Book Review: The Dead Key

This was the second of the free books I got from Amazon as part of my Prime trial membership, if anyone else here is thinking of doing the prime membership I highly recommend doing it so it falls over two calendar months (especially a 15th-15th if you can) so that you at least have the option of getting more than one book from this deal.

The Dead Key by D. M. Pulley

Manga Review: 20th Century Boys (volumes 1-14)

It's always nice when I get to read something I've been looking forward to for a while and, given the effusive praise I've seen for this series over the years it's been on my list for a while. People speak of it as if it's Naoki Urasawa's crowning masterpiece (I simply find it silly to call something that when the creator is still alive and making things) and I did like Pluto when I read it years ago so I've wanted to read it for a while, the problem is that not only is it quite long (over 20 volumes) but Urasawa does not want his manga available digitally so if I wanted to read it it looked like I was going to have to shelve out quite a bit of money and shelf space. Thankfully my new library system did have some of it but sadly I'm still at least eight volumes away from the ending, I wonder how I'll get to it and how many of the plot threads I can still keep straight by then.

20th Century Boys by Naoki Urasawa

Manga Review: Basara (volumes 1-5)

And I'm back folks, survived the almost 35,000 person crowd that was called Otakon and, well, that was certainly an experience! And expect a non-review post sometime in the next few days detailing a few changes around the blog since I'm moving again soon and moves always seem to leave this little blog a bit different.

But enough about that, let me talk to you about amazingly late 1900s shojo for a few minutes. For some reason from the late 70s, maybe mid 80s, through the very early 2000s there was a lot of shojo which I term "epic fantasy shojo" where the focus was on sweeping stories, large casts, and the coming of age of female characters in tense, often political, situations with a bit of romance tossed in that rarely was the main driver in the story. I'm not sure what happened to those stories, I've seen YA fiction in the US that seems more similar to that manga than most shojo manga I can find these days yet these titles are so unknown outside of the really devoted manga fandom that I doubt there's any connection. And of those titles this is one of the best known and if I hadn't been hearing about it for literally years I probably would have passed it up when I cam across it at the not-so-local library. I mean, look at that font, Basara are you SURE you're only as old as I am because that font looks like it came straight out of the 80s, a classic example of just because the calendar has entered a different decade doesn't necessarily mean that design sensibilities have caught up yet.

Basara (volumes 1 through 5) by Yumi Tamura

Summary: When Sarasa and her twin brother Tatara were born a prophet declared one of them to be "the child of destiny" and the village always assumed that this proclamation referred to Tatara. So did the king of their area of post-apocalyptic Japan, the Red King, it seems and Tatara is slain before he can even begin a rebellion to change Japan and so Sarasa takes up his name and begins her quest of revenge while discovering what a complicated place the world now is.

The Good: I make no secret that I adore stories with complex politics woven in and I love how the story has set up Sarasa/Tatara with their goal to take down some clearly corrupt kings, including the Red King, to make life better for all and yet has also shown her and the reader that the Red King's land is far better than the rest of Japan with the implication that the reason rebellions like the one her village planned have been crushed so brutally is because if they succeed the other kings will move in and make that area even worse. It's a world where there appear to be completely cruel and one hundred percent sadistic villains yet no true heroes or right thing to do, a fun set-up for readers who enjoy watching their protagonists fight for a good ending. The cast, much like the setting, expands rapidly but so far I haven't had any trouble telling the characters apart and the story remarkably enough even managed to sell me on it's star-crossed lovers aspect. Normally I become frustrated by that, especially when it's between two characters who are sworn enemies as is the case here, but the way that Sarasa and Shuri's relationship begins and grows feels as natural as it could under the circumstances and even though I know it will almost certainly end in tears I'm continuing to hope for the best. Finally, it's amazing how much has already happened in five volumes of this story when you consider that the entire story is twenty-seven volumes long. It's well paced now and if it continues at this pace then it's literally an epic and I can't wait to read the rest regardless.

The Bad: I almost feel like Sarasa is gathering allies too easily in the story, she's not a shonen protagonist after all, but I recall a line (sadly I can't seem to find it at the moment) that said that while Sarasa should seek out the groups which have the three other swords that were made along with the one she inherited the swords aren't magical, it's to find the people who go with them that matters. So yes this seems to be too simple until you remember what kind of world these characters live in and what they stand to gain by allying themselves with their best chance at creating a better world for themselves, although the fact that this usually comes after a battle means I'm not going to give up that comparison anytime soon.

The Art: As previously alluded to, even though this manga started in 1991 it still has a bit of an 80s look to it, especially when you remember that the shojo manga from the 80s and the 90s don't look that different anyway. It's not a pretty manga as even the editor admits in their column in the back of the first volume, the characters have oddly elongated cheekbones, hair that seems to puff without hairspray, and rather unfashionable clothes as well. But it does have nice detail work and I was able to keep the characters straight much easier than I expected to and everything is laid out nicely as well, the art is just styled in an out-dated way. But I am curious about one thing Viz did, what the heck happened to the cover of volume two? Here's what the original Japanese cover looked like, here's what the cover of the volume I got out of the library I got looked like (the manga inside is unflipped). Apologies for the lighting because it does not truly get across just how damn pink this cover is, while some of it can be from aging over 10 years, and all of these volumes look a bit faded, I doubt that's the only reason why. Although, looking at these Japanese covers at least explains where the truly strange title font comes from, I had been questioning the sanity of designers in the early 2000s who were going for a font like that.


