Webcomic Review: Galaxion

This has not been a good week for my review writing but the delay on this post does mean that I heard a very apt quote for it. I was listening to NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast (one of their more recent episodes, a short take on the Scott McCloud Sculptor book and other comics they currently recommend) and they had a great line "but this isn't a place where we dump on things, this is where we recommend things that we like". I've been getting a lot of webcomic review requests lately and haven't taken any of them up yet since that's exactly what it would be, me dumping on an amateur's comic when I'd rather just recommend stuff I like!

Galaxion by Tara Tallan

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: 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). 

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. :\

Manga Review: Gate 7 (volume 2)

Well, I'm still not convinced that Clamp is 100% sure where they're going with this story (partially because in some of the more recent chapters of Gate 7 and Drug and Drop Clamp has started to crossover even more stories and have screwed up their own timeline so much it is impossible to construct one, believe me the fans on tumblr have TRIED) it's still a pretty looking story and Barnes and Noble was having a big "buy two manga from this list and get a third from said list free" so technically this volume didn't cost me anything. So, is this story starting to get more interesting as it gets off the ground or is it still on the dull, and confusing, side?

Gate 7 (volume 2) by CLAMP

Summary: Chikahito is starting to get used to the strange new world he's found himself in, a Kyoto with mysteries and magic hiding seemingly behind every temple, and his knowledge of Japanese history is finally coming in handy, but even he can guess by the way his companions are acting that things are beginning to change. The hunt for the strongest oni begins in earnest and he's gonna meet even more people all the while trying to figure out where he fits into all of this.

The Good: Once again, thank any and all creators of the world for the translation notes in the back, without them I would be forced to read this book with wikipedia nearby in order to figure out whose who and who their allies were in real life. As it stands I might still end up making my own chart to keep things straight but these notes go a long way towards helping explain what's going on. There is more stuff going on here than there was in the first volume as the story begins to pick up and the story seems to be hinting at what Chikahito's role in all of this is (or at the least the characters are suspicious that everything starts changing once he arrives which is a good thing). 

The Bad: Even for Clamp this isn't new territory, there's nothing about this work so far that I haven't seen before (well, except for the combination of Japanese generals with the  demons but that's just a detail at this point) and between that and the confusion I'm having a bit of a hard time staying interested. In a way this series represents what I consider some of the worst of Clamp's traits, characters being overly vague (and not that fleshed out at this point), a plot we've seen before, and sadly not a lot of potential. At this point there aren't many people I would recommend this series to and it really makes me wonder just how well the series is doing sales wise. 

The Art: It's interesting to compare this work to Clamp's other ongoing work, Drug and Drop, since originally I loved Clamp's more detailed and intricate works but now I prefer their stories which use simpler designs, especially since I sometimes have trouble following the flow of panels in this story. There are a lot of complicated things in this story and the art is probably the least complicated of them but occasionally it feels like too much, especially when I noticed that quite a few of their backgrounds of Kyoto are merely photographs with a filter placed over them, something I don't think they've done in any other work.


As I was writing I was thinking about just how many hurdles this series has to jump to capture a non-Japanese fan (or non-Japanese-history-buff)'s interest and I find that fascinating since Gate 7 was originally going to be part of a new project which would be released simultaneously around the world and (logically) was probably planned with a broader interest in mind (and the original pitch was quite different in fact, it's like they kept parts of it for this and other parts got hijacked by Blood-C and the rest wandered into xxxHolic somehow). At the pace this series is coming out I can afford to keep up with it but again, I still don't know how long I'll continue to do so.  

Movie Review: Voyage of the Dawn Treader

And now for Sunday's normal review! I remember that my school was going to show the movie a while ago (I guess a year or year and a half ago) but removed it from their line-up which is never a good sign (for reference, the only other movie I can recall them changing was The Last Airbender). I was also a bit worried by the fact that this film came out in December 2010 and there's been no word since (plus, I seemed to recall it didn't do so well in the US). A quick google search reveals that the situation has gotten a bit complicated, personally I'd like for them to produce The Silver Chair next (they even had a tie-in to it at the very end of this film) since I would hate for them to change actors and the same actors are needed in The Silver Chair and to an extent in The Last Battle (teeeechnically in The Magicians Nephew and The Horse and His Boy as well but those would be much smaller roles involving characters who haven't had as much screen-time), but I like The Magicians Nephew so I wouldn't mind seeing that either, provided that at least one of them is made sometime before 2018.

