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Something to Watch: Discs

Humans, Season 1 is about Synths, near-human robots who may be more than they appear. It was shown on AMC (US), the BBC (UK), and ABC (AU) and is based on the Swedish science fiction program Real Humans, which has won a number of awards. Kudos Film and Television remade it for English speaking audiences with a somewhat changed plot line, and Acorn is releasing the uncut UK version on disc.

In Anime, the Utawarerumono OAV adds three new stories to this world of magic and combat, with just a bit of silliness thrown in. The other two new releases are about the genre rather than genre themselves; Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-Kun is a rom/com about a Manga artist, while Saekano: How to Raise a Boring Girlfriend is a rom/com about a high school otaku who decides to build his own game about a girl in his class.

Something to Watch: Discs

I didn’t see any movies, and TV has a single title, Game of Thrones: The Complete Fifth Season. In Anime, C³ as a complete series with an OVA tells the tale of a cursed object who morphs into human form, and wants to escape her condition. With her personality learning to do positive things (the way to break her curse) will be a real fight, though. When They Cry: Season 1 has a boy moving to a small town, where he makes four friends. Not long after, people start dying, and he needs to figure out why and how to stop it before it is his turn.

Rereading the Vorkosigan Saga

Want to catch up on some books you might have missed? The TOR web site has some excellent series going on, one of my favorites being Rereading. It introduces new readers to excellent stories they can fall in love with (and lets them know why they are worth their effort to check out). It also reminds long-time fans why they became fans in the first place, and connects the dots on aspects of the story that only became apparent some volumes later, so you get to experience the foreshadowing you never knew was there. The fact that they keep choosing some of the best series ever written keeps me coming back, if only to get some one else’s take on the plot, characters, and twists these tales offer the reader. This time around the offering is Lois McMaster Bujold’s masterpiece The Vorkosigan Saga, starring Miles himself, and sometimes his mother, and every now and then his cousin. Rereading the Vorkosigan Saga will definitely take you places you didn’t expect to go, but will no doubt enjoy. I hope you like them as much as I do, if you are not already a fan!

Zootopia: Shakira – Try Everything

Zootopia was amazing, and Shakira’s official video of Try Everything gives you a little taste of how fluid and detailed the animation was. I don’t think I have ever seen this many animated characters on the screen at the same time before, and they managed to bring a number of them to life as individuals in the course of this film. I am sure the singer enjoyed the experience of being one of those characters throughout the presentation, and her song at the end was the perfect way to close the story. If you haven’t seen this one yet it is still in theaters, and it is detailed enough that you really need to see it on the big screen at least once.

Something to Do: Movies

Creative Control is a near-future story where our protagonist uses a new Augmented Reality technology to conduct an affair with his best friend’s girlfriend… or so he believes. It has already won one award on the Film Fest circuit. 10 Cloverfield Lane is supposed to be Sci-Fi from J.J.Abrams, but seems more like a monster movie when I look at the trailer. Not being a horror movie fan, I am going for the other one.