Anime Review Roundup

Brand New Free and Legal Anime times 3

It's become a regular instalment of news, the latest series to be announced for streaming, there's probably more anime available to view online now, than on all non-Japanese television broadcasts put together.

1. Funimation have snagged a brand new series to show just hours after its broadcast in Japan. Phantom: Requiem For The Phantom comes from studio Bee Train, the people responsible for Noir and Madlax, and just like those titles, this is a tale of lost memory and skilled assassins. Funimation had a little catching up to do following their announcement, and put the first four episodes up last Thursday. New episodes will follow each Thursday as well, and give you something else to watch after you've caught up with the latest instalment of the Fullmetal Alchemist remake. News courtesy of Anime News Network.

2. Anime News Network also tells us that controversial love triangle anime School Days will be posted on Crunchyroll this spring. In fact, the first four episodes are available for streaming now. This was the show whose final episode was pre-empted by a brutal murder in Japan, and instead imagery of a boat was broadcast, starting a new Internet meme. No word as yet as to whether Crunchyroll will also replace the final episode with a boat.

3. I had already forgotten that Manga Entertainment had signed a distribution deal with Youtube earlier this year, but Anime UK News reminded me by reporting that Manga Entertainment have started streaming the Osamu Tezuka classic, Astro Boy over the Youtube service. This is one of the most remade shows in anime, a veritable classic, and Manga aren't showing the sixties original, nor are they showing the most recent iteration. They instead have the 1980-81 series in its entirety available to view for all (Crackle is showing the 2003-4 series, but that is region locked to UK viewers). An Astro Boy movie is currently in post-production.






It was an updating of an anime classic that comprised my first review of the week. Cutie Honey was Go Nagai's 1970s creation, a female android superhero that used her power of love to defeat the insidious forces of evil on a weekly basis. It took Hideaki Anno of Neon Genesis Evangelion notoriety to bring this kitsch pink power princess into the 21st Century. Japan's top swimsuit model Eriko Sato stars in this live action adaptation, and you can see if the Technicolor cartoon sensibilities overwhelmed my capacity to reason by clicking on my review.















Then it was another trip to Area 88, with more dogfighting action as classic jet fighters from both sides of the iron curtain face each other in a Middle East civil war in the fictional nation of Aslan. Shin Kazama, press-ganged into fighting someone else's war, still labours to return to his lost love, and the tension mounts as the enemy becomes more insidious and dangerous. The excitement is almost too much to bear for this reviewer. Click on the review for Area 88: Volume 3 to see what happens next.
















Finally, Stuart McLean donned an afro wig, and strapped a katana onto his back, as he set forth on another quest for vengeance as he reviewed Afro Samurai: Resurrection. This is one of those rare east-west collaborations, cross-cultural fertilisation that serves to inspire as well as entertain, and more importantly, spread the good word about anime to the as yet unconverted. With Samuel L. Jackson returning to the role, joined this time by Lucy Liu and Mark Hamill, tell me you're not intrigued.
















Area 88's third volume is available now from ADV films. Afro Samurai: Resurrection is released today, courtesy of Manga Entertainment (They've also acquired the rights to, and are re-releasing the original Afro Samurai as well, this time in a Director's Cut), while MVM's first live action title Cutie Honey will be released on May 11th.