Anime Review: Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu

Before the season started I was tentative on this title, it sounded like it could be good but I really hadn't heard much about it. I knew it was about rakugo, knew what the basics of rakugo was, and that it was a josei title. So it was for an entirely unrelated reason that I was optimistic, the last time I was curious but had no idea if a josei title was going to be good was Chihayafuru and we all know how amazing that series turned out to be!

Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju

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)

Book Review: Log Horizon (volume two)

A short review for a short book? Fine by me! And for people who have forgotten, I have seen the Log Horizon anime (and enjoyed it hence why I've been buying Yen Press's release of the novels) but I will try not to just compare the two!

Log Horizon by Mamare Touno 

Webcomic Review: Space Boy

This was a harder comic to review than I expected, it seems like such a simple story; sometime in a the future a girl moves to Earth from a deep space mining colony, must adjust to being in a new time as well as a new place, and it nails so many of the basic, oft-overlooked, parts of an adolescent story. Plus it's being hosted in an unusual place in a different-than-usual format and how about I just start with the review already? 

Space Boy by Stephen McCranie

Over three hundred years in the future, technology has greatly changed but people remain the same. Amy has spent her entire life living in an outer space mining colony, studying a blue planet called Earth and humanity's accomplishments, when her father loses his job and her entire family is sent back to Earth on a 30 year voyage. No time passes at all for Amy but once on Earth she has to deal with an entirely new world in more ways than one. Her new classmates are inscrutable but kind except for Oliver, this boy seems almost more lost than Amy and for that he might be the closest friend she can have. 

Anime Review: Death Parade

I immensely enjoyed Death Billiards when it aired as part of the Anime Mirai (Young Animator Training) Project a few years ago (it was the same year as Little Witch Academia for reference) and I remember that just a few months after it came out I had some hits on my post from a forum where someone was citing my post as proof that a full season was coming. I would like to take credit for announcing this season before even the director himself probably knew, although when the show popped up on the winter charts just a couple of weeks before the start of the season I wondered if those bloggers might be confused and it was a spring show again, or worse with such a late announcement that maybe the show wouldn't be finished on time. Thankfully both of these worries were wrong and this show helped make the winter anime season a surprisingly good one.

Death Parade

Movie Review: Letter to Momo

I went in completely blind for this film, I knew nothing about the premise other than it was a family film, wasn't familiar with the director, and I thought I had a friend who really liked the movie but even that wasn't true! It's unusual for me to go that blind into a film or anime these days, even more obscure titles I tend to watch because someone specifically recommended it, and it can be fun to go into something completely blind if it turns out good!

Letter to Momo

Cartoon Review: Over the Garden Wall

I give up, there is no way to watch this series legally online unless you're in a very specific situation. io9 has the full first episode streaming legally and the Cartoon Network website has the entire series, but unless you can log in with your cable subscriber information (and only from certain providers) you can only watch clips, that is total bullcrap and thus I pirated episodes two through ten. Clearly I didn't have to do this, I could've waited until this eventually popped up on DVD and hoped that my library would have it, hoped that it streamed on Netflix, or tried to arrange my entire free time schedule around re-airings of the show on tv but none of these are good solutions either. This has nothing to do with the show itself but I am very, very frustrated with how much harder it is for me to find American-made television legally online than it is to find anything else online, that's just dumb!

Over the Garden Wall

Anime Review: Free! Eternal Summer

This should be the last of my summer anime reviews which is slightly ironic since it's the most summer of the summer anime I watched and I'm seriously contemplating wearing long underwear to work tomorrow (curse you polar vortex). I didn't start out the summer watching this show but I had a feeling I would get around to it sooner or later and I finally did when friends told me it was actually better than the first season which was an odd thing to hear. I never thought that the first season was particularly good or bad, it had it's good and bad parts but was ultimately a bit bland, to hear that the staff decided to do actual character development and build upon the first season was a bit shocking more than anything else!

