I don’t know if I appreciate this more for the amazing cosplay or the quality video production, but this footage put together from this years Katsucon is just fun to watch. Congrats to Beat Down Boogie for an excellent job, and if you like this, check out their channel for a lot more of the same.
I usually hit movies first, but Day Of The Doctor gets the number one spot this time around. This is after all the 50th Anniversary Doctor Who Special, and definitely had more Doctors than any other episode. While we are on the topic of TV, I should mention Futurama: Volume 8 and Futurama: The Complete Series will both be hitting the shelves this week.
Another break from my normal structure; I usually do live action movies first, but Despicable Me 2 has to start out the movie presentations this week. It was way too much fun, and you just can’t have too many minions. The other movies worth mentioning have either Cantonese or Mandarin as their primary sound track, including Man of Tai Chi. Note that that is the second Asian-centric film Keanu Reeves has starred in this year, and the first one he has directed. Saving General Yang takes place in 986 AD, and involves the famous Yang Family Generals. For something different, The Rooftop seems to be a Taiwan gangland musical with lots of singing, dancing, and fighting. It looks like a fun film to check out.
In Anime, Bleach: Season 19 brings us up to episode 279. To put that in perspective, they are up to episode 366 streaming from Japan, so the DVDs are finally starting to catch up with the streaming sources. Another returning favorite is Fairy Tail: Part 7, bringing episodes 73 through 84, and they are also releasing Fairy Tale: The Movie this week, so you get a double dose.
Btooom!: The Complete Series is about a combat game which suddenly changed when the 7 best players in the world were kidnapped, and woke up on an island with a bag of bombs each and holes in their memories; now they have to kill each other off and be the last one standing to escape, or so they are lead to believe. Finally, in the main series, a bunch of friends had their bodies repeatedly swapped so they never knew who they were going to be next, had their ages change at random, and had their desires overwhelm them and take control, all being done to them by an outside force. Now, in Kokoro Connect: OVA Collection, their inner emotional state is suddenly being projected into one of their friends, including phobias and suppressed desires, sometimes with near lethal results.
The Last Days on Mars is a UK movie which is borderline horror and very much a thriller, but it includes some actors I like and some excellent production values. It has been out for a while on iTunes so will only be in a limited number of theaters, but I think it will look good on the big screen. Likewise the Canadian film Ice Soldiers only gets a limited run, also includes some actors I like, and has a very tasty looking trailer. Finally, the anime Puella Magi Madoka Magica the Movie Part III: The Rebellion Story will also be doing a limited run on American screens this week. The American offering this time around is Implanted, which did not look quite as interesting as the others when I viewed the trailer, so I will be waiting for that one to hit a streaming service to see it.
My favorite movie this time around just might be Red 2, the amazing sequel to the first film they created out of this graphic novel. Scratch that, nothing “might be” about it; this one is world class! Also out, Jobs is a BioPic with a proper attitude.
In TV, I count Murdoch Mysteries: Season 6 as genre because of its near Steampunk goodness, mixing the 1890s super science cutting edge of forensics, air flight, electronic communications, and so much more with some well thought out mysteries and a bunch of characters you will thoroughly enjoy. The protagonist himself most reminds me of the Mounty from the TV series Due South, another excellent police procedural.
In Anime, Accel World: Set 1 is abut an unpopular boy who spends all his time in online gaming. He is surprised one day when a popular girl approaches him and invites him to combat in a new virtual world as her knight. As usual, all is not as it appears at first glance, and when they neurolink into the game he learns about Brain Bursting, which accelerates your mind when you go into combat mode. La Storia Della Arcana Famiglia is the complete collection, the tale of what happens when and organization leader retires and puts his position up for grabs to whoever wins the fight for it. Each member of the organization has a power granted by a tarot card, as well as the usual guns and knives, so the competition will be fierce. But when he throws in his daughter as part of the prize, she gets ticked and enters the competition herself, with the goal of winning her own hand. Her card gives her telepathy to spy out the plans of her would be suitors and rivals, but she is aware every one of them also holds a card.
Super Robot Wars OG: Divine Wars is the full 2006 series, while Super Robot Wars Original Generation is the 2005 3 episode OVA that got the ball rolling. Alien invasion, giant mecha, the fate of the world at stake, you know the drill. The link I gave actually goes to Super Robot Wars OG The Inspector, a different series (the usage is different in Japan, I would have said season to mean the same thing in the US), but it will give you the idea.
The anime gem this time is the multi-award winning Wolf Children, a feature film by Mamoru Hosoda, the internationally-acclaimed director of Summer Wars. It has won dozens of awards around the world, one of the prizes it won was the Japan Academy Prize for Best Animation of the Year, 2013.