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

 Summary: In England, World War II is still raging on and, while the older Pevensie children are abroad, Edmund and Lucy are staying with relatives including their horrendous cousin Eustace. All three of them are dragged through a painting in the spare bedroom to find themselves in the sea east of Narnia and are quickly rescued by Prince Caspian (of the previous story, about two years have past) and join him, less than willingly on Eustace's part, to find out why a mysterious green mist has been haunting the seas and spiriting people off to the unknown.


The Good: It's clear that the producers want to make more Narnia films and went to the effort of putting in a few details foreshadowing which characters will be important in future films which was a rather nice touch. The returning cast, and new character Eustace, all act well, although I do wish some side characters had more chances to actually act.  And, as odd as it sounds, after the movie I checked out the deleted scenes to see what got cut and I agree with all the cuts made. Sometimes I wonder why scenes didn't make it into the feature film but here I could see why so, regardless of how I feel about the writing, it seems like they at least knew how to edit. 

The Bad: When I was a kid I loved this story because it was an adventure for the sake of adventure. Narnia is safe, well-ruled, so Caspian has a chance to go out, explore, and possibly find out the fate of a some of his father's closest followers who were exiled by his uncle. Here the story has been tweaked so that each of those retainers actually has a magical sword and together all seven of those swords can kill a people-eating, green mist which has started running around in the past few months because, um, well, they really don't explain that. They take some original ideas and ideas from the books, mash them up, put them out of order, and even mess with the character growth in the books* so it ends up being a very messy tale. A messy, watered down tale that I can't really recommend to anyone, especially since the other films are in limbo now so people don't even need to be concerned about keeping up with them for at least another two or three years.

The Audio: A lot of the music feels rather, well, standard fantasy-ish, like the composer got their inspiration from listening to just the Harry Potter soundtracks over and over. Even though I saw this movie less than a week ago I had to go to itunes and listen to clips from the soundtrack to remember the themes, the music simply isn't that memorable or different and that's never a good sign. The song used during the credits was odd too, I'm not a big fan of "wordless BGM for the whole movie and then song with lyrics used during credits" style since it just feels too out of place for me.

The Visuals: While not the best special effects I've seen of late, the movie looks fine on all accounts. The CGI is solid, the props, setting, and costumes look fine as well, although I do suspect that in another half decade or so much of it will look horribly out-dated. The film did have a smaller budget than the other two ($75 million smaller than Prince Caspian but only $30 million less than The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe), and for some reason the scenes set on the deck of the Dawn Treader never quite looked real to me, but for most people the movie is going to look just fine.



All in all a weak adaptation and that makes me rather sad since this was one of my favorites of the books. I was unhappy with a lot of the changes, especially the ones that changed the character's growth since a lot of those used the Christian theology/imagery that CS Lewis sprinkled quite heavily throughout the story which gave a lot of those scenes deeper meaning, here the characters appear much more shallow (and for god's sake can they please stop doing the "Edmund is still battling the darkness in his heart" bit? Poor guy can never catch a break). Don't foresee re-visiting this movie anytime soon, although regardless I hope it's sooner than 2018 than the next movie comes out since I would like there to be a full, seven movie set (or six, as much as I love The Horse and His Boy I can live with it not getting a film) for the sake of completion.

Webcomic Review Month 2012: Mahou Shonen Fight, Modest Medusa, Monster Pulse, My Finn

Just moving right along here, I've honestly run out of witty things to say about webcomics here by now (except that yes, I read some really odd ones but I think I said that at the very beginning) so let's keep this brief, provide a short link to the comics from last year, and then move onto all of the lovely comics here today.

