Madman has begun streaming popular shonen anime series Fairy Tail on its AnimeLab website, launched only recently for Aussie anime fans. Currently, the first season of 48 episodes is viewable on AnimeLab as a subtitled release.
Lucy is a 17-year-old girl, who wants to be a full-fledged mage. One day when visiting Harujion Town, she meets Natsu, a young man who gets sick easily by any type of transportation. But Natsu isn’t just any ordinary kid, he’s a member of one of the world’s most infamous mage guilds: Fairy Tail.
Fairy Tail first aired in Japan in 2009 as an adaptation of the manga written and illustrated by Hiro Mashima. Funimation, and soon after Madman, acquired the ongoing action anime in 2011 for a Western release.
BioShock may or may not be coming to the PS Vita in the future, but 2K has announced its porting to the iOS. The original masterpiece will be coming to the App Store for the iPad 4, iPod Touch, iPhone 5 and all later devices, with optimised touch controls and full ‘Made for iPhone’ (MFi) game controller support.
Irrational Games, being shut down recently, obviously has nothing to do with this port, with 2K China apparently responsible for the conversion. The release date and price-point has not been revealed as of yet, although BioShock is expectedly classed as a “premium title” and should arrive “soon”. Check out the gallery below for the first official screenshots of BioShock on iOS.
Indie Gala and Capsule Computers is starting August off right with a new indiebundle containing seven indie games. For one price buyers will get the following titles:
Omegalodon – A third person monster game that will pit two teams against each other. Each team takes turns playing the monstrous Omegalodon and the military summoned to stop the monster.
Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams – Funded through Kickstarter, Giana Sisters has been rebooted! The game gives the sisters a major update from their NES debut.
Helldorado – A gritty strategy set in the 1880s, complete with cowboys and train robberies.
Robot Rescue Revolution – A complex puzzler that will see players guiding their robots out of a devilish maze. The only catch is moving one robot moves all the robots.
Diamond Dan – A platformer starring a a young archaeologist running through ancient temples full of treasure and glory. There are four uniquely themed temples for Dan to explore.
Guise of the Wolf – A first person adventure starring Dominik, a werewolf hunter turned into a werewolf. Now Dominik must search for a cure for his lycanthropy.
Koala Kids – Inspired by the 16-bit era, players will pay for the freedom of their fellow koalas by collecting treasure for the captors. Be sure to vote for the game on Steam Greenlight.
For the first 24 hours of the sale, the Every Monday Bundle #19 will be $1.79 for all seven games. Afterwards, the price will rise to its normal price. Be sure to grab your bundle at Indie Gala!
Are you ready to get shell-shocked? After the release of the new theme song for the upcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film, I wasn’t sure if Paramount Pictures would have much more to say about the project before its impending release. As you can imagine though, I was dead wrong and today they have released a new behind the scenes featurette; “Turtle Power,” that briefly looks at some of the influences that the cast and crew took when making the film.
The video isn’t too long but still pretty interesting and you should definitely Ccheck it out below. Remember that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is set for release on September 11th so make sure you stay tuned to Capsule Computers for all the TMNT news as it becomes available.
Overview
As with the last few seasons of Lost Girl, FUNimation has released the newest season onto DVD and Blu-Ray through their Giant Ape Media brand. While last season ended in quite a surprise as titular character Bo was whisked away via some black smoke onto some different dimensional plane where The Wanderer resides, leaving her friends and family worried and wanting to get her back. Will this new season be able to offer the same quality in story and design as Bo and her gang meets more of the Fae? Or will the wonder of the show start to patter out? Let’s see what this season holds in it’s cards.
