Skip to main content

Something to Watch: DVD’s

The TV show that stands out this week is Blood Ties: The Complete Series. While all of this had been previously released in two series boxes, it is nice to have everything available in a single package.

The silly montage of copyright-free footage taken from vintage porn and 1950’s Sci-Fi films know as Sex Galaxy will also be hitting the shelves. If you are an MST3K fan, this should be right up your alley.

On the Anime front, Ah My Buddha – The Complete Collection is a good choice, with enough action to keep it interesting. The fan service built into the premise (he only gets strong enough to banish demons when he sees naked women) never really delivers, since naked women without nipples are obviously not really naked; think Sophia Loren in a bodysuit in that 1960’s movie.

Lucky Star Complete Collection is an entirely different critter on several fronts. To begin with, the young women in this series are the focus, not the eye candy. In addition, it tells a high-school tale that almost works for guys as well…

Rental Magica – Collection 2 takes us back to the world where multiple systems of magic work, each with its own set of practitioners (all of whom are in competition with each other), based on the book voted “Best Action Story” by Japanese fans as part of the 2007 Light Novel Awards (the Manga came after the book).

Hidamari Sketch × 365 – Complete Collection is also being released on Tuesday. I probably shouldn’t mention it here, since it has virtually no Sci-Fi elements, but the artist in me couldn’t resist.

Confessions of Fumiko

If you are a fan of animation, one program you should try to catch every week is Digista, or in English the Digital Stadium. Each week they have a guest who is a professional in the digital arts field, usually but not always animation. That guest, referred to as the Curator, nominates four works by unknown new talent for the panel and the audience to review and judge. One piece each week is declared the winner and goes into the permanent collection of the Digital Stadium Hall of Fame. Once a year all the entrants to the stadium become part of the annual competition, at which the DIGISTA Awards are handed out.

This program is a wonderful showcase for new animation talent, giving them world wide exposure. You can watch each weeks program anywhere NHK World is available. If your local cable company does not carry them (mine does, if yours doesn’t start calling and writing them to tell them to add it, or you can get them off a satellite), you can watch the animations online from the hall of fame page. Other NHK programs I never miss are Imagine-Nation for the weekly Anime, Gaming, and Manga news and features, and J-Melo for news and performances from the Japan music scene. The animation that won this weeks Digital Stadium entry is called Confessions of Fumiko; enjoy.

Voice and Video

One of the talents it takes to produce animation is Voice Actors; I know a number of them (and used to be one), and they have a unique skill set. Crunchyroll has a nice presentation on the topic called Adventures in Voice Acting, staring a huge assortment of the best in the business. Now that I have watched the first section, I have to flip a mental coin and decide if I want to buy and download the other segments, or just get the DVD for the permanent collection.

For some eye candy gone wrong, stop by SFX’s It’s Gone a bit 2001, a humorous review of ten movies that tried to imitate the psychedelic ending of that classic film and failed miserably.

Something to Do: Cons

KamikazeCon 3 in Houston, Tx, will be the massive anime event of the weekend. This is no great surprise considering it is the town that has created a full third of the English dubs for anime DVDs over the last decade. They have a ton of guests and a events for the gathering; wish I could be there.

SenshiCon, Alaska’s Original Anime Con (their tagline) takes place at the UAA Student Union in Anchorage, Alaska. While their web site seems to be in need of some help, they do have a strong voice actor guest list which seems to be primarily from FUNimation. Another anime convention this weekend is MomoCon, which I would love to tell you about. Unfortunately their web site is a blank black screen when I go to it, but perhaps you will have better luck. As near as I can tell from their source code, the Georgia Tech Anime Con is using a script to gracefully degrade to standard HTML if you don’t have Flash installed, and has a script which hides the standard HTML if you do have Flash; in my browser both scripts seem to be active at the same time, hiding both the Flash and the HTML.

LunaCon 2010 in Rye Brook, NY is a general Sci-Fi Con with author GoH Tanya Huff. They look to have pretty much everything going on, including Dancing in the Gears, the 2nd annual LunaCon Steampunk Ball, and a massive number of Events and Programs scheduled for the festivities, as you can tell by the list of participants. Meanwhile, in Chattanooga, Tn, FantaSciCon is happening, and it gets my vote for the best Con T-Shirt I have seen this decade. It also has a good selection of guests and a lot of fun events.

Something to Watch: DVD’s

There are some quality DVD’s coming out this week, and some much anticipated releases; but the two are not always the same. The one expected to pull the best numbers this time around is the perfect example of that: The Twilight Saga: New Moon sold tons of tickets to the prepubescent estrogen brigade, while generating noticeable amounts of negative reviews. Which attitude is the correct one depends on who you are, as always, but the saga will continue since the investment has been rewarded by the audience.

The other film that requires actual people to play the parts is Ninja Assassin distributed through Warner Brothers.

From the realm of TV we have the History Channel classic Clash of the Gods TV series. This is a bit different from most of the TV entries I post here, since it has some basis in reality. Some, but not a lot, thanks to the subject matter, so it gets a mention here.

The American animation of note is from Disney (what a surprise), with the title of the Princess and the Frog. Once again, they do a nice job on fitting the best music to the animation, and create a thoroughly enjoyable movie experience.

For imported animations, AstroBoy The Movie finally makes it to DVD, for those of us who missed it on the big screen. It has a serious history, starting in the 1930s or 1950s depending on which path you follow. It has also inspired every robot variant since then, many of which have been real-world builds.

While they don’t have any robots (yet), Genshiken 2 does have an interest in robots, and any other topic you might build a Manga, Anime, or Game out of. Even though it is called 2, this is actually the third series in the franchise. They took a break after the first series, and actually built the anime the characters in that series were watching, Kujibiki Unbalance.

And then there is Tayutama: Kiss On My Deity The Complete Collection. This one comes somewhere between Ah, My Goddes and Ah, My Buddha, and is a ton of fun. The final entry worth noting is Slayers Revolution, season 4 of the classic series. This season was built a decade after the others, reuniting the original cast and creating some closure (and delivering some new excitement).

Sky Blue: Wonderful Days

I haven’t seen it available in the US, but it has hit a lot of US Film Festivals according to the Anime News Network. I picked up the Korean anime Sky Blue: Wonderful Days as an imported sub in 2006, and it has won a boatload of awards since then. While not a replacement for Ghost In The Shell, it is a serious story; the animation is world class, the characters are fully realized, and the plot line is worth paying attention to.