Summer time at the movies

  Hello! I hope everyone is having a fantastic summer, or what ever season you might be in this time of year in your area. I hope you had a chance to see my last post, I know I said I would post more, but I recently moved to working over night full-time, it is a heck of a time adjusting.

  My Wife and I have recently decided to cut ties with the TV portion of our cable, now we just have internet and use Netflix and Crunchyroll. If you love anime you should have Chrunchyroll, it is amazing. It supports the anime industry and in turn the industry supports it. I am talking current episodes that have aired the day before in Japan, along with many, many other great shows. I have just started watching Toriko, it is a great mix of DBZ like action, in a world based entirely on food, these people love to eat as much as I do.
 
  I was able to see most of the movies on my list from my previous post, I will keep each of these brief.

  Amazing Spider-Man 2, I was very pleased with how they handled this movie, some people said it had too many villains, I disagree. Spider-Man is always fighting multiple villains at a time; it was not like he was fighting them all at the same time, each villain had their spotlight. I enjoyed every minute of it.

  Godzilla was also a fantastic homage to the old movies, it had its rough moments, a bit slow at times, but it got us to what was important. A monster show down that exceeded my expectations. For a while through the movie I was worried that they were not going to use his atomic breath, then the moment came and it was beautiful.

  X-Men: Days of Futures Past, I cannot express how disappointed I was in this movie, it had so much potential. They could have exploited so many avenues with new mutants, or ones that they have introduced in the past. It ended up being another Wolverine movie, do not get me wrong I love the character, but they needed to go another route with this. They sent him back to a point where he did not have his adamantium skeleton, making him useless against the sentinels. His part was minimal at best, they should have stuck to the comic story more. Further more they horribly weakened the powers of the mutants in the future.

  Guardians of the Galaxy was amazing, a perfect addition to the Marvel connected universe. Full of action to keep you on the edge of your seat, along with several "Wow!" moments to satisfy. There was so much witty banter between the characters I found myself laughing too hard, but I was not the only one. The chemistry between the actors was perfect, there were times where I felt as though they were playing off of each other and there was no script, and is was great. There were a lot of little extras in there as well, so keep your eyes peeled.

  Next to come out is the TMNT reboot movie, I am excited to see how they handled this.
Until next time.

Gatchaman goes Live!!

For those who do not know Gatchaman is a Japanese anime from 1972, inspired by the rise of popularity in henshin (transformation) series' like Kamen Rider. Gatchaman features five young heroes trained in the art of the science ninja technique. They fight for the conservation of nature, environmentalism, and responsible use of technology for progress and advancement. The main antagonist is a group of global terrorist known as Galactor, who use giant mechanoids to try and take control of Earth's natural resources. As you could guess, I am a huge fan of this series. I can remember getting up at four or five in the morning to catch the block of anime shows the local channels had running at the time. There were several, Ronin Warriors, Voltron, to name a few and of course Gatchaman. Though that is not what it was called when it came on TV here in America. It came over to America in several forms, from Battle of the Planets, to Eagle Riders. It was heavily cut for the violence, and they added sequences that were clearly of different quality. By doing so it was made even more into a kid show, cause we all know adults do not watch cartoons right? But I was young then and I did not know what I know now.

What drew me in the most about Gatchaman is that it was different from most superhero, action packed adventures that were out there. It had an on going theme and message, use technology wisely and protect nature. The plot was also continuous and consistent, something that is rare for a kid show and cartoons even today. They always used caution when using their bigger weapons, such as the bird missiles and the powerful phoenix attack. I really liked that they did not just go firing away, they thought about the consequences and any damage it might cause. I had never seen that before in anything, and I think it really taught a valuable lesson of think before you act. 

Back in 2005 ADV films released several DVD volumes with all of the episodes uncut for the first time ever in America. Both in their original subtitled version, and a new dubbed version. I was so excited that this happened, I was finally able to see Gatchaman as it was meant to be seen. And now the even greater news, Gatchaman is getting its own live action adaptation! When I heard about this I nearly jumped around for joy, okay I did a little. The movie is slated for a Japan release on August 24th of this year. They now have a teaser trailer on the official site, as well as some images.

Ken "The Eagle" Washio