Mahou Shonen Fight by DustyJack and JadePrince

Mike just wanted a normal life at his new high school, something average and boring. However, as luck often has it for heroes who wish for ordinary lives, he instead gets an exciting, adventure filled life as he is possessed by the spirit of summer who, along with the other spirits and teens possessed by them, decide the best thing to do in this situation is use their powers to save the world.

This comic is simply fun, although this is coming from someone who really likes magical girl stories and still starts giggling whenever she finds magical boys. The art is cutesy and the story is a bit cheesy but that's what you need in these situations, magical girl shows usually have an overall light-hearted tone so why shouldn't a magical boys series? I am glad that the series seems to be introducing a main antagonist however, now to see if it really follows in the vein of magical girl stories and has one boss after another until the series finally ends....

  Modest Medusa by Jake Richmond
One night Jake came home to discover that his toilet had flooded and there is now a child gorgon living in his house (since his toilet is the portal to another world, who knew?). They're none too polite, eat all the chocodiles, have no idea how this world works, and act like a general freeloader. But at the very least Jake and his niece Marah are getting some exciting stories out of this.

I swear, I feel like I walked into an alternate world and found their version of Squid Girl, it's a bit unnerving. Comparisons aside, Modest Medusa is a comedy which sometimes has arcs, it's currently in it's longest arc to date, but often the day to day gags are unrelated and it works alright. It's not my favorite comedy comic out there, some days I simply don't find the strip amusing, but it's not terrible by any means and considering how subjective humor can be I'm sure that plenty of people will love it more than I like it. And on a side note, I had no idea chocodiles were real until I put together this review, guess that's what I get for living on the east coast.

 Monster Pulse by Magnolia Porter

From the creator of Bobwhite a very different kind of comic, a fantasy story where various kids have had body parts (a heart, an eye, etc.) changed into monsters and they both fight and try to evade the government agency that made this happen.

The premise is a simple one but still rather neat, I can only think of one story with a similar premise* and it's certainly unlike most for kids/all ages comics I've seen. For one thing the story fully embraces the creepiness and horror of kids suddenly having their body parts come to life and the fact that this was done on purpose by a government agency, the story wouldn't be nearly as interesting if the government had been sympathetic or if the story had been more light-hearted. The comic is still in it's early stages but updates regularly and is paced briskly so I can give it a very solid recommendation regardless of that.

My Finn by Daiku

Set in an alternate fantasy world version of Ireland called Glen, Glen is a peaceful island nation which has recently come under attack from the invading nation in the south, Sem Icim. Along with the also un-conquered nation of Patrio the people of Glenn start to fight back and at the center of this conflict is a young girl named Lalin who has no memory of her past but apparently did SOMETHING big....

I'll admit that part of the reason I started reading this webcomic is because I find the art adorable, the style looks a bit like the "made in America manga!" which were all the rage five or six years ago but the style works well here. The plot is also interesting, it moves quite quickly (it doesn't seem like who Lalin "really" is will be a secret much longer and that's normally a plot point that really gets dragged out), it's always nice to see more than two sides in a conflict, and it's simply unusual for me to enjoy a story where "it got worse" seems to be a running theme. Sometimes it's hard to take a story of invasion seriously where the invaders are roundly trounced every time they fight the "good guys" but so far that's not what's happening here and I'm really curious where everything is going to go next (as a quick warning though, the story is currently on hiatus and stopped at a rather dramatic point so potential readers might want to check back in at the beginning of April to give it time to get going again).

 

*Variante which is an older and kinda obscure title that's currently out of print 

Book Review: Changeless

As a quick heads up, it looks like there won't be a review tomorrow since I've had just a hard time getting a hold of tv shows/movies to watch. I hate to miss an update like this but I just don't have anything and, looking ahead, I'll have plenty of stuff for the next month or two afterwords. My school has simply spent the first month and a half playing movies I have no interest in and I've had a time and a half getting a hold of Life on Mars (plus I kinda thought that Once Upon a Time and Grimm would be done by now and now it looks like neither of those will be finished until May). Again, sorry to do it but after this I don't foresee this problem popping up for another few months at leas.

