You hear "documentary" and you expect one or all of these: Controversy (Fahrenheit 911), insight (anything historical), or beauty (Winged Migration).

Animals: Friend or Food has little of the first two, and makes a token attempt at the third, following a nondescript Canadian as he runs his first animal farm in Nova Scotia, from purchasing the livestock to slaughter.

The title gives you the impression that a vegetarian or a hippie is behind this, and filmmaker Jason Young does sport the long hair and scruffy beard. But Young is not only a meat-eater, but seems to have few reservations about the issue. He just wants to see what being a livestock farmer is like, and whether being closer to pigs, steer and rabbits will alter his view of food. No statistics on animals slaughte...Read the entire review

In recent years, home runs have been the highlight of baseball. The exploits of Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds, and the like have captured our wonder and put fans in the stands. Blame it on steroids, blame it on tighter stitching on the ball, blame it on improved weight training, whatever the cause, homers are more frequent and get all the oohs and aahs.

Maybe not forgotten, but mostly treated as a poor stepchild, are the power pitchers. Guys like Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez and Kerry Wood are in the background nowadays. They get their due here in MLB Productions' Pure Heat: Ultimate MLB Flamethrowers, an hour-long series of profiles and interviews with and about the best power pitchers the game has ever seen.

The most surprising a...Read the entire review

Sometimes, action just isn't enough. That's the case with the Overman King Gainer series, an action-packed, poorly told story about a bleak future in Siberia.

Corporations control the last human settlement of the world, Domepoli, keeping a tight reign on the remnants of mankind. A group of settlers decides to leave the city, forming a giant Exodus to a new promised land, Yapan. For reasons yet unknown (and, possibly, never known) the military powers that be can't allow this Exodus to go on.

The settlers rely on a group of fighters, led by the handsome and powerful Gain and the talented cyber gamer kid Gainer, to fight off the military, which battles the fleeing colony-to-be at every step. Gainer and the military both utilize Overmen, giant half-biological, half-machine monstrosities tha...Read the entire review

Sex and magic never paired so strangely as they do in Maburaho.

In this colorful, quick-paced harem anime, we follow Kazuki, an underwhelming teen magic user, who can only use his powers a limited number of times before he turns to dust. He becomes the envy of every other boy at the magic school he's in, however, when three gorgeous girls begin vying for him, due to the fact he comes from the most powerful line of magic users ever. Let the chaos-in-short-skirts ensue.

Little by little over the first two DVD volumes, Kazuki has been forced to use his magic, and we've reached the point where he only has three spells left at his disposal. While the girls – Yuna, Kuriko and Rin – try to discover a way to increase Kazuki's spell count, he con...Read the entire review

It might just be me, but there's something about space that makes a bad story better.

This was the case of Shuten Doji: Nightmare, the second volume of Go Nagai's anime about a demon boy named Jiro. In volume one, Jiro fought back other demons intent on his destruction, and fulfilled his destiny … which apparently only requires him to be ugly and confused. At the end of that first DVD, we watched Jiro get sucked into a (time hole? Demon hole? Worm hole?) portal, where more demons await. Now Jiro is traveling with a demon who doesn't want to kill him, as well as his hot classmate who fell in love with him in volume one.

On the way through the portal, Jiro is separated from his demon and female companions, and gets sucked into space, where he's picked up by a space exploration crew of some sort. With the previous two ...Read the entire review

"For over a thousand generations, the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the old Republic, before the dark times. Before the Empire. A young Jedi named Darth Vader, who was a pupil of mine until he turned to evil, helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights. Vader was seduced by the dark side of the force."

— Obi-Wan Kenobi, Star Wars Episode IV, 1977.

"You were the chosen one! It was said that you would destroy the Sith, not join them. Give balance to the force, not leave it in darkness."

— Obi-Wan Kenobi, Star Wars Episode III, 2005.

The Phantom Menace and Jar-Jar are a distant memory.

Lambasted for t...Read the entire review

MLB Superstars Show You Their Game, a 47-minute long This Week in Baseball episode that few people will ever buy on DVD, would probably sell more copies if it was called Jennie Finch Shows You Her Legs.

That's the big selling point here, not any lessons you'll learn from the dozen major leaguers she hangs with. The Olympic gold medalist, softball champion, and smoking-hot blond plays one-time host of the Major League Baseball show, visiting training camps and All Star games, interviewing players, wearing short-shorts and standing idly by while everyone is thinking the same thing: Is she single?

