I could tell you how great an adaptation this is of the manga, but the episodes are really short, so see for yourself:

The manga is a really great read if you like cats. While the cats have internal monologues, they are very much cats rather than cat shaped humans. If you’ve ever owned a cat, the strips are totally enjoyable without any Japanese knowledge. The first volume in particular has some great visual storytelling as it deals with how a cat imprints on it’s new owners.

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Lewis Black’s Root of All Evil Episodes 1 to 3

This show finally surfaced this month after being announced ages ago. Not sure how long Comedy Central have been sitting on these, as the comedy doesn’t feel super topical. But topicality isn’t everything, and this format where two comedians each present a topic to Lewis Black and he must decide which of the two is Evil-er of the two.

And it works pretty well as both a vehicle for Black’s ranting delivery and as a showcase for stand-up comics. And neither have to burn through stage material on TV.

So far the comedians featured have been Paul F. Tompkins (twice), Greg Giraldo (twice), Andy Daly and Andy Kindler. PFT and Daly were particularly good I thought, and Kindler’s use of the taped segment was great.

South Park Season 12 Episodes 1-3

Still good.

Mnemosyne Episode 1

This XEBEC OAV is trying to do be a gorey erotic thriller, but it fails. It has some nice animation, but the plain looking character designs, cheap feeling digital sheen of a lot of the scenes and appalling pacing gives the project the feel of porn creators trying to be taken seriously. You know, like See No Evil.

Utter rubbish, and not even fun rubbish as it takes itself too seriously.

Strait Jacket Episode 1

Talking of plain looking OAVs, this has been licensed for future release by Manga, and it’s a pretty good fit. Guys in magic suits of armour blow up demons. Blow ‘em up real good.

I enjoyed this more than Mnemosyne as it lacks pretension, and when things started blowing up it was fun. However it took a while for that to happen, and the character designs look like they’ve come out of a rubbish Japanese strategy game.

Spectacular Spider-Man Episodes 1-4

This new Spider-Man show has one thing wrong with it – the character designs. Particularly the huge dead pupils in the eyes of most characters. They also suffer a bit from being overly angular, but it’s not as pronounced other recent shows.

If you can overlook the eyes, then there’s a lot to enjoy, both in the writing, that captures the feel of Spider-Man much more than the 90′s series did, and in the animation, which really excels in the action scenes. Fancy Dan spinning his cane during the fight with the Enforcers was the sort of choreography detail that made me sit up and take notice. Yes, the show has the Enforcers. In fact all the villains in these first four episodes are from the first 50 issues of Amazing Spider-Man. The show’s world feels like it’s cherry picked the best aspects of all the different interpretations of Spider-Man. At it’s core is the Ditko/Lee stories, but there’s bits which feel like they’ve come from the 70s comics, as well as setting up things so they can introduce a certain popular villain from the late 80s.

Those eyes though…

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Siegel Estate regains copyright over Superman material published in Action Comics #1.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/29/business/media/29comics.html?ref=media

http://uncivilsociety.org/2008/03/a-siegel-superman-copyright-de.html

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Guyver: The Bioboosted Armour – Vol.5

You know, it would have been fun to see this get released two eps a disc at that old £5.99 price point the original Guyver VHS had. See if that magic could be worked twice.

Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex: The Laughing Man

It’s the first season of SAC as a film.

Stratos 4: Complete Collection

This got delayed a week. So did other stuff, but I’ll get to that next week.

Fantastic Children: Complete Collection

This is looking like a good deal. £35 RRP for a 26 episode series. Yes, this is the holy grail, an anime TV release with a price point comparable to other 21-26 episode non-anime TV series releases (namely Sony, Fox and Universal releases – the trinity of “gettting it right” in my book). And it’s a good series to boot. Play have it listed as this coming Monday, Amazon a week later though.

