Book Review: Grave Mercy

I've already seen a few lists of books coming out in 2013 which people are excited for and I was thinking "man, it seems like assassins are the new in thing (which is kinda odd but o-kay)" and then remembered that I had heard a lot of good things about a book which involved an assassin in a medieval sounding setting that came out in 2012. Lo and behold my school library even had a copy of it, hurray!


Grave Mercy by Robin Lafevers

Summary: Before Ismae was born her mother tried to abort her but she was born anyway prompting the local herbwife to say that her father was actually Death himself. After a rather miserable life Ismae finds herself at the convent that serves death and is trained in all kinds of things including fighting, poison-mixing, and killing. She has no reason to question the sisters who took her in but when she's on an extended mission to keep the young duchess of her country safe and out of the hands of the invading French she begins to question whose will she is really following, Death's or the convents.

The Good: I really liked Ismae's character, she both loyal to the convent but still thinks for herself, even before all the facts start piling up in front of her. And all of her character development is paced well, it's a thick book (I believe it was a bit over 500 pages) but it never felt like the book was stalling for time or got lost and was wallowing around. The side characters also have some character development, or at least turn out to be more complicated than they originally seemed, and I'm happy that this is part of a series since I really want to see where Ismae goes after her big choice. As a side note, it's actually rather interesting to read this book so soon after Seraphina, both of them have very similar settings, conflicts, and character archetypes yet Ismae and Seraphina come from completely different places and it's interesting to compare how you can have two different characters in similar situations and seeing how they approach the problem.  

The Bad: I have absolutely no clue what is up with that tagline across the top of the book, Ismae rarely (if ever?) scorns the people around her for not knowing all the secrets of the court or for living simpler lives and it's almost the opposite of the character development she goes through. Bah, in any case, I'm also quibbling over the fact that the duchess is so young, just 13, I had wondered why she wasn't as active as I had expected but seriously, would it hurt or even change the character dynamics if she had been a bit older? After learning that I'm now questioning what she can really do in the next book or two with such little experience of life, hopefully I'll just be able to ignore it and not let that bother me too much.


So a 3.5 out of 5 for this book, not 100% if I'd buy it (since right now I don't have the urge to re-read it) but I'm certainly excited for the next books in the series (called the His Fair Assassin Series). I'm a little worried since it sounds like the viewpoint is switching over to another character (who did appear briefly so I have no idea where it'll fit timeline wise) and there were a few things left unresolved in this book but I'll just cross my fingers and hope that Lafevers makes it all work!

Anime Review: Kamisama Kiss

Continuing along with the just finished fall series (although I only had three, one-cour series this time, just about everything is carrying over into the winter but that's the subject for tomorrow's post), I had actually heard of this series before the annoucement since Viz Media has licensed the manga over here in the US (under their Shojo Beat imprint). So I tried reading some of it, kind of got into it but not really into it so I was pretty excited for the anime and hoped that it would just flow a bit better this way. Sadly the anime ended right where I stopped reading the manga so it didn't cover any new material, really wish I had planned that better but oh well.

Kamisama Kiss (Kamisama Hajimemashita)

Summary: Nanami lost her mother at a young age and now her father has run away from his gambling debts and all their assets have been seized leaving her with literally nothing. She's determined to do something about it but before she can think of anything she finds herself helping a man get away from a dog and he offers her a place to stay in return. What he didn't mention was that his place was in fact a dilapidated shrine and in the process he just made Nanami a god.... 

The Good: Since there's no good place to mention this otherwise, the title translates more or less into "I Became a God", best guess for why that was changed for English is for alliterative reasons/American idea of god is pretty different. Moving on, this show almost feels like it was based on a story from the early 2000s since it's so, clean in some ways. No fanservice (unless you count fox boys with long hair and all their clothes on fanservice), the romantic pairing is established pretty early on, no gimmicks, the characters never have too much trouble overcoming the problems placed before them, it just has a cleanness to it that I don't see that much these days (or maybe I'm not reading as much shojo so I'm just not coming across it as often, also totally possible). Funny enough, considering how they share a director, I think this show has the potential to be to a lot of early high schoolers what Fruits Basket was to me and my friends, a gateway anime which I think is a good thing (although my inner cynic says it probably won't work out that neatly).   

The Bad: When the director (Akitaro Daichi) was first announced I said I was a little worried since I just didn't like how he did parts of Fruits Basket (and it's no secret in the fandom that he and the manga-ka disagreed so much that that's why there's no second season) and yeah, again I didn't like the ending he had here. As I said earlier, I had read up to this point so I remembered a bit so I went, checked, and yep, not only did he squish in parts from the next arc (and they only had two episodes to wrap up!) but a lot of the stuff I didn't like (Nanami running away) was anime original. I'm guessing he felt like there wasn't enough drama already and wanted to add in more but I thought it was a poor choice. But mostly my problems lie with the source material, while there are some underlying plot threads throughout the entire story (which were brought up here, and ended up going no where since they haven't yet been resolved) the story has a ton of silly side stories and I do wish it underwent Cerebus Syndrome to an extent, or at least had fewer side stories (hell, I was starting to wonder if the anime was making up filler for some unknown reason).

The Audio: I might get pelted by the fans for this but, I didn't really like neither the opening song nor the ending. There wasn't anything wrong with either of them (Funimation translated the lyrics so I can say that they matched the show well enough) but they both had the wrong tone for me, they were too girly and simpering and I just wanted something a little more upbeat (or at least a more upbeat opening and make the current opening the ending). Didn't have any trouble with the voice acting however, every one sounded good 

The Visuals: I don't know what it is but Nanami's design just doesn't quite work for me. It's almost there, and I like around 75% of the other character designs in the show, but there's just something a little off. Maybe it was the color scheme, that also seemed oddly bright and cheerful and I would have liked it to have been a little more muted, although looking at the manga book covers I can say that I can see where they got the general scheme from.


So I give this show a three or a three and a half out of five and I'm not sure if I plan on buying it. I probably should, and probably will, since obviously the only way to convince Funimation to license more shojo (yes, even thought Viz had the manga Funi has the anime) and I'm sure they'll dub it well as well, it just fell a little flat with me in the end. Thankfully it does seem to be doing well in Japan (apparently the streaming numbers for Funi were either the best or among the best they've ever had for a simulcast) so we *might* get a second season, it would be a shame to leave the few things they set up just hanging, although if not there's always the manga (although sadly not on the VizManga site yet).

