Book Review: Without A Summer

So, I know I had said I wasn't particularly interested in reading more novels in this series since I suspected that nothing was really going to change from story to story but, well, it was sitting in the new books section of my library and looked really nice and shiny! Plus it had a colorful cover, yep I don't have a really good reason for why I picked it up anyway.


Without A Summer by  Mary Robinette Kowal

Summary: Jane and Vincent are back in England and taking private glamural commissions again which takes them out to London during the season and Jane invites her sister along. While trying to make sure her sister has enough to do Jane begins to hear rumors of something involving the Catholics which may or may not be related to the overly chilly year they are having, a bit of misfortune that same have started blaming on the glamourists.

The Good: I can safely I've never seen fiction set during "the year without a summer" before, although knowing the true cause of the bad weather (I was already familiar with the disaster and figured it out as soon as I glanced at the summary) did take out some of the tension. I did like how Kowal used it to recreate similar protests and social upheaval of the real 1800s, most of which I hadn't been aware of until I looked at the notes in the back and that's one of my favorite things about alternate histories, taking a real world issue, changing it a bit to fit the setting and yet in the process informing the reader in such a way that they don't realize it's happening.

The Bad: I was more or less correct, after the charming first volume it seems as if the books are starting to fall into a routine (Jane learns of a plot, suspects the worst, it turns out to not be the worst but more communication could have helped even more) and I don't like routine in my books, if I want to read the same idea over I'll go reread a book I already love. So yet again, technically and story-wise there's nothing wrong here but character wise I am starting to get bored, although I'm not sure how much character development actually is appropriate for fully grown adults.


In the end I'm giving this book 3 out of 5 stars since while I did enjoy it more than the previous book I still feel like the original book stands strongest on it's own. I've heard that Kowal plans to have even more books, I suppose it must be selling well, and I guess that if I come across any more of them in the library I'll pick them up but otherwise I won't be going out of my way to read them. 

Young Animator Training Project 2013/Anime Mirari 2013

I feel a little weird only talking about three out of the four shorts for this year's Young Animator Training Project but these three have been out for a while and I can't even find raws of Ryo (Studio Gonzo's short) after looking around. I know it must be somewhere since I saw someone commenting along the lines of "Gonzo was, ....Gonzo" which honestly doesn't make me want to search out the short, bad Gonzo is usually pretty boring and more than slightly terrible in the writing department. So, if I do ever find it I'll watch it and add onto the review, in the meantime let me tell you about everything else! 




Young Animator Training Program 2013 (Anime Mirai)

Aruvu Rezuru - Kikai Shikake no Yōsei-tachi (Alv Rezul - Mechanical Fairies, also seen it written Areve Rezere): This was an odd entry, this was made by Studio Xebec to fill in a slot that had previously been taken by Studio Perriot and I remember this showing up on anime charts for last summer, no idea if it was supposed to be a single OVA back then or a full series and was reduced to an OVA. The charts were listing it as a full series and it’s based on a light novel series, yet out of the three I was able to see this was easily the weakest. This one felt like a pilot for a full series and, while the others felt a bit like that as well, they managed to also feel complete in 30 minutes, this one felt like we had just started a series and that we wouldn’t have everything explained until it was done (or even the basic concepts fully explained until episode three). The concept was kinda cool, perhaps it was moved from the summer so it wouldn’t compete with the slightly similar in concept Sword Art Online, but the writing felt amateur, weak, and cliché-ridden the whole way through. Oooooh, mysterious organizations! Slightly incestuous sibling relationships which are okay because they’re not blood related and then plot shenanigans to make it even more “okay”! (which in case your wondering, even if you’re not related by blood you still feel pretty creeped out by that stuff, if my step-brother ever acted like this I would smack him in a heartbeat) The art was fine, although I was confused why Shiki always looked like she was drawn in a different style than the background, props, and other characters. I’m rather sad I didn’t like this since when I first saw it on the charts I thought it sounded rather cool, too bad it’s execution was poor.

Death Billiards: Studio Madhouse has made a lot of great things for many years so it’s no surprise that they made something great this time. The story goes that two men, one young one old, show up at a bar with no memory how exactly they got to it and have to play a game of billiards with their lives on the line. They don't know much more than that but it’s soon clear that pool is a game they both have strong memories of and that there is obviously more to the game than it first seems. I’ve seen a lot of people not like the ambiguous ending but I rather liked it, given the sense of mystery that permeated the rest of the short it makes sense that it wouldn’t explain everything to it’s viewers (or even it’s characters, of the other two characters present one of them doesn’t know the final outcome of the game either). I’m satisfied with this as a short yet I can also see it being fleshed out into a full, episodic series with an underlying story revealing more about the bar and it’s two attendants, although I have absolutely no idea how likely that is to happen.   

Young Witch Academia: Hotly anticipated since it’s from the new studio Studio Trigger which, if I recall correctly, is formed from a number of people who used to work at Studio Shaft, and people were also excited because it looked just plain fun and it was! Akko has wanted to be a witch since she saw a fantastical magical show when she was young but now that she’s actually at magic school she finds the lessons either boring or just plain impossible. This story could have easily been stretched into a full length film but here neatly fits into the 22 minute run time with good pacing and nice visuals, the OVA almost looked more heavily influenced by American Saturday morning cartoons than anime in places and had a really distinct look the entire way through. And the animation itself looked fantastic, very few still shots and lots of complex movements, if this is the future of animation via animators in Japan then I think we’re good! Lots and lots of fun and I’m excited to see what else Studio Trigger produces, I think they have their first full series coming this summer but it sounds like there isn’t a lot of information about it out yet. Oh and it's legally on both youtube and crunchyroll now so catch it at one of those places when you have half an hour to spare.

