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Something to Watch: Discs

TV has Heroes Reborn: The Complete Event Series, and I was thrilled to discover it has 13 episodes. Somehow my DVR only captured the first 12, when I got to the end of my binge watching session I thought they left it like that to try to get the fans to pressure NBC to do another season. It turns out it does have an actual ending, and I am going to get to see it after all. Movies has the DC direct to video animated Justice League vs. Teen Titans; I am afraid I am not a fan of the animation style, it is reminiscent of bad Saturday morning cartoons from the 70s and 80s. Someone is also releasing all of the Alien and Alien vs Predator movies in a single bundle; if you don’t already have them, now is your chance to get the entire collection at once.

In Anime, Gugure! Kokkuri-san is about a doll girl who summons a Kokkuri-san, or fox ghost, by accident. He decides to haunt her and cook for her, because all she eats are cup noodles, and he can’t stand it. Maken-Ki! 2 is the second season of this school for magical combat, done as comedy with a large helping of fan service. While it isn’t genre, Tonari no Seki-kun: Complete Collection are short, fun little episodes about the Master of Killing Time. Each day he sits at his desk in school and creates complex diversions to entertain himself, driving the girl at the next desk out of her mind from the distraction. While he never manages to get caught, her reactions pull plenty of attention from the teacher. It is pretty amazing how they manage to fit so much tension and humor into a show only 7 minutes long per episode.

Something to Stream: God Eater

The post-Armageddon series God Eater took a 3 month break between the biologic battles of episodes 9 and 10, now they are back to finish up the first season. Episode 10 just posted to Crunchyroll this past Monday, with new episodes each Monday. As with a number of other series, God Eater aired first on Daisuke, so you can watch 10 through 13 there already. Both sites have both free and paid accounts you can sign up for, and you can watch anything they stream with a free account. The paid accounts have some added benefits, like watching the shows a week earlier or getting them without commercials. Both streaming services also have free iOS and Android apps you can use to watch your favorite shows on your smart phone or tablet, and each service has pros and cons with different aspects of the account set up.

The most interesting thing about Daisuke is the titles they carry. They are a consortium of 6 Anime companies based in Japan, rather then a North American distributor like Crunchyroll, Funimation, or Viz. Which means they have a mix of some of the shows the other 3 carry, they show some titles a week or more before any of the others have them, and they even have some shows that aren’t carried by the North American distributors at all. Of course, there are more than 6 Anime companies in Japan, which means each of the others carry titles that Daisuke, nor their local competitors, have. Personally I can’t afford to have paid accounts with all of them, plus Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, Acorn, etc, on top of my cable company bill (best broadband bandwidth for the buck, bar none). So I am evaluating who has what, and which titles in each ones library I can not live without. If I can only afford a couple of monthly service fees, I want to make sure I end up with the best ones.

Something to Watch: Discs

Movies brings us Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which would be enough for me if that was all there was, but we get a bit more. Identicals is a rather twisty little film about people who take over the lives of others, to the point where they lose track of their own identity. Ghost in the Shell: The New Movie closes out the Ghost In The Shell: Arise prequel, ending with the scenes that began the very first movie. I get to mention it here rather then in the Anime section because it actually did play on the big screen in US theaters.

TV has Doctor Who: Complete Series 9, which was a fun season that I wouldn’t have minded if it had had still more episodes. We also get The Expanse: Season 1, a first class interpretation of the books series, and I am happy to see they have signed off on creating the second season.

In Anime, Parasyte The Maxim: Collection 1 is a tale of a body snatching alien and the human he permanently attached to when he mistakenly ate and replaced his hand, instead of his head. Now the rest of the invaders want them both dead, so they have to work together to survive in this first half of the series. Rail Wars takes place in a parallel time line where the nationalized railway system was never privatized. While a lot of the story arc is involved with agitators and saboteurs trying to take control of the rail system away from the government, a good bit of it is slice-of-life tales of the day to day workings of the system as valid in this universe as in that one. We also have new stories for a few old favorites, with Lupin the Third: Jigen’s Gravestone, and Naruto Shippūden: Uncut Set 26.

Something to Stream: My Hero Academia Launch Party

The My Hero Academia launch party will be streaming live online over at Funimation beginning at 1AM Eastern Time this Sunday, April 3rd. Usually when a new show launches they just play the first episode an hour or half a day after it airs in Tokyo. This time, there will be live pre-show and post-show programming, complete with a chat/IM interface allowing you to talk to the hosts and guests. They will be throwing in some giveaways, although they are vague about what that entails.

Of course, you need to subscribe to their service to get access, but you can use their 2 week free trial to check it out (along with everything else they offer), and then cancel before the regular payments start if you didn’t find anything you were interested in.

I haven’t previously seen Funimation do anything like this to launch a new series, if it works out for them perhaps we will get more of these kind of events. If they put the time and effort in to do it right, it could be an excellent Value Added feature of their subscription service, becoming worthwhile for their business model and their subscriber’s entertainment both. I look forward to seeing how they do on this one, and am keeping my fingers crossed.

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.