Movies have Alien Outpost, while TV brings Bitten: Complete Second Season and the Witches Of East End: The Complete Season 2. None of those did particularly well with the critics or the ratings.
In Anime Atelier, Escha & Logy: Alchemists of the Dusk Sky contains all 12 episodes of the mismatched alchemists working together to save their world. Noragami: The Complete First Season has a slacker god with no shrine or worshipers trying to help a girl who’s soul keeps slipping out of her body.
Yes, this is the series that asks that age old question: Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? Except the protagonist is doing anything but trying to pick up girls, they just seem to collect around him. The anime series is based on the light novel of the same name, what in the US might be called a Novella or Novelette, written by Fujino Omori and illustrated by Suzuhito Yasuda. This is my favorite anime of the spring 2015 season (although there are a few others which are quite tasty and almost as much fun, which I make sure to watch each week), and although the season is winding up, it doesn’t look like the story line is. In fact, becoming the fastest growing adventurer now seems to be the set up for what the quest becomes in the next season, not the goal for this one. Although as we get to the end of the first season, the advice his ghostly grandfather keeps giving him makes a lot more sense once we learn who that grandfather is. If you haven’t been following this one, use the Crunchyroll link and binge-watch it this weekend to get yourself up to speed.
Movies have Last Knights this week, which comes under the Epic Fantasy category. The film did not do well with the critics, and I don’t believe I will be watching it myself. Much more interesting is the indi film Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter, about a Japanese office assistant who mistakes a VHS thriller for a documentary and goes off for the hunt of her life. This is a much more surreal fantasy, but it is actually based on a true story. The only TV show worth mentioning here also seems like a total fantasy to me, although I suspect the show creators intended it to be more like real life: Banshee: The Complete First Season starts with the premise of the Amish Mafia, and gets rapidly less realistic from there.
Finally the actual fantasy film Forbidden Empire looks like it could be a lot of fun, I intend to check it out and see if it lives up to its promise. It is a Russian film based on Nikolai Gogol’s story Viy, and appropriately released there under the name Viy 3D. The story is about an 18th century explorer who sets out on an epic journey to map the forbidden uncharted lands of Transylvania; what he learns scares the holy living crap out of him, and more than likely most of the audience. It has already been signed off for a sequel which is filming in China, starring Jason Flemyng, Rutger Hauer, and Anna Yo, with help from Jackie Chan Stunt Team. I can’t wait to see how it does.
In Anime, Space Brothers – Collection 3 brings episodes 27 through 38 to the shelves, continuing this amazing story about the conquest of space and what it means to one family. In .hack//G.U. Trilogy our protagonist must unlock the mystery behind a computer glitch capable of leaving players comatose, and possibly killing them. Turn A Gundam – Part 1 brings us the first 25 episodes in an epic about the separation thousands of years ago of the two branches of Humanity, one on the Earth, the other on the Moon.
For the bridge between sci-fi and fantasy this week we have A Lull in the Sea: Complete Collection, a variation on the Turn A Gundam story, except with the separation of humanities branches being between below and above the sea. There is also BlazBlue Alter Memory, where it takes a serious combination of technology and magic to defeat the beast out to obliterate the human race.
There are a number of excellent titles out this time around on the pure fantasy level as well, starting with Magical Warfare, which has a Kendo geek suddenly finding out he has to become a magician to survive and protect those he holds dear. The Irregular at Magic High School team also has a new release this week, although limited in scope to 7 episodes. Tokyo Ravens: Season 1 Part 2 is a supernatural fantasy featuring otherworldly battles and forgotten promises, and worth taking a peek at.
My Little Monster: Complete Collection is about an impassive girl who meets a trouble maker in a brand new love story. While not exactly genre, it has enough fantasy elements to satisfy my immediate needs in a story line.
The band Unison Square Garden is from Japan, and they have been cranking out the rock for a while. The first track here is from their 5th Album “Catcher In The Spy”, called Heaven and Hell, released in 2014.
The second track came out about 5 weeks ago, and is the short version of Sugar Song and Bitter Step, Short Version in Japan apparently meaning they will give you one verse, and if they are feeling generous half a chorus. This isn’t the first time I have posted an official short version Japanese song on this site, for Anime OP or ED tracks are usually 90 seconds long, and worth every moment of it. And since it turns out this song IS an Anime ED track, specifically for the Anime Blood Blockade Battlefront, track 2.5 is the Anime version of it. Which also could explain why such a kick ass Rock band recorded such a Pop tune; they needed to land that Anime contract to get the word out about the majority of their body of work. At least, I hope that was their justification, and they didn’t just go belly-up into full-tilt Pop on us.
For the third track we jumped all the way back to the live version of their 2012 song Out Of Place Hummingbird. As always, the actual song titles are the best guesses of a guy with a very limited vocabulary in that language, but the music needs no translation, it is just that good.
On July 5th the Death Note live-action TV series will premiere on Nippon TV, which doesn’t have great reception at my house in North America. All is not lost for American fans, however, because Crunchyroll will be airing the show just a few days behind its Japanese release date each week. Thanks to Otaku USA for the heads up on this one, although I will feel more confident about the information when Crunchyroll actually adds it to their menu system.
This isn’t the first Live Action Attack On Titan trailer, but it is the first one that includes visuals on the 3D Maneuver Gear which is the core of the defense groups arsenal, and has helped make the animation such a success. Then they did it not once, but twice. I am so ready for this production set, which will be released as a theatrical presentation (i.e. Movie) on August 1st, a short series of weekly shown TV shows covering the space between, and then the concluding Movie on September 19th. The release dates I am quoting are all for Japan, but with the world-wide excitement the original Manga and Anime have generated, I have very high hopes one of the streaming services will pick up on the TV series, and someone like American Multi-Cinema (AMC) (founded in 1920 Kansas City, Missouri, now owned by China) will carry the films. Keeping my fingers crossed, at least.