Sword Art Online will be kicking off season 2 in a few days, on Saturday the 5th. If you liked the first season, I recommend you sign up for a free account with Crunchyroll so you can see the second season quickly, watching each episode a week after it airs in Tokyo. If you REALLY like the show, you might want to consider getting a premium membership, so you can watch each one an hour after it airs in Japan.
Possibly the best Sci-Fi movie never made, Jodorowsky’s Dune spent years assembling the most amazing cast and creative talents, before finally falling by the wayside. The team he assembled included Orson Welles, Mick Jagger, David Carradine and Salvador Dali for the actors. It was set to a musical score by Pink Floyd and the art/design work was put together by H.R. Giger and Moebius (Jean Giraud). Because of this project, many of the folks involved became entangled with other Sci-Fi masterworks which would have been much poorer for their loss. Even though we will never get to see this version of the film, the documentary telling us how close we came is finally becoming available. You can see it on the big screen if you are lucky enough to be in one of those cities. For myself, it doesn’t look like I made it unless I do a 3-hour drive, so I will wait for the Blue Ray/DVD to come out instead on July 2nd.
The folks over at Crunchyroll have announced that they will be streaming the new Sword Art Online II beginning on July 5th. As usual, that pretty much means you get to see it an hour after it airs in Tokyo if you are a premium member, and one week later for everybody else. This is a great show with a large audience, I am looking forward to finding out if they keep up the quality level in the new series.
In movies we have I, Frankenstein topping the list with its near-Dean Koontz like premise, great cast, and excellent special effects. In a completely different style but still with excellent production values there is Her, a touching story about a man who enters into a relationship with his household operating system. This Spike Jonze movie won a ton of awards, and is more than worth your time to check out. Goodbye World is one I missed in the theaters about the world ending while some old friends hold a reunion, and while the premise sounds ordinary it has the potential to be interesting if they did it right. Special ID has Donnie Yen as an undercover cop with some serious Kung Fu fighting for his life against China’s most ruthless crime syndicate. This looks to be the best week in movies we have seen in a few months.
In TV… not so much. In Anime, the Armed Librarians are back, with the The Book of Bantorra: Complete Collection. When you die, your soul becomes a book that anyone can read, and only the Armed Librarians can keep your secrets safe from the world. This series seems to have a lot in common with Black Lagoon (the anime, not the creature) in my mind. And then there is Haganai: I Don’t Have Many Friends NEXT, the 2nd season in the story of the school club that is supposed to be about making friends. They receive a warning that some of their activities (stalking, taking candid photos of their peers, playing adult video games, watching adult anime, and building time machines) are not approved club activities at their school. And finally, Deltora Quest is the complete series, 52 episodes of gem seeking adventure, striving to release everyone from tyranny once all the magical jewels are collected. And yes, this series is based on the Australian children’s book series written by Emily Rodda.
Probably the first computer playable game I ever got addicted to was the HHGTTG from Infocom, although 9 Princes In Amber and Leather Goddesses of Phobos were both hot on its heels. Now you can play the Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy Game 30th Anniversary Edition online at BBC Radio for an updated retro gaming experience. They do warn you to save your game state often, as it tends to kill you a lot, but it includes a bunch of new story passages written by Douglas Adams that they have been sitting on for a while.
One of my favorite fantasy series is Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files, where Harry Dresden is the only person listed in the Chicago Yellow Pages under the profession Wizard, and is a special consultant to the Chicago PD. This is an amazingly good blend of gritty noir detective story and combat sorcery, with an entire cast of characters you would want to have with you in a tight spot… or as far from you as inhumanly possible. There are 16 books in the series so far, 15 novels and a collection of short stories, and a TV series that ran for one season on Sci-Fi (it wasn’t Syfy yet). Oh, yeah, two of the Graphics Novels were original Harry Dresden stories not published in Novel form, kicking us up a few books, and James Marsters reads all the audiobook versions but one. Start yourself off with Storm Front; bet you can’t read just one!