Outlander is the story of Claire Randall, a girl from 1945 who suddenly jumps to 1743, not exactly what she was expecting. She is forced to marry Jamie, a young Scottish warrior, but she is an already married combat nurse in 1945, which she may or may not be able to go back to. The show is based on Diana Gabaldon’s best-selling books, and put together by Executive Producer Ronald D. Moore. It kicks of on Starz on August 9th. If you’re going to be at the San Diego Comic Con you can enter a drawing at the Starz site to attend the world premiere screening there to take place on July 25th.
I think the Doctor Who World Tour technically needs more than 7 cities to consider it a world tour, but they do manage to hit Europe, Asia, Australia, North America, and South America. So they did noticeably better than the Babymetal World Tour which only managed 6 cities in Europe, Asia, and North America as of the last time I checked. Thanks to BBC America for the heads up on this one.
There are a number of shows I am enjoying this season, although because of time constraints there are only 3 I have been keeping up with each week. If you are a Premium Crunchyroll member, you can watch any of these and a double dozen more an hour after they air in Tokyo. If you are not, you can watch them for free starting one week later. The current season is at episode 9 as I write this, the Summer season starts around the first week in July.
Brynhildr in the Darkness: 10 years ago Murakami lost a girl he was infatuated with in a lethal accident while trying to get a glimpse of aliens. As he heals from the accident he vows to find the aliens in her memory, which means years later he is running the Astronomy Club, searching the skies. Now she seems to suddenly turn up at his school again, revived from the dead and turned into a human weapon, but she doesn’t remember anything earlier than a decade back. She is not the only one to escape from the lab that upgraded her combat capability, and the military is out to kill all the escapees before they can reveal their secrets to the world.
Nanana’s Buried Treasure: In life, Nanana started the Adventure Club, and ran around the world collecting powerful artifacts, Indiana Jones style. She and the other club members used the proceeds to create an artificial island, where they built a city and hid the treasures. Then she was murdered in her room, and haunts it to this day, unable to rest until her killer is captured. The young man who gets tricked into renting that room for a year doesn’t have enough money left to live anywhere else when he finds it comes with a ghost. His only option is to try to bring her killer to justice, and since the killer was trying to get the treasures, that’s what he will have to do to track him down. There are a LOT of potential suspects.
No Game No Life: Genius gamer siblings Sora and Shiro are both NEETs and Hikikomori, and absolutely unbeatable in the online gaming world. One day they are contacted by a kid who is a god of a different world, where games decide the outcome of everyone’s lives and the ten commandments are gaming rules. There are 16 races in this world, and the humans are on the verge of being wiped out by the others, unless the siblings can win them back a chance to survive.
The show The Musketeers is coming to BBC America, and even though they are not exactly French (let’s face it, in most Musketeers variations, the British were the enemy even worse than the French king or Cardinal Richelieu himself!), this looks like it might be very good fun indeed. And I do like the Tag Line: 17th Century Paris, where Law And Order is more an idea than a reality. The show kicks off on June 22nd, and I intend to be there to check it out. Let’s face it, Alexandre Dumas was a genius with a unique place in time and a wonderful understanding of the human heart. I can’t wait to see which direction this newest variant on his story goes in.
The folks over at Crunchyroll have announced that they will be streaming the new Sword Art Online II beginning on July 5th. As usual, that pretty much means you get to see it an hour after it airs in Tokyo if you are a premium member, and one week later for everybody else. This is a great show with a large audience, I am looking forward to finding out if they keep up the quality level in the new series.
The folks over at Viz have licensed not only the new Sailor Moon series, but all the original series as well. They are bringing the classic ones back, uncut and unedited for the first time to North America. You will be able to buy them on DVD/Blue Ray combo packages put out two box sets per series, or you can watch them streaming on Hulu and Neon Alley. with two more episodes each week. By the time they are done, they will have put out a full 200 episodes of the various original series, and without editing out any of the dialog or relationships deemed not appropriate for a Saturday morning cartoon show. Heck, they are even keeping the character’s actual names this time, rather than changing them to something American. The first handful of episodes are already on line, with more coming every Monday. Thanks to the folks at Otaku USA for the heads up on that one, who got it from Anime News Network.