A new show this season, Random Hero seems to be somewhere between The Greatest American Hero and Sarah Jane Smith. The first episode sets the tone nicely and seems to promise some fun stories coming up…
After watching yesterday’s video I explored a bit more, and somebody is actually compiling the best, or at least strangest, commercials from Japan each week or 3. These include some serious genre references and products along side the merely wacked out, and I enjoyed them too much to keep them to myself. I particularly enjoyed the Kyary Pamyu Pamyu spots on each video, using her music to promote her fashion line, and the Mecha spots they had long before we started doing Iron Man commercials..
I love the amazing array of genre coming out of Japan, but some of their output is strange. I THINK this may be a recruiting video for McDonald’s street theater staff in Tokyo (why don’t we have that here?), but it could also be a girl with Hypno Toad genes creating her own cadre of dancing zombies. Maybe a commercial, maybe a music video, maybe filmed as part of a collage film making course; hard to tell from this side of the screen, but definitely different. Thanks to Japanator for the heads up on this one.
These guys have way too much fun with high speed cameras and then post the results for the world to watch, although in this instance they should have thought a bit more about the effect exploding paint might have on a camera held a bit too close. Calling themselves the Slo Mo Guys I think their most recent project was filling, bouncing on, and popping a 6 foot water balloon. Any time you need a bit of silly you can stop by their channel.
Crunchyroll has started playing the spring anime season shows, and it is off to a great start; you can see the lineup here. I thought I should mention a few of the ones that look promising to me in case you might want to check them out.
Attack On Titan is a tale of humanity trapped within a walled city by giants who seek to eat them. The Scouting Legion are the only ones brave enough to explore beyond the walls, and mostly they just die… a lot. Eren may be the one to pull humanity through the walls into the future.
HENNEKO – The Hentai Prince and the Stony Cat is about two people who went to beg a favor from a god, only to have their wish granted by having a part of their mind removed. Now they each act in ways they never expected, and are trying to find their ways back to being themselves, complete with the lost bits.
DEVIL SURVIVOR 2 is fairly Gantz-like; thirteen people die, and are given the choice to live, enlisted into the front line with the war with demonic forces attacking their family and friends. Only the summoning spells are built into cell phone apps, and a secret government agency has a completely different set of such apps. It looks to be quite the winner so far.
Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet brings a taste of Earth with a serious twist, and may be the most interesting series of all. Our protagonist starts out in combat protecting the survivors of humanity from alien attackers while looking for a new planet to live on. He then gets spat out the side of a collapsing wormhole to a random segment of space/time, where things get really strange. This is me urging you to watch the first episode, beginning to end, and see if you don’t like it too. I suspect this one may end up being my favorite series of the new season, it has everything from the paratemporal to the transdimensional, and with a double helping of attitude just for spice!
There are more I haven’t checked out yet, I will post again if I find any more good ones.
Have a friend you want to intro to Sci-Fi Anime, but are wondering what a good choice would be to get them into it? Top 10 Gateway Anime Series was posted by Aaron Magulick on his Go Boiano site, and it has the definitive list. And a few of the series listed, like Cowboy Bebop and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood are gateways to addict your friends to science fiction as a whole, not just anime, giving you a double edged attack vector. Bet they can’t watch just one!