No one can deny Finch is a superior athlete, with nasty pitches and a winner's mentality. You don't win gold and an NCAA title without being talented. But MLB Superstars Show ...Read the entire review

Usually when you find yourself asking aloud "What the hell is going on?" in anime, you can dismiss the confusion and settle for the eye candy and action. In Kizuna, both are sparse, and both would be welcome distractions to a story that has no discernable plot.

If you're heterosexual, it's nearly impossible to get into yaoi anime, unless it's funny or action-packed. Kizuna is neither. Yaoi, for the anime newbie, is homosexual drama, mostly involving impossibly beautiful men. It's like most of what Wolfe Video in San Francisco puts out on DVD, except animated and very Japanese. It doesn't necessarily have to be erotic, just gay.

Kizuna is erotic, and may send a tingle up a gay man's spine, but even the most simple-minded of yaoi fans have got to be wondering where the s...Read the entire review

The tale of Wolf's Rain comes to a close in this seventh volume, and it's depressing as hell.

Hope for our traveling band in these final four episodes is scarce, as they attempt to finish what they set out to do 26 episodes earlier: open a paradise only accessible to wolves, a mystical species (which can take human form ) in a world where mankind is destroying itself. Every turn on this DVD is chock full of tragedy, a closing to a lovely (but moody) anime that was either really, really smart, or purely manipulative.

If you fully fall into the journeys of your anime characters, you might come away pissed and teary-eyed, shaking your fist at creators Stu...Read the entire review

Bring me the head of the guy who thought Star Ocean EX would make for a good anime series. He must be stopped before he strikes again.

Star Ocean EX is an abomination, an anime based on a manga based on a video game based on every unoriginal show ever made, a rotten fruit salad mix of road trip adventure and horrid slapstick comedy. Trying to write a coherent summary of what this show is about is like chewing glass. Star Ocean EX started off as a boy (Claude) lost from his father's space ship, sent to a new and uninteresting world. That was episode one. Now, through 14 episodes of this show, it's about stupid, brightly dressed characters fumbling about, finding trouble, with no sense of direction, and about introducing these bright, fumbling characters every other episode, without devel...Read the entire review

Can a samurai fall in love? Are samurai allowed to be vulgar? Is it OK for a samurai to get high? Can a story about samurais include a history lesson about 1950's San Francisco hippies?

In Samurai Champloo they can.

By now you should know Champloo isn't your average samurai tale. Two morally opposite sword-wielders accompany a girl in her search for a samurai that smells of sunflowers, scrapping for food and gold on their journey by working odd jobs and performing strange tasks. Why are they searching for this samurai? I don't think they know, and it doesn't really matter. Champloo is about fascinating and flashy characters on a road trip, about how the trio is going to overcome the next obstacle in their path and find their next meal. Sometimes they find sex along th...Read the entire review

If you're a fan of the San Francisco Giants, San Diego Padres or Anaheim Angels (aka the "Close to Riverside, not that far from San Diego, just a stone's throw away from" Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim) then you have one thing in common: you hate those Dirty Dodgers.

San Diego: No championship.

San Francisco: No championship.

Anaheim: One title, courtesy the 2002 Giants' Dusty Baker.

L.A.: Five World Series titles.

The only reason Oakland doesn't spit and curse at the sight of Dodger Blue is because the A's have four World Series titles and split two World Series appearances against the Dodgers. They don't expend as much energy as the rest of us hating the Dodgers and their fans.

The fans don't have a pulse. They show up during the top of the third, only to leave during the seventh inning ...Read the entire review

The wonderful thing about DVD is that every fan of a champion can relive their team's greatest moments. A personal favorite of mine is the 2003 Fiesta Bowl national title game, where undefeated Miami lost to undefeated Ohio State in double overtime. It very well may be the most replayed DVD in my collection. Die-hard fans can watch the same victory over and over again, to the point where they can recite the commentators' every line. We watch these DVDs repeatedly because they never fail to send a shiver up our spines, and – admit it, wimp – maybe bring a tear or two.