Free! Eternal Summer

Anime Review: HaNaYaMaTa

During my Summer 2014 Anime Round-UP I mentioned that this was a show I hadn't tried out yet but was on my short-list to try if I found myself with some free time and that's exactly what ended up happening. I don't remember why but I found myself with a lack of colorful, cute shows in my viewing schedule and this seemed like a natural addition and a good way to fill those lunches at work where nothing else was airing that day.

HaNaYaMaTa

Anime Review: Terror in Resonance

Sorry for the delay here, I seem to write two kinds of reviews: quick ones where I can get one done in half an hour and then monstrous ones that take two hours to do a rough draft and usually I need to sleep on it to edit, guess which one this ended up being? So with that, no introduction this time around and let's just get down to Watanabe's latest series that's not Space Dandy, streaming on Funimations's website and hulu.

Terror in Resonance (Zankyou no Terror)

Anime Review: Haikyuu!!

In case anyone is wondering what happened to the movie review last week, a combination of my library woes and Anime USA just left me with no time to watch the film let alone think about it and talk about it so it's happening this Wednesday instead. Sorry folks, I had like a month of no missed updates there!

Moving onto this review, this year has been an odd one for me anime-wise so far and I realized that might be the case when I looked at my upcoming spring shows and noticed tha I wasn't, over the moon excited for any show and the only one I was confident would be good was a volleyball manga I hadn't even read. Thankfully I did enjoy some of the other shows like Captain Earth and Mushi-shi: The Next Passage but I was right to believe the tumblr hype for this show and thanks to how early it aired I always had something to look forward to during lunch at work on Sundays!

Haikyuu!!

Book Review: The Dream Thieves

I feel rather topical, the cover and title for the next book in The Raven Cycle was just released, Blue Lily, Lily Blue which not only has me excited for the next book but also clears up one or two thoughts I had about this book and The Raven Boys which means that for once I'm glad this review is going up quite a bit after I read the book itself! I will note however that I had apparently forgotten a few key details of TRB (as in, we've already had one main character die and revive, this is in addition to the one who is a ghost and the one whose fated to die) but once I started reading this book I was feeling too greedy to put it down, do a reread and then return to it. I plan on doing a post on my favorite books from 2013 sometime in June, when I've actually been able to get around to reading all of them, and unless I'm surprised between now and then I can say that this book will be on that list for sure.

The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stiefvater

Anime Review: Silver Spoon

There seem to be two reactions to this show, complete love for it (coupled with loudly wondering why the manga isn't licensed yet) and simply not being aware it exists. I fall into the former category (well, I understand why the manga isn't licensed) and I'm a bit sad that the buzz for this series seems to have died off by the time this second half started. I've seen people explain it as "if you know something is going to be good you're less surprised when it turns out well" but still, I think when anything is do consistently good that it should be talked about even more, even if it's not good in a flashy sort of way. 

Silver Spoon

Webcomic Review: Strong Female Protagonist

Strong Femal Protagonist by Brennan Lee Mulligan and Molly Ostertag

Allison Green used to be a superhero, she's retired now but she still has all of her biodynamic super-abilities. Too bad you can't solve most problems in the world by punching something but she's willing to learn how to deal with problems in other ways.

