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Movies include The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2, with a VR short of selected segments of the film also available, fully 3D and formatted for Oculus Rift, Samsung Gear, and others. There is one more release that looks worth watching, the documentary/essay film Dreams Rewired, a look at movies of 100 years ago at the beginning of the Information Age, with Tilda Swinton doing the voice over. On the silly side, we also get Cowboys vs Dinosaurs, a really fun bad movie, and Roboshark from Syfy, about a shark that eats an alien space probe.

This is the Google Cardboard version of that Mockingjay VR:

In Anime, Celestial Method is about a city with a flying saucer parked over it, which began with fear but turned out to just make the place a tourist destination. Then two girls get together, and everything changes again. Date A Live II is the complete 2nd season of the alien invasion rom-com. Durarara!! x 2 (3) is part 3 of season 2 for entirely too much money; you can buy the Japanese import for about $30 less than the US release, in fact. I will just watch it on streaming until they put out a sanely priced edition. We also get the continuation of a couple of favorites, with Fairy Tail: Part 19 bringing episodes 213 through 226 home. Notice that is putting us at about 4 and a half years into the story at one episode per week. Streaming live from Japan this week is episode 278, if you were curious. One Piece: Collection 15 brings episodes 349 through 372 to the shelves, with episode 457 currently streaming. Which means you can buy about 7 years of it, but they are currently finishing up the 9th year.

Ganglion is an excellent hard core rock girl band out of Japan you should definitely be listening to. The first track is their most recent release Never Ever Again, which came out this past October and was also the name of their just completed world tour. Next is Save Your Heart from last July, also one of their songs from the tour. Then we have Black Out from last March, which means these examples are only my favorite few tunes from the last year. And trust me, if this band comes to my town, I will definitely be part of the audience, rocking my butt off.

The 1975 documentary film by Orson Wells on Aliens and Extraterrestrial Civilizations called Who’s Out There? was apparently authorized by NASA. Even if it wasn’t, it really is a treat to watch, and it held the title of another Hugo Award winning story that was later turned into the movie The Thing. If you have the chance to watch it some time it is an interesting video.

The real world team of blacksmiths and craftsman build another fantasy weapon: Asuna’s Rapier! Anime is a very fertile ground for these kind of objects, and the team here does there best to show you the basics of creating your own.

10 Years of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter data gathered together: Magnificent Mars is a short but intense video highlighting the last decades worth of images brought back from the red planet. It’s next project may be selecting a landing area for the first manned flight.