Skip to main content

Something to Watch: Discs

The winner in films this week is Marvel’s Avengers: Age of Ultron, one of the best artificial intelligence movies I have ever seen. TV has Grimm: Season 4 with more Wessen intrigue and mystery, as the story line gets more convoluted with each episode. If you are more into temporally displaced bodice rippers, then Outlander: Season One, Part 2 concludes the first season. I suppose I should also mention iZombie: Season 1 is out this week, but I’m not sure I want to. I suppose I should watch an episode and see if it is any good.

In Anime Bleach: Season 26 brings us episodes 355 through 366 of the continuing epic of the Soul Reapers. For those who have been counting, that means we are finally getting Bleach releases up to date with the episodes that are streaming, but it took years to get there. Nobunaga the Fool: Collection 2 sees the Eastern Star on the cusp of full-scale interstellar war.

Go Nagai is one of the most prolific creators of anime, coming up with entire genres that never existed before. In 1991 he did it again in the OVA Go Nagai World; if you ever wonder where Chibi characters came from, wonder no longer. In these three episodes he transferred a number of his most popular protagonists to a deformed world where their bodies were seriously misshapen, and they spent the rest of the story line trying to return to normal. The other classic being released this week is Super Dimension Century Orguss, made back in 1983/1984 as part of the Super Macross series of space adventures. What makes this release notable is in its only previous US release back in 2007 only the first 7 episodes of the total 35 episodes had an English voice track, with the rest being subtitled. This time the first 17 episodes are dubbed, and there is a good chance the original voice actors did the next 10, since they appeared on stage together at this years MacrossWorld Convention to make an exciting announcement.

Durarara!! x 2 (#1) is out this week, but it is way overpriced for a single series, and it isn’t even that; it is only the first 6 episodes of the second series, which is already streaming episode 24. I will be watching this one online for the foreseeable future.

Something to Watch: Discs

I didn’t spot any new genre movies this week, but TV brings us both Arrow: The Complete 3rd Season and The Flash: The Complete 1st Season, just in time to binge watch them before they both kick into their next seasons on October 6th and 7th. And if you want a feature length film, the documentary The Great Museum tells the story of Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum, which is one of the most important art repositories on the planet. If your tastes are a bit different, perhaps Rammstein In Amerika will suit you better, also coming out this week.

In Anime, Sword Art Online II has another small, overpriced segment hitting the shelves, but as much as I love the series I won’t be picking it up. I will be waiting for a complete season, or better yet series, at a realistic price. Space Dandy Season 2 continues the strange adventures of the most sharply dressed alien hunter going. It is great to see the creative team that brought us Cowboy Bebop reassembled for another unique project like this. Speaking of strange, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Season 1 has Jonathan Joestar fighting for his life and his sanity against the vampire his adopted brother has become.

Selector Infected WIXOSS: The Complete Series is a combat card game that has some special cards that can take you to a dark plane of existence. If you win, your hearts desire is granted; but if you lose, things could get very dark indeed. Even though this says it is the complete series, in Japan a series is a season, and there is a second season to follow. Also dark this week is Tokyo Ghoul: Complete Season, about a book worm who finds himself turned into a monster by a Ghoul attack. Now he must learn everything he can about his new powers before they overwhelm him.

Hamatora the Animation is about a detective agency in a Yokohama Cafe tat is staffed by people who each have unique powers and abilities. Now someone is systematically killing people with powers, and it is up to Hamatora to solve the murders and stop the perpetrators before those with powers become extinct. Finally, Sabagebu!: Survival Game Club! may not quite be genre (although having an attack platypus argues that it may be), but it is definitely silly fun. I particularly like the way the narrator breaks the fourth wall with his commentary pretty much non-stop.

Something to Stream: GITS Arise

The latest chapter in the groundbreaking Cyberpunk Anime series is Ghost in the Shell: Arise, the story of how the various members of Public Security Section 9 got together and became a team. If you have signed up with Funimation you can stream it from their site, if you don’t have an account with them you can pick up the discs at your favorite Anime supply store. This first showed in theaters in Japan as four feature length films, when they reformatted it into a television series they called it Ghost in the Shell: Arise – Alternative Architecture and added two additional episodes to transition it into the 2015 version of Ghost in the Shell: The Movie.

Something to Watch: Discs

In movies we have Cinderella, a new live action take by Disney on the classic story. If you are looking for something a bit sillier you might want to check out Lego Star Wars: The New Yoda Chronicles Complete Collection. TV has Sleepy Hollow: The Complete Second Season, and Fox actually signed off on season 3. And I suppose I should also mention The Big Bang Theory: The Complete Eighth Season, even though I don’t personally watch it.

In Anime the The Irregular at Magic High School: Nine Schools Competition Arc siblings Tatsuya and Miyuki Shiba are at two different levels, Practitioner and Engineer, but the lowly engineer is changing the way the science of Magic is applied, and overturning the way everyone from the Military to the Yakuza thought the world worked. This show is following a rather unusual release pattern in that they are not putting it out by season, but by story arc. Since it ran for two seasons but was made up of 3 separate story arcs of different lengths that can become a little confusing, and it doesn’t help any that this set is priced around twice as much per episode as the usual initial release run. I will be waiting for a better deal and the complete series in a single box before I pick this up. If I feel the need to watch it again before that time comes I will stream it. Also out this week is The Comic Artist & His Assistants, which isn’t exactly genre, but rather a recursive story about creating one of the media formats the stories are told in.

Something to Stream: Anime Season update

The summer Anime season is winding to an end, and three clear winners have caught my attention. Gate remains my favorite, with the action and international espionage in the Special Zone and Japan torquing up with every episode. I really hope they are planning a second season of that one, there is a lot of story yet to tell in that universe. Charlotte kicked into high gear in episode 9, when the introduction of a new power completely changed the nature of the story. And while it still reminds me a lot of Attack On Titan, God Eater is very definitely its own story, and quite an exciting one. At this point those are the shows I am watching as soon as they become available, often checking several times during the day to see if they are ready yet.

Something to Watch: Discs

This week Movies bring us The Age of Adaline, the story of a woman who stopped aging around 1927, and fell in love in 2014. TV has Gotham: The Complete First Season and Supernatural: The Complete Tenth Season, both action dramas which are a bit on the dark side.

There is nothing new in Anime this week, but Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust has only been released on VHS in the US up until now, so this will be its DVD debut. It is based on the third novel in Yoshiaki Kawajiri’s Vampire Hunter book series, which has 27 novels so far. That is a bit misleading, since some of the novels take as many as 4 volumes to complete, there are a total of 40 books, with more expected to be in the works.Then there are two different spin off series of light novels; for the complete list, see the Wikipedia article about the franchise. Everything else coming out this week is a re-release, including the classics Patlabor Movie 3: WXIII and Ranma ½ – Set 7.