So, as for the actual review, I read Soulless quite a while ago and hadn't gotten around to the sequel since I was having even more trouble finding a copy of that then I had of the first book. No idea why but I eventually had to utilize the inter-library loan system to get a copy of the book from half-way across the state and it looks like I'll have to do something similar to get the next few books as well. It's a shame that it's been so hard for me to find these books, it's a fun series, it's regular adult fiction (or possibly romance fiction, I'm not 100% sure) which I don't read that often so it's a nice change of pace and I just don't know what my libraries seem to have against it, maybe it's the publisher?

Changless by Grail Carriger

Summary: Picking up where the last story left off, Alexi is now married to werewolf Alpha Lord Conall Maccon and has settled into her role of prenatural (ie, completely unmagical to the point where her touch turns werewolves and vampires into humans again) adviser to Queen Victoria. Recently there have been some strange events that have puzzled everyone in the supernatural society, a "normalization field" where all ghosts in it are exorcised, vampires become human, and werewolves are unable to transform. Conall chooses at this time to run off to Scotland to deal with pack business with a personal connection for him and Alexi has to chase after him, especially since the normalization field is tracking north to Scotland as well.

The Good: Alexi is a clever and competent lead who is quick on her feet and holds her own in arguments, I really enjoyed her as a main character, she's just fun to read about. I also like a lot of the supporting cast, special mention goes to newcomer Madam Lefoux whom I have heard is a reoccurring character in future books, although I was a bit sad that the change of setting meant that some characters got less page time than they had in previous books. The story does a good job at expanding the setting and further establishing it as an alternate reality and I hope that the next book expands it even farther.

The Bad: Unfortuantly a good bit of the conflict in this story arises simply from miscommunication and it's just not a good thing when you have to have characters willing not act in their best interest to draw out a plot. To the story's credit however this was only done by side characters and Alexi is quick to point out how stupid this all is so none of the main characters had to grab the idiot ball for this to pan out (well, mostly, there is some towards the end to create the conflict for the third book which made me wince). There were points in the later half where the story moved a bit too slowly, again mostly because of some obvious and infuriating miscommunication, but the first half moved quite quickly. Also, really don't understand the choice to shove Alexi's half-sister into the story and make her travel with them as well, I really don't understand that choice and don't think she needed to be in the story at all.

I really enjoyed this installment and as soon as my to-read pile becomes a more reasonable size again I'll put in another request for the next book. The fifth (and I believe final?) book in the Parasol Protectorate comes out in March so I don't think I'll have time to read all the other books before that, as was my original time, but hopefully some library will have a copy of it once I get through the next two. 

Anime Review: Mawaru Penguindrum

Quick note, I'm going to be at a con later this week so the plan is that Thursday's post will go up extra early and that Saturday and Sunday's posts will go up on Sunday together (and I'll make sure both of those are already written before I leave so I don't have to try and write them during post-con-lag). To make up for that next Wednesday I'll have my "continuing anime I'm still following" post and then next week I'll explain what my blogging schedule is going to look like from mid-January until sometime in May or later.

Back when information about this show first started surfacing I heard somewhere that it was going to be a kids show about penguins which didn't interest me terribly, even if Ikuhara of Revolutionary Girl Utena fame was directing it. And then Psgels of the Star-Crossed Anime Blog pointed out something interesting, the show was going to be taking over a late night slot so it certainly wasn't going to be for kids and posted some of the trailers which were filled with the characters darkly wondering about fate which did seem rather interesting. It's not Utena in any way shape or form, let's get that out of the way first, which isn't a bad thing, it's simply it's own story with some similar themes but really doesn't make for a good comparison.

Mawaru Penguindrum

Summary: Kanba, Shouma, and Himari are three siblings who all live together by themselves but Himari doesn’t have long to live. After she dies she is brought back to life by a mysterious penguin hat and the entity who resides in it tells Kanba and Shouma that this is only temporary, to bring Himari back to life permanently they must find the penguindrum, whatever that might end up being.

