Spirit Circle by Satoshi Mizukami
Showing posts with label egypt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label egypt. Show all posts
Saturday, July 2, 2016
Manga Review: Spirit Circle
This review is a bit later than I hoped, both in the context of this week and in general since Crunchyroll was a bit slow getting the final chapter up. I'm not sure why, they were fairly up to date with the rest of the chapters, but I have noticed that there are some, less popular CR series that don't update quite as regularly as others (by that I mean, not consistently same day, two days later etc than the Japanese magazine release). I don't think that contributed to the manga's relative unpopularity however, I have just had the hardest time convincing people to try this series so, once more with feeling! This is one of my favorite series from the last few years and dammit if it's never gonna get a physical release you should at least read this digital release since who knows how long CR will hold this release.
Saturday, May 18, 2013
Book Review: Timeless
And I finally, after several years of trying to achieve this, have finally read all of the Parasol Protectorate series, wahoo! So, same drill as before, talking about the summary of this book involves some good sized spoilers for the first few so only continue reading if you've read the first few or just plain don't care, although considering just how large this one is I'd recommend against that.
Timeless by Gail Carriger
Summary: Alexia and Conall’s daughter, Prudence, has been born and as predicted she has the ability to borrow a vampire or werewolf’s abilities which causes a whole slew of trouble given her surroundings. So its not without misgivings that Alexia accepts an invitation from the oldest vampire queen of them all in Alexandria, near the God-Breaker Plague of Egypt, and heads south hoping to resolve the mysteries of her family once and for all.
The Good: In retrospect, Carriger started seeding many of the subplots that would appear in Heartless and Timeless rather early on and I’m impressed. I’m sure some might find the ending overly neat but considering how many of the characters in the series actively try to create neat endings for the people around them this shouldn’t be surprising. As for the actual book, I had always been worried how Alexia’s pregnancy, and subsequent offspring, would be handled but it all worked rather well here. Alexia still acts like herself, she and Conall truly love Prudence (which is in line with their characters), and the child is important to the story but not a plot device. Considering that I was expecting her to be left on the sidelines while the adult characters went on more adventures this is much, much better than I had hoped and for me that’s why the series ended so satisfactorily, it was smarter than I expected and that makes the story work for me better than almost any other ending could have.
The Bad: In the end I do wish we had gotten a bit more information about both Alexia’s father and Floote. That storyline was also foreshadowed fairly early on but I think it needed not exactly more foreshadowing but more details revealed earlier on, especially considering how important it ended up being. Also, I feel like Madam Lefoux’s character ended up changing quite dramatically through the story, and well, it felt a little uneven by the end. Granted there is a timeskip between this book and Heartless, plus considering how Heartless ended a change in relationship makes sense (and she was changing in Blameless as well), but I almost feel like the Lefoux of Changeless is a completely different character from the one of Timeless. I’m not sure what I would have liked done differently but something does feel off and I feel like it could have been handled in a smoother fashion.
So I'm giving both this book and this overall series a 3.5 out of 5 which might be a bit low but there were just enough rough spots in the series to bother me yet despite those it's rather solid fun and I'm glad that I now own the books and would recommend them to a number of friends. Well, after making sure that my friends are okay with the implied sexytimes in the books but frankly considering how, uninterested and easily bored I am by sexytimes usually if I don't mind them then no one else I know will. With that in mind, if you like supernatural urban fantasy in Victorian London with some romance then give these a shot, hopefully you will have a better time finding the books than I did!
Timeless by Gail Carriger
Summary: Alexia and Conall’s daughter, Prudence, has been born and as predicted she has the ability to borrow a vampire or werewolf’s abilities which causes a whole slew of trouble given her surroundings. So its not without misgivings that Alexia accepts an invitation from the oldest vampire queen of them all in Alexandria, near the God-Breaker Plague of Egypt, and heads south hoping to resolve the mysteries of her family once and for all.
The Good: In retrospect, Carriger started seeding many of the subplots that would appear in Heartless and Timeless rather early on and I’m impressed. I’m sure some might find the ending overly neat but considering how many of the characters in the series actively try to create neat endings for the people around them this shouldn’t be surprising. As for the actual book, I had always been worried how Alexia’s pregnancy, and subsequent offspring, would be handled but it all worked rather well here. Alexia still acts like herself, she and Conall truly love Prudence (which is in line with their characters), and the child is important to the story but not a plot device. Considering that I was expecting her to be left on the sidelines while the adult characters went on more adventures this is much, much better than I had hoped and for me that’s why the series ended so satisfactorily, it was smarter than I expected and that makes the story work for me better than almost any other ending could have.
