Book Review: The Demon Catchers of Milan

Phew, last review of the week and now I can spend my weekend wracking my brain for how to keep up these reviews when my life seems to get busier and busier....

The Demon Catchers of Milan by Kat Beyer

Anime Review: Rage of Bahamut: Genesis

This is another title that wasn't on my to-watch list for the fall initially but good buzz, and some persistent friends, convinced me to try it out. Hmm, it seems as if I've been saying that about quite a few shows that aired this past fall....

Rage of Bahamut: Genesis

Anime Review: Mononoke

As noted back in my Library War review, despite the fact that I'm a big fan of the noitaminA timeslot there are quite a few shows from it that I've never seen and I really hope to change that this year by giving those shows a bit of priority on my to-watch list. So I went for a title that is both well-known and not; well-known amongst some circles of fans for being one of Kanji Nakamura's shows (Gatchaman Crowds was actually his first show to not air in the timeslot) and a pretty interesting one just to look at, and yet not that well-known at all since the series has never been licensed or even streamed legally in the US, bother!

Mononoke

Book Review: Demon's Surrender

Well this review has been a long time coming, I read the first book in this series sometime in early college and had such a hard time getting a hold of the later two that I even ended up reviewing some of the author's next series in the meantime. Admittedly I had rather mixed feelings on the first book ("but if I like the storytelling in her blog posts why don't I like her ACTUAL books?!") but I found that I enjoyed the second book more than the first and the first book in her new series even better. So I'm glad to finally finish this series, both for completeness sake and to see just where it's ended up.

The Demon's Surrender by Sarah Reese Brennan

Summer 2013 Anime Round-Up

First things first, Gatchaman Crowds doesn't air until tomorrow so I'll be updating this post for that tomorrow, heck I would have had this up earlier except apparently crunchyroll doesn't let you use multiple guest passes in a one week period which threw a wrench into my plans. Second, normally I talk about the shows that carried over for me from last season but I actually wrote a rather rambly write-up of the spring season over on my tumblr which covered those shows. TL;DR, still following Space Bros and Doki Doki Precure but other than that I'm starting with a clean slate, let's get started then! oh one more thing, each of these impression is made after seeing just one episode of the show, some of these shows do have a second episode out by now but I just didn't have time to get to them.

Blood Lad
Vampire boy is obsessed with Japanese stuff.
This is an aggressively shonen show from the way the visuals are designed (lots of sound effects on screen, word bubbles at times, things you usually see only in either a 4-koma or shonen based adaptation, I'm trying to figure out why Brains Base has pushed this show back by an entire year since it certainly wasn't because of the art!) to the humor (look at this girl! she has boobs! and not much else on!). Heck even the character designs are a bit more shonen-y than usual now that I think about it and it's been so long since I've watched a show like this I had forgotten, this isn't really my type of show (and yes, this is technically based off of a senien manga, knowing that doesn't make it feel any less shonen plus sometimes you do get weird overlaps with those categories). I'm going to give it a couple more episodes to see if I warm up to it, the entire Manga Bookshelf seems to really like the manga and their tastes often line up with mine and it's certainly a a different take on vampires (but let's face it, by now almost every story with vampires is "a different take!") but at this point I don't see myself following it's entire 10 episode run.

Blood Lad has been licensed by Viz Media and is streaming on their site and on hulu so Canadian viewers are sadly out of luck this time.


Danganronpa the Animation
Super highschoolers trapped in murderous school.
Initially I thought "oh I'll give this a shot since I'd rather watch this than read the summaries/translations and don't have a PSP to download the game/patch (plus, these games never get licensed in the US)" and then NISA licensed the game (and someone else got Steins;Gate in the same day which had previously been my basis for "these games that super popular anime are based on don't get licensed"). Well then, don't have much reason to check out the show then (even if I don't have a PSP Vita to play the actual game on) and I'm a bit relieved, this just didn't flow well for me. It's odd but I dislike books and tv shows with this kind of setting, murder-mystery with the player character having warped morals by the end, but I do like games with it (I adored 9 hours 9 persons 9 doors which is a bit similar, I joked to friends that the setting and some of the characters kept giving me flashbacks). There it's fun to play as an asshole-ish character and see how much you can screw everything up, it's less fun to watch other people do it (although I know that mountains of Let's Play videos out there contradict me on this point). So with all of that in mind, I wasn't able to take anything seriously enough to enjoy it, and you're clearly not supposed to take a lot of this story seriously to start with, and hopefully someday I'll be able to give the game a try and enjoy it much more.

Danganronpa the Animation has been licensed for streaming by Funimation but the first episode won't be up until this Friday the 12th.


Eccentric Family (Uchoten Kazoku)
Humans, Tanuki, and Tengu live in Kyoto.
Based on a novel written by the same man who wrote the original The Tatami Galaxy novel this first episode didn't grab me as much as it seemed to grab some other people which was actually what I expected, Tatami didn't grab me until I tried watching it again about two years later after all. Although I suspect it won't take me nearly as long to get around to the second episode, while this first episode might not have grabbed me and taken me for a ride like other shows have done it was still interesting enough to make me curious about the rest of it. This was an introductory episode, we see a lot of the main cast, get a sense of the different factions in Kyoto, possible conflicts and mysteries are mentioned but nothing super exciting has happened yet, it's all set-up. But I am curious what this show is setting up and I like Kyoto quite a bit so I'm not going to turn down a chance to see it as a setting. So, unless the next few episodes are deadly boring I'm going to stick with this one and see just what it develops into.

Eccentric Family is streaming on crunchyroll.


Gatchaman Crowds
Super-powered humans fight rubix cube aliens.
While it didn't start out that way this ended up being my most anticipated summer show and it's not perfect but so far it's pretty fun. Well, fun if you consider being on a rainbow colored roller coaster for 30 minute fun (although strangely enough the episode was just 22 minutes long, not 25) and it's already clear that this series is a shorter one since the pacing is frenzied and feels even faster with how bouncy lead character Hajime is. I really do hope the next few episodes slow down a bit since there was a lot to take in here, it's the complete opposite of tsuritama (which shares a good chunk of it's important staff) and I can easily see how the fast pace and Hajime are putting people off, although it seems to have no connection to the original Gatchaman so newcomers like myself don't have that to worry about. Regardless, I'm in this one for the long run since I'm just in the mood for a super-colorful, fighting aliens show with a female lead, fingers crossed that it ends well!