When I first saw the title for this comic I got nervous and put off reading it for quite a while, while the phrase "strong female protagonist" started out with good intentions these days it's a phrase that usually means "a female character who is physically strong and NEEDS NO MAN, YEAH, well okay that's a lie since she's emotionally weak/has no emotions to speak of at all." So, a very flat character, I've seen people describe it as "writing a male character in a female shape", which in and of itself comes wit a whole slew of weird connotations, and let me say that Mulligan and Ostertag are very clearly familiar with what the phrase means and that it was a very deliberate choice for a title. SFP takes a route that you don't see as often in superhero stories (I've seen so many different superhero stories that I'm not even sure if it's a straight retelling, a deconstuction, or reconstruction) where has Allison willingly "outed" herself as Megagirl live on national television and now works to try and help save the world as a more ordinary citizen instead of simply punching people through walls (and, while the story isn't completely clear about this, she seems to be the only masked/only American superhero to have done this). One thing I really like about her character is just how honest she is, not as in she's always telling the truth but how she's very upfront that even though she's helped save the world seven times she doesn't really know that much about how it works ("I've been in the Pentagon four times and I'm not sure what they really do") and really shouldn't have gotten as much media attention as she did. I think one of the best moments of the series so far was when she has not quite a rant but a piece where she said yes, she's a violent person and it's just so easy for her to let loose and really hurt people and both how hard it's been to break those habits and how it scares her. I'm rather surprised that I haven't seen that speech in more superhero stories actually, since wrestling with yours powers and responsibility is a classic part of the superhero story, and it's part of the reason why I think both long time superhero fans and newcomers would enjoy this story.

That's not to say that every part of the story has been smoothly written, I found the story involving Allison's teacher to be so blunt and obvious with it's themes that any meaningful message it could have provided was just killed by it's execution. Sadly, yet perhaps unsurprisingly, that's one of the earlier stories in the series so I advise people to keep going if they find the details in the other, concurrent subplots interesting even if this particular subplot doesn't quite work the way it should. But by and large the story's writing is strong and fresh. I find it interesting that a large part of the reason behind Allison outing herself was from encountering the super-villain Menace since usually when a hero actually listens to a villain's schemes it's a sign that they were rather weak-willed and easily manipulated all along, in other words not a hero after all. Here it doesn't feel like the case, it does seem a little odd that Allison actually took his words to heart but here it's a sign that she's incredibly strong-willed, she very much wants to save and protect the world and once she realizes that there's a better way to do it she switches tacks (although if it turns out that this was a long-term plan by Menace I'd only be half surprised, rather interested to see how the story continues to develop his character as well).

To talk about the look of the comic, I get the impression that the art strives to be a bit more realistic than it actually is but superhero comics are one of the genres that look equally good both super-cartoony and super-realistic. The comic itself is in black and white but the cover for the latest chapter has me intrigued since instead of following the series usual predominate colors (yellow, blue, and a bit of orange) it's in magenta and cyan, it's a sign that just like everything else in the comic the art is constantly changing and evoling and, again like the rest of the story, I can't wait to see where it ends up.

And as a heads up, while you can get the first issue or two of SFP right now I believe they're going to be running a KS for the first four chapters (issues) to be collected into one tradeback sometime in April or May so if you like the comic remember to put aside a bit of your money for that if you can!

Anime Review: Kyousougiga

I might be jumping the gun here a little bit since technically the last episode, 10.5 which is supposed to be a commentary, hasn't aired yet but if anything really major happens in that episode I'll be sure to add it in (at this point I'm just so excited to talk about this show that I want to do it NOW). 

So, two years ago I watched the original Kyousougiga OVA and was totally charmed by it's insane, fast-paced antics. I had to watch it twice to figure out what happened, and realized that almost nothing in the preview (PV) had actually made it to the OVA but I loved it anyway and wanted more. About a year later a series of short ONAs came out, five new ones, all under 10 minutes long which served as prequels, fleshing out different aspects of the setting and characters and while I enjoyed it I was a bit sad since I wanted to see where the story went next, not how it got there. So when a full tv series was announced this year I was happy and excited but not overly excited, although that was partially because of the format. The show has one special (which I suppose is 5.5), two recaps (0 and 10.5) and then 10 regular episodes which were all split into three parts which I took to mean it would be in the same vein as the ONAs, short, semi-interconnected stories (and probably reworking those original ONAs into it) but no real connecting plot.

