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Something to Watch: Discs

In western releases, Arrival looks like the most interesting genre offering, with Alien spaceships touching down around the globe. It has been nominated in at least a couple of categories for every major film award going, with a total of 8 Academy Awards nominations alone. As near as I can tell The Crash is genre only by virtue of the line “set in the near future” in its advertising because its hackers are not nerds, but I suppose I should mention it comes out this week as well. The non-genre film worth mentioning is London Town, about growing up in the 1970’s London Punk scene. Check that that is the topic when you see it on the shelves, or you might end up watching another movie with the same name about a washed up comic trying to make a comeback in Vaudeville.

Anime brings us Busou Shinki: Armored War Goddess, A story about a gamer and his four 6-inch-tall combat androids, and yes, it is a comedy. Comet Lucifer is also a comedy of surreal proportions with the fate of the world ultimately at stake. Persona 5 the Animation -The Day Breakers- is a single 24 minute episode running just under $40, so I will not be recommending it. Particularly because I don’t know what it is about, and haven’t found it streaming on any of the North American services, nor on Daisuki, a Japanese anime consortium who stream directly to the US. We do get One Piece: Collection 18 this time around, though.

I want to make special mention of The Mystic Archives of Dantalian, where real works of literature combine with a supernatural world to create the backdrop for a series of interesting mysteries, whodunit style. The series came out in 2011, but first streamed to North America last year, and it looks like this will be its first disc release for the US and Canada. Finally, in Nobunagun our protagonist’s school trip is interrupted by a monster attack! A clandestine government agency arrives to battles the army of monsters, using possessed weapons. The spirits possessing those weapons belong to famous historical military figures, mostly generals, warlords, and shoguns. This one is coming out now in a S.A.V.E. edition, so you should be able to pick it up for under $20 if you shop around.

Sword Art Online The Movie -Ordinal Scale- Trailer 4

On March 9th, for one night only, Sword Art Online The Movie -Ordinal Scale- will be on the big screen, this time with a story based on AR, rather than VR. This is another Fathom Events special transmitted digitally to theaters across North America, with the distribution rights going to Aniplex. It appears to be booked in more theaters than these things usually are, so there is a good chance it is somewhere nearby. The Anime are based on a series of light novels by the same name written by Reki Kawahara, who also had his Accel World series of books turned into Anime. Both series have also become Manga and Video Games, of course.

Miss Hokusai trailer

Miss Hokusai is a film by Keiichi Hara about the daughter of Katsushika Hokusai, one of the most famous artist’s of Japan. You may not know his name, but you have seen his work, like the iconic Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, of which this is one:

36 Views: Under The Wave Off Kanagawa-Hokusai
36 Views: Under The Wave Off Kanagawa-Hokusai

He was also the man who made Manga a household word meaning a picture book with words and sometimes a story, although that wasn’t his intent. Starting at the age of 55 in 1814, he wrote a series of Manga which were published every week or two as an instruction manual for his disciples and apprentices (pretty much the same thing in Japan at that time). There were only around 220 of them, so the publisher put the magazines up for sale to the public, in hopes of recouping at least part of his printing costs. Sales took off; working class people used them to to educate themselves and become more cultivated, craftsmen used the illustrations as models for their work, and the nobility and wealthy classes collected them avidly. Hokusai produced well over 1,500 of the volumes, and Manga became a mainstay of the Japanese culture. This anime is obviously a loving tribute of one artist for the work of another; I am sorry I missed it in the theaters, and will have to track down the disc or streaming service it resides on, because I really want to see it.

Ghost Dancing

This animated short is too adorable for words! The audio is Moses Supposes from 1952’s Singing In The Rain, the animation itself is very well done. Thanks to GoBoiano for the heads up on this one, and thanks to Bowing for doing the animation and posting it. At least it looked like he was one of the creators when I fed his statements through Google Translate.