Crowds is streaming on crunchyroll and currently unlicensed, however considering that Sentai recently licensed the original series many suspect they'll license this series as well. 


Kinmoza! (Kin-iro Mozaic)
Cute girls have intercontinental friendship
Not initially on my to watch list but after hearing so many people call it adorable I had to check it out and yep, that was a pretty adorable show. I liked it so far, this first episode is a flashback to how the main characters (a Japanese girl and a British one) met and became friends (in a rather romanticized Great Britain) and yep, not much happened but it was adorable none the less. I want to give the second episode a try but I have to ask, what is it going to do now? Are these girls with their friends going to form a club about Great Britain things? (since forming a club is all the rage now in anime-schools) Just do slice of life daily cute things with some culture shock? I'm okay with either of them but would like to know what they're going to do since I am worried about getting bored quickly, this isn't my normal type of show for a reason after all.

Kinmoza! has been licensed by Sentai and is streaming on Crunchyroll.


Free! Iwatobi Swim Club
Boys strip and swim.
I almost feel like this series needs no introduction considering how much the PV for it was being bandied about across the internet with various cries of "YES!" and "OMG IT'S OBJECTIFYING US [men]!" being thrown around. So to make things clear, no this anime was NOT made because tumblr wanted it (guys just look at it, you think that you can animate something with that much detail in the amount of time that passed between tumblr flipping out and the premiere? Hell no) and it doesn't really objectify men either, Zac of ANN articulates quite well why not so I'm just going to link to his review (it was his first so scroll of the bottom if you don't see it immediately). So, my thoughts? Well, fanservice in general isn't my thing (neither is swimming, I like the gymnastics part of the summer olympics much better) but I'm glad that they made the show so campy since that made it pretty fun to watch regardless. I doubt I'll continue it since there's so much else out there I want to watch right now but if I want to watch a mindless, well-animated show with a sense of humor then this one is at the top of my list.

Free! has not been licensed yet however it is streaming on Crunchyroll.


Makai Ouji: Devils and Realist
William doesn't believe in demons, oh-well.
So a few months back when this anime was announced I went off, read the manga, and started worrying. I've seen a lot of people compare this one to Black Butler and Pandora Hearts for thematic reasons (they both have the Victorian England inspired setting with gothic elements) but structurally they're the similar as well, they're all shows whose manga took a heck of a time to get to the meat of the plot (I gave up on Black Butler before finding out if it ever got there actually). So, judging from what I know, the pacing of this episode, and what was shown in the OP and ED (which by the way has a heck of a spoiler for one of the characters) this one is probably going to have a fast pace and either an original ending or an inconclusive one (which I think is more likely) since I can't really think of a place to end it as the manga currently stands AND the story is bland enough that I doubt it's going to sell well enough for a sequel. Which is rather sad since I tried out since I liked the premise, demons trying to become the new king of hell by bothering a British kid, and while the manga did grow on me it really wasn't because the characters or the plot turned out to be super interesting, the style just got a bit better and I liked the eye-candy. At this point I'm willing to give the show another episode or two for the eye candy reason (even though I'm not that happy with some of the voices in here, it's been a while since the voices have been the complete opposite of what I've imagined), the character designs really do look great in full color I'm most likely going to end up dropping it by the end of July.

Devils and Realist is unlicensed but streaming on crunchyroll. Seven Seas manga also picked up the manga recently and plans to release the first volume in early 2014.


Servant x Service
Civil workers work.
Hmm, this series didn't grab me as much as I had hoped a series about working adults would which makes me a little sad. Of course, one of the most common comments I've seen on this show is "Working!! but less zany" so perhaps that's what I should be watching instead, heck I have much more experience with weird food-industry work than weird office/government work (the libraries I've worked at have been fairly tame comparatively speaking). In any case, this looks to be a straight-forward, slice of life (in the really literal sense) story of a few different civil workers and for the moment I'm going to give it a few more episodes to see if the characters click with me but I feel that if the characters don't click with me then there's going to be no point in watching the show.

Servant x Service is streaming on crunchyroll and unlicensed.


Silver Spoon (Gin no Saji)
Boy enrolls in agricultural school, hijinks.
The lone noitaminA show of the season (since now it's AnoHana's time to do reruns) and a bit more anticipated than most noitaminA shows since it's based off of a manga by the creator of FullMetal Alchemist. I read a bit of the manga a few years back and while it wasn't bad I just wasn't really grabbed by it either which was the same reaction I had here. We've only had one episode to meet the characters and see the setting so not much has actually happened, although the egg gag got old really fast (guys, I'm a girl, I know EXACTLY where eggs come from), although that did end in some really excellently animated food which really makes me wish there was a food anime with that kind of animation out there. However, since it's not bad by a long shot, noitaminA, and could certainly get more interesting once the characters start developing and such I plan on following this one for the long run (literally, it's split cour so 11 episodes now and another 11 next January) and I'm really hoping that the show ends up growing on me (it is set at a farming school after all....).

Silver Spoon remains unlicensed but it is streaming on crunchyroll.


Stella Women’s Academy, High School Division Class C3
Cute girls form war games club.
Wow I have seen mixed reactions on it, I honestly tried out the show because I at first saw some people saying it was fun and then others saying that, as a result of the gun culture in the US, it made them uncomfortable and I wanted to form an opinion on my own. And I have to say, even though I'm not a big fan of guns I can easily see the appeal of running around shooting each other with fake guns (probably because a lot of my friends in high school did just that) but this show still came off as a bit odd. It's trying too hard to emphasize the juxtaposition of  "they're cute girls! And they like imitating Rambo movies!", honestly it wouldn't have felt as weird if it hadn't done that. Which puts me in an odd position of being interested in watching another episode but probably not sticking with the show for the long run, this is just turning out to be an odd season for me.

C3 has been licensed by Sentai and is streaming on Crunchyroll.


