Just the Ticket

Article by Sean Wilkinson, a.k.a. The Animeister. You know I love a good pun , Ticketholders; especially puns that work on multiple levels, because it takes more than a simple homophone to create. For example, the title of today's isekai getting the Anime Spotlight treatment for the month of April takes advantage of the interchangeable phoenetics of katakana to make a bilingual pun out of its English subtitle ("birth" and "verse" are spelled with the same characters in Japanese). Unfortunately, the anime itself ended up as a double- entendre of trying too hard and not trying hard enough. Heh; trying.... Onmyō Kaiten Re:Bāsu ( Re-birth / Reverse ) is a rare case of a Japanese property starting as an anime and being adapted into manga form later. Created by Fujiko Sakuno (who also writes the manga ) and series director Hideya Takahashi with animation by David Production ( Fire Force and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure ), it follows Narihira Takeru (a loud...

Article by Sean Wilkinson, a.k.a. The Ticketmaster. I was not alive yet, but the 70s were a strange time, if these last two  Goj -Year- ra  selections (and A Clockwork Orange ) are anything to go by. The architecture (before it's kicked over, smashed, cut through, and/or exploded), the hair and fashion that looks androgynous (feathered bangs! Dracula collars! Even the pant-legs are dresses!) and either over-patterned with intense primary colors or monochromatic with pastels (fittingly for the latter this month) like the designers were trying to blind you with Easter , and the...enhanced thinking it takes to come up with a plot where alien cockroaches try to conquer Earth with a cyborg buzzsaw chicken while two monsters talk to each other with see-through speech bubbles and rewinding tape noises. Directed by former franchise black sheep (before Yoshimitsu Banno "ruined" it with last week's entry )  Jun Fukuda  ( Ebirah and Son Of Godzilla ), Godzilla vs Gigan (pref...

Article by Sean Wilkinson, a.k.a. The Omnibuster. Now that we're sufficiently afflicted with the munchies after Monday's events , it's time to get lost in the woods and eat a magic candy house! And maybe get a little disappointed and uncomfortable with the contents of the Trade I'm reviewing today. Now that I know about the Myths & Legends Omnibus on ComiXology, I'll be pulling assets from it, the Volume Four Trade (because, yes, we're jumping backward to the penultimate arc of the series from Volume Five to Volume Four, like I mentioned last week ), and...other sources. But as I always do, let's first look at the original issue, which was included as one of the bonus materials for Volume Four. GFT #3: Hansel & Gretel This issue is very on-the-nose with its character names and framing scenario, which was generally the case with early Grimm Fairy Tales , though some issues got more creative with the derivations than we see here. A brother and sister...

Article by Sean Wilkinson, a.k.a. The Animeister. High, Ticketholders! Today is important for getting stoned (and for no other reason), and it's my second week of isekai anime in April, so I decided to cover the second season of I Was Reincarnated As the 7th Prince So I Can Take My Time Perfecting My Magical Ability (for some reason), the first season of which I reviewed on July 15, 2024, prefaced by a tangent on the awkward linguistics and social stigma of being sibling-deficient, the cultural importance of long-winded names, and the number of nickels I'd have for anime about throne-distant isekai protagonists. Here's the review copy of that before I get into the second season, with a few edits: I Was Reincarnated As the 7th Prince So I Can Take My Time Perfecting My Magical Ability (thank this series' one angel for predictive text) is obviously your usual novel/light-novel/ manga franchise publication salad, this time written by the awesomely named Kenkyo na Circ...

Article by Sean Wilkinson, a.k.a. The Ticketmaster. This is what I've been waiting for, Ticketholders! Like, I wasn't waiting to get to this specific movie in the Goj -Year- ra lineup, but I swiped away my media player with an incredible sense of hype and emotional disturbance that I hadn't felt since Minus One or the original Godzilla . Emitted into the world in 1971 as a visceral and blatant commentary piece the likes of which the franchise hadn't attempted in nearly a generation, Godzilla vs Hedorah ( Godzilla vs the Smog Monster in the U.S.) was directed and co-written by franchise first-timer Yoshimitsu Banno , with Haruo Nakajima returning as Godzilla, and Gigan and Heisei era Godzilla suit actor Kenpachiro Satsuma as Hedorah. None of the human actors here are recognizable to Godzilla fans, nor have any notable roles outside the franchise, so I'll just be referring to them by name or archetype going forward. Between the epic Bond -alike banger of a them...

Article by Sean Wilkinson, a.k.a. The Omnibuster. Now that I've deviated from normalcy with looks at Zenescope 's April Fools Editions and the canceled Chronicles Of Dr. Herbert West , it's time to get back into chronological order (puns?) by looking at something that’s been collected out of order. I make sense! So let's make sense of what I'm talking about with Myths & Legends: The Gathering . To get caught up (something that I've started doing myself this week ), Myths & Legends is a long, limited series that serves a two-fold purpose (at minimum) of being both a Samantha Darren -led title (in apology for the prematurely canceled Grimm Tales ongoing series we never got because Samantha is a lesser Sela) and a pseudo-anthology sequel series to some of Grimm Fairy Tales ' most popular early issues, with its story arcs thus far collected as follows: Volume One collected the first five issues (the Red Riding Hood sequel). Issues six and seven (s...