Movie Review: Hot Fuzz

Back during the summer I became a bit curious about seeing the film The World's End and realized that while I'd seen Shaun of the Dead I hadn't actually seen Hot Fuzz, writer-director Edgar Wright's other really well known film (my mother has no idea how she let that happen). To be clear, yes I know that these films have nothing to do with each other and you can enjoy one without having seen the others, however I knew it was going to be a while before I had a chance to see The World's End so why not watch this one first? I know this would all make a lot more sense if I had gotten to it a few months earlier but I honestly did forget until I caught sight of the DVD at one of the local libraries, probably why I hadn't thought to watch it earlier in the first place.

Hot Fuzz

Book Review: Girl of Nightmares

Sorry that these reviews are up a bit later, had a few wrinkles with my schedule this week and I doubt that I'll be able to get tomorrow's review up on time so I'm going to apologize for that in advance as well. Other than that, I read Anna Dressed in Blood within the past year and thought it was a good book even with I wasn't completely thrilled with the ending, partially since I wasn't sure if the book had a sequel. As it turns out, yes it does and that both helps and hurts it.

Girl of Nightmares by Kendare Blake

Summary: Sometime has passed since Anna sacrificed herself to help kill the ghost that had attached itself to Cas's ghost killing blade and he has a bad feeling about it. He's plagued by nightmares and apparitions of her undergoing torture in the afterlife and wants to save her but there's still so much he doesn't know that it's time to find the people do who, the shadowing organization who made his knife and made his family into the people who wield it.

The Good: This is an odd detail but, even though it was a bit frustrating when Thomas and Carmel were fighting with each other (since you just know they'll get back together, plus it doesn't feel like long since I read the first book so it feels like the characters haven't even been together that long), I still appreciated the fact that they seemed to have a rather normal teenaged relationship with some ups and downs. Quite honestly those two were my favorite part of this book, I liked how they made Cas open up more and even came along with some of the ghost hunting, as dangerous as it might be, since I always prefer stories where you have several characters interacting and bouncing off of each other rather than just one on their own

The Bad: To get to the heart of the manner, I don't think this story needed to be told over two books. I felt like a lot of the second book just felt like fluff, I wasn't that interested in the order that created Cas's knife, couldn't exactly figure out how Blake was trying to write new character Jestine (I think she was going for a younger/morally ambiguous character, which would be hard to portray but I still wish it was done better), and then when the story finally got to where Anna was I didn't quite follow what was going on. Perhaps I was just tired or in a rush when I read it, I don't remember, but I do remember just feeling confused about what was going on and didn't like how everything ended for Anna. I wish the story had instead just ended in Anna and left it at that, albeit slightly differently so that it had been a real ending not the To Be Continued one it actually has. 


For this book I'll give it a 3 out of 5 since even though I disliked it it was written perfectly fine and fans of horror will still enjoy it (is there much YA horror out there? I don't see a lot but I'm not looking for it and I'm not sure if that's why then). I am still a bit interested in Blake's latest book regardless of this one, hopefully that one will be a little more to my tastes. 

Book Review: Anne Dressed in Blood

SO, last summer I read a book called Death Watch, didn't really like it (the pacing just dragged) and completely unrelated to not liking it I just had a nagging feeling in the back of my mind that this was a lot different from what I was expecting. And you guys remember how last week in my Chime review I said that normally when I read a book and it's completely different from what I thought I had heard about it that means I confused it with another book? That was foreshadowing for this review actually, apparently I confused Death Watch with this book. In my defense, kid comes to new town having taken up the mantle of his father which involves dealing with malevolent ghosts and his mother seems to be connected and there's a dead girl as the love interest? That's enough specific detail to get me mixed up easily, especially considered how little information a blurb/jacket copy gives about a book anyway (personally I think that a lot of jacket copy is crap but that's a rant for another time).


Anna Dressed In Blood by Kendare Blake

Summary: Cas, like his father before him, kills the ghosts that linger around and cause trouble for the living which involves a lot of moving around and a fair amount of danger. So when he gets a tip about a particularly vicious ghost he and his mother head on up to Canada to deal with her and find a much thornier problem than they were expecting.

