This Week in Japan: The Show You Can Only Own

Five things from Japan this week. One of them is about a show you can hold in your hand but cannot stream. We will get there.

On the desk

Last week I said I was starting Chainsmoker Cat. Verdict, first watch: that show is super raunchy. It is not for the weak. You will see more poop than you will see boobs, is what I have noticed just off my first watch. Not mad, just curious.

Fuller ranking once I am deeper in. The new Ghost in the Shell is still on the list, I did not get to it yet, so that is something I get to in the next week or two. It is not going anywhere. Probably.

New on the desk: Interspecies Reviewers, which is basically a hentai with a little bit of a storyline. I have seen the first few episodes and I enjoyed it despite it being basically hentai. My girlfriend also enjoyed it, so we have been having fun watching something like that together. Who would have known. If you had told fifteen year old me, you will be watching comedy hentai with your girlfriend, I would have said you are crazy.

Here is the part that belongs on this blog. That show is incredibly difficult to find, especially if you want to own the physical edition. The Blu-rays are going for an easy eighty dollars and they sell quick, and you cannot really stream it anywhere. There is history behind that: Funimation picked it up for the Winter 2020 season, then pulled it three episodes in, saying it fell outside the company's standards. Other platforms followed. The discs became the only real way to own it, and the market noticed. A licensed show, dropped by its own licensor, now trading like a bootleg. Real.

As for how I am watching it, I have high friends in low places.

One more thing. I just picked up a batch of Interspecies Reviewers Weiss Schwarz cards, a couple hits and a stack of singles. The better ones may take a trip to CGC. The singles will hit the shop for anyone to grab and start their own collection. More on that when they land.

One Piece breaks a 26 year habit

The God Valley movie is officially set for summer 2027, with a second film, BAAD, slated for 2029. Every One Piece movie since 2000 has been an original side story. God Valley adapts canon, the incident the manga spent years treating as a locked room.

Twenty six years of filler films and the first time they open the vault it is that. Cool.

Gintama, reanimated, on Netflix

The Yoshiwara in Flames arc got the full reanimation treatment and landed on Netflix globally this week. That makes two beloved properties redrawn from scratch this year, counting the Science SARU Ghost in the Shell. Studios have noticed that redoing the good part is safer than making a new part.

Is it cynical? Sure. Does the arc rule? Also sure.

Your Name turns ten

Makoto Shinkai marked the film's tenth anniversary this week by sharing early concept art from 2016. Ten years since half the internet watched two strangers swap bodies and quietly reorganized its feelings about anime films. The concept art shows how much of the final film was already there in the first sketches.

Ten years. Check how that number feels and report back.

Oshi no Ko, final season teaser

Season four got a teaser visual and trailer this week, and it is the last one. The series that opened with the worst first episode gut punch of its decade gets to choose its own ending, which in this industry is rarer than it should be.

Endings on purpose. We support this.

That is the week. The cards are coming to the shop soon. In due time.