Manga Review: Coda

Augh, sorry that I didn't get this up on time folks, I'm really late now, for a bit of an odd reason. You see, this was recommended to me on tumblr over the summer and I really enjoyed it but it doesn't seem to have updated since September so I was wondering if I should take it off my list of things to review this year. I should have skimmed back through it earlier than I did to prep but apparently this was the week that a lot of my tv shows/manga decided to have really important updates so I wasn't able to find the time or the focus just to think about Coda. But I've got it now and expect what should have been today (Monday's) review up on Wednesday!

Coda by Ichimura Hitoshi

Haruichi is part of the dance class at his school, known for being a fine fine art school, with a concentration in Japanese Dance and he likes watching ballet quite well too. He knows his father would be angry to hear about it (why we never know, probably because it would be seen as a distraction from his studies) but he even practices some of the female parts on his own time. And so, through a series of odd events and blackmail he ends up becoming the partner of the internationally renowned dancer Yuri and practicing with him for an upcoming performance, except he's playing the female role!

Some series I love because they're like a good cake, full of lots and lots of layers and so rich that you occasionally need to stop eating and just sit and think about the flavors for a little bit, maybe go for a walk, and then keep devouring it. This series reminds me a little bit more of pietit fours, they still look great and taste wonderful but you can cram but you can cram a surprising number of them in your mouth at once without feeling too full. This is a fun little breather series for me, it has a simple plot that holds everything together, not too many characters, has a concise goal, and a bit of cross-dressing. Funny enough even though the main characters are two boys, and two boys doing ballet together at that, I wouldn't really call this even a BL series, it wasn't written with the sly *wink wink nudge nudge* that many other slash-able series are but of course that's just me, I'm sure that for some fans this is more than enough to make them excited. 

There's not a lot of plot to speak of in this story per-say, it's complete at three volumes and up to the first part of the third has been finished, and it really is a straightforward story, Haruichi is drawn in, half against his will half not, into doing ballet with Yuri and practices to get better, to better understand his role, and to better understand why Yuri has refused to dance as someone's partner for so many years while puzzling out why he suddenly choose him. He meets other people who provide some insight, I felt like none of the characters were too stiff (although these aren't the roundest characters, this story is so much Haruichi's that there just isn't a way to flesh out some of the supporting characters), and for once the cross-dressing gag feels just like that, a silly detail in the story that doesn't demean anyone but does make everything slightly more awkward (often I find that cross-dressing gags in manga don't make things awkward for the characters as much as it feels hella awkward to me because Gender Politics, which is far too long to get into here).


So, do I think this stands a chance at getting licensed? Yes and no, the fact that it's complete at just three volumes is great, however the publisher is Mag Garden and they haven't had a thing in print in the US since JManga went down and took down all the titles they had license-rescued from TokyoPop with them. It's rather strange to think that there's a good sized publisher out there who doesn't have a single story currently licensed in the US, I've never heard anything so I doubt that they have terrible relationships with any of the current US companies but there was some eye-brow raising when I realized that (funny enough they published Carat as well). I feel like this title might work at Seven Seas (especially with the recent news that no I wasn't imagining it, they really are doing better this year with sales that are something like 100% higher than what they were last year) although I wonder if the fact that it's not particularly "slashable" BL might mean it appeals to a smaller audience. So, not especially but it's not something that's completely unlicenseable either?

Manga Review: Carat

So, I'm out of town for the weekend and it didn't occur to me that the retirement home where I was staying wouldn't have wifi or even an ethernet jack. Elderly people use the internet right, they can't all be luddites. In any case, I now feel rather hip using my laptop in a coffee shop eating something not-coffee, talking about an unlicenesed manga title that probably not many people have heard of

Carat by Watanabe Yoshitomo

Summary: Two girls, Yuni and Melissa from  Carat have been chosen as candidates for the next queen and now have to fight each other over jewels that have been unleashed on Earth, the first to collect five wins. Buuuuut the girls don’t really want to fight each other, they’re best friends after all, so they both recruit someone to fight as a magical girl in their place and thus is the start of a truly bizarre adventure.