The Good: I had an amusing thought reading this book, normally the way that an urban fantasy/supernatural YA book plays out is that you have a girl in town, an ordinary girl, and then a strange guy comes to town and she's dragged into adventure. This book is actually told from the point of view of said guy, which has been done before I'm sure but I can't think of any titles off the top of my head, which has the real benefit of making Cas seem, well, not like an ass and he comes off as a fairly likable and sympathetic main character. The side characters also come off pretty favorably once the story gets moving along, I was really surprised at how sympathetic Anna came off considering, well, just look at the title.

The Bad: Originally I was going to say "I really hope this book has a sequel since it has just enough loose ends that it really needs one" but I actually found a cover for what I assume is the sequel (Girl of Nightmares I believe is the title) when getting the cover for the review so nevermind! I am a little worried that there won't be enough material for another book (I'm also seeing this labled as the the Anna Series and, considering you usually have more than two books in a series, usually anyway, I have no idea how there's enough material left for two books) since Anna's backstory is explained, Cas's backstory is explained, there's a good chance he'll be elsewhere which means new side characters, considering how solid this book was I'd hate to see (quote unquote) ruined by a less-than-stellar follow-up, crossing my fingers that this next one is good!


So 3.5 out of 5 stars for this one, don't think I'll reread it so I probably won't buy it but I'll certainly recommend it to people who like their supernatural YA to have some horror in it (which I don't know if there's simply less of or if I don't run into it as much, probably both). Getting closer to being back on schedule folks, just bear with me until March and then it all changes again!

Anime Review: Dusk Maiden of Amnesia

Another one of Sentai's many pick-ups, I was intrigued by the premise where I heard was something along the lines "high schoolers in a paranormal club solve mysteries that eventually connect to who killed their ghostly president." The story doesn't quite play out like that but I guess I should just get to the review to talk about that!

Dusk Maiden of Amnesia (Tasogare Otome X Amnesia)

Summary: Niiya Teichi never expected to run into a ghost in the old school building, much less for that ghost to develop a crush on him and for him to feel something for her as well. But Yuuko isn't just a ghost, with few memories of her past and rumors flying everywhere Teichi and the other members of the Paranormal Investigation Club soon realize that there was something sinister behind her death, something that is connected to the few, true ghost stories the school has.

The Good: I had to rewatch a little bit of the show, to check the lyrics for the songs, and I have to say the show started foreshadowing much earlier than I thought that there was something decidedly sinister behind Yuuko's death and I must give them credit for that. The show actually managed to tie in almost all of the urban legends that the club comes across in the end and Yuuko's story is easily the strongest part of the show. And I really did like the opening episode which showed the story both from the point of view of Teichi and from the point of view of the one character who can't see Yuuko, I wish the series had had a bit more humor like that.

The Bad: I really didn't like the early episodes that didn't focus on the mystery surrounding Yuuko, because that was the central point of the show and anything that doesn't contribute to that idea in one way or another is filler, and I was about to drop the show which I very rarely do. If one was to cut most of the episodes that didn't contribute to the plot then you don't have nearly enough material for a full length series, it's only 12 episodes to start with, and sadly this wasn't an anime original series, this was an adaptation based off of a manga and you can't cut that much of a series out. The fanservice was repetitive and awkward as someone who is not turned on by boobies (and I certainly wasn't expecting it from promo shots like the one above), only three characters in the entire series receive character development and I disliked the ending as well. In the end, this wasn't the show I was expecting and sadly it wasn't the kind of show I like either.

The Audio: It's been a little while since I've seen an opening or ending that is lip-synced to a character on screen and both of the ones here were shot more like they were music videos for Yuuko than a normal opening and closing. I thought that made them a bit more interesting (although I thought that for the one ending where Yuuko was removed from all the shots it would have worked a little better if they had used the instrumental version of the song instead), although the song lyrics I saw really didn't work. It's true that the stream from The Anime Network I saw the opening lyrics were horribly out of sync which might not have helped, and the ending seemed average and nothing from the rest of the soundtrack stood out to me either.

