In 1992 seven high-profile comic book artists, fed up with handing over the copyright to their creations, left Marvel to form their own publishing company Image Comics.  They included X-Men and Wolverine penciller Marc Silvestri who later went on to found Top Cow comics and co-create Witchblade.

Top Cow were responsible for bringing Tomb Raider's Lara Croft to comics for the first time and more interestingly for Anime fans, producing a Battle Of The Planets comic book with covers by esteemed artist Alex Ross (Marvels, Kingdom Come).

The Witchblade comic book was so popular that in 2006  it was reintepreted for a Japanese audience in a 24 episode animated TV series. The series broke new ground by being available on download to American Xbox owners  from Xbox LIVE's Video Marketplace.

Now it is available in the UK on DVD with a collection of the first 3 discs (12 episodes) in shops on June 9th.

The story is relocated to a post-earthquake Tokyo in the near future, where skyscrapers and the Tokyo Tower poke through the surface of the ocean and single mother Masane Amaha fights to recover her memory and regain custody of her 6 year old daughter.

Found at the epicentre of the disaster, she discovers that she is the owner of the Witchblade, a fearsome symbiotic weapon that transforms the wearer into a bloodthirsty warrior of unbelievable power.

Coveted by men but only ever possesed by women, the shady Douji corporation try to unlock the weapon's secrets by forcing Masane to fight for them and studying her remotely. While their rivals, the sinister NSWF who run the Child Welfare Department (go figure), pursue the same aim through genetic experimentation.

In true Japanese style, can it lead to anything other than a tragic conclusion for the good guys?

One way the Anime version remained true to Silvestri's vision however, was to follow his inclination for drawing scantily clad unfeasibly busty women.

It's great stuff but I wouldn't say subtlety was its strong point. The soundtrack has more panting than a Fleetwood Mac record and at one point a robot serial killer changes into a giant drill, so he can literally screw his victims into a bloody pulp.

The almost naked Witchblade character was toned down for TV thanks to some strategically placed re-colouring. For the DVD, most viewers will be pleased to hear, the series has been restored to its original glory, hence its 15 certificate.... well it's only animation right?!

DVD extras centre on the comic book. There's a video tour of Top Cow with Marc Silvestri and a short on How To Make A Comic Book The Top Cow Way.

Candy Fruit

Fans of Japanese comic books and animated movies need look no futher East than London's Excel Covenction Centre this weekend when it becomes home to the Movie Comic Media Expo.

Manga artists and Anime voice over actors like Johnny Yong Bosch (Bleach, Devil May Cry), who also plays the Black Power Ranger, will face their fans, many of whom will be dressed like their favourite characters or Japanese school girls.

Johnny Yong Bosch

MCM Expo is a glorious geekfest for fantasy and sci-fi fans to indulge in their guilty pleasures. A chance to take part in the  Cosplay competition or meet a Time Lord.

The entertainment and comics convention takes place on May 24 & 25th at London's Royal Victoria Dock.

Visit the official MCM Expo site

Countdown to Manga madness

More about Bleach

The only martial arts movie to keep company with Indiana Jones at Cannes Film Festival this year is Kung Fu Panda. The Dreamworks animation does however count a couple of Asian superstars amongst its cast fronted by Jack Black, Angelina Jolie and Dustin Hoffman. Jackie Chan and Lucy Lui provide the voices for Masters Monkey and Viper respectively.

 Good, Bad & the Wierd

Also showing out of competition is Ji-woon Kim’s Korean Western The Good, The Bad and The Wierd which I talked about last week.

Competing for the Palme D’Or is Chinese documentary maker Zhangke Jia with Er Shi Si Cheng Ji, a drama set in Chengdu , currently in the news as one of the areas affected by China’s tragic earthquake. It tells the stories of eight people affected by the closure of a state owned factory to make way for luxury apartments and stars Joan Chen, Lu Liping and Zhao Tao. Sounds a bit like a Chinese Clocking Off.

Unsurprising the category that best represents Asian cinema is Un Certain Regard, a showcase of 20 films from different cultures selected for their originality.

Tokyo!

The most intriguing prospect is Tokyo!, a film composed of 3 chapters showing the city as viewed by 3 foreign directors. Shaking Tokyo is directed by Joon-ho Bong who scripted and directed the most successful Korean movie of all time, The Host. He tells the story of a hikkomori, someone who has withdrawn from contact with the outside world for the security of his apartment, who falls in love with a pizza delivery girl during an earthquake. Merde directed by Leos Carax concerns a mysterious sewer dwelling man who spreads panic in the streets of the city through a series of provocative acts. Interior Design from director Michel Gondry tells the surreal tale of a lonely woman who discovers something strange after she moves to Tokyo with her partner.

Chen Chang who played Dark Cloud in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and will shortly appear in John Woo’s Chinese historical epic Red Cliff, stars in Ting Che, a film from Taiwanese director Mong-Hong Chung. Part detective story, part comedy and part melodrama, it tells the adventures of Chen Mo and the eccentric characters he meets on his quest to free his double parked car and save his marriage.

