Weekly Digital Disc Picks – January 27, 2009

Slight format change this week.

First, AceCaseOR’s (primarily anime) picks and comments:

  • Ah My Buddha: Vol. 1 – The Aroused One: It’s not porn. I checked. It’s fanservice harem-romantic-comedy (ala Tenchi Muyo and Ranma 1/2) series about a trainee at a buddhist temple who gets mystical powers whenever he sees a naked woman. I’d put the link to the TVTropes.org entry for I’m Not Making This Up again, but I did that last time and I don’t want to overdo the joke.
  • Aria the Natural Season 2 Pt. 1: I’m going to take a moment now to complain about how Amazon organizes their new-releases by genre, because this was *not* listed under Anime. I can’t point people towards it if I can’t find it. Fiziko’s addendum: I also hate that we no longer have alphabetical listings. It made creating these columns without missing titles SO much easier.
  • Baccano! Starter Set: Pulp Series set in 1920s America.
  • Blood+: Volume 4: Volume 4 of the spinoff series to Blood: The Last Vampire. I haven’t seen the series up to this point, but I have seen some of the series before this (prior to licensing), and liked what I saw.
  • Doktor Faust
  • Fullmetal Alchemist: Season 1 Box Set: Re-release of season 1 of the show.
  • Doujin Work: Vol. 1 – Pencil & Paper: Similar to Comic Party (but not based on a H-Game) the series is about a girl who is trying to become a Doujin (fan-manga/independant-manga) artist. This is also AceCaseOR’s pick of the week.
  • Life Gamble: Released on Blu-Ray and Standard Def, Wuxia film from Shaw Brothers about a Kung Fu blacksmith going up against a local crime boss.
  • Megaman: A Hero is Born: This is not a standard anime – while the animation was made in Japan and using Japanese character designs, it was produced for US TV back in the ’90s, based on the original Mega Man games (with Dr. Wily), not the Battle Network series or the Mega Man X series of games. Mega Man’s English VA may sound familiar – he was the voice of Goku for the English dub of DBZ. Fiziko’s addendum: It’s also a rerelease. The entire series was first released in two volumes in 2003 (Jan. 21, 2003 for Vol. 1, March 18, 2003 for Vol. 2) and there’s another Mega Man DVD release scheduled for March 10 of this year on Amazon.com, so it looks like the same two volumes on comparable schedules six years later.
  • Mozart’s Don Giovanni: I’ve seen another version of this as well, definitely a different staging (this one was definitely made for video/DVD and included shooting on location, and kept the setting of the original, instead of moving it to the present day).
  • Naruto Vol. 32: This looks like it’s an uncut version (a Japanese audio track is listed in Amazon). From the episode description this is the last to next-to-last DVD before the Shippuden time skip.
  • One Piece: The Princess & The Pirates (Movie 8): This is available in standard def and Blu-Ray. I don’t believe the uncut DVD releases from Funimation have caught up with this movie yet, so watch at your own risk. Thar be spoilarrrrrrrrs in these waters!
  • Panyo Panyo Di Gi Charat: Complete Collection : Prequel to Di Gi Charat, the episodes here are about 5 minutes long each.
  • S.T.R.A.I.N.: Strategic Armored Infantry: Giant Robot / Space Opera Series
  • The Story of Saiunkoku: Season One, Part Three: It looks like a wuxia reverse-harem (a bunch of guys fighting over 1 woman) anime.
  • Utawarerumono – Complete Boxed Set
  • Verdi’s Macbeth: I’ve seen a performance of this I liked – I don’t know if it’s the same performance, or in the same style (the version I saw updated the costumes to the 1920s-40s, with the final duel between Macbeth and MacDuff being with knives instead of swords)

Now, Fiziko’s DVD picks:

Now, the Blu-Ray releases:

Finally, Fiziko’s pick of the week. If you’ve got Blu-Ray capacity, go with Groundhog Day. If not, there are numerous “guilty pleasures” hitting shelves this week. Take your pick of America’s Dumbest Criminals, Super-Friends, or even Teddy Ruxpin.