Wow well this is certainly surprising. Three years after the first anime season ended, it seems that the Freezing manga will be getting a second anime season. Today it was discoveredin Japan that the 18th volume of the Freezing manga features a wraparound jacket band that reveals that the second anime season has been green lit.
Currently it is unknown when the second season will air, but it is worth noting that FUNimation did release the anime in English last year. The story of Freezing follows Kazuya, a boy who enrolls in a special academy where skilled female fighters known as Pandora train to fight against the Nova aliens. When Kazuya encounters the “Untouchable Queen,” one of the strongest fighters in the academy, he finds himself set on becoming her partner.
Shakugan no Shana: Season 3 Part 2 Studio: J.C.Staff Publisher:FUNimation Format:Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack Release Date: March 26, 2013 Price: $69.98 – Available Here
Overview: It’s been a long time coming and after multiple releases and reviewing Part 1 of Season 3, here we are with the final half of Shakugan no Shana Final. Part 1left us with a stare down between Yuji and Shana just before they were about to clash once more. Does Shakugan no Shana Season 3 Part 2 manage to continue the season’s momentum and provide a satisfying ending? We shall see.
Story: As Shana and Yuji begin fighting against one another atop of the Snake of the Festival’s body his resurrection has started something called “mistquakes” all around the world and anyone who can sense power of existence can feel these tremors. Knowing that their group has failed, the Flame Haze army makes a last ditch attempt at preventing the resurrection of the Snake of the Festival and it appears on the battlefield.
While the first half of the series left Yuji and Snake of the Festival’s final goal a mystery, as the two emerge from the gate the Snake of the Festival reveals his “Grand Order.” With the resurrection of his body he is aiming on creating a paradise known as Xanadu, an exact replica of the normal world where all Crimson Denizens will have an unlimited supply of power of existence and will no longer have to fight against Flame Haze or go hungry ever again.
Upon hearing this declaration, many in the Flame Haze army completely lose their will to fight as many Flame Hazes’ purpose in life is to fight against the Crimson Denizens. As such, Shana and the rest of the main characters on the side of Outlaw must fight in a losing battle as they attempt to salvage what is left of their forces and withdraw.
However when it is revealed that the creation of Xanadu will doom the real world to eventual destruction, the Flame Haze and Shana must put a stop to Bal Masqué’s plans once and for all. With new powerful allies stepping into the fray, can Shana stop Yuji before he does something irreversible and find her own happy ending?
Throughout the many Shana releases, the series has always taken it’s time to slow things down and let viewers catch their breath with bits of slice and life and romantic comedy. However while Part 1 of Season 3 had a bit of backstory and early development, Part 2 almost entirely focuses on the battle between the Flame Haze and Bal Masqué. Ultimately the only mid-way break in the action is present only for Shana and the rest to regroup, reach out to Flame Haze still willing to fight and plan their next course of action before heading into the final battle.
This release benefits greatly by keeping things concentrated on the ending. While a number of new characters are introduced throughout this second half, there isn’t much time spent developing them into much more than powerful warriors on the side of good. While this works well in keeping with the fast pace of Season 3, it does mean that these fighters are nothing more than powerful named characters simply filling up the battlefield.
In fact, the second half of the season does feel rushed at times and a couple of battles seem to be cut completely out for the sake of time. Despite this brisk pace there is a bit of character development here, mostly focused on the secondary members of the cast however. One thing that does stand out as a rather huge flaw in the series however is Yuji’s reasoning for his actions. While they may make sense on their own, the way he went about things seems like a major problem that, if handled any other way, could have avoided much of the drama of this season. Of course, if things went smoothly there wouldn’t be a climactic battle then would there?
Anyways, being Shakugan no Shana Final, there is indeed a finale present in this release. However those who have been watching the series from the beginning may find that the ending is less than satisfactory. As mentioned above, Yuji’s motivation for his actions are paper-thin at best and even after failing in their goal, everything still manages to wrap itself up with a smile on its face and everyone somehow moving on from the anger that was so prevalent just a couple of episodes earlier. While it probably is best that things were wrapped up nicely, a shoe-horned twist that manages to create such a conclusion will probably leave a sour taste in the mouths of many.
Visuals: Shakugan no Shana: Season 3 Part 2 continues to present a rather impressive visual package for the earlier half of this release, as the Flame Haze fight against the Denizens in various locations and have to partake in a retreating battle. However in the latter half of the release, the fights all take place in a very washed out city that remains constant throughout each fight, which is a major detriment compared to how vibrant the show can be at times.
As for the fights themselves, they are presented with fluid animation and a number of new abilities and character designs are shown off when new fighters are introduced. However it is worth noting that some rather shoddy CGI work is introduced for a number of special effects in Part 2. Also it is worth noting that once again the ending credits play over the last couple of minutes of multiple episodes which is not only distracting but also obscures a few of the action sequences.
