This time we get the orbital thriller Life, and the award winning comedy fantasy This Beautiful Fantastic. The later film slid right past a lot of folks, if you haven’t seen it you might want to consider checking it out. In Anime Norn9: Complete Collection has a nameless girl join the spaceship Norn in it’s mission to protect the planet from unseen enemies. The Seven Deadly Sins came out with season 1, part 2, while One Piece unleashed season 9, voyage 1, which covers episodes 517 through 528. Sailor Moon S released season 3 part 2, just because they can. While I don’t often mention re-releases, there is a classic this week you should be aware of: The Big O complete collection. A Noir detective with a Giant Mecha, what better combination could there be!
The western winner this week is The LEGO Batman Movie, absolutely my favorite Batman movie of all time. Although that may change, seeing as Joss Whedon is taking over DC Cinema, including the Justice League movie and the Batgirl movie. Except for some reshoots, the filming is largely completed on Justice League, but Whedon gets to be in charge of the editing; so for the first time in years there is hope of a well rounded movie with humor to go with the dark drama.
Anime brings Chivalry of a Failed Knight: Complete Collection, a story of magical knights, one of whom has no magical powers whatsoever. Did you know Shirow Masamune, the creator of Ghost in the Shell,also did Cyborg Comedies? This week we can also pick up Pandora in the Crimson Shell: Ghost Urn, Complete Series, where cyborgs and scientists fight terrorists.
Before I Fall has the teen protagonist living the same day over and over, dying at the end of each iteration, and trying to get it right. While the basic premise seems to be somewhere between Groundhog Day and All You Need Is Kill, this one is based on best selling author Lauren Oliver‘s book of the same name. We also get The Last Kingdom: Season Two this time around, the multi-award winning presentation of the uniting of England in the days just before King Arthur might have come along.
In Anime, Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya is the companion movie that goes along with the series. I didn’t get to see it in theaters, mostly because I don’t live in New York or San Francisco, and I am looking forward to finally checking it out. If anyone has streamed it before now, it completely escaped my attention. Endride: Part 1 finds Shun transported deep below the Earth’s surface, although which Earth isn’t immediately obvious. His only hope of getting back home is to team up with Prince Emilio, who is out to kill the king; this first dozen episodes introduces you to the story, and takes you through the point Shun discovers his new powers and gathers a team of rebels to help him move forward. I have to say I have a bit of a problem with the title Gosick: The Complete Series, Part One; it can be the complete series, or it can be part 1, but it can’t be both. Now that I have that out of my system, this is a tasty little series set in the 1920s, with a series of mysteries to solve and a brilliant detective who never leaves her hothouse to solve them (sound familiar?). Enough of the cases have a para-physical shading that I get to count it as genre and include it here. Finally Hi-sCool! Seha Girls: Complete Series is just silly fun, with three girls being the human avatars of classic Sega game platforms, fighting their way to 8 Bit Heaven!
Another new Marvel TV show is coming out: The Gifted takes place in the X-Men universe, so this one will be running on Fox. A suburban couple discover their children have mutant powers, and a government agency is coming to take them away. Pretty much everybody behind the cameras have been working on Marvel projects for years, mostly the X-Men/Wolverine movies and the Daredevil/Jessica Jones/Defenders TV series. It will be coming to the small screen this fall.
The Orville is a Star Trek parody that looks amazing, with Seth MacFarlan at the helm. It will be launching on Fox this fall, and I am so ready! Hopefully it won’t be cancelled 5 episodes in, like most quality sci-fi TV shows have been on that network. Next week I will no doubt get back to music entries on Saturday nights, but I had to post this as soon as I stumbled across it!
The franchise finally winds down with Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, one of the best movie franchises based on a game I have ever seen. The Space Between Us is also on the shelves this week, with the first person born on another planet coming back to visit Earth.
In Anime The Seven Deadly Sins: Season 1 Part 1 brings the first dozen episode of this amusing quest tale home, after a long run on Netflix and a shorter one on Funimation. Ajin: Demi-Human puts the entire 13 episode series plus the movie in one box, and Divine Gate likewise gets you the entire show. Both stories are about people who look normal at first glance but contain more-than-human powers, the former leaning more towards horror and the latter comprising a war between universes. Girls & Panzer der Film has the Tankery Team fighting to save their school ship from being sent to the scrapyards.