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Something to Watch: DVD’s, 3Dec13

In movies we have The Wolverine, another excellent selection from the ongoing Marvel universe, this time from their X-Men franchise. As usual, you want to stay all the way to the end, so you don’t lose any clues about what might be coming up next. The other film of note is based on a book without so many pictures, The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones. That one was written by Cassandra Clare, the opening volume of her YA series The Mortal Instruments, part of The Shadowhunter Chronicles.

In TV, we continue with the 50th celebration, this weeks offering being Doctor Who: The Doctors Revisited 9-11. This group is Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant, and Matt Smith, and concludes the first dozen Doctors. A worthwhile grouping of the next set of characters, don’t you think?

In Western animation, Marvel’s Iron Man & Hulk: Heroes United is a good companion piece for Wolverine.

In Anime, Aquarion Evol is not exactly a direct sequel to Aquarion, since it takes place 12,000 years later, but it is set in the same universe with the same underlying premise. I don’t remember the first one being quite this filled with less than subtle double entendre’s, but perhaps I just forgot; I should go back and watch it again before I start the new series. The unique series Girls und Panzer is all about the high school girls clubs which salvage, maintain, and go into combat with each other in tanks, and they are doing a duel release this week. They have the complete OVA series at 6 episodes long, and the complete TV series at 12 episodes both hitting the shelves.

One Piece continues the epic, with season 5 part 4 bringing you episodes 300 through 312. Zatch Bell mes out as the complete seasons one and two, but instead of the normal 26 episodes you might assume, this set weighs in at 104 episodes. In this series, creatures known as mamodo come to Earth every thousand years to battle it out and determine who gets to rule them for the next millennium. They can only use their magic when teamed up with a human, and the mamodo known as Zatch Bell has teamed up with 14 year old Kiyo for this round of fighting.

Something to Watch: DVDs, 12Nov13

In movies, Man of Steel leads off, with the latest retelling of the Superman legend. This one snuck past me in the movie theaters, so I am looking forward to this additional opportunity to check it out. The martial arts offering this time is Ip Man: The Final Fight, also known as Ip Man 4. This pretty much completes his life story, and it is appropriate that it is filmed in Hong Kong, since that is where he lived out his later days. I believe this is the first one that actually talks about his most famous student, Bruce Lee. I missed this one because it was only in my local movie theater for a single week before it was gone, but before China bought the AMC movie chain a few years ago, these kinds of movies were a lot harder to find on the big screen at all. If you are an H.P. Lovecraft fan and looking for some good comedy, you will want to watch Grabbers. This is basically what happens when the Deep Ones invade Ireland, but are terminally allergic to alcohol; the populace rallies at the pub, pitchforks and torches in hand! I missed this one because it would have involved a drive to NYC, or one of the 5 other major cities in the US it played in. And for animated silliness, Dreamworks Animation’s Turbo is also coming out to disc. I missed this one because the trailers and plot line just didn’t grab me, but now that it will be on one of the cable channels or available to stream on one of my services at no additional cost to me, I will check it out.

In TV, Stan Lee’s Superhumans: Season Two continues to be the only comic book based superhero reality show I know of. Plus, it runs on the History Channel 2, which is the part of the whole A&E family of cable stations that gives you some great Sci-Fi/Fantasy based programming. I am not sure if I can count the other two TV releases as being on TV, since they were only available on various streaming services such as Crunchyroll, but both RWBY: Volume 1 and Red vs. Blue: Season 11 will be on disc this week. They are both the products of the fertile minds over at Rooster Teeth, who keep cranking out some of the most innovating animations using products that pretty much anyone with a computer can pick up for under a hundred dollars.