Audio: Throughout the release viewers are presented numerous side-characters that are introduced to the series and each of them have been given decent voice work, though nothing too noteworthy considering most of these are simply meant to fill the battlefield. As for the main English cast they continue to impress with Cherami Leigh’s voicing of Shana still fitting Shana’s character perfectly.
As for the background music, most of the soundtrack is rather forgetful however there are a number of instances where the background music worked so well that it really helped that moment stand out. The second half of this season continues to use the ending theme to remarkable effect by playing the ending song thirty seconds or so before the episode ended. While the song did change from “I’ll Believe” the following ending themes, and there are many of them, continued to impress. As for the opening theme, we have “Serment” which is fitting for the series but rather forgetful overall.
Extras: This release features a number of bonuses including a promo video, the US version of the trailer, trailers for other FUNimation releases a clean version of the opening theme and a clean version of the five different ending themes that are presented in this half of the season.. Accompanying these standard bonuses we have two commentary tracks as well as the final Shakugan no Shana-Tan: Final Destruction 2. This Shana-tan is nearly ten minutes long and is rather hilarious, but it does feature a Japanese dub only and over half of the special is an extended “Why? What? Shana-tan Finale.”
The first commentary track is for Episode 14 which features Jerry Jewell the director of this season and interestingly enough the commentary is actually chopped in half in this release. The first half of the commentary features Scott Freeman who voices Haborym while the second half features Kent Williams who handles the voice of Alastor. This is an interesting take on commentary, but probably necessary since the first commentator only played a minor role. As for the second commentary track, we have Cherami Leigh the voice of Shana and Jerry Jewell again providing commentary over Episode 24. Being the final episode the two discuss various aspects of the show at this point.
Overall: It has been a long time coming and here it is, the finale of Shakugan no Shana. With Shakugan no Shana: Season 3 Part 2 viewers are presented the conclusion to everything that has been built up over the last eighty or so episodes. However anyone who has stuck with the series since the beginning will likely find the ending not only rushed but phoned-in as well. This means that while everything may wrap up nicely with great voice work and decent battle animation in bland environments, poor character motivations and an unsatisfactory ending to such a long running series will leave viewers feeling unfulfilled.
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
Fan-favourite anime series Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha has had its third theatrical film announced following the release of the second movie on Blu-Ray and DVD in Japan. Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha The Movie 3rd: Reflection was revealed at the conclusion of the celebratory “Lyrical Party V”, further announced on HMV Anime’s Twitter page, and hints at a new story.
The Nanoha anime series consists of three seasons which are being summarised in the ongoing films that boast high production values. Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha is a pure take on the “magical girl” genre, beginning with the third-grader Nanoha who transforms after encountering an injured ferret. To restore balance in the universe she must find and collect the Jewel Seeds that have been given form as monsters, but Nanoha soon finds there are others like herself that have ulterior motives.
The news that the third film may not follow the events of the third season, StrikerS, is a departure from the previous strict track record of adaptation. Although with StrikerS regarded by some fans as a lack lustre “threequel” that features the main cast as more grown-up, this might surely intrigue many.
Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha and its sequel, Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A’s, were licensed and dubbed in the west by Geneon USA. Sadly, following the company’s collapse Nanoha is yet to be reacquired by any western distributor.
The developers behind the upcoming Total War: Rome 2 revealed today that their newest faction will be none other than the Greek influenced, forward-looking nation of Ptolemaic Egypt.
According to the Total War wiki:
“Ptolemaic Egypt has close cultural ties to the Hellenistic world, while maintaining many Egyptian traditions. Founded by Ptolemy in 305BC following the death of Alexander the Great, it has become a centre of culture and trade under the influence of its Macedonian rulers.”
If you, like every other strategy fan, are a warmonger, you’ll likely be more interested in what it has to say about their fighting style, though.
“The intermingling of Greek and Egyptian fighting styles provides the Ptolemaic Pharaohs with a military that is both advanced and balanced, yet still honours the role of the champion commander. Making great use of spear and pike, their forces are further diversified with skilled swordsmen, scythed chariots, and more exotic units such as African war elephants. Egypt’s position on the Mediterranean Sea also requires a substantial navy to protect its colonial and trade interests.”
Spear, pike, scythed chariots and war elephants!? Sounds like the pyramids do wield some mystic form of power after all!
For more information on Egypt and everything else Total War: Rome 2, be sure to check out their wiki page here.
Christian Svensson, Corporate Officer and Senior Vice President, confirmed on theCapcom-Unity forumsthat the original voice actors from the DuckTales show would be working on the DuckTales Remastered game.
