The obvious winner this week is Star Wars: Rogue One, arguably the best film in the franchise so far. In Anime, Naruto Shippūden Set 30 contains episodes 375 through 388 for more Ninja goodness; for reference, they are currently streaming episode 500 from Japan. Hyperdimension Neptunia is being released in a S.A.V.E. edition, which makes now a great time to add this game-to-anime project to your collection.
Today we finally got to see the second teaser trailer for Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, based on the groundbreaking graphic novel Valerian & Laureline. This is the second major motion picture taking place fully in this universe (Fifth Element was the first), but you have seen scenes inspired by the series in other movies (including Star Wars, which took the cantina scene, Chewbacca, The Death Star, the Slave Leia outfit, and a whole lot more from it) and TV shows. It also had its own TV show in 2007 and 2008, but that is difficult to come by in North America. The new film will be on the big screen on July 21st, and I WILL be in the theater to see it!
Leading the pack this time is Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, the next generation series from the Harry Potter universe. I can’t wait to see where J. K. Rowling goes with this one, the first film was exceedingly tasty, probably because she wrote the screenplay herself. The other selection is A Monster Calls, a serious and powerful movie that did poorly at the box office, probably because most folks thought it was about some friendly monster. The target audience wasn’t kids at all, so most of the kids that get sent to see it by parents who had never read the book left it depressed and confused, generating a lot of bad word of mouth for the film.
In Anime, Steins;Gate: The Movie brings home the ending that the original creators always intended, where Deja Vu are only your fragmented memories of alternate time lines. This is their last chance to get it right or to lose their possibilities forever. I found Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? a wonderful series, but it really only covered the events of the first book. So I am keeping my fingers crossed that the flag The Complete Series means the complete first season, and not that they are not going to produce the rest of the story. As the series final works its way toward us, Boruto: Naruto the Movie helps usher in new generation of ninja. Fairy Tail: Collection 7 brings another half-years worth of episodes home, with Lucy kidnapped and merged with a time bomb, and all the other guilds out to get our heroes, I predict an unprecedented amount of collateral damage with this one. The war continues in Heavy Object: Season 1 Part 2, but it is a full dozen episodes despite the title.
Luck & Logic: The Complete Series has the gods rampaging over the Earth, creating all sorts of problems, one of which appears to be wiping out the Funimation and Crunchyroll web servers that stream their episode, hence no link. Diabolik Lovers II: More Blood seems to have the same fate, so I am thinking the servers may just be down for the moment. When I find them back up, I will add the links here. Finally, Inari Kon Kon: The Complete Series + OVA is coming out in a S.A.V.E. edition, for those who do not already own the Fox Goddess driven magical rom/com.
We get several interesting options this weekend, and while Power Rangers looks pretty campy just like it should, it also looks like they might take a more serious shot at the franchise. Leaning to the Horror side, Life has six astronauts vs. a single celled organism returned from Mars that can out-think them. In the Bollywood fantasy Phillauri, a man must marry a tree to break a curse, but the spirit of that tree has her own agenda.
Assassin’s Creed was a great game and an excellent premise for a movie; I don’t know if it succeeded or not, because I haven’t seen it yet. The critics seemed to be underwhelmed, with “confusing” and “disorienting” being the two words most often used to describe it. I don’t know if that’s because none of them ever played the game, or the script was that poorly done, but either way I will stream it before I consider buying it. I also haven’t seen Sing, but there is no question that this animation needs to be a part of my permanent collection. In Anime the new title is Attack on Titan: Junior High, probably the silliest series from this franchise, but still very worth watching. We also get a S.A.V.E. edition of BlazBlue: Alter Memory; The Complete Series, for those who haven’t seen it before now.
Everything you need to know is in the title; the Hillywood Show is a brilliant parody presentation put together by Hilly & Hannah Hindi, some truly twisted sisters who combine music, dance, and video production to create some of the most amazing short films you can find these days. It shouldn’t be a shock that they have been parodying such pop culture icons as Doctor Who, Harry Potter, Lord Of The Rings, Supernatural, and Sherlock. The real shock value comes from the fact that their fan base includes the casts of Supernatural and Doctor Who, actor/artists like Billy Boyd, Lady Gaga, and Sean Astin, writers/directors like Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, and production houses including BBC America and MTV. With the key players you are creating your parodies from being in the front row of your cheering squad, you have to know you have gotten it right!