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Something to Watch: DVD’s

Topping the list of movies released to DVD this week is Kick-Ass, one of the more violent comics made into a movie for this year. I really do hope they make a sequel for this one, although I am not quite sure where else they could take the story. In the non-fiction department, Dragon Masters looks to be the film to beat.

I have been waiting for a decade or two to be able to add Max Headroom: The Complete Series to my collection. Depending which web site you believe, this will either be available the 3rd or the 10th of August, but that is a small detail compared to the 1984 to 1987 initial programming dates. As near as I can tell, this box set is only the 14 episode US TV series, which was much wimpier than the original BBC TV Movie, and completely different than the BBC TV series. But it is more Max Headroom than has ever been previously available, so it is a great start! Set your TVs for 23 minutes into the future. The other TV release worth noting this week is Heroes: Season 4.

On the Anime front, Naruto Shippuden Box Set 3 becomes available. I personally enjoy Shippuden more than I did the previous series with the younger characters, although the gap between what is out on DVD and what is legally streaming online is fairly large. Since I only started watching the streaming stuff in the last 6 months or so, I think there are still about a hundred episodes between the two segments I haven’t seen yet. The Sola box set is also available this week. This strange little story involves a boy with a secret he does not know and an addiction to photography, and a girl who can not coexist with the sun.

Princess Resurrection: Complete Collection is not one of your more upbeat Animes, what with the protagonist dieing at the start of the series. He is brought back to life, but only for as long as he will be the Princesses servant. This one is Subbed, not Dubbed, so you get to hear the original voice actors. If your aggressive side needs some exercise, the Ikkitousen: Dragon Destiny complete box set hits the shelves. This one is a modern day retelling of the Romance of the three kingdoms story, with the high schools battling it out for supremacy.

Something to Watch: DVDs

The leader for fantasy movies this week is Clash of the Titans. While I thought the movie took itself a little too seriously, it was still a fun flic. A much more serious topic is explored in the science fiction film Repo Men, where it doesn’t bode well to be late with your payments for your body parts. For problems of a planetary scale, there is Ray Bradbury’s Chrysalis. Based on a short story by the famous author, it explores a theme of ecological catastrophe and human evolution. Out of the foreign films this week, Just Another Pandora’s Box caught my attention by the title alone, but on investigation it looks like this comedy/fantasy has enough laugh power to be worth the ride. Finally, Welcome to Earth made the film fest rounds, and even got mentioned for a few awards, so it should be worth checking out, in a direct-to-DVD kind of way.

SG-U Stargate Universe: 1.5 brings us the second half of season 1. While I have been really enjoying the series, the release style annoys me tremendously, so I will not be adding this to my collection until I can find it on sale. Like Battlestar Galactica before it, they have only released half the season but are asking a full seasons worth of money for it (it lists at $39.95). This is not a trend I am willing to support with my wallet. Both Flash Forward and Eureka also released half season box sets, but with a list of $29.95, most outlets sold them for $20, or half of what a full season goes for; that’s a price scheme I can live with. A 1972 British TV series not previously available in the US also comes out on Tuesday: The Black Arrow. My first thought was a variation on the Green Arrow, but it looks to be a bit more Robin Hoody.

The Machinima legend returns with Red Vs Blue: Reconstruction, season 6 and 7 of the series. After being on opposite sides for so long during the Blood Gulch era (seasons one through five, previously released), they now team up to solve a new problem. For new Anime there is only one real choice this week: Hell Girl Two Mirrors: Collection 2, which finishes up the 2nd season. I look forward to finding out how Hell’s debt collector has her own fate resolved. As usual, there are a few classics being re-released in reduced cost box set editions, like Love Hina and Magic Knight Rayearth

Bombshells from the Sky delivers

This series looked to be a Sci-Fi Alien Cat Girl boy-grows-up chasing after her kind of story from what I read before it started. I only have the first episode to base my opinion on so far, but in that first episode it completely changed the ground rules 3 times. It opened up as an action/adventure with an exciting combat sequence with a spaceship crash, and hints that the weapons of choice may not be the weapons we need. Then it went through the opening title sequence, and suddenly we were in a Fanboy Fantasy, where our hero wakes up next to a mostly naked Alien Cat Girl, and other girls and women of his acquaintance show up on his doorstep to hang out with him and make obscene comments. Just when you feel comfortable with that analysis, you discover that every woman in the story, with the possible exception of the Cat Girl from Another Planet, has their very own hidden agenda, and the tenor of the series changes again. Asobi ni Ikuyo: Bombshells from the Sky is off to an interesting start.

Even if the writers blew every surprise for the series in the first 23 minutes of the program, there is more. I counted no less than 5 inside jokes for Sci-Fi geeks in this episode alone (keep your ears open, and your eyes should check the background every so often), including the classic that everyone calls their home planet Earth, or Dirt, or some equivalent word that means “standing on land”, followed by references to and a depiction of the Babylon5 Grey Council, just to start.

