The Hyperlogos

Among the Samurai epics available on U.S. shelves, possibly only Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai is more familiar than the Lone Wolf and Cub series, which began in 1970 as a Manga and has branched out into movies, books, American comic books and graphic novels, a television series and even a video arcade game. Chock-full of violence and pithy wisdom, Lone Wolf and Cub has become synonymous with "Samurai" the world over. In this first movie in a series of several, the story is set up and much destruction occurs.

As an import car aficionado, it was pretty much mandatory that I see all of the Fast and the Furious movies - but as a long-time Nissan/Datsun fan, I was deeply disappointed in the first two, in which barely a Nissan is spotted aside from the Skyline. Oh, there's a couple 240SXs off in the background, but you only ever even get a good look at one of them. However, it's widely accepted that Nissan has made the majority of the best drift cars, and so this movie does not share this particular failing.

Innocent hippies and young children everywhere can be expected to enjoy Heisei Tanuki Gassen Pompoko, a rather bizarre story from famed Studio Ghibli and written and directed by Isao Takahata (Hotaru no haka/Grave of the Fireflies, Rupan sansei/Lupin III). It tells the story of some lovable yet fierce Tanuki, the "racoon-dogs" of Japan, who are being chased out of their homes by urban development.

This story has a PG rating which stems from basically two elements; first, there is continual (if minor) violence from the tanuki, as well as continual incitement by some of the tanuki to wage open war against the humans, and they regularly engage in what can only literally be termed acts of terrorism.