We already knew that Japan was not the only source of world class Anime; both Korea and China have major studios that have been cranking out some quality animation, with the three of them often working together, and with the US, to create the finished product. This wonderful little ultra-short story (8 minutes and change) isn’t from a mainstream studio, but seems to be a small team trying to break past the limitations of their animation shop into real production. Considering how good the Doctor Who Fan Built Anime was, all I can do is cheer this group on as well, since they have already exceeded the other. Did I mention that this video impressed me? Way to go, WolfSomke, and thanks to Escapist for the heads up on this one.
In movies, Red Riding Hood pits the darling caped cutey against a werewolf, or perhaps the werewolf hunter is the true evil one? The Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke put this together, but did rather a better job of it than in that series of films, or perhaps just had better source material to work with. For alien invasion fans, Battle: Los Angeles is hitting the shelves. Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen, is a martial arts movie about a wealthy playboy by day who becomes a masked crusader by night, fighting the Japanese occupation forces and Chinese mafia in 1920’s Shanghai. Staring Donnie Yen, playing the hero first portrayed by Bruce Lee in Fist of Fury, this one is tasty. And while it probably isn’t genre, Miente looks pretty interesting with a double handful of film festival awards and a killer soundtrack.
In TV, Haven: The Complete First Season is sort of what would happen if you merged Twin Peaks with Castle; each week there is a murder to be solved, but they died in some really weird, near supernatural way. Based on Stephen King’s novel The Colorado Kid, there is an overlying mystery to be solved about the town itself that makes these things happen there driving the story arc. There is some good dynamic tension between the FBI lady, the local cop with no sense of touch, and the bad-boy rouge type who might be one of the good guys.
There are two classic Doctor Who episodes being released this week. Doctor Who: Frontios is a Peter Davison era story with Tegan (Janet Fielding) and Turlough (Mark Strickson) as the companions. A group of human colonists who fled the destruction of the Earth are being used as spare parts for some underground aliens with gravity control technology and a mining operation. Time and The Rani is the first Sylvester McCoy episode, with Mel (Bonnie Langford) as the companion. The Rani has enslaved a planet and built a supercomputer by networking a bunch of really smart beings together, including Pasteur and Einstein from Earth, as the first step in her master plan.
There are a number of Best of the 80s packages involving a couple of disks with eight or ten of the best episodes from the show, usually including the pilot and series finale, coming out this week. I mention it because one of them is genre: Knight Rider, but I will not be adding any of these to my collection.
For western animation, Marvel Knights: Spider-Woman Agent Of S.W.O.R.D. was a 2009 TV series that now becomes available on disc. While I have been loving the live action films Marvel has been putting out, I have not been very impressed with the quality of the animations as a rule. Which is kind of strange when you consider how much I have been enjoying the animated comics productions, but there it is.
In Anime, Demon King Daimao – Complete Collection is the new series for the week; when he took his entry aptitude tests at the Constant Magical Academy, the results he heard were Future Occupation… Devil King. While trying to avoid that fate, he ran into more than the usual amount of girl trouble, some trying to help, others trying to hinder, but every one with their own agenda. In re-release in a cost effective package is the masterpiece Last Exile – The Complete Series Viridian Collection. One of the best steampunk anime’s ever made, one of the best aerial combat anime’s ever made, and one of the best anti-war anime’s ever made, it is hard to believe you can now pick the whole thing up for around 20 bucks. I think this one has to be on my top ten list of best anime’s of all time.
Eden of the East is now available to watch on Netflix from beginning to end, and you can follow that up with part one of the King of Eden movie (run the movie AFTER season one of the series). The story is simple; a dozen people have been given cell phones with a huge bank account attached, and they will either be the first to save Japan, or they will die at the hands of the folks who set up the project. A few work towards that goal, a few use the money for their own fanatic purposes, and a few try to destroy the country and everyone in it in the hopes they can escape their fate by eliminating those who may come back to neutralize them. This is one of the more interesting stories I have seen in the last few years, so I figured I should mention it here, and both the animation and the character development make this worth a look.
