Book Review: Untold

Hmm, for the first book in this series I was able to get an ARC and I was able to get an ARC for this one as well, abet I wasn't able to actually get a hold of it until well after the book was released (moving makes directing/picking up mail rather challenging it turns out). And of course my backlog of books to review doesn't make this review anymore timely but, since I haven't yet had to use tumblr savior for the third book in the series (which I had to do for this book about four months before it came out) I think that means I'm not too late to talk about it yet!

Untold by Sarah Rees Brennan

Manga Review: Dark Fable of the Forest

Another Emanga title, I would say I was trying to get to some of the more dark fantasy/horror ones right around Halloween but since this one is a fantasy shojo title to start with it was already fairly high on my reading list. Too bad for me it ended up being more gothic than fantasy since I've never been a big fan of gothic works.

Dark Fable of the Forest by Yuriko Matsukawa

Summary: Alyssa is an American college student who is interning at a mystery magazine where 90% of the stories they investigate turn out to be bunk. However, that means that the last 10% are real and Alyssa's goal is to investigate those 10%. Although, just because you know a mystery is real doesn't mean you understand it at first, or that it wants to be understood at all.

The Good: I have to admit I like how the story set itself up as acknowledging that most supernatural mysteries out there are fake, even if all the stories it investigated turned out to be true, since it was just enough world building for the story to feel grounded and in a supernatural story you have to let the audience know what's possible and what's not or else it will feel like the writer just doesn't care about their story. While it was a bit unexpected I was happy that I got to review a full story again, even if the pacing was a bit shaky so it was a little hard to tell that the story was going to wrap up in just two volumes. 

The Bad: Not exactly a fault of e-manga but I wasn't able to download the first volume my normal way, as a PDF, so I had to do some kind of special download for the iPhone in an odd format and I really don't recommend it. I can't recall what the exact name of the format was but it didn't scale as nicely and turned the pages the wrong way, thank god emanga puts a link on all of their "Stop! You're reading the wrong way!" pages so you can skip to the real beginning, just download it as a PDF if you plan to read it on your phone guys. As for the actual story, it felt a little choppy to me, as if the manga-ka originally planned for it to be a longer, more episodic series and then decided to turn the first arc into the main one of the story. That could have just been a miss-impression on my part, feeling like the story didn't fit since I expected something else, but something about it didn't just click for me. I wasn't a fan of the fact that one character vanishes and another who looks just like them takes their place, since it wasn't even used for a romantic plot point I can't figure out for the life of me why the manga-ka did that (could she not think of a different character design?). The other characters weren't much more distinctive, some felt more like a collection of tropes than anything else and really everything just felt a bit bland. The story was nothing new, the characters weren't new, I just couldn't get excited about any of it and when the endgame is finally revealed I more or less rolled my eyes that another cliche had been introduced and wondered how much longer until the end.

The Art: Yep this is 1990s shojo alright. We have the impossibly long faces, somewhat shaggy hair on everyone, and what I think of as odd fashion. One thing that did catch my eye however was just how full each page was, not that each panel was especially detailed but there are a lot of panels on each page and practically none of them had plain white backgrounds. Sure some of them only had a prop or maybe some reaction lines or screentones in the background but it never felt like the manga-ka/their assistants got lazy and didn't fill it in*.



Sorry for the short, delayed review folks, a combination of real life stress (the same stress that has me going to a reduced blogging schedule) and a really persistent head cold kept delaying this. Well, that and as you can tell, this was just so bland that in the end there's not much to say. I'm not a big fan of gothic stories to start with and this story just wasn't interesting to me at all. For fans of gothic sort-of-romances however both volumes are available on emanga.com and other online retailers and there is no print version as of this time.


*although I do keep meaning to pull a whole bunch of shojo manga from the past four decades and compare the usage of white space vs screentones, I feel like this is actually another stylistic choice which dates rather clearly.....

Summer 2013 Anime Round-Up

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

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

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


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

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


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

Eccentric Family is streaming on crunchyroll.


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

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


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

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


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

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


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

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


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

Servant x Service is streaming on crunchyroll and unlicensed.


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

Silver Spoon remains unlicensed but it is streaming on crunchyroll.


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

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


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

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

Book Review: Unspoken

Sorry this is late everyone, basically the last week of November has turned into "No Sleep November " (okay there is sleep, just never enough) because of all the projects I have which are more important than this and, sadly, involve less effort/creativity/focus than putting together a review does. So there are likely going to be weird outages/delays over here until around the 14th when I'm done, blaurgh.

