Is your job your life? The five girls of Sakura Quest

I didn’t like Sakura Quest as much as I had hoped I would and it was for the simple reason that I just didn’t resonate with any of the five girls. In some ways, the girls were really similar and I don’t just mean in art style, this is a story about working adults and yet it seems like all they do IS work!

Anime Review: ReLIFE

Hey y'all! Still a bit wiped from Otakon so here's what I'm going to do: as the resident ReLIFE expert on TheOASG I blitzed through the show in July and posted a review of the entire series which I'm going to repost here today. Next week we will be back to wrapping up the spring shows but in the meantime enjoy this semi-new post!

ReLIFE

Anime Review: Erased

Now it's time to really get going on the Winter 2016 anime season with noitaminA's third mystery show in as many seasons. For newcomers to the blog, I tried Ranpo Kitan (loosely based on the works of Edogawa Ranpo) but didn't like the first episode at all and watched The Perfect Insider (based on either a novel or a light novel from the 90s) until the end but got frustrated with both it's philosophy and it's "solution" to the murder mystery (I'm honestly surprised that more people weren't even harsher on that detail). Each of these shows has had greater credentials than the last and so we come to this show, based off of a manga with an excellent reputation and with a strong staff (I enjoyed the director's previous work on Silver Spoon quite a bit) and news that the anime would end concurrently with the manga and have the same ending. That's a promising start!

Erased (Boku Dake ga Inai Machi The Town Where Only I am Missing)

Webcomic Review: Girls With Slingshots

Well this wasn't the original plan but since the comic did end just last week it's perfect timing for me! If you follow the RSS feed the comic is now repeating with it's very earliest strips (but now in color) and holy cow I didn't even remember that the art was so different at first, so if anyone else is looking at the front page for the first time in a while and is confused that would be why, it's not your memory it's actually the comic!

Girls with Slingshots by Danielle Corsetto

Book Review: The Golem and the Jinni

Wait this is a 2013 book? Shoot, I was totally going to add this to my "best books of 2014" list because it's easily one of the best books I've read this year. I know I said I was going to focus more on reviewing YA books on this blog, since clearly I like them better and I feel like I give them more interesting reviews, but I had seen it reviewed on some mostly-YA book blogs before and honestly thought it was one. And it's a good book, a great book even, so let me try and convince people who like YA and adult fiction alike to give it a shot!

The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker

Manga Review: solanin

This is a comic I've seen in bookstores and wanted to read for years (since, goodness it must be high school if I was actually in a bookstore on a regular basis) but didn't want to just blind-buy it, despite the fact I knew that several of my friends had enjoyed it. So as soon as I saw it at my new local library system (and convinced them to give me a library card) I immedately checked it out and got to reading.

solanin by Inio Asano

Movie Review: The Garden of Words

Like many an anime fan, I was curious about Makoto Shinkai's work but, since it was much too new for Sentai to be streaming it (and crunchyroll's annual "Makoto Shinkai day" was months and months off) there wasn't really anyway for me to see it. However I was tipped off that a local group (they're connected with the Japanese embassy somehow but I'm not sure how, enough that the staff speaks Japanese and you have to go through metal detectors to go into the building however) was going to be having a showing one night. So I braved the cold to see a short film set in the summer.

The Garden of Words

Book Review: A Natural History of Dragons

This will be my last review of a 2013 book for a while, thank goodness, I've had to completely reorder my reviewing list to get these done as quickly as I could and as a result there are some things that have been on there for quite a while. Perhaps in the future I should continue reviewing novels during November Month of Manga as well, hmm. Regardless, I'm a little surprised that out of all the 2013 books I was looking for in my library that hey had this one (new author, not your typical set-up for a fantasy, etc) but I am not one to complain when the library has things I want to read!

A Natural History of Dragons: A Memoir by Lady Tent by Marie Brennan 

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

Anime Review: Servant x Service

This summer I ended up watching a record number of shows for me, a record low that is since I finished with just four shows left. I've been cutting more and more shows this year so that I can try and make time to get through my backlog faster (although funny enough I ran the numbers and I believe I actually tried out the exact same number of shows as I did in 2012) but I am trying to keep an eye on a few of the shows and come back to them later if it seems like other reviewers ended up liking them. When I originally watched this show I got a few minutes into the third episode and then dropped it, of course, as I later worked out, it seemed like the "three episode rule" was in full effect for this show since it seemed to even out and figure out what it wanted to do later in the episode.

Servant x Service

Summary: Lucy (abbr) is a new clerk in the Health and Welfare Department and while she's an efficient civil servant she's joined for one reason, to find the clerk who approved her birth certificate and give them a piece of her mind. At least her workplace is filled with nutty characters to keep things interesting, although interesting usually means "causes even more problems for her."

