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Something to Watch: Discs

TV brings us Daredevil: The Complete First Season, a rather brutal addition to the Marvel TV collection that has a good story to tell. Marvel is doing better than most at creating continuity between their Movie and TV storytelling, with the Netflix branch of the franchise focusing on the superheroes who called Hell’s Kitchen home. Movies have a couple of animations for us, Phantom Boy being a French production about a kid who can astral project and the policeman he works with to bring down a violent criminal being the first. The second is the rather more adult Sausage Party, which is funny as hell but NOT appropriate to share with your children.

In Anime, Sky Wizards Academy: The Complete Series is about an inept combat team and the outcast who was assigned to train them to fight against the armored insects that now control the Earth. 07-ghost tells of the destruction of a nation after a Thousand Years War, and the survivor who is about to turn everything upside down. Omamori Himari: Complete Collection has a cat girl guardian, a bunch of attacking demons, and the last remaining member of a demon killing family that wishes he was anywhere but here. Strike the Blood is all about Vampires who bounce from body to body, and the killer girls sent to snuff them who seem to spend a lot more time protecting them.

In The Heroic Legend of Arslan Season One: Part Two, trust me when I say Arslan is not having a good time, but you might enjoy the story noticeably more than he does. Overlord: Complete Collection the ultimate “trapped in a game” anime, and it certainly seems to be a lot of fun. Finally, Shomin Sample: I Was Abducted by an Elite All-Girls School as a Sample Commoner win’s this weeks award for most off the wall title, but it does look like an interesting animation.

Something to Watch: Discs

This week brings Star Trek Beyond, yet another excellent episode from the rebooted Federation universe. There are all kinds of options on this release including multiple collectors sets with one or more different spaceship models, getting all three rebooted movies in one box set, and various exclusive bonus content add ins combined with cards and artwork, depending on who you decide to pick it up from. It looks like a whole lot of shopping outlets have jumped all over the Star Trek 50th celebration. Nine Lives is a family fantasy with Kevin Spacey as the cat and Christopher Walken as the guy who put him there. The 2016 animation Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders is based on the 60s TV show and features Adam West, Burt Ward, and Julie Newmar doing the voices for their characters from that series.

In Anime, Snow White with the Red Hair is about an herbalist with unique relationships with the royalty of two countries, and yes this is a medieval fantasy. Psychic School Wars is a 2012 movie about a time traveler awakening psychic abilities in students in the hope of avoiding a future disaster, but he may end up causing one in the present. To Love Ru Darkness 2 is season 4 of that franchise, with devil dolls and alien girls taking over the school.

New Wireless Trailer

The MCM London Comic Con is taking place this weekend, and just like the US variations there are a ton of trailers and announcements expected, and they have already started. This one is for the streaming sci-fi police procedural Wireless, staring Andrew Lee Potts (Primeval, Alice, Stan Lee’s Lucky Man) and Lucy Brown (Primeval, The Village). There are 9 episodes posted on the web site, feel free to binge your way through them!

Classic Lost Doctor Who in Theaters, 1 night only

A classic lost story of Doctor Who will be available in select movie theaters for one night only. On Monday, November 14th, Doctor Who: The Power of the Daleks will be on the big screen thanks to BBC Worldwide. This was the 1966 story with the very first regeneration, when William Hartnell’s Doctor was killed off, and regenerated into Patrick Troughton’s version of the character. No one had any idea if it would work or if they would lose the audience, but with 20/20 hindsight it is obvious it worked very well indeed. The original broadcast now only exists as a handful of 15 second film clips totaling maybe 3 minutes or so, and a number of semi-complete audio recordings. So they compiled, cleaned up, and merged the best of the audio into the full soundtrack, and had a team of animators create the visuals to go with it. I have never heard this particular story, and while I could just buy the DVD and watch it at home (it becomes available in November as well) I feel the need to be in a large auditorium with a bunch of other serious Whovians and experience it for the first time it has been shown in public in 50 years.

Something to Stream: Flip Flappers

Flip Flappers is the most visually interesting anime of the new season, as well as being more than a little surreal. It compares favorably with Gurren-Lagann, FLCL (pronounced Fooly Cooly), and Paprika, at least so far. We will have to see if the story can grow as amazing as the visuals, like the other three I mentioned did. There are only three episodes posted so far, so if you like the first one you can binge your way through it in just over an hour.

Something to Stream: Ronja the Robber’s Daughter

Goro Miyazaki created an Anime version of Astrid Lindgren’s fantasy novel Ronja the Robber’s Daughter, and Amazon has picked it up for their Amazon Prime streaming service. Gillian Anderson will be narrating the story for them, and as a fan of all things Studio Ghibli I am looking forward to watching it. My only question now is when it will be available; they only finished dubbing the English audio in the last week or two, and searching the US and UK Amazon sites reveals no information.