In short, if my library had more than the first five volumes I would have checked out and read those by now as well (funny enough, I'm not the only blogger to have this problem recently and according to Ash yes, this is one of those series with out of print volumes that are hideously priced). I actually got rather excited at Viz's panel at Otakon since when they were talking about their digital manga I swear they mentioned Basara yet when I checked online afterwords it's not on their site. Hopefully this means that it will be up soon, since they've put up a lot of the other "epic shojo fantasy" manga (Red River, From Far Away, Please Save My Earth although that's technically sci-fi) they must have at least tried to get the digital rights for this one as well. 

Manga Review: Mars (volumes 1-3)

Recently I started going to my not-so-local library again and, since I'll only be able to use it until mid-August or so, I'm checking out just about any and every manga series I can get my hands on that doesn't look absolutely terrible. I actually remember reading the first volume of this series years and years ago (I think my local library had it, I also recall thinking that the characters were college aged which is quite incorrect) and liked it and I've seen some good things about it around the internet so I grabbed the first few volumes that were in order (I know they have some of the later volumes but I don't know if they have all of them, both times I've been recently they've been missing random chunks) and three volumes is more than enough to get the feel for a series and see if I want to continue it!


Mars (volumes 1-3) by Fuyumi Soryo

Summary: Kira is a shy student who loves art and is rather terrified when the class playboy and wildboy finally shows up to school and ends up seated next to her. But she quickly learns that while rough around the edges and reckless he's not a bad guy and they slowly strike a friendship and then a romance as they learn more and more about each other.

The Good: I'm rather picky about the kind of romance I like and this one fits my requirements nicely. The main plot isn't about the characters pining over each other, or other romantic interests, and as a bonus there's no love triangle either, excellent. Instead the story, at least so far, is about two teens, one very broken and the other simply shy who reach out to each other and in the process grow and start to become more comfortable with life as a whole (and considering my manga "roots" are with Fruits Basket the fact that I like this kind of story should be no surprise). While she starts out as shy Kira has already started to grow more outspoken and determined, plus if I read everything correctly the story plays around with the "oh the girl is being bullied because she talked to the guy therefore it's her/his fault" trope and (correctly) says that it's neither of their faults (not that this makes it any easier to deal with or resolve sadly). And I especially love how the story has characterized Rei in some ways, while Rei is acknowledged in the story (and most likely by the reader) as attractive the story never sexualizes him and uses it as an excuse for any of the situations. What I mean is that I've come across a number of shojo stories which have a bit of female gaze (which is exactly what it sounds like, a gender-flipped, still straight, version of the male gaze) which is meant to titillate the reader more than the character and to excuse (again, more to the reader than the character) the character's bad-boy actions towards both the girl and other characters. This never happens with Rei, partially since it seems that it never occurs to him to use his looks to get his way with anything other than hooking up for casual sex and when he does get mad it's portrayed as a very scary, not okay event, something that doesn't exactly make his character more likable but rather makes the manga as a whole more likable for me.

The Bad: I am a little worried about what this series will do next which is what I worry about all longer, character driven series, there's just a limit to how much character development high school aged characters can have and still remain realistic. I had to check a few things on the wikipedia page and glancing through I think I can see now how it plans to fill up another dozen volumes. I'm still a little cautious but, given that even with the character development that's already happened Kira has a bit of a ways to go, and Rei has literal miles, I'm more than willing to take a chance and see what the manga can do. Other than that, after having read so much manga I can't tell if the bullying scenes are actually cliched, if I'm just jaded, or if the manga is old enough that these scenes wouldn't have been cliched in the mid to late 90s but regardless I hope there aren't too many more of them because at that point they will certainly be more of a pain to read than contribute anything else, new, or meaningful to the characters or the plot.

The Art: Yup we're in the 90s folks, bring on the long limbed and high cheekboned male characters! (although at lease these look slightly more realistic than the characters in other series, say Red River who appeared to be all cheekbones). So far the cast is fairly small but all the key players look distinct and the motorcycle scenes also look great, I wonder if Soryo was already a fan of motorcycle racing (and created the manga partially as an excuse to draw it) or if she simply studied and watched a lot of races. Either way those scenes look great and I'm also enjoying the change of pace by looking at a manga whose art clearly screams 90s.


So as soon as I can get the library's catalog to work again I plan on seeing what other volumes they have and, provided that they have all of them, plan on requesting all of them to try and finish up this series. If that does happen then expect a review of the full series later this summer, crossing my fingers that this works out!

Manga Review: Akaku Saku Koe

You know I think I did this exact same thing last year, ran out of manga to talk about, looked at Yuki Midorikawa's (Natsume Yuujinchou) other works and then proceeded to read one of them from start to finish in an embarrassingly short amount of time. Oh well, in case people haven't figured out by now I've always been a rather voracious reader, and a fast one, so it should be no surprise that one of my favorite pastimes is to devour a large book/comic series in a pretty short amount of time, it's just that rarely I find a complete manga series that I like so I don't review them here very often (especially since I haven't figured out a better method for reviewing on-going manga, even stuff that's currently being published in the US).


Akaku Saku Koe by Yuki Midorikawa

Summary: Kokubu has a crush on a guy in another class, Karashima, and notices one day that he's going in the same direction she is and she decides to be proactive and follow him, follow him into a crime scene apparently. Karashima has an almost supernatural voice that let's him persuade and command other people and uses it to help out the police

The Good: There was a side note translated somewhere from the manga-ka which said something along the lines of "Kokubu is my favorite kind of heroine to write" and I can see why. While not physically strong or the fastest thinker she's determined and quick to improvise if needed (somebody grabs your friend? Throw a show at them, don't even think about it!) so, even if the story is never very clear WHY she developed a crush on Karashima, she's a pretty likable character (just like the leads in Natsume Yuujinchou and Hi-iro no Isu). I also liked how Karashima's secret was treated, the characters treat it almost casually, freely discussing it when other people aren't around, and that was a nice change of pace. Casual is actually a really good word to describe this series, it's not exactly slow paced or easy going and does have it's dramatic moments but still manages to feel rather laid back over all.

