Discotek Media is without doubt one of the final nice distributors of bodily anime media in N. America. They set the trade customary for video and audio high quality, generally even enhancing upon equivalents accessible in Japan. They’ve gone out of their solution to protect epochal titles which have fallen by the wayside, reminiscent of Mushi Productions’s Animerama movies. But they protect “bad” anime as properly, just like the really weird Chargeman Ken. Recently they’ve expanded into tokusatsu (Kamen Rider, Metal Hero), reside motion (Uzumaki) and even American cartoons (Street Sharks!)
Discotek Media additionally runs Discotek Day, the final purely good factor in the American anime trade. Technically it’s an promoting block in the vein of a Nintendo Direct. In reality it’s a hurricane blast of nostalgia completely calibrated to brush older anime followers off their ft. One minute the corporate declares the restoration of Project A-ko’s misplaced 35mm movie print. Another, it declares that all 358 episodes of comedy series Sgt. Frog have been licensed. Past anime glories come and go in a haze: SPT Layzner, Flying Phantom Ship, Bananya…
The most up-to-date Discotek Day streamed on YouTube on October sixteenth, and featured a consultant mixture of classics, historic curiosities and unrepentant trash. Here are the highlights.
Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha (anime)
Years earlier than the anime studio SHAFT blew up the magical woman style with Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica, they made Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. The collection spun the story of Nanoha Takamachi, a minor character from the visible novel collection Triangle Heart, right into a magical woman alternate universe. Nanoha’s story was focused at grownup anime followers slightly than children. Her magic is much less Moon Tiara Action than Wave Motion Cannon.
But the collection featured extra than simply grand-scale pyrotechnics. Nanoha’s relationship with Fate, a “dark magical girl” scarred by her abusive mom, captured individuals’s imaginations and birthed a franchise that has lengthy since eclipsed Triangle Heart itself. Discotek’s 2024 launch features a 1080 HD upscale (sourced from the Japanese launch) and improved subtitles.
Kamikaze Girls (reside motion)
Hailing from Discotek’s live-action Nihon Nights line, Kamikaze Girls is a stylistic tour de drive concerning the relationship between a woman who loves lolita style and one other woman who attire like a punk. This 2004 movie gained Best Picture and Best Director on the twenty seventh Yokohama Movie Awards in addition to on the 14th Japan Film Professional Awards, and was beforehand launched in N. America by VIZ Pictures, and the manga adaptation of Kamikaze Girls can also be accessible from VIZ. It options animation by Studio 4°C and a soundtrack by anime legend Yoko Kanno. I haven’t seen this movie but, but it surely appears to be like nice, particularly in case you’re into the Japanese style scene.
Here’s the trailer from the unique 2005 launch of this movie from NEW PEOPLE Entertainment, which will provide you with some thought of its mixture of reside motion and animated sequences:
Discotek’s launch of Kamikaze Girls consists of improved subtitles, newly translated interviews with the employees and plenty of different particular options. It’s set for launch in 2024.
Belladonna of Sadness (anime)
A darkish, erotic and tragic story of a girl accused of being a witch, Belladonna of Sadness was a important and business failure on its launch in 1973. Viewers at its Berlin International Film Festival premiere rejected it. Theaters in Japan have been reluctant to indicate it. It, together with different experimental, principally adult-focused productions by Osamu Tezuka’s Mushi Productions led to the anime studio’s chapter in the early Seventies. Artistically, the movie additionally has actual limitations. This is an animated movie in which the characters barely transfer, and a piece of feminist agit-prop in which the male gaze is prevalent all through.
Belladonna of Sadness can also be a masterpiece. There isn’t any different animated movie fairly like this one: a Satanic fairy story that owes as a lot to Nineteen Sixties Japanese avant garde theater because it does to Walt Disney. Directors Kunihiko Ikuhara (Revolutionary Girl Utena) and Naoko Yamada (Liz and the Blue Bird) depend themselves as followers. The movie stays putting at this time due to slightly than in spite of its imperfections. Discotek Media’s 2024 launch of this cult classic consists of each a UHD model for 4K HDR televisions in addition to a normal BluRay.