The Good: No, the show is far less dirty than that title makes it sound (also not related to Inu x Boku Secret Service although that might be a good or bad thing depending on your point of view), I'm honestly not quite sure what it's supposed to mean but it does work, kind of. Once the show gets going it is a fairly funny comedy which makes an effort to follow around all of the characters and the core cast (the three newcomers Lucy, Miyoshi, and Hasebe plus Chihaya, Ichimiya not so much) and once the show evens out I really did enjoy watching them get through their lives and everyone's interactions (heck, even Hasebe's romantic pursuit of Lucy turned out much better than I expected from the first few episodes). Some of the jokes really outstayed their welcome (like the Tanaka grandson, it's weird that I like how half the cast is written and find the other half to be practically two-dimensional) and in some ways it's not that different from high school comedy-with-a-romantic-subplot story, aside from the setting, but even those little differences made it more enjoyable for someone whose long out of high school.

The Bad: Two things drove me away from the show to start with, one was the side character Touko (who is a annoying, tsundere younger sister who appeared far too many times for an unfunny character in the first few episodes) and the other was that Chihaya's really air-headed tendencies when it came to cosplay just rubbed me the wrong way. Thankfully both of those do get balanced out later (Touko doesn't pop up every five minutes and Chihaya gains some other character traits) but that doesn't change the fact that they both bothered me enough to initially drop the show. And as I noted above some of the characters really do feel more like one joke characters than something fleshed out (Touko gets a bit better but the Tanaka grandson and the section manager really never do, plus it is a bit hard to take Lucy's unhappiness at her name 100% seriously all the time, but at least the other characters agree with me there).

The Production Values: The opening song is ridiculously catchy and the ending theme rather grew on me as well (I didn't even notice that they switched singers for the ED, oops) but I doubt I'll remember either of them a few seasons from now. I will probably remember how the opening looked with it's weird choice to portray the characters in their workspaces with everything flying apart while they stand still but other than that the series didn't look very special either. 


While I don't plan on buying the series, I just don't see myself rewatching it and given that it's an Aniplex title it'll probably be more expensive than I'd like, I did end up enjoying the series enough to give it a good 3 or 3.5 out of 5. And it's made me even more curious about the original author's other work, Working!!/Wagnaria!! and I'll probably bump that up my to-watch list now that I'm done. Both shows are streaming on crunchyroll for those interested in checking them out. 

Book Review: Without A Summer

So, I know I had said I wasn't particularly interested in reading more novels in this series since I suspected that nothing was really going to change from story to story but, well, it was sitting in the new books section of my library and looked really nice and shiny! Plus it had a colorful cover, yep I don't have a really good reason for why I picked it up anyway.


Without A Summer by  Mary Robinette Kowal

Summary: Jane and Vincent are back in England and taking private glamural commissions again which takes them out to London during the season and Jane invites her sister along. While trying to make sure her sister has enough to do Jane begins to hear rumors of something involving the Catholics which may or may not be related to the overly chilly year they are having, a bit of misfortune that same have started blaming on the glamourists.

The Good: I can safely I've never seen fiction set during "the year without a summer" before, although knowing the true cause of the bad weather (I was already familiar with the disaster and figured it out as soon as I glanced at the summary) did take out some of the tension. I did like how Kowal used it to recreate similar protests and social upheaval of the real 1800s, most of which I hadn't been aware of until I looked at the notes in the back and that's one of my favorite things about alternate histories, taking a real world issue, changing it a bit to fit the setting and yet in the process informing the reader in such a way that they don't realize it's happening.

The Bad: I was more or less correct, after the charming first volume it seems as if the books are starting to fall into a routine (Jane learns of a plot, suspects the worst, it turns out to not be the worst but more communication could have helped even more) and I don't like routine in my books, if I want to read the same idea over I'll go reread a book I already love. So yet again, technically and story-wise there's nothing wrong here but character wise I am starting to get bored, although I'm not sure how much character development actually is appropriate for fully grown adults.


In the end I'm giving this book 3 out of 5 stars since while I did enjoy it more than the previous book I still feel like the original book stands strongest on it's own. I've heard that Kowal plans to have even more books, I suppose it must be selling well, and I guess that if I come across any more of them in the library I'll pick them up but otherwise I won't be going out of my way to read them. 

