Anime Review Roundup
Summer Wars Trailer Is Here
Manga Entertainment have been tweeting and twittering this week, with a whole lot of Blu-ray and movie confirmations. Following last week's Fullmetal Disappointment, it'll be good to know that Blu-rays are still forthcoming for shows like High School of the Dead, and films like The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya and Redline. Also confirmed (after being confirmed and then denied last year), is the release of the second Evangelion movie, Evangelion 2.22 You Must (Not) Advance, sometime before June 2011. There was also a reminder that Summer Wars gets a Blu-ray and DVD release at the end of March, and there will be a double pack with Mamoru Hosoda's other gem, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. TGWLTT will also finally get a Blu-ray release of its own. Anyway, to whet the appetite, here's a trailer for Summer Wars from a fruit based website.
If you've been following my reviews for this series, you'll be aware of how frustrating an experience it has been for me to write about it, which is odd given how easy a sci-fi action series it is to watch. Then consider how much harder it is for me to write about me writing about it, as this paragraph threatens to turn into a self-referential singularity. So I'll just point you to my review of Kurau Phantom Memory: Volume 5 and be done with it, thankful in the fact that it is the penultimate volume.
But when it comes to love-hate relationships, few can manage as tempestuous a reaction as the Naruto franchise, which when at its best is downright addictive, while at its worst is perhaps the most annoying anime ever created. With the follow up series Naruto Shippuden, it has managed the impossible, to be addictive and annoying simultaneously. Case in point is Naruto Shippuden Part 4, which is where Naruto finally, after two years and more of training, after ninety episodes of filler, and after fifty episodes of the sequel series, finally, finally catches up with Sasuke, his best friend turned bad. And this volume does it all in slow motion, pausing to smell the roses.
It's an industry where life cycles are short, fans are notoriously short of memory, and everyone is looking for the next big thing, quickly forgetting what has just passed. In such an industry, the word 'classic' can be hastily applied, and ill-judged at that. What may be a classic this year, turns into disposable fodder the next. Finding a genuine classic can be difficult indeed. But to end the week, I found one, an anime that is gasp nearly 20 years old. That's the equivalent of a silent movie in this business. Any older and it would be a zoetrope. Roujin Z is a genuine classic from the mind of Katsuhiro Otomo, the man behind Akira, a satirical tale of a future where geriatric care is automated, and where the combination of incontinent pensioner, robotic bed, and 6th generation computer wreaks havoc on an unsuspecting Tokyo!
Kurau Phantom Memory: Volume 5 was released in the US only by ADV back in 2007, and you'll have to import it, just the way I had to. Naruto Shippuden Part 4 comes courtesy of Manga Entertainment on the 27th of December 2010, while you'll have to hunt around for Roujin Z, which was re-released in 2004 by CPM in the US, but is well and truly deleted now, and the company went bust for good measure.
Manga Entertainment have been tweeting and twittering this week, with a whole lot of Blu-ray and movie confirmations. Following last week's Fullmetal Disappointment, it'll be good to know that Blu-rays are still forthcoming for shows like High School of the Dead, and films like The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya and Redline. Also confirmed (after being confirmed and then denied last year), is the release of the second Evangelion movie, Evangelion 2.22 You Must (Not) Advance, sometime before June 2011. There was also a reminder that Summer Wars gets a Blu-ray and DVD release at the end of March, and there will be a double pack with Mamoru Hosoda's other gem, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. TGWLTT will also finally get a Blu-ray release of its own. Anyway, to whet the appetite, here's a trailer for Summer Wars from a fruit based website.
Kurau Phantom Memory: Volume 5 was released in the US only by ADV back in 2007, and you'll have to import it, just the way I had to. Naruto Shippuden Part 4 comes courtesy of Manga Entertainment on the 27th of December 2010, while you'll have to hunt around for Roujin Z, which was re-released in 2004 by CPM in the US, but is well and truly deleted now, and the company went bust for good measure.
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Thanks for the spot!