Book Review: The Scorpion Rules

Yep, missed another post Wednesday, my evening schedule was a little different this week so I ended up trying to write too much one evening and it didn't work. Also, honestly the reason I used to churn out so many posts was because I'd stay up as late as it took, I'm really trying to get better about my sleep schedule so I'm doing that less. My thoughts on Vinland Saga should go up by a sane time Saturday though!

So, Erin Bow. I adored Plain Kate and had quite a few problems with Sorrow's Knot (and ultimately didn't like it because of those problems). After SK I thought "well, maybe that first time was a fluke, me liking it anyway, since I didn't even see the prose I adored in PK in SK" and when I saw it was more or less set in a dystopia that really didn't make me excited for the book. But it got good buzz so it ended up on my to-read list after all and here we are, I finished it which is always a good sign!

The Scorpion Rules by Erin Bow

Book Review: Crewel

Crewel by Gennifer Albin

Anime Review: Psycho-Pass 2

There's no reason to make this introduction overly long, I put this show on my ANIME I DISLIKED: 2014 EDITION list before it had fully finished airing and now that I've had a chance to finish the show I can say that it fully deserved being on that list. Since I am discussing a sequel, there will be quite a few references and spoilers to the first season of the show; this is not a review to read if you're considering starting the series, this is a review to convince you not to watch this season and to explain the many many things that went wrong in it. And on that note, there will be some rather large spoilers for this season as well, I just don't feel like I can adequately explain the sheer stupidity here without laying it out exactly as it happens.

Psycho-Pass 2

Anime Review: From the New World

To keep moving on, this was a show I had pretty high hopes for when the fall season started and never ended up fulfilling them. Of course, I expected the story would have a totally different plot than it actually did which can cause that problem, really there's not much I can say to introduce this title so let's just get to the review.



From the New World (Shin Sekai Yori)

Summary: One thousand years from now Japan, and presumably the rest of the world, is quite a new world where everyone has psychic abilities and there is peace everywhere. Yet to keep this world peaceful there are many dark secrets lurking and, whether by accident or design, young Saki and her group of friends keep running into them and as the years go by and they start to uncover the real truth behind their world the consequences for their discoveries become higher and higher.  

The Good: You know, I'm almost surprised that I haven't seen a real blend between science fiction and horror before (I'm sure it's out there, I simply haven't seen it) and SSY got really close to it at times. Despite that, I can't quite call this story a dystopian story but the way it played around with so many of the elements from it (the slow realization the viewer gets when they see how messed up Kamisu 66 has become in order to have a peaceful world filled with people with godlike powers, the history of how it got there, and the monster-rats in general) was great. Now, if only the last third of the show had been completely different in some ways (while still keeping the same revelations and twists if that makes any sense) then I could love it, as it stands I have some very deep problems with the show. 

The Bad: I had a problem with this series but it’s not exactly a problem with the story per-say. The way I see it, there are two broad types of stories out there, character driven (where character growth in the main focus, with it’s timeskips I can’t really call SSY this since we miss a lot of growth, that and the memory erasure) and plot driven. When you write a plot driven story just about all the time you focus on characters at a pivotal point in their lives or in the society they live in and how they change it, that’s what I was expecting here but not precisely what I got. Yes the show all leads up to one big events that changes their town forever but in the end this will just become another forgotten part of Kamisu 66’s history, it just wasn’t a pivotal enough moment. I was expecting something along the lines that I was half expecting, and now hope, that Psycho Pass would do, a lot of other people have noted similarities in their ending and since that does involve spoilers I’ll talk more about that in a footnote*.

The Audio: This show was a bit odd since it never had a proper opening sequence which, given the mood of the show, I think was a great idea since I'm not even sure what they could have done for one. It did have two different ending themes (and the second one started at a really odd point) and while I liked the music of the first more than the second neither just fit the show for me. I'm not sure at all what the visuals of the first one were supposed to represent, honestly they reminded me of a series of fan(?) songs I'd seen on youtube, although in this case I can actually come up with an idea for an ending sequence that would have worked with the mood of the show. I thought the voice acting for the characters at all ages was done fairly well, they choose to have different voice actors for the characters as 10 year olds which was a smart choice (since if you can do 10, 12/14, and 26 year old voices then you have some crazy vocal cords the rest of us don't) and I was surprised at how quickly I got used to the changes. Oh and I have no idea how Squealer's voice actor managed to do that voice, I'm fairly sure they didn't use many digital effects on it but if they did I can't blame them, that must not have been an easy voice to do, especially considering how often that character appeared.

The Visuals: The character designs took a bit of a while for me to get used to, there was something just a bit off there and I don't think it was on purpose, and if you saw the internet streams you can see that they really experimented with color, lighting, and animation styles in some episodes. Which of course made everyone whine (how come when I like it no one else does and vice versa? I'll never understand that) and I've seen some screenshots of the DVD/BR release and everything seems to have been changed to be in line with the rest of the show now.


Honestly I think I might need to just make a long, very spoilerific, tumblr post about my exact feelings for the show since I do appreciate some of the things it did but, in my opinion of course, just didn't do other things right and that combination really bothers me. It bothers me enough that I'm still not sure what to rate the show, I guess a 3 or 3.5 out of 5 and at this rate I'll probably want to rewatch it (although knowing what's coming is going to make it a haaaard rewatch) although I'm not sure how I feel about owning it. For those who want to watch it it's being streamed on both Crunchyroll and Sentai's websites and Sentai will come out with a release (no word yet if it's DVD only or BR as well) sometime within the next 12 months most likely. 

*in short, SSY does have a stronger ending than P-P because it does manage to wrap up all it’s ends but I found it to be a much bleaker ending where the remaining characters have accepted the good and evil of their society and merely hope for a better one, they aren’t actively seeking a way to create it. Again there was at least a small timeskip right before the epilogue, it is entirely possible that Saki is trying to change some things but unlike Akane’s determined declaration that she will turn off the Sibyil system, Saki seems content to live a more quiet life and the fact that she now lives on a farm raising the impure cats, which apparently in the novel were sent to kill her the night she awakened so she barely escaped death, creeped me out more than anything in P-P did. 

Anime Review: Psycho Pass

And now to start the first of many anime review covering shows from the fall and winter which just wrapped up, as a heads up I'm going to try and get my post out about all of the new shows either tomorrow or the day after (Wednesday or Thursday), trying to get better about not being super late on that post but all of these delayed simulcasts are not helping me out there. This show however was not delayed at all so I finished it a few weeks back and I have to say, when the fall season started I was expecting to like Robotics;Notes (the other noitaminA title) more than Pyscho-Pass, since that one was based on an existing property and I had liked Steins;Gate (although it's true that I had also liked Fate/Zero, ie I had enjoyed the writing by the same people in both cases) but in the end I really liked Psycho-Pass better and I'm going to have to remember it when I talk about my favorite shows of 2013 since it has a really good shot at being on that list.