The Good: Mawaru Penguindrum is a strange, twist and symbolism heavy show which made for rather gripping storytelling and gave fans much to discuss every week. Nearly every character underwent significant character development (to the point where it's surprising who is the most crazy and who is the sanest by the end) and the story knew exactly when to show a flashback and when to keep the audience in suspense. I adored the show for all it's craziness and know I'll re-watch it in the future to see what details I missed the first time around.

The Bad: Not quite everything about the show is explained in the end and at times it's hard to tell when the location/actions on screen or symbolic or real which does bug some people. Sanetoshi wasn't the most gripping villain the end but that didn't bother me as much since the show didn't actually need a villain most of the time. It would have been nice to get a little more explanation on some parts of the show, or a view from a character unconnected to everything since it becomes clear that everyone remembers the past differently, but I'm not sure how well that could have been worked in. Shouma also takes a bit too long to do anything important and Ringo becomes a much more minor character in the second half but those were my only major complaints with the series.

The Audio: This is the first time I’ve seen a show where both openings were sung by the same singer but I really liked the effect. Normally it’s a little jarring when the opening or closing song changes but the visuals in both of the openings were incredibly similar and the endings also felt very connected through their imagery. There were actually ten different ending songs (and four insert songs) which bothered some people but I liked, no matter how great a song is it won’t fit the mood on every occasion so I liked how the songs got switched out*. As for the actual voice actors, this is the first major role for Ringo, Kanba, and Sanetoshi’s voice actors and the very first role for Himari’s which I find amazing, they were all great and I really hope to hear Himari’s VA in particular in more works.

The Visuals: The show had some absolutely great looking episodes (special mention goes to episode 18 which featured a lot of people who worked on Casshern Sins and it showed) and some bad looking ones (those didn’t bother me as much as they bothered some people but many people loathed how episode 10 looked). Hopefully the DVD/BR releases will clean up some of those episodes since when the art was good it was great, lots and lots of eye candy with interesting details and lovely color schemes.

As I've probably made abundantly clear, I loved this series so even the flaws it has doesn't bother me as much as they have bothered some people, possibly because I wasn't expecting certain things to get resolved/answered in the first place. I really hope someone licenses this show and brings it over so I rewatch it again and try to introduce more of my friends to it as well.

       

*actually, in one episode, I forget which had an ending that was really different from the previous episodes and I was thinking “man, when the song kicks in we’re in for some major mood whiplash” but then the song was different and it worked, that’s what the songs are supposed to do.

Comic Review: Zot!

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

Zot! by Scott McCloud

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

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

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


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


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

Anime Review: Tiger and Bunny

Eeek, I still have seven more anime series to blog after this one and this is my fourth review of the summer anime already, really wish I had the time to post more here but I really do have too much school to make that work, lovely. Also, on this tangent, I'm hoping to get the first half of the fall short reviews up on Friday (just waiting on those noitaminA shows and Last Exile: Fam) and the second half up next Wednesday (not tomorrow but the one after that) which is also a bit late but I always put those posts up later than everyone else anyway. Onto the review!

As I believe I've said multiple times now, this show wasn't even on my radar during the spring preview because come on, an anime about Western style superheros that's trying to market itself to the 14-22, male Western comic book fan audiences? That's almost the exact opposite of my tastes but it was one of the first shows to air back in the spring, got some good reviews, was streaming on Hulu so I tried it out, found the first episode to be much better than I expected and as the show went on it turned out to be centered around a central plot instead of the episodic, villain-of-the-week kind of show I was expecting. I really found myself loving the show more and more as it went on and I know I wasn't the only one, it's one of the best selling shows of the past season to the surprise of just about everyone.