And it turned out that the first episode was the first recap of sorts, that original OVA being aired as episode 0 so I skipped it, I've seen it enough times that I was able to help establish the tvtropes page for the show and just didn't need to see it again. At the time the summer shows had just finished and I was coming off my Gatchaman Crowds high and was thinking that was going to be my favorite show of the year for show, nothing could even challenge it (well, in the back of my mind I admitted that if anything did it would be my love of this franchise). Yet when I sat down to watch the first full episode of this show I was blown away and realized that a challenger for that crown had arrived and started to realize just how carefully planned out those earlier incarnations of the story had been.

Kyousougiga

Anime Review: The Eccentric Family

And now for the last summer anime review (well, sort of, I'll explain next week) I tackle one of the blogosphere's darlings, an anime based on a book written by Tomihiko Morimi (the author of the The Tatami Galaxy as well) which gave it an odd sort of nerd-cred in the circles I run in. This was one of the shows I was most excited for when the summer started and even though it didn't end up being my absolute favorite show I was pretty happy with it by the end.

The Eccentric Family (Uchoten Kazoku)

Summary: In the city of Kyoto there are many different kinds of people who live there. Humans of course but the city has also been populated by tengu and tanuki since ancient times and the three of them maintain an odd balance, even if the humans are barely aware of it. Yasaburo is a young tanuki from a tanuki family with a foot in each world it seems, masquerading as a human for fun, his teacher is a tengu (and quite possibly his crush, his master's former student), and he has deep ties to his tanuki family. But as with all families there are stresses there are stresses and problems with it and it seems like some of their problems have their roots far outside his family in the rest of Kyoto.

The Good: I'm finding it a bit hard to articulate why I enjoyed this series since I didn't like it for the usual reasons. There's no grand sweeping plot, a setting that is a character in it's own right, or characters who undergo deep, transformative journeys, although I'm sure people will argue with me on the last two points, Eccentric Family is in some ways a simpler series than that but to call it simple would be a gross misrepresentation. Unsurprisingly it's largely centered around the theme of family, both within Yasaburo's immediate family and the feud with his uncle and cousins, and watching his family change and begin to grow again, frozen as they were after his father's tragic death, is where I feel the show's true strength and heart lies. It's true that I enjoyed a lot of the whimsy in the show as well but since nearly every example I can think of involves Yasaburo and other members of his family I think that only serves to reinforce just how central the family is and if you don't like those characters or their dynamics then you're not going to enjoy the show.

The Bad: My only real complaint about the series is that I wish it had explained a bit more just what Benten is. We know she was born human, stolen by a tengu and able to use tengu powers but it's never quite explained how and, since the characters are a tad confused by it as well (ie, this isn't something we're supposed to simply accept is part of their world and move on), I was a bit surprised that the story didn't have a small reveal about how this happened towards the end. My personal theory on all of this was that she stole the teacher's powers (making him a human and her a tengu instead) but that's a wild guess on my part, not backed up by anything and I haven't seen anyone else out there with the same theory. I was also a bit sad that the titular family wasn't more, eccentric and filled with whacky hi-jinks as I expected, although I'll note that regardless the title is perfect, I merely expected something a tad bit different.

The Production Values: It was rather amusing to watch this show right after PA Works' spring show Red Data Girl and right before their fall show Nagi no Asukara because the art style is so different from what they normally do. There are no big eyed moe characters here with stunning landscape shots that have the same liquid feeling as a Ghibli film, everything here feels much flatter with less detail but you know what that's not a bad thing at all. To make it clear, this does not feel like a cheap show nor does it feel like the studio was trying to conserve resources after working on several shows in a row, in fact I can't really imagine this show being done in their usual style. I'm sure it would have worked yet I feel like the fact that they weren't going for a semi-photo-realistic style made the all important supernatural elements (which were more central to the plot than even those in either RDG or NnA) fit in better with the story, there was no obvious break where the mundane ended and the fantastical began because it all looked a bit mundane yet oh so slightly strange. As for the audio, I really wish I could have found a good subbed version of the opening to check the lyrics (since the song either starts off with "the world is interesting" or "the world isn't interesting" which is a rather large difference) but I liked the opening and ending regardless. All the voice acting seemed spot on too, the actors hit just the right high and low points for the characters and even though some of the situations were a bit absurd if you were to step back and think about them it was never the voice acting that drew you out of the situations.