Psycho Pass

Summary: Roughly one hundred years in the future Japan is once again a closed nation and enjoys relative peace and not as much large crime as it used to thanks to the Sybil System, a seemingly all-knowing computer program that helps weed out the good people from those who might commit a crime. Sybil helps people make most of the important decisions in their lives so young college graduate Akane Tsunemori is overwhelmed when she realizes that she scored high enough and has a good enough rating from the system to do anything she wants. When she realizes that she was the only person in her class to be recommended to the police however she decides that's what she'll do, she'll enforce the system along with some of those people Sybil has already declared irredeemable possible criminals and in the process ends up seeing what a dark system it can be. 

The Good: I was thrown when I realized it was the girl with the bad haircut in the promo pieces  who was the point of view character in the first episode (I didn't use one of those pictures for this review because it really is that hard to tell) and wasn’t sure how I felt about it, after all we've all seen the "naive newcomer learns the job on the go and presents a way to give the audience exposition as well" done to death. But I made up my mind on how I felt about Akane after she tazed a coworker to prevent them from killing a victim due to a fault in a system, something she even wrote a large paper about. Honestly that sentence sums up Akane, she’s determined, becomes rather badass, and ultimately goes through a character arc which I don’t see happening to female characters that often. Essentially, we have a woman in a position of power challenging the system she’s a part of with her power, normally when you see a woman challenging a system in a story she will have no power in it, she’s a rebel on the outside rather than a plotter on the inside and I rather liked that difference. She and Kogami, the guy with the spiky hair that I had thought was the main character from the promo pieces, carry the show, both become very well fleshed out and it’s interesting to watch characters who know they are flawed go about their work and the contrast between the two of them; Kogami knowing he’s flawed but not knowing a better way to do things and Akane fighting to find that better way. The other characters get varying amounts of character development but at least some and even the main villain, Makishima, has some not-quite-sympathetic-moments but points at which it’s very easy to understand his logic even if his methods are hideously wrong. And in the end I think that's what will determine if you like the show or not, the show has no bones about showing what a messed up world Japan has created in it's effort to have peace from the first episode so you have to root for one of the characters/one of the methods for trying to protect or change this system and if you don't end up agreeing or sympathizing with any of them then the entire story will have been a waste of time.

The Bad: The ending did a remarkable job of both wrapping up and feeling like an ending and leaving plot threads dangling which bothers me a bit. Since this does involve spoilers for the end of the series I’ll talk more about this in a footnote but, after ruminating on the ending a bit, I think I’ll be unhappy in the long run if they never give the story the last bit I think it needs*. Apparently at Sakura Con some of the staff present indicated that if the show sold well (I think they meant both in the US and Japan) then they would be able to produce more and it sounds like there are more stories they want to tell (some side stories but I don't know if they also meant a direct continuation). In any case, other than that, I had some major issues with the setting which can be summed up with me yelling “TECHNOLOGY DOESN’T WORK THAT WAY!” Thankfully I had an idea what the Sybil System would be early on and in most cases the technology works well enough with the plot to keep this from being a large problem but there were so many nonsensical background details that I truly wondered if all the creators were neo-luddites and had no idea how things like holograms or mass worked. Oddly enough, the criminal scanning technology, the one that seemed really far out there, is starting to be developed and perhaps it was because I was suddenly paying attention but I saw a number articles like this one from Wired pop up during or right after the shows run which certainly made me a bit worried for the future.

The Audio: I greatly prefer the first opening and ending songs to the second set although I'll admit the second opening grew on me (never became fond of the second ending song though, probably didn't help that it felt like the designers ran out of ideas for what to show along with the song and threw in whatever they had lying around). Actually, since Egoist did both ending songs you can actually purchase both of those on itunes (or at least the US one) which was rather nice considering that I really liked that first ending theme. The voice acting was also pretty strong, a quick browse through the cast list reveals no newbies but a lot of people who I've heard in other works and didn't recognize which is good. Although I did hear a rumor that the voice actress who did the voice of the dominator (the guns the police use) also has done a lot of voice work for GPSes in Japan which, if it's true, I refuse to believe wasn't done on purpose.

The Visuals: Aside from one episode in the second half where quite frankly the production values were in the toilet (you know it's had when the director apologizes on twitter beforehand for how it looks, oddly enough after seeing the rest of the show I still can't figure out why they ran out of time for that one particular episode), which will be fixed for the physical releases, the show looks pretty solid. The technology looks slick, even if it makes no sense, the backgrounds are detailed, and it uses color and color schemes pretty effectively. I'll admit that I'm not crazy about the character designs, they did grow on me some but I keep wanting to give Akane just a few more inches of hair, but I think I'm in the minority there.


All in all this ended up being a really solid, good show for me that I enjoyed and would like to see more of, provided that it tells the kind of story that I hope it does anyway (I've just been burned by too many sequel series in the past couple of years that seem to have forgotten what the show was about). So I'm giving this show a four out of five and I'm happy that Funimation plans to put it out sometime next spring. In the meantime people in the US/Canada can catch the show streaming on their site or on hulu.






*to get detail specific, so SPOILERS the story ends similar to how it begins with Akane now in charge of Division 1 and we’re shown how she’s both grown and yet hasn’t become jaded by the system. That’s all fine but there are a number of scenes shown during the ED that suggest that there is something more going on and earlier in the episode Akane makes a speech about how society needs Sibiyl now but someday they’ll be able to pull the plug on it once and for all. To me that sounds like the story declaring that we’ll see it happen, especially given how Akane’s personal philosophy has been shown throughout the show. However, someone on twitter pointed out how this could be social commentary about how Japan needs to change but ultimately isn’t doing so and, if I take that point of view, it doesn't seem likely that there will be a second season. I really do want one though since I think it would be poetic to see Kogami become something similar to Makishima and to see Akane finish her growth.

Comic Review: Shay's Story

Scott Westerfeld, author of the Leviathan series, has written a few other young adult series and by far his most well known was the Uglies series, a trilogy (with a fourth book that's more a companion novel than a true sequel) set about 300 years in the future after humanity almost destroyed itself when a virus destroyed/set all the oil on fire (as far as I recall anyway, it's been a few years since I read these books) which also resulted in society being reshaped. Now people live with their parents when they're very young, dorms for a few years (from around 12 to 16), after which everyone undergoes a mandatory surgery to become "pretty" after which they move out of the dorms into another part of the city where they live out the rest of their lives. I'm saying all of this since this book doesn't really say any of that and none of the original books do either, it's something you have to put together   (probably because otherwise red flags would go up in the reader's minds immediately). However, I think that people do need at least a bit of background to enjoy this story, or maybe a lot of background....

Shay's Story written by Scott Westerfeld and Devin Grayson, illustrated by Steven Cummings

   
Summary: Shay wants the same thing every teenager wants, for her sixteenth birthday to hurry up and come so she can finally undergo the operation that will make her beautiful and let her live a life of luxury in New Pretty Town for years to come. Shay isn't quite a normal teenager though, she's a bit "tricky" what with modifying her hoverboard to fly higher and faster than the limits will let it and sneaks over into New Pretty Town to pull pranks. She falls in with some life-minded people and they find out about the biggest tricky thing of all, how to escape the city and go live completely in the wilderness. Shay isn't so sure she wants this though, but the things she sees in the city start to convince her more and more.

