Review for Gantz 2: Perfect Answer (Review)
ThumbnailIntroduction Gantz was an unlikely candidate for a movie adaptation. The manga was ultra-violent, satirical, and with more than its fair share of sex scenes. The anime release kept these elements, but was weighed down by some leaden pacing, and the lack of a decent conclusion, as the manga was still ongoing. Now if the film adaptation would be in the style of say Battle Royale, I could see it...

Review for Tekken: Blood Vengeance (Review)
ThumbnailIntroduction It’s 2012, the era of high-tech, and Tekken: Blood Vengeance is the latest 3D CG anime movie to come via the auspices of Digital Frontier, the studio behind the similar Appleseed and Vexille movies. You’re wondering why Manga Entertainment aren’t releasing it on Blu-ray; you’re wondering why you aren’t watching this in high definition. Well, that’s because you clicked on the...

Review for LA Law: Season 1 (Review)
ThumbnailIntroduction I’ve come to realise that the procedural drama is like sci-fi for people who don’t like sci-fi. You get taken into the arcane and mysterious worlds of the policeman, the surgeon, the private eye and indeed the lawyer, professions that few of us will ever be qualified for; replete with jargon and procedure that seem fantastic to us, but the appealing thing is that the jobs that...

Review for Midori Days: Volume 3 - Handle With Care (Review)
Introduction Just another weird romantic comedy anime series... Maybe that’s a sign that you have been watching too much of this stuff, when a show about a guy who has a girl where his right hand used to be elicits a ‘seen it all before’ response from the viewer. It isn’t the peculiarity of the situation in this particular comedy; it’s the way that the writers handle it, by resorting to the...

Review for Ninja Battle (Review)
ThumbnailIntroduction Seiji Chiba has cornered the market in cheap and cheerful ninja action movies, and over the last year, they have been making their way to the UK en masse courtesy of Revolver Entertainment, who released Alien vs. Ninja, and MVM, who subsequently released Rogue Ninja, and Ninja Girl. It’s MVM who now release this, Ninja Battle, a.k.a. Sengoku: Igo no Ran, if you’re looking it up on...

Review for Midori Days: Volume 2 - Wrong Hand Man (Review)
Introduction “Those crazy Japanese!” is a cry I often hear when someone spies just what the latest fantastic anime show that I’m watching is. I don’t know exactly when the complaint began, but every other show elicits constant looks of bemused tolerance in those who aren’t familiar with a different cultural worldview. It isn’t just anime, I’ve been hearing that cry ever since I was a boy watching...

Review for Yamada: Way Of The Samurai (Review)
Introduction For some daft reason, I’ve taken to looking at the January releases from a distributor as some sort of sign, an indication of how the year will progress for them. It’s a totally arbitrary perception of course. There’s no real reason why the 31st of December should be a watershed for them, and the 1st of January should be a blank slate, and the reality is that these releases are...

Review for Midori Days: Volume 1 - A Helping Hand (Review)
Introduction There’s no such thing as a conventional relationship between a boy and a girl in anime. There’s always some twist, some flight of fancy that sparks the imagination, draws an audience, and makes the show stand out as deserving of Middle England’s ire and righteous fury. If it doesn’t make a grey haired old lady somewhere scream out, “Ban this filth!”, then it’s doing something wrong....

Review for Samurai Girls (Review)
ThumbnailIntroduction The first major new anime release from Manga Entertainment in 2012 isn’t actually a Manga release at all. Last year, they began distributing titles in the UK for European publisher Kazé Entertainment. Basically Kazé author the discs, set the price, and use Manga Entertainment’s infrastructure to get them onto UK retail and e-tail shelves, rather than starting up their own network...

Review for Appleseed: Ex Machina (Review)
Introduction Masamune Shirow may be one of the most exciting talents in manga, after all he did give the world Ghost in the Shell, but it took a good while for his Appleseed property to get a worthy treatment in anime form. The first OVA outing back in the eighties wasn’t immediately impressive, while Manga Video’s treatment of it entailed a whole lot of added profanity that removed it from the...

