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Something to Watch: Discs

Movies has American Ultra, a wonderfully twisted little spy thriller comedy that everyone should watch at least once. I don’t know anything about Jim Henson’s Turkey Hollow beyond the fact that it is a family friendly fantasy film made for TV and aired on the Lifetime network. But as someone who likes all things Muppet, I am looking forward to checking it out. And since I missed seeing the Shaun the Sheep Movie in the theater I am also anticipating that one.

Anime has Durarara!! x 2, and the second season is every bit as strange and wonderful as the first. Dragonar Academy: The Complete Series is obviously about a school where you learn to command Dragons, but our hot tempered protagonist ends up being paired with a dragon who will do whatever it takes to be the one in command. DRAMAtical Murder is about a sleepy town who’s main passion is an online environment where people battle to the virtual death. Z/X Ignition: Complete Series takes place on an Earth where portals to other worlds have opened up, and the aliens who come storming out of those ports are fighting each other for survival. Being caught in the middle isn’t doing the Earth much good, so it must join the combat.

A rare classic story is being re-released this week: Night on the Galactic Railroad was a fantasy novel written by Kenji Miyazawa around 1927 and was turned into an anime in 1985. It mostly takes place on a steam locomotive that travels between the stars, so may be one of the earliest examples of Steampunk, at least that I am aware of. We also get two more entries in the S.A.V.E. format with EUREKA SEVEN Ao: The Complete Series and Good Luck Girl! – The Complete Series, both worth picking up at their newly reduced price.

Something to Stream: Dining with the Chef

The NHK has launched VOD online, and if you love Japanese food you have to watch Dining with the Chef. While the Video On Demand site itself only has links to the last 2 episodes of each of the shows it is carrying, if you go to the main Dining with the Chef web site you can get the final “Let’s Review” portion of the program going back much further. That is where they give you the cliff notes version of the primary recipe for each episode, sometimes including the side dishes like the soups and salads.

You can also Watch NHK Live to see all of their programming from anywhere in the world, and they have a ton of excellent shows they have not yet added to their VOD servers you might want to check out. I have a number of other programs I make sure to never miss each week, including J-Melo for the latest music and Imagine-Nation for news about Anime, Games, Manga, and Otaku Events from all over the world.

Frederic

The band’s name is Frederic (or フレデリック if you read Asian text), and they have some amazing music. The first here is Owarase Night, the second is OddLoop, and they are both quite good. The band is a 4-piece from Kobe the twin brothers Kenji Mihara and Koji Mihara put together. Take a look and see if you don’t like them, and let me know what you think.

Something to Stream: RWBY

Yes! Team RWBY is back, with still more combat comedy and adventure as they roll into volume 3. If you are new to the series, start off with the original 16 episodes of RWBY, then go through 12 more for volume 2, before hitting the new series. This show is being created in Poser Pro by the folks at Rooster Teeth, of combat comedy masterpiece Red Vs. Blue fame. I find this story fascinating, and can’t wait to see where they take it from here.

Something to Stream: Oh My Ghostess

Oh My Ghostess is a Korean Supernatural RomCom/Dramedy which jumps into episode one with a wonderful setup. In the opening sequence, we have the police picking up yet another dead body in a long string of men that appear to have been frozen to death during a heat wave. That’s the only police procedural type action during the initial episode, but we do see the cops again later in a more domestic setting, and it is obvious they will play a major part in the story line going forward. The next scene introduces both our ghost protagonist and our living girl protagonist, their first encounter setting the tone for further interactions. Then we get introduced to all the other characters in their various settings, central to which is a team of cooks running a highly rated restaurant, a foodie blogger, an exorcist, and an entire community of ghosts who do not approve of Ms Ghostess’s approach to being less than alive. We also get to meet a wonderful range of supporting characters, all of them interesting and having the potential of being elevated to the main plot sequence depending on which way the writers decide to go. While I have only seen a single episode of this so far, I think it has a lot of potential, and I can’t wait to see what happens next. The entire series ran this summer and is only 16 hours long, so you should be able to complete it in a single weekend if Oh My Ghostess turns out to be something you enjoy.