The Good: While Tally is the main character, the mover and shaker, of the series Shay is an incredibly important character (although mostly because she usually ends up in conflict with Tally, hmm) so it's nice to fill in the gaps of her story and see how she got involved The Smoke which triggers the entire rest of the series. She is an interesting character, even though she's a bit flat here, and it was nice to see what some of the locations in the story looked like since, IIRC, the original book were a bit light on the descriptive details.

The Bad: I don't think this book works if you're completely new to the series because there is simply so much backstory to know to understand what the characters do. Why are the cities bad? While in the first Uglies book a reader could pick up on what was going on there are barely any clues to let a new reader figure out the truth and without that there's almost no reason for the characters to leave in the first place. Aside from Shay none of the characters seem to get any development, Zane is radically different from how he appears in the books (which is on purpose and about the only foreshadowing we get for my previous complaint), David seems more cocky (or like an ass, your mile may vary) than he did in the books, and Tally almost gets the worst of it since her development in the books often happened when Shay was off-screen. So when you combine those two things with the way the story itself flowed (choppy, it was split into a ton of super short chapters, it was impossible to get a grasp on the passage of time, characters came in and out of the story almost randomly) and I just can't say that this book was good or worth reading by any but the most hardcore fan. 

The Art: I shall be blunt here, this is not the medium to tell this story. An all text medium doesn't work really well for the story (it took me forever to catch onto the fact that the "ugly" characters were in fact normal) and a comic doesn't work either since, well, everyone looks pretty and there is supposed to be a huge, noticeable difference between uglies and pretties and, unless you're Urasawa* or someone who does more horror work, everyone is going to look pretty. Recently the Uglies books had their film right's optioned it was announced that they were in talks with the special effects team that did the work on Captain America for the body modifications, that would work but here where everyone is manga-pretty it just doesn't and that means a major part of the story doesn't make sense. If everyone already looks so great then why do people care about the surgery? I have to admit that the art here was in a style I'm not so crazy about (I see it in a lot of comics which  feel a lot like "OEL Manga") which uses a lot of flat, dark screentones which just doesn't work and there were times when it was confusing to figure out what order to read the panels in (something again that I see much more in comics like this than I do in webcomics which just baffles me). It's not a bad looking book, don't get me wrong there, but it just doesn't work.


So yeah, I had heard that some parts of this story didn't work, went in expecting that it would be at the very least okay and came out rather grumpy. It sounds like they want to make more graphic novels to help fill in the gaps of the series and, while on the one hand I'm curious to see what else happened to Shay when she was offscreen, and I can't really say no to books I find for free at a library, I really doubt now how good they would be. 



*who draws amazingly distinct faces, it's something about the noses 

Webcomic Review Month 2012: Thistil Mistil Kistil, Toilet Genie, Transpose Operator

Still got another few days left, and dreading writing Saturday's epic-length post, I think by now everyone can see why I generally have to write reviews pretty soon after I finish a work. Well that and why watching eight or so different tv/anime shows a week doesn't phase me, although I have certainly found that it takes more effort to review the comics that either have a lot of different plot-lines or take a lot of breaks and I generally don't have that problem with anime. In any case, last year's T reviews.

Thistil Mistil Kistil by Sarah Schanze
Coal is a fallen warrior on his way to Valhalla but things aren't going as planned. As he is informed by a few angry gods his special pendant is not a replica of Mjölnir but actually a piece of it stolen by Loki. It turns out that Loki has also stolen small pieces from other weapons of the gods and so they appoint Coal to find Loki and track down where these missing pieces have gone off to.

This series definitely gets points for having a different setting, aside from Tolkien's works I can't think of that many stories that have heavy Norse influences* and the art also has a distinct look, I believe it was inspired by The Secret of Kells which was inspired by illuminated manuscripts of the time which makes it all the perfect choice. A really big reason I like the comic however is because of how Loki is portrayed. My first brush with Norse mythology, way back sometime in elementary school, had Loki as a trickster but not a "bad guy" so I've always been rather partial to that interpretation ever since which fits this Loki rather well. I really like the banter he and Coal have and I'm curious how to see how the other main characters who have yet to be introduced will fit in with the rest of the story. 



*you guys would not believe the stuff Tolkien stole, it's rather amazing.

Toilet Genie by Cari Corene
The first installment in the DOOR series, Skittlze was an average pug (loved her owners but rather dumb over all) who stumbles across a man chained to a toilet who grants her three wishes, the third of which turns her into a girl. Before Skittlze goes off to discover just how well this last wish will turn out she asks the man how he ended up being chained to a toilet which is an interesting story indeed.

This comic is a lot more "artsy" than most comics I read, both in the actual art style and in the way it's creating it's on overarching mythology, and I'll admit that it took me a few tries to really get into the story but now that there's a good chunk out I think it's easier to get into. Part of the reason I had a bit of a hard time was with the art actually, the character designs are very stylized but by now they've grown on me and I really like how the mythological parts of the story are done in watercolors instead of the normal coloring style. This story is one that's better to be read in chunks than in single page updates but when read together it's weaving together an interesting mythology and history and I'm curious to see where it goes next.

Transpose Operator by Roxy Polk
Sometime in the future everything went to hell and Earth is now a wasteland where the atmosphere kills you and there are mysterious androids running around with seemingly sinister plans. It's in this situation that our heroine wakes up, has no idea who she is or any knowledge of the world but she's determined to survive and find out anyway.


The protagonist of this story is one of the most badass characters I've ever seen, how many characters could wake up in a strange hospital, know absolutely nothing about themselves and the world, be chased by TWO groups of strange people and get through all of that without having a break down (and nearly managing to evade both of them wearing nothing but a hospital gown to boot!)? That's really what attracted me to the comic when I first came across it and even the horror aspects of the story, a genre I normally don't like, added to the setting and made me more intrigued. I've read plenty of dystopian stories and some of them have had horror elements as well, nothing says the future has gone wrong like disturbing medical experiments after all, but it doesn't mean it's any less effective here. Oh and it's total conincidence that the comic came off of hiatus today, I honestly did not plan that.
 

Book Review: Sapphique

When I was reading Incareron I wasn't sure if I would read the sequel but I saw a quick review over on Bibliovermis (which is the only place I've seen, other than the webcomic Unshelved, that does picture reviews of books without pictures) and that convinced me to try it out. Okay, I found it at the local library without even needing to look as well, if I can find it easily I'm more likely to try it which I'm sure someone has noticed by now. 

Sapphique by Catherine Fisher

  The cover here is composed similarly to the first book's cover (which I think is a good thing, might help the casual browser remember the series and then check out the next book) and again I like the images used and think the font used for the title looks really cool in small doses like this.

Summary: Starting soon after where the first book ended, Finn has escaped the prison Incarceron and returned to the real world where he is now being groomed to be the next king, something Claudia very much approves of, while the Queen plots in the shadows to hold onto her power. Meanwhile Attia and Kiero are still trapped inside the prison and are searching for a way out, namely trying to acquire a legendary glove that once belonged to the mysterious Sapphique and all the while the prison plots a way for it to escape into a new body and leave it's old form behind. 

