Home Tech Toys RCA DRC618N Portable DVD Player DocuPen Portable Scanner Oakley Thump MP3 Player Eyewear Canon Elura 70 MiniDV Camcorder Nintendo DS Portable Blackberry 7100T DVDs to Buy DVDs for Kids Anime DVDs Hot Hardware Gifts The 12 Games of Christmas Video Games Board Games Fall Accessories Makeup / Back-to-School Buys Where the Deals are How to Buy a Used Car Style Q & A TV On DVD Before You Buy Bug Spray Summer Savings Confessions of a shop-a-phobic Shopping Q & A Restaurants and Meals in Amsterdam USTOA's Consumer Protection Plan

Anime DVDs By Tasha Robinson LAST EXILE COMPLETE BOX SET  A (Geneon). With the holiday season fast approaching again, a huge wave of gift-friendly anime box sets are hitting stores, from the Irresponsible Captain Tylor OVA "Limited Edition Ultra Box Set" to the Wolf's Rain series box to the Rurouni Kenshin first-season collection. Fans will be hard-pressed to choose among all the excellent new options, but one particularly popular set is guaranteed to be the complete run of the terrific sky-opera adventure Last Exile. The series, which follows a young pilot-and-wingman team through an airborne political adventure somewhere between Vision of Escaflowne and a Hayao Miyazaki movie, has been a huge hit with fans for its complicated story and terrific digital animation, and it holds up even better when all 26 episodes can be watched in close order. PATLABOR: THE MOBILE POLICE - THE NEW FILES DVD COLLECTION  B (Geneon) Patlabor is one of those long-running, many-limbed series that you either love or you don't, depending on how you feel about personality-heavy, action-light episodic mecha-police dramas. The "New Files" aren't all that new, and they're not likely to make converts, as they assume a deep familiarity with and interest in the TV series, which they follow up. But Patlabor fans love these OVAs, which pick up the pace, improve the animation and wrap up the threads the TV series left slack. GANKUTSUOU: THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO  A- (Geneon) Alexandre Dumas' classic revenge story The Count of Monte Cristo has been adapted many times in many ways, but this 24-episode futuristic version may well be the flashiest. Director Mahiro Maeda (who helmed Blue Submarine No. 6 and The Animatrix's "Second Renaissance" segments and served as Last Exile's production designer) recontextualizes the story through the eyes of a young viscount who meets the Count on the moon and gets caught up in his intricate politics and schemes-and in a web of stunning digital animation that puts scintillating textures into ordinary items. MYTHICAL DETECTIVE LOKI RAGNAROK  B- (ADV) Exiled from Asgard and given the form of a red-haired child, the Norse god Loki becomes a detective in order to fight evil and get back into Odin's good graces, though things get complicated when old acquaintances like Thor and Hiemdall show up to interfere. The animation's bright and the energy level is high (mostly thanks to bouncy loudmouth Mayura, an ordinary mortal who decides she's Loki's new partner), but the interesting supernatural mystery side of ten plays second fiddle to some shrill, mundane comedy. KAKURENBO: HIDE & SEEK  A (Central Park Media) Good things sometimes come in short packages, which is certainly the case with Kakurenbo: Hide & Seek, a gorgeous 30-minute dark fairy tale about a game of hide and seek played by fox-masked children in a deserted town labeled "Demon City." In spite of the clear danger, the story's protagonist wants to play in order to find his sister, who disappeared while playing the game herself. The spooky haunted environs are so beautifully rendered, and the story so vivid, that ifs easy to wish for more while still being thoroughly satisfied with what's here. Source: Sci Fi Magazine