Review for K-ON! - Volume 4 (Review)
ThumbnailIntroduction First the bad news, and there is plenty of that. K-ON! was to be released in the UK in a collected Blu-ray set this spring by Manga Entertainment. Prior to the release of this final volume, they announced that this title was now cancelled, and spring would only see the collection in its DVD form. To be honest, I wasn’t too surprised at this, as Bandai Entertainment’s US Blu-ray...

Review for Whisper Of The Heart - Double Play: The Studio Ghibli Collection (Review)
Introduction They say all good things come to those who wait, but waiting for each successive new Ghibli Blu-ray requires them to be very good indeed. That isn't going to be an issue with Whisper of the Heart, which I reviewed on DVD last year. Still, you can't blame them for taking their time with the Ghibli collection, as they are the crown jewels in Japan's anime industry. You want them to get...

Review for Welcome to the NHK: Complete Collection (Review)
ThumbnailIntroduction It's taken over four years for Welcome to the NHK to finally make it to UK retail. The thing is that we could have had it long ago; indeed we should have had it long ago. The first time that I saw Welcome to the NHK was at the start of the legal online anime streaming experiment. Just after Crunchyroll had aired The Tower of Druaga and Blassreiter, ADV put the first half of the...

Review for Origin: Spirits of the Past (Review)
Introduction There are a couple of firsts associated with Origin: Spirits of the Past. For one thing, back in 2009 this was one of the first, if not the actual first Blu-ray title released by Manga Entertainment. Coming from the visual powerhouse that is Gonzo animation, it's a tantalising title to kick off Manga's high definition revolution, although it would help if there were more to it than...

Review for The Shinkai Collection (Review)
ThumbnailIntroduction Makoto Shinkai is the hot new thing in Japanese animation, and has been for the last ten years. He's another one of the new wave of animators that is constantly being dubbed as the next Miyazaki. It's a little unfair, as his work to date has hardly been the fairy tale wonderments that Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli often astound with. Shinkai's work does share a visual splendour and...

Review for Darker Than Black: Gemini of the Meteor (Review)
ThumbnailIntroduction It's been my observation that lightning rarely strikes twice in the entertainment industry. You may manage to bottle magic once, mostly through sheer good luck, coincidence and random factors, but if you try and replicate the feat through design, you either fail, or you over-egg the pudding. Sometimes the result is only a minor disappointment compared to the original, sometimes...

Review for Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (Review)
Introduction The double dip is a phenomenon that all collectors must be familiar with by now. Every time there is a new version of your particular obsession, you're compelled to spend again just to keep up with the changes. It's all the more imperative when there is a change of format. It happened with music, and I actually still have a few albums on vinyl, tape and CD as I've re-bought them over...

Review for Brazil (Review)
Introduction I reviewed Brazil for the site way back in 2003, a delicious sci-fi satire that has found a place in my cynical heart over the years. Since then of course, someone has invented high definition, and slowly but surely, classic movies are now being remastered for the Blu-ray format, offering greater clarity and an experience even closer to the original intent. You know, many DVDs were...

Review for Black Blood Brothers: Complete Series (Review)
ThumbnailIntroduction I'm taking a break from the here and now of UK anime releases to wander down a back catalogue alley, catching up on a title or two that I might have missed the first time around. The retro look of the characters in Black Blood Brothers was what initially dissuaded me from trying its charms, but having read mostly positive things about it since its release, I've been persuaded to...

Review for Villain (Review)
ThumbnailIntroduction If Third Window Films can be accused of something as crass as hype, then it's with a certain degree of pride and anticipation that they have been promoting Villain, and it's one title that has seen an extensive nationwide cinema exposure, before being released on home cinema format. Who can blame them? Villain has certainly won its plaudits, nominated for 15 Japanese Academy...

