want the Disc version, that will be available on June 2nd. In TV we have The Musketeers: Season 2, buckling yet another swash as the adventure continues.

There are an assortment of Anime this time around, led by Space Brothers: Collection 2, where things are heating up in the competition to become astronauts. This set brings the count up to episodes 14 through 26, be aware that the series itself is currently up to episode 99 and counting. We also get Freezing: Vibration, in which a new generation of women are going through genetic engineering modifications to enable them to battle the alien invaders. Something is going wrong, and it is up to Satellizer el Bridget and her crew to get to the bottom of it before it is too late. Devil Survivor 2: The Animation, Complete Collection is about a group of people who’s cell phones acquire an app which shows their own death a minute or two before it happens. The deaths are caused by powerful beings from other universes/levels of existence, and to avoid dying they have to defeat the invaders. No one can fight these creatures alone, so they evolve into groups and teams, but even so death takes its toll. Unlimited Psychic Squad is a spin off of Psychic Squad, and is focused on Kyōsuke Hyōbu’s organization P.A.N.D.R.A. as it tries to oversee three of the most powerful psychics in the country.

Continuing a couple of old favorites, Naruto Shippūden DVD box22 contains episodes 271 through 283, while Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin, Blue-Eyed Casval is only 63 minutes long and is available only as an import. Considering it costs close to $100 for an hour of animation, I will watch it streaming on Daisuki, although it is also available from Amazon Instant Video and the Google Play Store. Speaking of expensive, The Garden of Sinners: recalled out summer has two movies about a precognitive woman who avoids death by seeing what is about to happen, but for $70 for 120 minutes I will pass. Considering the original price was $189, later reduced to $149, they are at least heading in the right direction with this, but I wish I knew of a legal streaming service carrying it so I could watch it there. Finally, Hanamonogatari: Suruga Devil is five episodes for $50, which isn’t as badly priced as the others but still seems steep. It is the Sixth arc to the Monogatari series’ second season, which I will continue to watch on streaming services.

Something to Watch: Discs

In Movies this week we get The Man with the Iron Fists 2, which is a kung-fu epic fantasy that takes place in a 19th century Chinese village. The villagers and mine workers are the oppressed, while the mine owners and their enforcers are the evil overlords. The stranger in town teaches the villagers how to protect themselves and fight back. We also get the animated Batman vs. Robin, the latest entry in the DC Universe Animated Movies catalog. I didn’t find any North American genre TV shows this time around.

In Anime a single title of note: The Pet Girl of Sakurasou puts all 24 episodes in a single box set. Banished from regular housing for adopting stray cats, Kanda finds himself in Sakura Hall, along with every other weirdo and genus from the campus. There he is assigned to keeping a completely dysfunctional but acclaimed artist from forgetting to eat, clothe, or groom herself, on the assumption that he is used to taking care of the easily confused and distracted animals he has taken in. The fun in this series is in the various characters, who include a manga artist, an animator, a script writer, and a voice actress, otaku all.