Girls' Last Tour (2017*)/Space Runaway Ideon (1980 - 1981/*both Sentai Complete Collection Blu-rays)/Tarzan Goes To India (1962**)/Tarzan's Three Challenges (1963/MGM/**both Warner Archive Blu-rays)/Waterworld (1995/Universal/MVD Arrow Blu-ray)

Picture: B+/C+/B/B/B+ Sound: B+/C+/C+/C+/B+ Extras: C***/D/D/C-/B Main Programs: A-/B+/C+/C+/B

PLEASE NOTE: The Tarzan Blu-rays are now only available from Warner Bros. through their Warner Archive series and can be ordered from the link below.

Now for three different worlds of adventure...

It's the end of the world ...but this is where our story begins. After some great war, it seems like almost all life is gone and all that remains are vast ruins that they once called cities. All except two girls Chito and Yuu, as they travel together they search for food, supplies and other survivors they try and make sense of what was life like before the war. But even in a ruined wasteland they find and discover unexpected beauty and wonder ...and somehow find the hope to journey on.

In Girls' Last Tour (2017), Chito and Yuu are two young girls and they have been traveling together since they could remember. They were born after a great war and now seem to be last humans alive. They survive each day by searching the ruins of human cities for anything that will help them survive or fuel their tank. Day by day they journey through an endless city searching for their purpose and hoping they may find other survivors and signs of life.

This was a sci-fi surreal anime, it is more about the journey than the story itself... 2 girls traveling through a strange world with beautiful and vast vistas with ethereal music.

Extras include Japanese commercial and promos, clean opening and closing animations and trailers, but a more elaborate box set has been issued.

Episodes are...

Starry Sky / War - Chito and Yuu travel through a vast underground factory searching for a way out. After finding a way out they discover a crashed plan with food and ammo inside.

Bath / Journal / Laundry - Chito and Yuu takes shelter in a snowstorm and discover a working power plant with hot water and have a bath. Yuu burns Chito's book in a fire. After the storm the girls take the chance to wash their clothes with the melting snow and discover a fish.

Encounter / City / Streetlights - Chito and Yuu meet another survivor Kanazawa who is trying to make map of the city ruins and helps them find a way to the upper levels. Chito and Yuu follow the streetlights deeper into the city.

Photograph / Temple - Chito and Yuu learn on how to take photographs and take pictures of strange stone statues in the city. Chito and Yuu discover a temple and a room filled with light.

House / Nap / The Sound of Rain - Chito and Yuu spend a night in an apartment and wonder what the city was like when it was full of people. Chito has a nightmare where Yuu turns into a giant and eats her. During a rainfall Chito and Yuu listen to sounds the rain makes on objects and they make 'music'.

Accident / Technology / Takeoff - Chito and Yuu encounter another survivor Ishii and helps her build an airplane and she helps them repair their tank.

Labyrinth / Cooking - Chito struggles to overcome her fear of heights. Chito and Yuu discover a factory where they make rations and they make their own food.

Memory / Spiral / Moonlight - Chito and Yuu discover a graveyard and find things that people once valued. The girls discover another tower to a higher level and are forced to take a dangerous path. The girls discover beer and get drunk.

Technology / Aquarium / Life - The girls discover an aquarium/fish factory with a single fish and a robot guarding it and decide to help protect it from a malfunctioning larger construction robot.

Train / Wavelength / Capture - Chito and Yuu rides a train and explores various machine inside it. The girls encounter a strange lifeform that communicates through the radio and decides to keep it as their pet.

Culture / Destruction / The Past - Chito discovers a book in English and a war robot and discover it's weapons are still active.

Connection / Friends - Chito and Yuu learns of what happen in the past that destroyed the world and discover their 'pet' is actually an alien and they are eating the technologies that caused the destruction of the world. The aliens tell them however they have not search everywhere and there maybe other survivors on higher levels of the city.