Watamote
High school girl has delusions of popularity
Yet another show that wasn't initially on my to-watch list but decided to give it a shot after seeing a number of other people mention it. And, ehhhhh, I don't think I'll be continuing with it after all. As many other people have commented, so far this is a dark comedy with only one joke, oh look how Tomoke has no friends/no social skills/doesn't even know it! Sure I've seen people like that in my years of high school and college, although usually the painfully socially awkward nerds I saw instead of not talking at all had no idea when was a good time to talk or that they weren't actually funny (and most started getting better at it after a few years!) and I was never like that, so I'm not getting that much kick out of the "oh ha-ha, it's like someone you know!" humor which I think I should be feeling just a bit. However I did think it got one point especially spot on, when Tomoke is mocking all the girls in her class who hang out with guys and look cute, calling them bimbos and sluts, and yet you get the feeling that she really wants that in her own life. That I think a lot of people of all genders go through, I know that on some parts of the internet there's a lot of "oh I'm better than other girls because I am/do_____ instead!" (my first thought actually was of this meme but apparently this was actually a parody of the situation, still gets across what I meant however) which also feeds into a lot of other assumptions about what's feminine, what's not, stereotypes (both as a result of media and as a reaction to said media) and all kinds of nasty stuff. I have no doubt that giving Tomoke that viewpoint was quite deliberate but that's not enough to keep me interested in what happens next sadly.

Watamote has both it's anime and manga licensed in the US, by Sentai and Yen Press respectively, and the anime is currently streaming on crunchyroll.

Spring 2013 Anime Round-up

And the spring shows have started folks! Trying to get this out a bit earlier than usual so for all of the shows here I’ve seen just one episode and I’m cramming everything into one post, should be fun to check back in three or six months to see what I actually kept/dropped. And as a quick note, I’m still following three shows from the winter season, Chihayafuru 2, Doki Doki Precure, and Space Bros. So far Chihayafuru feels a little weaker pacing wise than the first season (they only spent a few episodes at Omi Jingui and had completely wrapped that arc up by episode 15 but here we’re at 13 and still in the team matches, I’m wondering if the rest of the season will be spent at Omi Jingui and I really hope not) but it still has my attention and it’s managed to flesh out the two new club members better than I had hoped and the rest of the gang continues to grow (even if Arata still isn’t showing up on screen much, I finally found a word to describe him though guys, he’s a tritagonist!). Doki Doki Precure isn’t as good as Heartcatch so far but it’s self aware enough to make me laugh along with it and have fun casually watching it each week, although I’m having real trouble with the villains each time (instead of focusing on the monster/victim of the week like Heartcatch did we see a quick shot of them thinking a selfish thought, being mature and saying “naaaaah” and then they turn into a monster anyway, this idea is as awkward as it sounds in writing). However, unlike most of the shows I watch I don't feel super motivated to find fansubs for it each week and if this season gets busy I'll probably drop it and check back on it later to see if it's worth picking back up. And finally it looks like Space Bros is in for the long haul, it sounds like the anime is somewhere around volume 10 out of 20 volumes so far and I want to say I heard that the manga-ka is predicting it to go on for around 30 volumes. I’m really curious how much longer this one is going to be sticking around, it would be hugely impressive if it went all the way to the end, at the current pace they have about a year’s worth of material to animate still and in the past the manga-ka churned out an impressive four volumes a year but last year only produced two. I guess in theory the manga could stay far enough ahead (and it seems like the anime pads a bit with recap bits to help with this) and the show just got placed in a new timeslot which is right before Detective Conan on Saturday afternoon/evenings which is apparently a really really good sign. Regardless I still enjoy it’s humor, all the space stuff, and all the stuff involving it’s multiple sets of siblings now which makes me reflect on my own relationship with my siblings, although I do feel like a mediocre big sister when compared to Mutta.

Arata the Legend (Arata Kangatari)
Arata (no not that one) switches places with Arata (again, not that one) from another world.
Correct me if I’m wrong but I’m pretty sure this is Yuu Watase’s only non-shojo work and it’s always interesting to see when an author (of any medium) who is very heavily associated with one genre (in her case shojo) switch to a different one (shonen) and seeing just what tropes carry over. You could actually make this into a shojo very easily so I'm wondering what this genre switch will bring besides male main characters (which she's had before, Alice 19th had them for sure and a lot of her earlier works have a good amount of action as well). Also, I noticed on a scanlation site the other day that in Japan that the story is over 150 chapters yet the show is only going to be one cour, how the heck is that a good idea? With a story that long I can almost guarantee that individual arcs in the story are going to be longer than 13 chapters and, even if the pick up the pace and put multiple chapters into one episode (like they did here) they’ll still have a freakisly hard time making that work. Really at this point that’s what’s keeping me from getting really excited about this series, while it has potential I just don’t know if it has the time to make it work.

Arata the Legend is streaming on crunchyroll but only for United States and Canadian viewers and it might be for subscribers only. If it is subscribers only, the wording is a bit strange, I 'll have to drop it since I'm using a free subscription now to save money and won't be continuing with it.  

The Devil is a Part-timer (Hataraku Maou-sama!)
Satan escapes a crusading Hero and flips burgers.
Someone pointed out this one to me a few months back when they noted that a voice actor I had heard and liked had landed the leading role here so I checked out the manga (adaptation of the light novels this is based on that is) and found that the humor worked surprisingly well there. And here the humor continues to work, the first episode starts off a bit slow as it gets through the backstory of “how the hell a conquering demon lord is now trying to become a full time McRonald’s employee” but once it hits the second half it pulls off the situational humor pretty well. So I have high hopes that the entire show manages to stay funny and keep my interest, if that manga adaptation is any indication then it should fulfill those expectations very nicely.

Funimation has picked up the show for streaming and can be viewed either on their website or on hulu.



Devil Survivor 2 the Animation
Kids summon demon’s with their cell phones.
Initially this wasn’t on my to-watch list since I’ve never played any of the Shin Megami Tensei games of any franchise but, since I saw a number of good reviews for it and that reasoning hardly stopped me from watching Persona 4 the Animation, I gave it a shot and yeah, that was pretty solid. Thankfully here they’ve chosen to give the main character, in the game the player avatar, a real personality instead of trying to develop him as the show went on a la P4tA and the story gets to the action pretty quickly. I can still see that this was adapted from a game (“oh here is the exposition, this one is probably the tutorial fight” etc) but it doesn’t feel like I’m just watching a Let’s Play of the game so for the moment I’m sticking with it.

