Sunday, January 31, 2016

Weekly Round-UP: January 24th-30th

Wohoo, an entire week where I posted on time! I mean, I already had the reviews for Noragami Aragoto and Space Boy mostly written (I hadn't published them earlier since they were so big they needed a lot of fine-tuning so they still took a while) and my take on the second Log Horizon light novel wasn't very long but hey, I'm calling it a victory anyway! 

I did also publish my second positive review in as many weeks on The OASG for ReLife and I very happily devoured the second volume when it went up on Crunchyroll over this weekend. Which got me thinking, I haven't actually listed out which manga I'm currently reading in a while so below the cut, quick thoughts on everything that I'm currently reading and I tried to remember it all (the problem with scanlations is that some of them update so infrequently I forget if it's been a few months between releases @_@)

Saturday, January 30, 2016

Book Review: Log Horizon (volume two)

A short review for a short book? Fine by me! And for people who have forgotten, I have seen the Log Horizon anime (and enjoyed it hence why I've been buying Yen Press's release of the novels) but I will try not to just compare the two!


Log Horizon by Mamare Touno 



Wednesday, January 27, 2016

Webcomic Review: Space Boy

This was a harder comic to review than I expected, it seems like such a simple story; sometime in a the future a girl moves to Earth from a deep space mining colony, must adjust to being in a new time as well as a new place, and it nails so many of the basic, oft-overlooked, parts of an adolescent story. Plus it's being hosted in an unusual place in a different-than-usual format and how about I just start with the review already? 


Space Boy by Stephen McCranie


Over three hundred years in the future, technology has greatly changed but people remain the same. Amy has spent her entire life living in an outer space mining colony, studying a blue planet called Earth and humanity's accomplishments, when her father loses his job and her entire family is sent back to Earth on a 30 year voyage. No time passes at all for Amy but once on Earth she has to deal with an entirely new world in more ways than one. Her new classmates are inscrutable but kind except for Oliver, this boy seems almost more lost than Amy and for that he might be the closest friend she can have. 

Monday, January 25, 2016

Anime Review: Noragami Aragoto

It's a little awkward that I'm just now starting on the fall shows this late into January so let's get started my favorite [one and done] fall show from this past year and one of my favorites of the entire year as well.


Noragami Aragoto



Sunday, January 24, 2016

Weekly Round-UP: January 17th-23rd

Well, that didn't work out as planned. When I get stressed out I do the computer version of just running around in circles until I'm too tired to stay awake and go to bed (when I'm not snowed in under two feet of snow I also do the real life version and go outside!) which sometimes helps with blogging, like when I use it to read things I'm going to review a la Crown of Thorns, but a lot of times it doesn't.

And as I keep saying in these round-ups, I just have a lot of "long-term" stress right now, where I can't simply ignore something, finish it, cancel it etc to try and move past it and this is a bit unusual for me so I'm having a hard time focusing. Heck I was so distracted/tired that I didn't even notice that I initially titled my 2016 Winter Round-UP post as the 2015 version! So once again, the goal is to get four posts out this week (three here and one at OASG) but with the addition of new stresses ("oh hey a better job wants to interview me and I don't know what I'll do if I have to quit my new job after just two weeks!" "oh hey Katsucon JUST told me I'm running a panel in three weeks and I haven't worked on it since I submitted it in June!") this isn't going to be the easiest week.

And I guess I'm running a panel at Katsucon now, I'll have more details for anyone attending in another week or two, it's about shojo manga and anime and hopefully I know enough series to make it work!

Tuesday, January 19, 2016

Winter 2016 Anime Round-UP!

This isn't a really great season, I did try more shows that I thought I did but I wasn't really hyped for many of them and very few of them turned out to be my thing. Or good, lots of these were just kinda lame and incompetent feeling which makes me sad. So it's going to be a lighter season for me but not sure I'll have a chance to get through much of my backlog anyway, although I've kinda started 12 Kingdoms since I'm really desperate for adventure-shojo right now (Akagami is more like romance-adventure-shojo and I just want more dangerous adventures).

But before I get to all of the new shows I tried, the fall left-overs (because lord those are some of the strongest things I'm watching right now).

Wednesday, January 13, 2016

A note from management

So, a combination of just plain forgetting, reviews taking longer than expected, my cold returning with a vengeance/a 24 hour bug/a terrible headache/bad side effects from my new cough suppressant (it was one of those, pick one since I have no idea why I started throwing up), ANOTHER review taking longer than expected to work on, job-hunting stress meaning I feel like I can never relax and stop working, and sewing are why there haven't been any reviews here in a week-ish. Plus, even though I'm not under the gun like a lot of people are for the new season anime reviews I have been working on those on and off and man, for a season which honestly doesn't have a ton of good shows I watched a lot trying to see if I was missing any of them. 

So I'm going to say this, no reviews here this week (there still will be one at OASG) and extra big post next Monday with those new anime season shows. And fuck you to that cold which kept me from building up my post backlog like I planned on, it's been three weeks, I still can't sleep without a three-pillow-high pile in bed, this is the worst cold I've ever had.

Monday, January 4, 2016

Anime Review: Blood Blockade Battlefront

Before this show aired I had so many people asking me "so are you going to watch BBB?" that I felt like my status as a Rei Matsumoto fan was in peril! It's true that I wasn't really expecting to like the series (the premise sounded a bit generic and the original manga is from the creator of Trigun which is a series that I didn't like) but of course I was going to at least try it. And wow, I didn't realize that I needed a mash-up of Kyousogiga and Baccano! in my life but apparently I did and it was fun

Blood Blockade Battlefront (Kekkai Sensen)