Best movie selection this week definitely goes to Hugo, Martin Scorsese’s stunning Steampunk homage to a pioneer in the film industry and to movies in general. This one blew me away in the theaters, it won a Golden Globe and it is nominated for 11 Academy Awards; we will find out tonight how many of those it is taking home. If you only get one DVD this month, this is the one that gets my strongest recommendation. On the other hand, if you just want something silly, Johnny English Reborn would be the way to go. Once more Rowan Atkinson delivers a world class comedic performance, this time bringing his anti-007 character back to life.
In western animation, the feature length film Justice League: Doom pretty much covers all the choices.
In anime, Fairy Tail – Part 4 continues the story of the battles between guilds of wizards out to earn a living and prove who is best with episodes 37 through 48. I was not completely certain that Princess Jellyfish – The Complete Series is genre. But it has hopeless nerds with bizarre hobbies and crippling social anxieties, coupled with a late night jellyfish rescue mission; plus it is based on an award winning Manga (the award being Best Shojo Manga), and the anime was made by the folks behind Baccano, Hell Girl, and Durarara. Taken all together, how could I not include it here? You can watch some episodes online at that link and decide for yourself if it deserves to be added to your collection; when I did and discovered all the primary characters were Otaku, it went on the must watch list right away. And for pure Otaku recursiveness, Bakuman – Second Issue brings 6 more episodes of an Anime all about making a Manga, and it doesn’t get much more recursive than that.
It is kind of sad when the only live action genre movie for the week has a title like Bong Of The Dead, but it did win some awards, including Cannes, and the zombies are the ones being hunted for their brains in this horror comedy. In animated movies we have Puss in Boots, both as a stand alone and bundled with Puss In Boots: The Three Diablos. Staring Antonio Banderas, this Shrek spin off has all the humor associated with that series.
The genre TV series this week is The Fades: Season One, fresh from its run on BBC America. This one is a bit more horror than I prefer, and without the humor, but it is exceedingly well done.
The only US live action movie selection this time around is good, but isn’t genre: The Rum Diary, where once more Johnny Depp channels Hunter S. Thompson. Sword of Desperation from Japan tells the tale of a Swordsman who tries to raise his niece after the death of his wife and his release from prison while developing his own school of fighting. Also out is the classic film Three Outlaw Samurai, more of an origin story than a pilot for the TV series of the same name. And I am going to mention Nude Nuns With Big Guns because I figure that has to have some kind of a bizarre effect on my search engine results.
The top TV choice this time around is the Dr. Who show The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe which I am sure everyone recognizes as the 2011 Christmas Special. Like all that went before, this one has its own special moments. To counterbalance that, They Came From Outer Space: The Complete Television Series lasted on the air for nearly a season back in 1990, being the story of two alien brothers touring California in a classic corvette while government agents tried to capture them.
There are several western animations offerings this time around, but all spinoffs or direct to disc sequels. From Dreamworks, Dragons: Gift of the Night Fury is a sequel to How To Train Your Dragon. The other two are from a single source, the Penguins of Madagascar TV show, with the titles New to the Zoo and Operation Get Ducky being released separately.
There are several movies this week, of which Anonymous is the most interesting, as speculative historical fiction based on the concept that Shakespeare was a front man rather than a playwright. With the best cast and highest production values, it is hands down the film to beat this week. On the silly side, A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas is also out on disc this week. Other options include The Yakuza Weapon and The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1, neither of which will be joining my collection.
I didn’t find any live action TV shows worth mentioning this week. That doesn’t mean there aren’t any coming out, I just didn’t find them.
Anime fares quite a bit better this week, starting with the second season of the ever wacky Arakawa Under the Bridge × Bridge – Complete Premium Edition and all the craziness the characters each bring to it. This release is a bit pricy, consisting as it does of a Blue Ray disk set, as well as DVD disks, and a full color 32 page hardcover art book. I am going to wait for a more cost effective release to be made available before I add this to my collection, but it will be there as soon as that happens.
Also new this week Sengoku Basara: Samurai Kings – Season 1 and Sengoku Basara: Samurai Kings – Season 2 are both coming out. They both run 325 minutes, with the first one having 13 episodes and the second 12 episodes and an OVA, but the SRP for the second one is $20 higher ($12 higher if you shop around). As near as I can tell the only physical difference between them is the second season comes with Cardboard “art box” big enough to hold both seasons. I am not sure if I want to pay $12 for 50 cents worth of cardboard even if it is printed with pretty pictures, so I will probably be waiting to catch this one on sale. Another two at once release, Tales of the Abyss – Part 3 and Tales of the Abyss – Part 4 both become available on Tuesday. This is a series of stories on another planet that seem to have one character in common from volume to volume, cementing the world together.
