Bringing our review count up to over 145 are a trio of commentaries on animated pictures from Japan’s Studio Ghibli. Longtime aficionado Randall Cyrenne has added his takes on Whisper Of The Heart from 1995, the bonkers but brilliant 1994 offering Pom Poko, and the less successful My Neighbors The Yamadas from 1999. All three versions are the Disney dubbed Studio Ghibli Collection editions from 2005/06, all of which pass the Cyrenne test at least in their technical specs. Rand particularly warms, as I did, to Pom Poko, which despite a fairly muddled story execution does have something to say about the environment and has fun saying it.

Added to those are the very Japanese-influenced shorts that make up The Animatrix, as featured in Rodney Figueiredo’s very nicely detailed review. It’s a unique concept, not always successful, but always amazing to look at, thanks to its very varied mix of production processes, from black-and-white manga-styled artwork, to saturated colored traditional animation and state-of-the-art computer imagery. Rodney gives the disc high marks across the board and I must say I was impressed when I finally picked this up as part of the Ultimate Matrix mega set a couple of years ago.

Finally today, don’t forget that time is running out to enter our Peter Pan: Platinum Edition Giveaway, so fly on over and submit your name for a chance to win a copy. We’ll be back with more Pan goodness tomorrow, and my full review later in the week.

– Ben.