The Good: The story handles the increase in number of viewpoints very well (in addition to Finn and Claudia, Jared's viewpoint is shown more often and Attia becomes a major viewpoint as well) and the story never feels like one character is favored/more important than the other characters. More of the world, both outside and inside the prison, was expanded on which was also useful and it corrected a few incorrect assumptions I had made based on the first book (such as just how long it has been since the Years of Rage). The plot progresses logically and the ending works in a sense, it certainly wraps up all the plot points but it certainly had some issues.

The Bad: It's been a while since I've seen the "character sorta-kinda becomes Jesus" ending to a story (it is an actual trope but thankfully it's used very sparingly) and it seemed like Fisher was trying to create a flashy ending in order to distract the reader from all the plotholes in the backstory. One would hope that a book named after a character would shed more light on the character (especially as Sapphique has become more and more mysterious as the story goes on) but nothing ever is and it feels quite frustrating*. Also frustrating is the technology in this story, Clarke's Third Law is in full effect and, while I half-predicted part of this, the technology didn't quite make sense and since it's such a big part of the setting that really bugs me**.

So, technically the story worked but I felt really frustrated by the ending and I don't really want to check out any of the author's other works now since I had so many issues with her world building. I feel like I should add this to my common problems with sci-fi post, authors not quite understanding how technology has to work for it to actually work in the story....



*I have a personal wild theory that Sapphique never existed at all, rather he was a myth created by the prison at it's creation which somehow got spread to the real world as well and was told so many times that the prison itself began to believe that it was real. There are still plenty of plotholes with this theory but it would at least explain some things in a rather poetic fashion.
**what I predicted was that the "real world" would actually be just another faucet of the prison. That wasn't the case but there was apparently a lot of technology in the world masking what everything looked like and the electrical power to maintain the masquerade is stripped away at the end to show what the real world really looks like. It's rather poetic and all of that but there's no way that that technology could have worked in the first place without the characters have brain augmentation or such so that they didn't just see a pretty building but also could feel it, not feel a rundown building with wires running everywhere (and then Keiro should have seen that immediately since he was born in the prison). There are plenty of other ways this shouldn't have worked but that's the biggest one, you can put really advanced technology in books but you HAVE to put in at least a small line explaining them. And don't get me started about the stuff about at least partially destroying a Moon and stilling the tides, contrary to popular belief it's pretty hard to mess up a celestial body THAT much.   

Fall Anime 2011 Reviews: Part one!

Well then, Funimation is actually not doing a same day simulcast for Last Exile: Fam of the Silver Wing and since the show isn't airing until Monday I'm just going to leave a blank for it here and fill it in later on, I just won't have the time to do both of these posts later in the week and I've seen everything else I'm interested in. I also don't have a mid-season retrospective for what I'm still following this time around since the only show I'm following that halfway done is Mawaru Penguindrum (I ended up dropping Nura since it wasn't doing anything for me and I don't regret it) and I didn't want to make a post about a single show. I'm still loving the series to pieces for it's strangeness and strong plotline and between this and Star Driver earlier in the year it's really obvious now what parts of Utena were from Enokido and what parts were from Ikuhara, I might need to do a big post comparing all three when this one finishes up.

As for the new shows I'm doing this in the same style as before, I've seen at least one episode of each new show (more in some cases, it just depends on when the series aired) and I will try out the first series via fansub if I'm really curious about it. However, since I try to watch one (if that many) series fansubbed each season and I'm still following Penguindrum I won't be watching any new series that don't have a simulcast no matter how promising they seem.

 Chihaya Furu
Originally I wasn't interested in this series when the charts started coming out (I've enjoyed sports anime before and I've even read a large part of the Hikaru no Go manga) but I normally don't find the shows that interesting. Then I heard that this was a josei series so I decided to give it a shot and at least try to show that there is a small demand for more well done shojo/josei series, plus it was being simulcast over on crunchyroll and I still have a membership there. The first two episodes have been mostly flashbacks explaining how Chihaya became interested in the Japanese card game furata and those two episodes just blew me away. While Chihaya is oblivious and naieve she also has some remarkably perceptive moments, is stubborn and has a strong sense of what's right and wrong, what else can you want in a heroine? I'm curious to see how much of her personality, if any, has changed once all the flashbacks are over but I can see myself really enjoying this show (especially since it has 2-cour to try and pace everything right, too bad the manga it's based on isn't finished yet).

Future Diary
If I had posted this even one day earlier I would have said that this seemed like a cool series but since it wasn't being simulcast I wouldn't continue watching it but lo and behold it got a simulcast earlier today with the Funico agreement so I can watch it after all (a similar thing happened with Croisee in the summer season actually, makes me glad I wait a little bit to post these reviews). I read the first volume of the manga years ago and thought it was interesting so I was curious to see if it was as cool (but kinda disturbing) as I remembered and it appears that yes, this is a story with an insane yet cool premise (god of time and space gets bored so he gives 12 people future diaries to kill each other with and the victor takes his place, doesn't help that this god seems to like chaos) and characters who are just plain nuts (because sane people wouldn't take this as an opportunity to go murder each other). This show is also two-cour and the manga is finished at 12 volumes so I hope that's enough to tell the whole story.

Guilty Crown
The first of the two noitaminA shows, Guilty Crown is a curious show since it follows in noitaminA's recent trend of anime original stories and is only the fourth show in this timeslot to be two-cour, hopefully this means that the story will end up being better than the timeslot's other recent anime original stories (Fractal, [C]). All of that said, this is not a traditional noitaminA show and really shows how the timeslot it now trying to appeal to 2channer's/anime fans with deep pockets instead of it's older/more fringe audience from even a year ago. The premise is similar to Code Geass (with whom it shares some key staff) or any other show that has an apathetic/weak male lead who is given a mysterious power by a beautiful, out of the ordinary girl with connections to a group of rebels in Japan's dystopian, ruled by a foreign power future. It's not original but so far it's really pretty, the first few minutes before the title rolled were beautiful and would have dragged me into the show even if I hadn't already been interested in it. Funimation has the simulcast for this series and I hope it does well for them, also hope that the plot does well since I'm tired of being disappointed by noitaminA shows in the final act.

Last Exile: Fam of the Silver Wing
Not counting the flash anime they put out the summer season, this is Studio Gonzo's first anime in a few years and it's a good thing that such a controversial studio (they've produced some good work and some awful work over the years, their last series Shangri-La was sadly one of the later) is starting off with a sequel to one of their best known titles. Starting a few years after the first series ended, Last Exile: Fam is set on Earth where the Ades Federation is slowly conquering all the lands and has now turned their eyes to the Turan Empire. This doesn't concern Fam and her copilot Giselle as much, they're sky pirates and beholden to no one, but after seeing the Ades turn against Turan in the peace talks Fam offers to save the two princesses of Turan if the sky-pirates get their ship later on. In some ways it's a lot like the first two episodes of the original Last Exile (ordinary pilots getting caught between two warring countries and might possibly have a way to end the war) and while the art worked has been slightly "moe-fied" compared to the original show the characters already feel like real people and not cardboard cut-outs. Finally, a great thing about this show is that people are finally posting links to all the backstory about the original story and I'd encourage everyone whose seen the original series to read it (this timeline is a great place to start), partially to refresh your memories and also because it really clears up the ending of the original and helps explain the background of this series. 