There were short bursts of Anime tropes as well, like the holographically projected Kawaii Navigation System that leaped full blown from Cat Girls bell dangling from her choke collar. Actually, that alone was two tropes; another was Cat Girl in heaven because they let her eat her fill then snooze in the sun, just like a real cat.

I have more points to talk about, but hey, this is just the first story. If the rest of these are a fraction as good, congrats to the creators.

Streaming Anime this summer

I commented previously (in fact gave an entire review) about the new show streaming on Crunchyroll, Occult Academy, which is off to a wonderful start. If you are a premium Crunchyroll member, you get to legally watch new episodes one hour after they air in Tokyo; if a non-paying member, you can see them at slightly lower resolution a week later. Anyone who follows this blog knows I have become addicted to this service, and the annual fee has already paid for itself in terms of knowing which shows I do and don’t want to buy when they come out on DVD.

They have added a few new programs to the Summer Streaming Lineup that look pretty good on initial glance, although you might have to work for one of them. That one would be Tono to Issho, which is kind of the Anime equivalent of one-liners, or the 4 panel comic strip jokes everyone knows from newspapers (at least, those old enough to remember what non-interactive static media forms like newspapers were). You have to know a bit about the culture, history, current events, and popular opinion of Japan in order to get these jokes, but if you do they are delightful. Like all the best satire, it occasionally slips into Sci-Fi or Fantasy memes to make its points.

The third brand new program is Asobi ni Ikuyo: Bombshells from the Sky, an Alien Catgirls Romantic Comedy with a certain amount of Kawaii overdose (cuteness overload). We are still 13 hours out from the start of episode 1’s simulcast stream, but the trailer looks promising.

An old favorite come back for another round is Strike Witches season 2, the parallel timeline story of heavily armed propeller booted WWII flying girls versus alien invaders who seem to be related to cats. Check it out, and if you feel the need to catch up with season 1, it is available on DVD now in the US.

Occult Academy review

Yesterday when I logged into Crunchyroll to watch the next episode of Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu (so far, a series I associate with Genshiken and Welcome to the NHK in its expression of the Otaku lifestyle), I found a little flag telling me that episode 1 of the Occult Academy was available for viewing (it aired in Tokyo yesterday as well, so it is fresh!). So I felt the need to check it out and report back here, and if you want to watch it yourself, the direct link to the Occult Academy is here.

The story opens at the school commonly known as the Occult Academy in 1999, where the Dean/Principle/Headmaster has just died. He founded the school to help train people in non-standard modes of reality ranging from magic and astrology through telekinesis and UFOs. His daughter, Maya, arrives late for the funeral and in an angry frame of mind. When her father’s spirit-inhabited corpse gets out of the casket and starts attacking the students, Maya goes into action to protect them with a physical counter attack. While doing so, she hands out whatever disinformation she feels will best deflect the people she is speaking with from believing in the Occult as something supernatural, an equally important defensive move from her perspective. There are two brief segments, at the very beginning and the very end of the episode, where we catch a glimpse of something different than the main body of the program; a brief glimpse hinting at the time travelers from 2012 and their agenda.

This is only the first episode, so it is difficult to actually comment on the quality or give it any accurate rating as yet. The premise is first class and has a lot of potential, but as to whether the writers can convert that into an ongoing storyline that will build on the promise and deliver a riveting series that glues us to the screen remains to be seen. Likewise with the characters; in this opening episode we were introduced to Maya, several of the students, and the vice principle (or whatever the correct term is for the schools second in command). The only character explored in enough depth to get an initial peek at their motivation and personality was Maya, but that is not surprising in a 22 minute episode with 14 minutes of action sequences and 4 minutes of background and setup exposition.

Animation quality can only be inferred, since the available stream data density was not good enough to match a standard definition TV screen, but the actual animation itself looked pretty good within those limits. Not new or groundbreaking, but definitely solid and workmanlike in its delivery and quality. The animated Maya looks awfully familiar (think Eureka7), so I feel confident when I get to reading the credits in detail I will discover a few old favorite names. As for the music, it didn’t offend me, but I need to hear the intro and outro songs three or four times before they click in my head and I come to a conclusion. The incidental music, meaning the background audio that builds a mood for a specific scene or enhances the transition from one scene to another, did not stand out enough to distract me from what I was watching. That is half the job for incidental music, but because it did the first half so well, I didn’t notice if it did the second half and actually add to or improve the overall viewing experience. Again, with another two or three more episodes to base a judgment on I should be able to come to a conclusion. What can I say, my ears are a bit slow on the uptake.

Final conclusion: this one looks very promising indeed, and unless it takes a virtual header into the bottom of the quality pool I will see it through to the end of the first season. I will also tentatively recommend it, and keep my fingers crossed that I will continue to do so by episode 4 or 6.