This Week: Bandai is bringing Star Driver to Hulu and more shows are finding their way to Netflix streaming.
Aniplex (in partnership with Bandai) announced at their Otakon panel yesterday that they will be streaming Star Driver Kagayaki no Takuto on Hulu starting August 17th. Crunchyroll will also be hosting the series, and both websites will stream with official English subtitles (no word on the dub yet).
https://youtu.be/-Z5HhK0fTsI
This 25 episode series from 2010 takes place on fictional Southern Cross Isle. As it happens on your typical mysterious island, a boy washes up on shore one starry night and, luckily for him, there is a cute girl nearby who senses his presence and gives him CPR. A rich local student takes him in for the night and (due to obvious anime plot reasons) enrolls Takuto at the local high school (and what kind of anime high school would this be if nothing unusual was going on?)… In fact, there are mobile suits (called “Cybodies”) hidden underneath the island that possess immense power and can be controlled by humans. An evil organization, Glittering Crux, is plotting to steal these suits and only Takuto and his friends can stop them.
The show suffers from some seriously overused anime plot points (an insanely rich kid with moe-inspired maids, a super mysterious guy with an unknown past that will turn out to be the hero, and a girl that I can almost guarantee will fall in love with him by the series’ end…) but overall it’s a decent watch. The interpretations of time and “zero time” are pretty cool and the Cybodies are interesting in that they somehow manage to be both mech suits and magical-girl / magical-boy transformation driven power suits.
…and while we’re talking about streaming, have you been keeping your eyes on Netflix lately? Part Three of Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood has just been made available (until now you had to get the disks). Other great shows on streaming right now include Mushi-Shi, Nana, Speed Grapher, Hetalia, Monster, Excel Saga and 109 episodes of Bleach. I have to fully recommend Excel Saga to anyone that’s been watching anime a long time. It’s an over the top, ridiculous spoof of anime and television and is highly rated by anime fans.
Alongside the new subscription options debuting in September I’m hoping a few more shows will continue to make their way to Netflix streaming. I keep requesting Irresponsible Captain Tylor, but maybe I’m in the minority in actually remembering that awesome show…
I leave you this week with another obscure piece of video from Japan’s youtube. It’s a political satire miniseries (based on the original manga) called The Legend of Koizumi. Very entertaining if you have read up on Japanese politics, and still rather amusing even if you haven’t. The premise of the miniseries is that international diplomacy is settled at the mahjong table, with real-life politicians depicted as masters of mahjong: