Anime Review: Cute High Earth Defense Club LOVE!

Once again, sorry for the delay in this review, writing through a headache after a six day work week is never tempting enough for me to want to do it. Plus, I've reached the stretch of shows which I did enjoy enough to finish watching them but don't actually have a lot to say on them and as a reviewer that's a little stressful. How do I manage to convey why I thought that they were worth finishing if I have such a flat opinion at the end of the show? Middle of the show reviews really are the toughest ones to do, thank goodness every year I get pickier and pickier about what I continue so I watch fewer of them. 

Cute High Earth Defense Club LOVE! (Binan Koukou Chikyu Boei-bu LOVE!)

Movie Review: This is Spinal Tap

I'm in a video class this semester at school and for our first project I came up with a mockumentary-ish idea and a few people said that I should see Spinal Tap since it was the best example of that. As an added bonus it's on Netflix streaming and a pretty short filming, clocking in at just 82 minutes, so even though I wasn't really familiar with the genre they were parodying I decided to give it a shot.

This Is Spinal Tap

Summary: Director Marty Dibergi follows the British heavy metal band Spinal Tap as they tour the US to promote their new album and the internal drama the band has. 

The Good: Despite the fact that I haven't seen many, if any come to think of it, rock band documentaries I was still easily able to see what the movie was mocking and it was still an amusing watch. I would have enjoyed it more if I had been familiar I think but none of the humor seemed outdated and I was amused throughout so I think it succeeded. If it was a real documentary I'd say it had a really good balance between interviews, "non-scripted" segments  and commentary from the director and was a good length which I suppose I can praise here as well. As odd as it may sound, it was a well put together film and it was rather fun. 

The Bad: Even saying all of that, if you aren't really familiar with what a rockumentary looks like or a fan or parodies in general I don't know how much you'd enjoy this film. It's also quite crude (it's NSFW) which will turn some people off but it's not crude without reason, it's very deliberate and feels very in-character for the movie.  

The Audio: I'm not sure if this was on purpose or not but there were a number of songs by the band where it would start out and I would think "oh, this is actually a decent song, I kinda want it" and then it would get terrible, given the tone of the movie I think that was on purpose. I was also amused by how the band kept switching genres, although that has less to do with the music and more with the narrative, but it was still amusing.   

The Visuals: It's a film shot in the 1980s on what looks to be a pretty small budget, there's not much to say otherwise. It doesn't look that great today, I doubt even a remaster could make it look good, but I don't think that detracts from the film either. 


With something so short that's more character driven than plot driven and is a comedy there's really not much more for me to say here. So yes, I enjoyed it, more than I expected, and can see why my classmates/teacher were advising I'd watch it as well. It's streaming on Netflix so it's easy to find so if people want to see it, go for it, at the very worst it won't take much of your time.

Webcomic Review Month 2012: Lintier and Loldwell!

I believe that by this point I'm over halfway done with webcomic review month 2012, wohoo! Hoping that everyone has liked at least one comic I've talked about so far and if not, well, that's why we're not done yet there's still plenty of time left! And of course you can always see what I reviewed last year too for even more ideas~

Lintier by Colby Purcell
A direct sequel to Lint and therefore spoils the ending of the original (ie, if you plan on reading Lint just skip this paragraph), Sangwine is now king and dealing with this whole running a country business while he is still visited in his sleep every night by the now deceased Bactine. But there are plots brewing again in the background and who knows what old enemies might be planning....

This comic has produced an interesting conundrum for me, it's snappy and witty so I like it and want to recommend it to people yet you really should read Lint before it (who starts reading in the middle of a series anyway?) but Lint can be a bit of a slog in it's early bits (there is a video that compresses the entire comic into 8 and a half minutes but you'll have to pause a lot even, I found it too fast to read at many points). In any case, Lintier isn't that long yet (the creator is dealing with a lot of school work at the moment) so there's plenty of time to catch up and so far it's proving to be a satisfying sequel, almost all the important characters have made a reappearance and the story is starting to explain a few things from Lint so for the moment I'm happy with it.

Loldwell! by Caldwell Tanner

A comedy comic that doesn't focus on anything in particular except stuff the internet may find funny.

I first found this comic from the "brojos before shoujos" strip which I think in an odd way sums up the humor present in the comic. There aren't any real reoccuring characters, plot lines, or even running gags, something that would normally annoy the heck out of me but here the humor is just so spot on that I don't mind it. I would recommend that anyone who likes the comic to follow it's creator on twitter since he also does some work for collegehumor.com, most of it in the same vein, it's like having extra updates for the comic.     
 

Webcomic Review Month 2012: Cleopatra in Spaaaace! Cucumber Quest

It has come to my attention that my links/post titles on the main page of the site look a bit weird these days and are in hard to read colors but unfortunately I haven't been able to figure out why and fix that yet. I've checked my settings but no luck, apologies but I have no idea why blogger decided to make my links bright blue/purple instead of the lovely sea-foam green I selected which actually shows up against brown.

