Descriptions of the shows for Spring '06, this time from the Rev DFS. Regular Features! Gankutsuou: Picking up where we left off last fall, as the Count of Monte Cristo continues to unfold his elaborate scheme of vengeance upon Parisian high society. We're starting with episode 15, which is a key turning point with a really cool plot twist. Honey & Clover: A new feature, running 24 episodes altogether (so it will continue into next fall). Light shoujo comedy-drama about the lives and loves of starving students at a Tokyo-area art college. By turns absurdly funny and painfully realistic. Banner of the Stars: Sequel to last semester's Crest of the Stars, featuring the same odd couple of heroes thrust into the vanguard of massive interstellar warfare. As befits the more epic scope, it looks a fair bit sharper than the original series. 13 episodes. The above will be shown an episode a week. Accompanying them for the first four weeks, we have four recent TV series. Paradise Kiss: Detailed, realistic sort of neo-shoujo romance, based on a manga originally serialized in a fashion magazine, about a high-school girl drafted to model for a motley crew of design students. The visuals are very detailed and the ending theme song, for whatever reason, is by Franz Ferdinand. We'll watch the first four episodes. Blood+: TV sequel to Production IG's movie about a teenage vampire slayer. In her new incarnation, Saya is a little less cold-blooded than before, and the plot is a fair bit more complex this time around. Again, the first four episodes. Mushishi: A peculiar, but compelling drama about a man capable of seeing and communicating with mysterious nature spirits. I like to unhelpfully characterize it as Princess Mononoke without any of the action or drama. Pretty, calm, and thoughtful. Two episodes on tap. Aria: Another light, character-driven drama about a young girl studying to become a gondolier on the flooded surface of terraformed Mars. Very sweet, bordering on the schmaltzy, but it doesn't go too far overboard. Again, two episodes. Week five begins the Spring 2006 '80s Re-Education Campaign, spotlighting some of the finer features of Reagan-era Japanese animation. So, we have a classic movie. Dirty Pair Project EDEN: Trouble Consultants Kei and Yuri shoot the shits out of genetically-engineered slime creatures while anything and everything that can blow up does. Good goofy sci-fi fun for the whole family (our heroes just barely succeed in staying fully clothed for the length of the feature). Weeks six through eight have one regular feature, plus three irregular one-hour items in succession. Angel Heart: A new TV series based on Hojo Tsukasa's very retro comic strip, a sequel to his classic City Hunter. Ryo Saeba, Tokyo's greatest gun for hire, languishes in retirement after the death of his one true love, but she lives on after a fashion in the body of a comatose Triad assassin. Over-the-top gunfights and pervy slapstick in the finest Tsukasa tradition. Three episodes. Kyou Kare Ore Wa!: A one-hour OVA starring two teenage students who simultaneously decide to take up careers in juvenile delinquency. Lots of yucks and pointless violence. Kaleido Star Legend of Phoenix: A slickly-produced new OVA chronicling further adventures of the Kaleido Stage circus performers. Prefectural Earth Defense Force: Back by popular demand, the legendary adventures of high-school earth defenders battling the insidious menace of the Phone Pole Team. A late-'80s classic poking fun at every available target. Some of the funniest animation ever produced by human hands. The week of March 14 is spring break, and there will be no meeting scheduled, although an irregular not-COUP meeting will be held for those still in town (features to be announced). Week nine, on the 21st, delivers another classic movie. Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam -- Heirs to the Stars: We mean it this time, because we actually have a subtitled cut in hand. The heroes of the Anti-Earth United Government saddle up in their bad-ass robots to combat the grasping oppression of the Titans. Quattro Bajeena is your daddy. This movie edits together the events of the first third of the original 1985 TV series, with many newly-produced sequences showcasing gorgeous animation. Weeks ten through thirteen will have one regular feature, plus a bunch of irregular odds and ends. Combustible Campus Guardress: The regular feature, of which we'll see four episodes, is a somewhat-forgotten favorite from the early '90s about way-over-the-top battles between supernatural evil and overpowered high-school kids. Sharp-looking and really, really goddamn silly. Kino no Tabi: On week ten we'll check out the latest short OVA release starring a quiet young wanderer and his talking motorcycle. Kamichu!: Weeks ten and eleven will each have another episode of the fall-semester favorite about a young girl having godhood thrust upon her. Sasuga no Sarutobi: On week eleven, we'll have one more episode of this bit of '80s wackiness about a perfectly rotund young ninja master. In this outing, he battles the technologically-advanced dimwits of rival Spyner High School. Silent Mobius: On week twelve, we'll check out another throwback, the original movie based on Kia Asamiya's long-running comic about an all-female police force battling demons in near-future Tokyo. Only one hour, but suitably epic, and we have a nicely-encoded version from laserdisc source. Densha Otoko: Week thirteen rounds things out with the first 50-minute episode of a recent live-action sleeper, about a lonely geek's painfully awkward attempts to find love. For that extra '80s edge, this episode features a riff on Gainax's legendary Daicon animation clips. And finally, we close the semester on week fourteen (April 25) with an undisputed '80s heavyweight. Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind: Now available on DVD after oh-so-long, Hayao Miyazaki's magnum opus. Rollicking epic eco-fantasy with animation that easily holds up, even after 22 years. But wait, there's one more item. Gankutsuou will conclude with its 24th episode, four weeks shy of the end of the semester. As such, its four remaining timeslots will be given to another TV series. Boku Patarillo!: Very, very weird. Very, very funny. Patarillo is the child dictator of a tiny, fantastically wealthy nation, who passes his time with obnoxious antics involving his enormous supporting cast of effeminate sycophants and henchmen. Particularly Bancuran, the absolutely two hundred percent gay MI6 agent whose nominal purpose is to keep an eye on the little thug. Quite the rarity (a subtitled version has never been widely distributed), and well worth seeing. You may have seen the recent spinoff, Patarillo Saiyuki, which is miserable shit. The original is an entirely different proposition.