Star Blazers was hands down one of my favorite cartoons when I was a kid, both Quest for Iscandar and Comet Empire. I picked up DVD sets years ago for both, and recently got the Comet Empire finally as well.

But while I knew they were adapted from the original Space Battleship Yamato series, I had never seen the originals. I picked up a "Yamato" collection DVD set per below and have been watching the originals (sub-titled). While the USA versions from childhood will always be extra special to me, these have been amazing!

Yes! Thank you so much for mentioning this, I had forgotten about this series. I started to watch the first part several years ago and remember it being quite good as you mentioned. I'm definitely going to dive back in, awesome suggestion.

Been reading the first volume of the Legend Of The Galactic Heroes light novel that I bought eons ago, it's pretty dang good. But then again I guess there has to be something to it for it to have such a long OVA dedicated to it

Also, for Gundam fans, Netflix is going to have the 0079 films on their platform staring on the 18th

I watched Akira for the first time in decades after recently finishing the manga. The manga obviously has a lot more depth to it since it's over 2000 pages long, but the film is an excellent adaptation. I was impressed with how well the animation held up. The direction is superb and the backgrounds are gorgeous. They basically string the beginning and the ending of the manga together. The personal relationships aren't as strong as they are in the manga with the exception of Kaneda and Tetsuo, and there are a number of characters who are cut from the movie completely, but the biggest difference is that the titular character, Akira, is barely featured in the movie at all. The ending to the manga is drawn out and more detailed, however you still get the general gist of it in the movie. I'm glad I watched the film again and regard it as a nice companion piece to the manga series.

I am watching Gatchaman Fighter/Gatchaman F on dvd.



It takes place right after the end of Gatchaman II.

I tried to make an animated gif of the refreshing orange soda seen in episode one:

Finally got around to watching the original Hellsing from 2006. So much anime and not enough time as the saying goes. I make it a point for grabbing Anime DVD's whenever I find them on discount on Amazon or video used/thrift stores and Hellsing is one that I picked up around 5 years ago along with a few others from an Antique shop.

This is one horrific, strange and bizarre 13 episode 1st season (a shame it never got more seasons) that requires paying great attention. Lots of slower scenes with tons of exposition and set up before delivering some truly insane fights. Alucard doesn't get much development beyond being the ultimate killing machine of lesser monsters and NOBODY connects that he is so powerful because he is the Lord of the Vampires. Is Dracula spelled backwards so great as a disguise?

It is a wonderful darkly gruesome wickedly maniacal series and perhaps some day they will put out Hellsing Ultimate into a complete DVD set. I can only hope, as the prices individually are way too expensive currently.