SO, this was one of the books I was most looking forward to in 2012 based on the excerpts (and the two short prequels I read, names and places to find them escape at the moment, one of which could actually be considered a spoiler, I hadn't expected something there to have been revealed until much later, clearly SRB gets the idea of  "expect your readers will figure out the plot twists and don't wait until much later to reveal them") and was quite happy that I didn't have to wait months and months to get a hold of it. 

Unspoken by Sarah Rees Brennan

Summary: While most people consider Sorry-in-the-Vale to be your typical, quiet English hamlet Kami is convinced that there are mysteries that lurk below the surface. After all, the town has an absent, powerful family of whom the rest of the town only speaks of in whispers and there has to be a reason for that. But the Lynburns are about to suddenly return and soon enough Kami will have a chance to find out how right or wrong she is. That is, if anyone can take her seriously, she is the girl after all who runs around telling people about her imaginary friend from America.

The Good: SRB has said that Veronica Mars (the character from the show of the same name) was an inspiration here and I can see it easily. Kami is in no way a copy of Veronica, and different in some ways, but they are cut from the same cloth of adventurous, brash, clever, and all around fun to watch teen sleuths and I really liked her (even though it took a little while to stop wincing at her name). The other characters were great too, one complaint I have about a lot of fiction is how the main character has only one or two close friends (one or both of which will double as love interests) which generally isn't how real life is and here Kami has a whole posse of people who get fleshed out and I really liked reading about them as well and can't wait to read about all of them in the next book.

The Bad: Apparently a good part of the internet raged over the ending, once you get about half way through and know that fact then you can easily guess what happens, and I am frustrated but not for nearly the same reason most people are. I feel like a character made a sudden, 180 degree change in character either to move the plot forward or did it as a ploy to keep other characters safe, even though everyone has been working together up until that point. I imagine that there will be an explanation in the next installment but it still feels rather forced to me. 


There's not much else for me to say except yes, I really enjoyed this book, plan on buying a copy (I got an ARC from Random Buzzers and I entered a number of contests before to try and get a copy) and I may or may not have already shoved this book at one of my step-sisters (along with Book of Blood and Shadows) and am eagerly awaiting her verdict on it....

Book Review: Death Watch

I found myself in an awkward position this summer, I had checked out so many books that I had used up all my renewals for three of them which were due back in a week and I really wanted to read all of them. And that is why I plowed through 1100 pages in just under seven days, which is more than I ever had to do in a week in any of my English classes (I have a flatemate who is an English major who sometimes has 100 pages of reading a night but even that would be a few hundred less than what I did, although I had more hours in the day to pull this off) and I am never going to try and pull that stunt again. It did have one good side effect though, I went through the biggest book first (which was IIRC 500-600 pages) and if it wasn't for that time limit I don't think I would have picked up another book so soon afterwards.


Death Watch by Ari Berk

Summary: Growing up Silas Umber always thought his father was a mortician, someone who prepared the dead for burial, not someone who dealt with the dead who were a bit restless. He only finds out this fact after his father doesn't come back one night and learns that he now has to take up his father's job and move back to the families ancestral home in the city of Lichport where the dead are as big a part of the town as the living.  

The Good: I don't come across many stories in young adult literature that could be labeled as gothic (stories with gothic and supernatural elements? Sure, but those are usually mixed genre books and gothic is the secondary genre) so it was a change of pace from what I usually read (sadly though I don't really like gothic stories and this one reminded me why, mostly because of the tropes used which I just don't care for). The story also had a lot of details and, while it wraps up quite nicely and could work as a stand alone, I can see where they left room for future stories, although right now I don't see what new element they could introduce that could span another 1000 pages. 

The Bad: For a book that was over 500 pages long, not much really happened and it could have been paced much more briskly and been at least 50 pages shorter for it. While most of the little details and subplots it introduced were used by the end there was one glaring omission, Silas' sorta-kinda love interest Beau doesn't do anything the entire book and then leaves the story quite abruptly. Given that this is a trilogy I suspect she'll be back later but it all felt rather awkward. Awkward is also a good word to describe Silas' characterization, at times he seems like your average, college-aged guy and at other times he came off rather robotic. I think that shift was intentional to show Silas transitioning from being a kid to taking up the mantle of the Undertaker but it was done in a really jerky manner.


So nope, not the book for me, will not be tracking down it's sequels whenever they come out and I'm reminded of why I don't normally like gothic genre stories. Then again, I read another book lately which could be called a gothic and I liked it much better, maybe because the plot moved faster in that one.... 

