At an anime convention I attended over the summer, Alien Defender Geo-Armor: Kishin Corps (or Kishin Corps for short) was summarised to me as "people fighting aliens and Nazi robots that shoot swastika lasers". With a description like that, obviously my interest was piqued and I immediately went home to download the 7 episode OVA series. Based on a series of light novels by Masaki Yamada, Kishin Corps is set in an alternate history, specifically during World War II. Amidst the war and destruction, the planet is also hit by an alien invasion, but the two sides seem content on continuing their war despite this aggressive new threat. An orphaned teenager named Taishi suddenly finds himself at the center of a struggle over a mysterious black case entrusted to him by his father, Professor Tokamura. The case contains the controlling mechanism for one of the giant Geo-Armor Robots, and the Japanese Kanto Army, the alien invaders, and the Kishin Corps all want to recover the d...

Power Rangers S.P.D. (or Space Patrol Delta) is the 13th season of the Power Rangers franchise, following on from Power Rangers Dino Thunder. The story takes place in the year 2025, after Earth has welcomed alien beings to live peacefully with the human race. But peace is short lived, as the planet-conquering Troobian Empire turns its destructive attention to Earth. When the Earth's first line of defense, the S.P.D. A-Squad, vanishes without trace, the protection of the planet falls to their replacements: the B-Squad Rangers, and their doglike alien commander, Anubis "Doggie" Cruger. When two reformed thieves join the team as the Red and Yellow S.P.D. Rangers, tensions threaten to tear them apart. With the alien threat growing stronger every moment, the Rangers must put aside their differences and go into action as one. S.P.D. has an excellent group of protagonists. Where I've often found other series' have left particular members underdeveloped at the expens...

A complete set of original Power Rangers Zeo action figures! I've had the red, green, yellow and gold rangers since they were first released, but for some reason never got blue and pink. Managed to get a blue off eBay a couple of months ago but an affordable pink had been eluding me for ages - I seemed to either completely miss auctions or I'd get outbid in the last second. So yeah, I'm pretty happy right now. Hoping I can pick up a gun and blade for Pink and Blue's tonfas at some point.

Bubblegum Crisis is possibly the first anime I ever heard about. When I was younger, any VHS I bought released by ADV (so the Sonic the Hedgehog and Tekken movies) always had an advert for it, and even then it always looked like something I'd enjoy. So here I am, years later, watching the original Bubblegum Crisis OVAs for the very first time. These eight episodes were released between 1989 and 1991. The series takes place in the year 2032 in the city of MegaTokyo. Japan is still slowly piecing itself back together after the destruction of the Second Great Kanto Earthquake. The Genom Corporation, known for their intelligent labour robots (called Boomers), took a major role in the rebuilding of Tokyo, and as a result has become one of the largest corporations in the world. While the Boomers are supposed to serve humanity, in the wrong hands they are a deadly threat. Enter the AD Police force, who are tasked with dealing with any Boomer-related crime in the city. The only proble...

After the frankly superb Transformers: Animated, I was sceptical to see what the next iteration of the Transformers franchise would bring, especially since it was likely to have some sort of movie flavour to it (while I don't particularly oppose the live-action Transformers movies, I'd rather they keep apart from the series'). But despite being developed by first two movie screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, Transformers: Prime isn't quite as movie-influenced as one might expect it to be. Before I look at the story and characters of Prime, it's worth mentioning that this show really is a visual treat - I've not seen any CGI TV series like it before. The humans don't suffer from the "uncanny valley" factor of looking too realistic, but the metal finishes of the robots look amazing and the backdrops (both Earthly and alien) look superb. Even if the writing doesn't sell this show to you, it's worth the watch just for how damn goo...

GoGo Sentai Boukenger was released between 2006-2007 and was the 30th anniversary series for the Super Sentai franchise. The Boukengers are part of the Search Guard Successor foundation, a worldwide organisation that hunts down powerful ancient relics known as Precious. There are many organisations (known as Negative Syndicate) who plot to use these Precious for evil, and it is the Boukengers job to put a stop to them and collect dangerous relics all over the Earth. The Boukengers are made up of Satoru Akashi (Bouken Red), Masumi Inou (Black), Souta Mogami (Blue), Natsuki Mamiya (Yellow) and Sakura Nishihori (Pink). They are later joined by Eiji Takaoka (Bouken Silver), a monk-like warrior who defends the world from demons known as the Ashu. Before I begin this review, I should warn you that's going to be a recurring adjective all the way through it - and that's boring . I found pretty much everything about this show boring. Satoru is just the typical red leader type, whic...

The wait is finally over. After several months of waiting and a pretty frantic scramble for preorders the hotly anticipated Figuarts Gokai Red has arrived. The Gokaigers are the second Super Sentai team to be released in the Figuarts line (after the Shinkengers) and Red is the first to be released of the 6 (Blue, Green and Silver are mass releases, whilst Yellow and Pink are Tamashii web exclusives). Much like Figuarts Shinken Red, Bandai have really outdone themselves on the sculpt. Every detail from the suit is on show and the colours are replicated well (the gold is a little duller than the show versions of the suit, but any brighter and they probably would have had to be chrome which would not only look garish but ruin the overall aesthetic of the figure). The suit's collar is made of a softed plastic, which is good as it means it isn't brittle and gets in the way when posing parts of Gokai Red around that area. The joints are much like the ones Shinken Red had, only ...

At long last, my Go-Onger mini-pla mecha collection is complete! My final review in the series, and the 2nd mini-pla to be released is Gunbir-Oh - consisting of Go-On Green's partner Birca, Go-On Black's partner Gunpherd and the partner-less Carrigator. The set is made up of four boxes - with Carrigator taking up two of the boxes. I personally find that the engines that make up Gunbir-Oh don't need any additional paint as such for extra accuracy, but the silver engine parts on Birca and Gunpherd look much much better painted than they do stickered. On the subject of the stickers, BE VERY CAREFUL WHEN APPLYING THEM. The stickers used for each of their eyes (and to be honest, most of Birca too) are TINY, and could be lost or broken extremely easy. My Carrigator's right eye didn't come off the sticker sheet properly, and was pretty much rendered unusable. I managed to paint him a pretty good substitute eye (which I have thus christened his gimpy eye) but its s...

Another year, another season of Doctor Who over with. And its time for me to once again share my thoughts briefly on this year's offerings. This isn't a proper review as such, but more my opinions and ratings on thoughts on what has been my favourite TV show for as long as I can remember. The season began with 'The Impossible Astronaut' ( ★ ★ ★ ★ ) way back in April. The episode was a very strong start for the season, setting up the main plot for the year with the Doctor's death and the introduction of the Silents, who'd had a lot of hype surrounding them prior to beginning of the season. Not only that, but the episode included extensive shooting in the US, which was also a pretty big deal. Exchanges between the Doctor and River began to feel a lot less groan-inducing, and resulted in some pretty good banter between the two. At this stage Rory and Amy were also working well as a married couple. Unfortunately its second part, 'Day of the Moon' ( ★ ...