开云体育

Just watched this one on Amazon Prime. Based on a mecha TV series, this movie sheds the giant robots and takes its main characters on an odyssey of introspection. Forty years after the events of the TV show, Remy, the only female member of the gang, helps the police nab some bank robbers who have taken hostages in a high-speed chase. Unfortunately, it culminates in her vehicle flying off an elevated highway. The others get word that she is hovering near death in the local hospital. They all drop what they are doing, no matter how important (as they have all gone their separate ways by this time) to be at her bedside. The doctors are giving her a five percent chance of survival. Remy, in a coma, is having a dream in which she and her compadres find themselves in a town of no escape. The residents seem to be either killer cops or ultra-religious zombies who all worship the God of Fate, a purple castle visible in the distance. This god has issued letters to all six of them detailing exactly when and how each will die. But none of them believes that their fates are in anyone else's hands but their own. It's got action, humor, and drama, told in a kind of surreal way that works. One or two moments in it may have you scratching your head in wonder, but in total, it's entertaining and has a worthy message. Recommended. Walt

This short subject came out about a year or two ago (in English dub). Three high schoolers meet up to summon the ghost of a girl who is rumored to have taken her own life. They light sparklers, as ghosts are supposed to be drawn to them. Just as they are about to give it up as a bunch of hokum, she actually appears before them. But rather than be scary, Ayane is actually quite nice. Of course, they ask her about being dead and all, but she can no more tell them why she is a ghost anymore than they can explain why they exist. But she does correct them on a misapprehension they have about her. She was killed, but not by her own hand. As the story unfolds, we learn that they all have had troubled backgrounds. Ayane was the victim of a hit-and-run driver who put her body in a suitcase and buried it in some secret place to avoid the consequences. One of the kids resolves to help her find it, and maybe this will bring her peace. Other reviewers online complain about how short this movie is (40m), but I say it is just the right length to grip you and get you invested in what is driving each of them. Along the way, it effectively tugs at your heartstrings. While I would not recommend it to anyone suffering from depression (the start of it is a real downer), if you are in the mood for a sweet self-contained story about strangers helping each other while going through some tough times of their own, this one hits the spot. Walt

(I originally wrote this review for another group, but I'm reposting it here for obvious reasons. -wc) The "fighting boy" of the title is Sousuke Sagara, a teenager of Japanese descent, who was born in a war-torn country and was orphaned at an early age. The soldiers who rescued him were amazed by his will to live. They were happy to teach him some of their combat/survival skills and he was a very eager student. Flash forward to the present day, Sagara is now one of the top, highly trained, operatives of Mithril: a high-tech, semi-secret, mercenary organization that has no allegiance to any nation. This comes in handy for situations that call for military intervention, but that no country, for political reasons, wants to touch with a ten-foot pole. The setting is a parallel Earth, in which the Reagan administration had signed into law the mass production of giant humanoid combat robots that are now as common a sight in war zones as tanks or attack helicopters. These are called "armored mobile master-slave systems,” or just Arm Slaves, for short. Being a total professional, Sagara can pilot any AS, even foreign-made ones. He can disassemble and re-assemble any weapon you might toss him and quote any regulation or historical strategy that applies to his current predicament. None of this is of any help to him in his current assignment. Enter Kaname Chidori, a Jindai High School girl who lives alone in an apartment in Tokyo. Her only relatives are her dad and sister, who reside in the U.S. because of his work (Kaname has chosen to remain in Japan to finish her education). She is outgoing and well-liked by her peers. And completely unaware that the KGB wants to capture her. (Yes, the USSR still exists in this timeline.) Kaname is one of a handful of people scattered around the world known to a select few as the "Whispered." A part of their brains have been partitioned like a computer hard drive and filled with data about something called Black Technology. Thus far, in the story, the reader is only told that any nation that can extract this data will severely tip the balance of power in its own favor. Sagara is enrolled into Jindai High by his superiors as a new transfer student. His mission is to blend in, keep watch over Kaname, and to take action if anything suspicious happens. Ideally, without letting the cat out of the bag that he is protecting her. But he never had anything resembling a normal civilian childhood. For the first time in his life, he is out of his element. You may as well order Mr. Spock to infiltrate a clown college. Trying as hard as he might, he still hilariously sticks out like a sore thumb, not just to the faculty and the other kids, but to Chidori, too. In fact, she has begun to think that he is stalking her. My first exposure to the Full Metal Panic! franchise was the initial anime series. I found it watchable, but unremarkable. I didn't become a fan until the comedic spinoff series (Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu) Subsequent animes were released (By different animation houses, each one picking up the story from where the previous release ended, always with a huge time gap in between them that lasted so long that it made fans think that there would never be any continuations. There are currently four series, now, and the most recent one ended on a cliffhanger. No word yet if there will ever be a series five. Typical.) Being impatient, I went over to the manga series when it became possible, so I could find out what ultimately happened. It was heartbreaking to see that the best stuff is yet to come. It would be glorious to see it in animated form, someday. So, now, I am reading the light novels, where it all began. This first volume was the basis for the earliest episodes. While the plot is the same, the emphasis is more balanced in the book. By that, I mean that the anime version kept everything deadly serious. The novel has much more of a playful sense of fun about it. As one should expect from a story primarily designed as entertainment for the tired people riding the Tokyo train system. It also has a s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4b5QE8j32o This classic anime series brought many young people into anime fandom back in the '80s. In more recent years, it has been remade beautifully for at least two seasons that I know of. (This remake ought to be the template for how to take a beloved franchise from the past and spruce it up for a new audience.) The above link will take you to a YouTube video that explains the tumultuous history of the show. Like Dark Shadows, it had a cult following of kids who ran (not walked) home from school for fear of missing the start of the episode. Unlike most American-made cartoons, this one played like a soap opera in space. Every episode advanced the plot, even if only a little, so if you were into it, you really didn't want to miss one, or a portion of one. I have just learned that Amy Howard Wilson, the actress who played the female lead in the original series, Nova, has passed away only days ago. She was a popular mainstay at conventions, and if I recall correctly, it was largely through her efforts that other cast members were located and were able to appear at reunions. They were all non-union workers, consequently, they were never credited for their roles. Fans never knew their names for years. Walt