The Bad: It's pretty easy to see that this is Midorikawa's first work because, to be blunt about it, at least half of the stuff in here has appeared in some of her later works and has been refined since then. Kokubu's crush, while certainly cute, feels a little random especially early on, the pacing is a bit strange given all it's timeskips and how slowly the characters change, the art has it's own issues, and there never ends up being one unifying idea/plot thread/theme that ties together the entire story. Sadly these problems also appear in her later works, for me none of them were deal-breakers but they certainly do make it a bit harder to recommend. 

The Art: Yeah, this is another area where Midorikawa has improved over the years (although, don't kill me folks! but I still think that her art is a bit too basic and could be refined a bit more). In fact I can't really blame Karashima for not recognizing a lot of the criminals he's helped catch in the past, god knows I wouldn't have been able to tell a lot of them apart if they had all been lined up next to each other. Background are still kind of weak as well, basically you can tell this is her first work from the art alone, it's just not as strong as it could be.


In the end, if you really, really like Midorikawa's other works and want to read more, go for it, try this out, you'll probably like it. If you're more of a lukewarm fan, or haven't read/seen any of her work at all, look at Natsume Yuujinchou or Hotarubi no Mori E since they are stronger works. If I was to ever come across these books (in Japanese since I can't see this work ever being translated) I'd pick them up but that's because I'm a pretty big fan, otherwise I'm not going to lose much sleep over it.

Manga Review: Sailor Moon (volume one)

So I finally (finally!) managed to get a hold of a copy of the new Sailor Moon release in the US from a friend, excellent! So, I think I said this for my Codename: Sailor V review as well but to recap, apparently I watched some of Sailor Moon as a kid (I remember watching/wanting to watch it but not any of the show, according to my mom my favorite character was "the blonde, vivacious one" which I think means Venus), have read Sailor V, and then saw three or four episodes of the live action show in the past year (which had some god-awful special effects in them). So I'm going into this sorta-kinda blind, I don't actually know what the main plot (plots? arcs?) of Sailor Moon and wasn't super enthused after the live-action/Sailor V/the one or two episodes I think I saw at a girl's night in the past year so let's see how the real thing holds up!


Sailor Moon (volume one) by Naoko Takeuchi

Summary: Usagi was a rather normal middle school girl who likes video games and sleeping in more than homework and was fairly happy with her life. Then one day she finds a mysterious talking cat who gives her magical powers and a mission and her life hasn't been the same since.

The Good: That ended up being a whole lot better than I expected, Usagi stopped being annoying nearly immediately, the characters had, well, character. It was also paced quickly, though formulaically, I liked it! It doesn't seem to be dragging out any of the mysteries too long and like I said Usagi (and the rest of the cast) become likable pretty quickly (as of right now my favorite character is actually Jupiter because she is a Boss). 

The Bad: It was a bit of a slog to get through the first chapter or so (since I remembered the plot of that from the live action version) and I'm wondering how the story keeps going after this first arc finishes, is this going to be a "you defeated on boss BUT THERE'S AN EVEN GREATER ONE LURKING IN THE SHADOWS!" kind of story? Other than that there's not much to say here or in the Good section, it's just the introductory volume and technically not a lot of stuff has happened yet, which isn't a bad thing but just a thing related to telling stories in a comic format, they take a bit more time to get going usually.

The Art: While it's clear that Takeuchi is struggling with drawing some things (poor Luna looks less like a cat and more like a blob with details half of the time) but I was surprised that I liked Tuxedo Mask's designs here more than in all the anime screencaps I've seen, I think it was the lack of giant 90s shoulder pads. All of the human characters are rather pretty to look at (some of the aliens not so much, they also look a lot less distinct from each other) and while there aren't backgrounds in a lot of panels the ones that do show up have a good amount of detail to them.


So, a few days ago I found out that the local library has more volumes (they list up to the most current one, nine, in the catalog but it sounds like they only actually have up to five or six right now) and I requested those so hopefully I'll be able to review those in a few weeks and provide a fuller review. But for the moment yes I liked it, yes I'm reading more, and yes I plan on checking out the new series in summer (but I was already at least going to try it, practically the whole internet was going to do at least that).

Anime Review: Tokyo Babylon OVAs

While I was watching X TV it occurred to me that I should check these two little OVAs out since, as I'm not reading the Tokyo Babylon scans since it is licensed in the US (Dark Horse, are these omnibus editions coming out anytime soon?) and I've started following a few people on tumblr who lately have been talking about the series an awful lot. I'm a little curious about the live action movie made based off of TB (which I only found out even existed this past summer, I've almost never seen people talk about it) but for the moment my curiosity has been satiated.

Tokyo Babylon

Summary: Subaru Sumeragi is an omyonji in Tokyo who spends his days dealing with spirits and other magical things as well as spending time with the only two people he's close to, his twin sister Hokuto and their friend Seishiro (a local veterinarian). Subaru cares a lot about his job and tries to help people no matter what, often putting his own safely on the line. 

The Good: I'm not sure if the two stories were based on stories from the manga but considering how well they were paced I'm inclined to think they were original stories. Both stories were rather different from each other, interesting, and in an odd way it reminded me of why I liked xxxHolic, Clamp just seems to be better at writing more episodic series than plot-central ones. I did enjoy these two shorts, even if I was wincing at some of the weird 1980s styles that had crept in, and wish it had been a full series, partially because of a problem I'm about to bring up below.  