Soi Cowboy is a co-Thai/UK production directed by Thomas Clay. A large European man and a small pregnant Thai woman live together in near silence. He is her escape from Soi Cowboy, Bangkok’s red light district where the couple met. She has a growing collection of cuddly toy animals and he takes Viagra. Meanwhile a teenage mafia enforcer is ordered to kill his older brother.

Ocean Flame

Ocean Flame is a Hong Kong film based on a novel by iconic Chinese writer Shuo Wang about a blackmailer, Wong Yiu, who is driven to kill his controlling waitress girlfriend in a bid for freedom. Eight years later, freed from jail, he gets a gun who goes looking for her mother.

Japanese horror director Kiyoshi Kurosawa (no relation to Akira) is showing Tokyo Sonata, a film he directed and co-wrote. It is a portrait of an ordinary Japanese family in disintegration. The father conceals the truth when he loses his job. The eldest son hardly ever returns from college. The youngest son is secretly taking piano lessons. The mother whose role is to try keep the family together, cannot find the will to do so.

With works from China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Thailand, Asian cinema is well represented this year but one has to wonder, where is John Woo’s Red Cliff?

Offical Cannes Film Festival site

The Good, The Bad and The Wierd

Olympic race for John Woo's Red Cliff

Host sequel is a prequel

Anime collectors will not be able to resist adding a further 3 DVDs to their shelves when  Naruto Unleashed: Series 3 Part 2 hits the stores on May 26th.

It will take the Anime blockbuster up to a whopping 78 episodes, not taking into account Series 4 Parts 1 and 2 which are already scheduled for release later in the year, begging the question can we have too much of a good thing?

Naruto is already the most popular animated series in Japan where the Manga books have sold over 59 million copies and is the number 1 kids TV show in the US. Not forgeting the video games franchise which, when it lands on the PS3, will make it available on all the major games consoles.

It's easy to get sucked in to the story of Naruto Uzumaki, a young Genin (lowest ranking student) in the ninja school of Hidden Leaf Village whose body imprisons the spirit of the Demon Fox.

Although by this part of the series, the story mainly concerns Sasuke's duel with Gaara (a sort of Genin version of the Sandman) and the villain Orichimaru's battle with the Hokage, the ancient protector of Leaf Village.

The series is brilliantly illustrated and coloured in a style that reminds me very much of Princess Mononoke, but the resemblance need not have stopped there.  The episodes would have benefitted immensely by a bit of choice editing for the DVD format into something approaching movie length.

Even by just chopping out the titles, recap sequences and the credits,  the whole thing could have been cut by a third without even losing one iota of the plot or any of the action.

As it stands, Series 3 Part 2 is a bit of an endurance test until the pace picks up. And do rival ninjas really need to debate all that existential angst in every episode? Let their shuriken do it for them I say.

It had me hooked by the end though,  which is why I now not only want to see Series 4, but I am even more keen to see the spin-off  Naruto Movie: Ninja Clash In The Land Of Snow which was out on UK DVD only last December.

Now if I can only decide whether I prefer to get the video game on Xbox or DS...

 Moonlit Hunting Ground

Addicted to the anarchy of Bleach , I am already pining for the next box set after the cliffhanger ending of Series 1. Until then there is Black Lagoon Vol 2 which is out on DVD on May 19th.

Black Lagoon features four episodes of the kind of Anime I grew up on - excessively violent, coarsely expletive laden, cartoons for grown-ups. Well, not for kids at any rate.

It's a suicidally grim affair, at times made unintentionally funny due to the pedantic translation of the subtitles. Cue the theme song:

'I have big gun, I took it from my Lord
Sick with Justice I just wanna feel you
I'm your angel, only a ring away
You make me violate you, no matter who you are
It's all up to you, no one lives forever,
Been burn in hell, by all those pigs out there
It's always been hell from when I was born,
They make me violate them no matter who they are...

I'll put ou your misery, You made a mess
For Christ sakes, this rotten world
Shit out of luck, go with my vision
Light up the fire, right on the power
Weapon... I have it all.'

 Calm Down, Two Men

It follows the adventures of the Revy, Rock, Dutch and Bennie Boy, aka the Black Lagoon shipping company, scavengers and lowlifes for hire who, when they're not threatening to kill each other, come up against Neo-Nazis and gun smuggling nuns.

Imagine modern-day pirates given the Pulp Fiction treatment but instead of John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson is teamed up with Uma Thurman in a Lara Croft meets Black Mamba guise. It's lots of people pointing guns at each other and crooks discussing the finer points of business over a hot brew (only in this case it's tea not coffee).

The camera angles are great, the violence uncompromising and the language is, without putting too fine a point on it, offensive. 'Jungle Bunnie' is one phrase that immediately springs to mind.

The only disappointment is that the dvd ends just when things are really getting interesting with the arrival of (and I quote) a "killer robot from the future" dressed in a French Maid's outfit.

Where will they go with this next? I can't wait to find out. Been burn in hell indeed.

Check out my Gallery section for lots more screen shots.

Black Lagoon Vol 2 features the episodes: Eagle Hunting and Hunting Eagle , Moonlit Hunting Ground, Calm Down, Two Men & Rasta Blasta.