Anime Review: K

Good lord, how did I fall so hard for such a silly show? I only tried out K since it was a streaming title and I wanted to give it a shot. After the first episode I wasn't going to continue but a lot of people on my twitter seemed to enjoy it so I decided alright, I can give it another episode, it's giving me plenty to snark about anyway. And then I realized by the end of the second episode that I really liked the chemistry between the main trio and I was sorta-kinda hooked. So you can imagine how this show, which I saw someone else compare to a deep fried Snickers bar, surprised me when I realized it was plotted just a bit better than I was expecting.....


K

Summary: One night in December Tatara Totsuka went up on the roof to film a video and was shot dead by a crazed young man who declares himself to the seventh, the colorless, king. Tatara was a member of a the street gang Homra which was under the third king (who like the seventh king is all part of a larger system of kings and clansmen all with supernatural powers) whom are all rather pissed off about this and out for the blood of the guy who did it. And this is all rather unfortunate for Yashiro Isana, a regular high school student who has a striking resemblance to the guy in the video but no memory of murdering someone and has to go on the run when even more groups of people (all also related to the various kings) pop up and are after him as well. 

The Good: As I said earlier, this show turned out to be much better plotted than I expected, especially for a show that spends it's first episode being style over substance and it's second episode having a catgirl run around naked for most of it. The trick is that while the show does heavily foreshadow it's biggest twist it's mostly visual foreshadowing (some of which might have been coincidence on the animators parts but other parts were certainly deliberate) which, judging from the reactions I saw online, a lot of people missed (I wouldn't have caught the foreshadowing myself but did pick up on the other clues). And as I also said earlier, some of the characters, especially the main trio, have really great chemistry together and I liked seeing them just interact together on screen (especially since all of them got a bit of character development, the other characters in the show not so much). I'll be rather sad if they aren't part of the main cast for the sequel since for me anyway they were what made the show fun.

The Bad: There are two basic camps in the fandom for this, either you liked the characters Yata and Fushimi (in the red and blue clans respectively who have backstory) or you think they had too much screentime. I'm in the latter group although I was fine until they had a really out of place flashback in the last episode (which I wish had been instead used for one of the more important characters, like on the past of the red and blue kings who are important to the story unlike those two). The whole story is a bit unbalanced, the red clan gets way more screentime than the blue clan (even though both are about equally important than the end) and sometimes the story forgets that there are seven kings, not four, two kings (/their followers) never even appear and I wish they had gotten more than a passing mention since it doesn't make sense that they are completely absent from the situation at hand. 

The Audio: By the end of the show the opening song had grown on me (and when I finally looked up the lyrics they fit the show a bit more than I expected, I love when that happens, although the biggest "clue" from that is actually in Engrish so I really should've caught it) and the ending song wasn't that bad either (just beware of naked catgirl, the show is a bit NSFW but if you're an anime fan you've almost assuredly seen worse). The cast worked fine for me, everyone seemed to be acted well enough, I didn't dislike any of the voices/voice actors, although I was sad to learn that apparently one of the voice actors is a native German speaker and the story had a legitimate reason for him to use that talent and they never took advantage of it (and even I, who speaks no German, could tell that the brief snippets in there were as terrible as the Engrish in the very first episode). Oh and I was frustrated that it took Viz Media until almost the last episode to subtitle the little bit of German that was in the show, thank goodness for fans and google translate for the rest of it! 

The Visuals: Alright GoHands, you really need to learn how to spread out your budget earlier. Yes I know it's important to have a flashy first episode to draw people in, but there are "good looking (but the quality will probably drop a little by the end)" and "hey let's have a RANDOM really high budget scene that contributes nothing to the plot that couldn't been accomplished more cheaply otherwise!". You might think I'm being a bit hard but if you pause and look at later episodes everything just looks cheaper and more rushed, hopefully the DVD releases will look a bit better. But what everyone really notices about K are it's omnipresent filters, mostly of the blue variety for some unknown reason*.


So, K gets a three out of five for being just that damn entertaining (who would have thought that having seven different light novel authors writing a story would work out so well?) and heck yeah I'm looking forward to a second season, more to snark at while being amused! No idea if I would buy this if Viz was to ever release it on DVD, while I might want to rewatch it with friends I can always use the Hulu stream for that, guess I'll just cross that bridge when it comes. Until then I will continue tracking down the copious amount of side materials (two spin off manga, K: Memory of Red [focusing on Homra shortly before the anime starts], Stray Dog Story [focusing on Kuro between the last colorless king's death and Shiro's rise to notoriety], two light novels, K: Side Blue [which I believe is how the current blue king became king and focuses on characters not in the anime] and K: Side Red [set a bit earlier and explains how Anna came to be with Homra, provides more information than the anime did on the gold clan, and generally explains more about Strains], the upcoming light novel focusing on what the trio was doing when they were hiding from everyone [answer, hiding out in a love hotel], and various other short stories explaining character's backstories that are floating around) which yeah, is enough to keep me going for a quite a while.



*there was a theory that they reflected which king's territory they were in but as of now that doesn't seem to have been the case, shame because that would have made for some more great visual foreshadowing AND given the show an actual reason to abuse them as much as they did.

Anime Review: My Little Monster

As a reminder, after this and my 2012 in Review post I'm taking a break for the rest of the week (both because I need to prep for an upcoming con and I have a headcold which makes writing cohesive and interesting reviews trickier than normal). In any case, when I first saw this one appear on the fall season chart I wasn't that interested in it, both it and Say "I Love You" seemed to have very similar and, well, bland premises and not even the lure of Brain's Base was enough to make me interested in it. I don't remember why I did check it out, probably due to good reviews or the fact that I had nothing else to watch on Mondays) but I will quite happily admit that I was wrong and that there is nothing bland about this series at all. Oh and on a random note, the title better translates to something like My Neighbor the Monster, I have no idea why the Japanese licensors thought this one was a good title nor to I know why I haven't seen any crossover My Little Pony fanart yet.


My Little Monster (Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun)

Summary: Shizuka is an isolated studybug who doesn't care about friendship or anything like that, all she wants are the best grades. So it doesn't make a lot of sense when her homeroom teacher sends her off with the classwork for an absent (and, according to all the rumors, violent) classmate but with promises of bribes she does so anyway. Her classmate Haru turns out to be rather different than she was expecting, he's just as isolated as her but he relishes hanging out with people and turns out to be quite social if given a chance. Of course, since Shizuka was the first person who "reached out" to him he's quite drawn to her now..... 

