This is the Senior Thesis film produced at Ringling College of Art and Design by Dylan Vanwormer and Logan Scelina. Yes, it is a bit silly, but where animation is concerned that is often the point. These kind of things inspire me to plug away at my own animation projects, even though mine never seem to look this good.
The one that gets my vote this week is Epic, an animated fantasy from the folks who did Ice Age and Rio. They did pretty good on the voice actor department to, with a cast that includes Collin Farrell, Chris O’Dowd, and Beyonce to name a few. If you’re in the mood for something darker, the no budget film No Sanctuary will also be out in at least some theaters.
Looks like the Daisuki streaming animation site is now live! Because, you know, I didn’t have enough online streaming services to watch anime on already, so I needed this. If, like me, you need more streaming anime in your life, sign up today and check them out. Also, starting today as part of their launch festivities, they are giving away a boatload of prizes of various sorts, you can pick one and apply to win each day.
Movies this week include a ton of things released previously on DVD and now coming out on Blue Ray, like Hitchcock, but they have been available in some format for a while, so not new as such. The best of the new releases looks to be The Assassin’s Blade, the Jingle Ma 2008 film out of China. There is also Shifter about a kid who gains the power to shift into the body of a wolf and goes to save his parents, but I couldn’t find a proper link to it.
We do better in TV, with Fringe releasing both season 5 and the entire series as two different box sets. May I just mention how shocked and surprised I was that Fox actually let a high quality TV show run all the way to the end, without canceling it 6 episodes in after playing it in the wrong order and changing what time/day it airs each week? We also have K-9: The Complete Series, an Australian Doctor Who spin off that they made appear to take place in London by use of some London production input. Some of that London production input is from Bob Baker, who took a break from co-creating all those wonderful Wallace & Gromit projects to help out with the series. There is a rumor that they have a second series in the works, but I will remind everyone that when you look at the quality you need to keep in mind it is a children’s program, just like the Sarah Jane Smith series.
In western animation we have Superman: Unbound, where Superman goes up against Brainiac to try to save his home town of Kandor, miniaturized along with all of its inhabitants and held captive by the arch villein.
In Anime, Natsuyuki Rendezvous: Complete Collection is about a still grieving widow, the man who wants to woo her, and the ghost who comes between them, making for one of the stranger romantic triangle stories I have ever followed. Since they only have 2 bodies between the three of them, it can occasionally get a bit confusing as to who is doing what to whom. As you might suspect from the subject matter, this one is a bit melancholy. Toriko: Part 4 continues the combat gourmet saga through episodes 39 to 50, which are every bit as funny as the food fights that went before.
While not quite genre, both Sound Of The Sky and Kids on the Slope are music based series with a positive attitude, and look like a lot of fun. Finally this week, Sekirei: Complete Series puts both seasons into a single box set for the first time, making it a more cost effective buy.
This one is truly strange; Scooby Doo and Twin peaks collide. In fact it happened twice, in two separate episodes, both silly fun to watch. The info comes fromThe Mary Sue, and the heads-up was courtesy of Topless Robot.
Crunchyroll has started playing the spring anime season shows, and it is off to a great start; you can see the lineup here. I thought I should mention a few of the ones that look promising to me in case you might want to check them out.
Attack On Titan is a tale of humanity trapped within a walled city by giants who seek to eat them. The Scouting Legion are the only ones brave enough to explore beyond the walls, and mostly they just die… a lot. Eren may be the one to pull humanity through the walls into the future.
HENNEKO – The Hentai Prince and the Stony Cat is about two people who went to beg a favor from a god, only to have their wish granted by having a part of their mind removed. Now they each act in ways they never expected, and are trying to find their ways back to being themselves, complete with the lost bits.
DEVIL SURVIVOR 2 is fairly Gantz-like; thirteen people die, and are given the choice to live, enlisted into the front line with the war with demonic forces attacking their family and friends. Only the summoning spells are built into cell phone apps, and a secret government agency has a completely different set of such apps. It looks to be quite the winner so far.
Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet brings a taste of Earth with a serious twist, and may be the most interesting series of all. Our protagonist starts out in combat protecting the survivors of humanity from alien attackers while looking for a new planet to live on. He then gets spat out the side of a collapsing wormhole to a random segment of space/time, where things get really strange. This is me urging you to watch the first episode, beginning to end, and see if you don’t like it too. I suspect this one may end up being my favorite series of the new season, it has everything from the paratemporal to the transdimensional, and with a double helping of attitude just for spice!
There are more I haven’t checked out yet, I will post again if I find any more good ones.