Webcomic Review: Erstwhile

I may be a week off from my usual schedule now but I still wanted to take the time and highlight the just-ended Erstwhile before it holds the kickstarter for it's third and final volume next month. I have the first volume from the very first kickstarter and I'm still deciding if I want to pledge for another volume or not (it's a matter of "will I reread this?") but don't think that means I didn't like this anthology, on the contrary this is the most consistently well-drawn and well-told anthology I've ever come across.

Esrtwhile by Gina Biggs, Louisa Roy, and Elle Skinner

TV Series Review: Once Upon A Time (seasons 2)

While I've grown used to having 3/4ths of my anime ending in the same week I was a bit thrown when I realized that all three of the regular, American/British live action shows I was watching all ended the same week so bear with me for a few weeks guys as I sort them out. So, as per my usual strategy, first up is the first to end which was the second season of Once Upon A Time which I was super pumped up for when it started. The first season started weak but got better and ended really strongly and I was pretty curious to see where it was going next which are the best feelings to have when going into a new show/new seasons of a show. Also, something that seems to be happening more and more over here, I'll try to keep the bulk of the review as spoiler free as possible but if I really need to talk about something spoilerly in detail I'll do so in a footnote so read those at your own risk.



Once Upon A Time

Summary: Continuing from where the first season left off, Storybrooke is a little town in Maine entirely populated by fairy tale characters when their land was cursed and they were flung to Earth. For 28 long years nothing changed and they remembered nothing, until Emma, the daughter of the king and queen and the promised savior, returned and somehow lifted the curse. But the characters are confused why they are still in Maine and even though they have their memories back there are still dangers lurking around.

The Good: The show was able to flesh out a few characters which it didn't have a chance to in the first season and I liked that, rounder characters are always preferable to flat ones. And it was nice to see just how the Enchanted Forest has fared over the years, that wasn't something I expected to see nor was it something I especially wanted to see but it cleared up a few questions before I even had them which is a good thing. Oh and the show cleared up a lot of things about Henry's father, although it really had to work to make some things line up, but when it's all said and done I'm actually okay with what they came up with. Honestly it's a little hard for me to be specific for what I liked this season not because it's spoilerly but because most of this happened fairly early on in the run which was back in October. I know there are reasons for why American tv shows have such weird breaks but man it makes it harder to remember specific details when everything is all said and done. 

The Bad: Here's the non-spoilerely version, I disliked Regina's character arc*. In fact, I disliked an awful lot of things about this season. I disliked the fact that it seems like the writers are prolonging the character's stay in Maine (I'm guessing now that if the cast was to ever get back to their original world for good then the story would be over) with what feel like really contrived reasons. I like that the side cast has gotten a bit more fleshed out, I don't like how the core cast is left alone for episodes at a time, I liked this show because I liked the growing dynamic between Emma and Regina, don't cut that out! Also, guys there's a limit to how much backstory any individual character can have. Yes a lot of them have lived grand and exciting lives but you can't expect me to buy that they spent all their time having adventures of sort which have a clear influence on who they are now, somehow that breaks my suspension of disbelief even faster than the CGI does. Oh and they seemed to be trying to introduce some sort of Earth based, anti-magic agency in the last few episodes which came out of nowhere and was so sloppy I wasn't even sure that's what they meant until I talked with a few friends and found that they had come to the same conclusion I did.

The Audio/Visuals: I'm of two minds here. On the one hand, the wardrobe/costuming on this show is fantastic and I love a lot of what they do. On the other hand, it seems like they spent the show's entire budget on costumes and had to settle for less than polished CGI. I know that in this day and age, and considering that there have been fantasy movies with terrific special effects lately, but when it looks like you green-screened the actors in front of a fairly simple background for no reason then I'm going to get exasperated.


So I'm giving this just 2.5 out of 5 stars and I'm jumping ship now since, if the last few minutes meant what I think they did, we're about to get wibby-wobbly timey-wimey and that reminded me that this shares several important staff with Lost which is a phrase that fills me with trepidation. I do have a number of friends who plan on still watching the show so if they say that it fixes the problems I had then great, I'll come back. Until then however I'm going to spend my time watching tv shows that I'll hopefully enjoy more.