Story
The newest season opens up in media res, but in what seems like a very different version of the world fans of the series have come to know mainly with the lack of its star character, Bo. As it turns out that with Bo off on some other dimensional plane, in her own world she has been scratched out of everyone’s memory by some powerful being in hopes of delaying The Wanderer from being free. Plus, the team is also trying to find the whereabouts of the recently deceased Tamsin, which of course being a Valkyrie doesn’t really stop her, just puts her back into adolescence. The main strength of the show continues to shine in these situations though, introducing more and more of the Fae to the viewer and the members of Bo’s group that haven’t been part of the Fae World since birth and exploring the dynamics of it, both as it was and now that they have been mucking it all up.
As the series continues, there is a lot more of this as well as a real focus on the concept of history being written by the winners, as not everything in the Fae’s past is as cut and dry as the present makes it out to be. The biggest example of this being the major character development that occurs with the former Blood King, and Bo’s grandfather, Trick. The additional information that is explored in this season about that character alone is fascinating as it covers more about what Trick did to remain in power as the Blood King, why he ran away like he did, and what brought him to be the barkeep he is today.
Additionally, to the character development that occurs this season for the first time since the start of the show not all of the member of Team Bo are completely safe. In previous seasons it was easy to see who would be getting the ax as they added new characters, but for the first time the major cast sees actual losses, which in shows like this is interesting to see what comes of it. Not only from the initial reaction of the other characters, but how it impacts them for the rest of the season/series as well. It’s great to see the show pull out of its somewhat formulaic ways in this aspect and what they will do to fill in these gaps later or if they will at all.
There is a good amount of focus on the greater mythology this season, in regards to the destiny that lies before Bo and how she keeps finding herself following it. Though the series continues to do well slowly revealing more of it as she finds out about it, without needing to completely recon different aspects of the show caused by writing it as it goes. Not to mention the fact that there are still plenty of Fae for the group to meet and interact with, from Krampus, to the Leviathan, to the Pyrippus. Season 4 of Lost Girl is able to broke its own mold and still hold viewer’s interest for next season.
Visuals
This special effects for this season are still able to match up to the quality of the previous seasons, though there are a few that are a bit sub par, such as some of the effects for the Origin Seed. The dimensional shifts and the train for The Wanderer however do a fantastic job of adding to the show’s aesthetic. The costumes and makeup have even fewer flaws, still with a great sense of style that brings the series alive. The few problems those do have are solely for the character Vex when dealing with being forced to amputate his own hand, namely the makeup effects for just before he does and the costuming for when it is supposed to be missing. However, as such a small part of this season it is easy to overlook this small slight.
Audio
The acting and the music likewise do a great job throughout Season 4, but there are some slight problems in the form of Massimo, the Druid, who starts off as a great bad guy and then just gets very very weird with the addition of mommy issues. It might have been worked better, but as it is leaves a somewhat offputting feeling, but that may have been the entire point. The musical selection for this season though might be some of the best so far featuring such meaningful and memorable songs as “Baby I Call Hell” by Deap Valley, “Heart Killer” by Gossling, and topping it all off with “You” by Keaton Hanson during the finale. All these songs fit not only the tone of the scenes they are used in, but the tone of the series so well that they deserve their specific mentions. Hopefully the next season can live up to this season’s music.
Extras
For their fourth season, Lost Girl has a decent amount of extras for the Blu-Ray release. With two sneak peeks behind the scenes, one with a cast roundtable with Ksenia Solo (Kenzi), Zoie Palmer (Lauren), Kris Holden-Ried (Dyson), Richard Howland (Trick), and Paul Amos (Vex) as they talk about some different elements from this season and their own insight, while the other a much longer inside look with the crew as well as the cast about Season 4. There are also the full Lost Girl panels from both San Diego Comic-Con and New York Comic Con, though the New York panel is a much smaller affair with just Richard Howland (Trick) and Paul Amos (Vex), though luckily with much more humor.
Overall
The latest season of Lost Girl still has plenty to offer fans of the series’s previous seasons. The sense of style that the show has, plus the uniqueness of its characters and Fae at the center of its world make it a show really unlike others in the fantasy/supernatural genre. There seems to be no limit of the creatures that can appear and is always able to handle them just as well the familiar, but with more surprises. Those that have enjoyed the previous releases should find this release at home with all their others.