DS2tA (DeSu2A?) is streaming on crunchyroll for people in : USA, Canada, UK, Ireland, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Netherlands, and Scandinavia..

Gargantia on the Verduous Planet (Suisei no Gargantia)
Mech pilot accidentally space-warps to backwater Earth
This was one of the shows I was most excited for going into the spring season. Scratch that, I was curious about a number of shows but only really excited for this one, it's a low-key season for me this time around, and I had such a hard time waiting for the second episode that I eventually found a fansub of the second episode (ripped from a DVD given out a few weeks earlier) with subpar subtitles and still enjoyed the heck out of it. Somehow this one just worked for me, I've seen a lot of people say that the first half moved a little too slow for them but I like space battles and space operas so I was just fine with epic-scale outer space fighting (and no the CGI does not look bad, it's not quite as nice and neat as Majestic Prince's was but it's perfectly fine guys, the show in general looks fantastic) and I was also okay when the story did a pretty large genre shift for the second half of the episode/for the rest of the series it seems. I’m okay with how they’re handling the shift to a quieter, not exactly slice of life but certainly smaller in scale story following the remnants of humanity on Earth living on boats and endlessly moving on the all-encircling ocean.

Gargantia is steaming on Crunchyroll for United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, the Netherlands, Spain, South Africa, Turkey, Brazil, and Portugal. 


Karneval
Two boys get entangled in secret, colorful, organization.
I’ve been a bit worried about Karneval for a while now since I’ve read the manga and I can say first hand that this series has it’s strong points and it’s weak ones and the beginning is most certainly one of the later. The anime works with the source material as best as it can, namely by compressing the first three chapters into one episode which does cut out some problems (I don't think the manga-ka even knew what they wanted Circus to be in the very beginning) but the pacing as a result just does not work. I’m tempted to say that the staff spent more time trying to figure out how to make the story look cool than how it was going to make sense and I’m really hoping that it gets smoother as the series goes on but that’s another thing I’m worried about, the length. This has been confirmed to be a one cour series and based on what characters have been posted on the website I can guess at least how far they’ll go and frankly I don’t think there is a really good stopping point after just thirteen episodes. All all I'm nervous about this series, I've seen manga fans say "yep that made about as much sense as the manga did at this point" and non-manga fans optimistically say that they think they like where it's going but yeah, I'm going to hold off recommending this show until it ends and I can say whether or not it worked.

For those willing to risk dazzlement and confusion, Karneval is being streamed by Funimation for Region 1 viewers.

Majestic Prince (Ginga Kikōtai Majestic Prince)
Five failing teens are flung into mecha fights.
Another of the mecha shows this season and one where I really wasn’t sure what to expect when I went into it. The good news is that the snark I saw in the trailers was present in the actual show, but a bit of snarking alone isn’t enough to make me keep watching a show especially when it’s got weird character designs (seriously, here are the original designs, here’s some promo material, and here’s an actual screenshot, I think a side character in the first few minutes stole everyone else’s noses in order to have a large schnoz, this is even worse than the Moyashimon Returns character design changes) and nothing new about the premise in general. Heck, while it is also fast paced and has some nice fight scenes it’s seriously lacking in the explanation department (or perhaps the common sense department, I want at least a line about why they took the worst teen mecha pilots and gave them the best robots they had AND someone at least noting that they seem to be working much better as a team than they were just a few hours earlier) and sure that can be remedied in further episodes but with so much other stuff coming out this season I’m not going to stick around to find out.

Majestic Prince is streaming on crunchyroll for USA, Canada, UK, Ireland, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand and has been licensed by Sentai Filmworks.


My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU (Yahari Ore no Seishun Love Come wa Machigatteiru or literally My Youth Romantic Comedy is as Wrong as I Expected)
Teacher forces student to join service club.
Intially this wasn't on my to watch list since, well, the premise on the lists and charts of the upcoming spring season didn't interest me and it sounded like Brain's Base was just redoing a less interesting version of My Little Monster (Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun) half a year later. But after seeing a couple of good reviews, plus the fact that I wasn't interested in that show before trying it either, I gave it a shot and nope, my instincts were spot on. The show actually reminded me more of Bakemonogatari in how it sets up two of it's lead characters, the guy's appearance to a small extent, how it tries to be artsy with flashbacks and such, and guys, if you're going to be similar to another show you had better be better than them and that's not what happened here. I'd like to say that I'm not saying that one light novel series copied the other here but this one is certainly the weaker of the two and I'm not a huge fan of the -monogatari series to start with. Also, as I was watching this I thought "the author here feels young" and yep, the original author is only 27 and since this series is now on it's fifth or seventh book he must've started when he was even younger and it shows. Neither he (I believe it's a man) nor the director/writers of the show were able to make the characters believable or even interesting and the idea of a group/school club that helps people is a pretty tired premise yet they didn't do anything to spice that up either. 

Another dropped show for me but those interested in checking it out can go over to crunchyroll, provided you live in United States, Canada, South Africa, Finland, Norway, Sweden, or Denmark. 

Red Data Girl
Girl breaks computers and boy is broken.
So I caught one of the rips of the niconico stream a week or so back and man, maybe the fact that I was watching the worst quality video I’ve ever seen that wasn’t a copy of a copy (etc) of a VHS tape but this first episode just didn’t grab me. Looking at other’s screenshots I can say now that yes the art looks fine, lesson learned there, but the first episode just felt a bit awkward. We can see the characters acting but we don’t know why, why is cutting Izumiko’s hair so important (it’s not like this is Crime Edge, heck that makes this the third anime this year to place a focus on hair so I'm declaring 2013 "year of hair" at this rate) and why is Miyuki’s dad so insistent that he’s going to help her? Since there are a few more episodes out I’ve seen some people say it gets stronger I am going to give it a few more episodes (especially sine Funimation is streaming it) but there's another problem, the legal streams (and the tv broadcast) are a full three weeks behind, almost a month in Funi's case, the internet streams which is going to make avoiding spoilers for the series nigh impossible. I have absolutely no idea why there's such a huge delay, it was weird enough last season that there was a three day delay between when the first tv stations showed From the New World and when the main station/crunchyroll did and this is even stranger. Oh well, at least I'll have something to watch on Wednesdays.

As noted above, RDG is being streamed by Funimation, also make sure you use the hastag #rdg_anime on twitter or apparently you'll offend a small town in England.