The Bad: In the end I do wish we had gotten a bit more information about both Alexia’s father and Floote. That storyline was also foreshadowed fairly early on but I think it needed not exactly more foreshadowing but more details revealed earlier on, especially considering how important it ended up being. Also, I feel like Madam Lefoux’s character ended up changing quite dramatically through the story, and well, it felt a little uneven by the end. Granted there is a timeskip between this book and Heartless, plus considering how Heartless ended a change in relationship makes sense (and she was changing in Blameless as well), but I almost feel like the Lefoux of Changeless is a completely different character from the one of Timeless. I’m not sure what I would have liked done differently but something does feel off and I feel like it could have been handled in a smoother fashion.
So I'm giving both this book and this overall series a 3.5 out of 5 which might be a bit low but there were just enough rough spots in the series to bother me yet despite those it's rather solid fun and I'm glad that I now own the books and would recommend them to a number of friends. Well, after making sure that my friends are okay with the implied sexytimes in the books but frankly considering how, uninterested and easily bored I am by sexytimes usually if I don't mind them then no one else I know will. With that in mind, if you like supernatural urban fantasy in Victorian London with some romance then give these a shot, hopefully you will have a better time finding the books than I did!
Sunday, May 5, 2013
TV Series Review: Doctor Who: The Pyramids of Mars
And it's time for another classic Doctor Who serial, I really like how the serials that BBC decided to air complement each other so well. The Aztecs had one of the shows famous lines about not being able to rewrite time and in this episode when Sarah Jane questions if they really need to save the day since she obviously came from the future the Doctor shows her how much the future will change if they don't (and I really do think these two go together given the shows guidelines about what can be changed and what can't). In Tomb of the Cybermen we see the character Victoria and in this serial Sarah Jane is running around in some of her clothes (which are actually period appropirate for once!). And in Spearhead from Space the Doctor begins his long term relationship working for/with UNIT and here they were aiming to go back to them for a bit, and as usual end up in the right place but the wrong time by several decades.
Doctor Who Classic: The Pyramid of Mars
Summary: While the Doctor and Sarah Jane were attempting to get back to UNIT after some adventuring they accidentally end up in what would become their headquarters a few decades too early, although knowing the Doctor and his relationship with UNIT that might have been on purpose. Also, knowing how adventure calls to the TARDIS it may also be no coincidence that they land in the middle of a plot to unseal an alien known as the Egyptian god Set from his prison on Mars.
The Good: This was a fairly solid serial, it shows something that I've been thinking about a lot lately which is how it seems like in Classic DW the companions were always having their own side adventures instead of just tagging along with the Doctor (like they seem to do most of the time in Nu Who) and I like that, even if it's still a bit hard to see the companions as fully fleshed out characters when you only see a single story with them. Especially since in Sarah Jane's case my first experience with her was in Nu Who when she was completely and fully an independent adult whose a bit more jaded than she is here, honestly that made for some odd dissonance but that's my problem, not the show's. Other than that, while the twist on Egyptian mythology didn't work 100% for me it worked better than I would have thought if someone had just said "they were all aliens-" "suuuuure, because everything on Doctor Who is aliens-" "who sealed Set on Mars" and it's always a good thing when DW actually pulls off their bizarre set-ups.
The Bad: One thing I think I've said a lot over the years is how I don't like it when Doctor Who kills off a lot of it's one episode characters. Not because this is a family friendly show or such but because it always feels so pointless, the Doctor (and companions) rarely seem to be torn up over it and we never see how other people react to their friends and family mysteriously dying and that does frustrate me. I did feel like the story got a bit too overly complicated by the end but I guess that was the result of them needing to fill time.