In Anime I normally don’t talk about re-releases unless something truly good has become rare, and this one missed the rare part but is dead center for the truly good. Akira: 25th Anniversary Edition is the definitive release of the Anime that made North America, and most of the rest of the world, realize that they needed to take this art form seriously. This digitally restored HD version of the movie includes both the 1988 and 2001 English audio dubs as well as a Japanese soundtrack with subtitles, and a ton of other extras. Since my own copy is SD, that alone means I need to upgrade. If you haven’t seen this feature length film before, you can watch it online at Funimation for free, and you really ought to do so; this is the production that changed everything about how North America viewed Japanese Science Fiction and Pop Culture.

Maken-Ki! Battling Venus is the complete series (at least until someone decides to finance another season) in a single box set. It is the story of a combat school where the you train with a magic object that gives you powers, called a Maken, and where the women outnumber the men 3 to 1, because they are three times as deadly. Our protagonist is a boy who can’t figure out how to get his Maken to work, and it is a race between getting kicked out of school with failing grades or getting killed by his pretty schoolmates. Being made by the team that did Ikki Tousen, you can expect a lot of fan service, predominately during the combat sequences.

Something to Do: Movies, 8Nov13

This is shaping up to be an excellent movie month, with several films to chose from this week. I absolutely have to be in the theater for Thor: The Dark World with the 9th Doctor (Chris Eccelston) playing the bad guy, and Chuck (Zack Levi) playing one of the Warriors 3 as kind of a variation on his role in Tangled. For those disappointed that About Time didn’t come out in a theater near them last week, it goes into much wider release this week, so you have a better shot of finding it. And The Starving Games is a parody of The Hunger Games that looks like it could be pretty funny.

Something to Watch: DVDs, 29Oct13

The action/comedy winner is R.I.P.D., the after life cop story based on the excellent Dark Horse comic. The other film of note this week is Byzantium, the dramatic fantasy about two beautiful vampires.

There didn’t seem to be any live action TV options this time around, at least not from North America. The western animation is a good one, though: Disney’s Monsters University. This was released as a digital HD download at the beginning the first week of the month, but this is your first chance to actually get the discs.

In Anime, Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day is the story of 5 childhood friends who grew apart after the death of Meiko, another friend. Years later, while they are in High School together, the ghost of Meiko returns and draws them back together to fulfill a promise they made to her as children. Thermae Romae: Complete Collection is about a bath house builder from ancient Rome who travels in time to modern Tokyo and gets some great ideas to incorporate into his designs from contemporary bath houses.

Something to Watch: DVDs, 22Oct13

The Wall is a German fantasy adventure about a woman who suddenly finds herself isolated from humanity by an invisible barrier she can not cross. This looks like it could be a very powerful interior movie if it is done right. The documentary this time is Necessary Evil: The Villains of DC Comics, because there just isn’t enough nerdyness already in the world.

In TV, the excellent but short lived Primeval New World: The Complete Series is available to bring home. I liked that series, and was very sorry it did not get renewed. The other tasty series is Nikita: The Complete Third Season, spy fun for the whole family.

In Anime, Blood-C: The Last Dark is the feature film that complements the TV series about the half-monster vampire killing girl. Kokoro Connect: Complete is about a group of friends who suddenly find themselves swapped in each others bodies with no clue as to why. Even with the cross-gender swapping, objectionable content is mild; this one is played strictly for the laughs.

Winning the award for this rounds longets title, Yamibo – Darkness, the Hat, and the Travelers of the Books: Complete Collection, I find the premise of this one interesting. Our protagonist has had her elder sister/love interest vanish in front of her. In the process of seeking her out, a talking parakeet leads her to the Great Library, where every book is a gateway to its own unique world. Not surprisingly, this is from Bandai, the same folks who distributed Read Or Die.

Di Gi Charat: Complete is centered around an extraterrestrial princess and her friends who descend on Tokyo with the objective of making her an Idol. The original anime and OVA were kind of promotional, since the Gamers store it is set in, in Akihabara, actually exists, and is part of a chain that has stores as far away as LA, California. This is more of a re-release, but it has been quite a while since the series was available in North America.