Anime Review: From the New World

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



From the New World (Shin Sekai Yori)

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

Anime Review: Towanoquon

I was fairly curious about this project, like Break Blade it was going to be a set of six, hour long OVAs instead of a regular tv series, and saw the first two episodes via fansubs. Then Sentai picked up the series (and Break Blade now that I think about it) and I decided to do the right thing and see if I got a chance to view it legally. And then over Memorial Day weekend The Anime Network was streaming the whole show for three or four days and I rushed to finish it (normally this wouldn't have been a problem but I had a graduation and a con to go to, both of which take a lot of time). Did have a few technical hiccups but they had a very responsive tech team (that and complaining on twitter seems to work well for these cases) and by the end everything was working well. Well, the stream was, how well did the show itself do?

Towanoquon

Summary: In another version of Japan there are a group of people called "Attractors" who have strange powers, like the ability to teleport or talk to animals. Mainly they wish to lead normal, peaceful lives, but a secret branch of the government is dedicated to wiping them out, especially ones who are just beginning to manifest their powers and are the easiest to find and kill. But those who survive are saved by those who live in Fantasium Gardens are a lead by young looking, although clearly older than he looks, Attractor named  Quon. It's becoming harder and harder to find though as the government draws ever closer to their hideout, will they survive or will they all be killed in the end?

The Good: I only saw the first two episodes via fansubs and was a bit bored by them, turns out the show picks up in the third episode and, while it's not a good thing that it takes a third of it's short runtime to pick up, it is good in that it turned out to be a well-done story. It's nothing new, I've seen a number of other people, who are much better versed in American comic books than I am, compare it to the X-Men and most of the tropes used are ones I've seen a lot before as well. But, once it got over that hump, it was interesting, paced well, Quon's personality and behavior were well explained and Epsilon was much better fleshed out than I expected (since I figured out what the writers were going to do with him when I saw the first clips from the series). The series also ended very well with only a single loose thread hanging (or, depending on your perspective, none at all) and was one of the neatest endings I've seen in a long time and it worked rather without feeling like a cop-out of any kind. 

The Bad: One thing that I think wouldn't have been a problem if this show had been a tv series (and therefore a bit longer) would be that the side characters would have been much better fleshed out. Their characterization is spotty overall, some characters got a lot of time to grow up and change and others never deviated from the, a bit bland, personalities they started out with. That's basically my biggest problem with the show, it also can't decide if it wants to be a "monster of the episode" or a central plot kind of episode (it's too short to pull of both sadly) and like I said earlier, the first part of the series is a bit rocky. 

The Audio: Each episode ends with a kind of cheesy rock song which I'll admit really grew on me as the series went by (I've seen a lot of people point out how the art was a bit of an homage to 80s shows and I'd argue that this song and the plot to an extent were homages as well). And after two months that's the most I remember about how the show sounded; there was no opening theme and the voice acting seemed competent. The show was only streaming in Japanese so I don't know how the dub sounds but there is one and I'm sure that someone has reviewed it. 

The Visuals: The show was produced by Studio Bones and, as usual, they make the series look really good. There's at least one fantastic looking fight in each episode (I'm always impressed when a studio manages to animate a fight where not only are the characters moving around at lightening speeds but, if you pause, almost every single shot looks on model or if it's distorted it's clearly for effect, not a time-saving measure). The show's designs, from the characters to the settings, had a clean and not overly-detailed look that was quite eye-pleasing and remained distinctive even if it was a bit on the simple side.


This show ended up being much better than I had expected, from having seen the first two episodes, but it's still not good enough that I plan on buying a copy for myself/re-watching it. I'd certainly recommend it to friends and such but it just wasn't the story where I think I'll get anything out of re-watching it. 

TV Series Review: The Legend of Korra

I have decided to start my end of spring/beginning of summer reviews a week earlier than planned since once again I looked at my list of shows and realized at this rate I'm not going to finish up until August (as it is I might have to start reviewing two shows a week, we shall see) and since I finished up Korra about 12 hours before I finished Fate/Zero 2 it's up first! Obviously I haven't had a chance yet to get along with my re-watch of the first show but given that the second season is still in production (so I'm not expecting it before fall 2013 to be completely honest) it'll give me something to do during the break.

The Legend of Korra

 Summary: 70 years after the end of the first series and 17 years after the death of Aang, the new Avatar Korra has masted water, earth, and fire bending and is eager to start her airbending training (despite the fact that she is the complete opposite of spirituality from Aang and as a result has never been able to airbend). But Tenzin, Aang's son and the only airbending master in the world, has other matters on his plate since he is also in charge of governing a new nation, Republic City (formed from the oldest Fire Nation colonies in the Earth Kingdom whose cultures had become so entwined it was decided that it was better to let them continue to co-exist than separate), where anti-bender sentiments are on the rise. Korra decides that she will go to him then and gets entangled in pro-bending, romance, and politics.