This is a classic anime series from the creative mind of Rumiko Takahashi, who, at this point, is probably better known outside of Japan for another TV series, InuYasha. Ranma 1/2 preceded that one and uses much of the same voice cast in the English dub. Canadian actors, in fact, who have appeared in the flesh in such shows as the rebooted The Outer Limits, Stargate SG-1, and The X-Files, to name a few. So they are no slouches. You can be all subtitle-fan as you want but I will not hear a single word of disparagement against the talent involved in the dubbed version. Both versions can currently be viewed on VUDU for free, albeit with ad interruption. All you need is to create an account there and you're good to go. Having watched the first two episodes there (and comparing them to my DVDs), it seems they have decided to go with the original Japanese openings and closings rather than the ones created by VIZ for home video. So you don't get Trish Ledoux's "translation" of the theme song as it is being sung. Actually, she made up her own lyrics, which fit the spirit of the song better in English than a literal translation would have done, plus it rhymes. Another thing missing is the previews of the next episode, which came after the closing credits. Myriam Sirois narrated those while in character as Akane, and I consider them to be as much a part of the show as anything within the episode. Ah, well, I suppose it could have been worse. Ranma 1/2 (pronounced "Rahn-mah One Half") begins in the household of a widower named Soun Tendo, who teaches martial arts in his dojo. He gets a postcard from his old buddy, Genma Saotome, telling him that he will be arriving shortly from China with his son, Ranma. Soun, as it happens, has three daughters. If one was to marry Ranma, they'd all be one happy family, and the legacy of the Anything Goes School of Martial Arts would be secure for another generation. Here is where the complications begin. Ranma and his dad are cursed. When splashed with cold water, Genma turns into a panda. Ranma turns into a ginger female version of himself. Warm water changes them back. The two older Tendo girls immediately push the youngest sister, Akane, off on Ranma, even though she and Ranma get off on the wrong foot, and neither of them likes the idea of being fiances. A fact that everyone else blithely ignores. Ranma being a girl half of the time and also having to deal with a violent tomboy for a fiance are just two of his ever-growing list of problems. As the series progresses, new semi-regulars are introduced who either bear grudges against him for one reason or another, or they become smitten with him to the point where they just won't leave him alone. Akane, too, gets a bevy of uncalled-for suitors who see Ranma as the barrier to her that they must defeat. And Akane often has to fight Ranma's would-be girlfriends for the same reason. Good thing she's no pushover at martial arts, herself. I forgot to mention that this show is hilarious. The humor is just nonstop, from the clashes of characters who must be seen to be believed to the ridiculous situations that they often blunder into. Yet, when it needs to, it can turn quite dramatic on a dime. The music written for this series also deserves high praise. So much of it is catchy and hummable. Highly recommended! Walt

Another anime series I would recommend catching while it is available for free viewing is this one. But you MUST watch it in English dub. Allow me to 'splain: It only lasted one season in Japan because it suffered from a terminal case of bad ratings. Maybe it was a poor time slot. Maybe the audience at the time wasn't in the mood for teenagers facing the seriously paranormal every week. Who really knows? The point is, it was a disaster. So when it came time for the producers to try to sell it overseas, they didn't care what the dubbers did with it as long as they were paid well for the privilege. ADV was the powerhouse anime dubber/distributor in North America in those days. Given the green light to throw out the straight-translated script of every episode and just go for laughs, they mercilessly gave it the sort of dialogue that just would not fly in today's Thou Shalt Not Offend Anyone climate. It's the sort of thing that Woody Allen did with What's Up, Tiger Lily?, a serious foreign-made spy movie to begin with, but turned into a laugh-a-minute comedy in English. In the first episode, the kids encounter a nasty demon haunting the old abandoned school building who means to do them some harm, until the female lead reads something written in a journal left by her late mother, which causes the demon to become trapped within the body of her pet cat. So the demon hates them all for putting him into this undignified position, but he also knows that the only way to be set free is if the girl breaks the spell. Despite himself, he is forced to co-operate with them in sharing what he knows about the spirit realm as they continue to have adventure after adventure where they must deal with mysteries that have a supernatural twist. The demon cat is voiced by standup comedian Rob Mungle who has a long career of doing many unforgettable anime characters. Here, he has an almost Vincent Price-like glee in giving the cat a malevolent sense of humor. It is no wonder that he is one of my favorite dub actors. The series is available for free ad-supported viewing on retrocrush.tv. You can visit their site, or watch via any popular platform (like Roku), or even download their app. They have a wide variety of old-school anime (and a growing number of newer exclusives) that are worth watching. Walt