When Earth colonists set on the planet Solo they had no idea that they would discover the legendary mecha Ideon, but on it's discovery they are discovered by a second human race known as the Buff clan who is seeking to claim Ideon as their own and to takeover the universe ...by any means necessary. The colonists only hope lies in Ideon to help protect from the vast space armada of the Buff clan in Space Runaway Ideon (1980 - 1981).

The humans of Earth have began settling on other planets and they discover large strange vehicles (and an even larger starship) buried on a remote planet call Solo. Together, the vehicles come together and form Ideon, the legendary invincible robot. Ideon is discovered by Cosmo a young boy and his friends and they end up being the pilots for Ideon (somehow they are the only one able to activate Ideon) and they are forced to fight the Buff Clan to protect their colony. But the Buff clan's military might is far more vast and out number them. Cosmo's people are forced to use the ancient starship to flee with Ideon protecting them from the attacks Buff clan. Each time Ideon is able to repel the attackers, as the Buff clan returns each time with more firepower, Cosmo and his friends unlock more of Ideon's secrets and become more powerful too. But wherever they run, Cosmo and his people can find no sanctuary and each time they try to make peace with the Buff clan it fails because of human ego and greed. In the end, can Ideon grows so powerful enough to make a difference?

Before Gundam, before giant Sentai Robots and Power Rangers there was Ideon. This is another blast from the past series with giant mechas and space operas. Like most early Japanese sci-fi anime they are very symbolic, the abuse of technology, robots, war and weapons of mass destruction symbolizes the death and destruction of mankind. As usual, the giant mecha falls into the hands of young kids who then are expected to become the 'hero/heroines' in the series. In the end what good is technology and war if it doesn't bring peace?

Next we have the last two of three films with Jock Mahoney as literature's famed 'Lord of the Jungle' in John Guillerman's Tarzan Goes To India (1962) and Robert Day;'s Tarzan's Three Challenges (1963), both British productions that went out of their way to be big entries in what was a profitable series that kept changing actors and was finally in the widescreen and color era. Still, the films landed up being in the shadow of the Johnny Weissmuller black and white MGM films and Mahoney (who had appeared in a prior entry as a different character) had a body type more like Weissmuller's so they made a few with him with passable results.

In the first, shot partly on location, Tarzan has to protect his elephant friends while battling evil in the raw parts of India, while the second film has him back in Africa (shot in Thailand) fighting an evil warlord and a plot to overthrow a very young royal. Woody Strode shows up here somewhat repeating what he did a few years earlier in Kubrick's Spartacus (1960) and the scripts are not awful, the action being just enough to get the audience through the films, but they are not highly memorable and really just upscale B-movies that have their ambitions and two directors who were more capable than they ever get credit for.

As noted Guillerman later made the 1976 King Kong and Towering Inferno, so he can handle a big production, while Day is at least as talented, with a decent set of big screen movies to his name, then turning to a very long TV career including launching the TV version of Logan's Run in the 1977 via its pilot among his many Hollywood credits and directing some of the best episodes of the British spy classic The Avengers during 1967, the full color Diana Rigg era.

As limited and simple as the films and stories can be (some might consider some of the moments here questionable and borderline racist, but that was typical of all such films of the time, especially dealing with imperialism, et al), there is still a certain amount of intelligence both films have and expect the audience to be smart as well, so that is a big plus for both films in an era of so many bad franchise junkers. Warner Archive has issued both on Blu-ray and may continue to issue the many Tarzan films they own in the format, something fans will consider way overdue. India has a theatrical trailer, but Challenges has no extras.

Finally, an infamous film. One of the most expensive films made in the '90s (second only to James Cameron's Titanic), Waterworld (1995) gets a beautiful new restoration in this three disc collector's edition from Arrow. The film was previously released on Blu-ray from Universal in a more bare bones edition that just featured the Theatrical Cut, so this is a welcome edition for Waterworld fans. The film is interesting to look back on now that the hype has worn off around it and especially in this newly remastered edition with new color correction makes it worth revisiting. While it's pretty much Mad Max on the water, Waterworld has some very impressive set pieces and action sequences that still make it impressive to watch, especially from a filmmaking standpoint despite negative reviews of the time.