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
Educational television is… Well it is frequently a bit of a bore isn’t it? Filled with old grainy black and white snapshots of times gone past, and narrated by people with boring monotone voices, it is easy to see why many TV networks have abandoned documentaries in favor of more entertaining formats. Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey is an outlier, a show that breaks the mold and shows that educational shows don’t have to be boring. A follow-up to Carl Sagan’s 1980s Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, Spacetime Odyssey is hosted by world-renowned astrophysisist; Neil DeGrasse Tyson and continues on where the original left off. It is an entertaining and insightful look at one of the universe’s biggest mysteries and our place among the stars both now and in the future.
Story
Hosted by the popular and internet-famous astrophysicist; Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Cosmos: A Spacedtime Odyssey takes viewers through a whirlwind look at the world around us, and the universe at a whole so that we may better understand our place among the stars. Each of the season’s 13 episodes tackles a different aspect of the celestial bodies (or of Earth itself) using a lot of diagrams, photographs and digital representations to allow viewers of all ages and creeds to be able to come away from the program having learned something of value.
Each episode’s 44 minutes are jam-packed with facts and knowledge, but never at any time do they feel overwhelming. Even when you binge-watch the show, you can go from one episode discussing evolution and artificial selection (AKA:Selective breeding) straight into another episode that is all about philosophers and astrologists centuries ago would use pattern recognition to determine the seasons, and the entire time you will be totally at ease absorbing this information.
Not only does Cosmos deal with the future and the present of humanity and the universe, but it also delves into the past. Historical events like the burning of the Library of Alexandria and the Catholic Church’s persecution of astrologist Giordano Bruno (who asserted that the world revolved around the sun) are all touched upon, and it really gives the viewer more insight into how we came to be the people we are today, and how far we really have come. In this way it also serves as a little bit of a historical documentary in addition to a scientific one.
One of the criticisms that the show had when it first aired on television was that it ostracised the religious peoples of the world by explaining away creationist theory, and by bastardising the Catholic church especially for detailing how the church persecuted Giordano Bruno for his ideas that the earth could revolve around the sun, while also leaving out their more complicated role in Galileo’s assertion of the same principal.
Without trying to insight and religious debate, it is easy to see why the fundamentalist Christians might be a little offended by the program’s notion of evolution over creation theory, it is a well-accepted fact of the scientific community that evolution took place, and as such it merits inclusion in the documentary that is all about how the Earth and the stars formed. It really comes down to the fact that if the notion of evolution is offending you, then you probably shouldn’t be watching the show.
Visuals & Audio
Cosmos is to put it simply: beautiful. The series makes use of an incredible array of visual effects to show off the cosmos, and everything in it. Not only are the stars, planets and suns all animated beautifully but the series is also filled with a wide-array of actual telescope footage, digital mock-ups of the known universe and even some animations drawn from Sagan’s original series.
Tyson is an incredibly likable presenter, and will no doubt mage to bring in an audience of internet-goers who are familiar with the “Look out, we have a badass over here,” meme that uses his likeness. His voice especially is a perfect fit for the documentary series, and he managed to illicit a lot of passion and excitement from the viewers as he discusses the universe that surrounds us.
Extras
A lot of work went into reviving a long-extinct educational television program for a modern audience, and I am thankful that we get to see the fruits of that effort not only within the episodes of Cosmos themself, but through the behind the scenes featurettes and episode commentary.
The first look behind the scenes is titled “Celebrating Carl Sagan: A Selection from the Library of Congress Dedication.” This 35 minute look at the recent library of congress dedication. Seth MacFarlane and Ann Druyan narrate the video, which showcases how they played a big part of getting his personal collection of works and scientific memorabilia on display for everyone to enjoy. As Seth himself says, it serves as a “great anecdote for all the terrible fart jokes I have made on television.” Seth’s passion for science and education really shines, and it paints him in a different light to what many people think of him.
