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Something to Watch: DVDs

Warriors Of The Rainbow: Seediq Bale tells the true story of the aboriginal Seediq tribes who rebelled and almost drove the conquering Japanese army off the island in 1930s Taiwan. Their initial attack succeeded, taking the invaders by surprise and killing most of their primary targets; but knives and bows only win for so long against aircraft and poison gas. The other movie worth checking out is an animated Doctor Seuss story, The Lorax. I was particularly impressed with Danny DeVito, who played the title character in the English, Spanish, and Russian versions of the film.

In TV we have Grimm: Season One, one of the better supernatural police procedural programs to come down the pike in many a year. The writing is very intelligent, so of course I expected it to be cancelled half way through its first season and was quite happy to find out we will get a second one. They also picked an excellent cast who jell together quite well onscreen, and base the series on a very interesting premise. This one will definitely be joining my permanent collection.

There are several new and interesting collections in Anime this time around, starting with Rental Magica: Collection 1. A company of wizards and witches have misplaced the company president, and immediately put his son in charge. The problem is the son doesn’t have a lot of knowledge about magic himself, and is also something of a coward in a near combat situation. So the monsters and evildoers the company is up against become much more dangerous to the magicians in the ranks, and the son is in danger of destroying the family business if he can’t get his act together. The 12 episodes in this box set are the first half of the story so far.

In The World God Only Knows: Season Two the champion dating sim player and his demon tormentor continue to free girls from the lost souls who posses them. When a giant lost soul takes over a large portion of the school and turns them into love starved zombies, they will need to recruit another demon to help them win. Also continuing, One Piece comes out with season 4 part 1, continuing the effort to become King of All Pirates.

Something to Watch: DVDs

It doesn’t look like we get any genre movies this week, so I thought I would mention the documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi, about the award winning ten seat sushi restaurant in a subway station in Tokyo and the man that runs it.

We do a little better in TV this time, with both Touched By An Angel: The Complete Fifth Season and Touched By An Angel: Seasons 1 through 5. The show ran 9 seasons, so the latter set brings you to just past the halfway point. If you missed it when it originally aired it was quite a well done fantasy about helpful spirits. The other TV release is Sheena: The Complete Second Season, which completes the series which ran from 2000 to 2002. The original Sheena TV series ran in the 1950s, and both series were based on the comic book which ran from 1937 to 1953, the very first comic book series with a female protagonist. Wil Eisner and Jerry Iger created the character, which they based on H. Rider Haggard’s 1886 book She.

The anime release for this week is Golgo 13: The Professional, and that is more spy thriller than sci-fi or fantasy. It is also a re-release, the original feature length film came out in 1983. And yes, this is the movie, not the OVA.

Something to Watch: DVDs

There are several tasty movies this week, starting with Lockout. This one is another Luc Besson action adventure film, which seems a lot like Escape from New York done in orbit; escapist action fun all the way (yes, pun intended). Extraterrestrial looks like a lot of silly fun; you wake up with no memory of the one night stand who’s house you are in, to meet her wacky ex-boyfriend and neighbors, only to discover the Earth has been invaded. This one is Spanish with English subtitles, and definitely falls into the comedy category. Also in comedy, The Fairy (Le Fee) tells the tale of a man who searches all over Le Havre for the fairy who granted him two wishes and disappeared, taking his heart with her. This one is French with English subtitles, and is the third in a series of rather surrealistic films, the previous titles being Iceberg and Rumba. Finally, 4:44 Last Day on Earth is an award winning love story on the day the world dies.

We do every bit as good in TV this time around, with Eureka: Season 5 bringing this excellent series to a close… unless there was an announcement at Comic-Con this weekend I missed (please, please, please…). We also get Alphas: Season One, which just gives you time to catch up on it before season 2 starts next Monday. And Sanctuary: The Complete Fourth Season also hits the shelves, with more monster protecting adventure. And for those who like a bit of reality TV with their unreality, Stan Lee’s Superhumans: Season Two is also going to become available.

Anime also has some winners, starting with Fractale: The Complete Series. A boy who geeks out on obsolete electronics saves a girl being chased by dangerous men, and when she later runs away from him she leaves behind a necklace crammed with data. Suddenly he is being chased by both the political group who wants to destroy the technology that drives their world, and the one that wants to save it, for the data he has holds the key to it all.

Meanwhile, The Book of Bantorra: Collection 2 Continues the story of the Armed Librarians and their battles with the religious fanatics who are trying to capture the soul books and use their knowledge to conquer the world. It is a completely different premise than either Library Wars, where the librarians took up arms to defend against political censorship, or Read Or Die, where the Paper Sisters, book addicts of the first order, used their mystical powers to defend the world from the illiterate hoards who wanted to enslave it. Even so there is something of a common theme here, and as someone who has been reading everything I could get my hands on since the age of 7 (yes, I started late, but I have been doing my best to make up for it ever since), I dearly love all three series. And yes, I will be in the theaters to see the new version of Fahrenheit 451 when they release it.

Psychic Squad – Collection 2 rounds out the new releases for the week, but that link will get you little info, since they do not stream to North America. If you caught the first collection, expect more of the same. Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood Collection 2 compiles the second half of the series (episodes 34 through 64) into a single box set, for a more cost effective package than the original one season at a time release. And finally, Girls Bravo S.A.V.E. edition, which as usual means you can pick up the entire series for less than 20 bucks. Enjoy!

Augmented Reality Hatsune Miku

I am still trying to decide if this is a major tech advance or just creepy. Using some Augmented Reality goggles and software, a Japanese engineer has come up with a way to date his favorite virtual idol, Hatsune Miku. A bit creepy, was my first reaction. But what if you then used a Kinect or other low cost motion capture solution to drive your anime character of choice in real time with an actual person wearing the avatar? That could end up being a new level of RPG and Cosplay interaction amongst consenting adult geeks. Perhaps it is time to break out your own copy of the ARToolKit and start programming your glasses.