The Good: I ended up identifying with Shizuka and one of the other female leads (Natsume) more than I expected and just really ended up liking them. Honestly I liked almost the entire cast and since this is a show that's built around it's character interactions that's a great thing, it was a fun show to watch. Also, I'm not a huge fan of the romance genre but I liked how it was handled between Shizuka and Haru. Well, not some of Haru's stranger out bursts but how the two of them are both in love for the first time and just trying to find their feet but definitely getting more comfortable with each other and even a bit jealous (which normally would bother me but here both of them realize what they're doing and use it to figure out how they feel, which is also so ridiculously characteristic for them). It's a character driven show with a lot of romance but also a lot of time spent on it's side characters and some humor, it strikes a good balance and I'm sad that Brains Base doesn't make many sequels these days.

The Bad: I have seen a lot of people, quite rightly, call out Haru's stranger behavior (which runs the gamut from "he doesn't understand society so it's quirky!" to "NO DON'T DO THAT, NO") especially in regard to some, odd (to put it mildly), turns of phase he uses to talk about his relationship with Shizuka. In the end though I am okay with their budding relationship for one reason, the manga (and the characters) never imply or so that this is a normal relationship and Shizuka is quick to call out Haru when he does something wrong. There are many (too many in my opinion) shojo manga where the male lead isn't quite as bad as Haru but it's portrayed as completely normal and romantic, at least here the story shows that it's off and it's honestly about it. I can still understand why some people might be put off the story for this reason and it does really make me wish that whatever character development Haru is going to get that it came more quickly. I was also okay with the anime-original ending, partially because I had heard that there wasn't a really good place in the manga to end a 13 episode series, and also because it gathered all the characters together one last time to interact and that's as much as I was hoping from it.

The Audio: I honestly wasn't overly fond of the opening or ending songs for the show, although their tone matched well with the perky tone of the show (also, no translations from CR to help me see if the songs actually made sense in context). I really liked all of the acting however, some of the actors were actually pretty new (this is the second role that Natsume's actress had) and for the others their voices weren't as recognizable and I kind of liked that (since I wasn't associating the voice with another character the whole time that is). The character's had a roughness to their voices which made them sound more like high school students than characters in a lot of anime do (plus it looks like a number of the actors aren't even that old) so everything acting wise sounded perfect to me. 

The Visuals: The art was, in a word, fun. It used simplified/chibi versions of the character just often enough to make it amusing (and not so often it felt like the art budget was being stretched) and was plenty colorful as well. I also swear that the school uniforms don't look as ugly as they do in that promo image, somehow the show makes them work.


So, I give this show four out of five stars and sadly of the three shojo series in the fall this was the one that didn't get licensed, even though it's the one I would snatch up in a heartbeat. Sure it's streaming over at Crunchyroll but you hear me NISA? I'd buy this, please license it please! (Or Sentai or Funimation, honestly I'm not that picky about where I get it from) 

TV (Special) Review: The 2012 Doctor Who Christmas Special

Originally I wasn't sure if I was going to watch this let alone talk about it, just been feeling a bit burned out on Moffat's projects lately (for no real reason), but then I remembered that the new companion was supposed to be introduced in this episode and that's rather important. And, after watching the special, I realized I had a lot of thoughts about it (both good and bad) so I guess I'm also going to talk about it!


Doctor Who Christmas Special 2012: The Snowman

Summary: The events of Angles Take Manhattan are still affecting the Doctor strongly and he has sworn off helping humanity again, although it seems like he can't stay away and can't stop being curious about all the strange and unusual things around him. Like, snow with a memory and a habit for producing snowmen with toothy grins, although it's going to take that and a human girl named Clara to get him back into the saving-the-world business.  

The Good: I really liked how the Doctor was written and handled here, it's immediately clear that the end of the previous (half) season has had a strong effect on him but that he's still the same Doctor we've seen for the past few years, he can conquer grief or at least be distracted from it. And it was fun to see Clara unsettle him and show just how much he likes to show off to his companions (and the audience as well), all in all it was a pretty entertaining episode and reminded me that yes, I would like the second half to hurry up and get here already.

The Bad: I'm in two minds about Clara, on the one hand she's fun, sassy, and the dynamic she creates with the Doctor is fun (since through her actions she shows how set he is in some of his ways, also just how much the Doctor loves to mentor his companions to become greater than they were) but, well, she did come off to me as a bit shallow by the end. Sure it's hard to completely flesh out a character in one episode (and should you really completely flesh someone out in their first appearance) but the show has done that with some of it's side characters before, it's certainly possible. So yes, rather mixed feelings and I'm also a bit worried about Jenna-Louise Coleman's character for a completely different reason, apparently it was a last minute choice to have her play a character in the first half and I'm worried that Moffat is going to make the series more timey-wimey than it needs to be again. Yes Doctor Who is a show that has a lot of camp and a lot of strange stuff in it but it still needs well, call it a base of logic to stand on, rules that it can't contradict, and I'm afraid that it's about to do some very odd stuff that's going to mess with the continuity*.

The Audio: Hmm, didn't notice anything really new music wise. The intro may have changed but I was a little distracted by the (trippy) visuals to notice. All the music worked however so no complaints here.

The Visuals: Well I finally figured out why Vastra looks odd to me, despite all of the prosthetics on the actresses face it still has a very human facial structure (and eyes), I do wish in that the designers went even father with the design. Other than that small revelation on my part, no real comments on the episode. It seemed weird that Jenny was wearing pants at one point but I don't know nearly enough about Victorian era fashion to actually say if the rest of the clothes were accurate or not and as for the setting, well, you see one Christmas story set in a snowy, especially Victorian, London and you've seen them all.


It feels odd to rate a single episode so I shall sum this all up by saying that while awkward at times this was still enjoyable, even if it makes me worried about what's coming next. Which I guess is also your average Doctor Who episode.....



*for those who want spoilers, doesn't the end of it imply that reincarnation or something similar exists in the Whoverse? Which I think would just make things complicated or I could be over-thinking it, only the second half will tell and who knows when that is coming out.  

Book Review: Seraphina

Originally my last review of the year was going to be volumes 5 and 6 of Kieli (yes not only  did I finally get both of them but I found time to read them as well!) and I didn't think I'd have a chance to read this book until 2013. But unexpectedly one of my libraries had a copy of this, I got it out, and then proceeded to read it over a day and a half this. This was impressive because not only is the book around 460 pages (which even for me is a bit thick) but those two days were Christmas Eve and Christmas Day where between the two of them I spent over 10 hours in parties and another couple of hours each day getting to/helping prepare for each. So I didn't just read this book fast, I read this book fast for me and I think that alone says something about how I liked it.


