Hallyu may have hit the US stage this past weekend with yet another installment of KCON, over in Japan this was the opening weekend for home grown monster battling apocalyptic adventure movie Attack on Titan. An adaptation of the popular shonen manga of the same name, with already a wildly popular anime season 1 under its belt, the live-action movie has huge expectation and excitement shoes to fill and I’m waiting to get a smorgasboard of reviews to decide how the domestic audience reacted to the flick. The movie released this weekend was also only part 1, with part 2 coming next month as a one-two punch.

In between will be a short movie caliber webisode series called Attack on Titan: Beacon for Counterattack with the headlining character of Hans Zoe played by Ishihara Satomi. Intended as laying additional foundational background, the webisode series follows Hans and her fellow soldiers during the period of the development of the vertical maneuvering equipment after her scientific team captures a titan and does research on its weaknesses to create the ideal weapon. The first preview is out for the webisodes and actually looks even more interesting than the action-heavy movie trailers – the mythology is dense in the AoT universe plus I do love great pathos-building backstory features. The web dorama streams over DTV starting on August 15th. Continue reading →