Tiger & Bunny

Summary: In an alternate Manhattan (here called Sternbild) there are people with special powers, called NEXT, and some of them act as a kind of corporate mascot by becoming superheroes and taking down crime, all while wearing logos all over their outfits. Kotetsu T. Kaburagi is the superhero Wild Tiger who isn't rated very high, doesn't have a lot of popularity and has a habit of causing property damage chasing criminals and costing his sponsor company money. The company folds and he's brought into another company to be part of the first superhero team with newcomer Baranaby Brooks Jr (Bunny), too bad neither of them really want to be partners.

The Good: As I pointed out in my second Diversity post, this show has quite possibly the most diverse cast of characters I've seen in any story, any medium (barring webcomics which are a bit special) recently. None of the characters come off as stereotypes and many of the side characters get their own focus episode to develop more which is great, the show is focused around a central plot but it's incredibly character focused. All of the major and minor characters have been fleshed out well enough that if you were to put two of them in a room together the viewer would know exactly how they would react, no matter the situation. The plotlines, while no the craftiest bits of writing ever conceived, were good and interesting to watch.

The Bad: Sadly some of the heroes didn't get their own focus episodes and the second league of heroes only appeared once after they were first introduced, hopefully if there is a second series both of those groups will get more attention. Sometimes the plot twists, especially towards the climax in the second half, were painfully obvious or the characters were being a bit dumber than normal which could get frustrating at points, the show does have it's cheesy moments. And if there isn't a second season after the stinger thrown in at the very end then Sunrise might have an angry mob on their hands which is never a good thing.

The Audio: It's been a while since I was surprised by a change in an anime's OP/ED but that happened here which was a pleasant surprise. The first OP/ED weren't bad per say but I found the second set (especially the ending theme) to be much more catchy and generally liked them more. I don't really have anything to say about the voice actors aside from saying that all of the acting seemed well-done without any odd moments and I'm sure there are many other reviewers out there who can talk more about the details.

The Visuals: Another reason I was so hesitant to watch this show was because it was obvious from the promo art (like this piece) that a lot of the heroes would be done in CGI on traditionally animated backgrounds which I always find to be really jarring. It is jarring for the first couple of episodes but you really do get used to it quickly and at least this way the heroes are never off model. And, while the rest of the show looks fine it is interesting to see all of the TV series/Blu-Ray comparisons, Sunrise has been doing a lot of touch-up on characters facial expressions so they look more natural and, in one case, adding in the elusive background character "scarf-tan" whom fans had fun finding in all of the later episodes.

The show is finished now and feels complete but there are still tons of things a second season could be about, most fans would love to see it deal more with the crime syndicate Oroborus and it seems the most likely direction a new season would take. Viz is streaming this in the US using Hulu (so Candian viewers can't see it, sorry guys!) although they haven't formally announced if they have the DVD/BR rights everyone wants them to get on it, dub it, and then put in on TV since it would probably be a hit there as well. It's really funny to compare this oddball show from Japan who no one thought would succeed to the recent reboot of DC Comics, the creators of Tiger and Bunny seemed to effortlessly make a great reconstruction of the superhero genre with fun, diverse characters (even the apparently "obligatory girl superhero in sexy outfit" Blue Rose is a well-rounded and interesting character and is barely used for fanservice, compare that to any of DC's female characters) and it has tons of fans. 750,000 people wanted tickets to the Tiger & Bunny live event in November, I don't know if any single volume of DC comics released in the US cracks 100,000. Over the past few weeks I've realized that I actually do like stories with superheros in them and that there are a lot of fun ones out there, it's just that none of them happen to be done in the style of traditional American superhero comics, how strange is it that it took a show from Japan and a few webcomics for me to come to that conclusion? 

TV Series Review: Doctor Who (season six part two)

And here's the current Doctor Who review! Again, this is the second part of the sixth season so you need really need to see the first part and I would recommend watching season five since that's a good place for a new viewer to start (there are multiple good places to start in DW but season six is not one of them). Other than that, there's not much I can say to introduce this show that's not a spoiler, this season has been heavily structured around a central plot arc, although it does still have some episodic episodes, and I'm a little torn because I wanted a more central plot focused season but this didn't quite seem to work.