Seraphina by Rachel Hartman

Summary: In the country of Goredd there has been a tenuous peace agreement between humans and the dragons for 40 years which seems threatened nearly every day due to a lack of understanding of each side. For Seraphina the peace is even more important for her than most, her mother was a dragon (a fact her father didn't know until she bled silver blood while she died giving birth to Seraphina) and her father human making her a hybrid and a fact she hides every day. There seems to be no upsides to her strange parentage and it only seems to have given her terrible headaches and strange mental landscapes to attend to, hardly a desirable thing. But with dignitaries from both sides gathering to celebrate the treaty she'll simply have to deal with everything while trying her best to stay out of the dangerous politics that it seems like she was born into.

The Good: Now THIS is what people should do if they want a medieval-Europe inspired setting! Goredd isn't a dressed up and renamed England or France, it's an original setting which draws heavily inspiration from real world culture (such as the music and the idea of Saints) without falling into some of the traps ("noooo you can't have women with power in a middle ages setting, wait almost all of the named royals are female? Well, everyone has to be whit-oh hell side characters from other countries and clearly described to be not-white!"). The story makes use of it's large page count to create a fairly detailed plot with multiple subplots that come together by the end (like a calmer version of Diana Wynne Jones' books) and there is plenty of politicking and scheming to make me happy. In these ways it feels like a rather mature young adult book, I can easily see that if just a few things were changed that it could be a work of adult fiction. That isn't to say that it should be an adult fiction book, it's simply a book that I think has more crossover appeal than others. 

The Bad: There were some points where it felt like Lucian, who can be a bit touchy but isn't hot tempered, got mad (or madder) at Seraphina than he should've just for the sake of advancing the plot but even then you could come up with a realistic reason for that (being in charge of all the security for the peace treaty celebration will make anyone cranky). I also had a bit of a hard time buying that Princess Glisselda was only 15, she does act like a 15 year old a lot of the time but there are other times when she was too wise beyond her years (which is something I could say for a lot of characters in young adult books actually, so while a bit frustrating it was something I could easily deal with and did half expect).


So I happily give this book four out of five stars, would buy it, and I'm hoping that there is in fact going to be a sequel. There was a note in one of the appendixes which lead me to think so but honestly I won't be crushed if there isn't. Yes there is so much more plot that could happen but after spending this much time with the characters I can see how they could further develop so even if there's not a sequel I can easily imagine how it would have gone down. For those interested there's a prologue which fills in one or two details and gives you a good feel for what the characters and the book is like. 

Anime Review: Kyousogiga ONA Series

Last December a one-shot OVA came out from Toei which was sorta-kinda a Buddhist themed Alice in Wonderland story, ish, which I really enjoyed and wanted more of. So I was happy when a series was announced and then saddened when I learned it was going to just be five OVAs from August to December. There's also a manga adaptation out there it turns out which also helps fill in the gaps between when Koto came to mirror Kyoto (which was the end of the first episode here, from now on episodes here will be referred to as  season two) and the original OVA, none of the materials is recycled in the second season or the OVA so fans of those should check that out as well.


Kyousogiga

Summary: Less a sequel to the OVA and more an all over the place prequel, season two focuses on fleshing out the major players from the OVA and talking more about the strangeness of Mirror Kyoto.

The Good: There were a lot of questions I had after the original OVA (not that it was bad, just that it deliberately left a lot untold) and this season answered quite a few of them and some other questions I hadn't even thought to ask. Most of it was character related, although it did help flesh out just how odd Mirror Kyoto is as well and I enjoyed it. I didn't think that any of the episodes were wasted, although I would've chosen to focus on different thing for a few of them, and it showed that the OVA wasn't just a one-off thing, the writer(s?) really do have some interesting ideas and I'd like to see more of it. 

The Bad: Ack, so short! I think the longest episode was only 12 minutes and I'm really sad that this idea hasn't been given a full series which details the story from start (wherever they think it should start, technically this series went back to the very beginning) to some sort of end beyond where the OVA did. All of this world and character building is quite nice, don't get me wrong, but there seemed to be a few rumblings of an underlying plot and I'd love to see what it really is. So, financial backers, get on this please, I want more!

The Audio: There were only two new characters with large speaking roles so there wasn't much change from the OVA. Everyone still sounds just fine, all of the characters have a wider range of emotions than you'd expect out of a short series and all of the actors did a fine job at making the characters sound like themselves no matter what was going on . 

The Visuals: I only found some low-quality streams to watch so I don't know if the show looked quite as nice as the OVA did, it did seem a bit less detailed but the OVA was extraordinarily detailed so that's no surprise and not a failing either. Everything still felt as creative as the OVA however so I'm satisfied regardless, I can live with a less detailed series as long as it feels like the team put just as much effort into it quite happily.

I'm not sure I can even rate this series given how short it was, hopefully it will suffice to say that yes I liked it and if you have a few spare hours to check out the original OVA and this season, it'll take less than three hours and it'll be a fun three hours. And, if you have the time, give the manga a look as well (as I mentioned earlier, none of the mediums repeat any of the stories so it's all new and the manga also really helped flesh things out for me, now if only they would put all of this together into one, cohesive story). 

Movie Review: Rise of the Guardians

When I initially heard about this project I wasn't that interested in when it was announced, heard a bit more about it and was interested, once it came out I noticed that people were only talking about the art/how dreamy the characters were (which, while not necessarily a bad sign, isn't usually a good sign about the art), and then decided to see it with a friend once I was done with finals. So here I am now, my friend and I were actually the only ones in the theater when we saw this so we were free to snark all we wanted (which turned out to be a good thing since there was a lot of snarking....)


Rise of the Guardians

Summary: Santa Claus (North), the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, and the Sandman are the four guardians of childhood but with the Boogeyman (Pitch) growing stronger and stronger the mysterious Man in the Moon tells them that there is now a fifth guardian, Jack Frost. Jack is as confused as the rest of them, he doesn't remember his past and nobody believes in him so nobody can see him, how in the world is he supposed to help save it?