Review for Ghost in the Shell: 2.0 (Review)
Introduction It's time to throw away those old-fashioned DVDs, as the Ghost in the Shell Blu-ray is now mine. Ghost in the Shell is a perennial anime favourite, oft revisited by Manga Entertainment and fans alike. It's the Star Wars of the medium, the film that everyone will buy and re-buy with each new home cinema release for the best possible quality. This is my fifth version of the film,...

Review for K-ON! - Volume 3 (Review)
ThumbnailIntroduction A single volume, full-ish price release, with just three episodes on, and nominal extras. I'd be in the middle of a full-blown whinge right now, if I wasn't eagerly awaiting the arrival of K-ON! Volume 3 with a Pavlovian reflex. Quality makes everything worthwhile, and K-ON!'s is oozing with the stuff. The cute girls doing cute things antics, the charming and heart-warming...

Review for Eden Of The East Movie 2: Paradise Lost (Review)
ThumbnailIntroduction Another six months have passed, and now we finally get to see the conclusion of Eden of the East in the form of the final feature film, Paradise Lost. The end of 2010 saw the UK release of Kenji Kamiyama's peerless Eden of the East anime series, 11 episodes of animated event television, a social satire, and cyberpunk mystery that was conceivably the anime release of the year. It...

Review for Underwater Love (Review)
ThumbnailIntroduction I don't watch a lot of erotica as a reviewer. I'm never quite sure how to approach it, and I haven't really gotten past the teenage smirking stage, a sneaking suspicion that none of this stuff should be taken seriously. But then there is my innate trust in Third Window Films. They are a distributor that I follow with interest, whose films I simply have to watch. I may not like...

Review for Slayers: Evolution-R (Review)
ThumbnailIntroduction For reasons outside of my control, I couldn't review Slayers Evolution-R prior to its release in the UK. I've had to be just like the little people and wander into a virtual anime emporium, and part with my all too real cash. Fortunately, I've grown very fond of the Slayers franchise as I have watched its UK release since season 1, and I eagerly grabbed the final collection once...

Review for Redline (Review)
ThumbnailIntroduction Could an anime title be any more hyped than Redline? For the last eighteen months and more, it's a movie that has toured the festival circuits, been previewed, reviewed and raved about in all corners of anime fandom, and it's a title that comes so preloaded with hype, that I may as well not review it. Of course now that the disc is here, I feel my compulsion to opine take over,...

Review for Silent Running (Masters of Cinema) (Review)
ThumbnailIntroduction The Javan Rhinoceros is now extinct in Vietnam. That was the headline to a brief story printed in the Guardian newspaper a week or so ago. The story itself merely stated that a poacher had killed the last known specimen for its horn (what else?), and that elsewhere, only 30 individuals were accounted for in the wild, making this one of the most endangered species of mammal in the...

Review for The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya (Review)
ThumbnailIntroduction What a 'mare Haruhi Suzumiya has been, a franchise that in the West has turned out to be as unpredictable and temperamental as its titular heroine. The first season was released in the UK without incident, but subsequent incarnations have been plagued by the equivalent of King Tut's curse. There's scheduling that I can't quite get my head around, a deluxe boxset of Haruhi...

Review for K-ON! - Volume 2 (Review)
ThumbnailIntroduction Two months gap between single disc releases? I feel like I'm back in 2005. But while the release format may be distinctly last decade, the K-ON! anime is very much of the now, and could very well be the next anime gateway drug, the show that recruits a whole new legion of fans to the medium. Ten years from now, grizzled veterans of the anime fan base will be citing a show where...

Review for Naruto Shippuden: Box Set 7 (2 Discs) (Review)
ThumbnailIntroduction We've settled down to something approaching a regular schedule with Naruto, as we seem to be getting the boxsets on a seasonal basis. Naruto Shippuden Collection 7 will hit the streets as autumn draws to a close, and Collection 8 is set for the dying gasp of winter at the end of February. That pretty much matches a television schedule of one episode a week or thereabouts, which...