The Bad: If you don't know anything about TB this is not the series for you, while it briefly touches on Subaru and Seishiro's connection (which ends up being a huge deal later in the story) it's still rather vague. The stories here don't require you to know much about the characters but when they don't explain anything at all it's clear who the show is aimed at. As I mentioned last week with X, that show works a bit better if you know more of Subaru's backstory and, since that is explained there, I could see these OVAs working if someone was to watch them and immediately follow them up with X to get a better grasp on how Subaru has changed in the 7+ years that separate the two. Other than that I really can't recommend this to anyone who hasn't already seen it, it just doesn't have that wide an appeal when it's almost completely lacking in backstory/explanations.   

The Audio: I about started snickering when the first OVA had a classic, let's-play-music-over-unrelated-images moment, such an 80s thing to do (heck, even the way a lot of shots are framed in the series feel not exactly dated but old school). I was a bit surprised that Subaru was actually voiced by a male voice actor (I've just gotten so used to hearing female VAs do male roles) but it really worked well. Hokuto was rather screechy early on but thankfully mellowed down by the end of the first OVA and the rest of the (Japanese, I don't think there's a dub) was fine. 

The Visuals: Please note the above image has nothing to do with the actual OVAs, it was the best thing I could find on google that wasn't a screenshot (or involve some of the story's more, interesting, outfits). In any case,  I watched this on an incredibly crappy stream (which occasionally had subs when people weren't talking/saying something different than what the characters actually were saying) so I don't really know what to say about how the OVAs looked. They're from 1992 and I'd imagine that they'd look fine if they were remastered although I did see some weird looking animation in places. Aside from that, and I've already established that these OVAs were channeling the 80s like it was going out of style (wait), the only thing I have left to say is that yes, Subaru is pretty damn adorable and one I would actually call moe (and I'm nigh-positive I'm not the only person who would say that).

So, hasn't aged that well in terms of looks (although if it was remastered that would help) and has a narrow appeal, come to think of it you can probably apply those statements to a lot of Clamp shows (or will be able to in another decade or so). I had fun with this but hopefully next week I'll finally be back to shows where I can whole-heartedly recommend them to people.

Anime Review: Fate/Zero (second part)

Hopefully there's not much I need to say to introduce this series, I think the title says it all, it's the second half of a series in a franchise. I was thinking about making a little graphic called "How to understand what's going on in Fate/Zero if you haven't seen Fate/Stay Night" but since I still haven't seen (read?) F/SN I wouldn't be able to tell if I was even putting down accurate/relevant backstory. I will say this however, this show should be watched as one whole, complete show, not as two halves to the whole, partially because if you don't have a three month break between the episodes then you don't have time to ruminate on all kinds of unanswered details, look them up, and spoil yourself silly. I will say that it is perfectly possible to enjoy this series without having seen/read any of the other installments of the Fate franchise but those details I spoiled myself on from the Type-Moon wiki did give the show more of an emotional payoff for me in the end.

Fate/Zero

 

Summary: Continuing immediately from where the first half left off, the Fourth Holy Grail War wages on and seven participants still stand and, along with their servants, are fighting for the chance to use the wish-granting Holy Grail. Some of them have clear plans, some plan on using it for another purpose, and still others have no plan at all yet still fight for the entertainment this war brings them. But in a set-up like this where there can be only one pair left at the end not many characters have happy fates waiting for them.

The Good: I rather unexpectedly became quite attached to some of the characters in this show, mostly side characters admittedly, and every character who either survived the show or came close underwent a good deal of character development in this half. I was sad to see that Saber didn't get as much as I had hoped (which I suspect is because it all originally happened in Fate/Stay Night, the one problem with prologues is that they are bound by things such as that and F/Z had a few other odd character moments arise from that) but other than that I was satisfied. I do wish they had touched more on the history of the Grail War itself (which I read up some online which both explained a lot of things and was just plain interesting) but I suspect that's another thing that was covered in F/SN so couldn't really be dealt with here.

The Bad: To agree with quite a few other people on the internet, the two episode Kiritsugu flashback was much to long but my even greater problem was that I actually didn't know that he WAS the main character until I went "geeze, he's in the opening A LOT, like, more than anyone else." The first half of the show had made me think the story was going to focus more-or-less equally on all seven pairs, not that it's very much Kiritsugu's story, and that's a rather large narrative failing, I believe it is made clearer in the novel where he has internal narration, which also appears to make him more sympathetic earlier on. That lack of internal narration also made it much harder to, well, not be bored whenever Kirei was on screen. To explain why his character bored me would be dangerously close to spoilers but he's of an archetype I'm not particularly fond of so, while he did make some great looking fight scenes possible, in the end I just didn't care about his character at all.  

The Audio: There were new opening and closing themes but no new major characters (and obviously the same music composer) so not much changed. I didn't like the opening and closing themes as much as I liked the original ones and several of the actors really had a chance to prove that they had range but other than that there's not much else to say that I haven't already said. 

The Visuals: As expected, the second half of the show looks just as good as the first half and all of the fight scenes are stunning to look at. While I still liked the fight in The Legend of Korra a bit more for their choreography the fights here were a close second for their fluidity and just plain old visual interest. There were also quite a lot of them (I'd ask where UFOtable got the money and then I remember how many sets of the first half they sold) and many of them incorporated CGI very well (which sounds like a no-brainer for American animation but a lot of series in Japan are still hand-drawn and I've seen a bit of hostility to companies using CGI in these circumstances). Actually, in addition to making me more curious about the rest of the Fate franchise, all of the art here has made me more and more interested in UFOtable's other well-known series, Garden of Sinners, and it's always impressive when a studio leaves such an impression on a viewer that they want to see other, completely unconnected* productions they have made.