Mobile Suit Gundam Seed: Complete Collection Box 1

Insanely, this is also from Bandai, has a lower running time, and is twice the price as Fantastic Children.

Which makes me wonder if a) the listings for Fantastic Children are right or b) Beez are out of their fucking minds.

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GONZO’s plan to immediately stream their next two terrible series around the world for free is a GOOD THING. And it’s really something that a bigger fuss should be being made over. As much as I hate on GONZO’s content, in terms of how the international home entertainment business works nowadays, they are quantum leaps ahead of the pack of the Japanese anime industry.

Strangely it coincides with my realisation that Human Giant are doing the exact same thing with their second season. The last two episodes had all the sketches online after the episode had aired on MTV. And in fact they now have every aired sketch online. When you consider it’s a MTV (part of the Youtube suing Paramount) show, a pretty big hurdle has been crossed. The MTV site doesn’t even seem to have country blocking on it. Yay!

Vaguely related: Marcus Estes at WFMU’s Beware of the Blog has a sensible piece (with a great title) on the issues Billy Bragg raised about social network sites and musicians.

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A Jesus and Mary Chain cover band composed of men dressed as 2000AD’s Tharg The Mighty.

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The Soul Eater trailer surfaced on youtube while I was eating chocolate eggs.

It’s looking pretty good. The action looks solid and the bits with Death The Kid in the trailer remind me of how well such comedic reaction segments were delivered in Ouran Host Club. Definitely looking forward to this, ideally it should be a mix of FMA’s fluid action and Ouran’s frugality-minded sense of design and framing. And I’ll also make the easy prediction of this being 2008′s cosplay fad.

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There might have been something out last week, I’m not sure. Play.com did have The Tick DVD listed as last weeks “anime” release though. This week the flood gates seem to have been thrown wide open.

Gunbuster 2

RRP is £24.99, which feels a little high, but it is an OAV series rather than a TV series, and if you look you can find it for 16 quid. As long as I don’t hear anything awful about the video transfer, I’m going to get this. I don’t know if we are getting the extras the Bandai Visual USA releases have, but it’s sure as hell a lot cheaper than they are charging in the US (it’d cost me about £40 plus postage for the US releases).

Stratos 4: Complete Collection

More sensible series packaging from Beez. This totally doesn’t look like my sort of thing, but £25 RRP for a complete 13 episode TV show is an OK price, especially when you can find it for about 2/3 that online.

Crest Of The Stars: The Complete Series

Hmm, one could argue Beez maybe putting too many boxsets out on the same day, but that might be churlish of me. What I said about Stratos 4 goes here too.

S-Cry-Ed: Complete Collection

And they have a 26 ep series too. These are £49.99 a boxset, which I definitely think is at least 10 quid too pricey. Sure it’s just twice the price of the 12/13 ep series, but you aren’t finding twice the online discounts. You can find this for about £38 online, which is still too much to pay for an average TV quality series.

Mobile Suit Gundam Seed: Destiny – Vol.10

If you’ve been buying this series you’ve probably now spent between 120 and 200 pounds. Was it worth it?

Beck: Vol 3 (Mongolian Chop Squad)

Beck’s a good if inconsistent series, not worth picking up in single volume form.

Moon Phase: Vol.5 – Phase 5

Terrible vampire cat girl moe show.

Peach Girl: Vol.4

Shojo anime, that if I recall correctly, has a similar rough looking quality to it as GTO. Say what you like about Revelation (uncommunicative is what I usually like to say about them), they do have a better grasp on price points than most. 4 episodes for a £16 RRP is still a little too high I think for TV animation, but far more realistic than Beez’s £20 RRP on the Gundam Seed volumes.

Requiem From The Darkness (Thin Pack Set)

MVM add to the week’s boxset flood with this underrated series. £30 RPP though for 13 eps. Play have it for 18 quid which is better, and cheaper than importing it. If Gunbuster 2 wasn’t out the same week, I’d probably get this.

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