Waterworld stars Kevin Costner, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Tina Majorino, Jack Black, Kim Coates, and Dennis Hopper. The film was directed by Kevin Reynolds (The Postman, Tristan and Isolde) and Kevin Costner (uncredited) and was written by David Twohy (Pitch Black) and Peter Rader.

The polar ice-caps have melted and the Earth is now mainly water. What's left of humanity struggles to survive by any means they can with even the most mundane things now holding value and live on boats. In this world controlled by pirates who call themselves Smokers that are led by the tyrannical Deacon (Hopper), it's up to the mysterious man known as the Mariner (Costner) who helps a woman (Tripplehorn) and a little girl (Majorino) in the search for dry land.

The Waterworld limited edition has three cuts of the film which includes the previously released

Theatrical Version (2:15:06). On the second disc is The TV Cut (2:56:01) which was created for U.S. broadcast television and contains over 40 minutes of additional material that includes alternate scenes and the third disc contains the "Ulysses" Cut (2:57:13), which was made for European broadcast markets and restores some material that was cut from the U.S. broadcast version. One of the film's strongest aspects is its score by James Newton Howard, which is front and center in the mix.

Special Features include...

Maelstrom: The Odyssey of Waterworld - Feature Length BTS doc

Dances With Waves featurette

Global Warnings featurette

Image Galleries

Production Image Gallery

Concept Art

Production Stills

Behind the Scenes: Hawaii

Behind the Scenes: Los Angeles

Miniatures and Visual Effects

Promotional Image Gallery

Original Trailers and TV Spots

and Reversible Cover Art with new art by Paul Shipper.

The Blu-ray is presented in a nice chipboard box that contains six eye popping collector's postcards, a double sided fold out poster, and a limited edition 60-page booklet featuring essays by David J. Moore and Daniel Griffith.

There's no doubt that this is the ultimate edition of Waterworld that is a must have for fans.

The 1080p 1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image on Last Tour looks fine in color, warmth and definition, if not one of the very best Sentai releases in this respect, it is still up there, but the 1080p 1.33 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer in a 1.78 X 1 frame on Ideon can show the age of the materials used and is an upscale because either the original masters are lost or the final post-production used so much low def analog video, they had no choice, so it is the poorest performer by default on the list.

The 1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfers on both Tarzan films can also can show the age of the materials used, but this is far superior a transfer to all previous releases of the films. Both were processed in MetroColor, but used different scope lens formats. Older CinemaScope was used on India and the distortion is apparent, while the French Dyaliscope lenses were used on Challenges and it has less distortion, if not as great as the better Panavision squeeze lenses of the time.

Both Sentai releases are in Japanese DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 2.0 Stereo lossless mixes, but Last Tour has much more warmth (also in a lesser English dub) while Ideon sounds smaller and a generation down or so, or is that just the age of the recording? Hard to tell. Both Tarzan films were theatrical monophonic films and are here in DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 2.0 Mono lossless mixes that are as good as they will likely ever sound. However, they do show their age and are not surprising in any way, but they sound fine for their time and budgets.

Waterworld has been remastered in 4K resolution and presented on 1080p Blu-ray disc with a widescreen aspect ratio of 1.85:1 and audio tracks in DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit) and DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 (48kHz, 24-bit) lossless mixes. The film has been newly color corrected and looks much better than the previous Universal Blu-ray release, including the old DVD and obsolete HD-DVD that had its transfer recycled for Blu-ray. Note that this was a for DTS in its time and that is still a highlight of this reissue/upgrade.

To order either of the Warner Archive Tarzan Blu-rays, go to this link for them and many more great web-exclusive releases at:

http://www.wbshop.com/

- Nicholas Sheffo (Tarzan), Ricky Chiang (Sentai) and James Lockhart

https://www.facebook.com/jamesharlandlockhartv/