Here’s a trailer from the 2016 launch of this one-of-a-kind anime characteristic movie:
Chie the Brat (anime)
Isao Takahata is finest recognized for his movies at Studio Ghibli, reminiscent of Grave of the Fireflies and The Tale of Princess Kaguya. But he’s simply as revered in Japan for his tv collection. Chie the Brat, tailored from a 1978 manga, is a ribald comedy a few younger woman in Osaka residing together with her deadbeat dad. Discotek affiliate Justin Sevakis is a fan of Takahata’s 1981 movie model. So it’s no shock that the corporate determined to license its tv predecessor.
Chie the Brat is scrappier than Takahata’s World Masterpiece Theater productions, reminiscent of Anne of Green Gables and Heidi, Girl of the Alps. Still, Chie’s adventures stay charming at this time. Takahata and his employees render the heroine’s neighborhood in loving element with out compromising its tough and tumble enchantment. Per Andrew Osmond, future Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki as soon as requested Takahata, “How can you now do a film about a girl cooking giblets on skid row at Osaka?” Takahata, after all, was an important director as a result of (and generally regardless of) he would insist on perfection even when it got here to drawing these giblets. Discotek’s BluRay launch of this classic anime collection is about for 2024.
Rainbow (anime)
Rainbow is an animated drama about seven boys despatched to a Japanese reformatory college in the years following World War II. The collection aired in 2010, only a 12 months earlier than its studio Madhouse fell right into a decade-long tailspin following the departure of producer Masao Maruyama. Funimation picked up the streaming rights, then misplaced them. Now Discotek is about to launch the collection on BluRay for the very first time in the United States in 2024.
For transparency’s sake, I haven’t seen Rainbow. I’m extra acquainted with Masaaki Yuasa’s fantastic Tatami Galaxy in relation to 2010 Madhouse tv collection. That mentioned, Rainbow does signify an period of anime manufacturing that arguably now not exists. Through the early 2000s, Madhouse tailored a number of grim and intense comics for older audiences together with Black Lagoon, Shigurui and Kaiji. I’m curious to see how Rainbow suits into that custom.
Lovely Complex (anime)
The premise of Lovely Complex is basically fairly easy. Risa Koizumi is tall for her age. Atsushi Otani is brief for his age. They fall in love. That’s it! What Lovely Complex lacks in flash, although, it makes up for with relatability. This isn’t a melodrama in the vein of Dear Brother or Boys Over Flowers. The viewers isn’t meant to insert themselves in one character or idealize one other. This is a meat and potatoes romantic comedy about extraordinary youngsters that attend an extraordinary highschool. It’s for that purpose that the collection stays a sentimental favourite to this present day amongst followers of a sure age.
The manga that impressed this romantic comedy anime collection is on the market as a 17-volume Shojo Beat collection from VIZ Media with the shortened title, Love★Com.
Discotek’s launch of Lovely Complex is upscaled courtesy of AI firm AstroRes. It additionally includes a new English dub produced by Sound Cadence. While I’m a subtitle devotee myself, dubs are on the very least a vital accessibility instrument. The better of them breathe life into outdated favorites. Lovely Complex is simply the most recent Discotek launch to obtain this remedy; I’m glad that dubbing stays a precedence for them, particularly when many anime collection accessible on streaming websites are by no means dubbed in any respect.
Don’t neglect the opposite upcoming Discotek anime and reside motion DVD / BluRay releases, together with: Hand Maid May. Dual! Parallel Trouble Adventure. Lupin the third: Sweet Lost Night. BELA: Humanoid Monster. Fatal Frame in reside motion. The 2016 Hurricane Polymar movie. Extreme Dinosaurs. Kurokami: The Animation. Fist of the North Star: The Legend of the True Savior – The Legend of Kenshiro. Puss n’ Boots Around the World. Futakoi. IGPX. Discotek incorporates multitudes.
For the most recent updates from Discotek, observe them on X/Twitter at @DiscotekMedia or go to their web site at www.discotekmedia.com.
Discussion about this post