The Visuals: Since the show is a little dull in parts, and doesn't feel very original either, someone on the production committee must've said "you know what this series needs? ARTSY VISUALS!" and that's what happened. It's not as "artsy" looking as say, a show from Studio Shaft might be (Bakemonogatari, Madoka Magica) but it certainly stands out from other shows in the spring season with it's use of dramatic lighting, composition, and interesting color choices. Overall though I found the artsy bits to be rather, well, amateur, like a newly graduated graphic designer had decided that they had to alter everything they could get their hands on to make it more dynamic. I do like shows that have interesting imagery and symbolism in them (see Revolutionary Girl Utena) but here I felt like the visuals were trying to compromise for an average plot and that just annoyed me.

So, no buy from me but for those who are curious you can check out the show over on Crunchyroll or over on The Anime Network (since they're using the hulu player you can probably go straight to hulu and find it as well). I can't see this one doing well enough to merit a dub/BR but who knows, still wouldn't change my opinion on it at all in the end.   

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.
 

Comic Review: Brain Camp

Sorry that this one is going up so late and that it's a bit short, no excuse for the former but I've just burned part of my hands for the second time in the week so I really don't want to do tons and tons of typing. This is a pretty quick book anyway so there isn't tons and tons for me to type, found it at the local library and recognized the title since I had seen Faith Erin Hicks, who did the art, talk about it (currently reading her Friends with Boys and Adventures of Superhero Girl comics) and I read The War at Ellsmere sometime last year (I believe I have an unflattering review of that lying around here somewhere but would rather not dig it up) so I decided that I should give this book a whirl as well.

Brain camp by Susan Kim, Laurence Klavan, and Faith Erin Hicks

Summary: Neither Jenna nor Lucas are the apple of their parents' eyes and so when their parents get the chances to send their kids to Camp Fielding, an exclusive summer camp which seems to turn average kids into geniuses, they leap at the chance and deposit the protesting teens there. Neither of them can stand the camp, or each other, but quickly realize that the camp is more shady than it already seems and that some truly horrific events are going on behind the scenes.

The Good: I'm always amused at what settings horror writers will use next and I can see the logic in using a summer camp, some of them are pretty horrific on their own. The horror bits were well done, they came across as strange and scary and the strangeness made it even creepier without coming off as, pardon the pun, camp.

The Bad: The pacing seemed just a bit off here, everything flowed much too quickly, I ended up reading the whole book in just about half and hour because of it’s fast pace, so the story never had anytime to really sink in. Of course that might have been for the best, all of the adults are flat, one-dimensional characters (a common problem with children’s stories, you have to keep the adults from getting in the way of the plot so why not make them idiots?) and the romance that sprung up really felt unexpected to me. I should’ve expected romance given the kinds of characters and age group the story was aimed at but when categories, not the plot itself, explain the story better then you have a problem.

The Art: As I said earlier, I picked up this book because of Faith Erin Hick’s name on it so the art was as I expected. It was solid and worked well, the characters looked different, emoted, and the backgrounds were well drawn, the art was a good fit for the book.

I was a bit disappointed with this book overall, I was just expecting a bit more out of it overall. Oh well, it is a short book and it's much harder to great something really great and grand in a shorter space .

 

Winter 2012 Anime Reviews

So it's that time again, a new season of anime has started and there's all sorts of stuff to try out. Only one post from me this time since, as is usual for winter seasons, there isn't a ton of stuff that interests me but there are still a few shows that caught my eye. I've seen the first one or two episodes of each series, for once all of these shows are legally being simulcast so I might be a few days behind some of them, but normally my opinion doesn't change too radically from my early impressions so onto the mini-reviews!