Phi Brain
I saw a few other reviewers say good things about this show so I decided to give it a whirl, although it took me a few minutes since I was sure I had seen crunchyroll pick it up for a simulcast but it appears that I was mistaken and this show is unlicensed thus far. However, while the premise of the series sounded interesting (a puzzle obsessed world and the main character is really good at solving them), the presentation just didn't work for me since the show took itself way too seriously and in doing so felt too illogical. Supposedly hard puzzles that the rest of the cast couldn't solve seemed quite simple to the audience and a secret underground (literally) society that, erm, does something with life-threatening puzzles just felt too silly to me. Maybe if this was simulcast I would give it another episode (although it seems as if the second episode was worse than the first) but for the moment I've dropped it.

And here is part two!

And now for something different, Diversity in everything else under the sun

 As I said in the first post, books are hardly the only kind of fiction I consume. I read somewhere between 30 and 50 webcomics a week, I've spent this past summer watching waaaaay too much anime and rounded that out with a few movies and tv shows and I've noticed some interesting and different trends in each medium concerning LGTB and PoC characters. So I'll cover all of that in this post starting with anime and working my way through each medium (warning, I watch/read some really weird stuff, it's just that most of it is good weird stuff). As a refresher, the point of the original challenge by the Diversity in YA people was:
By diverse we mean: (1) main characters or major secondary characters (e.g., a love interest or best friend kind of character) who are of color or are LGBT; or (2) written by a person of color or LGBT author.
LGTB=Lesbian, Gay, Transsexual or Bisexual
PoC=Person of Color, anyone who isn't of white European ancestory


Despite the fact that I watch a lot of anime I'm actually even less of the target audience for it than I am for western YA novels but since that didn't stop me from talking about books I don't see why that should stop me from talking about anime. Also, in the context of this challenge, anime is a bit odd since all of these titles are produced by Japanese staff (original creators, voice actors, directors, producers and animators in most cases) and nearly every show is set in Japan so, hair colors notwithstanding, most of these shows feature entirely Japanese casts as well. However, most of these anime are really lacking in the LGTB character department and sadly in the strong female character department as well (and almost every foreigner that appears in any anime ever will be heavily stereotyped, Japan has some issues there). However, when I was making up this list I noticed something funny, the shows that aren't explicitly set in Japan (in most cases I can tell just by looking at the architecture or other little things) actually do much better in in LGTB/PoC departments so I'm going to highlight those shows instead.

An odd first example is Tiger and Bunny which was actually designed with marketing to an American audience in mind, abet probably not myself in mind (a male 14-22 year old audience although, thanks to a huge female following in Japan, never underestimate the fujoshi, it's become a hit over there as well). The basic concept is that it's an alternate New York City where people with superpowers (NEXT) exist and some of them work as superheroes that are sponsored by big companies in the city. Despite the weird set-up for the show (it's basically a buddy-cop movie with superheroes instead of cops who are corporate mascots with real world companies helping sponsor the show) it's a really good reconstruction of the American superhero genre and I would whole-heartedly recommend it to people who aren't bit fans of the superhero genre such as myself and it has a surprisingly diverse cast. However, at first glance it's a bit cringe worthy, one of the heros (Nathan/Fire Emblem) is a twofer character, black and gay, and he's flamboyently gay with fire superpowers, he's a flaming gay! Honestly, from seeing an interview or two about how the show was designed and it appears the staff had (and possibly still don't) have any idea about that stereotype, and generally today we would say "camp" instead of "flaming" but it's still a pretty cringe-worthy moment (apparently one of the real-world sponsors decided not to sponsor him after finding out he was gay which is really unfortunate). Later episodes show that he's a very capable character and he gets fleshed out (he's actually the CEO of the biggest energy company in the city) but it takes a few episodes to get to that point. And, while he is the only LGTB character he is far from being the only PoC character, a good portion of the cast is. One of the leads (Kotetsu/Wild Tiger) is Japanese (he's a native to the city though, his hometown is just outside and has the unfortunate name of "Oriental Town" the general fan theory is that his mother is from Japan) and one of the side characters appears to be Japanese based on his name, Doc Saito. Pao Lin (/Dragon Kid) is shown to be from either China or Hong Kong, Antonio (/Rock Bison) is Hispanic and I've seen people suspect that one of the major villains, Jake Martinez, was also Hispanic based on his name (I can't tell from looking at him since frankly I'm more interested in his multi-colored hair and tattoos). Yet another character (Ivan/Origami Cyclon) is also explicitly stated to be from Russia (although that would make him just white, the entire fandom questions his sexuality however and there are some canon hints that could be taken either way) and Kotetsu's former manager (who appears a lot in the second half of the show) is black, all in all making for an incredibly diverse show with the main cast alone. I actually have a theory about this, since it was a more diverse show than normal that was being produced for a more American audience, so remember that, I'm coming back to it later on. 

Next up is an example which I kinda think fits and kinda think it doesn't, No. 6. The two main characters in this show are male and while some people didn't think any of it at first (I didn't) there were some shippers who were hoping that it would become a boy's love series (although it seems like most of them already knew the story before the anime started or waited a few episodes before really starting to hope) and then there were tons and tons of people who whined about the characters being "teh gay" after just one episode, because the two characters (both 12) fell asleep holding hands. That's pretty disturbing that people are put off of a show for something not even specifically romantic like that which does bring me to the problem with listing this show here, it's never made explicitly clear if our two leads (Sion and Nezumi) are in a romantic relationship or have romantic feelings for each other. If there was a word for the kind of relationship that is between platonic and romantic then that's what I would label them as but the author of the original novels intentionally wrote a very ambiguous relationship between them (I think she said in one interview she was tired of seeing how the main boy and girl of a story would be paired up, something I found interesting especially after a friend said that people wouldn't be freaking out if one of the characters was a girl instead, or possibly if they were both girls) so it's hard to tell. And having said that, there are two, on the lip kisses between the two boys (and clearly shown on screen, no cuts to black or to an alternate view to make it hard to tell) which is still considered a bit unusual and, as one poster I saw pointed out, you have to be in a certain kind of relationship for that to be considered normal.


Finally, the third show I've seen this past summer which I thought best fit this challenge (again, by the challenge's definition practically any anime would have actually qualified) was Croiseé in a Foreign Labyrinth, a rather sweet show about a young Japanese girl (Yune) who comes to 1880s Paris to help manage a shop as an apprenticeship of sorts and the culture clash between her and the rest of the cast comes up quite often. Sometimes it's played for laughs and other times it's more serious (with one character, usually Claude but this happens to Yune as well quite often, misunderstanding the other because they are still adjusting to how people of the other culture feel/act and then apologizing to make things right). It's a character driven series so those bits make up a good deal of the series and, since I remember calling out Clockwork Angel on it earlier, no Yune does not experience any kind of racism which would be expected towards an Asian person in 1880s France. However, unlike Clockwork Angel, it would have been completely against the mood of the series so I'm glad the author chose to focus on how the difference in race effects Yune's relationships with other characters rather than how the world as a whole perceives her.

