Madhouse seem to have this curious habit of making movies that don’t appear for quite some time. Admittedly, this is rarely for the same reasons – things like Redline fail to materialise simply because they take so long to actually make, whilst things like Clover and the other Clamp shorts were too short to have a reasonable home release vector (not that it didn’t stop them from eventually releasing a DVD of nothing but Clover).

In the case of Hells, and adaptation of the Shinichi Hiromoto manga Hell’s Angels, it looks to have been stuck in something of a legal quagmire since it’s theatrical debut in 2008, until it finally saw release on blu-ray in Japan about a month ago. A blu-ray with English subtitles, at that.
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Oh my, doesn’t time fly when you.. aren’t updating much. I mean, by gum, this was the first time I’ve drawn anything vaguely-proper in about five months (apologies for any cack-handedness and lack of ambition as a result of that). I suppose I should really force myself back into some kind of regular update pattern.

But probably not drawing, because throwing this together just reminded me that it’s still murder on my spine. Not the same degree as murder as it was a few months ago, thankfully, but, alas, I’m still not up to putting up with that three times a week. It’s better excuse than last years explanation for not having updated regularly, which is that I’d just been playing Xenoblade for an indecent number of hours (a lot more fun that suffering a back injury, let me tell you!).

Anyway, that’s probably enough for the token seventh anniversary update. I’ll try and update more frequently going forward – honest!

(P.S. For the readers residing in Blighty, Scotland Loves Anime tickets for both this years Glasgow and Edinburgh events went on sale this week. As per usual, I’ll be dragging myself to both events to see all of the weekend films at least, even those which I’ll end up seeing twice. Also, the full schedule for the London Film Festival was released today, and includes three screenings of Mamoru Hosoda’s Wolf Children mid-October. Clashes with Glasgow SLA, unfortunately, so I’m going to have to wait a whole additional week until Edinburgh for that one!)

From episode 4 of Joshiraku, except that it was in the episode preview part which means that it’s technically from episode 5.

This submission, like so many others, came via Author, although he did actually send me this the best part of two weeks ago. Yay for procrastination! I should really get around to clearing out my own queue of these things before I forget about them…

From… I think it was episode 5? I can’t quite remember – somehow I managed to not watch last weeks episode until this weeks was already available, so it’s all kind of blurred into one.

I can’t really say I have much to say about Tari Tari. It’s a pleasant show. It’s rather less blunt about it’s drama than Kokoro Connect, and comes across as being a little less methodical about it (at least, it doesn’t have characters pretty much pointing out that others are sorting out characters issues in order). Not that I wouldn’t cut Kokoroco some slack on both matters due to it’s rather more supernatural setting, nor that it particular bears any real comparison to Tari Tari beyond a certain amount of tonal similarity, but since I’m short of anything in particular to write about here I’m perfectly happy to clutch at straws.

The first home-release volume of Kawamoris latest sci-fi classic, AKB0048, was unleashed upon Japan… well, it was last month at this point. I literally just got my shipping notice for volume 2 today, but my volume 1 was waiting upon the latest Precure movie and K-On! before shipping, meaning I only got ahold of it yesterday. Let me tell you, as sweet as K-On! is as a show, more than any other disk media release I own the LE would make a pretty great blunt weapon. It’s got some serious heft behind it, and you could do someone some serious damage with properly (or improperly) wielded.

Anyway, to steer back towards point, the first episode of AKB is presented on BD in it’s directors cut form!
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