The Audio/Visuals: Oh dear, we’ve entered that weird era of British television where the shows were at least partially shot on a higher frame rate, here it’s really obvious to me that it’s not the usual 24 frames per second when the characters move around quickly. Even though I would love for us to move to a higher frame rate in general it’s still unusual enough to look jarring and, considering most of the special effects look cheesy to start with and I’ve heard it’s even harder to make them look good at higher frame rates, yeaaaaah. Weirdly enough there are some moments when the special effects look really good but by and large you can tell that most of their props were made of foam and for some reason that detail pulls me out faster than almost anything else. Also, there are some shots where the video looked a little distorted, like they were shot with a lens that was slightly fisheye, and I don’t think that was on purpose. I could be crazy and imagining something that wasn’t there, and it could be a result of aging over the years, but that didn’t really help the show regardless.
Yep I really can't wait until I'm back near my libraries that have a pretty good selection of classic Doctor Who (/the time to browse and see just what Netflix has for streaming), the more I watch of it the more I like it, bit sad that by the time the next classic serial rolls around I won't have BBCA anymore so who knows how I'm going to watch it. Actually, at this rate I won't have BBCA for the finale of the current season, that's going to be frustrating considering how spoiler laden the internet will be.....
Doctor Who Classic: The Pyramid of Mars
Summary: While the Doctor and Sarah Jane were attempting to get back to UNIT after some adventuring they accidentally end up in what would become their headquarters a few decades too early, although knowing the Doctor and his relationship with UNIT that might have been on purpose. Also, knowing how adventure calls to the TARDIS it may also be no coincidence that they land in the middle of a plot to unseal an alien known as the Egyptian god Set from his prison on Mars.
The Good: This was a fairly solid serial, it shows something that I've been thinking about a lot lately which is how it seems like in Classic DW the companions were always having their own side adventures instead of just tagging along with the Doctor (like they seem to do most of the time in Nu Who) and I like that, even if it's still a bit hard to see the companions as fully fleshed out characters when you only see a single story with them. Especially since in Sarah Jane's case my first experience with her was in Nu Who when she was completely and fully an independent adult whose a bit more jaded than she is here, honestly that made for some odd dissonance but that's my problem, not the show's. Other than that, while the twist on Egyptian mythology didn't work 100% for me it worked better than I would have thought if someone had just said "they were all aliens-" "suuuuure, because everything on Doctor Who is aliens-" "who sealed Set on Mars" and it's always a good thing when DW actually pulls off their bizarre set-ups.
The Bad: One thing I think I've said a lot over the years is how I don't like it when Doctor Who kills off a lot of it's one episode characters. Not because this is a family friendly show or such but because it always feels so pointless, the Doctor (and companions) rarely seem to be torn up over it and we never see how other people react to their friends and family mysteriously dying and that does frustrate me. I did feel like the story got a bit too overly complicated by the end but I guess that was the result of them needing to fill time.
The Audio/Visuals: Oh dear, we’ve entered that weird era of British television where the shows were at least partially shot on a higher frame rate, here it’s really obvious to me that it’s not the usual 24 frames per second when the characters move around quickly. Even though I would love for us to move to a higher frame rate in general it’s still unusual enough to look jarring and, considering most of the special effects look cheesy to start with and I’ve heard it’s even harder to make them look good at higher frame rates, yeaaaaah. Weirdly enough there are some moments when the special effects look really good but by and large you can tell that most of their props were made of foam and for some reason that detail pulls me out faster than almost anything else. Also, there are some shots where the video looked a little distorted, like they were shot with a lens that was slightly fisheye, and I don’t think that was on purpose. I could be crazy and imagining something that wasn’t there, and it could be a result of aging over the years, but that didn’t really help the show regardless.
Yep I really can't wait until I'm back near my libraries that have a pretty good selection of classic Doctor Who (/the time to browse and see just what Netflix has for streaming), the more I watch of it the more I like it, bit sad that by the time the next classic serial rolls around I won't have BBCA anymore so who knows how I'm going to watch it. Actually, at this rate I won't have BBCA for the finale of the current season, that's going to be frustrating considering how spoiler laden the internet will be.....
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Webcomics that died and really shouldn't have
Wow, sorry for not updating yesterday, had some unexpected stress from school* which helped trigger a really nasty headache for me and I've noticed that I'm even snarkier then. And today's entry doesn't need any extra snarkiness because today dear readers, I talk about the dark side of webcomics. I've proven throughout the month that there are plenty of webcomics with good art, good writing, and keep a regular update schedule, even if they don't appeal to everyone. But there are plenty of webcomics out there that did have good art, good writing, and then suddenly, stopped. No word from the author why they stopped, no resolution, nada. Gah, so, here are the comics that were great, maybe even amazing, and then just died one day, anyone who wants to try them has been warned.