Related to anime, I also read a far bit of manga when I have time and sadly there are very few PoC or LGBT characters in any of the series I read. I will say however that I prefer to read stories without any romance in them so a good half of the series I follow don't have any romance in them at all (either the characters are too young or just too busy with the plot to have a relationship, straight or otherwise). I will admit that I do read a lot of shojo (which, if the story isn't primarily a romance to start with usually has it as a strong secondary genre) but even the stuff I'm reading is generally a decade or two old, American YA wasn't that diverse back in the '80s or '90s either. I would really like to see more stories with diversity in mainstream titles, not relgating PoC characters to side positions or LGBT characters just to BL and GL stories. Finally, this applies to the anime as well, in most series I'm not looking for PoC or LGTB characters, I'm looking for a capable female lead, if a medium is having a hard time representing half of a population I'm not expecting them to be any better at representing minorities.

Some summers I watch a lot of movies and some summers I don't, this was one of the summers where I didn't see a lot of movies (although I am starting to catch up with what my school is showing). The only two recently made movies I've seen recently that come to mind are Thor and X-Men: First Class which aren't really great in this department either. Thor actually did alright with having some likable and capable female and PoC side characters, many of whom I thought were even cooler than the main characters, but they were only side characters and the story probably could have existed without them. X-Men was a bit strange because by the very end of the story every character who wasn't white and male (and presumably straight, none of the characters had any indications that they weren't straight) was evil. Since the story already had to contradict some of X-Men continuity couldn't they have worked around this? Heck, that's the first time in a while I've seen the "black man dies first" trope played straight and didn't even make any sense in this context, it just felt like they weren't even trying here.


When I was first coming up with the categories for this post I thought "oh crap, but I don't watch any tv!" and then I remembered that Doctor Who was airing this summer and breathed a sigh of relief. Back when I started watching DW two years ago (starting with the 2005 series and working my way up to the currently airing episodes) I was surprised at how many PoC or LGTB background characters there were in the episodes set in contemporary Britain. The UK has an even higher population of Caucasian people than the US does (90% vs 72%, source Wikipedia) so the show could have been technically accurate if it had had all white background characters, by not doing so it highlighted to me just how strange US television is for doing just that. When the first episode of the current season premiered this year there was some discussion on the internet on the fact that there was a black secret service man who was personally assigned to President Nixon, set in 1969, something that many people, including several who self-identified as PoC, found strange. Apparently there were black secret service men at this time but some people still debated whether someone like Nixon would have had one on their personal staff and someone made a comment that really struck me, there was a black man there because the British audience expected to see one there. Going back to Tiger and Bunny, who also had a much more diverse cast set in a US setting than a US show in a US setting would have, the world seems to view the US as a diverse country (which it is) and therefore makes an extra effort to show them that way in their stories, something we don't seem to do, wohoops. And beyond that one scene character, there are two couples (one lesbian and one gay) in the mid-season finale, two characters who fit the challenge's definition but would be spoilers to mention, and a Muslim girl who was an important character in one episode and who I really really liked. Also, before people point out that these characters normally end up dead by the end of the episode, most side characters in DW who are kinda important to the story but not especially end up dead, gender/sexuality/skin tone play no part in it. Thankfully the series doesn't kill off as many characters as it used to (one reason I like the switch in showrunners) but it does tend to kill off a lot of great characters that way. And, since I've rambled too long on just one property now, check out this great post for a breakdown on all PoC/LGTB characters in NuWho and other details.

Review: No. 6

Sorry this is so late tonight, partially because I've had a busy day but mostly because my school email account (which was my google account) but got updated(?) and it's making logging into blogger really tricky. Trying to fix this but it could be a few days and I might just have to go yell at the tech services at my school for this problem, since I think it's a problem on my end, but hopefully I'll at least be able to put up the second diversity post in a few days.
Anyway, to the review! The noitaminA timeslot has had a lot of original works this year (there will be four and a half-ish original works) but both of the summer shows were based on exisiting works, in the case of No.6 it was based on a nine volume young adult series published in Japan (not a light novel, no pictures and a bit higher up on the vocabulary scale I'm told). I'll be blunt, I've read summaries/partial translations of all the novels now (I actually read the bit for the final two after I saw the last episode which covered them so I went into that unknowing) and I really prefer how the novels went. It seems like this was the first time this director has directed and entire series (instead of just an episode or a unit) and it seemed to show.

No.6

Summary: After a global war decimates most of the planet, Sion lives in one of the few remaining cities, No.6, where he is an elite, chosen based on his test scores when he was young to become one of the leaders of the city. But one night Sion leaves his window open and the young escaped criminal Nezumi (literally mouse/rat) spends the night in his room and Sion befriends him. Soon afterwords the city discovers what happened and Sion is stripped of his position. Life is quiet for the next few years when the story starts there are some mysterious deaths in the city which intrigue Sion and Nezumi has reappeared as well.

The Good: No.6 is has a classic looks-like-utopia-but-is-really-a-distopia set up and reminded me of both The Giver and Brave New World, two really good books in the genre. And, as much as I complain about the changes from the novels, there was one change that the anime made that was for the better, making Nezumi and Sion meet-up with the old man in the cave before the final arc, in the novel that happened during the final arc (the novel readers all agree that that didn't make much sense to start with). Also, since this seems to have been the intention, I must congratulate Atsuko Asano, the original author, for writing what is possibly the most ambiguous relationship between two characters ever. If you like BL then you'll probably see Sion and Nezumi as a couple, if you aren't so sure then you'll just see their relationship as a bromance, I have yet to find two people who have the exact same view of their relationship and my own opinion on it changes depending on what part of the story I'm thinking about, I don't think I've ever seen a relationship that has had me thinking about it quite that much.    


The Bad: The pacing had some issues and, in a series this short with so much source material to adapt, that spells problems. The pre-timeskip part took too long, one episode early one (I believe it was episode 4) was 90% filler that never had an actual impact on the story and the final episode combines the final two volumes, sort of anyway, the strange bits were all the anime's doing (basically both versions got to the same end point, minus the epilogue, but the anime took a much different route to do it). That's not a good plan and it cut out quite a bit of the explanations, I found myself having to explain some details to anime readers that the novel had explained quite clearly early on, and sadly it also cut down on the conversations between Nezumi and Sion which are vital for their character development. That was an understandable change but there were times when it seemed like the characters were acting differently than how they had in the novels.

