Competition! Win Rin - Daughters of Mnemosyne on DVD

It's been a while, but it's competition time again, and this time we have something quite special for fans of old school anime and fans of modern anime. Once upon a time, if it was animated and it came from Japan, it contained lashings of sex and violence and gore, and it was guaranteed to give some authority figure somewhere a stroke in apoplexy. But since then, the anime that we get in the UK has gotten much broader in range, catering to all audiences, and storytelling in the medium has gotten a lot more sophisticated.

Rin - Daughters of Mnemosyne takes the best of both worlds, the sex, the violence, and the gore, and adds in the smart sophisticated storytelling to result in one of the most talked about anime shows in years.

Now you have a chance to win a copy of the complete series on DVD. All you have to do is click the link, and answer a simple question. And naturally, only over 18s need apply.

Manga Blogging

Everyone's doing it, and now you can add Manga Entertainment to the list. It's all about opening the avenues of communication. It may be Twitter, it may be Facebook, and it may be a dedicated blog.

The link here, and the one to the side points to Manga Entertainment's blog, and it's one to keep an eye on this week, as they intend to announce their new anime licences for 2011. If one of them isn't Evangelion 2.22, I'll eat my… I'll eat someone else's hat!

This week the reviews begin with the return of Manga's new shonen phenomenon for 2010. No not Soul Eater, the other one, D. Gray-Man: Series 2 Part 1 to be exact. It's been a while since we last saw Allen Walker and his friends engaged in their ongoing battle against The Millennium Earl, the Clan of Noah, and the evil menace of Akuma. The end of Series 1 left us on something of a pesky cliffhanger as well, so you'd expect this new volume to dive right in and get to the meat of the story. You'd expect that, wouldn't you? See what the creators actually did by clicking on my review.

Speaking of slow, interminable, and tiresome shonen action series, I got my second helping of Bleach last week, and given how the latest series instalment sent me on a downward spiral of torpidity, I wasn't exactly jazzed for more. Fortunately, Bleach the Movie 2: The Diamond Dust Rebellion is a movie (the clue's in the title), which means that it gets to tell its routine teen male action fare in a brief and compressed ninety minutes. A story begins, has a middle, and ends, all on just one disc. The novelty of it! What's more, The Diamond Dust Rebellion isn't routine at all, it actually offers something different with its storyline, and Manga Entertainment give us something quite nice when it comes to the DVD. Click the review to see just what, pal!
It's all Manga Entertainment this week, and D. Gray-Man: Series 2 Part 1 is released today or tomorrow depending on Bank Holiday shenanigans, while Bleach The Movie 2: The Diamond Dust Rebellion comes out next week on the 6th of September.

Posted by Jitendar Canth

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Uk Anime.Net broke the news in the West last night, following a flurry of Twitter rumours that the visionary director Satoshi Kon had died of pancreatic cancer yesterday morning. He was just 46.

If anyone could be termed an auteur in the field of anime movies, it was Satoshi Kon, whose movies attracted critical acclaim in the West to a degree that no other anime did. He made his mark with the breathtaking and mind bending psychological thriller, Perfect Blue, followed by the ode to Japanese Cinema, Millennium Actress. Then there was the off-kilter family movie, Tokyo Godfathers, and most recently the sci-fi thriller Paprika, which some might say provided inspiration for this summer's hit Inception. He also found time to create a fantastic television series, Paranoia Agent.

Early on in his career, he also served as screenwriter on one of the segments in Katsuhiro Otomo's Memories. Satoshi Kon was an astounding director whose varied work always extended the borders of imagination, and tested the limits of animation as a medium. In an industry where we in the UK usually only get to sample a small segment of what is produced in Japan, it's telling that practically his entire filmography is available to buy here on DVD.

At the time of his death Satoshi Kon was working on The Dream Machine. With his passing, anime has lost a genius talent whose best days were surely yet to come. His presence will be sorely missed.

Follow up news at ANN.

Posted by Jitendar Canth

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Getting straight into the reviews this week, of which there are two. The biggie of course is the new Fullmetal Alchemist Series. I took a look at the first thirteen episodes in Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood: Part 1. It's the tale of two brothers, Edward and Alphonse Elric who made the ultimate sacrifice when they tried unsuccessfully to resurrect their mother. Now Ed has mechanical automail where his arm and leg used to be, and Alphonse is a disembodied soul bound to a hollow suit of armour. The story follows them as they try to get their bodies back. I fell in love with this tale of magical alchemy set in an alternate Europe at the start of the twentieth century, when it was released a few years ago as Fullmetal Alchemist. But that series raced ahead of the manga, and had to fashion a unique ending for its story. Brotherhood follows the manga much more closely now that it has concluded, and the story will eventually go in a completely different direction. The first thirteen episodes of Brotherhood follow much the same path as the first half of the original series though, so I got to do a compare and contrast, and wound up with something of a thesis. You can skim through it if you click the link.

My review of Bleach: Series 5 Part 1 is a lot shorter. This serial anime continues on like an unstoppable juggernaut. In Japan the episodes are already somewhere in the high-200s. With this collection of episodes, we come tantalisingly close to the hundredth episode of Bleach to be released in the UK. I'm finding it pretty hard going though, as we're in the middle of what feels like an endless filler arc, and there's only so much of people running around with big swords that a man can take. See if I reach my limit by reading my review.
It's all Manga Entertainment, and today is the big anime event of the year, with the release of Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood: Part 1, on both DVD and Blu-Ray. If you want Bleach: Series 5 Part 1 instead, you'll have to wait a week till the 30th of August.

Posted by Jitendar Canth

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