The Good: There was a lot of decent to amusing humor in this film (while it felt like it was a little much at times it didn't feel nearly as forced as say the humor in Brave did) and it was a new and interesting take on characters like the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny. The film looked great, more on the later, and if we're calling it a Christmas movie (I'm not sure since it's actually set right around Easter) it's one of the best Christmas movies I've seen, normally I can't stand that little genre. The plot, while not complicated, did have some good bones to it, but it was buried under a lot of not so good stuff....    

The Bad: I saw some people say that if you see this movie you see it for the art not the plot, that I think was the understatement because holey moley, my friend and I were convinced that this movie went through multiple directors because of how all over the place it is (which isn't the case so I'm more confused). The action scenes, while cool looking (I've seen some people call it the kiddie version of The Avengers) go on way too long, some of them probably could have been cut altogether, and the final battle really didn't make that much sense. Afterwards I went online to compare the movie to the original books it was based on (which it turns out are set 200 years earlier) and man I wish they had kept some of the stuff about the characters in there, they had some rather interesting backstories. And speaking of characters, Jack Frost is as flat a main character you can get. I hardly know what his personality is like (other than "mischievous" and really he barely does anything like that), no wonder he's confused about being made a guardian, I'm confused too. Confused sums up my feelings on this whole movie, how in the world was this supposed to work as a cohesive story with so little exposition (either told or shown)?

The Audio: Sooo, my friend and were I debating who had the worse accent, North or the Easter Bunny, and it turns out that Hugh Jackman (an actual Australian) voices the Easter Bunny so I guess my friend won (Alec Baldwin apparently can't do a very good Russian accent, if I didn't know he was supposed to be Russian I wouldn't have been able to guess). Jack sounds much too old but oddly enough I got used to his voice rather fast, Pitch's voice seemed a bit off though (Tooth for the record sounded just fine from the get go). Didn't really pay attention to the soundtrack that much, I was too distracted by the pretty.

The Visuals: Yes this movie looks really great, apparently Dreamworks had to come up with new software for all of the sand special effects (which I think they even released as freeware in hopes that the rest of the industry will use it as well) and honestly the only time I thought it looked weird was North's beard. Specifically, it didn't look like it was growing out of his chin but rather pasted on, and out of an hour and a half long movie that's my only compliant which is rather fantastic.


In the end I give this movie 2.5 stars out of 5 and don't plan on seeing it again (unless it's a fancut where they cut down all the action scenes, god know how short the movie will be at that point then). So, I'm in a bit of an awkward position since the rest of the internet seems to adore this film and it's no secret that it hasn't made nearly the money Dreamworks was banking on and at this point the planned sequels may easily fall through (see, cutting down those action scenes would have helped in multiple ways!). I'm seeing a lot of people saying to see it anyway because of the potential in the film but did I see potential? Potential is what I see in a webcomic where there's one author-artist who may or may not have a critique partner who is fumbling along learning how to write, edit, and illustrated at the same time. But when you have a project with tons of people involved, enough people that no one person has to do all these things and where there are people to say "no this isn't quite right, let's rethink this" then I don't want to see potential, I want to see the actual thing. And I didn't really see potential here, I saw a very confused movie which doesn't quite work and, well, I can't really recommend it, sorry folks. 

Book Review: Diva

And finally I get to the finale of the Flappers series, finally since I got this book from Random Buzzers back in the summer but then had to spend all that time tracking down copies of the first two books and, well, finding time to read them (plus everything else I had). So there's not much to say here to introduce the story that I haven't said in previous reviews, it finishes up the tale of Gloria, Clara, and Lorraine (with Jerome providing two or three point of view chapters) as they come into adulthood in New York City in the 1920s and make a whole bunch of dangerous mistakes along the way. Hmm, I feel like that would make either an excellent or terrible tagline for a book, probably terrible since I wouldn't pick up a story like that.....


Diva by Jillian Larkin

Summary: Gloria is in jail, Jerome is in danger, Clara is estranged, and Lorraine is being Lorraine (that is, meaning well in her own mind but causing trouble for everyone around her). But Gloria has a chance to work out a deal with the FBI and Clara and Lorraine realize that Clara's former beau is being roped into a scam, none of them have a chance to just sit around and watch life unfold around them if they want anything to work out well so it's time to undo some mistakes and get into even more trouble in the process.

The Good: I was okay with the very end, Gloria and Jerome's choice seemed somewhat logical (I keep meaning to actually look up details-that-are-spoilers to see if it really would have worked) and I couldn't think of a better ending myself. It was nice to see Clara "redeem" herself after the previous book and Lorraine finally became a semi-likable character for me which impressed me. The real story of this trilogy has been the romance or the various troubles the girls get into but one big character arc for each of them and by the end I was satisfied with those arcs. It seemed like each girl had a good beginning, middle, and end and, while not overly creative in some places, each girl had become a more rounded character by the end and that's always a good thing.

The Bad: The climax was, eeeehhhhhh I stand by my assessment last time that while Larkin does okay drama she seems to have trouble coming up with really grand finales that actually make sense. I'm of mixed feeling about Lorraine's ending, on the one hand it feels like a "pair the spares" move but on the other hand it's completely in character for Lorraine. The climax certainly didn't do Marcus any favors and honestly I just couldn't find the effort to care about the story that Gloria had found herself involved in and didn't really feel strongly one way or other when everything was all said and done.


So in short, as I expected after the second book the final book here didn't end up wowing me although it wasn't terrible. I give it 2.5 stars out of 5 and, well, if I was to come across any of Larkin's future books I'm honestly not sure I would try them. Granted there are several authors where I don't like their initial book series but then like books they write later on but at this point I'm not going to keep an eye out for her name just in case this turns out to be the case here. 

Book Review: Raven Boys

Another schedule update, I was so busy with exams/my plans to see The Hobbit fell through this weekend so I actually don't have anything for Sunday. But on Monday I'm talking about Heartcatch Precure which does have a (really short) movie so I'm going to watch that and then talk about that briefly at the end of the review on Monday. Not ideal but I honestly have no ideas what to watch that also happens to be streaming on Netflix, this has just been a pretty bad year for movies for me.

But not for books weirdly enough, this year not only have there been a lot of YA books that I've been interested in but I've also been able to get a hold of them, huzzah! This one did require that I put in an interlibrary loan request (and then the library failed to notify me about it and I only figure that out since I was obsessively checking out the status of all my requests and realized one seemed to have already been checked out to me) but this is what you're supposed to use a college library for, right?