The Audio: I've seen a lot of people either love or hate the music in this show for reasons I didn't quite get (apparently it sounded 80s ish at points?) but aside from a few tracks (such as one that had been used in the trailers) none of the music really stood out to me. I did like the opening song because of the way it sounded happy at first but sounds creepier each time you hear it (much like the city No.6) although I haven't been able to find lyrics for it. I have been able to find lyrics for the ending song which I didn't like as much and again, a lot of people found the lyrics to be incredibly sad but I didn't think so. I did like the few instances when Nezumi sang which unfortunately does bring us to a problem. Nezumi is an actor, in the books he's supposed to have an androgynous voice to start with (and have an incredible range) but here he sounds quite male which made a few scenes awkward. It was a nice voice ( Yoshimasa Hosoya was the voice actor) and the acting was good, it just didn't exactly work the way it needed to.

The Visuals: noitaminA shows in the past seasons have shown that just because the shows have a low episode count (ie, not as much to stretch the budget across) doesn't necessarily mean they're good but here we have Bones and the show looked very good. There was a lot action, very few still shots if I recall correctly, and lots of detail in all of the backgrounds. It was a very clean looking show, although there were one or two more "artistic" scenes involving Sion that I didn't like as much but only a couple of scenes in 11 episodes still means it is a very good looking show.

So, for the third season in a row it's the noitaminA show I like less that's been licensed and I just don't know if I want to buy and rewatch this series. It was good in many places but when it was bad it was really bad, honestly I wish the novels were licensed since I enjoyed those overall. I suppose in the end it will just determine on how much the show costs but, since it's a Section 23 release, it might be a while before the show it at a price level I'm willing to pay. Those who want to check out the show (and are in the US/Canada) needn't worry about that however, it's still streaming for free over on crunchyroll and if you have a paid account it looks quite nice in HD.

Book Review: Incarceron

I remember coming across this book a year or so ago at a local bookstore and not being really interested in it but was interested enough to check it out of the library when I saw it this summer (I was puzzled however by the author's name, I had gotten it into my head that this was Cornelia Funke's latest book so I was a bit puzzled). Funny enough, I was actually reading the first part of this book at the same time another person on twitter was and we exchanged a few emails with theories on the book (I had a crazy one that wasn't right, she had one that I had also noticed, we agreed it was too obvious, that was right, even as much as the story later tried to make it ambiguous) and it was funny to see someone, who until then I thought had fairly different readings tastes than mine, feel exactly the same way about the whole first part of the book. 

Incarceron by Catherine Fisher

 Interesting choice in font, I'm surprised I haven't seen any steampunk books or websites using it since it really evokes the feeling of clogs and clocks.  And, considering what's on the rest of the cover, it all fits very well. It was nice to have the key from the book on the cover since, even though it's described so often, it's nice to have a visual to see what it really looks like.

Summary: It may be the future but the world is stuck in the past, trapped by traditions enacted after the world nearly destroyed itself but the protocol that binds Claudia doesn't seem to be doing her any good either. And her's isn't the only messed up part of the world, Finn lives in the great prison Incarceron, initially created as a place to nurture and provide for every need of thousands and thousands of people but instead is a living hell for all it's inhabitants. Finn wants out and Claudia wants out of her arranged marriage with the crown prince and in the process discovers an interesting link to the mythical prison.  

The Good: Claudia turned out to be a much more interesting protagonist than I expected and was a very nice mix of clever, curious and yet not too impulsive, the kind of character who goes out and does things but not the kind of things where you want to yell at them for being an idiot. Also, even though this book is part of a duology, most of the plot threads are wrapped up at the end of this book so it feels very complete which is very nice. That's not to say that there aren't a few sequel hooks, some of them rather large ones, but if the book wasn't quite working for you (like it was for me at points) then it's easy to feel satisfied and stop reading at this point.

The Bad: I mentioned earlier that both FelicityDisco and I both figured out a fairly major plot point within the first hundred pages of the book and, since the book tried to make it ambiguous for the next 300 or so pages, that's not a good sign. It's entirely possible that the second book will prove that we were actually wrong but still, I like books with plots so it's annoying to read one where it uses such an obvious trope that I can figure it out so early on. What bothered me more however was how the logistics of Incarceron worked, from minor ones (where does such a large place get enough power to work?) to more major ones (people being born with machine parts in them because "the prison recycles everything" except they were conceived, erm, in the normal way, ie one that doesn't require outside sources). There were other things about the setting that bothered me as well* but this detail cropped up so often that it bothered me throughout the entire book. 




Sorry for the delay, busy afternoon and night for me, wasn't expecting certain things (coughbusescough) to take up so much of my time (and I have yet another head cold which always makes writing slightly tricky). Tomorrow's review should be up at a more reasonable time tomorrow and, as normal, I plan on glancing over this when I'm more awake, hope there's nothing major I need to correct....


*I suppose this would actually count as a lying protagonist except it's by accident, having a character who has never seen the real world be the point of view usually means that things get described differently than how someone with a regular worldview would (a good example is The City of Ember) always bugs the hell out of me. 

Manga Review: Akira

A few people here might remember that I reviewed the first volume here back last spring and are probably wondering, why the wait? What happened is that I got through volume four before somebody went ahead and requested the entire series from the school library (one thing I don't like about this library, if someone requests something you have you have a new due date that's MUCH sooner) and already checked out five and six before I returned four. Of course five and six didn't get returned before the school year was over (and of course no one else had checked out these books the entire semester leading up to when I did it) so believe me I wanted finish up this series several months ago. But once I got back to school one of the first things I did was snag volumes four, five and six from the library  (wanted to reread four just in case, thankfully each volume has a pretty detailed "what happened previously" section as well) and finished up this epic sized manga.


Akira by Katsuhiro Otomo

Summary: The setting is Neo-Tokyo a few years after World War III destroyed the original Tokyo. Kaneda and Tetsuo are punks in a local motorcycle gang who enjoy causing havoc but ultimately staying out of trouble themselves. But they find a lot more than just trouble one day when they accidentally come across a decades old government experiment involving physic powers in children, Tetsuo becomes a part of the experiment and decides to use his new powers to cause as much havoc as he possibly can, starting with releasing the most powerful of the children of all, Akira.

The Good: The ending of the Akira movie was rather, odd (that darn journey-t0-the-center-of-the-mind sci-fi ending variant) but the ending here was much more solid and enjoyable. Also enjoyable was how Kei, a girl from a resistance group in the early volumes, continued being an important character throughout the series and had a lot awesome moments in the end. I had been afraid that she (and the other prominent female characters, actually all the characters except Kaneda and Tetsuo) would be less important later on but thankfully every important character in the good sized played at least a small part in the ending. It takes real skill to write a climax where it's clear that the final battle will come to just two of the cast but still find a way for every other member make a legitimate contribution.

The Bad: The ending may make more sense than the movie's but it's still a bit, strange. Thematically it makes sense but I couldn't help but feel cynical and couldn't up a lot of enthusiasm for it. Honestly, as interesting as the manga was, I never managed to connect with any of the characters or get really caught up in their struggles. It was like watching a really interesting documentary but not being able to sympathize with the characters since you already know how it ends and there was never any doubt in my mind how this series was going to end. 