The Good: I will admit that Korra isn't a terribly original character if you were to genderflip her, she's rather similar to a lot of shonen protagonists, but I still do love the concept of having a late teenaged, female, not-white, protagonist of a show, not in a school setting, who is, well, brash and young for lack of a better phrase. I do believe Korra grows in the show, not tons but certainly some, but more than that I do hope her presence of tv (combined with stuff like The Hunger Games and Brave) show off that yes, people will watch action shows with a female lead. I do like a lot of the characters on this show regardless, Asami in particular (I do like how she and Korra were female characters but more nucanced than "one is a girly-girl and the other is a tomboy") but also some of the older cast including Tenzin and Lin Bei Fong. I also loved the setting, partially because (as I have made it clear before) I love the 1920s as a setting and technology was always a part of the original show from very early on so I didn't find it jarring. Finally I was amazed at just how political a kids show got to be (yes people, this is rated Y7 or youth, seven year olds, Nick is clearly crazy) and those episodes were my favorite ones of the show. 

The Bad: One big thing that the internet has been practically screaming about for the past few days, yes this show had some serious pacing issues which were most apparent in it's finale. Given how well the original show was paced I cannot believe that the creators weren't aware of the problems here (which I know I know, doesn't make it better) and, based on some information from interviews, I do wonder who made the final call that the show should be 12 episodes instead of 20, Nick or the creators. Again the finale had the most trouble here, it also created some problems with the romantic subplot I wasn't as happy about (although I have no trouble with that subplot as a whole) and I desperately hope that the second season ties up some of the loose ends here otherwise I will be unhappy with it. The show simply had too many things it tried to include (hence my thoughts that it was the decision of Nick, not of Bryke, to make the show only 12 episodes) yet I cannot figure out a way to cut anything major in order to help with the pacing.

The Audio: The Track Team returns in to continue composing for the show and, while I don't think they quite suceeded with the premise of "if jazz was invented by the Chinese" the tracks were gorgeous regardless. There are some more jazzy pieces in this series and there are plenty that make full use of the more traditional instruments that serenaded the original show and really hope that the music gets a full release this time around. As for the voice acting, I didn't like some of the voices oddly enough (Older!Aang and Older!Toph sounded off to me and Dante Basco's character sounded at least five years younger than they looked) but overall I liked the main cast and thought they did a good job throughout.

The Visuals: While there were several shows airing this season that had some great looking fight sequences, such as Fate/Zero 2 and Accel World, they often had so many effects and fast cuts that the fights themselves were almost hidden from the viewer and at times it was hard to tell how good looking everything was. Korra never had this problem and was able to show off it's amazing choreography to the fullest and even when the characters weren't fighting there was a great amount of detail in the backgrounds. I do wonder if Nick plans to release this show on BR (given that the original show was released on DVD I do believe there is at least a DVD release planned down the line), although I'm not 100% sure that the visuals are enough to make me choose a BR over a DVD.

In short, I still love the show but there are certainly problems with it (outside of the finale the biggest problem is that there weren't any downtime episodes to get character development, I think Asami probably had more than Mako and certainly more than Bolin did) but hopefully those next 14 episodes will help. Fingers crossed in any case! 

Comic Review: The Promise part one

As promised, more Avatar: the last airbender stuff! The Legend of Korra takes place 70 years after the original series and in a completely different setting so the creators (Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino) decided to create a short, three volume comic to show how the new setting was established and hopefully wrap up a few plot threads from the original series that were never resolved but that's for another review. Sadly not all of the books came out before the series premiered, the second volume came out just a few days ago, and it's going to be a while before I get to the second book but for the moment, here's how the first volume shapes up. As a note, this review is a bit more spoilery than normal but, considering how a lot of stuff in here can already be inferred from Korra/the Republic City game on the Nick site there's not much I can do about that.

Avatar: The Last Airbender The Promise Part One written by Gene Luen Yang and illustrated by Gurihiru (lettered by Michael Heisler)

Summary: It's been a year since Aang defeated Firelord Ozai and agreement has been reached between the Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom for all fire nation colonists to return to their ancestral homes to help change the world back to what it was 100 years ago. But the world has permanently changed in those 100 years and the new conflicts have arisen, ones that don't have any easy solutions to them. 

The Good: Much like the anime Last Exile: Fam of the Silver Wing from earlier in the year, The Promise tackles a question that doesn't appear as much in non-historical/realistic fiction, at what point do "immigrants" become "natives", much like one of the problems that plagues modern day Israel. Korra watchers know what the solution here is but it'll be interesting to see how the characters manage to come to it. The comics also incorperate a number of plotlines that were left hanging at the end of the tv series (such as whatever happened to the Earth King after his last appearance in the comics and perhaps, finally! closure about Zuko's mother) and starts bringing in plots that will connect to Korra (such as Toph's earthbending school which would later become where she trains the first metal bending cops). This mini-series has a lot of ground to cover but it making good progress in dealing with everything.

The Bad: It may be dealing with everything but goodness is it short and fast paced. It's only about 70 pages long, it took me under 20 minutes to read the whole thing, and much like Korra is means the characterization feels a bit rushed. I felt like some parts (such as Aang's decision that he must kill Zuko after all) felt almost random they were so rushed and, even though I have always been an ardant Kataang shipper, I'll admit that Katara and Aang calling each other "sweetie" and such did seem incredibly out of place with the language previously used in the series*. I was a bit underwhelmed overall by the volume but hopefully the next two will make up for that.

The Art: The book was drawn by a team of Japanese artists called Gurihiru (which as some people have pointed out could technically make this manga, I think of it as a comic since the original creators are American as I believe Gene Luen Yang is as well) and they do a pretty good idea sticking to the original art style of the series. It helps that over the years I've seen a number of other ATLA comics (all of which I believe have been collected in The Lost Adventures) so I don't mind that the style was slightly different from the tv show. I'm a bit surprised how well the pages flowed together, sure the comic didn't use a lot of elaborate panel layouts but the artists were still working left to right instead of right to left and having that kind of flexibility is rather impressive.