The Good: In case the summary didn’t make it clear enough, this is a magical girl parody and one I found much more amusing than ones such as Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-chan or Puni Puni Poemi. I think it did help that I read some of Sugar Sugar Rune recently, since this has a really similar identical set-up, but I think that a lot of fans of the magical girl genre have come across these tropes before and can easily find the humor in it. The story is also well paced, it’s not too long, doesn’t draw anything out (except the ship tease), as I said earlier I liked a lot of the humor so this ended up being a quick, fun little read for me which was good. 

The Bad: I will admit that I wanted a few things to be a little more conclusively resolved by the end (heck, I wasn’t expecting the ending to be as odd as it was so it caught me off guard and I didn’t realize at first that this was the end) but I should have seen that coming considering this is a parody that plays almost no trope straight. Some of the jokes, especially concerning the villains, became a bit too repetitive by the end, and I would have liked to have seen at least a little more character development than actually happened (I hadn’t realized the story was so short when I started or I would have nixed that hope) but overall it was short enough that it didn’t have time to develop any huge problems.

The Art: The art was not exactly generic, since there isn’t really a “this is how all magical girl stories look!” style but if I was to read something else by the artist I wouldn’t even notice since there was nothing that stood out and made the style distinctive or even recognizable. I liked all the designs, they were cute and everything was certainly consistent enough for everything to look like it was from the same story but it didn’t stand out the way the art in other series has for me.

Licensing Chances: This is something I’m going to add in for unlicensed manga that I talk about (probably not anime but I might) and sadly I think that this series has next to no chance to being licensed. It is pretty short which does work in it’s favor and it’s from the publisher Mag Garden (ie, no company has “dibs” on it, although this does mean Kodansha Comics can’t license it and since they got a lot of Del Ray’s old titles which included a fair amount of shojo/magical girl titles that is a shame) but I noticed something weird about that. I went to Wikipedia, looked up what magazines Mag Garden has (a shojo one and a shonen one, ______ and _____ respectively) and as far as I can tell every title from those magazines that was licensed in the US was done by TokyoPop who hasn’t been around in a few years (I’ll believe they’re back when they do more than sell back stock through Right Stuf). I have no idea if they had a special contract or if they were just a good fit for each other (which is more likely the case) and sadly this does fit in best with TokyoPop’s line of titles, much better than any other company currently out there. So at this point I doubt we’ll be seeing this in English, if you want to buy it you’ll have to do so in Japanese.

Now that that’s out of the way, I give this 3 out of 5 stars for being fun, something I would pick up since it’s so short, but probably not something I would go to the trouble of importing (honestly if shipping was cheaper than it was then I’d be much more likely to consider importing manga from Japan, curse you Earth having an ocean and a continent between me and comics). However, even though I said I probably wouldn’t be able to identify the artist since the art style wasn’t very, stylistic, I do plan on looking up and seeing what else they’ve made, I wonder how their sense of humor translates into stories that aren’t straight up parodies.

Book Review: Fire Horse Girl

So, I'm not 100% sure how I got this book. I remember seeing it on Unshelved's bookclub list and entering a contest there to try and get a copy myself. Didn't hear anything so I assumed I hadn't won a copy and then one showed up at my apartment on my birthday which left me quite happy. Until I realized a few days later that I had never had the book sent to my apartment and that UPS had somehow magically known to send it there instead of my PO box, they had even put a second shipping label on top of the original one. I'm still happy I got the book, I'm just now very confused how it happened, I guess I got lucky that I had them reroute a package of mine a couple of weeks earlier and they were able to look up my address again?


Fire Horse Girl by Kay Honeyman

Summary: Jade Moon was born in the year of the Fire Horse and she embodies all the traits of it: stuborn, reckless, and headstrong. Partially because of this horoscope, and partially through Jade Moon fulfilling it, she's lonely and frustrated so when a cousin arrives at their house with a plan to go to America for a new start eager to take it, no matter what problems they might find there. 