Chasing Rainbows
American manga fans probably know who the author/artist of this one is by the art style (Svetlana Chmakova for those who don't) and this was a webcomic she did from 2003-2006 (pretty fun to see how her art style has changed by now). The story starts with our heroine, Pam, agonizing over having to choose between two guys. A couple of pages later, it's revealed that whatever guy she doesn't choose is going to die, don't know how but he is. The rest of the comic dealt with some of the events that day (but not the accident itself, although what it's going to be is hinted at) and flashbacks showing how she knew each guy and what her relationship was with them. The story ends completely unexpectedly and hasn't updated in almost five years now, even though Svet said recently she was going to try and come off hiatus but she's working on a new project now so I'm not holding my breath.
Crowfeathers
Alright, the title mislead me here since it says Crowfeathers and other tales of the west so I figured that Crowfeathers was a short comic that was part of a collection and therefore a complete story. Nope, the author said they weren't happy with the story, planed on rebooting it and nothing has happened yet. It's true that the beginning of the story doesn't mesh that well with where the story has gone now but you could just re-do the opening (seen plenty of webcomics that have done that) instead of killing it completely. I really loved the mythology they were building up (sometimes I complain that authors don't get creative enough with the mythologies they draw on but this, combining traditional Christian imagery with Native American myths, is nothing but creative) and really loved the sephia toned art. Gah.
Fallen
I knew going into this one that it had suddenly stopped updating at some point (just glancing at the front page tells you that much) but I saw so many people link to it on their comic pages^ that I had to try it. And so one day I finally got into it and, as I last recall, the comic had just explained something big and was about to explain more stuff and then it stopped, I believe this is the point where I started cursing. Heck, checking the date on the last news article I realized it hadn't been updated in four years and wondered if the author/artist had died, you'd think that they would have been able to post something more recently. But then in the past month, when I was sorting through all my webcomics, I clicked on the LJ link on the side and discovered something, the creator of this comic is the same Yuko that draws for Johnny Wander! AFSADFA, so they never just said "hey guys, not working on this anymore, bye?" Found this out after I reviewed Johnny Wander and I still do like that comic but geeze, this is going to annoy me for a bit longer.
Kemet Kids
Another series with interesting mythology (Egyptian this time, made me a bit nostalgic for those few years in middle school I would come across something Egypt-related almost everyday) and aimed at younger readers (more MG than YA) but it was still an interesting read but I think it didn't have that many readers since the comic just stopped one day. I think it was still in the early stages too, it was still just introducing the villains, poor comic that died before it's time....
Resonance
Another comic where the reboot killed it and, unlike Crowfeathers I'm not sure why it even needed a reboot. As far as I can recall (since neither the comic nor tvtropes have a plot summary about this series) it involved a kid discovering he was actually a demon and trying to find out more about his past (since apparently his dad was a super-powerful demon who went beserk, also means we have plenty of people trying to kill our protagonist). There were some demon hunters and mages also introduced in the comic but I don't recall any major plot revelations in the 270-ish pages before it restarted, no big explanations in any case, and then the comic restarted and didn't get close to where the story had been before. Sigh, there's a reason I freak out these days when a comic artist announces that they want to re-do the story....
So there you have it folks, comics that went out with a whimper and never a word on why they did. Actually, recently I saw a comic (not one I read) where the author announced that they weren't going to do any more of it and then wrote down what the plot would've been otherwise. THAT is what you do, heck, if I ever get started on doing a comic myself I'm going to make sure that, in case of an accident, a friend of mine could post the rest of the script so the readers aren't left hanging forever, it just seems like a sensible and nice thing to do to me.
Also, since I don't have any webcomic reviews to post tomorrow, I'm just going to go ahead and start posting regular reviews again tomorrow anyway. It is a day early but since I already have some written, and especially since the winter anime season is about to end and I don't want to get as behind on those this time, I might as well. See y'all tomorrow with a Harry Potter review!