The voice actor for Scrooge, Alan Young, is now 94 years old and still came into the studio. It is extremely commendable that he put the extra effort in to make the remastering of DuckTales as perfect as possible. Christian Svensson believes that the voice actors from the original show “really adds a lot to the package”.
DuckTales Remastered will be released for the Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network and Wii U e-Shop some time this summer.
Last week, on the 17th of March, Toonami returned in epic style by airing the ‘Evangelion 1.11’ movie and, let me tell you, they really couldn’t have celebrated their return with a better movie choice. Even at its time slot of 1 am, the ‘Rebuild’ movie still did extremely well bringing in about 40,000 short of a million views.
The anime that came before it in the lineup had over 200,000 more viewers than Evangelion, but obviously because they were on at an earlier time. Bleach, which aired at 12 am, reached 1,197,000 and Naruto, which aired at 12:30 am, reached 1,196,00. Overall the entire line-up did well. Looks like we’ll be seeing a lot more Toonami. We all missed you the first time so don’t leave us again!
A tumblr question to Toonami about its satisfaction with how the airing went was answered with a spokesman from Toonami saying; “We were. It was a solid showing that gives us something to build off of as we think about our next movie night…”
G.I. Joe: Retaliation is mere days away from its nation-wide release on March 28th. Today, we have two final promotional pieces for you.
The Jinx vs Snake Eyes clip shows the two characters – played by Élodie Yung and Ray Park respectively – duking it out in a practice sparring match that is meant to hone Snake Eyes’ skills for his inevitable confrontation with Storm Shadow. But, the two are a little too committed and their competitiveness boils over.
The Land, Sea, Air piece is a featurette on all the “boy’s toys” in the film. It’s a really cool video, with interview snippets from The Rock (I will always call him that), Director Jon M. Chu and Adrianne Palicki as they talk about the action set pieces and what they entailed.
Splinter Cell: Blacklist the upcoming game in the Splinter Cell series has gotten another video to showcase what the game will be offering in terms of gameplay, this time commented by Game Director Patrick Redding. The point of the video is to show off the different play styles available to players in game, which have been adequately dubbed: Ghost, Panther, and Assault.
Weighing in at a little less than 9 minutes the video does a good job of explaining the differences between the three playstyles; Ghost being non-lethal stealth, Panther being lethal stealth, and Assault well that’s everything else. Interesting note is the difference in time it takes to clear the section between the methods.
Players can watch the video for themselves embedded below to see the different methods in action. Splinter Cell: Blacklist will be releasing for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC on August 2oth for North America, August 22nd for Australia, and finally August 23rd for Europe.
Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara is going to be a HD remake collection of Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom and its sequel Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow over Mystara. These games are classic arcade beat-’em ups that are adaptations of Wizards of the Coast’s pen-and-paper RPG. This remake is being developed by Capcom’s Iron Galaxy.
The Original games were available on Arcade and then on the Sega Saturn, so it has been a long time coming for people who never had access to either. The HD double-pack is set to be released in June 2013 and will be available on the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, WiiU, and Windows PC. Pricing will be $14.99/€14.99/£11.99/1200MSP.
‘Rise of the Cobra,’ or G.I. Joe 1, was bat-shit insane. The goodies and the baddies were both very well drawn with awesome characters emerging from both sides. As far as Hollywood action blockbusters go, you couldn’t really have asked for more – the effects were huge, the pace never let up and everything made sense, even if it was ridiculous.
I remember when ‘Rise of the Cobra’ had finished I couldn’t wait to run out and watch the next one – the set up was perfect for a massively expanded universe. Alas, the direction the franchise has taken strips out everything that was interesting about the original and replaces it with… sitting around and talking about nothing heaps? Or was I supposed to supposed to have been focusing on the half thought out set pieces and their fake looking locations? I can’t put my finger on what the new angle is but it’s not a comic book movie (which, aside from the toys, are meant to have been the narrative basis for the franchise).
Story:
At the end of ‘G.I. Joe – Rise of the Cobra,’ Cobra Commander actually pulls off his diabolical plan, despite being denied the awesome explosions that acted as a red herring. The real plan was to replace the president (Jonathan Pryce) with Cobra insider Zartan (Arnold Vosloo) and control the Executive Branch of the US government. Cobra uses the office to frame the ‘Joes’ for the assassination of the Prime Minister of Pakistan and the theft of their nuclear weapons. Every single Joe is then annihilated because apparently they all went on the same mission at once despite having one of the sweetest bases ever built by man. I guess even the I.T. department came along for the ride this time. Oh, except for our protagonists, Roadblock (Dwayne Johnson), Lady Jane (Adrianne Palicki) & Flint (D.J. Cotrona), who manage to survive.