The Good: Bit of a different setting than I normally come across which was nice (although I did have to make sure I read this and The Broken Lands far enough apart that I didn't accidentally mix up Jin and Jade Moon), I liked how it was set in San Francisco in the 20s and the author kindly provided a list of sources which I'm going to check out since I realized that I really have no idea what the history of the west coast is like. And it was that not exactly novelty but different-ness about Jade Moon's situation, the setting, and how her new life in America turns out that kept me interested in the book.

The Bad: The pacing felt a little weird to me, although I think part of that was because the book flap talked about Jade Moon going to America and the cover showed that she was going to crossdress and as a result I expected both of those events to happen sooner than they did. Even taking that into account I felt like the story just lingered in a number of places for too long which is funny since it's not a very long book, if you were to pace it a bit more briskly it would have been a very short novel. As hinted at earlier, the characters aren't exactly original and they're a bit too flat to be compelling. I'm not surprised that this is Honeyman's first novel because in some ways it really feels like a first novel, there are some great parts and some needs work parts, nothing terrible but it's not a book I expect to win many awards either. 


In the end I'm going to give this book 3 out of 5 stars, it's the kind of book I'd check out from the library, read once, and not feel the urge to own/re-read. In fact, I think I'm going to swing by the local library and donate this in the hope that this book gets more use that way than it would just sitting on my shelves.

Webcomic Review Month 2013: Knights Errant

Meant to talk about this a few days ago but it slipped my mind, I seem to have finally found a partial solution to keeping up with all my comics. I've mentioned in the past that when I started reading webcomics (using Safari as my browser) I just made bookmark folders but that hasn't really worked for Firefox or Chrome. But this winter I installed an RSS feed collector right into Chrome and about 80, maybe 90% of my webcomics these days have RSS feeds so I've been able to keep up with everything nicely. Some comics don't have RSS feeds, or have ones but don't seem to be working (and whenever I mention it in the comments section I never an answer) and for those I still use twitter/facebook as a way to follow them but thankfully most of those comics also update promptly. I've seen more people using feed aggregator sites, such as Comic Rocket and Ink Outbreak, in the past year and while I can see the appeal I just follow entirely too many comics and when I find a new one I don't want to go to all the hassle to see if it's on the site already or not. In any case, onto tonight's review!


Knights Errant by Jennifer "theyoungdoyley" Doyle

Wilfrid is a mercenary who rather likes being one and is thrilled when a war breaks out between the nations of Aster-Morgaria and Vetal. They join a group of mercenaries known as the Errant Knights due to their reputation and discovers that their young commander, Oswald Dytel, is even more intriguing than he first appears.

Normally I wouldn't read a comic like this because, well, the characters are asses. But they are well-developed, amusing, and interesting asses and I like a story with good character development so why not! The summary mentions a war going on and while that's certainly a driving force lurking in the background of the story, so far everything has been rather character driven, although if the prologue is any indication that plot will kick in sooner or later, for better or for worse. The art style varies quite a bit from section to section, I have yet to figure out if there's a pattern or reason why some pages are in full color and others are not (believe me I have been trying for months now) but regardless of whatever style or color the pages are in the art is dynamic, expressive, and as it goes on increasingly detailed as well. I find the art style rather attractive, and thankfully not overly gorey, so while a bit inconsistent it's not jarring enough to take most readers out of the story. 


Knights Errant can be read on it's website and does not seem to have a print edition yet, although I'm sure one is coming down the road. It can also be read online in Russian which appears to be only a few pages behind the English version.