So, I'm not getting the second box set since I don't have $400 to spend, honestly I probably wouldn't even if I did, but I do hope Aniplex puts out a Region 1 priced set in the future (and I've heard rumors that some of the extras on the original set weren't subtitled so if any of those were included I hope that's fixed).




*okay, semi-connected in the sense that they're apparently in alternate universes but in the Type-Moon mega-verse overall, or something like that 
 

Webcomic Review Month 2012: Fall On Me, Fishbones, The Fox Sister

Since one can never have too many webcomics (okay yes you can but roll with me here) I found out about this webcomic tournament over on ComicMix this morning and encourage everyone to go over, see their list of nominations (which I believe is over 200 comics) and if you have any comics to give them a vote. I don't really care who wins in the end but it's a great way for smaller comics to get exposure, all of the comics are currently updating ones which is more than I can say for some of my reviews, and I was even able to find out that a comic or two I liked had come off of hiatus thanks to the list, so go on over there!
Side note, I think I have the creators of The Fox Sister correct but I'm still really tired so if I got them wrong someone please correct me sooner rather than later. Last year's reviews.

Fall on Me by Adriana Blake
 A simple autobiographical, slice of life comic dealing with daily life for Adriana Blake and her husband.

There are a surprising number of (semi-) autobiographical webcomics out there, tvtropes calls them journal comics as a catch-all term, and what's even more amazing is the amount of variety you can get from a rather mundane and ordinary topic. This one chooses to focus on the cute moments between Blake and her husband and succeeds in being cute but not overly sugarly. It's perhaps not the best comic to marathon in one go, it reminds me a bit of Aria in the sense that it's much more about the interaction between the people and there's no "plot" to connect everything together, but it's a nice pick me up to read a few times a week. The series is also translated by the author into Spanish, I don't come across many webcomics that have been translated so I'll try to note that whenever it comes up.

 

Fishbones written by Jisuk Cho and illustrated by Yuki S.

 Set in a fictional city on the east coast of the US back in 1999 Ferris Levinstein would be perfectly content with a quiet, everyday life but with family in the mob that sometimes seems like a pipe dream. Of course, no one has ever asked him to join the family, or even talks about it in front of him except for his friend Demos, but who knows how long that will last.

I only warmed up to this series recently, when I initially tried it there wasn't a lot published and so far the story has been very character driven and you need a solid amount of page/screen time to establish a character. I do hope the story becomes a bit more plot driven later on, it involves the Mafia after all, there's just so much room for fun there, but the characters have interesting dynamics and I'd like to see a lot more of those explored as well. No clue where the story will end up going but for the moment it's an interesting read and I'll be continuing with it. It also appears to have a Russian translation

   

The Fox Sister by Jayd "Chira" Ait-Kaci and Christina Strain

Set in 1960s South Korea, Cho Yun Hee and her sister seem to be the only survivors of a fire that killed their parents but Yun Hee knows the truth, it was a kumiho that killed them and it seems to have taken the form of her older sister in the mean time. It's been years since then but it seems that the kumiho is still stalking her and trying to finish what it started while also becoming close to an American named Alex who has taken an interest in Yun Hee and her dog.

Another comic that is still relatively new but it has a good start under it's belt and it seems like a number of things are about to be explained so I feel confident recommending it to people. It's not obvious from the banner but the art has a very nice feeling to it, it's not quite as detailed as some other comics but the smooth lines manage to convey a lot of motion and emotion in the characters so I feel like too much detail would actually clutter the art and take away from that (and it's not like there is no detail work in the comics as well, there's actually a surprising amount when you look closely at the artwork). I'm also really curious about the setting, since I don't read as much manhaw as I do manga I almost never find stories set in Korea and I never find historical fiction set after 1940s, period*. I feel like those are enough reasons to recommend this comic, even if it it's a bit on the short side now, and hope that it continues as strongly as it started.

*ironically enough, many American school never find enough time to really teach any history after world war II as well so without a textbook or historical fiction my knowledge of the time period is especially sketchy, hence why I'm excited to actually see a story set then. 

Winter 2012 Anime Reviews

So it's that time again, a new season of anime has started and there's all sorts of stuff to try out. Only one post from me this time since, as is usual for winter seasons, there isn't a ton of stuff that interests me but there are still a few shows that caught my eye. I've seen the first one or two episodes of each series, for once all of these shows are legally being simulcast so I might be a few days behind some of them, but normally my opinion doesn't change too radically from my early impressions so onto the mini-reviews!

Ano Natsu de Matteru (Waiting in the Summer): High school student Kirishima Kaito is expecting to have a laid back summer shooting a movie with friends but then he apparently gets crushed by an alien space ship. Oops. So far he hasn’t remembered that detail but since the offending alien, and the one responsible for bringing him back, has now transferred to his school, agreed to help out with the movie and somehow moved in with him while his sister leaves for the summer, it might not be so quiet after all. Ignoring how much of that sounds like Birdy the Mighty Decode (since there have been plenty of shows with a similar arrangement of tropes) I was surprised at how much I liked this one. It took some classic romantic tropes, such as the mysterious and hot new transfer student moving in, and actually played around with them and made them funny again. Sure there were still some facepalm worthy moments when things became too clichéd but so far I think the writers stand at good chance at making this a fun little show.

Ano Natsu is streaming on Crunchyroll and has been licensed by Section 23

Another:26 years ago, a talented student who was beloved by everyone died. Yet her classmates pretended that she was still alive up to graduation and there seems to be even more to the story than that. Fast forward to 1998 and Kouichi Sakakibara has moved to the small town of Yomiyama and will be attending the same middle school while his father is off researching in India. He spends some time in a hospital first however and from there the story starts creating an atmosphere that “not everything is as it seems!” and by creating atmosphere I mean beating you over the head with all the shots of people looking uncomfortable, shots that drag out way too long with “creepy sounds” played, and too many close-ups of people’s eyes dilating dramatically. The show does sound interesting and a like a lot of it but after two episodes I just can't take the "this is atmosphere!" moments seriously and I just become too annoyed at the show. I might pick it up later but for the moment the show is dropped.

