Media | Anime Releases | December 11th, 2007: This week is Harry Potter week, apparently, so the selection of new anime was a bit iffy in order to leave the market clear for everyone's favorite emo wizard. Release data courtesy of The Digital Bits and cover art courtesy of Amazon.

Roundup by Mightyblue | Posted

Pick of the week

Tokyo Majin, Vol. 1: Dark Arts-Dragon Stream
If you like your wizards boyish and with lightning scars on their foreheads, this is the week for you! Unless you're an anime fans, in which case... not so much. That said, I offer up a darker and more twisted view of magic as this week’s pick, Tokyo Majin. If you’ve played any of the Persona games and like the characters and story you’ll find a lot of similar themes in this show. Lots of magic, lots of demons, lots of destruction of public property.

As you might, expect there’s more than a bit of mature themage in this show, so teenagers or older, please. I don't want to get into trouble for recommending this smut to kids! But for you old people, smut away.

The Other Stuff

Air: The Movie
As a rule, movie adaptations of anything with a significant amount of text or material to them, like books or video games, don’t work all that well. Especially when they’re character-driven exercises, like the original video game Air upon which this series is based. When you consider just how badly compressed the twelve-episode TV series was, it doesn't take a genius to realize that a 90-minute movie is going to do the source material even less justice. It might make for a passable rental for date night, but definitely not worth more than that for any but hardcore Air fans.

My Santa: Special
Hey, remember last week's diatribe about the panderiffic works of Ken Akamatsu? Well, this is another one of his works, a little two-episode direct-to-video about an unlucky Japanese guy named Santa who gets a Christmas present in the form of the real Santa’s hot teenage girl apprentice. No, I’m not making that up, much as I wish I were. My Santa also attempts to cram a relatively large amount of material into a brief running time and suffers from the same issues as the Air movie as a result. Definitely not worth your time or money.

Anime Boxsets and Other Things of a Swaggy Nature

It’s another decent week for collections, at least in terms of quantity. The only useless swag edition on offer is for the second volume of Pumpkin Scissors. Meanwhile, no less than five regular collections debuting: Megazone 23 Complete, Tenchi Muyo: GXP Complete, Spiral Viridian Collection Complete, Gunslinger Girl Viridian Collection Complete, and Slayers Next Complete. Megazone, Spiral, and Gunslinger Girl are all worth rentals, and if you like parodies of the fantasy genre, you can hardly go wrong with (the slightly dated) Slayers either.

The Hall of Shame: Voltron Vol. 5

Ah, Voltron, if only I was younger and more beholden to my sense of nostalgia. Sadly, rose-colored visions no longer hold the sway they once used to, and I have come to the saddening conclusion that you little more than an utterly terrible butchery of the show upon which you were originally based, Go-Lion. To date, you are the only show I’ve ever returned to Netflix after five minutes, physically unable to watch any futher. May your wretched soul rest in peace.

It’s a slim week, but it could have been worse. My colleague handling the regular DVD column is likely having the week from hell in his column though. Things will likely pick up in the final run towards Christmas, though hopefully there won’t be a glut of crappy Christmas titles. One can only hope. Discuss it on the Forums!