Following on from that are a brief spotlight of fan-reactions to Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey being screened at the 2013 Comic-Con, and a look at the past, present and future of the series itself. If you are a fan of DVD extras then these will be right up your alley, and are a good few hours worth of additional content to enjoy. While they are a great addition in their own right, they are a little less exciting than the show itself, so many viewers out there will probably skip over them.
Overall
Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey was a massive undertaking by everyone involved, and luckily it has paid off. With its incredible production values, well-renowned and likable host, and a tonne of talent backstage, Cosmos could very well pave the way for educational programs to make their way back to television. No matter how old you are, or how keen your interest in the cosmos is, you will without leave each episode with more knowledge that you came into it with, and I think that is just amazing.
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
Monster girls have become something of a selling point in the last couple of years and now fans of them will be happy to hear that a new 18+ original English visual novel featuring monster girls is being developed and will be released sometime in Fall 2014 on PC. The announcement came this weekend when Lupiesoft and MangaGamer announced their partnership to release The Menagerie on MangaGamer’s website where it will be sold for $15.95.
This is Lupiesoft’s first time traveling into 18+ territory but they are able to do so thanks to a very successful Kickstarter last year for a title named Dizzy Hearts that is currently still being developed for release on Steam by Sekai Project. The amount of money the company earned from the Kickstarter also helped fund a title named Vagabond, a game that takes place in the same world and time period as Dizzy Hearts where players will be told the story of the common life in the desert city of Alabast.
The Menagerie on the other hand, will take a closer look at the decadence inside of the city’s most prominent landmark called The Sail where the high-class nobles live. Players will follow Roa-ji, a futanari Drachene, as she encounters a myriad of other beings collected by the nobles in a tale of personal discovery and plenty of yuri action. You can read more about the title and the characters in The Menagerie on MangaGamer’s listing for the title. (18+ Only)
In a little under a month, Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair will be released in North America and Europe and because the release date is growing closer NIS America has released a new batch of screenshots for the game that highlight some of the new elements that have been introduced in class trials.
The company describes each of the elements below:
Logic Dive – You’ll skateboard through a glowing path, interrupted by questions. Answering correctly will lead you down the right path, but the wrong answer will throw you off course and reset the Logic Dive!
Hangman’s Gambit – Letters are flying across the screen, and you have to pick out the ones you need to spell out your key evidence! Correct spelling lands you points, and you can fuse like letters together to form larger yet stationary letters that are worth even more points! But these big letters will detonate if you’re too slow to use them, and if mismatched letters collide with each other, your health bar will take a big hit!
Rebuttal Showdown – Characters won’t just sit back and let you talk this time around. Your arguments can be interrupted, and you’ll have to use evidence to cut down their arguments in this frenetic, one-on-one debate! The tropical sun’s bringing some serious heat to the Class Trial!
Those who have been keeping an eye out for Fairy Fencer F will be happy to hear that the game’s release date has been moved up a week while those that are waiting for Natural Doctrine will be a bit disappointed to hear that they now have to wait one week longer to play the title.
In a bit of a strange swap, NIS America has announced that Fairy Fencer F and Natural Doctrine have swapped release dates, with Fairy Fencer F now being released first on September 16th in North America and September 19th for Europe while Natural Doctrine will now be released on September 23rd in North America and September 26th in Europe.
About a month ago NIS America announced that they would be bringing The Guided Fate: Cross Thesis over to North America and Europe under the name The Awakened Fate Ultimatum and today the company has released their first English trailer for the title that focuses on introducing the concept behind this game.
The story follows a new human turned god who must determine the fate of the world by choosing between two girls in his life, one that will be saved and another that will be killed. Currently The Awakened Fate Ultimatum is set to be released sometime in Spring 2015.