Again like LE:Fam, I really wish this in-between comic had been fully released before the start of Korra since so far nothing in here has spoiled Korra (indeed it's been the other way around) but it is doing a fairly good job filling in the gaps and I hope it does improve from here. It'll be a while I suspect before I get the second volume (just due to me needing to budget even more carefully than usual) but I do plan on buying the second and third volumes as well (and the third won't be out until September I believe).


*it also kept reminding me of River Song from Doctor Who but that one is my own fault. 

TV Series Review: Avatar: The Last Airbender (Book One: Water)

So, back in 2005 I had just recently been introduced to Miyazaki and had been seeing a lot of advertisements on Neopets for a new, American cartoon airing on Nickelodeon called Avatar: The Last Airbender. So I sat down to watch it the first night it aired and it was a bit different than I had expected, which was okay, but it hadn't quite grabbed me. The third episode wasn’t what I expected at all, I had been expecting something like Pokemonwhere the villain, Prince Zuko, chases the characters across the world in strange hijinks every week, not genocide and seeing other characters who Zuko went up against who seem like the real villains. So I kept watching and then the mid-season episode, “The Spirit World” happened. By this point I was already enjoying the show and, since this was the age of nigh-nu-programmable VHS players, I had to resort to watching this episode as I babysat a two year old neighbor instead of missing the episode and the bits that I caught blew my mind. The idea that the series would have a clear and concise beginning, middle, and end and that the episodes would not be random ones that could be watched out of order but rather following a cohesive plot was completely new to me and I loved it and that's what kept me coming back for the next three and a half years.

So where does that leave this review? Well, despite being a huge fan of the series I’ve never re-watched it entirely and there are a number of episodes I’ve only seen once so I had planned on re-watching the whole show before The Legend of Korra premiered. However, since Nick only announced the show a month before it’s air date (given their other, scheduling issues in the past, I thought I’d have a few months heads-up) that didn’t happen so now I’m trying to balance it out with everything else I’m watching. So here's the first season of the first show with both my current thoughts on the show and remembering how this seemed to a 13/14 year old with no experience with long form stories being told in anything other than books or magazines and certainly no experience with cartoons actually looking good.   

Avatar: The Last Airbender (book one, water, re-watch)

Summary: In another world there is a very specific kind of magic that allows people to manipulate one of the four elements (water, earth, fire, or air) called bending. Out of all these benders there is only one person who can control all four elements at once, one who is the reincarnation of the planet itself’s spirit (fittingly called The Avatar). But something has gone wrong, one hundred years ago the Fire Nation declared all out war on the rest of the world (the two Water Tribes, the great Earth Kingdom, and on the four Air Nomad temples) and completely wiped out the air nomads, the nation the avatar had recently reincarnated into and the avatar vanished. Things have been bleak ever since, that is until two kids from the Southern Water tribe, siblings Sokka and Katara, discover the avatar encased in an iceberg, named Aang, and set off to train him in the other elements so that he can save the world.

The Good: Re-watching the show I was surprised to see just how sarcastic the characters were all the time (I remembered that Sokka was, it’s in his nickname, but not how snarky Katara and even Aang could be) and the dialogue really felt like something my friends or I would have said in high school which is really hard to pull off. The characters do act rather mature for their age, to the point where it’s odd to see Aang act more like a 12 year old (especially compared to the later seasons), but they never seemed so mature that it jolted me out of the show. In addition to all of that (and as I mentioned earlier, a sturdy central plot) the show never treats it's viewers like idiots which isn't the most common thing for a show aimed at 8-12 year olds, the fact that a show aimed at such a young age group has such a large following in older fans is testament to how strong and engaging the writing, and really the whole show, is.   

The Bad: There are some random episodes in this season (special mention goes to “The Great Divide” which, when I first saw it, didn’t think it was so bad but was cringing when I re-watched it) and has the most “filler” of the three seasons. I don’t mind the “filler” episodes as much, they help establish characters and introduced others that would reappear in larger roles later on, but only about half of the 20 episodes were truly crucial to the overall plot. I did notice on the re-watch though that Zuko is especially slow to grow and develop and I wish he had grown a bit more here (especially considering how the entire show is set over just one year meaning that most of his latter character growth is in the course of just a few months). And I was a bit confused by Iroh, he doesn't undergo character growth like Zuko does but he's portrayed quite differently by the end of the series which again seems like such a huge change I wonder if that was something added in last minute.

The Audio: As I’ve said time and time again, I often don't pay much attention to the music in a show but I have been doing so more and more with each year. Even before I re-watched this show I could clearly remember specific bits of music when I watched this show in it’s original 2005 run, that’s pretty special music. I still adore the music used and it really does add to the scenes, I remember seeing “The Southern Air Temple” and being suspicious why there was such triumphant music being played during Zuko’s parts (I didn’t know the term anti-hero back then but the music tipped me off that Zuko was more than a bad guy, without it I never would have picked up on that). 

The Visuals: Re-watching this on Netflix has reminded me that this show didn’t have the largest budget when it started but they made good use of it. There is some rather conspicuous CGI on various fire nation vehicles (I remember seeing the tanks as the kid and being confused why they looked a bit different from everything else but couldn’t figure out why) but the numerous battle scenes look amazing every time. The choreography in this show is great, since the show aired I’ve seen some clips and demonstrations martial art styles and whenever I see one that was used in the show (Tai Chi*, Northern Style Shaolin, etc) I can immediately see where the inspiration came from and a few times I’ve been able to look at a clip and tell what style it was, the show managed to capture the martial arts just that well. I was surprised on the re-watch to see just how “cartoony” the characters and their facial expressions sometimes got, one thing I had liked about the show was how it seemed less cartoony than anything else on Nickelodeon/Cartoon Network/Disney/Kids WB but after seeing literally hundreds of other comics and cartoons since my take on that has changed a bit. It’s not a bad thing, just not a thing I had been expecting to discover.