The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

Summary: Blue's mother believed in not ordering children around so she's never told Blue to do anything in her life until now, stay away from Gansey she warns or something terrible will happen. Blue has already realized that on her own, when she was young her mother and her other fortune telling aunts predicted that she would cause the death of the man who fell in love with her and Blue has seen Gansey stumbling in the parade of the dead-to-come with her own eyes. But when she eventually runs into Gansey and his group of fellow students she's intrigued by their quest for a dead Welsh king and finds herself drawn in regardless and how could she fight her fate anyway?

The Good: Really quick since it's basically the same thing I said about Lament/Ballad, I like how Stiefvater sets her stories in The South (Virginia again in this case) and yet it's never made stereotypical or exaggerated (heck, there are multiple times when a character's accent is mentioned and it's clear that she lives in Virginia since she understands the different between the old, gentry country accents and the small town/out in the country accents, really small details but I like the small details). I like how the magic is worked into the setting, it's so subtle that it feels realistic but you don't doubt for a second that it's not real (the setting is too small-town for it to really be called an urban fantasy but it has the same causal approach to magical things that an urban fantasy does). Gansey and Adam grew on me more than I expected and, for a final little detail (I just love her detail work apparently), I love the thought that went into the names of the characters. Blue comes from a bit of an eccentric mother so she has an odd name, Gansey is short for his full name which works considering his background (old money, actually I only started thinking about this after I saw his sister was named Helen and went "hey that's a name that hasn't been popular for about a hundred years, wait a minute that would actually make sense here), Adam is a common name but there have been many great people named that, and Ronan is as Irish and wild as you can get. And now I want to go back through Stiefvater's other books and analyze all the names in there to see if they match up as perfectly....  

The Bad: I found Blue to be the most interesting viewpoint character and everyone else to be, well, varying from merely less interesting to one or two who I wish had been cut completely. I understand why the characters were viewpoint characters, I can't think of any other natural way to convey the information they had, but that understanding didn't make me any less bored. I am also a little curious about what the next book in this series will cover which is a bit funny since, while there a lot of open ends, the book feels like it ended rather neatly and I'd almost be okay if this was a stand alone book. I guess the best way to put it is that you expect that a sequel expands upon the first book and this book worked so well I'm really not sure where the story can go from here.

So 3.5 out of 5 stars to this book and I'm interested in reading the next book (no idea how long this series is supposed to be). It still hasn't ousted Ballad as my favorite Stiefvater book but I like it a bit more than The Scorpio Races, I guess the trick for me is that her books have to have romance as a secondary genre instead of it being the primary one for me to like them.  

Book Review: Thieftaker

Augh, sorry this is late, I started writing this early yesterday but then got hit with a headache that could've felled an ox and decided to just go to bed early instead of staying awake (and in pain) trying to finish this. I will try to get today's regular post up as well although that will be up closer to the usual time.

Tor.com put up a short excerpt for this book a few months ago and when I had a chance to win an ARC I jumped on it. And then, continuing with my recent pattern, it took a while for me to get around to actually reading it since I had so much checked out from the libraries and enough homework to fill up all the time I had between classes. But eventually I found the time and this makes the third historical-novel-with-fantasy-elements I've read this year, can't tell if that counts as branching out for me or not. 


Thieftaker by D. B. Jackson

Summary: Ethan Kallie has an unusual job in pre-Revolutionary War Boston, he's a thieftaker and uses magic to hunt down thieves for his clients. He tries to not advertise the fact that he can use magic but when he's hired for a murder case it seems like everyone already knows his secret and that if he doesn't use magic he'll never figure out the killer.

The Good: In my copy (an ARC) there was a note on one of the early pages which I think said that there would be a map in the published edition which I think is a great idea. I've been to Boston just once and a lot of times during the book found myself wanting a map so I could figure out where everyone was, especially since they were using real locations in the story. The concept of magic here is interesting and works, my main worry had been that the magic would be so flashy that it would be unbelievable that this world had followed the exact same history as our world had with that giant difference. However the book made clear that magic users had by and large always stayed hidden (lest they be burned as witches) and for me that made the setting work which had been my biggest fear going into it. 

The Bad: Despite the fact that the opening excerpt Tor posted really grabbed me I was just, well, bored with this book by the end. I feel like it was wavering between becoming really dark and being less dark, and trying to decide just how much it wanted to use real historical characters. I didn't like Ethan as much by the end (honestly after seeing so many anime with a character going "oh god two girls like me what do I doooooo?" I have a much lower tolerance for that, especially when the character in question is an adult man who should be able to figure out what to do with his life) and just felt like the entire climax was awkward, not tense. All in all it doesn't make me very excited for the next book, I probably won't look for it at all.


So sadly a dud and I'll try to toss it in my library's free pile soon and hope that whoever gets it next enjoys it much more than me. Giving it 2.5 stars out of 5 and I'm hoping that I'll have a chance to read one more piece of historical fiction this year and that I'll enjoy it more.  

Anime Review: Eureka Seven Astral Ocean

This year has been a weird year for sequels. We started out the year with Last Exile: Fam of the Silver Wing (whose first half I think was better than the part that aired this year), Legend of Korra (which, to sum it up, tried to cram 20 episodes worth of material into 12 which gave it some terrible pacing problems towards the end) and then this, the sequel to Eureka Seven: Psalm of the Planets, despite the fact that it's set in the early part of the 2000s on Earth which is about 10,000 years earlier than E7 and, knowing how history went down on E7, seemed to be an alternate world (which reminded some fans of the movie, I only saw part of it but even after that small part I saw I had to spend about 15 minutes explaining to a friend what the tv show was actually about). So, as per usual for me, I was excited for the new show to see how exactly this was going to work and a bit cautious but hey, this is a group of people all working together, surely they can call each other out if they did something stupid right?
Well, from what I've heard (I haven't been able to double check this since I don't read Japanese) apparently the show changed from a more, monster-of-the-week approach early on (with Naru being a prominent character) to what we got which was more connected to the original series and, given the strange difference between the early promo art/first opening and what actually happened I'd believe it. I am happy that it wasn't just monster-of-the-week but I don't think it was a good call to apparently re-write the entire story just weeks before the broadcast start.....

Eureka Seven: Astral Ocean

Summary: Ao has never known his father and his mysterious, turquoise haired mother vanished years ago in a scub burst. So he's grown up on the semi-independent island of Okinawa shunned by just about everyone but his sickly friend Naru and, through a slightly complicated series of events, ends up piloting his mother's old mech to save the island and becomes closely entwined with the eventual fate of the world and it's fight against the secrets and the scub. 

