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The first wave of anime to arrive in America was usually found in syndication, filler in the mornings and afternoons for the off-network stations in the New York area. It all started with Astro Boy but was quickly followed by Eighth Man and Gigantor, Kimba the White Lion to the Amazing Three. And then there was Marine Boy, the first of the color animated series to be broadcast in America. In his native Japan, the name translated to Undersea Boy Marine and was therefore Americanized.

Produced by Minoru Adachi and Japan Tele-Cartoons, there were 78 episodes in total and the first season or 26 episodes, have now been collected by Warner Archive, which is fitting since Warner was the company to distribute the series back in the 1960s.

Sometime in the future, there lived a boy, maybe 15, remarkable enough to serve as a full-fledged agent of the Ocean Patrol. Their mission was...

Alongside the heralded Speed Racer and Kimba: The White Lion, Marine Boy was one of the original handful of imported television series that captured youngsters’ imaginations and put Japanese anime in the stateside consciousness.

Now fans of the 1960s series, and an entire new generation of anime appreciators, can experience the undersea hero’s aquatic adventures as Warner Archive Collection distributes Marine Boy: The Complete First Season. Produced in Japan but intended for first-run syndication in the United States during 1966-67, Marine Boy was one of the first color cartoons to come from Japan. A teenager with some amazing inventions at his disposal, Marine Boy battles evil on and under the seas on behalf of the Ocean Patrol, aided by his father, Dr. Mariner, and the brilliant Professor Fumble. Joining Marine Boy in his missions are his white dolphin, Splasher, young mermaid friend Neptina, and fellow Ocean Patrol agents Bullton and Piper.

Drug dealers, serial killers, Satan worshippers and immortal Nazis are some of the ingredients of the bloody stew that is Ratline, a tough, well-made shocker from St. Louis-based regional filmmaker Eric Stanze. Ratline is not a “boo!” sort of horror flick. It’s not about stalkers in dark corners or monsters under the bed. It’s about the evil that men often do, if not necessarily in real life, then certainly within really nasty horror flicks like Ratline. It;s an angry, humorless film filled with sex and gore, but writer/director Stanze is not one of these independent filmmakers who;s simply in love with his own nihilism. He’s working from his own smart script that attempts to say something important about the murderous energies at loose in society. Ratline is not without flaws, but it’s an aggressively low budget piece of horror weirdness that defies expectations and is remarkably accomplished.