Another is another show streaming over on crunchyroll and is another new show licensed by Section 23.

Bodacious Space Pirates (Mouretsu Pirates): …..I am never typing out that title again if I can help it. Contrary to the title however, this isn’t a fanservice show (or at least not yet)! In the future there have been many planets that have been colonized and one of them, the Sea of the Morningstar, gained it’s independence from it’s mother system only 100 years ago with the help of privateers, space pirates who attack enemy ships with permission from the government (a “Letter of Marque”). This is all fairly unimportant for Marika Kato, an ordinary high school student who is very active in her school’s space yacht club, until she learns that she is the only living descendant of the captain of the ship Bentenmaru* and therefore is the only person who can be the next captain. Marika isn’t so sure about all of this pirate stuff but I definitely be checking out a few more episodes since this one seemed like a fairly fun show and I liked Marika a lot as well, she seems fairly sensible so I’m curious how they’ll convince her to become the captain. The show also has had the sense not to rush Marika into her new position, even if it’s clear to the audience that she’ll be the next captain, and I’m really enjoying the world building build up right now.

Space Pirates is also streaming on Crunchyroll and also been licensed by Section 23.

InuxBoku Secret Service: Ririchiyo is the newest tenant of the Mansion de Ayakashi, a super exclusive apartment complex where each person is assigned their very own Secret Service person. Ririchiyo, who moved in to try and work on her habit of covering up her true emotions by speaking disdainfully to people, doesn’t want her assigned Secret Service man but Soushi might wear her down yet. I read some of the manga for this series before this and it took me a few chapters to get into the swing of it and I feel like that might be the same case here. It’s kinda interesting but not a very gripping first episode, I did like the OP though which was nice since I haven’t liked most of the OP/ED I’ve seen this season.

 Take a wild guess who is streaming this one and another guess who licensed it.

Lagrange: The Flower of Rin-ne (Rinne no Lagrange: Flower Declaration of Your Heart): Madoka seems to be a fairly ordinary student, abet one who helps out everyone who asks and because someone asked her she ends up piloting a robot in the fight against alien invaders (she does object when she finds out this wasn't a one time thing however). It certainly feels like a lot of mecha/space/sci-fi-ish shows this season (this, Aquarion Evol, that pirate show, Senki Zessho Symphogear, Ano Natsu to a degree), I guess this is the accidental theme of the season (and perhaps the year) just like young girl detectives were the theme last year. I didn’t like the first episode that much, it felt bland and predictable, but I started warming up to the show in the second episode as Madoka and some of the other characters started to get a bit more fleshed out and there was a small twist on the monster-of-the-week style episode I was expecting. The show is (split) two cour so it has time to build up and I really hope that’s what they’re doing right now.

Rin-ne has been licensed by Viz and is being streamed on hulu since Viz doesn't have their own player.

Natsume Yuujinchou Shi: You really shouldn’t be watching this show if you haven’t seen the previous three seasons and if you’ve seen them then you already know the drill here, Takashi Natsume can see spirits and inherited the Book of Friends from his grandmother who could also see spirits and decided to release all the names contained within it. He gets into trouble a lot however and mostly unrelated to the book such as the trouble he gets into in the two-parter that starts off the season. I like the more serious arcs of Natsume myself, especially since we might even get some back story on his parents this season (it popped up recently in the scanlations), and the theme of the season so far seems to be Natsume actively helping out yokai, but regardless which way Natsume goes I’ll be sure to keep watching.

Same as the previous seasons, Natsume is streaming on Crunchyroll (and all four seasons have finally been licensed for the US by NISA).

In case you guys couldn't tell, Funico have been surprisingly mum about their pick-ups for this season, so far they only announced the DxD boobs show and honestly there aren't many other series this season I'm curious in trying. Possibly The Daily Lives of Highschool Boys or the new Aquarion Evol show but for the moment I'm good. I have 5 continuing shows, at least 5 new shows, Once Upon a Time, Grimm, MLP:FiM, 3 Nozomi shows (although the last episode of Emma streamed yesterday and the last episode of Antique Bakery streams next week), plus a few other things to watch so it's not like I'm getting bored anytime soon.

Soooo, what is everyone else trying out that they absolutely adore so far? 

*whose name keeps reminding me of a mash-up of Bettenou from Un-Go and Bishamaru from Kyosougiga, which is a pretty funny image 

Anime Review: Fate/Zero (part one)

I know that a number of bloggers have decided to do just one review for Fate/Zero but I don't trust myself to be able to remember the first half perfectly come late June when the second half finishes airing so I'll just be a little different and talk about it now. As a heads up, I have never seen Fate/Stay Night and don't particularly want to either. I've read a lot about it (after the first episode of this show I went over to tvtropes, skimmed the F/SN page and looked at the characters to figure out who was related to who), read some reviews for it, and know the general gist of the plot but finding out that Studio Deen produced the show really didn't make me want to watch it. So why did I try out F/Z in the first place? A little after I had finished up my fall previews I went to a meet-up with some local anime fans I knew, we've all been friends for years now, and one of them was talking about how much she was enjoying the show ("Oh Rin, your father was SUCH a bastard") and you could tell she was honestly loved the show so I thought why not? And sometimes that's all it takes to get me to watch something, sometimes anyway.