The film seems to struggle on giving Flint anything to do at all while resting pretty comfortably on some well worn tropes for the other two. Meanwhile Snake Eyes (Ray Park) is chilling out somewhere ages away from the action. Granted both he and the RZA appear to be training a new member, Jinx (Elodie Yung) but she has barely any lines in the film and is basically rendered redundant.
Let me take this chance to deal with how the two different films handle having females in their casts. While both films used the female characters for eye candy, in ‘Rise of the Cobra’ they were functional team members that used an equal balance of wit, brawn and sex appeal. This time around the female leads were either not given any dialogue or their only cunning was to flaunt their bodies, which is a real shame. They try to make up for this with a plot line about how Lady Jane’s father never wanted her in the army because she was a girl and that’s what inspires her. Not only is this tacky and ham-fisted, it’s delivered in the most insincere fashion.
We get no time with the villains at all. Watching the Machiavellian machinations of Cobra was one of the most interesting elements of the first film. I think Cobra Commander has 5 minutes screen time absolute tops. Destro, the arch nemesis who now has a head entirely made out of metal is left out. Why? That’s totally sick. You can’t set up something as epic as the main bad guy from the previous film getting his head turned into metal and then leave it unused. The rest of the plot revolves around ‘getting the gang back together.’ It’s hard to care when everyone you like from the previous films are now dead and replaced with people that aren’t even introduced clearly.
Visuals & Audio:
Again, this film takes another major step down from the standard set in ‘Rise of the Cobra.’ That movie was constantly filled with colour. The nano-tech added some vibrancy to the action sequences, to the point where it was almost another character. Locations weren’t just arenas for battles to take place, they were crucial to the narrative and were shot in a way that took full advantage of the space. Plus they had a dope base. I can’t talk about that base enough; that was amazing. Did Hasbro release that as a play set?
Anyway, ‘Retaliation’ fails to make use of space in that same way at every turn. Nano-tech feels like it’s only included because the first one did it. Its absence changes the palate of the film and isn’t replaced with anything. Instead of a sweet base we get a poorly lit gym that Roadblock grew up in.
The change in directors, from Stephen ‘The Mummy’ Sommers to ‘Step Up Revolution’s’ Jon M. Chu should have indicated a shift from magnificent set pieces to tightly choreographed fight scenes. Yet we get neither. Chu has had a pretty fast rise to fame and, despite what you may think of films like ‘Step Up 2’ or ‘Justin Bieber: Never Say Never,’ he’s renowned for capturing fast paced action and movement. Unfortunately this does not translate into being able to direct an action film. I wish we didn’t have to learn that with this franchise though – I had high hopes.
Some basic mistakes are made here. There’s a whole sequence where it looks like Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow (Byung-hun Lee) are in the same location, despite one of them being in a penthouse in Tokyo and the other in some far off mountainous hideaway. I fail to understand how the editing can be so bad in such a high budget film.
Directly lifting sounds from Transformers to imply technology isn’t just lazy, it’s sad. Otherwise I can’t say the audio had much of an impact on me. Pop songs are used exactly how you’d expect them to be. Explosions sound ‘explodey’ without having all that much meat on them. The stripping back of the tech angle meant there wasn’t anywhere near as much room for audio flair as the original.
Overall:
They had so much good material to work with here that the result is pretty unforgivable. I’m placing the blame mostly in the hands of the director change. It’s a pity too, because a dance director converting to action is a pretty interesting choice and it could have worked out too. When you’re competing with the guy who made ‘The Mummy’ though, you’ve got your work cut out for you.
What’s worse is that Chu was unable to make the best of his own strengths. Fights seemed stilted and uninteresting, the dynamics between characters were dry and nobody seemed to have any grace on the screen. Actually, that’s kind of unfair. Perhaps the cutting room floor, the producers or the writers need to be slapped around a bit too. Excluding a core narrative from the villains’ perspective is a horrendous misstep. Just reading a list of their names gets me pumped. Firefly, Storm Shadow, Cobra Commander, Zartan…. I could keep going. They’re such an integral part of what makes this universe compelling – why shouldn’t we get to know what they’re up to?
That’s not all they’re guilty of though. We don’t really have anything for the Joes to fight until the 3rd act. They spend most of the film kind of flitting about, with a little time set aside to perv on each other. By the time Cobra’s scheme is introduced and the clock starts ticking, it’s already the final fight scene. There’s no pressure cooker here. ‘Rise of the Cobra’ had our protagonists chasing terrorist attacks after scrambling to protect their base while solving the mystery along the way.
The whole thing feels lazy. Some of the G.I. Joe parody youtube clips have more character development than this film.
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
G.I. Joe: Retaliation is mere days away from its nation-wide release on March 28th. Today, we have two final promotional pieces for you.