Valvrave the Liberator (Kakumeiki Valvrave)
Average teen meets mech, gets messed up
And the award for the show which made me snark the most this season so far goes to Valvrave! Seriously folks, this show has some okay moments (when part of the what looks to be a good sized cast chilling in school), some bad moments (maybe I'm getting jaded but I couldn't take any of those military operations/people seriously), and then, well, one rather large WTFDIDIJUSTSMOKE moment at the veeeery end of the episode, make sure to watch past the credits guys. I seriously don't know how to feel here, the show looks great but the plot alternates between being generic and feeling like the creators are trying to hard to replicate their past successes, namely Code Geass. Here's the thing, I liked Code Geass (or at least the first season, the second season promised to reveal some things which it didn't and that annoyed me) and even Guilty Crown (which I believe also shares a lot of the same staff) didn't have me snark-raging as much as this did. Honestly in that respect the show reminds me a lot of K but with K I tried the second episode and went "you know, I think the writers are aware that what they're writing is kinda silly and they're just rolling with it, I can deal with this" and enjoyed the show, I don't think that's what Valvrave is doing. I'm going to give it another episode or two (mainly because of how pretty it is) but if this doesn't get at least more amusing then I'm going to find other shows to spend my Fridays watching.

Valvrave is streaming on crunchyroll for  US, Canada, United Kingdom, and Ireland. 


SO, now that I've finally gotten through everything, my final verdict? I am following Gargantia, Chihayafuru, Maou-sama, and Space Bros for sure (and most likely Doki  Doki) and I'm gonna be pumped for them each week. And I'm going to continue with Arata, Karneval, RDG, Devil Survivor, and Valvrave for now, if any of them fail to keep my interest for a few episodes I'll drop them with no hesitation. And dear lord, all of those shows except Precure and Space Bros (maybe Devil Survivor, Valvrave is apparently confirmed as split cour) are going to end this summer, I am going to be very busy come late June/early July with reviews.

An Introduction to Webcomic Review Month 2013 and Ava's Demon

And now for my third year running I will change my schedule from it's usual 4-reviews-a-week rotation and will spend all of March talking about webcomics. Partially to help me build up a buffer to survive April/exam week in May and partially because I really love webcomics, there won't be as many titles as last year, which didn't have as many titles as the year before, for the same reason as last year, I simply find fewer comics each year that I both like and that are far enough along that I can feel confident about reviewing them. That's a new thing this year, there are at least half a dozen titles I found this past year which I do enjoy but are still so early on in their story that I want to give them some time to mature, time to see if the creator(s) really do that have the time/drive to tell the story all the way through, especially after posting about a few titles last year and having them simply stop updating with no news less than six months later. Also it appears that there were no webcomics that I followed that finished this year so there obviously won't be a post on those either. All in all I should be updating every other day so at the very least this month shouldn't lack for updates!


Ava's Demon by Michelle Czajkowski

Ever since she was born Ava has had attached to her what other's called a mere figment of her imagination but what she knew was really a demon. This demon seemed determined to torment her, isolate her, and eventually try and make her kill herself and Ava has fought back her entire life. But after a strange turn of events Ava finds herself listening to her demon and making a pact to get rid of her once and for all.

One trend I'm noticing in webcomics is how more and more comics each year are starting to take advantage of how the web is a multi-media platform and adding in sounds, music, unusual formats, and even animation. Ava's Demon is both an unusual format (each page is one square panel) and has a few, simply animated movies at the most dramatic points*. The setting for the story really caught me off guard, it seems to start in a bland, modern day setting (although there are some large hints upon re-reading that we're actually in a science fiction setting) and then has a rather dramatic setting change and Ava's relationship with her demon also changes rather rapidly, to the point where it's hard to not spoil important plot points when just trying to give a synopsis. So the best way to put it is this, the story is a science-fiction story of revenge with great attention to color with pretty good pacing and rather creepy at points as well.

Ava's Demon can be read (obviously) on it's website and you can subscribe to the tumblr for updates (or use that as a way to subscribe to it's RSS feed). It's not in print form yet but Czajkowski said recently that they plan to try and get the book printed once it hits 500 panels. As of writing we've just passed 350 panels so I suspect the story will hit that number later in the year, curious to see how the movies will be printed. The story updates every Thursday with multiple pages.


2012 "A" webcomics

2011 "A" webcomics




*a just as interesting bit about the videos is that they are hosted on Vimeo so anyone can see the stats, the first two videos are over 40k watches, with a drop-off of less than 5k between them, and then the latest one only has 16.5k views as of writing this. That may seem like a huge drop off but that video was posted this last Thursday, I don't know much about American superhero comics but only the top selling manga in the US could even dream of reaching 16k purchases from what I understand, much less in only three days!

Book Review: The Ring of Solomon

Not quite a prequel to Jonathan Stroud's Bartimaeus Trilogy, set in an alternate, modern day London where the technology doesn't seem quite as advanced but where magicans have been summoning spirits (what we, and they, call demons) since ancient times and I enjoyed the trilogy quite a bit. So when I came across this book at the local library, well over a year since it came out (I had seen it around in bookstores before but hadn't heard much of it so I had forgotten to look around my libraries for it) I figured it was about time to jump back into the series and see how it fared.

The Ring of Solomon by Jonathan Stroud

Summary: Long before Bartimaeus was ever summoned to London he served under hundreds of other masters and like many dijinn one day he found himself in Jerusalem under a cruel master who was one of King Solomon’s highest magicians and thus his servitude begins anew. But while things look bright for Israel other nations resent how high and mighty Solomon has become and how he now taxes their nations, if they refuse they will feel the full wrath of his ring that can summon untold numbers of spirits. The Queen of Sheba is the latest person to be approached with these demands which she does not like one bit and so she sends one of her most faithful guards, Asmira, with the daunting task of killing Solomon and retrieving the ring. Of course, given that Bartimaeus becomes involved in this story it doesn’t go nearly as smoothly as anyone plans….

