TV Series Review: Thunderbolt Fantasy

Given all the jokes that this show, a Taiwanese puppet drama written by Gen Urobuchi that feels like a wuxia-style DnD campaign, was "anime of the season" I have elected to drop this review into my anime review slot of the week instead of the tv series/movie one, although I will note that it is 100% non-animated. That's the short sell for the series by the way,  "the writer of Madoka Magica does a fantasy that feels like a Chinese-inspired Dungeons and Dragons campaign, except that it's all told through Taiwanese puppetry action with details on the same level as The Dark Crystal." 

One technical note, I watched a Crunchyroll which used the Japanese dub for the series but left all of the names in Chinese in the subtitles (which made me glad that everyone had distinct designs at least since the names rarely even sound similar). I am going to follow that and continue using the Chinese names, hopefully it'll still be clear who I'm referring to!

Thunderbolt Fantasy

Book Review: Persona

Persona by Genevieve Valentine

Comic Review: Ghosts

Ghosts by Raina Telgemeier

Fall 2016 Anime Round-UP

After a bit of a quiet year from me it's here:

too many shows for me possibly watch at once.

As has become the norm for me, I didn't have any carry-over shows from the summer unless you included Kuromukuro (which I guess you could count since Netflix released the second half right in the middle of the season preview week). I'm cutting out summaries this time for brevity and also assuming that by this point in the season that everyone has already heard the basic gist of all of the interesting shows (but if I somehow covered one that was new to you I will be happy to elaborate on the plot more in the comments).

October so far

And then I caught X.

Movie Review: Star Wars: The Force Awakens

I've never liked Star Wars. I say this because Star Wars should totally be my jam; it has the kind of expansive yet detailed setting I adore and its basic story, of watching an empire bursting with corruption fall and then the eventual fight against what has replaced it, is the kind of ambitious idea that I like! But at its heart, the earlier Star Wars films are horribly simple plot-wise and the newer ones needed a lot of editing (I've never dabbled in the extended universe but a lot of what I've heard about it does sound interesting).

So I wasn't interested in this new film, clearly this wasn't for me! But it wasn't until after the film was leaving theaters that I started hearing that actually, this was a really solid story and could appeal to the few folks like me who didn't already love Star Wars. So, it was time to wait until the library got it's DVDs and then see if I should start paying attention to Star Wars. 

Star Wars: The Force Awakens (episode 7)

Anime Review: The Morose Mononokean

The Morose Mononokean