Doctor Who

Summary: Following the game-changing revelation at the end of the first half, the Doctor is traveling across the universe trying to find Melody Pond and after a summer of waiting Amy and Rory are tired of waiting, meet up with him again and join up. But another big revelation is just around the corner which changes everything again and the Doctor is becoming more and more worried about his impending death from the very first episode. 


The Good: Overall I like what Moffat is doing to the Doctor, Russel T. Davis made him into a larger than life character (one who was occasionally declaring himself as a god by the end) but Moffat seems to be bringing him back down to just "a mad man in a box." This season had two episodes that were both very good at doing this, The Girl Who Waited and The God Complex, which were both excellent episodes on their own and I thought were among the best of the combined season. The Girl Who Waited really let Karen Gillian (Amy) show off her acting chops (I'll admit, Amy is sometimes such a static role that I was wondering how good an actor she is, this episode removed all doubts in my mind) and Closing Time was a really good episodic episode that did what it needed to, provide a quick chance for everyone to catch their breath and then move into the final episode.


The Bad: The final episode was both convoluted and too simple, complicated in execution and simple in result is probably the best way to put it. I feel that there was a better way to tell this story so I did feel a bit disappointed with the final episode. I also wish that Night Terrors had been kept in the first half of the story like it was supposed to and either had that push A Good Man Goes to War back one episode or nixed The Curse of the Black Spot (the episode it switched with) entirely and put in a different episode which showed the characters dealing with the big twist of Let's Kill Hitler. I feel like that revelation was dealt with partially but really needed more screen time, perhaps not a full episode but at least a full scene which it never got. I do believe that this season actually could have been better if they weren't constrained by the 13 episode limit/requirement (especially with the mid-season split*) but that's a part of the series that the writers know from the start so it's their job to make it work one way or another, not to leave someone like me wishing they had more or less episodes to do it in.

The Audio: No changes have been made to the opening theme and I feel like I'm starting to notice the background music for this series more and more, there are a few tracks from it I would love to own but have no idea how to find. Other than that there's not much to talk about, it's silly to talk about voice acting instead of regular acting for a live action series, and there was some creepy children chanting but that did it's job well also.


The Visuals: It's rather obvious that a good chunk of the budget was spent on CGI in the final episode but a lot of the imagery still felt awkward and obvious, I would have liked it to have been toned down a bit to make it look better. The rest of the series, both CGI and traditional sets, were good and I thought that the settings for some of the episodes (such as The Girl Who Waited and The God Complex) were really well done. So all and in all this season looked pretty good and I, like pretty much every other fan, love the Doctor's new green jacket, such a nice cut.

I didn't like this season as much as I hoped to which made me sad but I hardly think it was the worst thing ever (good lord, the last time I saw so many passionate people trying to explain why a show is the best/worst thing ever was all the debates that people had over my summer reading book my freshman year of college, even in the anime fandom I've never seen arguments this vehement and often). I'm a little hesitant about the Christmas Special since I generally don't like those as much (also, I'm agnostic, it's strange to see a tv episode focused solely around a holiday that I don't have a religious connection to any more) but I've seen a few production pictures for it which did make me a bit excited for it. Until then, back to the Classic Who! 


*which reminds me, if the reason for the split was Sherlock, which I know they started filming back in April, then why isn't it out yet? The BBC recently made some budget cuts but I'm suspecting they've had budget issues for a while and that's the real reason this season was split and why next years is delayed.

Anime Review: Noein: To Your Other Self

Back when the summer started I had a list of anime titles that I was going to get out of the local college library and get through in their entirety. The list went Neon Genesis Evangelion, Cowboy Bebop and then Trigun. Later I found that Trigun was streaming on Netflix (and then it got removed but the dub is still streaming on Hulu, very strange) so I took that off the list and added on another title I had seen which I was interested in, Noein. I had seen the first two or three episodes at my anime club sometime in the past year but honestly it was the bloopers I saw on youtube that really made me want to try out the series. Not the strangest reason I've checked out a series, although I did glance over the tvtropes page as well and thought it sounded interesting, and I'm really glad that I had just enough time to finish it before I went back to school.