Fate/Zero

Summary: 10 years before the Fifth Holy Grail War of Fate/Stay Night there was the Fourth Holy Grail War where once again seven magi, Masters, summoned seven heroic spirits, the Servants, in a battle to the last Master/Servant pair and the winners get one wish granted by the grail. The story follows each of the Master/Servant pairs but puts special focus on Kiritsugu Emiya and on his servant, the same Saber of F/SN, as they as they try to survive and win the deadly game.

The Good: Unusually for me I really dislike about half the cast of this show yet I'm still interested in what most of them are plotting and, once the show gets into the swing of it, even the talking dominated episodes are rather interesting. It's particularly interesting to hear not why the Masters are participating in the Grail War, since many of them don't have a clear goal in mind, but what the Servants hope to achieve and fleshed them out much more than I was expecting. And, even if I may despise some of them, I'm happy that each Master-Servant relationship is different and many of them already feel very nicely fleshed out as are the characters in general. You can imagine any two of the Masters or any two of the Servants meeting and already know how their encounter would go, not every series can boast that kind of character depth, especially after just thirteen episodes.

The Bad: The place chosen to break the series in half wasn't an especially good place to stop, couldn't they have at least shown a few moments of a fight scene to tide us over until the spring? I've seen some novel readers say they expected the series to stop here, so I guess that means there isn't a much better stopping point farther along, but that does make me wonder why they choose to make a split cour series after all, give the animators time to catch back up? The start of the series also wasn't so great, 40 minutes of talking with some necessary world building but I really think that some of it could have been spread out more, it's a real test of your patience if you aren't already a fan of the franchise (likewise, for the episodes that were focused on conversations between characters I didn't really like were also a bit of a drag to get through but that was because of personal taste, not bad writing).

The Audio: I was so focused on the visuals that I didn't pay as much attention to the audio in this show but it worked well. The characters were well voiced, I liked the opening and ending themes, none of the background music felt jarring or out of place, it just worked.

The Visuals: Part of the reason I don't want to see Fate/Stay Night is because Studio Deen does not produce very good looking anime and this is one of the best looking series from all of 2011. Gorgeous fights, loads of details, and it's clear that the same people who worked on Garden of Sinners worked on this as well, they used the same distinctive blue and red color combination for some of the magic scenes and made it look good, they have an excellent grasp on color. In short, the show is eye candy (although not just eye candy) and looked consistently great for 13 episodes and I applaud Ufotable for that.

I'm looking forward to the second half of the show coming out in the spring (good lord, there's already so much spring anime that I want to watch!) and I can see myself owning this someday, probably even on BR because of how gorgeous the show works, but no way in hell am I going to buy that $300+ BR set of the first 13 episodes. That's five different kinds of crazy and I can only hope that Aniplex does put out a reasonably priced (like, comparable to Funimation or Nozomi prices) sets, 13 episode or full season, in a year or two. 

Comic Review: Zot!

Technically I should have written up this review, eeesh, in October but I elected to put up reviews of more Halloween-ish comics, honestly I checked out this book quite a while ago from the local library but the sheer size of the book took a while to get through. Honestly my first thought when I found the book was "Holy crap, a comic that rivals the size of A Drifting Life!" although it's actually a few hundred pages smaller. I'd seen Scott McCloud's books previously, namely his ones on making comics, but after reading too many god-awful "how to draw manga" books I shy away from all kinds of how-to books that involve art, no matter how well regarded they are. But this book seemed kinda interesting and I have been reading more superhero stories lately so I figured why not try it out?

Zot! by Scott McCloud

 
 Summary: Jenny lives in contemporary, suburban America and her life feels even duller in comparison to her boyfriend Zot's who comes from an alternate Earth "in the far-flung future of 1965" where he is a superhero and lives in a seemingly perfect world. The first half of the story deals more with adventures in Zot's world and the second half deals with the more mundane journey of growing up in our/Jenny's world.

The Good: The second part of the book, while it feels very disconnected at times, also had a lot of great character development chapters. I think having a break from Jenny and Zot helped me (although I did like Zot more in these chapters than I did in the first half of the book) and I was surprised that McCloud decided to flesh out the side characters so much. Even more surprisingly my favorite two chapters had to deal with romance, I'm really not a big fan of romance, and I could see how one (maybe both of them) was nominated for an award.

The Bad: The introduction to the book promises that this is a reboot of the earlier Zot! comics and that readers don't need to have seen the originals but it neglected to cover a number of things which I suspect were in the original. Where did the running gag of Jenny's brother come from? How did Jenny and Zot meet, the story even shows that Zot's uncle is the only one to have figured out how to go from world to world so how did that come about? I feel like the comic was missing a good one to three chapters from the beginning, there's starting in medias res and then there's simply not telling part of the story. There were some other plot threads that also weren't followed up on (at one point there's a very intriguing idea that Zot's world may be a replica of ours, and idea that eventually leads to the second half of the series, yet it's never followed up on, why?!) and the ending, while it technically worked, felt so disconnected from the previous chapters that it seemed to come out of no where. I think that overall I disliked the first half of the story more since the characters and the setting came off as very flat and all the villains bugged me rather than they interested me.


The Art: It may have been the difference in sizes but I think it was the fact that this book was a hardcover that made it much easier for me to hold than A Drifting Life which was very nice. Onto the actual art, there's a mention on the back of the book that, even though the series started back in the 1980s (ie, before much manga was published in the US), McCloud was already interested in manga and I feel like I can feel a few influences on his style. The sound effects were still very much American comic style but the character designs felt a little more "anime"-esque. I thought the art worked well for the style but, while I would certainly recognize the style elsewhere, it isn't the kind of art that I'll think back on in a few months and think "yeah, that was really amazing art."