Review for ICE (DVD) (Review)
Introduction I have the utmost respect for labels that bring anime to the UK. It's a niche product at best, not the sort of product that makes bank managers smile, and a headache to licence. It's not just a matter of getting the anime from Japan and sticking it on a disc, you usually have to wait for the US to licence and create a dub, or at least subtitle it, and then you have to wait on someone...

Review for Ikki Tousen: Dragon Destiny Complete Collection (Review)
ThumbnailIntroduction The way that the anime cake has been shared in the UK of late lacks for a little equity, with Beez Entertainment getting a small slice, MVM getting a smaller slice, and Manga Entertainment getting everything else, including the candles. The thing is that despite the way the situation has evolved, I still have a lot of affection for MVM, after all it was their releases that...

Review for Assassin: City Under Siege (Review)
ThumbnailIntroduction Are we tired of superhero movies yet? That initial thrill that the studios might finally have sussed this most deceptively simple of genres out, with movies like the initial Blade, X-Men and Spider-man, began to fade once the sequels start being churned off a production line. My will to watch these films in the cinema died with the advent of X-Men: The Last Stand and Spider-man 3,...

Review for RideBack: The Complete Series Collection (Review)
ThumbnailIntroduction There just isn't enough time in the day anymore. I first heard about RideBack at the start of the year, and despite my general dislike of the mecha genre in anime, there was enough in the blurb, a ballet dancer turned robotic motorcycle rider in a dystopian near future that intrigued me. It didn't hurt that Funimation were streaming it to the world on their Youtube channel, and...

Review for Five Minarets in New York (Review)
Introduction I've never been one for excessive reality in what I choose for my entertainment. I want my movies and television to be an escape from the real world, not a reflection of it. Not that I don't enjoy shows that set out to reflect an aspect of society, or make a statement, it's just that I very rarely seek them out. That's doubly true for films and TV shows that have sprung up following...

Review for Black Butler: Series 1 - Part 2 (Review)
ThumbnailIntroduction Extreme hyperbole by its definition often accompanies damp squibs, but in the case of Part 1 of Black Butler, it's fair to say that I'm the damp squib, not the show. Black Butler has a large and established fanbase; a loyal following that appreciates the adventures of a damaged young aristocrat and his elegant and devilish butler, as they go about their business of investigating...

Review for The Melancholy Of Haruhi-Chan Suzumiya & Nyoron! Churuya-san Collection 2 (Review)
ThumbnailIntroduction If you thought that we were done and dusted with Haruhi Suzumiya following the release of Season 2 in the UK, think again. Next month sees the release in the UK of the feature film, The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya (except the Blu-ray, which has been delayed until February 2012), but before that happens, there is the small matter of completing the release of the short animations....

Review for Dance in the Vampire Bund (Review)
ThumbnailIntroduction A point of silliness… 'Bund' is a rude word in Panjabi. So not only am I giggling every time I read the title of this show, I'm also pronouncing it incorrectly, in an Indian accent. God help me if I ever have to speak about the show in polite company. Typing is okay, I can get away with typing, and also Dance in the Vampire Bund isn't the sort of show that that you regale the...

Review for Gunslinger Girl: Il Teatrino OVA (Review)
ThumbnailIntroduction I'm impatient, and I'm a collector; that's a combination that doesn't bode well for my wallet. Manga Entertainment had initially announced that Gunslinger Girl Il Teatrino would be released in the UK as a three disc, complete collection, gathering the two series discs, and the OVA disc into one, very appealing package. But when it came to the release date, that wasn't to be, and...

Review for Bleach: Series 7 Part 2 (2 Discs) (UK) (Review)
ThumbnailIntroduction That was fast! Normally we have to wait interminably long for subsequent instalments of shonen anime such as Bleach and Naruto, especially in these financially straitened times. Distributors want to keep apace with their fanbase's ability to buy the product, as well as avoiding overstretching their resources, and with Viz at the head of the English language region release chain,...

