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Something to Watch: Discs

Movies brings us Pixar’s Inside Out, where the main characters are various emotions running loose all across our subconscious. A Lego Brickumentary explores the history and uses of Lego’s from perspectives I had never imagined, and ended up being quite an interesting documentary.

TV has Doctor Who: Series 9 Part 1 which contains the first six episodes of season 9 of the new series. If you look at the same show in the UK they have it flagged as season 35, which is really a bit more accurate. The other offering is the single episode animation Toy Story That Time Forgot, from Disney/Pixar again.

In Anime, GLASSLIP: Complete Collection is about an ordinary person working to become a professional glassblower, but when she sees things reflected in glass, sometimes they are things that don’t happen until several days later. When she meets a boy who claims a voice from the future led him to her, she begins to re-evaluate what is going on in her world. If Her Flag Breaks is about a boy who sees “flags” over people who are about to have a major change in their life caused by the choices they make. Those changes might effect their love lives or even just whether they will live or die, and now he has some hard choices of his own to make.

Fairy Tail: Collection 5 contains episodes 97 through 120, which covers almost half a year of episodes at a price equal to Fairy Tale: Part 18, which is the more recent story, but has half the number of episodes for the same amount of money. Finally, Fafner: The Complete Series plus Movie is coming out in a S.A.V.E. edition, which means you can get the whole thing for right around $20.

Something to Watch: Discs

This time Pixels arrives home with the mind numbing premise that Aliens take our inclusion of video games on the Voyager disc as a declaration of war, and return the attack with one of their own. Don’t think that Pixels is strange, though, because also this week an underground classic of a film comes out on disc: Forbidden Zone. It seems back in 1980, Richard and Danny Elfman, along with their Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo theater troupe, decided to assemble the stuff they were doing into a movie. The results were one of the strangest and most offensive films ever made, and someone had the guts to finally release it as a 2 disc set, the film on DVD, the soundtrack on CD. I don’t actually recommend that film to anyone because of the included offensive parts, but it is extremely bizarre sci-fi fantasy, so I have to at least mention it. There are also several live concert DVDs coming out this week for the musically addicted, including the Prismatic World Tour from Katy Perry, Roxy the Movie from Frank Zappa (The videos of the December 1973 concert series that became the album Roxy and Elsewhere), and From the Vault: Live at the Tokyo Dome 1990 from the Rolling Stones.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail Limited Edition Castle Catapult Gift Set is one of the sillier things they are doing in honor of the film’s 40th anniversary this week. It is a re-release, obviously, but I had to at least put that title in print, so you could imagine just how interesting the box set with accompanying catapult looks. In TV the Doctor Who: Christmas Specials Giftset includes all of the so far available David Tennant, Matt Smith, and Peter Capaldi Christmas Specials. Plus, they are throwing in a Sonic Screwdriver with every set, but they don’t mention which Doctor’s screwdriver is included. Quite frankly, that takes care of four of my Christmas gifts this year with two of each.

In Anime, Black Bullet: Complete Collection tells of a virus spreading fast and mutating rapidly, giving their hosts unexpected powers and abilities, along with a compulsion to attack others to continue to spread the virus. The entire thing is 13 episodes long, as is Blade & Soul: Complete Collection. In Blade, Alka has been her clan’s assassin her entire life, but now her clan is dead and she lives only to destroy those who killed them.

Continuing favorites include Lupin III vs. Detective Conan The Movie, which is a crossover story between the 2 series created in 2013 that has lots of action and humor. Plus it is a hoot to see a favorite thief go up against a favorite detective, leaving me a bit confused about which one to cheer for. One Piece: Season 7 Part 3 has episodes 410 through 421, but before you get your hopes up you are getting there, the current episode is 714, or maybe 715 by now. Or maybe even 716, I saw 714 listed a week or two back, but I am not sure what day the new episodes come out, so I don’t know how many times it has changed since then. Sailor Moon R: Season 2 Part 2 brings episodes 69 through 89 home, meaning the battle against the time traveling Black Moon royal family story arc, or at least a lot of it.

I left Aldnoah.Zero: Set 2 to the final paragraph because even though it is a new release, it is only half a season’s worth of episodes, 7->12 to be specific. Even that is only a quarter of the series so far, which runs to 24 episodes; and I try my best not to reward marketing teams which release things in tiny pieces so they can sell a lot of them for what other groups make the price of an entire season or better. While I will sometimes mention something with 6 episodes like this series, it will only happen when they are quite good (or 6 or fewer IS the total number of episodes available). The other side of that coin this time around is Dance in the Vampire Bund: Complete Series S.A.V.E. Edition, S.A.V.E. standing for Super Amazing Value Edition. The S.A.V.E. releases are quite inexpensive box sets that give you an entire series but generally run you one side or the other of $20, and you can catch them for $12 or so when sales happen. So even though most of those series are a year or two old, and have usually already been released as a complete series, I find them worth telling folks about, so they can get the most Anime for their buck (which is the way I always try to buy this stuff).

Something to Do: Movies

There are several interesting choices this week. The Last Witch Hunter is an action fantasy about an immortal witch hunter and his reincarnated most powerful opponent, battling it out in modern times to determine if the human race gets to survive or not. While not genre, Steve Jobs is a look at one of the people who completely changed how the world works (and plays) during and after the computer revolution, and will probably be the best film coming out this week. There is a lot of controversy about the live action Jem and the Holograms since the original Anime was at its core about women’s empowerment, with the heroine owning the record company the band played for and using the super-science of her AI computer Synergy to project holograms from her earrings. Those holograms protected her secret identity, generated illusions that baffled and confused the evil doers she was constantly fighting, and also created special effects for the band. It appears that in the new live action version Jem is not the owner of the company, not the possessor of a secret identity fighting the bad guys, not in possession of proprietary advanced technology that is indistinguishable from magic and makes her powerful. Instead she seems to be a wanna-be rock star who leveraged a YouTube account into a ticket to being exploited by a record company, which is not even close to the original story line. Or is she? The trailer seems to have changed since it first came out, I am wondering if the production company may have realized their mistake when the public outcry started over the changes they introduced. Not hopeful, but wondering.

Something to Watch: Discs

Movies bring us Jurassic World, this year’s continuation of the classic series. In my opinion the latest addition stands up to the original in terms of action and story, and surpasses it for special effects. If you don’t already have the previous installments you can also pick up all 4 at once in the Jurassic Park Collection. Also out is a post apocalypse tale called Z for Zachariah about what may be the last 3 people on Earth after a nuclear war. I suspect the release timing for this one may be because Chris Pine stars in both sci-fi movies and they are hoping that might boost its sales. I did not see any genre TV this time around.

In Anime, Hayate the Combat Butler 2nd Season embeds 25 episodes of combat fun into the domestic matrix. Meanwhile, Space Brothers: Collection 5 has both brothers being hit with failing health while they are being overworked. Collection 5 adds episodes 52-64, so we are past the half way point on the current story.

Something to Stream: MSG Iron Blooded Orphans

In the Anime series Mobile Suit GUNDAM: Iron Blooded Orphans you have the continuation of the war between Earth and Mars in all its depth and complexity. The Martian independence movement has gained an important supporter in the person of Kudelia, daughter of one of the major terrestrial governing families on the red planet. She has chosen the child soldiers to escort her to Earth, and the are abandoned by the adults looking to save themselves when the assassination teams arrive. The consequences could be much different than the ruling houses on both planets would ever wish. If you are not already a fan of the Gundam franchise, this might be the series that opens your eyes and brings you on board.