Apologies for the lack of updates, I was down with a nasty bout of influenza since last weekend and could summon little energy for anything besides completing my chores at work. The rapidly dropping temperatures in Tokyo ( 9°C and falling ) didn’t make things any better.

I took a day off work on Tuesday to recover and watched a couple of blu-rays at home, including Hellboy II – The Golden Army. Its not out yet in Japan, ( a travesty, I know. ) so I was rather excited watching it the first time. The production, set and character designs are all astounding ( especially if you watched the extras too, particularly the long and elaborate walk through the troll market with Del Toro ), so I guess its especially regrettable that the story couldn’t nearly match the scale and awe of the artistic achievements of the film. Prince Nuada, in particular, having such a strong and overwhelming presence, could have been put to much better use, or so I thought.

The forest god feels like a nod to Mononoke HIme and Miyazaki-san, and the scene where it was pulling its body out of the building, with vines snapping, feels very much like a reference to Tetsuo’s mutated arm in Otomo’s Akira. ( of which Del Toro is a self professed fan too. )

My copy of Freedom blu-ray boxset arrived with Hellboy II and I’ve taken some pictures, but my Nikon is not with me at the moment so I can’t post the pictures yet, I’ll do that early next week. In the meantime, you can read the review of the blu-ray box on HighDefDigest and its available from Amazon here.

Anyone else watched Hellboy II ?