Studio Ghibli’s Only Yesterday and live action Gods of Egypt both hit the big screen this weekend. The 1991 animated classic Only Yesterday has finally been released in the US now, 25 years after the rest of the world got to see it, and is filled with exactly the kind of touching heart-felt story one expects from them. Its run in the theaters is extremely limited, opening in a single theater in New York on January 1st and expanding on Friday to another double dozen cities. If you are not close enough to make one of them, it will be in still more cities each week over the next four, and then released on DVD for the first time in this country. Gods of Egypt is the flip side of that coin, brand new live action/adventure epic fantasy, although I do admit to studying the trailer carefully looking for a Stargate. I look forward to seeing at least one of them.
There is very little genre coming out this week, with the animated Disney fantasies The Good Dinosaur and The Lion Guard being pretty much the only Western exceptions. Anime does a bit better, with Tokyo ESP: Complete Series taking place in a world where flying fish bestow paranormal powers, and only the penguin can overcome them. Meanwhile, police without powers are rounding up all the gifted they can get their hands on, and are either killing them outright or forcing them into concentration camps where they are worked to death. This is not a good time for Rinka to gain powers, but she does the best she can with them to protect her family and friends. In Ga-Rei-Zero: Complete S.A.V.E. two sisters are teenage exorcists fighting demons using sacred swords each night, until one of them becomes possessed. Now the other sister has to decide whether to kill her, or let her run around slaughtering innocents.
Alice Through the Looking Glass will be on the big screen on May 27th, but while you are waiting, here are a few things to watch…
The second trailer for The Huntsman: Winter’s War seals the deal for me; I have GOT to be in the theater for this one (because the first one just wasn’t enough)! Billing itself as the story before Snow White, the world class cast and special effects artists guarantee a fun time even before you get to the story itself.
Funimation is bringing the Psycho-Pass Movie to US theaters on March 15th and 16th. The Sibyl System uses extensive surveillance and biological monitoring to determine who is likely to commit a crime. When they find one the police remove potential criminals from the population before they become a problem. But some are bypassing the system and attacking without warning, and Inspector Akane Tsunemori is tasked with bringing them to justice. Normally a movie like this would be a stand-alone taking place in the same universe as the anime TV series, with the same characters in a separate story, but not in this case. This is actually the culmination of the TV series, bringing the story to its end. If you have been following the series from the beginning, this is your chance to see the conclusion on the big screen. If you haven’t been watching it until now, you have time to see the entire series before the theatrical presentation; you can catch it on Funimation or Hulu.
As previously mentioned, also in March The Boy and the Beast will be brought to American theaters by Funimation. That one will be at the beginning of the month, on March 4th, and I am including the new US trailer for it. This being Monday I would normally be talking about what will be hitting the theaters this week, but sadly the answer is Nothing. If you missed Deadpool last week this would be a good time to see it.
There isn’t much out this week. In Movies Steve Jobs hits the shelves, and will hopefully recover some of the money it lost in the theaters. It was a bit too cerebral for audiences raised on a diet of explosions, car chases, and sex scenes, and it didn’t have a mega-star playing the title role, so it never got the traction it deserved on the big screen. I didn’t see anything for western TV, which makes me think I may be missing something.
Anime has Space Brothers 7 with episodes 76 through 87; there should just be one more collection to finish the tale of the sibling astronauts. Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya 2Wei! has Illya going head to head against her evil magical clone in a 10 episode series that follows up the previous season. Finally, Bleach Movies: The Unforgiven Double Feature are the 3rd and 4th Bleach movies, packaged together and released at a discount.