Crunchyroll has added some tasty new live action videos to its streaming service. One of them is 009-1: The End Of The Beginning, which brings the sexy cyborg spy of dystopian Manga and Anime fame to life. Another is Onna Nobunaga, the epic fantasy about the famous Samurai lord who was (in this story) a woman trying to hide her secret while uniting Japan. They have also added Flesh for the Beast: Tsukiko’s Curse, about a trio of paranormal investigators and all the really strange things they run into. Mind, they already had a ton of great live action stuff streaming, like Time Taxi, which is not only a great time travel what-if series, but has one of the funniest subplots I have ever seen in the form of the Criminal Detective. Another great one is Time Traveller, based on the anime series The Girl Who Leaped Through Time. Just thought I should mention they are doing a bit more than just anime, although their anime is amazing.
We finally get a look at a decent length trailer for the upcoming Netflix/Marvel project Daredevil. It will begin streaming on April 10th, giving Marvel a whole new flavor of outlet for their stories.
A ton of movies based on Philip K. Dick books have been made, but Amazon is taking a shot at doing a TV series based on The Man in the High Castle. This multi-award winning novel takes place in a parallel time line where Germany and Japan won WWII, and the number one underground hit in occupied America is a science fiction story about the Allies winning the war instead. Executive produced by Ridley Scott, this is part of Amazon’s new Amazon Pilot Season. They basically made the pilot episode, you watch it, and you rate it, telling them if you want to see more. They will turn some of these pilots into original series which you can watch on their streaming service, and I really hope they go with this one; the pilot was excellent.
I think this one might just be worth watching, at least based on this brutally short teaser… what do you think?
The first two episodes of Haphead go live on their web site tonight, right after they show the entire first season at the Royal Theatre in Toronto tonight. It is a cyberpunk tale about a new haptic peripheral which makes videogames so immersive that people learn skills just by playing them (yes, that is pretty much their tag line). Thanks to Cory Doctorow for the heads up on this one.
The TV series My Love From Another Star was released on Blue Ray yesterday, January 7th, at least in Asia. It was previously released in Standard Definition, which hasn’t been the standard for a while now (tech advances way faster than marketing scams). In honor of that, NBCUniversal Entertainment has posted an embeddable version of the first episode on their YouTube channel, which I almost posted here. But, since it is in Korean with Japanese subtitles, I decided that didn’t make a lot of sense for a blog hosted in North America. If you want to watch that version, it is at the second link. The first link will take you to the Hulu page where you can watch it with English subtitles. The story is he crashed his flying saucer on Earth in 1609, had to dodge being killed by Earthlings and therefore missed the rescue craft, and has been waiting for 400 years for his chance to catch a ride on a comet and go home. But now, with just 3 months to go, he has made the mistake of interacting with someone and getting to know them; his terminally annoying new neighbor, the airhead actress. I rather enjoyed this sci-fi rom-com, and thought this was a good excuse to mention it here.