*and now for the spoilerly version, while I was initially hesitant to see her try and become good, considering how evil she's been, the idea grew on me and I felt like as soon as I started liking it the writers dropped that idea and instead had her revert back to her evil ways. I maintain that it was illogical for her to go and help her mother, considering how much pain her mother had caused for her and what she had done to Cora as retaliation, and just could not get behind that mini-arc. Finally, despite the fact that Regina hadn't changed by the end of the series, and had in some ways become worse since she showed that she couldn't really change, the writers still had her pull the line "I know I'm bad but I really tried to change" which had me wanting to flip tables into walls, when you're that inconsistent about character development trying to evoke sympathy for it seems like the dumbest thing you can do. 

Movie Review: Rise of the Guardians

When I initially heard about this project I wasn't that interested in when it was announced, heard a bit more about it and was interested, once it came out I noticed that people were only talking about the art/how dreamy the characters were (which, while not necessarily a bad sign, isn't usually a good sign about the art), and then decided to see it with a friend once I was done with finals. So here I am now, my friend and I were actually the only ones in the theater when we saw this so we were free to snark all we wanted (which turned out to be a good thing since there was a lot of snarking....)


Rise of the Guardians

Summary: Santa Claus (North), the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, and the Sandman are the four guardians of childhood but with the Boogeyman (Pitch) growing stronger and stronger the mysterious Man in the Moon tells them that there is now a fifth guardian, Jack Frost. Jack is as confused as the rest of them, he doesn't remember his past and nobody believes in him so nobody can see him, how in the world is he supposed to help save it?

The Good: There was a lot of decent to amusing humor in this film (while it felt like it was a little much at times it didn't feel nearly as forced as say the humor in Brave did) and it was a new and interesting take on characters like the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny. The film looked great, more on the later, and if we're calling it a Christmas movie (I'm not sure since it's actually set right around Easter) it's one of the best Christmas movies I've seen, normally I can't stand that little genre. The plot, while not complicated, did have some good bones to it, but it was buried under a lot of not so good stuff....    

The Bad: I saw some people say that if you see this movie you see it for the art not the plot, that I think was the understatement because holey moley, my friend and I were convinced that this movie went through multiple directors because of how all over the place it is (which isn't the case so I'm more confused). The action scenes, while cool looking (I've seen some people call it the kiddie version of The Avengers) go on way too long, some of them probably could have been cut altogether, and the final battle really didn't make that much sense. Afterwards I went online to compare the movie to the original books it was based on (which it turns out are set 200 years earlier) and man I wish they had kept some of the stuff about the characters in there, they had some rather interesting backstories. And speaking of characters, Jack Frost is as flat a main character you can get. I hardly know what his personality is like (other than "mischievous" and really he barely does anything like that), no wonder he's confused about being made a guardian, I'm confused too. Confused sums up my feelings on this whole movie, how in the world was this supposed to work as a cohesive story with so little exposition (either told or shown)?

The Audio: Sooo, my friend and were I debating who had the worse accent, North or the Easter Bunny, and it turns out that Hugh Jackman (an actual Australian) voices the Easter Bunny so I guess my friend won (Alec Baldwin apparently can't do a very good Russian accent, if I didn't know he was supposed to be Russian I wouldn't have been able to guess). Jack sounds much too old but oddly enough I got used to his voice rather fast, Pitch's voice seemed a bit off though (Tooth for the record sounded just fine from the get go). Didn't really pay attention to the soundtrack that much, I was too distracted by the pretty.

The Visuals: Yes this movie looks really great, apparently Dreamworks had to come up with new software for all of the sand special effects (which I think they even released as freeware in hopes that the rest of the industry will use it as well) and honestly the only time I thought it looked weird was North's beard. Specifically, it didn't look like it was growing out of his chin but rather pasted on, and out of an hour and a half long movie that's my only compliant which is rather fantastic.


In the end I give this movie 2.5 stars out of 5 and don't plan on seeing it again (unless it's a fancut where they cut down all the action scenes, god know how short the movie will be at that point then). So, I'm in a bit of an awkward position since the rest of the internet seems to adore this film and it's no secret that it hasn't made nearly the money Dreamworks was banking on and at this point the planned sequels may easily fall through (see, cutting down those action scenes would have helped in multiple ways!). I'm seeing a lot of people saying to see it anyway because of the potential in the film but did I see potential? Potential is what I see in a webcomic where there's one author-artist who may or may not have a critique partner who is fumbling along learning how to write, edit, and illustrated at the same time. But when you have a project with tons of people involved, enough people that no one person has to do all these things and where there are people to say "no this isn't quite right, let's rethink this" then I don't want to see potential, I want to see the actual thing. And I didn't really see potential here, I saw a very confused movie which doesn't quite work and, well, I can't really recommend it, sorry folks.