Ano Natsu de Matteru (Waiting in the Summer): High school student Kirishima Kaito is expecting to have a laid back summer shooting a movie with friends but then he apparently gets crushed by an alien space ship. Oops. So far he hasn’t remembered that detail but since the offending alien, and the one responsible for bringing him back, has now transferred to his school, agreed to help out with the movie and somehow moved in with him while his sister leaves for the summer, it might not be so quiet after all. Ignoring how much of that sounds like Birdy the Mighty Decode (since there have been plenty of shows with a similar arrangement of tropes) I was surprised at how much I liked this one. It took some classic romantic tropes, such as the mysterious and hot new transfer student moving in, and actually played around with them and made them funny again. Sure there were still some facepalm worthy moments when things became too clichéd but so far I think the writers stand at good chance at making this a fun little show.

Ano Natsu is streaming on Crunchyroll and has been licensed by Section 23

Another:26 years ago, a talented student who was beloved by everyone died. Yet her classmates pretended that she was still alive up to graduation and there seems to be even more to the story than that. Fast forward to 1998 and Kouichi Sakakibara has moved to the small town of Yomiyama and will be attending the same middle school while his father is off researching in India. He spends some time in a hospital first however and from there the story starts creating an atmosphere that “not everything is as it seems!” and by creating atmosphere I mean beating you over the head with all the shots of people looking uncomfortable, shots that drag out way too long with “creepy sounds” played, and too many close-ups of people’s eyes dilating dramatically. The show does sound interesting and a like a lot of it but after two episodes I just can't take the "this is atmosphere!" moments seriously and I just become too annoyed at the show. I might pick it up later but for the moment the show is dropped.

Another is another show streaming over on crunchyroll and is another new show licensed by Section 23.

Bodacious Space Pirates (Mouretsu Pirates): …..I am never typing out that title again if I can help it. Contrary to the title however, this isn’t a fanservice show (or at least not yet)! In the future there have been many planets that have been colonized and one of them, the Sea of the Morningstar, gained it’s independence from it’s mother system only 100 years ago with the help of privateers, space pirates who attack enemy ships with permission from the government (a “Letter of Marque”). This is all fairly unimportant for Marika Kato, an ordinary high school student who is very active in her school’s space yacht club, until she learns that she is the only living descendant of the captain of the ship Bentenmaru* and therefore is the only person who can be the next captain. Marika isn’t so sure about all of this pirate stuff but I definitely be checking out a few more episodes since this one seemed like a fairly fun show and I liked Marika a lot as well, she seems fairly sensible so I’m curious how they’ll convince her to become the captain. The show also has had the sense not to rush Marika into her new position, even if it’s clear to the audience that she’ll be the next captain, and I’m really enjoying the world building build up right now.

Space Pirates is also streaming on Crunchyroll and also been licensed by Section 23.

InuxBoku Secret Service: Ririchiyo is the newest tenant of the Mansion de Ayakashi, a super exclusive apartment complex where each person is assigned their very own Secret Service person. Ririchiyo, who moved in to try and work on her habit of covering up her true emotions by speaking disdainfully to people, doesn’t want her assigned Secret Service man but Soushi might wear her down yet. I read some of the manga for this series before this and it took me a few chapters to get into the swing of it and I feel like that might be the same case here. It’s kinda interesting but not a very gripping first episode, I did like the OP though which was nice since I haven’t liked most of the OP/ED I’ve seen this season.

 Take a wild guess who is streaming this one and another guess who licensed it.

Lagrange: The Flower of Rin-ne (Rinne no Lagrange: Flower Declaration of Your Heart): Madoka seems to be a fairly ordinary student, abet one who helps out everyone who asks and because someone asked her she ends up piloting a robot in the fight against alien invaders (she does object when she finds out this wasn't a one time thing however). It certainly feels like a lot of mecha/space/sci-fi-ish shows this season (this, Aquarion Evol, that pirate show, Senki Zessho Symphogear, Ano Natsu to a degree), I guess this is the accidental theme of the season (and perhaps the year) just like young girl detectives were the theme last year. I didn’t like the first episode that much, it felt bland and predictable, but I started warming up to the show in the second episode as Madoka and some of the other characters started to get a bit more fleshed out and there was a small twist on the monster-of-the-week style episode I was expecting. The show is (split) two cour so it has time to build up and I really hope that’s what they’re doing right now.