Noein: To Your Other Self

Summary: Haruko and her friends were living rather normal lives in their last summer before middle school when people from another dimension (La'Cryma) begin to appear with the intention to kidnap Haruko in order to save their world from the encroaching dimension of Shangri-la.

The Good: A fellow anime blogger has said that Noein is a lot like Denno Coil in some ways and the two shows really feel similar in the way that they construct their plot. It's clear from both shows early on that there is a larger plot lurking beneath the surface and the characters are partially aware of it but the character's aren't immediately drawn into it so the show takes it's time to let things unfold and give the characters development in the mean time. It's not quite the "first half unconnected, second half plot heavy" set-up that many shows use but it does work very well with a cast of kids to get them to the point where they can deal with the problems from the main plot. This also let some subplots get resolved rather quickly (such as Yuu's troubles with his mother, something a regular anime would have dealt with much later in the plot) and that made the show very put together. A big difference between these two shows is how Noein has an adult cast that is even bigger than it's cast of children, competent adult characters even, which also provides an interesting dynamic that many shows don't have and the adults get character development as well. The characters make and hold this show even when things are getting strange and very few of them don't feel well fleshed out by the end of the show.  

The Bad: At some point the writers must have realized that, for the show to have a really good climax, there needed to simultaneously be problems going on on Earth and La'Cryma and the villain of sorts for the Earth problems is a very unsatisfying one. All of his actions seem to be "for the luz" (or evulz) which was a cheap way to introduce drama and to bring Haruko's father into the plot (and then not really do anything important in the end). A few other details weren't very well explained in the series (how exactly Atori had a personality change for one) and I don't think that quantum physics works quite the way the show makes it out to be (a bit of a problem since the show revolves around quantum physics).

The Audio: For one reason or another I just didn't like the ending music that well and fast-forwarded through it after almost every episode. I liked the opening music better but at times it felt too light-hearted for the episode in question which lead to my interesting discovery of an "official" alternate opening (which would better with some episodes for sure). The background music worked fine, although some people may find the ominous chanting music a tad annoying, and thankfully here the more light-hearted music was used appropriately. Feeling a bit lazy I watched the dub which, like the show, is a bit earlier than most of what I watch and the dub is a bit weaker compared to dubs produced in the past few years. Most of the adult characters were fine but the kid's voices sounded more forced and, while they certainly got better by the end of the series, they were never quite as good as a dub made this year. Some lines were changed, or left out all together, in the dub which made me glad I was watching subtitles but thankfully it was never too major. Finally, the dub made the gender ambigous character Tobi (whom characters address with -kun in the sub) a girl which I didn't mind at all but might bother some people*.  


The Visuals: Noein looks a bit strange since there are two very distinct sets of character designs: those from Earth, who looks a bit more like standard anime designs, and those from La'Cryma who look more like characters from an indie comic. It's a bit jarring at first to see the two groups of characters interact with each other (and even more jarring to cut from a scene featuring the Earth characters to a stylized fight sequence involving the La'Cryma characters) and either you get used to it or you don't. There are one, maybe two fight scenes were there is a lot of CGI is incorperated as well and some other sequences in the show that use CGI (which, since the show is from 2005, are the most jarring bits of all**). The art style is going to turn some people away from the series, there are no cutesy designs here, but for the way it's done it's done well and the fight scenes are interesting to watch if you like the looser style of animation favored by some people.  


I really ended up enjoying this show and probably will buy a copy of it in the future (the fact that it's dead cheap online certainly helps me out there). It's a show that's slightly different from the way that other shows are paced/plotted out but it's because of those differences that I really liked it, although writing about it's similarities with Denno Coil makes me want to go and re-watch that show as well....


*IMO, the only thing more awesome than one lady talking about quantum physics is two ladies discussing quantum physics as equals, I did actually squee there so I liked that slight change.
**or maybe that's the part when the back of the DVD proclaims it to have great CGI, the best yet!