Webcomic Review Month 2012: The Becoming, Bird Boy

This year I had a bit of an odd problem that I kept planning on reviewing some webcomics, looking at my list and going "yeah that's a good number of comics for one day" and then the comics finished! I saw a lot more shorter comics this year than I did the previous year and I'm not sure if that's a trend or just luck on my part. In any case, here we have one comic that it's for the long haul and another that's just starting up so if you like your comics on-going and long then you should be in luck!
Last year's B review.
 

The Becoming Written by J. Alan Shelton and Illustrated by Douang Khamsitthisack

 In the isolated city of Bellac the air is thick with politics from both the government and the all-powerful church as each side seeks to outmanuver the other side to achieve their own goals. The newly orphaned Oscar LeBeau seems to be caught up in the thick of it as he and the woman who killed his father, Jeannine Delacroix, discover there are even more secrets than either of them would have guessed.

I hate to say this but this is a comic that doesn't work that well updating one page at a time on a weekly basis. There has been at least one time, probably more, when I've considered dropping this comic, gone back through to re-read it to give it one last chance, and then suddenly all the stuff that was confusing me made sense. There are just enough characters and plotlines, especially since there is at least one spin-off story providing more backstory, to make things confusing yet when you read it in chunks it's quite interesting. The art is also quite pretty, it has steampunk aesthetics without feeling gimmicky and it's surprisingly colorful. So I do recommend the comic and maybe other people, ones who aren't following as many comics as I do at once, will find it easier to remember all the plot threads.

Bird Boy by Annie Szabla

Bali is a young boy who wishes that he could be of more use to his tribe, or at least be taken more seriously but so far he seems to have only caused even more trouble for his tribe by finding an ancient sword and accidently unleashing a monster on them.

I debated whether or not to review this comic this year or if I should save it for next but in the end it was the art that won me over since the story already has a gorgeous and a distinct style. There's not much to say about the plot at this point, the story is under 30 pages but I really liked Szabla's other (sadly unfinished & doesn't seem to be on the internet anymore) work Cealdian so right now I remain confident that the story should be solid as well.
 

First Impressions: Winter 2011

No regular review tonight but, partially to help me build up a buffer again, I decided to post some quick first impressions on the new 2011 winter anime. It's not a bad season for anime actually, winter is usually the weakest season for me (I think last year I was just following Durarara! and Tegami Bachi) but this year I've I'm following six shows and four of them are new ones. So, synopsis taken from ANN/MAL (usually I write my own summaries but, since I've only seen one/two episodes I can't do that yet) and now in alphabetical order:

Fractale (noitaminA)

"The story takes place in an island, where a "Fractale System" is beginning to collapse. One day, Clain finds an injured girl called Phryne under a cliff. She disappears leaving a pendant. Crane sets out for a journey with the girl-shaped avatar Nessa to look for Phryne and discovers the secret of the Fractale System."
Only seen one episode of this so far but I can say that the island mentioned appears to be Ireland which is interesting (I honestly can't think of any other anime set in Ireland and several Irish anime fans have said that it's definetly the setting for sure). The plot of the anime didn't grab me to start with (and I have accidentally gotten into an argument with people on the internet whether it was weird or not that Phyrne strips in the first episode...) but the setting seems part Laputa with a bit of Summer Wars thrown in and that has me interested. I love a show where I don't know the plot and can speculate about it so, unless it turns out to be super crappy, I'm sticking with Fractale. For US/Canada viewers it's streaming at Funimation's site/youtube/hulu.

Gosick 

 "GOSICK takes place in 1924 in a small, made-up European country of Sauville. The story centers on Kazuya Kujo, the third son of a Japanese Imperial soldier, who is a transfer student to St. Marguerite Academy, where urban legends and horror stories are all the rage. There he meets Victorique, a mysterious yet beautiful and brilliant girl who never comes to class and spends her days reading the entire content of the library or solving mysteries that even detectives can't solve."
  So far this anime hasn't lived up to my expectations of it sadly. The mysteries in both episodes so far have been ridiculsy easy to solve (I figured out the solution before the situation was fully explained) and for a mystery series that's really bad (I'm told it gets better but at this point I'd really hate to see it get worse). None of the lovely 1920s fashion/architecture so far that I was hoping for (outside of the lovely looking opening song) and I wonder what's the point in even setting the series in the 20s if the characters are still acting like it's the Victorian era. It is streaming on crunchyroll (NA/SA, UK, Africa, part of Europe, ME, Malaysia and the Philippines) and I do have lower standards for what I'll watch legally streamed vs what I'll watch that's fansubbed, so for the moment I'm going to get the most out of my CR trial and keep watching.