One thing that does have me worried about this comic is how it has a rather complicated set of character relationships and politics, which is awesome, but it hasn't updated in a bit and I'm worried that I'm going to start forgetting who was who and where they stand. And this is a worry I have with a lot of webcomics actually, the one great failing of webcomics is how they update so much more slowly than print comics (some might put out a full chapter a month, very few, and others will barely get a chapter out in a year) and that just completely messes with the pacing. I'm sure this comic will start updating again soon, I'm not too worried about that, but it does make me ruminate on what the proper way to read it is, there's no point in reading scattered updates if I know that I'll forget what happened in a month but I want to read it regardless, maybe someday I'll find a happy compromise between the two of them.


2012 "K" Comic

2011 "J" Comic
2011 "K" Comic

Book Review: Goliath

Bit later than I would have liked this review to be up, like it's predecessors this book was released back in the fall but between waiting for the library to get it and my large to-read pile (I, erm, may have bit off more than I could chew, combined with my March break I have more than enough books to review for a long time) it took a while to get to it. So no I do not have a copy of this book yet but fully intend to get one soon, if my anime expenses don't take over my budget for another month....

Goliath by Scott Westerfeld, illustrated by Keith Thompson

Summary: Deryn and Alek continue their trek eastward on the Leviathan as the world falls farther and farther into war. But the Leviathan might have the solution to the end of the war, along the way they pick up renowned scientist Telsa who claims to have a weapon that could level cities at a glance, a weapon that force anyone to stop all the fighting and what Alek is banking on. Deryn and the other Darwinists have their doubts however and Deryn is finding that it's becoming harder and harder to hide her true identity and the more involved she becomes in the world's affairs the more dangerous it becomes to reveal it.  

The Good: Westerfeld continues to expand his world by showing off Japan and the Americas and their blends of technologies and ideologies was nice*. Also nice was some characters from the second book reappearing, I’ve grown rather used to trilogies which have different expanded casts in every book that this was a nice surprise. The book actually balanced a large cast very well with even more factions being introduced and no one felt like a flat, background character. This was helped in part by the pacing, a lot happens in the story and the Leviathan covers even more ground than the first two books and it never feels like one area or place drags on too long or is breezed by too quickly, everything flowed very well.  Finally, fans should go to Westerfeld’s blog and read the extra chapter set after the series which was quite fun.

The Bad: While the ending wasn’t bad and was what I had been expecting, since I knew the actual history Goliath was borrowing, so it wasn’t quite as satisfying as I had hoped. Again, it’s a reasonable ending, makes sense (hence I had predicted something rather close), it just didn’t hit the right emotional notes with me (not the very end end, the whole ending in general). I was also a bit underwhelmed with what the Lorises were really supposed to be, it does sound like Doctor Barlow broke a major rule while creating them but I still fail to see why they were ever supposed to be important to the conflict. Overall, the ending was a bit underwhelming and played out fairly close to what I predicted and, as someone who likes tricky plots I found it a bit unsatisfying. 

The Art: The art continues to be stunning and while I felt like some of the crowd scenes weren’t quite as detailed as the ones from the second book but the art has noticeably improved from the first book (which wasn’t bad, it simply got even better). The art continues to be the easiest way for me to promote the book to friends (it’s much easier to flash a few pictures from a book rather than find time to make someone read a few passages that they hopefully like) and it’s the biggest reason that this book is on my to-buy list (and on a similar note I'm excited for the companion guide which will have even more illustrations in it, coming out later this year I believe). 

Despite the ending not being quite as interesting as I hoped this was still a very strong installment to end on and I'm looking forward to whatever Westerfeld writes next. Actually, come to think of it I don't think I've heard of what his next project is (other than the pre-Uglies graphic novels and the companion book for this), hope it's interesting!

*although I question that the [American] South, the god-fearing South which today still has issues with “moral debates” today (I mean, for god's sake my state votes on a constitutional amendment against gay marriage even though it's already illegal) being the half that had fabricated beasties, I can see where he was going with the North and their machines but it didn’t quite work for me, an East-West split with an industrialized East and a fabricated West would have made much more sense.

