I know I keep going back to this artist, but there is a reason. He has an amazing grip on Nerd sensibilities, and a control of word usage that is nothing short of amazing. This time we have only two tracks: Critical Hit and Pitch Dark, both Game-centric and at the core of how we evolved into our current reality.
There is not much in Movies this week, other than another slew of re-released Godzilla films packaged up two movies to a box to take advantage of the forthcoming new movie version. There is also the western animated Son of Batman, an adaptation of the 2006 Batman and Son storyline which looks pretty good. Western TV series seem to be notable for their absence this time around.
In Anime, Persona 4: Complete Collection is a surreal tale of murder, mystery, odd weather patterns, a self-willed TV show, and clues from an alternate reality. Fusé: Memoirs of a Huntress is a historical fantasy about the shogun’s vendetta against a group of human/dog hybrids known as the Fuse. The huntress who joins in the search ends up befriending one of them, and begins to question everything about the persecution of the group. Finally, Aria the Origination also includes an OVA, continuing the stories of gondoliers on Mars.
If Miyazaki Films Were Like Other Anime is the name of this hysterical video, made by the folks over at College Humor, a site I tend to visit pretty much every week to see what new silliness they are up to this time. Of course, Hayao Miyazaki never made an ordinary anime in his life. Each work he crafted was amazing, and are some of the best animations in the world.
Arthur Darvill played the part of Rory Williams in Doctor Who, but these days he is starring in a musical in London called Once. Because he wants everyone to know this, he went on BBC1 and sang this rather silly song, using Let It Go for the musical inspiration.
He is called the God of Manga because he not only wrote some of the most iconic Manga of all time, including Astro Boy, but he basically invented the system of Manga and Anime creation and marketing in use to this day. Earlier this month Google opened up an online version of the Tezuka Osamu Manga Museum with a huge number of exhibits and displays for those of us who can’t get to western Japan and see the real thing. If you are a fan of Manga and Anime, you want to check this one out. Expect to spend some time there, because there is a lot to see and read. You could always follow your visit by getting some of the original Manga and reading it, even a lot o the older stuff is still available.
We get The Amazing Spider-Man 2 on the big screen this week, with all that excellent spidey action and banter we have come to expect. He gets a couple of super villains to defeat this time around, and begins to suspect they have something in common. This 5th venture into the Spiderman franchise looks like it is going to be quite the fun ride. Bad Johnson is a comedic fantasy in which a mans penis leaves his body and takes on human form. As you might expect, that one is in limited release. In even more limited release is Protector 2, original title Tom Yum Goong 2, another elephant training martial arts series from Thailand. Thai martial arts are a bit different than the Chinese and Japanese forms we are all familiar with, and this film stars Tony Jaa of Ong-Bak fame. His parents are elephant trainers, which explains why the animals are in so many of his films.