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Something to Watch: Discs

Movies bring us Goosebumps, a wonderful little film based on the books of R.L. Stine, and starring Jack Black. Thats pretty much it this week for Western TV and Movies.

Anime has Corpse Party: Tortured Souls – Complete Collection, where Heavenly Host School was burned to the ground and replaced by another school in the hopes that everyone would forget the gruesome things that happened there. THAT didn’t work out the way people were hoping, and now the students of the new school are battling the undead in the hallways of the old. In Momokyun Sword, Momoko must band together with some Heavenly-sent Celestial Goddesses to rid feudal Japan from a rampaging hoard of Evil Oni. Re:␣Hamatora – Complete Collection has a detective agency made up of the supernaturally powerful up against the returning dead who came back specifically to steal their powers.

Kingdom: Season 1 has all 38 episodes of the Waring States Period story about two war orphans who vowed to prove themselves, one of whom looks just like the young man who was the King of Qin, and would become the Emperor Shi Huangdi. There are a few returning favorites with new volumes this time around, One Piece – Season 7 Voyage 5 and Naruto Shippuden Uncut Set 25.

Something to Stream: Dimension W

By 2071, the world’s energy problems are seemingly solved by a network of cross-dimensional power induction coils, but there is one minor problem. What the power can do depends on which of the multiverse iterations it was drawn from, and if it isn’t pulled from the officially sanctioned universe it might be able to overwhelm the energies employed by by the government and the police. Needless to say, they have a vested interest in making sure that doesn’t happen, so they pay a premium bounty to anyone who collects the bootleg coils for them, under the excuse that “illegal coils are dangerous”. Which is true; they just don’t mention dangerous to whom.

In this setting, coil-hating repo man Kyoma makes most of his money from confiscating such power sources and selling them to the government. The unique coil android Mira (who is more than she seems) is near him when she sees her father die at the hands of that government, in an event which also takes out 20 square blocks of the city, knocking out herself and any others within a 50 mile radius who’s lives depend on constant coil input. The two end up having to work together to try to achieve their separate goals.

There have only been two episodes at this point, with episode 3 becoming available at 9AM tomorrow, Saturday the 23rd. That is about an hour after it airs in Tokyo, and the built in leeway in the time frame is because they will still have to subtitle it into English, which might take them more than an hour. I do like the two episodes I have seen so far, and am quite looking forward to more.

The Boy and the Beast Theater Showing

Get ready for The Boy and the Beast, in select theaters this March. It is the latest film from Mamoru Hosoda, who’s previous works include The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, the cyber adventure Summer Wars and the Ghibli-esque Wolf Children. It has picked up a number of Film Festival awards already, no surprise considering its creator actually worked at Studio Ghibli before forming his own small animation studio with the goal of making quality animations like the world had never seen before. This is another presentation made possible by Funimation, and they have more coming soon.

Something to Watch: Discs

Movies bring us Jem and the Holograms, which I have yet to see, so I can’t comment as to how true it stayed to the original premise. Not very, if the reports I have read are accurate; they threw out the female superhero corporate executive of the original series and replaced her with a you tube star with no powers or control. Rotten Tomatoes gave it 19%, which I don’t find very promising, but I will watch it at some point just so I can make up my own mind. Much more interesting is Eden, a French film about the Paris Rave scene in the 1990s and the DJs who made it happen. Daft Punk flit about the edges of the film while the core DJs go through their own evolution played out against the backdrop of the clubs. Rotten Tomatoes gave this film an 82% and it won an assortment of film festival awards, so I am looking forward to catching up with it. I did not find any genre live action TV this week.

Anime has the release of A Certain Scientific Railgun S: The Complete Series, the second season finding a cabal of scientists cloning people with powers and murdering the clones. Their goal is to use the deaths to fuel the growth of a very powerful Esper, but Misaka and the girls of Judgement get wind of the plot when they run into their own clones. Now the battle is on to see who will control Academy City. In Terror in Resonance director Shinichiro Watanabe and composer Yoko Kanno are teamed up to bring you this highly suspenseful series, where Tokyo is decimated by a shocking attack. That is only the opening move in a plot to destroy the planet, and there isn’t much time for the detective chasing down the clues to sift through them for the truth and stop the bad guys.

Something to Watch: Discs

The Martian is out on disc this week, based on Andy Weir’s book and starring Matt Damon. The film has been nominated for a number of awards already, it will be interesting to see which ones it takes home. For animated family silliness we also get Hotel Transylvania 2, with the further antics of Dracula’s daughter. While Mr. Robot: The Complete First Season may not be genre, it is cutting edge TV you should be watching, and it too is up for an assortment of awards. From now to January 21st you can watch all 10 Season 1 enhanced and uncensored episodes on their website, especially if you are voting for any of those awards.

In Anime, Argevollen Collection 2 continues to up the ante in the war, with newer and better combat mechs rolled out to both sides. It is beginning to look like the only winners will be the companies that create the giant robots. The IGPX Immortal Grand Prix: Complete Collection originally came out in 2005 as 2 box sets, this is the first time the entire thing is in a single package. It combines auto racing with combat mechas for a rather unique sport.

MetaFive new tracks

The band METAFIVE was formed around Yellow Magic Orchestra’s Takahashi Yukihiro early in 2014, as I mentioned when I posted their video for Don’t Move last month. This time around we have the video edit version of Luv U Tokio, posted on line 3 days ago, and the studio live version of Maisie’s Avenue posted a few weeks ago on December 26th. This band just gets better with each new track I hear from them. Their very first album, META, which includes all of these tracks and many more, hits the shelves in just a few days on January 13th. You can pick it up from your favorite Japanese online music outlet as an import for 2,800 Yen, but sadly it is not coming out in the US at the same time. Locally you can get their track Split Spirit, featured in the Anime Ghost In The Shell: Arise from the iTunes store.