Anime Review: Concrete Revolutio: Superhuman Phantasmagoria: The Last Song

I don't believe it, I somehow managed to hold out all the way until the spring season batch of shows without running out of things to blog! I'm pretty thrilled by this turn of events, although I didn't watch many spring shows so I'm going to actually run out of things to blog pretty soon. 

Hmm, well for the moment, as per-usual my first review of the season is my favorite show/the one that really needs as many views as it can get (places like Funimation have said that the views that count towards determining if a show is going to get a physical release or not are all of the views while the show was airing+one week, although I've missed that window). I talked about the first half of Concrete Revolutio earlier in the year so I suppose this is my last shot to convince folks that yes, this is yet another superhero anime worth watching.

Concrete Revolutio: Superhuman Phantasmagoria: The Last Song

A bit of a round-up

So I kept thinking "I'll do my next round-up once I've done a full week mostly on time so all of my posts get a fair amount of time on the main page" but clearly this hasn't happened in a while. My health has been up and down the past few weeks (well, more than it has been usually during 2016, I want a redo) but I think it's on the up so I should be able to focus enough to churn out some reviews that I've really wanted to get to!

Since I haven't done a round-up since, uh, May it looks like, now seems like a really good time to recap what I have managed to put out. Starting with The OASG, I've done Instant Analysis posts on Itihasa, How to keep a mummy, and Arte (not in the review, someone suggested this to me later, but this manga might be loosely inspired by real world, amazing artist Artemisia Gentileschi), and I did a joint review with Justin on the first Baccano! light novel (and kept him from totally trashing it which was his first plan! >:D).

Continuing with comics, I got around to talking about The Nameless City (how could I not after I went to the launch event?) and two anime that are not based on any manga, Active Raid and Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron Blooded Orphans. I also talked about the excellent, unique sci-fi work Our Lady of the Ice and the possibly also unique but far less excellent Manners & Mutiny which finishes up Gail Carriger's The Finishing School series. Finally, to make sure that this blog keeps things silly, I also talked about finishing my very first visual novel (an important step in every anime fan's life), the western-made Hustle Cat where yes folks, I dated all of the cats.

This time next week the anime world will be knee-deep in the new summer anime but I'm going to take that time to talk about how the spring anime season wrapped up. I'm almost done, I just have one more episode of Flying Witch left, but I feel like this round-up has gone on long enough already, gotta save up my energy for tomorrow's review of Concrete Revolutio!

Book Review: Manners & Mutiny

Lord this blogging schedule is so off now, but I really want to power through and talk about some books that I read recently that I adored without falling farther and farther behind. So let me get back on track with a steampunk novel (is it just me or does it seem like steampunk has faded with as a fad? Genuine questions!) that I sadly did not adore.

Manners & Mutiny by Gail Carriger

Visual Novel Review: Hustle Cat

Every now and then, I actually play video games! Even more rarely, I complete them! I usually just don't have the time or the operating system but I've happily noticed that more and more US-produced visual novels do tend to be Mac compatible (since like heck I'm gonna figure out how to dual-boot my computer for just that). So I was already interested when I saw a kickstarter for a cute dating game at a cat cafe and jokingly told my friends I was going to date all the cats. And then the kickstarter revealed that your coworkers ARE the cats and I wondered if I should regret my words.

Hustle Cat (created by Date Nighto)

Anime Review: Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron Blooded Orphans

Normally I order these reviews from my most-favorite anime of a season to least so I should put up a little note that says: this was not my least favorite show of the season! I just go so slammed by con work back in February that I was barely keeping up with anything and even since then I've been non-stop busy and seeing folks make, disapproving noises at the last half of the show wasn't the kind of motivation I needed to finish the show. The fact that it's already dubbed and airing on Toonami in the US is however so let's get onto this very late post.

Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron Blooded Orphans

Book Review: Our Lady of the Ice

Well this review is far later than I wanted it to be, both in terms of this blog's supposed update schedule and in general, I think when I read this book it was still cold outside! But hopefully this is a book that I'll be recommending to people for years to come, no matter the season.

Our Lady of the Ice by Cassandra Rose Clarke

Comic Review: The Nameless City (book one)

So I've already talked about seeing Faith Erin Hicks talk at the book launch so let's not rehash that and just dive straight into a pretty anticipated work.

The Nameless City by Faith Erin Hicks, colors by Jordie Bellaire

Anime Review: Active Raid

I've noticed an odd trend in my anime reviews lately, namely that the series with the best first episode premiere of the season usually isn't anywhere near my favorite show of the season. I don't know why this is, you would think that a strong first episode would mean a strong show in general and I just wouldn't use that generic word "strong" for this show.

Active Raid