Rin-ne has been licensed by Viz and is being streamed on hulu since Viz doesn't have their own player.

Natsume Yuujinchou Shi: You really shouldn’t be watching this show if you haven’t seen the previous three seasons and if you’ve seen them then you already know the drill here, Takashi Natsume can see spirits and inherited the Book of Friends from his grandmother who could also see spirits and decided to release all the names contained within it. He gets into trouble a lot however and mostly unrelated to the book such as the trouble he gets into in the two-parter that starts off the season. I like the more serious arcs of Natsume myself, especially since we might even get some back story on his parents this season (it popped up recently in the scanlations), and the theme of the season so far seems to be Natsume actively helping out yokai, but regardless which way Natsume goes I’ll be sure to keep watching.

Same as the previous seasons, Natsume is streaming on Crunchyroll (and all four seasons have finally been licensed for the US by NISA).

In case you guys couldn't tell, Funico have been surprisingly mum about their pick-ups for this season, so far they only announced the DxD boobs show and honestly there aren't many other series this season I'm curious in trying. Possibly The Daily Lives of Highschool Boys or the new Aquarion Evol show but for the moment I'm good. I have 5 continuing shows, at least 5 new shows, Once Upon a Time, Grimm, MLP:FiM, 3 Nozomi shows (although the last episode of Emma streamed yesterday and the last episode of Antique Bakery streams next week), plus a few other things to watch so it's not like I'm getting bored anytime soon.

Soooo, what is everyone else trying out that they absolutely adore so far? 

*whose name keeps reminding me of a mash-up of Bettenou from Un-Go and Bishamaru from Kyosougiga, which is a pretty funny image 

Anime Review: Red Garden

I remember about a year ago a friend and I were watching this show together and we got about halfway through before it was just too much of an effort to coordinate our schedules, plus I think I was enjoying it more than she was, and I didn't have enough time to try and find it online to watch the rest of the show. But recently the first few episodes were shown at my anime club (for "mindf*ck night," although really it isn't one at all) and I decided to pick it back up to watch during the Halloween season. I was able to find the dub online (on hulu) but not the sub so now I've seen half the show subbed and it completely dubbed, I think that's a first for me.

Red Garden

Summary: Claire, Rose, Kate, and Rachel were average high school girls who all ran in different circles although they did all have a common friend, Lisa. So when she is killed all of them are upset and then become even more upset when they learn they were actually killed along with her and now have to fight monsters nearly every night to stay alive. Each one reacts differently to this truth and the overall larger conspiracy that they have fallen into.

The Good: I've seen a number of monster-of-the-week and you-are-the-only-one(s)-who-can-fight-these-monsters kind of stories and I think this story does the best job at showing how people would really react to that. Some of the girls break down, others manage to keep living normal lives and, while it might be annoying to see just how broken this leaves some of them, it feels a lot more realistic than the majority of this genre. It was also nice that each of the girls have a very different group of friends and all of them got enough screen time to fully flesh out those relationships and see how they change throughout the series. While this story does have a central plot line I think the strongest part of the show was the character parts instead. 

The Bad: Towards the very end of the series it got really strange and, even though it was well-foreshadowed, the sudden expansion in the scale of the plot didn't quite work. The story went from a story of four girls who are fighting to live and dealing with the psychological effects to a centuries old, fur-vs-fangs feud and it didn't quite work. I kept yelling at the characters to try and negotiate instead of just fight, which is never a good sign, so by the end of the story I actually felt less emotionally connected to the characters and in a sense relieved it was over. 


The Audio: The English dub is, okay, you can easily tell it was produced in that time period between the god-awful English dubs and today's pretty darn good dubs. The weirdest bit however is something that's in both the English and Japanese version, random, musical-esque bits of singing*. It sounds kinda awful in both languages, apparently the Japanese version was bad on purpose so that's why the English version was bad but that's based on the word of Steven Foster, someone who isn't well liked by the anime community lately for writing a bunch of sub par dubs in the past year. The opening song was okay and both of the ending songs were really weird, none of which were translated even though this was a licensed Funimation stream, not a simulcast stream where they can't always get approval to translate the songs. The Japanese dub didn't really stand out to me either but I would probably recommend that one in the end since the character's voices in the English version just varied too much to sound natural.


The Visuals: The opening sequence is a bit reminiscent of Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo (also produced by Gonzo) with all the unmoving patterns but the rest of the series looks more normal. The characters are lankier than most anime characters (although they look much more realistic than say, Clamp's "noodle people") and almost all the characters have really big noses as well, some of my friends joked that you could tell this was set in America by the noses. Odd designs aside, the art was consistent, the setting seemed like a good representation of NYC and the many fight scenes looked pretty.

I also saw the OVA for this series, Dead Girls, which was, well, um, not very good. It didn't feel like a part of the series at all, rather like Gonzo had a (kinda) cool new idea for another series and just reused all the character designs. It did answer a few questions from the final but it raised a dozen more and was neither needed nor coherent. Booo, Funimation has put out this series as part of their super-cheap SAVE line so I plan to get that some day. 


*and now that I think about it, there never has been a musical anime has there? I don't normally like musicals but that could be interesting.... 
 

Anime Review: Blood-C

Back when the summer season was starting up this was one of my most anticipated series. I wanted to give Clamp another chance since this seemed like something they could do well, take an existing supernatural/horror/gore series, genres they're familiar with, and do a short series on it. The character designs looked nice, the trailers seemed interesting enough and I like a lot of series that Production IG has done. But, as a Clamp fun, well, this just didn't seem to work.

Blood-C

Summary: With no connection to Blood+ and only a possible tenuous connection to Blood: The Last Vampire, CLAMP takes a crack at Production IG’s franchise and turns vampire slayer Saya into an ordinary school girl who is the only one who can fight the Elder Bairns and try to keep the town safe. But the town is a strange, empty place and some of the people around Saya are stranger still, not that she has anytime to notice with the vauge flashbacks of strange memories she sometimes gets.

The Good: Once things are finally explained towards the end of the series Saya becomes an interesting character and I do wonder just what course of action she’s going to take in the upcoming movie (coming out June 2012 in Japan, it'll be a few months later still until fans in the rest of the world can see it however). The series also employs a trope that isn’t used too often and it takes a little while for the viewer to figure out what trope it is which is good, sometimes it feels like every big “plot twist” is too easy to spot these days so it’s nice to see some where it really is a twist.

The Bad: I never thought I would say this but 12 episodes was too many episodes for this series. The show tried to have nothing happen in the first three episodes to show how abnormal the town is but the fact is that almost all settings in anime, especially ones in fantasy, are strange so I didn’t even pick up on most of it until other people told me. I suspect that if the earlier episodes were really compressed, the pace of the later ones was sped up and the upcoming movie were combined into a 13 episode series it would have been much more tolerable and interesting. I only kept watching this show because NicoNico doesn’t offer it’s back catalog to nonsubscribers, if it wasn’t for that detail I would have dropped this show and waited for others to see if the characters got more likable or if the plot sped up/got interesting/actually showed up and said what was going on because that simply took way too long.

The Audio: Blood-C’s composer has worked on another CLAMP work before, X/1999 which was Naoki Sato’s first work actually. Anyone who has heard one of the X’x trademark themes (Sandame) will instantly recognize his hand in some of the more dramatic music during the fight scenes*. The BGM is solid, the OP is a mash-up of Japanese, Engrish and I believe French (and, if you can find translations, your first hint that things are not as happy as they appear), the ED is a ballad and Saya’s singing really does not work in this series.