Anime Review: Princess Jellyfish

Initally I was going to post this review before Shiki's (since PJ technically airs before Shiki and I post reviews in the order that I finish the material) but there was some weird delay and Funimation posted the last episode a couple of days late. Actually, if they had taken any longer I was going to go looking for fansubs since you do not deny me my josei, heck, I was going to watch this series fansubbed if it wasn't simulcast at all, that's how excited I was for it. So was it worth the wait?

Princess Jellyfish (a lot of fans refer to it by the Japanese name Kuragehime but since Funimation has translated the title that's the one I'm using)

Summary: Tsukimi is a girl with a deep love of jellyfish (to the point where she could be called a jellyfish otaku) living in a boarding house in Tokyo with a bunch of other introverted, terrified of normal people, otaku (who refer to themselves as "The Nuns"). But her life is about to get more exciting when a stylish young lady helps her save a neglected jellyfish and decides to integrate "herself" into Tsukimi's life

The Good: I was surprised that Kuranosuke (the "young lady" that Tsukimi meets) turned out to be just as important as she was in the series and I really loved the episodes he narrated. He's as cosmopolitan as Tsukimi is navie, a bit sarcastic, cynical, and jaded and just a pretty funny narrator and really holds up the show when Tsukimi gets stuck in a rut. Tsukimi is also a pretty interesting main character but for me Kuranosuke stole the show. As for the Nuns, sometimes they bothered me and sometimes their antics reminded me of my dorm and Kuranosuke's family did the same.

The Bad: Ouch that was a rushed ending (sounds like the manga didn't have a good place to stop at so they combined parts of two volumes plus some original material) and it really would have been better with just one more episode. Normally I would call that horrible planning but since they had to wrap up three different plot lines in just eleven episodes it's understandable (and this is a weakness that almost all noitaminA shows have sadly). Also, the Nuns really didn't grow as characters over the course of the series (they're pretty flat actually) and Tsukimi didn't grow that much either. She does seem to have a revelation at the end but there was a lot of her moping around to get to that point. Some of the other characters were missing some development (I know that Shuu changed suddenly in the last few episodes and some manga readers had to fill in a few details) so the problem with Princess Jellyfish can be summed up as this: It really needed more episodes.

The Art: As odd as it sounds, I really like the character designs in this series. Specifically, the Nuns get a makeover or two throughout the series and, even though they do look prettier, they still look like average girls with a good stylist. It's a small detail but I'm still giggling over that fact that Kuranosuke is the prettiest person on the show most of the time (speaking of which, I want his wardrobe now). Nothing else too special about the art, Clara the narrating jellyfish is adorkable and really, all the jellyfish in this show are really beautiful looking, so the visual work well for the show.

The Music: Alright, I have no idea why the opening is a montage of scenes from famous movies (none of the Nuns are movie fans which would've been my best explanation) but it's pretty awesome none the less*. As odd as it sounds, all the character interactions in the OP match their personalities perfectly and the lyrics match both the story and the movies in the OP so it's a really opening. Likewise, the ending song is perfect for the series (I like the interpretation that the song is Kuranosuke singing to Tsukimi) and the lyrics really fit the theme of the series."I really want you to realize that your gorgeous/Why haven't you realized this before?/....I'll be so happy if you just realize your loveliness." Plus the song starts during the last few seconds of the episode itself by playing the lyrics "LOVE IS COMING BACK, BACK" in the background and it's just hard to hate such an upbeat and positive song. As a final note, I was seriously impressed at Kuranosuke's VA, I honestly couldn't tell if it was a woman or man until I looked it up (it's Mitsuki Saiga so a woman) and she was really able to pull off his voice amazingly well, kudos to her!


I fell in love with this series, despite it's short comings, and would love for it to get a second season. However, since this seems unlikely, I'll probably check out the manga (which is sadly unlicensed) and pray that Funimation gives this a DVD release soon. Until then it can be seen on Funi website/youtube/hulu and I believe on ANN as well. Now, to go show off my darling Clara plushie to my friends....



*So, whoever thought "hey guys, let's make the nerdiest anime opening ever because we can get away with it!" you are pretty darn amazing.