Manga Review: Takasugi-San's Obento (volume one)

About a month back Digital Manga (also known as eManga) sent out a tweet asking if anyone would like to review their works and, especially since I had no idea what my book situation would be for the next few months, I said sure and now have quite a few things from them to review. So for the next couple of months I'll alternate every week between one of their titles and one that I found at the local library, turns out I shouldn't have been worried about having enough to read but that's a problem I can live with.


Takasugi-San's Obento by Nozomi Yanahara (volume one)

Summary: Harumi is a 30 something university researcher who has yet to be hired on as a full time staff member anywhere due not so much to a lack of drive but simply getting too scared to do anything when the opportunity arise. Thus he would have refused the care of his younger cousin Kurui if he could have but, since it was in the will of his favorite aunt who helped raise him, he does and slowly the two get to know each other and navigate through life.

The Good: At first I couldn't work out how the title was supposed to connect to the story but slowly it turned out to be a rather appropriate title for how both Harumi and Kurui cook (bentos in particular) to become closer to each other and to remember Miya (and then technically the title could refer to a lunch made by any of them). I'm not sure how long the entire series is, the website only has this volume, so while I wonder if the entire story could have been told in a single volume I thought that the pacing was fine since we can already seen changes in both Harumi and Kurui which is what I was hoping to get out of a character-driven story.

The Bad: There were a couple of moments in the manga that came off as a bit, creepy, to me. Namely little things like Harumi half wishing Kurui was younger so he'd have an excuse to wash her back and then a short scene where Kurui counts out how far removed she is from Harumi (you need to be at least three removed to be able to marry) and smiles when she sees that he's four removed. Little details like that killed the good vibes the story was putting out before that, it just felt a little too skeevy for me. Oh and I was frustrated to see that Harumi's two, rather close, female coworkers were in fact not a lesbian couple just really close friends but that's just personal bias talking there. 

The Art: The art is okay, for a story with the word "obento" in the title you would think that it would spend a lot of time focusing on the food with meticulously detailed drawings but that wasn't the case (although, as noted earlier, the bento is more a symbol of how the characters are becoming closer and that bond is more of the focus than the food). I was looking forward to some well drawn food so I am a tad disappointed there, otherwise the characters are distinct, the paneling flows well, et cetera, there's nothing to complain about.


For having both sweet and a few skeevy moments I'm going to give the manga a 2.5 out of 5. It's the kind of thing which I would check out from the library, read, not feel like I wasted my time, yet not pick up the next volume in the hope of finding something more interesting to read next time. Interested folks can check out emanga.com to purchase, although it appears that it can only be read on their online e-reader (which is alright, I wish it gave the option to display manga as single pages a-la scanlation sites however, zooming in and then moving around a two page spread gets a bit awkward), not downloaded at this time.

Anime Review: Living for the Day After Tomorrow

Another title I haven't heard much about anywhere on the internet, I think that once again it went on my to-watch list after seeing a rather positive review on AnimeNewsNetwork and then earlier this summer I discovered that Sentai had put a number of their anime up on hulu and, since a lot of them are just one cour, resolved to try and make a real dent on my to-watch list before the end of the year and got to it!

Living for the Day After Tomorrow

Summary: Three years ago while living in America, Shoko was dumped by mail and has now (at 24) returned to live in Japan in an isolated, small town. As fate would have it it's the same time her former boyfriend Hiro lives in and she discovers the reason why he never returned to her, his 11 year old sister Karada. Karada is more understanding than she looks and realizes that her brother has had to shape his life around her and prays at a roadside shrine that she might become an adult immediately so she can free Hiro from his burden. But her extra years have to come from somewhere and soon Shoko finds herself much smaller than she should be.

The Good: While I couldn't completely suspend my disbelief for it the most interesting part of the show by far was watching Karada deal with the outcome of her wish and simply try her best to be an adult (with the story implying pretty heavily that in some ways she's a better adult than Shoko and possibly Hiro). Hers was by far the most interesting yarn in the story and the most emotional as well, the setting is realistic enough that it takes a while to convince any of the other characters that yes, Karada and Shoko has switched ages, and even though I was expecting a comedy I actually liked that approach a bit better, even if I didn't like a lot of the more serious elements that came along with it. 