Championship DVDs are perfect preseason fare. They're even better when our team doesn't win it all, because we can look back, and remember what was. For New England Patriots fans, the Super Bowl XXXIX Ch...Read the entire review

Guessing who was going where in the 2005 NFL draft was a real crap shoot for everyone, what with no clear-cut top star. You knew San Francisco would use the No. 1 pick for a quarterback and some brave team would take a risk on the troubled Ohio State star Maurice Clarett.

That being said, 4th & Goal Films, the makers of the 2005 Draft Preview DVD, should stick to scouting, and leave the draft-day guess-work to the NFL beat writers. They got zero team selection predictions correct in this DVD.

Sure, this was a tough year, but they didn't even luck out and get one pick right. They call Texas linebacker Derrick Johnson the best pick in the draft and say he'll go with the three pick to Cleveland (pick 15 by Kansas City); USC wideout Mike Williams is tabbed for pick 12 (pick 10); and they say Cal QB Aaron Rodgers was going to SF with the No. 1 (pick 24, Gre...Read the entire review

More than one dominatrix, magic-wielders, a 12-foot-tall matriarch, a hero named Carrot, the end of the world. C'mon, this is great anime!

Sorcerer Hunters isn't for everyone – too cheesy for some, too serious for others – but it is for you, dear action anime fans. This 1995 offering ranges from sexy and light to vicious and morose. It's got decent animation, an above average story, and a sweet cast of characters. It's got a great villain, the heavily cloaked, methodical Zaha, and a wonderful hero in Carrot, the lanky, oversexed, always hungry young man who everyone else in the show revolves around. And don't forget the dominatrixes.

This is a world of magic, where the ruling class of sorcerers has gotten too powerful, too willing to inflict pain on the muggels...Read the entire review

Go Nagai needs a hug. A bear hug. It could be from anyone, a stranger on the street even. Just as long as someone out there lets Nagai know that the world isn't all evil, that there's more to life than demons, devils and depressing tales of woe.

Devil Lady, Devilman, Demon Lord Dante, Nagai loves his evil beasties. He can't stay away. The devils and demons are at the forefront again in Shuten Doji, and they're at some of their least interesting in this silly, meandering story about a boy who comes from demons.

We open with two, large blue demons, who fight through an ancient forest, amongst giant space craft, and a modern-day cemetery. One of the demons has a baby in its mouth. How are they jumping around from place to place, time to time? How did the ba...Read the entire review

In 1992, the American home video industry was laughing at this little start-up company out of Texas, which had licensed a Japanese "cartoon," Devil Hunter Yohko, for the domestic video store market. Anime? On store shelves? Please. Who's going to buy this?

Today, ADV Films is the largest distributor of anime in America, with nearly 700 anime releases under its belt, putting out 10-15 DVDs a month. It's the biggest and best-known distributor of anime in America, and is the leader in a profitable and expanding corner of home entertainment.

Who's laughing now?

It all started with Devil Hunter Yohko, an odd little action show filled with fan service, which has now been released in a three-disc, complete collection set. This show – which follows a demon fighter who shows off h...Read the entire review

When a show looks this good, does the story matter?

Appleseed is the first anime feature ever done completely in 3D CGI, a blend of motion-capture technology, 3D computer animation, and stylized two-dimension character animation. Voice actors had sensors attached to their faces during the dubbing process, actors played out action scenes with motion-capture, and characters and mecha went through a three-step process – conceptual, digital layout, design – before the finished project hit theaters. We've come a long way from those cheap 3D glasses. The creators are calling it the "Birth of 3D Live Anime." Call it a wo...Read the entire review

What happened to the aliens?!

In the opening salvo of Please Twins!, a young boy who's only tie to his past is a picture of him and a girl as children, sees the house in the background of the photo in a news report about an alien encounter. Two girls – both claiming to be his sister, and carrying the same photo – move in with our boy Maiku, and try to find out who's related to him, and, subsequently, who's going to bed with him.

Being the sequel to Please Teacher!, where the premise revolved around an alien teacher, I figured this ET arc would be hashed out at some point over the course of this show, and wrapped up in a nifty package in this fourth and final volume. But no, the only evidence of our alien friends to the end (ot...Read the entire review

All I can think about is everything I could have accomplished during those two hours.

Because those hours I spent with Star Ocean EX Vol. 2, one of the least enjoyable modern anime I've sat through, are a painful memory, for everyone involved. If I wasn't reviewing it, I would have turned this show off a few minutes in, fearing my TV would hold a grudge. Star Ocean EX makes anything with the title combination of "wedding" and "peach" sound really, really good. Everything Steven Seagel ever made is vastly superior to this anime series, even that one where he's karate chopping goons for the well-being of the Eskimos.