So, when I find the time next (I'm currently watching 11 different anime series among other things) I'll continue on with book two and continue my re-watch. Actually, I've got another Avatar related review later in the week as well.....

*not technically a martial art but oh well

Webcomic Review Month 2012: Unsounded

Sorry this is up a bit late folks, I'm really busy on Wednesdays (hence why I normally don't post on Wednesdays) and twitter is being weird and not letting me post tweets either right now (or even reply to people) anyway. It's also messing up my timeline a bit which makes me worried, as you guys have seen I follow more webcomics than one person can keep track of (updates for) at once and I use twitter for a lot of my updates, including for this comic, so hopefully this resolves itself soon....
Last year's U review.

Unsounded by Ashley Cope

Setta Frummagem is the lion tailed daughter of the thief king whose been sent with a mission to get the annual cut of money owed to the king from a cousin who's "gotten too fancy for this pants" and accompanying her is the Galit Duane Adelier. Setta thinks he's too stuffy and never does anything fun and Duane considers his young charge a hooligan whose more trouble than she's worth but for the moment they're stuck together on what is turning out to be a longer than expected journey.

I wasn't expecting the setting for this comic to end up becoming so wide and diverse, especially with it's magic, and as someone who loves setting this is always a plus. I know it sounds odd that, as a fan of fantasy who reads a lot of it, it sounds odd that I keep praising how people use magic or fantastical elements  but I can't help it, there really are a lot of creative people out there making webcomics and it makes me happy! It did take me a bit of a while however to get used to Setta's dialect, a lot of people like her relationship with Duane from the beginning but it took me a while to warm up to their banter which makes up a good part of the story, and I seem to recall that I found some of the text a bit small and hard to read. Looking back however through the early parts the text all seems to be of reasonable size, I might have just been tired the first time I tried this comic. And the art has even evolved from some very nicely drawn parts in the beginning to absolutely gorgeous pages currently, it's got one of the most polished art styles of any comic I currently follow and I can only imagine how amazing it would look in print.

 

Manga Review: Alice 19th (reread)

A few weeks ago I went to a small, local con and by the time Sunday rolled around I had spent barely any of my money in either the Artists Alley or the Dealers Room, there just wasn't much to interest me. Sunday made up for that however, there was an event called the Otaku Flea Market where anyone could bring in old (anime) stuff they wanted to sell and there was plenty of stuff to browse. I snagged the second omnibus for Jyu-Oh-Sei and volumes 4 and 12 I think of Please Save My Earth at one table for $15 (so to everyone who says that PSME is good y'all had better be right, that was a total blind buy) and from another table I got all seven volumes of this series for $25. I've read the series before years ago, I think it was mostly volume by volume whenever I was in the local Barnes & Noble, and it is my favorite Yuu Watase series so even though I wasn't sure how much I'd still like it I thought it was worth a buy.

Alice 19th by Yuu Watase

  
Summary: Alice Seno is a painfully shy high school girl who is secretly envious of her older sister, Mayura, and wishes she had the courage to do more things. She finds her courage one day when she rescues a rabbit from the middle of traffic, with the help of her sister's crush (Kyo, also her crush), and discovers that she has the power to use the Lotis Words, magical words that posses great power. Alice was hesitant to start training her powers but after she accidentally banishes Mayura to a realm of darkness she and Kyo begin frantically training before Mayura unleashes the end of the world.

The Good: I'm rather impressed with how Mayura comes across especially early on in the manga. She's a very realistic sister, she and Alice do love each other despite their little fights and the event that causes Alice to accidentally banish her could happen in real life as well, they just had the bad luck to have magic involved. Early on Mayura feels like the most realistic character out of all of them, although her descent into darkness makes her become more stereotypical, and I was really impressed at all of that. Alice and Kyo also have a ton of character development, have reasonable fears, and both of them admit early on (to themselves and other characters) that they love each other, it's nice not to see romance dragged out. The plot also flowed well and at a good pace so it's clear why I like this work the best.

The Bad: The characters introduced later in the series sadly don't get much backstory which, compared to the characters who appeared early on, is a bit jarring and the motivation for the mini-bosses falls rather flat. Mayura after her face heel turn also feels much less interesting. The story certainly still works at that point, I just wish that it had been structured a bit differently so there was more time to give some of the characters more depth and not make the pace feel quite as frenzied.

The Art: I'm a fan of Watase's art if nothing else and reading through the manga again reminded me why I've wanted to cosplay as Alice, she draws nice outfits that are simple enough to stay consistent yet detailed enough to be visually interesting. The character's faces, especially the guys, do look a bit similar and there's nothing super special about how the backgrounds are drawn but the series is still fun to look at and I think it's an improvement on some of her earlier series.

After reading this again yep, still want to cosplay Alice sometime and I was reminded of how much I want to sew a plushie of Nyozeka, the rabbit, as well which I think speaks for how much I enjoyed it. It's fluffy shojo, nothing super amazing, but I enjoyed reading it and would certainly recommend it to other shojo lovers so the series certainly succeeds in being non-mind numbing entertainment.  