The Good: The story is a nice call back to the original trilogy where Bartimaeus often boasted that he had talked with Solomon, normally followed by a fellow spirit going “well who didn’t, the man got around”, and it’s nice to get more than bits and pieces of his original adventure (although I would have loved to hear about his time with Ptolemy in Egypt even more). The book, even though it's not a true prequel to the story, fits in well thematically, Bartimaeus is lazy but clever (with many footnotes), all magicians/people in positions of power are conniving bastards (with the lone character who fits into none of those categories is supposed to be sympathetic but is a bit dumb), and all the plans end up being more complicated than they probably needed to be (but in a fun way). In short, if you enjoyed the original trilogy you'll like this but if you aren't already familiar with the series this isn't as great a place to start.  

The Bad: One of the things that made the original books so much fun was the multiple points of view (Bartimaeus, Nathaniel and then later a third person named Kitty) and sadly Asmira is not as interesting a character nor as good a balance as those two were (this book actually reminded me of the first book of the trilogy a bit, neither Nathan nor Asmira felt real enough to me as Kitty did). The story never feels grounded enough and with a fantasy story you do need a certain amount of grounding, without that it’s hard to take any detail, fantastical or mundane, seriously and that’s when a story starts to fall apart. I also had a hard time figuring out if Solomon was supposed to be a multi-faceted character or if Stroud decided close to the end that he needed Solomon to be more sympathetic or the story wouldn’t work.

In the end I was disappointed by this, the story wasn't nearly as strong as I was expecting and none of the characters, yes even Bartimaeus, just weren't interesting. The setting was a nice change of pace, I've been studying ancient history lately so it was nice to read something actually set in the time period, but that was all I got out of it. I'm in two frames of mind over whether or not to recommend it; on the one hand I'm sure some fans liked it better than me, on the other I just didn't get anything out of reading it and don't have the urge to buy it (and I do already own the other three books). So I guess the review will have to speak for itself this time then.  

Anime Review: Blue Exorcist

The final summer title and only two months after it finished! Note to self, don't watch so much anime in one season again, overall this summer was a pretty good season with a number of great shows, good shows and average shows. It also had a number of not-so-good shows but thankfully Blue Exorcist wasn't one of those, although it wasn't one of the great shows either.

Blue Exorcist (Ao no Exorcist)

 Summary: Rin only recently discovered that he’s the son of Satan and found out when Satan killed his foster father while protecting him. Rin has now sworn revenge on Satan and is studying to become an exorcist in order to defeat him while trying to master his own demonic heritage.

The Good: Blue Exorcist is a good example of solid and alright shonen, the fights don't take too long, the villains aren't too overpowered, the lead, who might not be the most interesting character, is likable enough and so is the rest of the cast. Rin, while hotheaded, at times seems a lot more street savvy than many shonen heroes which was a nice change and all of the (main cast) characters had their good points, their bad points and some character development. For the first half or two thirds of the show it was an enjoyable shonen series which, while predictable at a lot of points, I enjoyed watching.

The Bad: Due to a need to pad out the series the later half is different from the manga and one thing I didn't like is how the other characters reacted to the news that Rin is a demon. In the manga this was all handled quite well, some characters accepted him sooner than others and it felt natural. Here things got odd because of fillers so at first they were okay with it, then they weren't, and then they became okay with it again? While the story doesn't fall apart in the final arc, all filler, it just didn't make quite as much sense as the previous arcs and made it impossible to continue based on later manga material*. Honestly, as many fans of the series have already said, this anime was made just a bit too earlier since there just wasn't enough material for a two cour anime. Personally I really didn't like the last arc, it felt like a stupid conflict, like the characters suddenly stopped using part of their brains and yet like nothing was really happening.

The Audio: The background music for this series was solid and worked well but the opening and ending song were, strange. The first OP had both very active bits and very slow bits (which were reflected in the animation, it was a wide variety for only a minute and a half and felt jarring), the first ED was just strange (it was by the Korean band 2pm and, when I showed it to friends who were familiar with the band, they were also confused by it) and the second set were just average. I was a bit miffed that Aniplex was going to distribute the title themselves, were doing the subtitling themselves and were the Japanese license holders yet didn't bother to sub any of the songs.

The Visuals: Animated by A-1 (Aniplex’s studio which has gotten much bigger in the past few years) the series looked pretty nice overall, although whenever I would pause while watching in HD on crunchyroll I usually ended up with a very strange looking frame. Provided you didn’t pause the video however the art looked good, the animation seemed to move well, none of the many action scenes looked off and very rarely was a scene just shots of talking heads. It’s a shame that the series is only getting a DVD release in the US, I imagine it would look quite nice on Blu-Ray.

While I do mean to start buying the manga soon, I don't think I'll get the anime for this series anytime soon. It's a really expensive, sub only, DVD only set, two sets actually, and I just don't like the series enough for that. I also feel like Aniplex is hurting themselves by not dubbing it, I can see this working quite well on Cartoon Network and they've already put Durarara!! there, I feel like Aniplex is trying to rush this release as if they're worried that the fans will forget if the series isn't put out right now.

*funny enough, it's biggest twist might happen soon in the manga after all but even with that it would be hard to have a second season, they would have to rewrite the next arc very heavily.

Manga Shorts: Blue Exorcist

And here's the first in my little manga reviews for the month of November (which again will be a lot less formal than my regular reviews, think back to my webcomic reviews vs my regular manga reviews). Going alphabetically I'm starting with Blue Exorcist (I swear the anime review is coming, it's just the very last summer title) which is currently the only shonen title I follow. I've actually read a good deal of shonen, I've read about 400 chapters of Naruto and 300 of Bleach (I've long since dropped both), probably around 150 of both D. Gray Man (dropped after the author's huge hiatus) and Nurarihyon no Mago (which just stopped interesting me),  about five years ago I was caught up with the US release of HunterxHunter (which was either at the end or towards the end of the Greed Island arc, i'd like to read the rest someday), and 80 or so chapters of Soul Eater (dropped after the rescue Kid arc). I did read Psyren to the end (but I started when it was almost over and the ending had to be rushed or it was going to be cancled) and also read all of Fullmetal Alchemist but FMA is odd since it doesn't favor the tournament fighting style of plot that nearly every other shonen series I just listed does and so far Blue Exorcist doesn't either. It might be because Blue Exorcist is still much smaller than any of those titles (not even at 3o chapters yet) but as long as it avoids the tournament style fights I'll probably stick with it.

