A documentary about Studio Ghibli, and more specifically Miyazaki himself, is coming out called Kingdom of Dreams and Madness. The article the folks at Otaku USA did on it was really quite interesting, and I am now looking forward to seeing it, as soon as they release a version in English, or at least with English subtitles.
The movie of choice this week is Edge of Tomorrow, based on Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s light novel All You Need Is Kill. The book was excellent, I expect they did their best to do it justice bringing it to the big screen. If you are in the mood for lighter fare, or maybe want a movie you can share with your kids, they are re-releasing Ratatouille in a 3D version.
OK, maybe just the teaser-trailer, but Big Hero 6 does look like a fun ride. The 3D modeling/animation software the boy is playing with to create his robot looks like the kind of interface the animators used to make the movie, which makes sense. You use what you know to create, after all, and today’s animator certainly knows 3D modelling software. This has to have one of the first uses of 3D Printing I have seen in a cartoon, but that should happen more often now that the technology has gotten cheap enough that ordinary hobbyists can afford them for casual use. I should mention the Big Hero 6 Game, and the fact that there are Anime tropes embedded all over this feature, putting it solidly in the J-Pop Culture category. I find that kind of interesting for a Disney project; perhaps they are missing the recently retired Miyazaki. Then again, the film is based on the Marvel Graphic Novel of the same name, which takes place in Japan and is itself a non-stop tribute to Otaku culture and sensibilities. The premise is the Giri (a secret consortium of government and private sector interests) decides it needs its own set of superheroes, and sets out to create them. A 13 year old super genius they try to recruit wants nothing to do with them, until his mother is kidnapped by Everwraith, the spiritual remains of everyone killed in the 1945 nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, acting as a kind of group poltergeist.
As far as I know is the first Marvel property to get the full Disney Animation treatment. I don’t count Motion Comics as full animation, no matter how many of the same tricks are used in Anime to make the productions less expensive to create. I am looking forward to this one, which should be in theaters on November 7th.
In Movies the winner is Journey to the West, an action comedy about a young inept demon hunter and the highly skilled female demon hunter he teams up with. This is another Steven Chow film, the man who created Kung Fu Hustle, and who is well on his way to taking over the Action Comedy crown in China from Jackie Chan. There is also Independence Daysaster, a made-for-Syfy movie that might be OK as a comedy, but doesn’t look like they expected anyone to take it seriously. While not quite genre, Eastern Bandits is somewhere between a western, a mafia flick, a war film, and a martial arts movie, and all of it is action.
In TV we have Universe, Season 7: Ancient Mysteries Solved, another great season of exploring what we know about what is out there. If your looking for some spy action, Covert Affairs: Season 4 is also hitting the shelves this week.
For western animation, Defenders of Berk Part 2 is actually season 2. They seem to have lost the core of the story/character development in the new season, going instead for mindless entertainment to boost their ratings. Perhaps the new feature film will return the franchise to its underlying values.
In Anime, Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions! Complete Series begins with someone trying very hard to face reality as he enters High School; a Chunibyo is a student who wants to be acknowledged as valuable so desperately that they’ve literally convinced themselves that they have secret knowledge and hidden powers. Our protagonist Yuta is struggling to leave that behind, but he didn’t count on his friend and neighbor Rikka, who knows all about his past mental state, being delusional herself. Life gets truly strange as fantasy worlds collide in this comedy. Aquarion Evol: Part Two brings episodes 14 through 26 of galaxy-crossing Mecha combat and hormone fueled silliness to the shelves. I find it interesting that there is a 12,000 year gap between the stories of Aquarion and Aquarion Evol, but luckily there is only a difference of a few weeks between parts 1 and 2 of the new series.
There are also an assortment of Lupin The Third releases this week, including Lupin the 3rd: The Hemingway Papers, but most of them seem to be re-releases of earlier series and feature films. Still, Lupin is always an enjoyable show, so I figured I should mention it. And yes, I do know that the one I linked to here has been available for a while, but it is a great series and also worth mentioning again; Fujiko Mine. Finally, Servant × Service: Complete Collection is also worth mentioning for its covert government strangeness and general eccentricity. It is a comedy, as you can tell by checking it out at Crunchyroll.
Based on the Adam Rex book The True Meaning of Smekday, the Dreamworks Animation version is called Home, and it is scheduled to be in theaters on November 26th. This one looks like it will be a lot of silly fun. This particular short, Almost Home, was already on the big screen in front of the feature animation Mr. Peabody & Sherman.
This week sees the animated Legends of Oz: Dorothy’s Return on the big screen, with quite an impressive collection of actors doing the voice work. The book it is based on was not written by L. Frank Baum, but rather his great-grandson, Roger S. Baum, who also writes books about Oz. Roger’s grandfather, Frank Joslyn Baum, didn’t write any books, but he did broker the deal with Samuel Goldwyn in 1934 that gave MGM the film rights to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Frank J. had the contacts to make that deal because he was in the business, having adopted two other Oz books into screenplays that became an animation in 1933 and a live action feature film in 1925.