Anime Review: Fate/Zero (part one)

I know that a number of bloggers have decided to do just one review for Fate/Zero but I don't trust myself to be able to remember the first half perfectly come late June when the second half finishes airing so I'll just be a little different and talk about it now. As a heads up, I have never seen Fate/Stay Night and don't particularly want to either. I've read a lot about it (after the first episode of this show I went over to tvtropes, skimmed the F/SN page and looked at the characters to figure out who was related to who), read some reviews for it, and know the general gist of the plot but finding out that Studio Deen produced the show really didn't make me want to watch it. So why did I try out F/Z in the first place? A little after I had finished up my fall previews I went to a meet-up with some local anime fans I knew, we've all been friends for years now, and one of them was talking about how much she was enjoying the show ("Oh Rin, your father was SUCH a bastard") and you could tell she was honestly loved the show so I thought why not? And sometimes that's all it takes to get me to watch something, sometimes anyway.

Fate/Zero

Summary: 10 years before the Fifth Holy Grail War of Fate/Stay Night there was the Fourth Holy Grail War where once again seven magi, Masters, summoned seven heroic spirits, the Servants, in a battle to the last Master/Servant pair and the winners get one wish granted by the grail. The story follows each of the Master/Servant pairs but puts special focus on Kiritsugu Emiya and on his servant, the same Saber of F/SN, as they as they try to survive and win the deadly game.

The Good: Unusually for me I really dislike about half the cast of this show yet I'm still interested in what most of them are plotting and, once the show gets into the swing of it, even the talking dominated episodes are rather interesting. It's particularly interesting to hear not why the Masters are participating in the Grail War, since many of them don't have a clear goal in mind, but what the Servants hope to achieve and fleshed them out much more than I was expecting. And, even if I may despise some of them, I'm happy that each Master-Servant relationship is different and many of them already feel very nicely fleshed out as are the characters in general. You can imagine any two of the Masters or any two of the Servants meeting and already know how their encounter would go, not every series can boast that kind of character depth, especially after just thirteen episodes.

The Bad: The place chosen to break the series in half wasn't an especially good place to stop, couldn't they have at least shown a few moments of a fight scene to tide us over until the spring? I've seen some novel readers say they expected the series to stop here, so I guess that means there isn't a much better stopping point farther along, but that does make me wonder why they choose to make a split cour series after all, give the animators time to catch back up? The start of the series also wasn't so great, 40 minutes of talking with some necessary world building but I really think that some of it could have been spread out more, it's a real test of your patience if you aren't already a fan of the franchise (likewise, for the episodes that were focused on conversations between characters I didn't really like were also a bit of a drag to get through but that was because of personal taste, not bad writing).

The Audio: I was so focused on the visuals that I didn't pay as much attention to the audio in this show but it worked well. The characters were well voiced, I liked the opening and ending themes, none of the background music felt jarring or out of place, it just worked.

The Visuals: Part of the reason I don't want to see Fate/Stay Night is because Studio Deen does not produce very good looking anime and this is one of the best looking series from all of 2011. Gorgeous fights, loads of details, and it's clear that the same people who worked on Garden of Sinners worked on this as well, they used the same distinctive blue and red color combination for some of the magic scenes and made it look good, they have an excellent grasp on color. In short, the show is eye candy (although not just eye candy) and looked consistently great for 13 episodes and I applaud Ufotable for that.

I'm looking forward to the second half of the show coming out in the spring (good lord, there's already so much spring anime that I want to watch!) and I can see myself owning this someday, probably even on BR because of how gorgeous the show works, but no way in hell am I going to buy that $300+ BR set of the first 13 episodes. That's five different kinds of crazy and I can only hope that Aniplex does put out a reasonably priced (like, comparable to Funimation or Nozomi prices) sets, 13 episode or full season, in a year or two. 

Anime Review: Rental Magica

Another Nozomi show that has recently been streaming on youtube and this time they were streaming it in chronological order which actually made me interested. I read the reviews for the DVDs back when they came out and the general consensus was that there was no reason to watch the episodes out of order, unlike Baccano! or debatable-y The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzimaya where it added something to the story, and previously Nozomi had only streamed the show in the broadcast order. So it was October, I was looking for even more horror/magic shows to watch and this seemed like an alright choice.

Rental Magica

Summary: Itsuki Iba is the young new president of the company Astral, a company composed of mages who rent out their services to resolve various problems. The company itself has a few problems, they never get the big jobs, several of the characters have troubling pasts, and Itsuki has a magical eye that will one day kill him but overall they manage to stay upbeat no matter what comes their way.

The Good: Lately it seems like all the magic in anime is of the same kind (or at least compared with all the YA fiction I read where I am constantly surprised at how creative authors and characters can become) so it was nice to see a show put in some effort into having radically different types of magic. I especially liked the ghost girl's poltergeist magic, I'm sure supernatural experts would say that it's all wrong but it's so unusual to see a ghost character, much less one that does something more than just talk exposition, that I liked her. 

The Bad: The last episode in the show was an odd one to end on. It would have been a weakish filler episode but as a last episode it made no sense, why didn't they end just an episode earlier after a multi-episode arc? The opening credits also spoil that arc a bit for some unknown reason which is always frustrating, it kills any bit of suspense you might have about it. I also found the love triangle the series tried to develop very cliched (I've seen plenty of much more unlikeable male leads suddenly have girls fawning over him but that doesn't mean it never stops baffling me) and wish that had either been cut from the story all together or toned down. Finally, I wish there had been some more connection between all the different arcs (the single episode stories and the multi-episode arcs alike) since a story needs connections to feel cohesive and this anime just didn't have them.