Based on a video game - which was then made into a manga - this show is about Claude, a young man whisked away to a not-so-strange planet (it looks ...Read the entire review

Is Black Jack in love? He's had other girls infatuated with him through his medical adventures, and he's most always rebuffed them. But when a crippled beauty suffering from a disease caused by biowaste meets our super surgeon in Biohazard, Black Jack may be interested in more than her ailment.

Black Jack has been called to a Japanese bayside town, where years of a company dumping toxic waste into the bay has taken its toll on the locals. Many people are sick, and the best medical minds in the world are stumped as to how to cure them. But Black Jack, our unlicensed medical miracle worker for hire, ...Read the entire review

The endgame of Wolf's Rain is near, as all the principle characters converge in the city of the evil Lady Jaguara. Friends are being held captive by this strange noble, and it may take some sacrifices to set them free.

Wolf's Rain follows the future of a warring mankind, where wolves are a mystical creature believed extinct by most humans. A pack of the last remaining wolves – which can look like humans in order to blend into society – has undertaken a journey to find a mythical paradise, said only to be accessible by wolves. While a war between human nobles and commoners has engulfed the land, one noble, Jaguara, is capturing wolves to control paradise. Another human, the tired and angry Quent, has made it his life's mission to destroy all the ...Read the entire review

So the giant walrus is a bit much, but this fifth volume of Wolf's Rain is a little smarter than it appears on the surface.

Short version, Wolf's Rain is a seven DVD-volume road trip undertaken by wolves that can look like humans. Longer version, it's a different take on the future of a decimated mankind, following the trials of the last existing wolves, living silently among the remaining humans by morphing into them. In this world, wolves are supposedly extinct, and are a mystical creature found in mankind's campfire stories. They're said to be the only creatures able to find paradise.

A set of young wolves has been convinced to seek out paradise by a white wolf named Kiba, a handsome devil in...Read the entire review

I think this is what Harry Potter would have looked like if the Japanese had gotten their hands on it first.

In the world of Maburaho, where status in society is based on magical ability and how many times you can use it, young Kazuki is on the bottom of the totem pole. Other students in the elite Aoi Academy can use magic thousands of times. Kazuki can use magic eight times before he's dust … literally. Cats have more lives than this guy has talent.

But despite being the school loser who everyone makes fun of, Kazuki one day finds himself to be a hot commodity: He walks into his dorm room to...Read the entire review

A long disproven medieval "science" as the basis of an anime set in the early 1900s? No big-breasted females or mecha battles? No constant, blazing gun battles or slashing samurai sword fights? No tales of battling demons? No brow-furrowing detectives? And it's already being called one of the greatest anime ever? Wow.

Does Fullmetal Alchemist meet the hype? It's too early to tell for sure, but it does pretty well without robots, constant fan service, or hot girls with guns. It entertains with excellent animation, heartfelt storytelling, and a unique idea. What if alchemy wasn't a modern day joke? What if the only place to get a practicing alchemist certific...Read the entire review

OK, what's with the get-up, kid? A young psychic crime investigator – dressed like Boy George and sounding like him too – uses powerful runes and innate abilities to help solve crimes in Tokyo Babylon. With the help of a similarly talented twin sister and a family friend, the boy shows maturity beyond his years in his abilities.

Split into two parts, Tokyo Babylon is two separate OVA stories based on a manga (and it's the prequel to X: The Movie), following a trio of psychic private investigators, led by the young Subaru Sumeragi, an onmyouji, or shaman. Usi...Read the entire review

Fear not: Astro Boy hasn't been destroyed. He's been roughed up a little, in the name of American children's programming, but Astro's a tough little bugger. It would be hard to completely mess up a modern remake of the original anime superhero.

In the future, robots are an everyday part of human life, and the machines are slowly evolving. Artificial Intelligence has been born, and society is changing to accommodate this fact. But there are humans who can't stand the thought of robots that can't be controlled. And there are robots that want humanity wiped out. Amid this turmoil, a robot boy named Astro is born. With a mind and body more powerful than any ...Read the entire review

And you thought the first volume of Paranoia Agent was a trip.

