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Something to Watch: DVDs, 30Apr13

There doesn’t seem to be any new genre films this time, except for the very low budget Agent Beetle, so Not Fade Away is my only recommendation. However, if you have missed any of the Trek movies now might be the time to collect them up. A bunch of them are being re-released to sync up with the release of Star Trek: The Best of Both Worlds this week, along with Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 3 on Blue Ray. There is another re-release that most Americans will have missed the first time around; 1988’s The Navigator: A Mediaeval Odyssey. This time travel story is quite a bit different in that the time travelers are escaping from the Black Death in the middle ages and end up in a modern New Zealand city.

I already mentioned the Trek TV releases, the other good TV worth mentioning this week is Nova: Earth from Space, a two hour special. There are some pretty amazing images there.

In Anime, Fairy Tail: Collection One puts the entire first series in a single box set. This mystical mayhem series is in the tradition of Dirty Pair, where collateral damage costs multiple times what stopping the bad guys saves. Also new, Qwaser of Stigmata II contains all 12 episodes of the second series plus the OVA. Now that the first ancient artifact has been resolved, a new eldrich weapon needs to be tracked down, this time hidden with a member of a girls school and with serious competition hunting for it.

Patlabor The Mobile Police is re-releasing the original 7 volume OVA series that started it all. After that one Mamoru Oshii followed it up with the second OVA series, a 47 episode TV series, and three movies. All of which set his universe up to spawn the next great story series advance and cult classic, Ghost In The Shell. One of the best sci-fi cyberpunk stories in Anime it also grew into multiple movies and TV series.

Spring Anime Lineup

Crunchyroll has started playing the spring anime season shows, and it is off to a great start; you can see the lineup here. I thought I should mention a few of the ones that look promising to me in case you might want to check them out.

Attack On Titan is a tale of humanity trapped within a walled city by giants who seek to eat them. The Scouting Legion are the only ones brave enough to explore beyond the walls, and mostly they just die… a lot. Eren may be the one to pull humanity through the walls into the future.

HENNEKO – The Hentai Prince and the Stony Cat is about two people who went to beg a favor from a god, only to have their wish granted by having a part of their mind removed. Now they each act in ways they never expected, and are trying to find their ways back to being themselves, complete with the lost bits.

DEVIL SURVIVOR 2 is fairly Gantz-like; thirteen people die, and are given the choice to live, enlisted into the front line with the war with demonic forces attacking their family and friends. Only the summoning spells are built into cell phone apps, and a secret government agency has a completely different set of such apps. It looks to be quite the winner so far.

Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet brings a taste of Earth with a serious twist, and may be the most interesting series of all. Our protagonist starts out in combat protecting the survivors of humanity from alien attackers while looking for a new planet to live on. He then gets spat out the side of a collapsing wormhole to a random segment of space/time, where things get really strange. This is me urging you to watch the first episode, beginning to end, and see if you don’t like it too. I suspect this one may end up being my favorite series of the new season, it has everything from the paratemporal to the transdimensional, and with a double helping of attitude just for spice!

There are more I haven’t checked out yet, I will post again if I find any more good ones.

Something to Watch: DVDs, 23Apr13

Fairly thin on the shelves this week, Jurassic Park 3D is the only movie of note, and it is left over from 1993, updated for some new technology. Unlike many movies that have been updated to a 3D format, this one is quite worth the effort, in that the 3D processing actually enhances the film experience. There is also a collection of short experimental pieces called Tunnel Vision: The Underground Films By Raz Mesinai which could have some interesting entries in it. Finally there is the made for TV Pegasus Vs. Chimera, which still seems to have a web page.

I didn’t find any live action TV this week, but Marvel Knights: Inhumans is a dark animated feature just over two hours long that looks very interesting. If you followed the Inhumans through their graphic novel adventures with the Fantastic Four and others, you have an idea of the kind of scope this group has for telling a serious story.

In Anime, Rosario + Vampire are releasing both season one and season two as two boxed sets on the same week. Tsukune’s grades suck, so he only has one school that will accept him, but when he get’s there he discovers it is a school for monsters who consider humans lunch. In fact, before long a beautiful vampire girl is snacking on him, and sharing her lunch with a few close supernatural girlfriends. But when real danger threatens, Tsukune unlocks Moka’s super-monster seal, and all hell breaks loose. Psychic Detective Yakumo contains all 13 episodes of the series where the dead tell the crime fighting team what they know about their murders, and the duo has to work hard and fast to avoid joining the rolls of the deceased. It all started when Haruka tried to help a possessed friend get free from her controlling spirit, and got more dangerous by the moment from there.

Naruto Shippūden Box 14 brings us to episodes 167 through 179, a critical juncture where Naruto has manifested eight of his nine tails during the battle over Leaf Village. Does he now have sufficient power to save his friends? Hakuōki: A Memory of Snow Flowers is an OVA collection of 6 episodes in which a Shinsengumi warrior must disguise herself as a geisha in order to gather the intelligence her side needs to win, as Kyoto teeters on the brink of war. Not all of the dangers in the mission require a warriors heart to overcome them.

Galaxy Express 999: Complete Series 2 continues the old-school anime series with the 1998 sequel to the original 1979 show.

Anime Gateway Series

Have a friend you want to intro to Sci-Fi Anime, but are wondering what a good choice would be to get them into it? Top 10 Gateway Anime Series was posted by Aaron Magulick on his Go Boiano site, and it has the definitive list. And a few of the series listed, like Cowboy Bebop and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood are gateways to addict your friends to science fiction as a whole, not just anime, giving you a double edged attack vector. Bet they can’t watch just one!

RWBY Animation ID

I first posted the following a few weeks ago, and thanks to the newsletter from Smith Micro I now know this new project is not Machinima, but is being created in Poser Pro. I didn’t know you could get that kind of Anime style from the software, I find myself quite impressed. RWBY won’t be kicking off until July or so, but I like the trailers and am looking forward to the new project. Here is the original posting:

Rooster Teeth, the folks who brought us that masterpiece of combat comedy Red Vs. Blue, have a tasty new animation project: RWBY. The latest trailer is the top one, the Black trailer. After that are the earlier trailers, the White and Red. They haven’t released the Yellow trailer yet, but this will give you an idea of what the new series is up to. I find the style on these very interesting, almost like they recorded Machinima and then rotoscoped them into Anime. Which wouldn’t be a huge surprise, since Red Vs. Blue was some of the finest machinima ever made.

Streaming Anime: Hulu

Hulu runs an amazing collection of Anime both in its free service and in it’s Plus subscription product.Some shows are only available until the next season comes out, some only while the current season is running, and some titles last for years. As with the other streaming services there is a lot of overlap as to what is available from which service, so you will want to look at what each one offers. It may be that you only need one or two of the ones mentioned over the last week to cover your favorite shows, or maybe two at the paid service level and a few more of the free service level. I actually got my Hulu Plus subscription as the only way to watch Misfits a day after the new episodes air in the UK, and then discovered their Anime section, so I consider that Bonus!