The Audio: There were some episodes where the opening song was in English for some reason, I'm pretty sure it wasn't for the later broadcast episodes and I didn't think that those episodes were really special ones, and again the ending credit song is shown over a still image instead of the real end credits. There isn't a region 1 dub for this show (I honestly don't know if there's any English dub for it) and the Japanese voices were okay. No one's really stood out, it was all just solidly average just like everything else about the show.

The Visuals: This isn't a show you watch for the visuals. Sure the designs are consistent and there was some effort made to make all the different types of magic look different but there's nothing exciting or new about any of it. No odd color schemes, unique character designs or super detailed work to keep my attention, I even used the fight scenes as a chance to change my thread or grab more fabric for all the sewing projects I was working on which sums up the series as a whole, nice enough to have on in the background while I work but nothing that commanded my full attention.

Honestly more than anything else this show made me want to go back and re-watch Ghost Hunt (which has a vaguely similar premise) which is both a good thing (I really like Ghost Hunt) and a bad thing (apparently I liked it much more than this show). So not planning on buying this one anytime soon, sorry guys, it just didn't do enough for me. 

Book Review: A Wizard of Mars

In case some people missed it, I made a post earlier about how I'm having to change up my schedule again so this is going to be the last book review for a while. But I'm glad I'm ending on a book I really liked and it was also the perfect book for me to read write before NaNoWriMo, something I loved and that made me want to try and write something just as good.

Quick note before the review though, since I have no idea if this is a good thing or a bad thing, I complained in the previous volume that the characters acted much too old for their age and I was confused how they were still so young. It appears I had the timeline wrong and that's why I was confused by their ages and Kit and Nita acted much more like 14 or 15 year olds in this volume but the age thing still bothers me, almost moreso since there's a weird dissonance between this volume and the previous volume in the series now.

A Wizard of Mars by Diane Duane

 The cover fits in very well with the covers in the rest of the series with showing a few of the characters (I believe here we see Ronan, Kit, and Darryl) silhouetted against a colorful scene from the book. I think they're even still using the same font for the covers so I like this continuity.

Summary: Set a few months after Wizards at War, it's summer vacation time and Kit has a new project to work on, Mars. He's been obsessing over it for months, which has everyone teasing him over it, and it looks like there is finally something happening up on the surface of the red planet. Nita meanwhile is developing her visionary talent and still acting as a mediator between her father and her sister and it's those distractions that keep her from immediately noticing that something isn't right with Kit these days.....

The Good: It was nice to see old side characters appear in W@W and some who only had a few scenes got more time here which was very nice and added some continuity to the series. Carmela, Kit's sister who many people are quick to label as a Mary Sue, seems to have her role better defined in this book and has some of the better "ordinary life meets magic" moments (which are my favorite part of the series by far). The book also manages to still feel like a strange mish-mash of fantasy and science fiction (magic is clearly fantasy but the setting, the characters and even the magic itself seems more like sci-fi) and the new world building introduced was rather neat. And again, Nita is one of my favorite protagonists because she thinks the way I do which is always fun to read, although that brings up the age issue again since I'm more than a bit older than her at this point.

The Bad: After the high stakes in the previous book this book felt a little, quiet which was off-putting. Yes there was adventure and high stakes but the stakes just never felt that high so I just felt confused when reading parts of it. I had also heard that the book was a great deconstruction of the "invasion from Mars" sub-genre of science-fiction, which I'll admit I'm not too familiar with, but the book didn't feel like a deconstruction of anything, maybe it pointed out how silly the outfits writers thought that Martians would wear were but I don't feel like that needed pointing out. I also felt like several things in the book didn't happen early enough in order to create the conflict and that also bothered me, restricting some of the characters so others can make dumb mistakes feels like a reverse deus ex machina and I just didn't like it.

I really did enjoy this book and it got me pumped for doing NaNo, don't get me wrong there, but I don't think it was one of the strongest entries in the series (my favorite is the fourth book, A Wizard Abroad, where Nita spent a month in Ireland, I could probably do a whole blog post on the resurgence of Ireland in YA fantasy actually). The next book, Games Wizards Play, I believe is due out next year and a compilation of short stories (that you can choose to buy e-book versions of first, a new one each month for a year) should also be out next year so hopefully I'll like those a bit more. 

Book Review: Wizards at War

There's a bit of a funny story behind this book, Diane Duane was one of my two favorite authors when I was in middle school/early high school (the other being Tamora Pierce) but I almost forgot about her in recent years since she just wasn't writing that much. This is the second most recent entry in the Young Wizard series, one that started a good half decade before I was even born (1984) and it's from 2005 but I think I didn't read it until 2006 or 10th grade. I believe that on my to-read list I had listed the sequel to this, A Wizard of Mars, under "will read if it ever comes out" and only discovered early this summer that it had in fact finally come out, last year. After feeling a little ashamed for not realizing that sooner I eventually found time to get a copy of this book out of the local library to reread first. Some might think it's crazy that I would reread a 500+ page book before reading another book of equal size but I was really afraid that some parts of this book would be important later on and that I'd be lost.
Speaking of which, the Young Wizards series is unusual for me because it doesn't have an overarching plot that connects all the individual books (each of them is pretty self-contained) but, looking back on the series, I do see a myth arc of sorts that is starting to show just why these adventures of our protagonists are important enough to focus on. So if you want to read this series you should start at the beginning (the proper place to start with any story), although I am hesitant to recommend a nine book series series since I bet that so many people will simply be scared off by the length.

