Animation

The Painting is the most interesting movie this week, a French animation (the language; the country the animation was made in was Belgium) about three different castes of painted characters. The animation approach is unusual, although it does remind me of A Cat In Paris, another French animation (this time both the country it was made in and the language) with a distinctly Impressionistic look to the artwork.

In TV, season 1 of Elementary, a modern interpretation of the Holmes stories with Lucy Liu as Joan Watson. I have only seen a few of them so far, but they look quite good. Not as good as Sherlock, the UK modernized interpretation now on season 3, but still good. Also season 3 of The Walking Dead hits the shelves, for those who can’t get enough zombie action.

In anime, Guilty Crown: The Complete Series is released in 2 boxes, parts 1 and 2, but at least they both come out the same day so you don’t have to wait 6 months to find out what happens next. A meteorite carrying a lethal virus crashes into Japan, killing a major chunk of the population. Some of those who survived the infection, including our protagonist Shu, gained some strange powers as their body mutated to survive (shades of Wildcards!). Now he has to decide if those powers should serve the secret government agency or the rebels led by the rock star goddess. Here is a hint: Shu is a high school boy.

Medaka Box: Complete Collection only has 12 episodes, so it fits into a single box set. Medaka was just elected Student Council President, and instituted a suggestion box proposal thinking the students would be looking for help with studying or dating advice. It turns out there is a lot more going on at the school then she ever suspected, things quickly get wild and deadly, and only the special powers this brings out in the student council are holding back total destruction. Now she has to solve the mystery before everything goes to hell… literally.

Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams starts as a historical epic, telling of the downfall of the warlord Nobunaga Oda at the hands of Jubei, and the rise of Hideyoshi Toyotomi to power in the late 1500s. Then on June 29th, 1596, a mysterious red star appears in the sky, and Emperor Hideyoshi becomes evil while Japan is rocked by natural disasters. Some of what follows is close to historical fact: the capture of the Spanish vessel San Felipe (it was shipwrecked, but the rest of the story is true) and the execution of its crew, along with the banishment of all foreigners from Japan and the persecution of christian religion. The raising of armies of Demons and attempting to conquer the world with them, not so much. At this point in its history, Japan was a very insular place, and wanted little to do with the rest of the world. It stayed that way until the 1800s. But this epic fantasy does bring some very interesting twists to the true story of those times. And yes, this anime is based on a game, as you no doubt already figured out. The game creators started with history, while the anime creators started with the game.