Blue Exorcist (Ao no Exorcist) by Katou Kazue

  That above statement pretty much sums up why I'm following Blue Exorcist right now, it's not the most original of premises but it works well, is entertaining, and understands what kind of pace it needs to succeed as a monthly manga (even if the chapters never seem like they're long enough). Rin is the son of Satan and has inherited many of powers but he's made it his goal to kill Satan in revenge for killing his foster father and for that reason he enters the True Cross Academy to train as an exorcist and hon his demonic powers. Having a good reason to hate your parents is hardly a new trope (best example I could find for it was Archnemesis Dad) and going to a magical school to train for revenge is also hardly new in any medium. But the fact that Rin isn't an emo teen whose whole life is structured around this revenge, he's actually a pretty friendly and likeable lead character, does make the story a little different and here it's all the characters that make the story interesting. About half of them have been fleshed out with backstory so far (and I'm sure the rest will be sooner rather than later) and it was refreshing to see how the characters didn't immediately accept Rin's demonic powers once they found out about them but instead were, rather realistically and like real people, unnerved and it took a while for them to come around again. That leads to the problem I had with the anime in the end, they didn't handle that part of the story nearly as well (partially because that's where the anime diverged) but that's a subject for a different review. But for now, Blue Exorcist is a fun series with interesting characters, nicely done fight scenes, has a good mix between enough action and enough non-action interesting things happening, and the actual background of the series (the magic and the demons) proved more interesting than I was initially expecting. I am following the scans for this series and haven't started buying the print copies yet (I'm always a little leery to start buying such long series when they're not even close to over and this is going to be a long one) but I do want to start buying some of the volumes soon and look forward to what's going to happen next.   

And now for something different, the continuing spring anime

Don't expect me to do this every season, especially since the current trend is for more and more one cour shows, but when I started looking at summer shows I noticed that I had a few shows carrying over from the spring season as well. So why not write about why I'm continuing them (especially since I'm trying out a grand total of 10 new shows plus one or two older shows, I've got pleeeenty to watch right now) and hopefully convince some people to try out shows that they might have heard of but never checked out. Onto the post!

Blue Exorcist:

If my watching schedule becomes too full and I have to drop something, sorry Blue Exorcist but you’ll one of the first to go. That said, BE isn’t bad at all but it is fairly average shonen series and I like shows that go beyond the average and break as many tropes as they can get their hands on (and I knew this going in, I’ve read through the first major arc in the manga which is probably where this season will end). Rin is more genre-savvy than your average shonen protagonist (he’s even lampshaded what he’s SUPPOSED to do at a few points) and there is a good sized main cast (but not so big you can’t remember all of them), those of who have gotten character development in the manga are decent enough characters. The show looks good (A-1 is becoming a rather strong studio aren't they?), even if the ending sequence looks weird and the opening is a bit uneven, the closing song is really weird (well, from the Engrish in it, neither songs are translated) but the background music works. So, if you like shonen, watch this, it’s got a better than average plot and great visuals, it’s solid entertainment (and I have no idea why Aniplex is releasing this without a dub in the US, it would work pretty well with the other shows airing on Adult Swim right now).

Steins;Gate:

The first few episodes were a bit slow and I almost dropped it but around episode 4 something changed for me and I got really interested in the characters and then episode 12 (the half-way point), whooooa. The show is surprisingly quotable (I’ve actually seen more memes based on audio clips from the show than images which is a first), quite a few of the characters have already gotten some character development and everyone is sure to get more in the later episodes and the plot here seems really solid. I’ve heard a lot of people say that this is one of the best visual novels out there (in terms of plots) and that the second half doesn’t disappoint and, after seeing episode 13 (which is firmly in the second half of the season), I’m hyped for the second half! Funimation picked up the license for this one just last weekend, although I’m betting it won’t get a release before the later half of 2012, so right now this one is firmly on my to-buy list!

Tiger and Bunny:

As I said in my spring review, I wasn't planning on watching this at all until I heard great reviews for it and this is one of my favorite shows of the spring season. I was expecting the show to be really episodic (criminal-of-the-week) but very early on it introduced a more central plotline (Bunny tracking down his parent’s killers) and the character development for Tiger and Bunny (more for Bunny because he needs it more) also showed up way earlier than I expected. Heck, half the heroes have had a focus episode already (it looks like the episode for this week will be another one as well) and hopefully everyone will keep appearing often and developing. The CGI isn’t as distracting as you would expect (unlike [C] the traditionally drawn characters are always traditionally drawn and the CGI stuff is always done in CGI, this really helps) and the music seems to work well. Sounds like this was a surprise hit for Sunrise (neeeever underestimate the buying power of the fujoshi!*) so here’s to hoping the plot for the second half is as solid as the first!

For those interested, I'll do my summer anime roundup the same way I've done the past two but, since only half the shows I'm interested in have aired, it's going to a bit. I should have the first post up late next week (yeah, it's going to be multiple posts again, like I said, 10 shows, that's just too many to put up at once @_@).

*Hell, there’s so much slash fanart that some of my friends were half-convinced it was a BL show, pretty funny thing to see first thing in the morning on your facebook

Spring Anime 2011 Reviews, part one!

And for something a bit different again, going to give my thoughts on all the new anime from this past spring season that I've tried (so, if anyone really wants to know what I'll be reviewing in three or six months, consider this a sneak peek). Since I tried out eight different series this spring I'm going to split this into two parts and I'll put the second part up tomorrow, once I write in anyway.

AnoHana (Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae Boku-tachi wa Mada Shiranai. or We Still Do Not Know the Name of the Flower We Saw That Day.)

One of the two new noitaminA shows premiering this season, it's an anime original story about a group of friends who grew apart after one of them died when they were kids and are starting to reconnect almost ten years later. The reason they're starting to re-connect is because Jintan, originally the leader of the group and now a hikkimori, has started being visited by Menma (the girl who died) and is trying to grant her wish so she'll leave him alone again, although even Menma isn't sure what her wish is. It's a surprisingly touching show and, while it is paced fast (it's going to be only 11 episodes long so it has to move fast) everything feels like it's progressing at a natural pace, can't wait to see where it goes!

Sadly this one does not have a simulcast and makes it my one fansub of the season, I'd forgotten how annoying it is to wait around for fansubs too.