*on the list of "things you can't do in college," I wasn't aware that "major and minor in the same general department" was on that list, working on it though!
^I have since learned that many comic artists are super slow to update these pages which rather puzzles me.
Chasing Rainbows
American manga fans probably know who the author/artist of this one is by the art style (Svetlana Chmakova for those who don't) and this was a webcomic she did from 2003-2006 (pretty fun to see how her art style has changed by now). The story starts with our heroine, Pam, agonizing over having to choose between two guys. A couple of pages later, it's revealed that whatever guy she doesn't choose is going to die, don't know how but he is. The rest of the comic dealt with some of the events that day (but not the accident itself, although what it's going to be is hinted at) and flashbacks showing how she knew each guy and what her relationship was with them. The story ends completely unexpectedly and hasn't updated in almost five years now, even though Svet said recently she was going to try and come off hiatus but she's working on a new project now so I'm not holding my breath.
Crowfeathers
Alright, the title mislead me here since it says Crowfeathers and other tales of the west so I figured that Crowfeathers was a short comic that was part of a collection and therefore a complete story. Nope, the author said they weren't happy with the story, planed on rebooting it and nothing has happened yet. It's true that the beginning of the story doesn't mesh that well with where the story has gone now but you could just re-do the opening (seen plenty of webcomics that have done that) instead of killing it completely. I really loved the mythology they were building up (sometimes I complain that authors don't get creative enough with the mythologies they draw on but this, combining traditional Christian imagery with Native American myths, is nothing but creative) and really loved the sephia toned art. Gah.
Fallen
I knew going into this one that it had suddenly stopped updating at some point (just glancing at the front page tells you that much) but I saw so many people link to it on their comic pages^ that I had to try it. And so one day I finally got into it and, as I last recall, the comic had just explained something big and was about to explain more stuff and then it stopped, I believe this is the point where I started cursing. Heck, checking the date on the last news article I realized it hadn't been updated in four years and wondered if the author/artist had died, you'd think that they would have been able to post something more recently. But then in the past month, when I was sorting through all my webcomics, I clicked on the LJ link on the side and discovered something, the creator of this comic is the same Yuko that draws for Johnny Wander! AFSADFA, so they never just said "hey guys, not working on this anymore, bye?" Found this out after I reviewed Johnny Wander and I still do like that comic but geeze, this is going to annoy me for a bit longer.
Kemet Kids
Another series with interesting mythology (Egyptian this time, made me a bit nostalgic for those few years in middle school I would come across something Egypt-related almost everyday) and aimed at younger readers (more MG than YA) but it was still an interesting read but I think it didn't have that many readers since the comic just stopped one day. I think it was still in the early stages too, it was still just introducing the villains, poor comic that died before it's time....
Resonance
Another comic where the reboot killed it and, unlike Crowfeathers I'm not sure why it even needed a reboot. As far as I can recall (since neither the comic nor tvtropes have a plot summary about this series) it involved a kid discovering he was actually a demon and trying to find out more about his past (since apparently his dad was a super-powerful demon who went beserk, also means we have plenty of people trying to kill our protagonist). There were some demon hunters and mages also introduced in the comic but I don't recall any major plot revelations in the 270-ish pages before it restarted, no big explanations in any case, and then the comic restarted and didn't get close to where the story had been before. Sigh, there's a reason I freak out these days when a comic artist announces that they want to re-do the story....
So there you have it folks, comics that went out with a whimper and never a word on why they did. Actually, recently I saw a comic (not one I read) where the author announced that they weren't going to do any more of it and then wrote down what the plot would've been otherwise. THAT is what you do, heck, if I ever get started on doing a comic myself I'm going to make sure that, in case of an accident, a friend of mine could post the rest of the script so the readers aren't left hanging forever, it just seems like a sensible and nice thing to do to me.
Also, since I don't have any webcomic reviews to post tomorrow, I'm just going to go ahead and start posting regular reviews again tomorrow anyway. It is a day early but since I already have some written, and especially since the winter anime season is about to end and I don't want to get as behind on those this time, I might as well. See y'all tomorrow with a Harry Potter review!
*on the list of "things you can't do in college," I wasn't aware that "major and minor in the same general department" was on that list, working on it though!
^I have since learned that many comic artists are super slow to update these pages which rather puzzles me.
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