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Something to Watch: Discs

The movies this week include The Last Witch Hunter with Vin Diesel. I missed this one in the theaters, I will catch it when it gets on one of the premium services I already have. There are also two animated feature films, Batman: Bad Blood is a direct to video story that may have The Dark Knight on the dark side. And the 1937 animation classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs will be released on Blu Ray/Digital HD for the first time, completely remastered and restored. Finally I have to mention Simon Pegg’s Man Up, which isn’t genre but is a whole lot of fun. Supposedly. Sadly it didn’t play at a theater close enough to me so I could see it on the big screen, but I will get to see it now.

TV has Falling Skies: The Complete Fifth Season and the continuing battle of alien invaders vs. human defenders. Since that was the final season, you will also be able to pick up Falling Skies: The Complete Series in Blu Ray or DVD. We also get From Dusk Till Dawn: Season Two this week, one of a number of spin-offs generated by the original film.

Anime finally gives us the next episode of a true classic after entirely too long a wait! Evangelion 3.33: You Can (Not) Redo is hitting the shelves, and as a person who was trying to watch it 3 years ago, I am thrilled to finally see it make it into the light of day. It is a reboot of one of the iconic Anime series of all time, and now we just have to wait for the fourth and final part to be released. The other release this week is worth everyone’s attention is From the New World, where the lines between Time and Space may blur, but the lines between people are razor sharp.

Night on the Galactic Railroad is a classic from the 80s telling the story of a young kitten who faces problems well beyond his age. The Festival of Stars becomes his escape, and he and his childhood friend are thrilled as the Galactic Railroad whisks the two away for parts unknown! Then there was Blade Dance of the Elementalers: Complete Collection, where maidens try to control spirits, before the Demon King gets their contracts before them.

Something to Watch: Discs

Movies bring us Goosebumps, a wonderful little film based on the books of R.L. Stine, and starring Jack Black. Thats pretty much it this week for Western TV and Movies.

Anime has Corpse Party: Tortured Souls – Complete Collection, where Heavenly Host School was burned to the ground and replaced by another school in the hopes that everyone would forget the gruesome things that happened there. THAT didn’t work out the way people were hoping, and now the students of the new school are battling the undead in the hallways of the old. In Momokyun Sword, Momoko must band together with some Heavenly-sent Celestial Goddesses to rid feudal Japan from a rampaging hoard of Evil Oni. Re:␣Hamatora – Complete Collection has a detective agency made up of the supernaturally powerful up against the returning dead who came back specifically to steal their powers.

Kingdom: Season 1 has all 38 episodes of the Waring States Period story about two war orphans who vowed to prove themselves, one of whom looks just like the young man who was the King of Qin, and would become the Emperor Shi Huangdi. There are a few returning favorites with new volumes this time around, One Piece – Season 7 Voyage 5 and Naruto Shippuden Uncut Set 25.

Something to Stream: Dimension W

By 2071, the world’s energy problems are seemingly solved by a network of cross-dimensional power induction coils, but there is one minor problem. What the power can do depends on which of the multiverse iterations it was drawn from, and if it isn’t pulled from the officially sanctioned universe it might be able to overwhelm the energies employed by by the government and the police. Needless to say, they have a vested interest in making sure that doesn’t happen, so they pay a premium bounty to anyone who collects the bootleg coils for them, under the excuse that “illegal coils are dangerous”. Which is true; they just don’t mention dangerous to whom.

In this setting, coil-hating repo man Kyoma makes most of his money from confiscating such power sources and selling them to the government. The unique coil android Mira (who is more than she seems) is near him when she sees her father die at the hands of that government, in an event which also takes out 20 square blocks of the city, knocking out herself and any others within a 50 mile radius who’s lives depend on constant coil input. The two end up having to work together to try to achieve their separate goals.

There have only been two episodes at this point, with episode 3 becoming available at 9AM tomorrow, Saturday the 23rd. That is about an hour after it airs in Tokyo, and the built in leeway in the time frame is because they will still have to subtitle it into English, which might take them more than an hour. I do like the two episodes I have seen so far, and am quite looking forward to more.

Something to Stream: RWBY, TV

I watch near-realtime streaming TV shows from Hulu+/Amazon or Cable/Show/Network Apps because being tied to the TV Show clock is so 20th century. To begin I have to mention that RWBY kicked off its new season the other week, filling in lots of the missing backstory pieces explaining how everything got to be like this as well as advancing the current plot line to new levels of tension. This is my favorite animation created in Poser, it is quite nicely realized. It is also streamed from one of my two Asian near-realtime services, those being Crunchyroll and Funimation. They want to simulcast them within an hour or so of their Tokyo/Seoul/Hong Kong air time, but they face the added challenge of getting each episode subbed into English before they can post it online. Sometimes that makes the presentation a few hours late.

But next week we get a number of Broadcast TV shows I have been waiting for eagerly, so it is appropriate I mention them in this post since I will not be watching them as the shows air. In most instances, Broadcast TV shows are available to watch starting at local midnight after their transmission, just like the cable companies VOD presentations (and under pretty much the same distribution contract), and I usually go on a binge the following weekend. I might not be able to wait this week though.

Tuesday brings the long awaited Season 2 premier of Agent Carter, which is pretty much my favorite Marvel franchise. If you missed season 1, you can watch the whole thing for free on their site to get you caught up for Season 2, but you only have a few days to do so. The other stand alone show I have been waiting for is Heroes Reborn, but this time it is the season finale rather than the start of anything; that happens Thursday. And yes, you can watch the entire season of that online for free to get you ready to see how the season closes.

Tuesday also brings the Winter Premier (the 2nd half of the season) of The Flash, kicking off the next round of CW DC Universe stories. That is followed the next day by Arrow, and I expect both of them to be crossover stories gearing us up for Thursday’s Series Premier of Legends of Tomorrow. I am looking forward to this up-leveling of the DC Universe presentation, which finally puts them within range of Marvel’s TV offerings. Somehow, I just haven’t found the excitement in Supergirl, which needs to step up to the plate to be on a par with the rest of the shows.

It doesn’t quite end there. Also this week, on Wednesday Supernatural kicks off the second half of the season, and The 100 adds its own flavor to Thursdays. And finally, next Sunday we get the long awaited rebirth of The X-Files, bringing a true classic back to television. All in all, it promises to be one hell of a season!