And the last of the new releases for this week is Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion R2 – Complete Season 2, a parallel Earth in which our protagonist is executed and the rebellion is crushed forever… or is it? Even though it isn’t genre, I also wanted to mention that K-ON! Season 1 box set is also coming out.
Xam’d: Lost Memories – Complete Collection brings this excellent anime together in a single box set, at a much better price then you got when you bought the two seasons separately. Akira, the movie that really broke anime out into public awareness for North America, is also being re-released, no doubt because of the American live action movie project.
A re-release I am particularly excited about is Gasaraki – Complete Series Collection, another giant mecha combat story with excellent animation and production values. I first stumbled across this one in a used DVD section of a local brick-and-mortar where they had two of the volumes. Over the years I managed to find 3 more used volumes (it was already out of print when I found the first one), but I have never been able to see the entire program. Now finally I can. And speaking of giant mecha, there are a handful of classic Gundam series being re-released this time around, three different series second seasons.
There isn’t much coming out this week, but a few of them are quite good. In Time is a brutally intense little film about using your lifespan as money, and all the implications of that shift on society. The Thing is done as a prequil to Carpenter’s 1982 cult classic film, which was a remake of the 1951 movie The Thing from Another World, which was based on the John W. Campbell story Who Goes There.
I couldn’t find any live action TV this week, and even the anime is barely genre, although I did find B Gata H Kei: Yamada’s First Time quite amusing. And the Straw Hat Gang is back in One Piece – Collection 4, which brings that series to episode 103.
Topping off the movie list, Real Steel, an excellent movie about a washed up fighter, a kid, and the robot the kid believes in. But there is another movie that excites me this week: Toki o kakeru shôjo, or in English Time Traveller: The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. This one is the latest live action variation on the novel/manga/anime/live action/movie/TV show classic from Japan. It has been around since 1965 and they just can’t seem to get enough of it, and neither can I. This one is the 2010 live action movie version based on the novel, the previous US release was of the 2006 anime feature length film. The same actress plays the Leaper, in the anime the niece of the time traveler, in the live action the daughter. The first TV version was the 1972 live action series, which to my knowledge is currently unavailable, even in Japan.
In TV, a show I cringed at even when it was new can now be taken home for your personal collection: Buck Rogers in the 25th Century: Season One. While there is some camp appeal in this program, mostly in the form of its undersized robot with a speech impediment, it was pure Disco Buck. You won’t be getting any links to it from me, as I considered Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century much more intellectually stimulating. In fact, Vixens of Virtue, Vixens of Vice: Season 2, also being released this week, beats it as well, hands down.
In Anime, Our Home’s Fox Deity, parts one and two, give you the complete series with a single release, all about some rather ticked off gods and the family they have been protecting. Likewise, Pandora Hearts Sets 1 and 2 gives you the entire storyline at once, this time about a teenager who is thrown into a secret otherworldly prison at his coming of age party to pay for sins he never committed.
Also this week, The World God Only Knows complete series tells the story of a game player who is the best at Dating Sims, those games involving making all the right moves to get a virtual girl to fall in love with you. That is just fine, until he gets visited by a demon hunting angel who wants to put his gaming skill set together and point it at real live girls! It seems that the demons she is hunting hide in human hearts, and if those hearts fall in love they have no room left to harbor a demon.
There are two new series this week from Funimation. Fairy Tail – Part 3 brings us up to date on the Magic Guild warriors who continue the venerable tradition of inflicting as much or more damage onto your surroundings and the local population as the menace you have been hired to protect them from begun in shows like Dirty Pair. Their other program this week is Requiem for the Phantom – The Complete Series, which might be considered a cross between Kite and Noir, with a bit of Gunslinger Girls thrown in. Zwei has no clue who he is, and kills on command for his masters. When he meets Ein, a girl in the same situation who is as beautiful and brutal as she is lost, he decides it is time to make a change. If only it was that easy.
Viz has Naruto Shippuden (DVD box 9), and this show and Bleach both surprise me. Western TV shows always go for open-ended structures that they want to run forever, but most Asian TV is constructed with actual story arcs, which come with a beginning, a middle, and an end, usually concluded within a year or two of their beginning. I have no clue where these programs think they are going.
Finally, this week we only have a single cost effective re-release: Tenchi Muyo! GXP – The Complete Series [S.A.V.E.], 8 DVDs worth of absolute insanity for under 20 bucks. If you don’t already know Tenchi, this series is a great introduction; a bumbler who causes harm to himself and those near him (yes, sort of like Fairy Tale, or Dirty Pair, or so many more) suddenly has a number of girls from outer space descend on him. Each wants to keep him for herself, and each has powers to make her wishes known. This time around, those girls are galactic cops, and they both want to take him home. The evil galactic girls show up in other series, but trust me when I say only the labels change.