In the end, I just had a looooooot of issues with this story, enough to make me wonder both if McCloud really had an idea of where he wanted the story to go and why so many people apparently loved this story. All of which made me really sad, I really was excited to try this book out since it looked so good and in the end it just didn't work for me at all and it kinda makes me want to avoid his other works as well, oh well.
 

Book Review: Dust of 100 Dogs

Aka, the book my mom kept trying to steal from me when we were on vacation, no idea why she found this book so interesting based on the blurb on it's back cover. Then again, I don't know why I was interested by this book either, I remember coming across it in a bookstore years ago, thought it looked interesting and just now found it at my local library. I suppose part of the interest for me was because the blurb seems to give away the entire plot of the book so I was wondering what was left to tell.

Dust of a Thousand Dogs by A.S. King

Part of the reason I was initially attracted to this book (in the bookstore) was because of it's cool design. It's only three colors, very graphic and really fits the book well, plus that's a pretty neat font used for the title (also a little unusual to see the title placed in the lower right hand corner of the cover, usually it's right at the top). So the cover itself is eye-grabbing and really stands out compared to other YA titles.

Summary: Emer was originally born in Ireland at the time of Cromwell and saw her family home destroyed while she escaped and eventually became a pirate terrorizing the Caribbean. However, right after burying some treasure, she was killed and cursed to live the lives of 100 dogs before being reborn again as a human. It’s now the 1970s and she has finally been reborn as a human (named Saffron) who remembering every single life she’s had before and determined to escape her deadbeat family and reclaim her treasure.

The Good: It seems that the book gives away it’s entire plot on the back cover but proves that knowing what happened (the facts) isn’t the same as knowing how it happened (the reason), in a way it shows that you can still enjoy a story even if you know almost all of what is going to happen. The book uses a lot of flashbacks to tell the story and, in an unexpected twist, shows that Emer and Saffron are not the same person unlike most stories where a reincarnated person is exactly the same. Emer is certainly a part of Saffron but they are still two separate people, Saffron doesn’t mind her visitor/former self living with her and seems to have simply accepted that she knows all the things that Emer does. Because of all the flasbacks this story is more of a historical fiction work which covers two very different time periods, 17th century Ireland and the Caribbean and 1970s through early 1990s America which is an unusual combination for a book written only a few years ago*. Emer and Saffron carry the story so well that book is a really interesting and engaging read.

The Bad: A few things about the ending seem unexpected or just a bit too convenient for some of the characters (almost an inverse deus ex machina since it makes things harder for Saffron/Emer ). It also provides a much needed climax for the story since in the current timeline the story is already in the 1990s and most of Saffron's problems have been (at least temporarily) taken care of yet something still needs to happen at the end to wrap everything up. It’s not a plot heavy book, it’s very much a character book instead and at times it feels more like a very strange slice of life story. The interludes the include dog training advice/snippets from Emer's 100 lives as various dogs sometimes felt rather strange and out of place, the story would have functioned perfectly without them. 

I ended up liking this book more than I thought I would (just because I had no idea how much I would like it) and wouldn't mind buying a copy of it someday for an e-reader or such. Makes me wish I had more historical fiction to read as well, for some reason that genre just isn't as popular in young adult (or if it is it's something more along the lines of ROMANCE, INTRIGUE.... in the 1800s!), although it is entirely possible that in my years of wandering through bookstores and libraries that I've just missed all the historical fiction they have.

*by which I mean, it's rare to see what is technically historical fiction books that are only set a few decades ago (instead of some more "romantic" era).

 

Comic Review: Blue Monday (volume 1: the kids are alright)

Bit of a quick one tonight since I've had an on-again-off-again headache, plus this was a fairly short book (issue? It had four chapters in it but I'm afraid I don't know the American terms for these sorts of comics). Wouldn't mind reading the rest of the series but doubt I'll find them anywhere near me soon.

Blue Monday by Chynna Clugston-Major

 Summary: Life is strange when you're a teenager but Bleu Finnegan and her friends Alan, Clover, and Victor are making the most of it. Between getting revenge on the guys, getting pranked by the guys, and trying to score tickets to their favorite band's show it's gonna be a fun ride if nothing else.

The Good: I'm not sure how but this story made me feel really nostalgic for the 90s (and considering I was nine when the 90s ended I'm really not sure how that works). I suppose what it really reminds me of are the Nickelodeon cartoons from the early 2000s (like The Wild Thornberrys, Hey Arnold etc) where the kids weren't quite old enough to be obsessed with romance all the time and their adventures were really just their daily lives and the weird scrapes they get into (and much more romanticized than most kid's lives). This days I do like a bit more plot in my stories but this was a really nice change of pace and the characters are fairly likeable kids I would have loved to have as friends when I was in middle school.

The Bad: It's a pretty short book (especially when you take out all the short stories at the end) and I wish their had been a bit more continuity between the chapters (another way it's like the above mentioned cartoons). Had a bit of a hard time figuring out the age of the characters/where the heck this story is set (apparently it's high school and California, could've sworn it was Ireland for some strange reason) and I felt like the book ended just as soon as it got into a rhythm. There are three more volumes in this series but I still wish this particular one was a bit longer.

The Art: The art was alright for most of the book. However, there was one section at the end of the book (I think it was a collection of one shots related to the story) where the art looked more rough and was horribly cramped and squeezed on the page, to the point where I didn't read it since it wasn't worth straining my eyes over (and i think the dimensions of the book were a little bigger than a regular sized manga too). Don't think I missed anything important there but let this be a warning to all comic artists, don't put too much on one page!


Like I said, if I had a chance to read more of this series I would (likewise, if they released the whole series as one big volume I would consider buying it) but at the moment I don't feel a burning desire to track it down. Good thing too, with all the stuff I do have a burning desire to go out and buy I've got quite a long list by this point, thank god for streaming and libraries!