The folks over at Crunchyroll have announced that they will be streaming the new Sword Art Online II beginning on July 5th. As usual, that pretty much means you get to see it an hour after it airs in Tokyo if you are a premium member, and one week later for everybody else. This is a great show with a large audience, I am looking forward to finding out if they keep up the quality level in the new series.
The folks over at Viz have licensed not only the new Sailor Moon series, but all the original series as well. They are bringing the classic ones back, uncut and unedited for the first time to North America. You will be able to buy them on DVD/Blue Ray combo packages put out two box sets per series, or you can watch them streaming on Hulu and Neon Alley. with two more episodes each week. By the time they are done, they will have put out a full 200 episodes of the various original series, and without editing out any of the dialog or relationships deemed not appropriate for a Saturday morning cartoon show. Heck, they are even keeping the character’s actual names this time, rather than changing them to something American. The first handful of episodes are already on line, with more coming every Monday. Thanks to the folks at Otaku USA for the heads up on that one, who got it from Anime News Network.
OK, maybe just the teaser-trailer, but Big Hero 6 does look like a fun ride. The 3D modeling/animation software the boy is playing with to create his robot looks like the kind of interface the animators used to make the movie, which makes sense. You use what you know to create, after all, and today’s animator certainly knows 3D modelling software. This has to have one of the first uses of 3D Printing I have seen in a cartoon, but that should happen more often now that the technology has gotten cheap enough that ordinary hobbyists can afford them for casual use. I should mention the Big Hero 6 Game, and the fact that there are Anime tropes embedded all over this feature, putting it solidly in the J-Pop Culture category. I find that kind of interesting for a Disney project; perhaps they are missing the recently retired Miyazaki. Then again, the film is based on the Marvel Graphic Novel of the same name, which takes place in Japan and is itself a non-stop tribute to Otaku culture and sensibilities. The premise is the Giri (a secret consortium of government and private sector interests) decides it needs its own set of superheroes, and sets out to create them. A 13 year old super genius they try to recruit wants nothing to do with them, until his mother is kidnapped by Everwraith, the spiritual remains of everyone killed in the 1945 nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, acting as a kind of group poltergeist.
As far as I know is the first Marvel property to get the full Disney Animation treatment. I don’t count Motion Comics as full animation, no matter how many of the same tricks are used in Anime to make the productions less expensive to create. I am looking forward to this one, which should be in theaters on November 7th.
In Movies the winner is Journey to the West, an action comedy about a young inept demon hunter and the highly skilled female demon hunter he teams up with. This is another Steven Chow film, the man who created Kung Fu Hustle, and who is well on his way to taking over the Action Comedy crown in China from Jackie Chan. There is also Independence Daysaster, a made-for-Syfy movie that might be OK as a comedy, but doesn’t look like they expected anyone to take it seriously. While not quite genre, Eastern Bandits is somewhere between a western, a mafia flick, a war film, and a martial arts movie, and all of it is action.
In TV we have Universe, Season 7: Ancient Mysteries Solved, another great season of exploring what we know about what is out there. If your looking for some spy action, Covert Affairs: Season 4 is also hitting the shelves this week.
For western animation, Defenders of Berk Part 2 is actually season 2. They seem to have lost the core of the story/character development in the new season, going instead for mindless entertainment to boost their ratings. Perhaps the new feature film will return the franchise to its underlying values.
In Anime, Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions! Complete Series begins with someone trying very hard to face reality as he enters High School; a Chunibyo is a student who wants to be acknowledged as valuable so desperately that they’ve literally convinced themselves that they have secret knowledge and hidden powers. Our protagonist Yuta is struggling to leave that behind, but he didn’t count on his friend and neighbor Rikka, who knows all about his past mental state, being delusional herself. Life gets truly strange as fantasy worlds collide in this comedy. Aquarion Evol: Part Two brings episodes 14 through 26 of galaxy-crossing Mecha combat and hormone fueled silliness to the shelves. I find it interesting that there is a 12,000 year gap between the stories of Aquarion and Aquarion Evol, but luckily there is only a difference of a few weeks between parts 1 and 2 of the new series.
There are also an assortment of Lupin The Third releases this week, including Lupin the 3rd: The Hemingway Papers, but most of them seem to be re-releases of earlier series and feature films. Still, Lupin is always an enjoyable show, so I figured I should mention it. And yes, I do know that the one I linked to here has been available for a while, but it is a great series and also worth mentioning again; Fujiko Mine. Finally, Servant × Service: Complete Collection is also worth mentioning for its covert government strangeness and general eccentricity. It is a comedy, as you can tell by checking it out at Crunchyroll.
The latest Anime in the Appleseed franchise brings the story to a head. From Stage 6 and the other related creators, this iteration put the entire series into perspective. Based on the original story by Masamune Shirow, creator of Ghost In The Shell and Dominion Tank Police, this series is well worth your time to check out.
I have no clue what made them call themselves Bump of Chicken, but their music is fun. These tracks also feature Hatsune Miku, a virtual idol and computer-generated diva.