Now that we have virtual Idols, between Vocaloid and the 3D RL holographic projection process that displays them live on stage, it is time to get creative with our live concerts. Mikunopolis is coming on July 2nd to the stage in LA as part of Anime Expo. Besides being Virtual Idol Hatsune Miku’s first performance in the US, she will be the first ever Virtual Guest of Honor at an American Con. In case you were wondering, her back-up band on stage with her will be non-virtual, but there is always the chance some of the other Virtual Idols will be joining her on stage. SEGA is doing the 3D imaging tech work for the show with Crypton Future Media, the creators of Hatsune Miku, supervising. The videos here were taken at the Miku’s Day Thanksgiving live show in Tokyo on March 9th 2010, and the reports are the 3D tech for the on stage presentation has gotten even better since then.
If you are interested in creating your own Virtual Idol, it was announced today, or yesterday depending on which side of the date line you are on, that Vocaloid is finally being updated (the last new version was released 4 years ago). The program itself has come down in price, and version 3 will be retailing at around $125, but they have not announced what the voice packages are going to run yet. This is supposed to be the most realistic singing voice engine to date, and comes with multi-language support. That means your English language songs can be built from English phonemes now; I am sure anyone who programmed the previous versions to sing in English when it only came with Japanese phonemes is going to be quite excited about that. I think I will save the resources to create your 3D Idol for another post; enjoy the music from the old version of Vocaloid.
The Wild Hunt has been making the round of Film Festivals for a year or two picking up some awards in the process, had a limited theatrical run, and is finally coming out on disk this week. A LARP reenactment gamer group is deep into their dungeons and dragons when a jilted non-gamer comes looking for his ex-girlfriend to win her back. Things get ugly when the line between game and reality gets blurry. Winning the award for strangest movie of the week is Rubber, the story of a tire that comes to life and terrorizes the countryside. That works with a whole car and has in several previous movies, but a single tire just doesn’t weigh enough to harm anyone larger than a chihuahua.
While not really genre, I have to mention Burn Notice: Season Four, if only because they have that whole McGuiver technology thing going on, and their tech is dead on target. Plus I love the show, of course; The new season kicks off on June 23rd.
In western animation we get Green Lantern: Emerald Knights. The trailer looks interesting, they are going to give us some info on the origin of the Green Lantern Corp, and Nathan Fillion gets to play Hal Jordan. Obviously the timing on this never-before seen feature length animation is to tie in to the movie release in the theaters, and I’m in.
Moribito: Guardian of Spirit – Complete Collection is a difficult story, with a warrior woman who needs to save one more soul before she dies, and a prince who may be that soul trying to save his kingdom. Together they may be each others salvation.
Revolutionary Girl Utena – The Student Council Saga is the first of three box sets of remastered video with a newly created Dolby Digital 5.1 Japanese soundtrack of this classic series. Containing the first 12 episodes, it has a ton of additional improvements and upgrades; this is more of a special edition set than anything else. Which makes it kind of amazing that if you shop around you can pick it up for as little as $30, especially considering this is in limited production, with only a certain number of them being made.
This may be the best fan-made Anime I have ever seen, and certainly the best Doctor Who fan built Anime. We are talking Classic and Retro here; the Doctor in this one is Jon Pertwee, and the Master is Roger Delgado, using some excellently edited sound bytes from the 1970s episodes. On the Anime side, Bubblegum Crisis, Dirty Pair, and Macross all contributed to the animation style, although I don’t speak quite enough Japanese yet to vouch for the Nihongo quotes (but I expect they are as well done). I do suspect a lot of them are from those series, which puts our Doctor Who influences from the 70s and our Anime influences from the 80s, and gives us a nice familiar jumping off point to explore this totally new combo creation from them. Did I mention this may be the best fan-made Anime I have ever seen? It even uses the old-school minimal animation sequences with the modern flash minimal animation sequences. They may sound the same, but you create them using totally different techniques. Thanks OtaKing 77077, also known as Paul Johnson for creating this incredible animation!! He has a number of Tutorial animation videos as well, you should watch them all!
I recommend watching it full screen, in case you were wondering: it is just that good.