Wizards at War by Diane Duane

   This cover amazingly enough actually looks and feels like the other covers in the series (erm, some of the newer ones, this series has had tons of covers) and I'm impressed. Gives away a little bit of the plot (warning, giant bugs involved) but it's not a huge spoiler so I'm okay with it.

Summary: Continuing with the same characters from the previous book, A Wizard's Holiday, the characters discover the reason for some character's mysterious absence in the previous book, dark matter is expanding across the universe faster than ever and threatens to destroy everything, including people's belief in their wizardy. The gang is sent across the galaxy chasing a mysterious clue that might be the key to stopping this problem and it might have an even greater affect on the whole universe. 

The Good: While the story is fantasy, the fact that the word wizard is in nearly every title is a good clue, it's a strange science-fiction-fantasy hybrid because of the setting (a good half of the cast in this book are aliens and the magic always feels rather precise and scientific) which I like and I've never found another book quite like it. That I had remembered over the years but I was pleasently surprised at just how much I still loved the characters (especially the leads, Kit and Nita) and how much I still connected with them. They act and react the way I would, have very human faults without having too many faults and they are witty without being overwritten. The story didn't have as many "mundane situation with a wizardly twist" moments as some of the other books have, some of which are my favorite scenes of all time* but this was a more serious book overall so I'm sure there will be more of those moments in future books.

The Bad: One problem I do have with the characters is that they are apparently way younger than I remembered, I believe Kit and Nita are only 14 (with Darine at 13, not sure of Carmela and Rohan's ages) and it reminds me of an old pet peeve, which I don't see as often these days, where the characters act like mature, older teens who are just about to become young adults, except they're barely teenagers. I could have misread but honestly in my mind I've simply aged the characters up a few years anyway (also, almost three years have passed in-story since the beginning which means that Kit and Nita would have to be closer to 15 anyway based on what earlier ages I remember). Also, I am starting to get worried about how long this series will run since the longest YA series I've ever read was 10 books long (Pendragon) yet this series seems to be aiming for even more, will this series be able to have a good, conclusive ending if it's structured like this?

So, despite my worries for the series as a whole, I really do enjoy all the books in it, I love to see how the characters and their dynamics have grown over time and I'm pretty eager to be reading the next book with a tenth on the way.

*specifically Kit's arguments with his DVD player/remote at the beginning of the sixth book, hell anything to do with his tv is hilarious.

Book Review: Clockwork Angel

Before I left school, probably when I was procrastinating on studying, I glanced through the catalog of the library near my home and discovered that they had both of Cassandra Claire's new books and requested both of them, good thing since I was 15th in line for City of Fallen Angels and about sixth in line for this one. For whose who aren't familiar with the series, this is the start of a new series, The Infernal Devices, and is set in the same world as her other series, The Mortal Instruments, but over a hundred years earlier in Victorian times. Since there are a couple of long-lived characters in this series there is a small bit of crossover but I don't think that someone needs to have read/even know the general gist of TMI to read this one (also, not abbreviating that again, that's just awkward).

Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare

In a rather nice touch, this cover looks similar to the covers for the first series (one of the major characters against a backdrop of the city) but has a few differences (like the character being in parallel and not having their face obscured). I like the color scheme a lot although I do wish it was Tessa on the cover (I'm assuming this is Will on the cover) instead since the story is told mostly through her point of view for this book.

Summary: Tessa, a girl from the US who is now on her own, finds herself traveling across the pond to Victorian England in search of her brother but instead discovers a world of magic with warlocks, vampires and werewolves all at each others throats and constantly wary of Shadowhunters, the humans who keep the peace. Tessa alerts the Shadowhunters to an underground plot to create an army of clockwork monsters to overthrow them all and must come to terms with the idea that she herself is not quite human.

The Good: The story has a good sized cast and all of them get at least one good scene and there is a surprising number of badass normals, many more than in The Mortal Instruments. Another nice improvement is that, while part of the conflict is wrapped up at the end of this story, it feels very much like a series instead of a few books with the same big bad creating new problems each time (although I may feel differently by the end of the series). There is a sequel hook at the end of course (several actually) but even with those I would be content to read this as a stand-alone book. 

The Bad: From the way the book is written it seems rather clear where the love triangle is going (one character has a death flag and the other is a narrator at times, either one would be a big clue) and that begs the question, why write a love triangle in the first place anyway? True I’m not a huge fan of love triangles, and I would prefer the pairing I don’t believe is going to happen, but it still bothers me. I was also sad that Mangus Bane, who was a fairly important side character in The Mortal Instruments (and it seemed like the author hinted that he would have a large role here was well) had a very tiny role and he was also the only non-straight character in the entire work which was also sad. Sure there often aren’t a lot of LGTBQ characters in period works but nothing says that you can’t have them, plenty of other authors have found ways to work those kinds of characters in.

I didn't enjoy this book as much as I hoped it would, especially since I saw about a million, fangirlish reviews for it (yes it was THOSE reviews that helped motivate me to start this blog) and didn't find anything about this book to be extra-special/special enough for me to remember it and suggest it to friends. Perhaps I'll like the series better after another volume (ie, after the character development kicks in)  but for the moment I'm not holding my breath. 

Also, forgot to say this earlier but, I'm NOT going to post a movie review tomorrow since I just haven't had any time to watch anything, still catching up with anime I missed while I was gone. I will post something new tomorrow to make up for it and things will go back to normal Sunday, sorry for all the weirdness!