The Visuals: The show certainly lives up to the blood part of it’s name, this is easily the goriest show I’ve seen the whole year and I saw Deadman Wonderland earlier in the year which had plenty of gory bits. Here not only is there tons of gore but it’s really well drawn gore, the artists don’t just splash red paint onto Saya, they make the blood run and clump the way real blood would if it was on skin or clothing, if it streaked or if someone tried to dry it off. Many of the monsters in this show also look quite disturbing one way or another (although some of them just look narm-ish) and I’m glad niconico was streaming the censored version, despite how bad the censoring actually was (black and white areas that would cover the entire screen without so much as a gradient). It’s easy to tell that CLAMP did the character designs since they all bear their (recent) trademark look of noodle people and as usual the men look more elongated and awkward than the female characters do. It’s clear from the visuals that this show had a high production quality level (screenshots of individual frames show that there was even some animation in the fights that was much to fast for most people to notice) and I wonder just how good the movie is going to look if this was just a tv show.

I was frustrated by this show, it had plenty of potential yet I didn't like the presentation at all. Still want to check out Blood+ sometime, the only reason I haven't is because it's rather long, but I really can't recommend this show to anyone since I disliked it so much. I do like slow paced stories when there is a good payoff and so far this story hasn't had a satisfactory ending.

*well let’s put it this way, this is the first time I’ve ever heard music by a composer, heard some other work by them and could tell it was by the same person. If someone as musically challenged as me can tell I think most other people probably can, it was actually a little freaky being able to tell.

Manga Review: Variante (volume 1)

I had a bit of an odd conversation with a librarian lately when I was being checked out, I think it was when I was checking out this book, that I thought might be interesting to share. It was an older woman who I hadn’t seen around a lot (and believe me, after almost five years of volunteering, I recognize a lot of the librarians) who was taking an extra-long time to check me out and mentioned that one of the books I had on hold wasn’t in the library after all, the AX manga anthology. I was a little surprised; all I remembered about the anthology was that I got the recommendation from it off of ANN, but apparently the library thought it had sexual material that was unsuitable for teenagers and didn’t simply shelve it in the adult fiction instead. That said, then she had no trouble with checking out this comic which I found in the teen comic section that has a big label on it saying PARENTAL ADVISORY and a cover promising gore to come. Now I’m really curious to see if the AX manga had sex that was somehow worse than all the gore in this one….

Variante by Igura Sugimoto

Summary: One night, for an unknown reason, Hosho Aiko and her family are killed by a monster but Aiko wakes up three days later in a morgue seemingly fine. However, one of the arms of the monster has grafted onto her body, replacing one of her own, and seems to have a life of it's own at times. Because of these strange things there are several government agencies who are interested in her, those who are devoted to eliminating monsters like the one that attached itself to her. 

The Good: While this is a fairly gory story, there’s no denying that, none of it is the kind that will leave a reader disturbed for days on end (it reminded me of what little I’ve seen of Six Billion Needles and Guyver, both pretty gory but not without some reason). The government organizations here are portrayed as fairly capable and fairly logical (some sections are cold-hearted bastards but they’re cold-hearted bastards who know how to do their jobs) and the choice they offer Aiko is a surprisingly nice one, a chance to fight with them and discover the secret behind her parent’s death instead of simply being dissected for her abnormality. Finally, this is a dark story and the manga-ka isn’t afraid to prove it by showing a lot of characters dying, and not simply background characters, so kudos for that.

The Bad: It’s really hard to get a feeling for how good this story will be from the first volume. It’s a solid start to the story but it’s treading familiar territory, can it do anything really different that will make it stand out? It does show promise but the premise is built upon tropes and, while it plays those tropes well so far, it just hasn't done anything new with them. 

The Art: The art is fairly detailed which is a good thing, the more detailed a monster it is the easier it is to show just how disturbing they are. The monsters (and the gore) are suitably scary and grotesque looking and everything else is well-detailed as well. So there is certainly no problem with the artwork and it does it's part in the story quite well.

So, I was interested by the series but just don't really want to make an effort to find the rest of the volumes. It was published by CMX but they managed to publish all four volumes and all of them can still be found for a good price (come to think of it, the only CMX manga I've found that has an engorged price is Two Flowers for the Dragon, I wonder if that was one of their bestsellers) so anyone who is interested in the series should go right ahead and check it out!