The Good: When the show is firing on all pistons it's a really great show, for the spring and summer it and Hyouka were the two shows I was most pumped about. Ao is a sympathetic character, like the viewer he's caught up in the growing, changing politics and (since for the majority of the show even veteran viewers had only theories on how the two shows were connected) there really is no easy or right way out in this show IMO. The side characters got a bit more fleshed out than I expected, the show showed off more of it's setting than I expected and it did do one of the better versions of a parallel universe that I've seen. I don't think it's a spoiler to say that, since you say a series is a sequel and it's set 10,000 years earlier it's logically got to be something like that, and it actually explains how that happened and puts the viewer in the interesting position of knowing that the "real" world (ours/the one that the people in the original show left and came back to) is out there but wondering if that's really what the characters should be aiming for. I imagine most people didn't care that much about that detail but I really liked it, now if only they had actually answered that question in the end....

The Bad: The show reached it's peak towards the middle of the series and it's not like it skyrocketed downhill from there, it got really confused and it only became apparently in the last few episodes (especially the last two) that it just wasn't working. The short version is that the show took all of the themes that were so important from the original series and tossed them out the window by ignoring them/having the characters destroy them, the long version was eloquently written up by some of the users on tvtropes (especially the 10th post down, number 510, spoilers for the last two episodes apply to the entire page but everything should be behind spoiler tags). I'll admit, I'm biased against series where to create a sequel they have to undo what was supposed to be a happy ending in the first series (as opposed to a show which was always meant to have a sequel and this was always the intent) and again, in doing so the writers ended up contradicting all of the themes from the first show which just didn't work. I had some trouble with some of the other subplots, I feel like they changed whatever was going on romantically with Ao at least twice during the show, Elana's bit was dragged out too long (not a lot too long but long enough and it was really confusing at parts), and both Naru and Truth didn't quite work in the end (which is an understatement for Truth in my opinion) but I was still okay with the show up to those last two episodes, now I'm confused about how I feel and just generally unhappy that whoever was in charge of the writing thought this made sense and made for a good story.     

The Audio: As far as I can tell, ANN isn't being really clear here, the musical team behind AO is not the same as the team behind the original but damn the music is still catchy none the less. I do question some of the music (like the second ending theme, is it just me or do shows these days love to have catchy outro music when the show gets dark?) but hey there were some parts in the original show that I really questioned as well. The voice acting was pretty good, Ao was even voiced by a teenager which gave his voice some nice rawness, although there was one casting decision I questioned. I probably shouldn't say who it is but again, it's from the last two episodes and if you've seen E7 recently (and in Japanese obviously) you'll know it when you hear it and I really didn't like it, although it does fit in with the destruction of themes if you think about it in a sideways kind of manner. 

The Visuals: Like the audio, no complaints here, the show looked fantastic! It was colorful, the mechs looked similar enough to know that they were based on some from the original series (no literally, that's the in-universe reason) yet different enough because they did come from two different groups of people (again in-universe), and the fight scenes looked glorious. The character designs also looked similar to the original series (as far as I can tell neither the character no the mecha designer are the same people from the original show, although it looks like some of the other people who did design did some in both) and the backgrounds were nicely detailed as well. So, like Fam and Korra (hell, did all three sequel shows have the protagonist's name in the title?) this is a show which had amazing production values yet some writers which seemed to have trouble this time around.


I probably should have said this at the beginning but no, I don't think that the original Eureka Seven was a masterpiece beyond words or anything like that and that's not why I'm so hard on this show. I did really enjoy it, especially in the end, but I still swear that the second cour was entirely filler (and joke that it should've been given to X'amd, which until now was considered E7's spiritual successor, since it needed more episodes) and it had a lot of situational gags which I know where supposed to be humorous but I just didn't find so. Eventually I'll rewatch the show for a full review, I meant to do that but didn't have the time last spring, but in the end while I still want to buy all of E7 I'm now torn on getting AO, maybe if I get it for a good price and just pretend that the ending is way different but usually when I say that I end up not buying the show, I'm just going to have to think about it some more. As it stands I give the show three our of five stars for having some really good bits but yeah, those last two episodes. :\

Book Review: Cinder

I heard about this book around the beginning of the year when Tor published a short story that worked as a prologue to the story and I was hooked. It was a subtle retelling of Cinderella and the setting was neat too. I entered more giveaways than I can remember trying to get an ARC of the book but sadly didn't win any of them and had to wait until the summer when I could snag it at my local library. So how did the actual book hold up to my (by that point) very high expectations?


Cinder by Marissa Meyer

Summary: Cinder is a cyborg which makes her a second class citizen in New Beijing and she's already detested by her step-mother and one step-sister, even though since she's a gifted mechanic she's the only one who can earn money for the family. But her life becomes more confusing when she's drafted as a test subject to find a cure that's sweeping the world, has to avoid the mysterious, visiting dignitaries from the moon, and may have caught the prince's eye as well.

The Good: The setting is interesting and I really hope that the moon colony is explored more in the future books (even though I do read a good bit of sci-fi I don't find many YA books that feature colonies on other planets so at the moment it's still rather novel to me). The technology was often quite cool as well, everything managed to feel realistic enough (and, considering it turns out that there is outright magic, that's really impressive) which makes me a little sad that Cinder won't be the protagonist of the next book, having her be a mechanic was the perfect way to explain and flesh out that part of the setting and I can only hope the next book manages to do the same in an equally natural fashion.

The Bad: I don't know exactly why but I felt a little underwhelmed by the end of the book. I think part of it was that the story ended up following the Cinderella formula more strictly than I thought it would and another part was because there was a large plot twist revealed in the last few pages, a twist that I figured out by the halfway point of the book if not a third of the way in. A good twist will have enough foreshadowing in there that the reader can figure it out or at least go "ah yeah, that makes sense" which the book did in a way ("hmm, the book mentioned this thing and since everything mentioned must be related to the plot then this character must actually be this character"). However, I believe that you also need to reveal the twist quickly as well, not leave it dangling or else the readers will get bored. Finally, this is a bit of an odd one, but I'm really glad that I read that prequel before I read the book since it provided some nice background. I'm sure there were plenty of people out there who didn't read it at all and understood everything just fine but I'd still recommend people read it first (link in the top, plus it introduces you to the story so you can at least see if you want to read the rest). 


So in the end, meh. I do plan on reading the next books in the series, and I'll probably enter a ton of contests for an ARC again (wait, I do that for nearly every book I can) but I won't be as excited. In the end I give this book 3.5 stars out of 5.    

