If you’ve never heard the name Junji Ito or read any of his works, then congratulations. You’ve been able to sleep a little more soundly at night.

Ito is a horror manga artist from Japan who revels in delivering his scares with tales of the strange, unnatural and the unexplainable. And copious amounts of body horror. He’s notorious amongst manga fans for his sheer ability to create nightmare fuel with his style of drawing and his love of putting his story’s protagonists through ungodly amounts of hell.

Out of the over one dozen volumes of his horror collection, and several stand-alone stories that can span many chapters, there are some that stand out above the rest, be it for their superior story or their extreme ability to make us squirm.

These are those exemplars in my book.
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It’s been over 2 years since Season 4 of Venture Bros. ended with “Operation P.R.O.M.” and left us all wondering what was next in store for Dean & Hank, as well as the now huge cast of other main and secondary character we’ve all grown to love. With Seasons 5 and 6 being greenlit, we’ve since had to wait patiently for the rare announcement of progress. (satiated with a single Halloween Special this past year to tide us over)

Looks like the long wait is going to be over this spring, as leaked on an Adult Swim Q&A teaser recently. According to the Venture Bros. Blog (now currently under maintenance. possibly due to the flood of eager fans crowding to test validity), the new season of Venture Bros. will begin airing May 19th. It also featured a slew of screenshots that give hints as to what’s in store for Season 5. I won’t give spoilers away, but some details hinted to in the last episode of Season 4 are pointed to.

Rejoice, VB fans. The wait will soon be over.

Let’s face it: our world is disappointing. We have to pay taxes out the tuckus. We have to work 40+ hour weeks to make ends meet. We have corrupt politicians screwing us over on a daily basis. We have the Westboro Baptists and other fanatics maintaining the status quo. Our world sucks, and it’s just made worse by the fact that we’re told by scientists that the possibility of alternate realities exist. Realities where the slightest divergence in fate can turn you from a pencil-pushing cubicle jockey to the president of Club Awesome.

These are those divergences from our every-day knowns that make us wonder “Why the heck couldn’t I have been born into THAT world?” Where you could be a superhero/villain or leader of a alien rebel militia or a tech-genius millionaire with hot chicks/dudes/whatever just hanging off of you at every turn. Those are the alternate universes that we wish some slight change in the timestream had set us on the path to becoming our every-day norm, for good or for ill.

Mostly for the good, thought. If not the awesome.

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Another year has gone by and another MAGfest is upon us. Last year, Sean Orange and I made the trek to MAGfest X to take part in the 4-day music and gaming geekery that surrounded us, and this year we’ll be doing another round and taking in all the highlights (and even maybe some hilarious lowlights!) that the event has to offer.

This year features 3 special guests in terms of composers. Following up last year’s spectacular appearance by Final Fantasy’s Nobou Uematsu, MAGfest XI has the legendary combined talents of Kuniyo Yamashita (Castlevania, MegaMan X3), Chris Huelsbeck (Turrican Series, R-Type) and the great Yuzo Koshiro (Streets of Rage, Actraiser) gracing the Gaylord National Harbor hotel. This will also be the first time Koshiro will be playing a DJ set in US shores, which provides event-goers with an extra special treat!

There are a huge amount of bands and performances this year as well; 38 concerts and visual performances to be exact! (the largest amount thus far!) Included in the lineup are mainstays such as Metroid Metal, The One-Ups and The Megas, but also included are a ton of new-comers to the MAGfest scene such as Lords of Thunder, Fighting in the Streets and The Tri-Force Quartet. There’s even band-personifications of two of the better institutions for video game music arranging: Overclocked Remix’s Overclocked University and Dwelling of Duels Live! Throw in tons of panelist and entertains like Arin “Egoraptor” Hanson, The Angry Video Game Nerd and yet another return by Jon St. John, and you’ve got the most ambitious MAGfest to date!

The event runs January 3-6 at the Gaylord National Harbor Hotel, Maryland with tell that there are tons of tickets still available at the door. Sean and I will bring coverage of the fun little things we run across at this gamer’s paradise and bring it to you for your viewing enjoyment.

It seems to be that so many cartoons were so beloved in the 1980’s and early 1990’s, that dollar signs could be seen in the eyes of many a television executive in terms of potential goldmines that needed to be further tapped. Granted, many of us remember these original series fondly through the grace of nothing more than nostalgia-tinted glasses, but whatever the case was a lot of the cartoons we grew up with were blessed with awesome. (either cheesy awesome that we didn’t care about much as kids, or through actual honest talent in writing and execution.

And thus, several show saw “comebacks” in the mid-to-late 1990’s and early 2000’s, either as reboots of their original series of sequels, that meant to bank on said nostolgia value and gain the same acclaim that the previous installments gained from much of us.

Sadly, a lot of them failed. Some, miserably so. Either it was because new concepts were being tried that failed, or that concepts that were popular and worked with shows that were made around a certain medium tried the opposite approach and came off looking half-assed at best and utter crap at most. And then there were some that just should have stopped while they were ahead.

These are a few of those.
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The original Voltron cartoon was a childhood favorite for so many of us growing up. For some, it was their introduction of large robot fighters in general, to be accompanied by several others of the time. As with the general 80’s English dubbing of the Japanese GoLion series, Voltron was still rife with action, drama and mecha being the crap out of each other, as well as featuring characters that may have fit a couple of eventual stereotypes but still had personality.
Years later, we dealt with the supposed sequel series, Voltron: 3rd Dimension, whose main purpose wasn’t so much as to continue with the storyline and development that the original series left off with, but rather to simply show off how “unique” it was by being completely 3D rendered and computer generated. The plot and characterization suffered in turn, even though several of the voice actors from the original series had returned to reprise their characters. (Oh Michael Bell, you will always be my first audible animation love)

So after that disappointment, and over a decade going by, when Nickelodeon announced a new cartoon dubbed “Voltron Force”, it was a glimmer of hope for a lot of us oldschool fans. And for the first few episodes, it held the promise of erasing Voltron 3D’s disgrace and forging the path to continue everything as they had been with the original series. However, after the first half of the first season, you might start to notice some things that don’t really add up, or certain inconsistencies start piling up and can no longer be ignored in favor of compromising “Oh, it’ll get better, I’m sure”.

Not so much.

Spoilers, FYI.
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This episode of Rewind centers around of the the best Disney games created for the 4th generation of consoles and handhelds – Disney’s Aladdin. In a day when Epic Mickey and Kingdom Hearts put Disney high up on the gaming food chain, does this older gem stack up for it’s age?

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