Review for Freedom: The Complete Collection (Review)
ThumbnailIntroduction Freedom is here at last, again. Beez Entertainment originally released it on Blu-ray, although that four-disc release was a strictly limited edition, hard to find now. Manga Entertainment have licence rescued Freedom, and are re-releasing it, this time with all the content squeezed onto a single Blu-ray disc. To give the package added value, Manga Entertainment release the Blu-ray...

Review for Ninja Girl (Review)
ThumbnailIntroduction Director Seiji Chiba likes his ninja. In the last few months, I have partaken of his Rogue Ninja, his Alien vs. Ninja, and now Ninja Girl, and have found that he has quite the ninja production line at work, making short and sweet action movies, set in the feudal era, full of ninja naturally, with a recurring cast and familiar locations. The thing is that it works. The films are short...

Review for Freedom: The Complete Collection - Collector's Edition (Review)
ThumbnailIntroduction There are a whole lot of firsts with this disc. It's not the first anime licence rescued in the UK, but that's a rare enough occurrence to count on the fingers of one hand. But it is the first Blu-ray anime to be licence rescued, indeed back in 2009, it was practically the first anime series to be released in high definition in the West. That happened so long ago, that it was...

Review for Strike Witches Complete Series Collection (Review)
ThumbnailIntroduction Imagine a world where World War II never happened. Imagine a world where instead, 1939 heralded the arrival of aliens that proceeded to lay waste to the world, driving humanity back and to the verge of extinction. Imagine a world where the only defence against the aliens turned out to be magic, where young witches riding technologically advanced 'brooms' went into battle in the...

Review for Phantom: Requiem For The Phantom - Part 1 (Review)
ThumbnailIntroduction Is it possible to dislike a series for reasons that have nothing to do with the series itself? There once was a (brief) time that Funimation's video portal streamed anime to the world freely and legally. Then they read the small print on their contracts, and suddenly the portal was geolocked to North America. At that point the UK was just a few episodes into the simulcast stream...

Review for Sawako Decides (Review)
ThumbnailIntroduction We're still feeling the after effects of those horrific riots a few months back. One small incident in North London was the torching of the Sony DADC replication plant and warehouse. That single incident dealt a crippling kick to the collective gonads of the independent film distribution industry in the UK, wiping out back catalogues and throwing a monkey wrench into future release...

Review for Quirky Guys and Gals (Review)
ThumbnailIntroduction I really ought to pay closer attention to what I read, as just skimming a press release can make me jump to some unwarranted assumptions. Not that I wouldn't have reviewed Quirky Guys and Gals anyway, but I would have approached it without certain preconceptions. I'd gathered that it was an anthology movie, and that Gen Sekiguchi, director of Survive Style 5+ was involved. I...

Review for Gantz (Review)
ThumbnailIntroduction When the live action movie of Gantz was announced a few years back, I got more than a little excited… for about twenty-four hours. Gantz is an ultra-violent, sci-fi manga from Hiroya Oku, which I managed to sample a volume of a while back It's an intense, fast paced sci-fi action thriller with a cast of morally questionable anti-heroes, a wicked sadistic premise that makes the...

Review for Bleach: Series 7 Part 1 (2 Discs) (UK) (Review)
ThumbnailIntroduction I've written sixteen reviews for various iterations of Bleach on DVD, whether it is another instalment of the series, or one of the feature films, and I've never really noted the rather ill advised idea of naming your production after something that you put down a toilet. How many of these reviews have I let pass without using a flushing metaphor, or made mention of some of those...

Review for Tales Of The Gold Monkey (Review)
ThumbnailIntroduction This is my ultimate nostalgia treat! I was ten years old, and my absolute favourite television programme in the world was Tales of the Gold Monkey. I'd watch it with a religious fervour every week on BBC1, following the adventures of Jake Cutter and his trusty one-eyed dog Jack with an unhealthy obsession. If there was one world that I wanted to live in, it was that of the South...