Blue Exorcist (Ao no Exorcist)

Taking over Star Driver's timeslot this is a shonen series based on the manga by the same name (now being published in the US by Viz) and so far I like it a bit. The premise is that Rin is the son of Satan (while his twin brother Yukio is not) and after the events of a second episode spoiler has sworn to kill Satan by becoming an exorcist. While teenage rebellion isn't a new thing in anime (or any media) this is a different take on it and Rin is a pretty likable protagonist. I'll confess that after the first episode I read ahead in the manga (I didn't mean to! It just sorta-kinda, well, happened!) so if the pacing stays consistent this should be a pretty fun ride.

Blue Exorcist is being simulcast by Aniplex and streaming on crunchyroll.com, hulu.com and animenewsnetwork.com not 100% sure what the restrictions are on it but everyone in the US and Canada should be able to see it. Also, I am torn between laughing or being embarrassed on behalf of the ending sequence (animation and song), keep an eye on the tv screens to see what I mean.  

[C]-CONTROL-The Money and Soul of Possibility
FYI, this is another title that has a lot of alternate spellings, I'm fond of calling it C(ontrol) myself but C-Control seems to be the most widely used one*. The other noitaminA show, also anime original, C deals with a Japan a little in the future where everything seems the same except for a mysterious alternate world called the Financial District where people engage in "deals" (battles) with other people's "assets" (anthropomorphic representation of their futures), putting their own futures on the line for riches. Kimimaro Yoga is a full time college student holding down two part time jobs who just wants a stable, normal government job and wouldn't like to be involved in any of this, no thank you, but he's our protagonist and like it or not he's got to continue in these deals now, and maybe he'll learn something about his family in the process.
C is being streamed for US and Canadian residents on Funimation's website (which, now that they changed their video player, let's Canadians watch the videos now) as well as on hulu and youtube. I think that it's also being streamed on ANN for Australia or the UK but I'm not positive. 

Deadman Wonderland
 It used to be that when people in the US thought of "anime" they thought of much darker and gritter cartoons than produced in the US and Deadman would certainly fit that description. Within the first episode our main character Ganta has watched all his classmates be brutally murdered in front of him, been convicted with the murder of them due to some faked footage of him confessing, sent to the only private prison/amusement park in Japan (Deadman Wonderland) which makes all the prisoners put on shows for the customers in order to raise money to re-build Tokyo. Oh, and some of the people there want to kill Ganta before his execution date, if the poison seeping out of his (and everyone else's) collars doesn't kill him first, is that enough action for you yet? I'm a little worried since fans of the manga say that there is no way you can tell the story properly in just 13 episodes and there's a rumor that the series is only planned to be 13 episodes, as long as the story has enough episodes we should be fun.
This one is streaming on crunchyroll.com I can't seem to find out what regions at this time, and it's streaming on Anime on Demand for anyone in the UK. Final note, this one has my favorite opening song of the series so far, the Engrish was so good I had to double check to make sure they hadn't gotten an English speaking band instead.   




Whew, wrote up most of that between exams (gah, I hate double exam Saturdays) and I'll get the other four reviews up tomorrow sometime. Don't have much else to say (except that I have discovered an amusing number of similarities between Blue Exorcist and The Demon's Lexicon^) so see you then!

*actually, when it was first announced it was just announced as "C" prompting a joke or two that AnoHana stole it's other letters. 

^No seriously, in both series we have a set of brothers, one of whom is actually a demon (Rin and Nick) and the other brother (Yukio and Alan) has A) known about this for years and B) is desperate to keep them safe. Add in the fact that both demon's use swords (although sadly Rin does not keep his under a leaky sink in the bathroom) and both of the other brothers use guns, plus even their "allies" would rather use the pairs than help them. So it's not surprising that my mind made that jump, although I am sad that Mae and Jamie (from The Demon's Lexicon) don't have Blue Exorcist compatriots as well, stories need more pink-haired, totally normal yet still awesome girls/boys and more witty gay boys/girls!   

Book Review: The Demon's Covenant

So, one of the earlier posts here was a re-read of The Demon’s Lexicon since I intended to read The Demon’s Covenant and wanted to re-familiarize myself with the first book. Well, turns out that the libraries didn’t have the second book so it was only recently that I actually got a chance to read it (and I only looked around for it after I read a snippet of the third book which had a pretty big spoiler for this one).

The Demon’s Covenant by Sarah Rees Brennan

Again, I think I like the UK cover more than the US cover, probably because it features Mae (the narrator of this book) on the cover instead of Sin (who is the narrator of the next book). Not sure why the US publishers did that, anyone who has read the first book would notice, but I suppose graceful, biracial girls sell more books than curvy pink haired girls books.

Summary: Drawing on the revelations of the last book, Mae narrates what happens next in the clashes between magicians and her friends, her brother’s growing (romantic) relationship with one of the magicians, her own love life, and trying to teach Nick how to be human.

The Good: Definitely liked this book better than the last one and I think it’s because of the change in narrators. The last book had Nick narrating and, while snarky, it’s hard to sympathize with him since he is so emotionless and the actions that set him off are very random at times (and this carries over into this book as well). Mae however is a completely normal girl who has willing gotten involved in these affairs and is well aware of the limits of what a non-magical person can do yet still manages to be awesome. It’s hard to define what exactly makes her awesome* but her persistence in doing something useful and doing whatever she can to be useful is a nice change from Nick and I really like normal characters in abnormal situations which sums her up pretty well.

The Bad: Like I said, I liked this book more than the first book but I’m not sure why. It wasn’t any more snarky or action filled, had more romance, and I could even make a good argument for why Mae isn’t really needed in the story at all (many of the things she did could’ve been done by Sin instead, my point being that there wasn’t anything Mae did that had to be done exclusively by her which makes her role feel a bit weaker). Also wondering a bit where the story is headed in the end (it doesn’t sound like they can defeat all the magicians in England and that more will come after them if they defeat this one group that is bothering them so then what? What is our main goal?) and I always get worried when I’m this far through a series and can’t find the central reason for it.

Hoping that one of my many libraries gets the third book closer to the release date this time but in the meantime I will track down that short story narrated by Jamie (apparently I wasn't the only one who was sad he didn’t get a book to narrate, the third one is done by Sin, by the way) and hope that I remember everything important in the meantime!

*I think the pink hair has something to do with it but clearly I’m biased towards pink-haired heroines.