For this show I'm going to give it 3.5 out of 5 stars and I'm also going to say that even though I'm probably in the minority, when comparing the two I do think that The Tatami Galaxy was a bit stronger. Of course, TG takes a favorite trope of mine, following a pattern to the point where it becomes mundane and then breaking/elevating it to the point where it becomes symbolic of something greater, which also means it was a bit more heavily plot driven by the end (as weird as that sounds) so of course that's going to give it the edge for me. However, this was still a good show and by far a more accessible one too which is certainly a good thing. There hasn't been an official license announcement for the show here in the US but, considering all but one of the episodes suddenly popped up on hulu with NIS America's logo splashed quite prominently on the page, it seems there will be one soon. In the meantime however interested parties can check out the show both on hulu and crunchyroll (which does have all the episodes still).

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.

Movie Review: The Princess and the Pilot

After seeing quite a few good reviews for this movie lately (after not even knowing it existed before NIS America licensed it, the anime blogging community often seems to miss movie works that aren't done by a well-known director, for the record this was actually based on a light novel and not a completely original work as I had previously assumed) I was thrilled to see it on the Otakon schedule and even more so when I realized that it conflicted with practically nothing else I wanted to do thanks to it's Friday morning scheduling. There were a few technical snafus (I think it all was whatever they were using to show the movie and not the staff's fault, either that or the disc itself had a problem showing the subtitles) but everything got resolved pretty quickly and we were still out right around when the video was supposed to end anyway.

The Princess and the Pilot

Summary: Princess Fana del Moral is set to marry the prince of Levahm across the ocean who is currently engaged in a brutal battle with a third country. The prince wants her to be with him and, after the entire palace is fire-bombed in an attempt to assassinate her, her family accepts and the Levahm prepares their ace pilot, the mixed blood Charles, to escort her directly through the line of enemy fire. 

The Good: This is a movie that involves quite a bit of just two characters talking and once the story gets going (and it's the middle and end of the story which have the bulk of the talking) it never once feels dull and manages to feel remarkably natural as well, I suppose this is one of the cases where coming from a prose source material is a pro, not a con. It was well-paced, Charles and Fana felt like rounded characters by the end, the setting had been fleshed out, the plot didn't contain any leaps of logical, all around it had fantastic writing which translated into great material for every other aspect of the show.

The Bad: After seeing quite a few people declare this to be practically a masterpiece I was a bit let down since I didn't think it was one. I still think it was a great movie but the one thing that bothered me was Fana's character development. She certainly grew and changed and I have no trouble with that, yet in a way that story started so quickly that I wasn't sure if her distant and quiet personality when the plane ride began were due to the recent, destruction assassination attempt she was coping with or if she simply was a quiet, retireing person and learning about the world has made her blossom. I suspect it's the former, if it was the later then just under a week should not have changed her that much, but I wish the story had started out oh so slightly differently just to establish this since then the story wouldn't just be about her growing but also moving past that event and helping her find determination that she'll keep for the rest of her life. 

The Production Values: The movie looks fantastic through and through and the art staff went to a lot of effort to make sure that the scenery was varied even though about a fourth or third of the movie is spent on or over the ocean. I seem to recall that Fana's voice struck me as a bit high, I expected something a tad deeper and more mature, but it wasn't a bad choice and her seiyuu certainly acted more than well enough (since this is a NISA release there is no dub) as did all the others. 


In the end I'm giving this a solid three and a half out of five for being a good movie, recommended to all anime fans who enjoy slightly slow paced, character driven stories (and possibly to people who aren't exactly anime fans but enjoy a number of anime movies). However, I don't like it enough to justify buying NISA's fancy release right now (even though artbooks are always tempting), perhaps if I can find it for an amazing deal or if they do a regular edition release in the future I will grab that though. As far as I know this title is not streaming anywhere online, although if they were showing it at Otakon it might pop up at other American anime conventions this year as well.
  

