Viz Media

This weekend sees both the long-awaited debut of Nintendo's latest game console, Nintendo Switch, and the even longer-awaited release of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. In a change from Screen & Page's usual focus on anime, we thought we would use this occasion to look at the media history of perhaps the greatest Zelda game, A Link To The Past!

Friends, how many times have you seen this story play out? Boy meets girl who ushers him into a hidden world beyond our own where he gets special powers. Girl mentors boy in use of said powers. Girl and boy, despite a solid bond formed in battle, argue constantly. But then, after enduring innumerable trials and hardships only to come out the other side stronger, girl and boy realize they can't live without each other and finally admit their feelings. Cue Big Dramatic Kiss and Sappy Montage of Happiness, right? Well, in the case of Tite Kubo's Bleach, which concluded last August after 15 years, the answer turned out to be a firm "no." And that still kinda bugs me.

Today, we're talking about the much-hyped, very welcome return of Goku and friends, Dragon Ball Super! Finally legally available in North America, this sequel reunites Goku, Gohan, Piccolo and the rest of the Z Warriors in a show that's just as fun and suspenseful as its predecessor!

First published in the defunct Weekly Young Sunday magazine, the introspective and shoegazey Solanin by Inio Asano is a slice-of-life seinen (teen/adult male) manga about the role that music can play in a young person's life, and the promises and heartbreak that music can represent.

Sakura Tsukuba's Sweet Rein tells the story of Kurumi, a teenage girl who discovers that she's a Santa Claus when she encounters Kaito, a wispy and beautiful boy who is also sometimes a reindeer, and who is quite literally bound to her with an invisible rein that compels him to obey her commands. Also, they are in love. It is, without question, the single most bonkers premise I have ever encountered in a lifetime of reading Christmas comics, and I've saved the second volume for an entire year waiting to read it. And folks... it does not disappoint. Because this is the one with Dark Santa.

I know we've all been waiting very patiently, but the day is finally upon us. Comics based on James Cameron's Avatar are finally coming next year on Free Comic Book Day! The comic book adaptation of the smash-hit blockbuster that everyone loves and remembers is just one of twelve Gold Titles as part of FCBD's 2017 celebration, which also includes Rick & Morty, Doctor Who and X-O Manowar. Announced today, Free Comic Book Day 2017 will be celebrated across the world on May 6th, and as usual the big name publishers, including Image, IDW, Boom, Oni and Titan, all have offerings as part of next year's crop of Gold Sponsor titles.

I am woefully behind on my attempt to catch up with all 81 volumes of Eichiro Oda's One Piece, but I always understood this to be a series about, you know, pirates. Like, people who sail around on boats doing boat stuff and occasionally docking to have ridiculously weird super-powered pirate fights, many of which would also involve boats. But I guess you eventually have to stop being on a boat sometime, at least for a little while, and in One Piece Film: Gold, they're heading to the city-sized casino that is Gran Tesoro for an all-new anime adventure --- and it's coming to theaters in America from January 10 to 17.

If you've been looking for something nice to look forward to in 2017, I have some good news. Viz has announced that it's not only releasing Sailor Moon R: The Movie on DVD and Blu-Ray, but that for the first time ever, the full-length feature will get a theatrical release in the United States.

Without the massive popularity of Osamu Tezuka's trademark creation Astro Boy, the manga and anime industries might look very different today. By taking the hot topic of the time --- nuclear power --- and marrying it with a heroic child character and the influence of the Walt Disney cartoons that were flooding into postwar Japan, Tezuka not only secured his reputation as "the father of manga," but created an enduring icon of action and adventure. The book also had a very specific influence on one of the greatest mangaka of the 21st century, Naoki Urasawa, who retold one of the classic Astro Boy tales in Pluto, but succeeded in making it very much his own.

To mark Sci-Fi Week on ComicsAlliance, Screen & Page tackles one of the great anime series of the '90s, and the show that brought the world's oldest "Real Robot" franchise to the West: Mobile Suit Gundam Wing!