A detective story set in a creepy state of wide-spread psychosis, this show is a look at confused, everyday people and the boy who haunts them.

In a Tokyo suburb, people are being assaulted. The culprit is described as a young kid in golden roller skates, and his weapon of choice is a bent, golden baseball bat. His victims seem random, yet somehow they're connected. All were dealing with a personal crisis of some sort before their encounter with thi...Read the entire review

See, this is why fewer Japanese teens get pregnant. If American teens got laid as often as the characters of Please Twins, nobody would be a parent before the age of 21.

In Please Twins, two girls move in with a software designer. All three own the same picture, showing the house they've moved into with a brother and sister in the front yard. Both girls – and the local school teacher, and a gay guy at the school – are infatuated with our boy Mike. One of the girls, Miina or Karen, is Mike's sister, and none of them are getting in bed together before this situation is resolved.

This third volume opens up with a shocker: We find out the flaming gay kid, who's been practically dry-humping Mike this entire time, isn't quite so gay. And it's the teacher he's inf...Read the entire review

Let's be clear about this from the beginning: Yes, Tree of Palme is Pinocchio on crack.

Beautifully animated, chock full of flashy characters, and confusing as hell, it's a movie that has a ton of style, yet chokes on an overabundance of substance.

Palme is a puppet machine, built from a wood that acts like a brain, holding both emotion and memory. If he stays still in the sun for too long, Palme sprouts roots and soon becomes a tree. Quiet since the wife of his creator died, he only becomes lively, for unknown reasons, when a giant air fish wanders by. And Palme hasn't spoken in years.

That all changes when a mysterious woman comes calling, carrying the mystical sap of a rare tree and a strange egg, which slowly b...Read the entire review

Waaaaaiiiit a minute. Haven't I reviewed this DVD before?

Due either to a lack of judgment or some subconscious form of movie masochism, I picked Duel Masters: The Good, The Bad and The Bolshack out of the review pile. Convinced I would be seeing Yu-Gi-Oh! all over again, Duel Masters was worse in one way, but better in another. It actually had me laughing, but looked worse than its more popular predecessor. Duel Masters: The Good, The Bad and The Bolshack is...Read the entire review

Here's a suggestion for the characters in Please Twins: DNA test. Seven episodes in and no one's thought of it yet.

The journey of two girls, one guy, and no birth certificates continues, as Miina and Karen make an agreement not to make any sexual advances toward their roommate/possible brother Maiku, and to keep all other women away from him.

That's assuming he's not in the closet, of course.

Please Twins follows the dilemma three teenagers find themselves in when two cute girls move in with one boy, and two of them are related. And to make the story last a full 12 episodes, Please Twins takes its sweet time resolving the...Read the entire review

No ecological undertones, no mystical cats to marry, no spiritual wonderment, nary an in-your-face moral lesson to close things out. Just a pig, his plane, and the Adriatic.

Said to be the closest thing to an autobiography of Hayao Miyazaki, Porco Rosso is a light-hearted, nostalgic tale of a freelance air pilot in the post-World War I Mediterranean.

Air pirates plague the land, swooping down on unsuspecting ships in their boat planes, taking what they want. Porco, a WWI fighting ace who has been cursed with the body and face of a pig, is now a gun for hire, invoking fear in the hearts of pira...Read the entire review

It's easy to fall in love with anime movies from Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli, mostly because of the constantly superb visuals and unique stories. But we also love Miyazaki movies because there's a measure of joy to be found in every one.

This goes for the darker, more adult tales too, like Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, the headliner in the group of three, two-DVD Ghibli releases from Disney/Buena Vista. Porco Rosso is the most adult (in a fun way) of the group, The Cat Returns is the one meant to keep the kids entertained for a couple hours, and Nausicaa is the epic...Read the entire review

If you're the sensitive type and found yourself fighting back tears during Bambi, you'll let them flow freely during The Boy Who Wanted to Be a Bear.

This touching, thoughtful family film from Les Armateurs, the French studio behind the Academy Award nominated Triplets of Belleville, is based on an Inuit legend about a boy torn between the human and animal worlds.

The same day a polar bear gives birth to a stillborn cub, an Inuit family gives birth to a new son. The humans name their son Bear after hearing the anguished cries of the mother polar bear. When the father Inuit leaves one day to hunt bear for clothes for his son, the father bear wanders in...Read the entire review