The Art: One thing I've noticed is that older manga series tend to have much more detailed (insanely detailed even) and epic artwork that most modern series don't and with very few screentones as well. The level of detail in every panel is astonishing and you really need a few minutes to soak in the many double page spreads. It's no wonder that the manga took nearly ten year to be finished, nearly 2000 pages of that kind of detail takes a while. Impressively, there are no instances when the art looks sloppy or like anything was drawn by a different person (I have no idea if Otomo used assistants at all) and the start of each volume has several full color pages which take even longer to do. The manga is worth a look just to take in all the art, it's on a level that few comics today are (as a warning however, the English edition is flipped which I found irritating). 

In the end, this was a good story but for some reason I just couldn't connect with it and felt a little hollow when it ended. I'll certainly admit that this was an amazingly badass story which I think was better than the film and that plenty of people should check out but I don't think I'll be rereading it anytime soon.  

Summer Anime 2011 Reviews: Part two!

And here is the second half of the reviews, sorry it's up later than I said but apparently the time that crunchyroll will air Dantalian ≠ the time NicoNico streams it (CR is streaming it a week delayed) so that threw me off. Lesson learned, simulcasts are weird, don't try to predict them. XD

Mawaru PenguinDrum:

When Ikuhara announced that he would be working on a new anime, his first one since Utena, part of the internet went nuts and, after the trailers came out, promptly showed them to the other half of the internet to convince them to try it. The first episode alone involves death and revival of a character, invisible to normal people penguins, a magical girl transformation sequence in reverse and possibly incest (actually, considering Utena, make that incest for sure but, again considering Utena, it probably won’t be portrayed as a good thing). Plus plenty of colorful artwork, lots of background detail that will probably make for a fun second viewing and it seems to introduce a central plot thread all in the first episode. Unfortunately this one doesn’t have a simulcast so you’ll have to hunt down fansubs for it but I think it’s worth a look by everyone who enjoys more surreal things/bored with mainstream/loved Utena or who is just plain curious about what the hubbub is about.  

The Mystic Archives of Dantalian (Dantalian no Shoka or Bibliobeca Mystica de Dantalian):

The final show of the season that looks an awful lot like Gosick but, like the other two shows that also bear some resemblance, the show itself seems rather different. Huey, a former fighter pilot (from what looks like World War I^), has inherited his late grandfather's estate and belongings which include a ridiculous amount of books and a young girl who looks like a girl, Danlian. She is quick to inform Huey that his grandfather's death was no accident, as he had already suspected, and then reveals that his library houses some very dark and very magical books and it seems like Huey is now in charge of guarding and binding those books. I checked out a few chapters of the manga and really like the anime designs better (the way Danlian's hair and face are drawn make her much cuter) but for some reason Ginax uses photographs with a cheap photoshop effect over them for backgrounds in places which is a bit odd. The placement of the music also seemed a bit strange at times but honestly the strangest thing about this show is the live action ending that seems to have absolutely no connection to it. The show is streaming both on crunchyroll (with a one week delay for everyone, even subscribers) and on NicoNico without commercials (but I think only for the US).   

 

Natsume Yuujincou San (Natsume and the Book of Friends III):

To all the people who are complaining that Brains Base hasn’t made Durarara 2 yet, shut up. Natsume was their biggest seller before DRRR and I love it more/been waiting longer for this.

Ahem, not much has changed between seasons of this show (except that it looks a little better here, a little cleaner, so it might have a slightly higher budget) which continues to follow Natsume’s episodic encounters with the local yokai and people which help him grow and mature. This first episode also revealed more of his grandmother Reiko’s background and the contrast between her ultimately tragic life and Natsume’s growing happiness/security with the normal world is heart-breaking, which is of course what you except from an episode of this show so clearly it’s doing it’s job right. You can’t stop me from watching this show (streaming on crunchyroll as everyone expected it would be), when is this thing going to be licensed! (I don’t care if it’s in the R3 or R4 markets, I need this thing on DVD with subtitles some day!)

No. 6:

The other noitaminA show this season, set in the far off year of 2013 after a nuclear war devastated half of the habitable area of the planet and the remaining areas where divided up into six sections, Sion is an elite among the elites. Recognized for his high IQ he’s lived the life of luxury with his mom since he was a toddler but even he can see that there is something not quite right with this city. This is confirmed when Nezumi (Mouse/Rat) come bursting into Sion’s room one night with a gunshot wound, a violence chip implanted in him by the government and no desire to burden Sion with the truth. So, it’s sci-fi, it’s a utopia that’s actually a dystopia, I’m game! And to everyone who is complaining about all the “BL”, shut up, grow some ovaries and if you can’t take two guys holding hands (yet find two girls hugging cute) then yeaaaaah, I have nothing polite to say (seriously, if I have to read one more  “ewww, BL ruins all the good series” BS I will start drop-kicking people through the internet). And for anyone who was unnerved that Sion and Nezumi sound waaay too old for 12 don’t worry, there is a timeskip (judging by the preview it’ll be right at the beginning of the next episode), it looks gorgeous (this is BONES after all) and should have the plot to back it all up. Crunchyroll is streaming the show but just for the US/Canada (on that note, Funimation isn't streaming either of the noitaminA shows this season which seems strange, especially since they just had a panel at Anime Expo promoting the brand of sorts).

Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan (Nurarihyon no Mago: Sennen Makyo):

I saw most of the first season last year since I really enjoyed the manga but I had to give up by the end, it was just doing things so differently from the manga and I just didn’t have any motivation to watch it (also, there was too much Kana in it, believe me this was actually a problem). So I had no intention of watching this until I saw a few other people who had dropped the show try the first episode and say that the new staff seem to be doing much better than the first group. And yes, this is better so far, heck, they FINALLY animated the very first chapter of the manga which is set four years earlier and completely explains why Rikuo feels the way he does about the yokai. It’s not the most ground-shattering revelation but, as the first season got more and more muddled (and had flashbacks to the silly thing) I always wondered why they didn’t just put this in. Beyond that, it looks like they’ll be skipping a minor arc or two (hopefully not the semi-major one) to get to the series really big arc, the Kyoto Arc, so fans of the manga who dropped the first season should go ahead and check out the first few episodes here (streaming on hulu by Viz again) to see if it’s worth picking back up.

So, right now here's what my watching schedule looks like (in addition to watching some live action tv and older anime from the library):

Sunday: Nura*

Monday: Natsume

Tuesday: Steins;Gate

Wednesday: Blue Exorcist*, Furuba Radio Drama

Thursday: Blood-C*, Bunny Drop, No. 6

Friday: PenguinDrum (yes I know it comes out Thursday but the subs take a little while), Dantalian*

Saturday: Tiger and Bunny

All the shows with a * on it means I'm watching it now but if it doesn't stay at least decent I'm dropping it. Technically No. 6 should have one as well since I didn't like the pacing in the second episode but I haven't dropped a noitaminA show yet, just ranted about it. On that note however, I've seen a lot of people who liked the pacing/didn't mind the pacing in the second episode so I suppose that means this story is working as an adaptation (that said, I like what one of the reviewers suggested on ANNCast, think it was Rebbecca, when she suggested that it just have longer episodes, that would really well in this case I feel).

^oh dear, maybe this isn't so different after all, pleasedon'tbringupWWIIIohpleasedon'tdothatagain.