The Bad: When I saw all the brightly smiling promo pictures I thought "oh this will be a comedy with age-changing antics, fun!" and was quite unprepared for the slow, un-comedic, character drama that unfolded instead and I think because of that mindset I didn't enjoy the show as much as I could have. That said, this show also does have some problems with it's character development, it seems odd that Karada was able to pass as a twenty year old with ease (I live with 11 year olds, there is no way any of them are that mature, I can't even suspend my disbelief that far) and doesn't really change as much as realize that no, she's not a burden to her brother after all. Likewise, Shoko is still rather bitter over being dumped (since Hiro gave absolutely no reasons for it) and the story is more about her trying to forgive him, and Hiro eventually admitting that he needs to be more open and more courageous to say things that may hurt people but will ultimately make their relationships stronger. So as you can see, both girls' "growth" revolves around Hiro (which is a bit awkward since he is most decidedly not a protagonist in this story) and in some ways it's a very non-Western kind of character growth as well and one I had a really hard time sympathizing with. The story felt stretched out and limp by the end, I think it would have worked better as a movie with a shorter run time, even if that would have made it hard to fit in all the events that needed to happen for the girls and Hiro (and in some ways side character Testu) to change.

The Production Values: I was a bit surprised to see how recent this show was, 2006, since the show just looked older than that. Perhaps it's because hulu wasn't streaming an HD version and that soft blur effected it, and perhaps it's because it's based on a manga which must be a few years older (ANN lists it at 12 volumes and only gives 2005 for a date) but the character designs just looked dated and the color pallet for the entire show was oddly muted. The backgrounds being done in a softer, more watercolor or chalk pastel style I can understand, it fits with the quite tone of the show, but everything looked just so dull that I'm still confused about how this show can be only seven years old.

In the end I can only give this 3 out of 5 stars for being okay but entirely too long, having trouble giving the right characters meaningful development (since, even if Karada has to grow the most in the story in the end most of that seems to regress which made me even more frustrated), and having the art look just a bit off. Can't say I can recommend it to anyone but someone whose already a fan of slow paced character dramas, if you are one however and in the US go check it out on hulu or purchase the DVD.

Manhwa Review: Full House

Just in case people didn't get the memo yesterday, I switched the comic and book reviews this week since I just hadn't gotten around to reading a comic as of yesterday so if you came here looking for a book review just go down to the next post. If you came here looking for a comic review then great, you're in the right place because I've got an odd one this week. Odd in the sense that, well, did everyone else know that the now-defunct publisher CPM (part of DC Comics) published manga and manhwa? I hadn't known that until a few weeks back when I stumbled upon a different title at my local used bookstore and was pretty surprised, I hadn't even realized manhwa was being printed in the US in 2004, heck the copyright page for this book (found at my not-so-local library) says it was on it's second printing too, madness! Which is also a good word to describe this story.....


 Full House by Soon Yon Won

Summary: Elle is an aspiring screenwriter living in a house that her late father had designed and is quite attached to it. She's confused and enraged to learn that the house has been sold and she's to be evicted as it's new owner, world famous actor Ryder Baye, prepares to move in yet somehow she ends up pretending to be engaged to him despite the fact that they hate each other's guts.

The Good: Well, it is a bit more unusual to come across manga/manhwa published in the US with adult characters (certainly not impossible but it's usually not what you find first) s that was, nice. I also ended up liking the character Miranda, Ryder's manager, more than I expected for her almost talent at looking at a bad situation and being positive about how it can work out well (and how this weirded out the other characters just a bit) and her scenes were the most fun to read.

The Bad: As a general disclaimer, I'm not a big fan of the "slap slap kiss" romance trope in general, I don't even get why fans will ship two characters together who (obviously to me) hate each other and call it "unresolved sexual tension", this just isn't my area of expertise. However, I think that a lot of people would agree with me that the slap slap kiss go on just far too long. Several times that situation goes down, things start to defuse, the characters walk away, aaaand then one comes back and it starts up all over again! I feel like the author just had no sense of timing (since I feel like slap slap kiss does require a bit of comedic timing to work well) and because of this I can't believe that the characters will ever have feelings for each other. This could be the rare work which doesn't pair up the characters in the very end but as it stands Yon Woo would have to do a lot of writing, and more convincing writing than right now, to make me fully believe that Elle and Ryder could actually fall in love with each other.

The Art: This is a bit random but is it just me or does Ryder look an awful lot like a lady on the cover? I'm well aware of the bishonen trope but if anyone was to pick up this story and think it was a lesbian love story between a pretty girl and a more androgynous girl I wouldn't blame them. Not that you would make that mistake once you looked at the back cover (on which the characters look more like high school students than adults) or within the story itself, although at that point you might be having more trouble with figuring out the reading order of more than a few oddly laid pages (the rapid fire pace of the slap slap kiss made it even worse for me).


This one gets a 1.5 out of 5 stars since I didn't like it, don't think anyone can convince me to read more of it and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Even if you like this sort of romance I will go out of my way to find a better example of it for you to read, although this does mean that the series has won the dubious distinction of being the first CPM work that I've actively disliked, I'm almost impressed.