Review for Erotibot (Review)
ThumbnailIntroduction I have an impulse control problem. I see a title that tantalises me, in a genre that I know to be cheap and cheesy, yet I have to indulge my curiosity anyway. It's the DVD equivalent of judging a book by its cover, and I really ought to know better by now, having reviewed Japanese low budget genre films like Geisha Assassin, Chanbara Striptease, Rogue Ninja and Tokyo Gore School. It's...

Review for Shaolin (Review)
Introduction If ever there was a word with connotations, it's 'Shaolin'. The first time I heard it was back in 1986, when I got hold of a Spectrum arcade conversion called Shaolin Road. It wasn't the most inspired beat-'em-up ever, but I got enough enjoyment out of it for the title to stick in my mind. It was only later, when I discovered the wonders of Hong Kong cinema that I got some idea...

Review for Sparrow (Review)
ThumbnailIntroduction I haven't seen all that many Johnnie To films, but what I have seen, Mad Detective, Running Out of Time, and Fulltime Killer have led me to believe that his output consists of hard-boiled, high octane action thrillers, excelling in suspense and tension. Terracotta Distribution have already released his Sparrow in a three-disc limited edition, with a disc full of extras including an...

Review for 2001 Nights (Fumihiko Sori's TO) (Review)
ThumbnailIntroduction If Hayao Miyazaki can be called Japan's answer to Disney, then it seems appropriate to liken Fumihiko Sori to Pixar's John Lasseter. While Sori has had considerable success in the live action realm with films like Ping Pong and Ichi, among anime fandom, he's perhaps better known for his championing of 3D CG animation techniques, as opposed to the traditional 2D animation that...

Review for Star Wars Episode III Revenge Of The Sith (UK) (Review)
ThumbnailIntroduction The Blu-rays are coming! The Blu-rays are coming! Which in no way explains why I'm reviewing the DVD of Revenge of the Sith, the final movie in the Star Wars saga, or the third one depending on how you look at it. It's been six years since Revenge of the Sith was released, and a big reason why I've finally put fingers to keyboard is that it is the one film that I have yet to...

Review for Sacred Blacksmith: Complete Series (Review)
ThumbnailIntroduction Boobs! We all know that sex sells, and that's even truer for anime, the majority of which is targeted at the young male demographic. That isn't to say that there are not a grand variety of shows out there, a wide selection of genres and styles, stories and ideas. It's just that the money comes from those series that appeal to the core demographic, and as the industry has...

Review for Birdy The Mighty: Decode Part 2 (Review)
ThumbnailIntroduction It's been something of a summer of disappointments this year when it comes to serial anime, and we're not just talking about Blu-ray cancellations. Time and again, shows have demonstrated imagination and promise in the first half, only to fall flat in the second. So far I've been disappointed by Casshern Sins, Xam'd Lost Memories, Nabari no Ou, and Shikabane Hime. Against this...

Review for 13 Assassins (Review)
ThumbnailIntroduction I watch a lot of discs as a reviewer, a whole lot of cinema, and on occasion I can get to fooling myself, thinking that I have seen it all, have sampled all there is to enjoy in the world of home entertainment. Then a disc arrives that reminds me just how much there is to yet discover, and worse, the inevitability that there is no way that I will get to see everything worth seeing,...

Review for Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood - Part 5 (2 Discs) (Review)
ThumbnailIntroduction Obscure reference for you… Do you remember Keith Harris and Orville, and Cuddles the Monkey? Whenever Keith Harris had an idea, he'd ask Cuddles to be an assistant in his plan. Boy did that monkey get excited about being an assistant! He'd go on and on about being an assistant, you could see the thrill rush to his obnoxious little head. That's how excited I am at the advent of...

Review for XAM'D Lost Memories Collection 2 (Review)
ThumbnailIntroduction Here we are again, with yet another anime series cancelled part way through its Blu-ray release by Manga Entertainment. First it was Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, then it was Casshern Sins, and now it's Xam'd Lost Memories. We can cast blame and debate the reasons why until the cows come home. The bottom line is that while I had a great blast reviewing the first half of the...

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