Level E

"Tsutsui Yukitaka is a freshman who has finally convinced his parents that he is ready to live on his own. When he arrives at his new apartment, he is surprised to find that someone has arrived before him; A young man who claims that he is an alien and that he is suffering from amnesia."
Despite predating Men in Black by a few years, that and Birdy the Mighty: Decode are the most similar titles I can think of except for the fact that this doesn't involve any alien fighting so far. It's a comedy dealing with the fact that there are dozens of alien species living on Earth and the only people who don't know are the humans. I'm loving the humor so far (which ends up being a two man routine between Yukitaka and Prince, with Prince being far stranger than any of the characters guess) so this is a keeper for me! It's streaming on crunchyroll in the Americas, Western Europe, South Africa, and Australia/New Zealand.

Puella Magi Madoka Magica/Mahou Shojo Madoka Magica

 "Beloved family, good friend, laughs and cries. Just an ordinary life that Kaname Madoka, a second grade student of Mitakihara City Middle School, has lived on. One day, a mysterious encounter has come to her. Was that encounter a chance, or inevitable? She still don't know. An encounter that cause her fate to change, that is a beginning of new magical girl story."
I do like a number of magical girl series and I do like the genre, just not this one. When the story was in dark-what-the-heck-is-going-on mode (complete with trippy imagery!) it was fun but the everyday life parts of the story were rather boring. The show certainly has potential to be really creepy and dark but I'm not that fond of shows by Shaft and since people are calling this the next Nanoha (which I didn't like, side note, never marathon that entire show in one day) for now it's a pass. But I will be keeping an eye on the reviews to see if it ends up being good after all.


Wandering Son (noitaminA)

"Shuicihi Nitori appears to be a shy and quiet preteen boy, when he transfers to a new school he quickly makes friends with the tomboyish Yoshino Takatsuki who sits next to him. It soon becomes apparent that both Shucihi and Yoshino are more than simply a sensitive boy and masculine girl, they both are transgendered. Together they decide to take the first steps toward becoming the people they want to be."
Dear Western YA, why can't you be this awesome? When I think of everything I've read/seen I'm hard pressed to think of more than ten transsexual characters and most of them have been side characters in anime*.  So when I heard this was being made into an anime (and the story is by the same manga-ka as Aoi Hana which I adored) I was pretty excited. The story is starting in medias res (having skipped the first 33 chapters actually) but from all the summaries I've read I haven't felt lost yet but don't feel connected yet either. Not worried about that however, usually it takes a few episodes for an anime to click with me and I can't wait for more! Streaming on crunchyroll in NA, UK, AU/NZ, Brazil, and parts of Europe.



Yumekui Merry

"Ten years ago Fujiwara noticed he had a power to see multicolored auras surrounding the person's body. Ever since then he's been having a weird dream about a war with cats. Then one day a mysterious girl falls on top of him..."I really wanted to like this anime, the premise sounds cool and Merry reminds me a lot of Alice from Pandora Hearts (which I love). However, between the first episode and the few chapters of the manga I read, it's just not as cool as I hoped for. Also, this show isn't being streamed and I try to watch fansubs only when the show is amazing and I'll buy it for sure once it's licensed. Like Madoka, I'll keep an eye on the review but ultimately, if it does turn out to be a good show I'm sure it'll be licensed and I'll check it out that way instead.




In addition to those four, I'm also still following Star Driver (still fabulous and I haven't had that much fun speculating about a show in a long time) and Letter Bee/Tegami Bachi Reverse (which has me a little worried now that we seem to be getting into anime original territory to set up an anime original ending, also realized that the scanlations fell behind and looked up the RAWS only to discover that what the manga is doing is way cooler). So expect to see reviews for all of those except Gosick sometime in April! Actually, speaking of end of the season anime reviews, my next anime review is the first end of the fall season anime review I have and I still have a ton more reviews to put up. At this rate I'm going to be putting up a review a day until Feburary so look forward to it!






*Let's see, to name them all, the protagonist's sibling in the book Luna, side character in Tamora Pierce's Bloodhound, a number of sides and one main in Satoshi Kon's Millennium Actress, a couple of side characters in the anime Shangri-La, two mains in the webcomic Khaos Komic, and that's it. Might be able to come up with one or two later but since it took three mediums for me to come up with that many I think my point is made.