Anime Review: Chihayafuru 2

After the first Chihayafuru anime series ended I held off a bit on reading the manga since I had a feeling, no real reason but a feeling, that if we were going to get a second anime series that it would happen soon and I didn't want to spoil it if that was the case. And I turned out to be right and went in totally blind for this new season, although the fact that the manga still isn't fully translated means that there are less spoilers to try and avoid to start with.

Chihayafuru 2

Summary: Chihaya and the rest of the Misuzawa karuta team are back and another school year has begun which means it's time to recruit new members and to train up everyone for the upcoming high school championships. And this year Chihaya is greedy, she wants the team to win both the team tournament and each of the class tournaments as well, is that even possible with such strong players challenging them at every turn?!

The Good: I was a bit hesitant about the two new characters (actually they're the reason why I thought we might get a second season, they were pictured on the box set of the first season's DVDs) but they actually worked rather well. Tsukuba already liked karuta so it was easy to integrate him and the story went out of their way to build up Sumire and make her into a more likable character (and oddly enough into a bit of an audience surrogate at times), although then the story didn't end up using them as much as I expected for their character development. This is also one of the few sports shows where even the viewers can see how much better the characters have gotten at the game. I feel like it’s sometimes hard to convey that easily through story-telling, in real life the actors obviously just act and special effects may help (like the Doctor from Doctor Who playing soccer a few seasons back and they simply added in the ball later with CGI) and for sports shows, well, it’s hard to animate anything to look perfectly the way it does in real life especially with less than awesome players. But here we can see how the characters remain calmer, how Chihaya is taking more multi-syalbell cards, how the characters begin to move faster, and for once I can really believe that they’ve all improved.

The Bad: In the first season the show had a really fantastic pace, nicely balancing the matches and the character development outside of them but here that pace slowed to a crawl. From what I can tell this is the result of the manga slowing it's pacing, not from the new series composition staff, and having seen where the manga ended and knowing how little there is left beyond it I'm not sure what the staff should have done instead. It would have been great if the individual matches themselves had been sped up so the story could focus on more people. Chihaya and Taichi obviously got a lot of screen time and Arata got much more this season, Nishida and Tsutomu got some time devoted to their feelings but not much, those two, Kana, and the newbies seemed to vanish at times during the Omi Jingui matches and that did make me a bit sad. 

The Production Values: I don't know if they started doing this this season or just did it more frequently than in the first season but I loved how they would often have a small line of words, a character's aside or inner thoughts, alongside them, unvoiced in a lot of scenes. It reminded me a bit of Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood actually and the trouble that series had in adapting the humor and snarking that often came in the middle of serious scenes that worked perfectly well in print but not so well in anime. Here it worked well, breaking the tension or providing a tiny insight but without completely breaking the flow or the mood of the scene. Aside from that, I liked the new additions to the soundtrack (need to track that down soon actually) and again I adore that soundtrack, it knows how to use it's uplifting, dramatic, and inspirational tracks so well that I find it impossible to not get excited whenever it plays. I did feel like the art looked a little cheaper this time around though, I know it's common practice on the internet to take screenshots of far off background characters, blow them up, and laugh at how silly and crappily drawn then look but some of the foreground characters here looked a bit off as well which was more than a bit frustrating.  


I'm still frustrated by that slow pacing but in the end this season covered just as much as the previous one did, another 45-ish chapters which means the story ended at chapter 92 or 93 out of about 119 chapters. Clearly this means it'll be a long time before we get more anime, if ever, so once those manga scanlations get up to date (yup, still not there even with two teams working from different places!) I'll probably start following it. In the meantime however I give this season a 3 out of 5 and even with these problems I'm still crossing my fingers for an American home release (if not, well, there's always Australia to import from!).