This week’s home entertainment offerings include the second season of the dark and compelling comic book noir Gotham, the first season of Toei Animation’s new more faithful adaptation of Naoko Takeuchi’s Sailor Moon, a new anime from the creator of Trigun, the Angry Birds Movie, and a powerful thriller from Pakistan directed by a woman about a mother and daughter’s flight across a country beset with internal strife.

TV on DVD

There are some TV releases of great interest to geek viewers led by Gotham: The Complete Second Season (Warner Bros., $49.95, BD $54.97).  In some ways (ratings) the second season of Gotham was less successful than the first, but more characters from the DC Universe were introduced, piquing the interest of comic book fans as the narrative focus shifted from the episodic to the longer serial format beloved by comic book readers.

Other series with some geek cred include the fairy tale-based ABC series, Once Upon a Time: The Complete 5th Season (Disney, 924 min., $45.99, BD $79.99), and the YA novel-based, teen-targeting CW horror series, The Vampire Diaries: The Complete 7th Series (Warner Bros., 968 min., $49.99, BD $54.97), the gritty AMC western about the building of the transcontinental railroad, Hell on Wheels Season 5, Part 1 (eOne, $29.98, Bd $39.98), and the Showtime psychological mystery The Affair: Season 2 (Showtime, $39.98).

TV offerings for kids due this week include the super sentai series Power Rangers Megaforce: The Complete Season (Shout Factory, 460 min., $14.98), and Power Rangers Super Megaforce: The Complete Season (Shout Factory, 460 min., $14.98), while the only vintage TV release is excellent late 1970s newspaper drama Lou Grant: The Complete Second Season (Shout Factory, 1110 min., $39.97).

Anime

There are a lot of great anime releases this week led by Sailor Moon Crystal: Set 1 (Viz Media, 322 min., $39.99, BD $69.99, Ltd. Ed. $79.99), which includes the first 13 episodes of the 26-episode Toei anime that aired in Japan in 2014-2015 and was simulcast here by Viz Media.  This series is a reboot of the original 1990s Sailor Moon anime, with the emphasis on Naoko Takeuchi’s original manga, which means that the “filler” elements from the original series have been eliminated.  While this first 26-episode series has received mixed reviews, the 13-episode sequel, which is known as Sailor Moon Crystal Season 3, really kills it, so fans of the original Sailor Moon series should take note.  The limited edition comes in a special slipcase with seven art cards and book of Sailor Moon stamps.

Also of great interest is Assassination Classroom: Season 1, Part 2 (Funimation, 300 min., DVD/BD Combo $64.98), which presents the final 12 episodes of the 2015 series from Lerche that is based on the manga Yusei Matsui (published here by Viz Media) about a powerful octopus-like teacher and his students who are bent on killing him and saving mankind from his alien race.

Those who enjoyed Trigun will want to check out Yasuhiro Nightow’s Blood Blockade Battlefront: Complete Collection (Funimation, 325 min., BD/DVD Combo $64.98, Ltd. Ed. $84.98), which includes all 12 episodes plus an OVA produced by Bones in 2015 and based on Nightow’s bloody supernatural manga that is published here by Dark Horse Comics.

Other series that are new to North America this week include the 2014 harem comedy, the Trinity Seven Complete Collection (Sentai Filmworks, 300 min.,DVD $59.98, BD $69.98), which includes all 12 episodes of the series produced by Seven Arcs that is based on the manga by Kenji Saito, which is published by Yen Press, and another harem comedy, the Punch Line Complete Collection (Sentai Filmworks, 300 min., Subtitles Only, $49.98, BD $59.98), which collects the 12-episode 2015 series from MAPPA that was simulcast on Crunchyroll.

Theatrical Movies

This week’s most popular theatrical release is The Angry Birds Movie (Sony, “PG,” 90 min., $30.99, BD $38.98), which squeezes the popular phone game into the generic “animated movie for kids” format that includes some double entendre humor for the adults in the audience along with slapstick and mild rude humor for the tots.  Angry Birds is far from the worst attempt to create a new animated movie franchise, but it is also far from the best—in fact the film’s mediocre 43% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes seems about right.

The man behind the concept of creating a movie franchise out of The Angry Birds game was David Maisel, who was instrumental in the development of Marvel Studios (see “The Secret Origin of Marvel Studios”).  But I’ve read Marvel comics, and spent a few minutes playing Angry Birds, and I can assure you that there is no comparison between the Marvel Universe and Angry Birds in terms of narrative possibilities.

The only other film due on Tuesday that made any money at all at the box office is the religiously-themed God Is Not Dead 2 (Universal, “PG,” $24.98, BD $29.98), yet another bad sequel in a summer filled with inept retreads and do-overs.  Given that separation of church and state is enshrined in the Bill of Rights, this film’s saga of a high school history teacher, who gets in trouble by bringing Christ into the public school classroom in a religious rather than historical context, is bound to offend some, including Christians who believe that religion does not belong in the public schools, especially given the diversity of today’s students’ beliefs.  Critics hated God Is Not Dead 2, giving it a 9% positive rating, but those who feel Christian beliefs are under attack will find ammunition to bolster their paranoia in this crude bit of agitprop filmmaking that targets the Fox News crowd.

For those who enjoy foreign films, there is a real treat this week, Dukhtar (Kino, “Not Rated,” 93 min., $29.98, BD $34.98), which was Pakistan’s entry in the 87th Academy Awards.  Written and directed by Afia Nathaniel, Dukhtar provides a rare look for westerners into the war-torn nation of Pakistan traveling from deep in the mountainous tribal lands controlled by warlords and religious factions to the 4-lane highways and urban sophistication of Lahore, a major Asian city.  This is also a courageous film in its narrative of a young mother, who runs away with her 10-year-old daughter, when her husband informs her that the girl is to be the child bride of a 60s-something warlord.  There is plenty of tension in the escape of the women and her daughter (“Dukhtar” is the Urdu word for “daughter”—and, via German, the source for our English word) and in their journey across the beautiful, mountainous countryside as they are pursued by fanatical types driving Toyota pickups bristling with rifles and automatic weapons.  Particularly poignant are the moments when mother and daughter meet with the girl’s maternal grandmother, who had not been allowed to see her daughter since her marriage and had never seen her granddaughter.  While it’s not a perfect film—it can be a little Bollywood at times with music video interludes and a dewy-eyed unconsummated love affairs—Dukhtar is never less than visually stunning, and its narrative is completely involving and compelling to the very end.