There are many aspects to a SIGGRAPH convention, but one of my favorites has always been the Computer Animation Festival, and the SIGGRAPH Asia 2014 con coming up next month looks to have a good collection. The gathering takes place in Shenzhen, China, from December 3rd to the 6th, and as always will feature the cutting edge in what is being created in the world of computer graphics.
The final Miazaki masterpiece The Wind Rises hits the shelves this week, in a combo BD+DVD pack. Unusually for an anime, it tells the true story of one of Japan’s top aircraft designers, or at least as true as any movie ever gets. It follows his life from that of a young man almost to the end, with all the style and compassion Miazaki is known for. With a totally different attitude we also get Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, another twisted story from Frank Miller told from the pages of his graphic novel, with an excellent cast. Automata goes in still another direction, with Antonio Banderas as the robot hunting enforcer in a world where the machines are more human, and humane, than the people. Even though several versions are already on the shelves, I had to mention that the Frozen Sing Along Edition is being released this week as well; follow the bouncing snowflake!
The only genre TV show I found a reference to being released this week is Wolfblood: Season 2, and for a 13 episode series to go for $10 on its day of release says something about the level of quality you can expect from this one, I suspect. Although it is a BBC (or CBBC, more accurately) show, and airing on Disney in the US, so that says some good things.
In Anime, besides the previously mentioned The Wind Rises, two other Miyazaki animation classics are being released on Blue Ray for the first time; Kiki’s Delivery Service, and Princess Mononoke. I am thinking I will have to upgrade my copies from DVD.
New this week is the very amusing I Couldn’t Become a Hero, So I Reluctantly Decided To Get a Job, about a man who graduated Hero School, then had to get a job in retail when the war against the Demons ended unexpectedly, also ending his paycheck. But his culture shock is nothing compared to his new co-worker, the daughter of the now-deceased Demon King! We also have One Piece Season 6 Part 2, bringing us up to episodes 349 through 360 on disc, while streaming just showed episode 670 this past week.
A Certain Magical Index: Complete Season 1 brings the entire first season together in a single box set for the first time, which means you can pick it up for a bit under half as much as you would have paid by buying the previously released Season 1 Part 1 and Part 2 individually. This story is a heady mix of science and sorcery in the same universe as the genetically modified parapsychics of A Certain Scientific Railgun. Likewise, Death Note: The Complete Series includes all 37 episodes of the TV show for a decent price, but none of the movies, either live action or animated.
Just because it is both silly, and very well done, here it is: the regeneration of the 11th Doctor into the 13th. The numbering assumes the War Doctor existed in the order his episode aired, not his progenitor and descendant Doctors proper order. Just to show you how well Blob Van Dam did at creating this Lego animation, I am also including the original regeneration scene from the official Doctor Who channel.
This weekend they held the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Governors Awards, and as part of that they gave the Lifetime Achievement Oscar to Hayao Miyazaki. I have ranted often enough about what an amazing craftsman, director, animator, writer, and on and on he is. I think this time I will let the presenter and the recipient speak for themselves.
This is a good week, with several offerings in each category. Iceman has Donnie Yen as a Ming Dynasty palace guard, wrongly accused of a murder. When he and the three guards chasing him end up frozen, they get defrosted 400 years later, continuing their fight across modern China. The animation How to Train Your Dragon 2 is the second film of three in this series. I quite liked the first one, and am looking forward to this one since I missed it in the theater. The Movie category is rounded out with a documentary, James Cameron’s Deep Sea Challenge. This is the project he used to refine the development of his 3D camera system, just before he used it to make Avatar.
In TV we get True Blood: The Complete Seventh Season, which brings this series to a close. The camp classic Batman: The Complete Television Series starring Adam West and Burt Ward, are serious when they say complete. All 120 episodes and 3 hours of extras are included. Finally Star Wars The Clone Wars: The Lost Missions continues to detail the conflict between the Republic and the Separatists as the Jedi war grows closer.
In Anime, Patema Inverted appears to be an animated remake of Upside Down, and could be quite interesting. Sailor Moon: Season 1 Part 1 is being re-released in North America with a brand new English translation, making it almost like a whole different series. Stella Women’s Academy, High School Division Class C3 is a typical story about the school club the protagonist joins. But in this case, the school club is a serious survivalist team out drilling in the woods, and friendly fire may be their most dangerous enemy; this is the complete series.
My mental choices are completely interfering with my school romantic comedy takes place in the kind of universe where a game premise suddenly takes over our hero’s life, and seems to be designed as a curse more than anything else. Finally, High School DxD: New Season 2 is filled with still more zombie stomping action as the Archangel Michael joins the Occult Research Club in the battle to protect the living.
More and more of what I watch is streaming video, and less and less is based on some kind of physical media. I guess the reason these weekly entries focus on the discs is there is too much streaming Sci-Fi and Fantasy, especially out of Japan, that no single person could possibly cover it all. I think a team of three people, all doing it full time, could do it the way it should be done. But one person, doing one entry a week? No chance. I will probably start mentioning my favorites again, though, in case anyone missed hearing about them.
A couple of classic tunes put together in minimal time to tie them to an animation, created in iClone. The minimal time factor explains why the lip sync is so bad, and the crudeness of some of the other animation aspects. But while as a viewer I can critique these as not being as perfect as the music videos from world class productions like Frozen, as a creator I am in awe that a single person working from an extremely tight deadline managed to put out anything at all, let alone anything as tightly animated and choreographed as this. I mean, compare the budget, timeline, and production staff between the two projects and see if you don’t understand what I am referring to. Kudo’s to Jay for creating such amazing product under this kind of constraint. And he did it using a couple of my all time favorite tunes, always a bonus!