Anime Review: Humanity Has Declined

The final summer (for now anyway) show and one of the weirder entries in the season, although thinking back on it the summer season was a filled with strange shows. Not much else I can say about the show without getting into the actual review so let's get going!


Humanity Has Declined (Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita)

Summary: Based on a series of novels, humanity is in it's twilight years and the new, widely spread form of intelligent beings are tiny faeries. Mediator is well, a mediator between the humans and the faeries and tries to facilitate communication and cooperation between them, even though the world she lives in is quite weird.

The Good: Often when watching anime (or reading a book, seeing a movie, etc) I'll see something strange on screen and make a sarcastic comment to myself or my friends. Here there was no need to do it, Mediator was making all of those comments for me which was rather fun. I often feel like stories aren't self-aware enough (as in "why don't these characters realize what they're doing is dumb? Haven't they seen enough other media to go 'wait a minute...'?") and this story had enough of that self-awareness for at least one other show.

The Bad: While I'll admit that ending the story with the earliest (chronologically) part of it was probably a better ending than whatever arc was actually last, I just can't see the point in telling these stories out of order. You can work it out if you're paying enough attention, and each arc is so separate that it doesn't matter in the end, but I'm of the opinion that non-linear storytelling should only be used when it serves a purpose. Other than that nitpick, this show just dragged for me by the end. I mentioned to friends that I couldn't tell if the writing was supposed to be brilliant or if a really cynical 13 year old was trying to write a "deep" story for homework (my friends proposed it was both) and while the cynical humor worked sometimes there were other times when it just got too strange or it took itself too seriously for it to work and in the end I was glad that the series was over. 

The Audio: I looked up the opening and closing lyrics and they were both, strange, and didn't add anything to the show (I've known enough shows where the lyrics actually relate to the show to make an effort to look them up, although sometimes they can be quite spoilerly). The voice acting worked, Mediator sounded young and a bit cute (not the overly, moe-moe cute but just cute) and did sarcasm quite well and everyone else sounded just fine as well.

The Visuals: The art in the series is very soft and pastel (rather watercolor like but without the texture that comes with it) which was of course the perfect choice for a show that's slyly cynical about how corrupted the world really is. I have no idea if there were any illustrations in the original novels or if all of the anime designs are completely original but I think they fit rather well. However, I am of the opinion that the faeries are creepy looking and not cute-creepy, Japan once again your definition of cute has confused me.

So another anime where I would give it 2.5 or 3 stars out of 5 since it had some good parts but I lost my interest before the end. It has been licensed by Section 23 in the US and can be viewed either on their website or on Crunchyroll.

Anime Review: Choyaku Hyakunin Isshu Uta Koi

If it wasn't for Chihayafuru last year/earlier this year I would have never tried out a show where all the stories were based on a-few-hundred-years-old Japanese poems and heck, I do have to wonder if it wasn't for Chihayafuru getting a small number of people more interested in karuta and these poems if this show would have even gotten made. Who knows on that point but the show did have an interesting effect on me, it actually made me check out The Pillow Book by Sei Shonangan, one of the poets featured in the show, from the school library and I expected that I'd read a little bit of the book and then decide it wasn't for me and return it. But, after seeing the show and learning a few basic things about Sei (namely that she was a bit snarky) I've ended up really liking the book so far. I won't be reviewing it here (partially because I have so little time to read it that I'll be lucky to finish before Thanksgiving) but I never would have tried the book if not for this show which I think means the show did at least one thing right.

Uta Koi

Summary: The Hyakunin Isshu are a collection of 100 poems chosen by Fujiwara Teika to decorate the walls of a relative's mansion and are taken from across Japanese history and from a range of subjects, although as Teika will admit many of them are love poems. So what are the stories behind all of these poems and what do their often highly symbolic words mean?

The Good: I was wondering how well the show would wrap up especially since it's first "arc" wrapped up well and was pleasantly surprised to see how well it went. I actually hadn't know that Teika was also a poet (reading The Pillow Book however I think I've come across several of his relatives/ancestors, all of whom have had some skill in poetry) and that seemed like a good way to end the show, I doubt it was popular enough to get a second season. I also liked how in the first "arc" a lot of the characters knew each other and interacted with each other over multiple episodes, it's hard to do character development in just one episode so this felt like a smart choice. And all of the episodes did a good job explaining where the various poems came from, normally this kind of literary interpretation isn't my strong point but by the end of each episode I could see what the writers (the anime or original poets, I suspect most of the stuff in this show was made up) were getting at. 

The Bad: While Teika's appearance at the beginning of some of the episodes was useful (like when he talked about why he chose some poets over others, I'm curious how much of this, if anything, was taken from writings he may have done or if the writers here were just throwing ideas out there) but some times it really didn't, see the episode where he and another character started off the episode by doing ballet while singing in deep voices, in my opinion that was the weirdest moment of the show but there were a lot of other contenders for that dubious award. Actually, there is a lot of random strangeness (and not all from Teika!) in this show and a lot of times it felt rather out of place and it would keep me from recommending this show to fans of Japanese culture but not so much anime. If it hadn't had  those bits sure, I would feel fine recommending this to someone who doesn't like anime as much but loves the culture, with it however I don't think I will and considering how small the potential audience for this show is to start with that's not a good thing.

The Audio: This show had a weird opening and closing theme. The opening theme is really nasally (it grew on me after a bit but I think I'm in the minority there) and the closing theme didn't seem to have much to do with the show and I really couldn't stand it. The voice acting seemed alright, no characters really stood out to me but most of the time everything sounded at least passable.

The Visuals: This show was cheap, while some aspects of it you could argue were more stylistic choices than money saving measures (such as the "unmoving plaid" textures) it had a lot of talking heads, slow pans over still images, and just generally didn't look as fluid as say a show with a huge budget. It's okay, I never expected really great art for this show, although nearly any show could be improved with a great budget, but it might be a turn off to some.


So, if you really can't wait until January for Chihayafuru and need something to tide you over, go burn a few hours watching this, the first episode even revolves around the "chihayafuru" poem. If not, well, there are simply so many other shows out there that are better that it's hard to recommend this one, but if you do have an interest in Japanese poetry check it out, don't worry about skipping through the Teika stuff at the beginning of each episode. I give the show a 2.5 or 3 out of 5 stars and, while unlicensed in the US, the show can be viewed over on Crunchyroll.