Top spot this week goes to The World’s End, another excellent collaboration between Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost. Not only will it be released as a stand-alone, but they will also bring out the box set with the entire Cornetto Trilogy; Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and The World’s End. There is a rather unusual Vampire film coming out called Sanguivorous, with no spoken dialog and an acting style based on Noh or Butoh, a form of Japanese story telling through dance. It only played in a handful of theaters across the US, in part because a live band (composed of Japanese percussionist Tatsuya Nakatani and Chicago saxophonist Edward Wilkerson, Jr.) toured with it to play the soundtrack for this silent film. The 3rd interesting film this go round is Mars, a 2010 animated comedy romance about space exploration that has been on the Film Festival circuit for the last several years, and is finally getting a DVD release.
In TV, Doctor Who: The Tenth Planet is story number 29 with William Hartnell as the Doctor, and companions Ben and Polly. This was Hartnell’s final tale as the Doctor, and the first time we got to meet the Cybermen. It was also the first time a Regeneration happened on screen as the role was passed on to Patrick Troughton. Star Trek The Next Generation: Season Five makes its Blu-Ray debut this week as well, and they are also extracting a two-part story to roll out separately, Star Trek The Next Generation: Unification.
In Anime, Sword Art Online: Fairy Dance Part 2 delivers the final 6 episode of this excellent little series. I think they should have packaged them up in season 1 and season 2 boxed and sold them for the same price that they have been selling the half seasons, so I will be waiting for a more cost effective packag before I buy my copy. One Piece Movie 10: Strong World continues that series, with a new film. I mention that because sometimes the feature length presentations are retellings of the TV show stories.
Good Luck Girl is about a rich, beautiful, and very lucky girl who has everything going her way. That is because she is siphoning off the good luck of everyone around her, and a minor god notices and decides to follow her around and give the luck back. A lot like spiritual wack-a-mole, really, with all the fun and silliness the situation can deliver. This is from the folks who did Bleach and Gintama, I recommend you check it out. Finally, Little Busters!: Collection 1 is about 5 childhood friends who have grown up, letting their dreams of becoming defenders of justice fade over the years. But now cats are bringing two of them messages about a secret world that needs their help, and their dreams might not be as far in the past as they had thought.
In movies, Man of Steel leads off, with the latest retelling of the Superman legend. This one snuck past me in the movie theaters, so I am looking forward to this additional opportunity to check it out. The martial arts offering this time is Ip Man: The Final Fight, also known as Ip Man 4. This pretty much completes his life story, and it is appropriate that it is filmed in Hong Kong, since that is where he lived out his later days. I believe this is the first one that actually talks about his most famous student, Bruce Lee. I missed this one because it was only in my local movie theater for a single week before it was gone, but before China bought the AMC movie chain a few years ago, these kinds of movies were a lot harder to find on the big screen at all. If you are an H.P. Lovecraft fan and looking for some good comedy, you will want to watch Grabbers. This is basically what happens when the Deep Ones invade Ireland, but are terminally allergic to alcohol; the populace rallies at the pub, pitchforks and torches in hand! I missed this one because it would have involved a drive to NYC, or one of the 5 other major cities in the US it played in. And for animated silliness, Dreamworks Animation’s Turbo is also coming out to disc. I missed this one because the trailers and plot line just didn’t grab me, but now that it will be on one of the cable channels or available to stream on one of my services at no additional cost to me, I will check it out.
In TV, Stan Lee’s Superhumans: Season Two continues to be the only comic book based superhero reality show I know of. Plus, it runs on the History Channel 2, which is the part of the whole A&E family of cable stations that gives you some great Sci-Fi/Fantasy based programming. I am not sure if I can count the other two TV releases as being on TV, since they were only available on various streaming services such as Crunchyroll, but both RWBY: Volume 1 and Red vs. Blue: Season 11 will be on disc this week. They are both the products of the fertile minds over at Rooster Teeth, who keep cranking out some of the most innovating animations using products that pretty much anyone with a computer can pick up for under a hundred dollars.
In Anime I normally don’t talk about re-releases unless something truly good has become rare, and this one missed the rare part but is dead center for the truly good. Akira: 25th Anniversary Edition is the definitive release of the Anime that made North America, and most of the rest of the world, realize that they needed to take this art form seriously. This digitally restored HD version of the movie includes both the 1988 and 2001 English audio dubs as well as a Japanese soundtrack with subtitles, and a ton of other extras. Since my own copy is SD, that alone means I need to upgrade. If you haven’t seen this feature length film before, you can watch it online at Funimation for free, and you really ought to do so; this is the production that changed everything about how North America viewed Japanese Science Fiction and Pop Culture.
Maken-Ki! Battling Venus is the complete series (at least until someone decides to finance another season) in a single box set. It is the story of a combat school where the you train with a magic object that gives you powers, called a Maken, and where the women outnumber the men 3 to 1, because they are three times as deadly. Our protagonist is a boy who can’t figure out how to get his Maken to work, and it is a race between getting kicked out of school with failing grades or getting killed by his pretty schoolmates. Being made by the team that did Ikki Tousen, you can expect a lot of fan service, predominately during the combat sequences.