Tonight there is a one time opportunity to see Rurouni Kenshin: Trust and Betrayal streaming live from Japan, simulcast in Japan, the US, and Canada for free! Trust and Betrayal is the OVA prequel to the TV series, showing Kenshin going from an idealistic young man to a hardened killer in 19th century Japan. The simulcast is being run on Nico Nico Douga, and you can use the first link in this article to get directly to the streaming page. It starts at 22:00 PST tonight or 01:00 EST (yes, that is 10PM west coast, 1AM Saturday morning east coast time), and will run just over two hours. Do not be late, as it will not be repeated. Thanks to the folks at Anime News Network for the heads up on this one.
Choice off the week for movies has to be Paul, the wonderful Pegg and Frost romp across the American southwest in the liberation of aliens assault. It isn’t the only silly fun option, though, as the film Your Highness also becomes available on Tuesday. The film Super may also be a comedy, but not silly; more in the black comedy range, with some serious issues lurking just beneath the surface. I’m thinking all three of these need to follow me home this week.
In TV, the Tom Baker era Dr. Who: The Sun Makers is the only offering of note this time around. Companions Leela (Louise Jameson) and K9 round out the primary cast, with Leela’s eternal question of why can we not kill them? being prominent.
In western animation, Mars Needs Moms is the Disney feature film with an all star voice cast and some quality animation work.
In Anime, Soul Eater: Parts 3 & 4 is being released in a combined box set under the title Soul Eater: The Weapon Collection at a considerable savings over buying the two seasons separately. Parts 1 and 2 were released a bit ago in a combined edition as well, under the title The Meister Collection, which means by shopping around you can pick up the entire 4 season series for about $50.
Thanks to Japanator, I was turned on to this wonderful AMV featuring the visual input from Full Metal Panic: fumoffu. The series is funny as hell, with a military minded giant mecha driving high school age combat veteran without a clue about how to act in non-combat situations assigned to guard a high school girl. If nothing else, his threat evaluation skills need retraining and his responses could be a little less lethal. After watching the AMV, I am ready to break out the series and watch the entire thing again, starting with season 1, episode 1.
Not really a lot to be said about this one; it is the kind of thing that happens when you combine a singing program, some animation software, a good imagination, and some serious skill sets. This was put together by Vocaloid artist Oster Project using music from her her fourth album, Cinnamon Philosophy. Thanks to Crunchyroll for the heads up on this one.
In movies there don’t seem to be a lot of choices this week; Stake Land pretty much looks like it, and I am not terribly enthused about this one. However, there is a box set that should be fun: Mystery Science Theater 3000: MST3K vs. Gamera XXI has all 5 Gamera films with the famous MST3K audio overlay going on.
In TV, The Colony: Season 2 is a very interesting show, if you haven’t seen it. It is sort of the Discovery Channel reality TV version of the BBC’s Survivors, the setup is post-apocalyptic and the goal is to prosper in the face of adversity as a team. Unlike the wimpy broadcast TV equivalents, this program includes full tilt combat situations as part of the environment and resolution process. The other TV program of note is about a different battle: Ed Sullivan Presents: Rock N Roll Revolution is all about the British Invasion of the 1960s, and how America fought back. Of course, that battle took place on the dance floors and for the first time ever for a purely cultural clash on TV (there had been a number of political clashes on TV before that). The one notable Ed Sullivan Show performance that should be on the disk but is missing appears to be The Doors Light My Fire.
The western animation selection this time is Rio, a delightful little film put together by Blue Sky Studios, who did the entire Iceage series of animations. The choreographed areal dance/music sequences are some of the best I have ever seen.
For anime, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood Part 5 continues the steampunk and sorcery parallel timeline story as brothers Elric and Alphonse struggle to regain what they have lost. With this one they also finish up the Brotherhood storyline, which was much closer to the original Manga than the first anime series was.
This weekend is Otakon, the by fans, for fans convention covering Manga, Anime, and all things Asian pop culture like. It takes place at the Baltimore Convention Center and the surrounding Baltimore Inner Harbor from July 29th through the 31st. Their schedule is huge, and for the last handful of years they have sold out the convention center, which is a lot of people. They generally try to hold back a block of tickets for same day walk up sales, but you have to be there awfully early in the morning to get them. One of the movies scheduled to be screened this year is Bunraku, currently on the film festival circuit and looking quite tasty, as you can tell from the trailer. The unscheduled Otakon event that got the most YouTube coverage last year had to be the fire drill, when 30,000 Otaku were all on the streets of Baltimore at once.