Anime Review: Shiki

I first came across Shiki a couple of years ago actually when the same group that was scanlating Pandora Hearts said they would start scanlating Shiki as well. So I read the summary and go to the "small village with people mysteriously getting killed off" and did a "AUUGGG, HIGURASHI! *flees*" sort of deal. However I enjoyed this series way more than Higurashi and it was one of my favorite anime of 2010. A quick note however, while it's not very hard to figure out what the "mysterious phenonmenon killing off the villagers" is, I do try to write spoiler free reviews so I'll just refer to them as "monsters" and have a spoilery footnote here about that element of the show* (and try not to look at the tags).

Shiki

 Summary: The village of Sotoba is a quiet place with a tiny population of only 1500. But the isolation may not work to their advantage when the population suddenly starts dying off for no apparent reason and most of the village refuses to believe that there is a reason.

The Good: Over the past year I've noticed that fewer and fewer movies/tv shows are scaring me and anime never does. This is the one exception to that and Shiki actually did really creep me out from time to time just the way a good horror series should, both with suspenseful cliffhangers and things-that-go-bump-in-the-night way. I ended up liking a lot more characters in this series than I expected and felt that most of them were reasonably fleshed out (although there were a few instances where a manga reader had to provide some additional details) and many of them turned out to be pretty badass in the end. And finally, this is one of only three noitaminA series to go beyond 1 cour so pacing by and large was not a problem.

The Bad: My biggest problem was how unsympathetic all the minor human characters were for at least 3/4ths of the series (and then when they did become sympathetic, well, it makes sense in context but the shift still seemed abrupt). They didn't even come off as characters but rather as flat cutouts to cause more problems for some of the characters and force the story down a particular path. What really annoyed me was how the characters were claiming that they were being "logical" when they were instead refusing to listen to anything they didn't want to hear (ie, lots of people were dieing and something is up) and this is hardly the first time I've seen this (very badly done) argument of religion versus science come up in anime in recent years (and it was presented as "oh we aren't superstitious, ie religious, anymore so we think all those deaths were a coincidence). It makes me wonder if Japan is undergoing a major mindset shift and the authors are doing a bad job of incorporating it into their works.

The Art: Yes the characters look really strange in this series, although watching House of Five Leaves almost everything looks more normal. There's no rhyme or reason for why one person has a relatively normal, abiet spiky, haircut and why another has giant pink pig tails but you get used to it after a while.

The Music: Hey, I can actually remember some of the background music! I don't remember much of the music but a remember a couple of bits played that were appropriately creepy and added well to the atmosphere. As for the openings and endings, I preferred the first opening to the second and the second ending to the first (ironically enough the first opening and second ending were by the same group, Buck Tick) but I didn't like the endings that much (probably because the second one had really weird, clip art avante garde imagery). But the first opening was pretty awesome none the less.

I may get some crap from this but I actually really liked the ending of this anime, which I know a lot of people didn't. However I noticed something, most of the people who were unhappy with the ending either really, REALLY wanted some of the characters to live/die and were pissed when that didn't happen. These were also the same people who spent about five weeks debating the morality of the monsters and the people all killing each other and frankly that got boring after about two or three weeks of debating. So if you find yourself watching this show and getting really attached/disgusted by some of the characters prepare to not like the ending. Personally I'm waiting for the two extra episodes to tie up some loose ends but I'm pretty confident that they'll work. Not sure yet if I'll check out the manga (the anime series is actually based on the manga adaptation of the original light novels which have a couple of major changes), I probably will after those episodes (since the manga has a lot of little details the anime left out) but I'll hold off until then.






*Okay, ready? SPOILER TIME: It's vampires. Ack no, don't go away, this is a really good vampire story! The original novel (written by Fuyumi Ohno, also the creator of Ghost Hunt) was written in 1998 and, since it was before the current vampire craze, the vampires (or shiki) are a lot creepier than modern day ones. They can't be in sunlight, holy objects hurt them, they have to feed at least every other night and, while they don't drink a lot of blood each time, after four eatings they kill the person, a detail that doesn't usually come up in most vampire literature.