"Actor: Lowell Bartholomee"

• Princess Blade | DVD | (23/09/2002) from £14.98   |  Saving you £0.01 (0.07%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Shinsuke Sato's The Princess Blade is, in some respects, a standard Japanese action adventure with a lot of swordplay and repayment of blood debts; but it differs in that it stretches the formula in interesting ways. Its moody angst is turned up to full power and it has a twilit elegiac quality, a sense of the sadness of things, which is at once very Japanese and very stylish. Yukio is one of the assassins of the house of Takemikazuchi, a group of exiled royal guards from a neighbouring kingdom who have created a life in the isolated low-tech kingdom Japan has become in some near future. She is in fact the last of the original Takemikazuchi family, who have gradually been marginalised and murdered. Informed of this and on the run from her fellow swordsmen, she takes refuge with, and falls for, Takashi, an assassin of a more modern kind, an alienated young man whose concern for his retarded sister sits uneasily with his bomb-making. The film moves steadily from explosions of passionate action beautifully choreographed to quiet intense moments of stillness, ending ambiguously on the latter. It is a superior film in its genre because it coherently questions the values and actions it celebrates. --Roz Kaveney

• Queen Emeraldas | DVD | (19/07/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  In a far distant future a would-be master race seeks to dominate the galaxy. Against these merciless Afressians mankind has just one hope: the mysterious female warrior known as Emeraldas. Driven by the tortured memory of her lost love Emeraldas sails the Sea of Stars like a privateer of old blasting the forces of tyranny into atoms with an amazing array of futuristic weapons. But when the devious Commander Eldomain kidnaps a group of innocent civillians Emeraldas is drawn into a deadly trap from which even she may not escape! Featuring state of the art animation Leiji Matsumoto's fearless heroine who appeared with Captain Horlock and the crew of Galaxy Express 999 has her own special adventure!

• King Of Bandit Jing - Vol. 3 - Episodes 8 To 10 | DVD | (17/05/2004) from £24.65   |  Saving you £-4.66 (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  No priceless bauble or exquisite jewel is safe from the leering eyes and stealthy hands of Jing the King of Bandits. With a heart of gold and girl-crazy albatross sidekick Kir Jing steals his way through one exciting adventure after another! Don't Drop The Por Vora! Our heroes are on a quest to find the Systema Solari but first they must deliver a dangerous cargo of two Por Vora. Trouble is waiting for them around every turn but that won't stop Jin from doing his best to

• King Of Bandit Jing - Vol. 2 - Episodes 5 To 7 | DVD | (15/03/2004) from £24.65   |  Saving you £-4.66 (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  No priceless bauble or exquisite jewel is safe from the leering eyes and stealthy hands of Jing the King of Bandits. With a heart of gold and girl-crazy albatross sidekick Kir Jing steals his way through one exciting adventure after another! The Little Girl From Technicolor Town: Jing and Kir find themselves on a whirlwind rescue mission in the Technicolor Town of Pompier to save a young girl placed on the auction block after being transformed into an art masterpiece. The