So, enough about how blogger is being weird, it's webcomic time! Bit of a smaller update again today but I still have last year's review of a favorite of mine for perusing as well.

Cleopatra in Spaaaace! by Mike Maihack
Before she ruled Egypt Cleopatra was a normal teenager, well until she was pulled far from Earth and faaaar into the future to fight alongside P.Y.R.A.M.I.D. against the evil Xaius Octavian. This would all be going much better if Cleo wasn't inclined to go off on missions on her own but what else do you expect from a 17 year old?

It's an odd mash-up of ideas but it's a fun comic so it doesn't take much time for the reader to go along with the idea of "what if Cleopatra was really a time-traveling, astronaut who fought crime?" I found it to be a really fun all ages comic with a neat art style (currently the comic is showing guest strips so check the archives to see what the regular art looks like) and I can easily see this in the youth comic section of any of the libraries I go to. I'm really excited for this one to start back up but for the moment I'll have to content myself with the cute Supergirl and Batgirl comics he's made*.

Cucumber Quest by Gigi
Cucumber just wanted to go to his school for the super rich and/or magically gifted not go off to save the world, his sister Almond is much better suited for that anyway. But life and everyone around him seems to be conspiring against him and he finds himself starting out on that journey anyway.


The comic isn't a full on parody of the "regular kid goes out to save the world" genre of storytelling but with all of it's self-aware jokes it comes close at times. I like seeing self-aware characters so I enjoy the parts where the characters point out how unlikely or suspicious something seems instead of being annoyed by it but it's certainly a kind of humor that won't appeal to everyone. I also enjoy the cutesy art style the comic uses, at times I suspect the art is being used to mock the genre even more, and it's a rather distinct style from the majority of other comics out there, at times it's hard to believe that it's done digitally. It's also hard to believe that the comic is still in it's early stages (it's just now started Chapter 1) since so much has already happened and I'm curious just how long the comic will be since it seems to be setting itself up for a long run.
 






*also, none of this praise has anything to do with the fact that I won an awesome commission from him on twitter, although it is super awesome especially considering he didn't know the show at all.
  

 

And now for something different, the continuing spring anime

Don't expect me to do this every season, especially since the current trend is for more and more one cour shows, but when I started looking at summer shows I noticed that I had a few shows carrying over from the spring season as well. So why not write about why I'm continuing them (especially since I'm trying out a grand total of 10 new shows plus one or two older shows, I've got pleeeenty to watch right now) and hopefully convince some people to try out shows that they might have heard of but never checked out. Onto the post!

Blue Exorcist:

If my watching schedule becomes too full and I have to drop something, sorry Blue Exorcist but you’ll one of the first to go. That said, BE isn’t bad at all but it is fairly average shonen series and I like shows that go beyond the average and break as many tropes as they can get their hands on (and I knew this going in, I’ve read through the first major arc in the manga which is probably where this season will end). Rin is more genre-savvy than your average shonen protagonist (he’s even lampshaded what he’s SUPPOSED to do at a few points) and there is a good sized main cast (but not so big you can’t remember all of them), those of who have gotten character development in the manga are decent enough characters. The show looks good (A-1 is becoming a rather strong studio aren't they?), even if the ending sequence looks weird and the opening is a bit uneven, the closing song is really weird (well, from the Engrish in it, neither songs are translated) but the background music works. So, if you like shonen, watch this, it’s got a better than average plot and great visuals, it’s solid entertainment (and I have no idea why Aniplex is releasing this without a dub in the US, it would work pretty well with the other shows airing on Adult Swim right now).

Steins;Gate:

The first few episodes were a bit slow and I almost dropped it but around episode 4 something changed for me and I got really interested in the characters and then episode 12 (the half-way point), whooooa. The show is surprisingly quotable (I’ve actually seen more memes based on audio clips from the show than images which is a first), quite a few of the characters have already gotten some character development and everyone is sure to get more in the later episodes and the plot here seems really solid. I’ve heard a lot of people say that this is one of the best visual novels out there (in terms of plots) and that the second half doesn’t disappoint and, after seeing episode 13 (which is firmly in the second half of the season), I’m hyped for the second half! Funimation picked up the license for this one just last weekend, although I’m betting it won’t get a release before the later half of 2012, so right now this one is firmly on my to-buy list!

Tiger and Bunny:

As I said in my spring review, I wasn't planning on watching this at all until I heard great reviews for it and this is one of my favorite shows of the spring season. I was expecting the show to be really episodic (criminal-of-the-week) but very early on it introduced a more central plotline (Bunny tracking down his parent’s killers) and the character development for Tiger and Bunny (more for Bunny because he needs it more) also showed up way earlier than I expected. Heck, half the heroes have had a focus episode already (it looks like the episode for this week will be another one as well) and hopefully everyone will keep appearing often and developing. The CGI isn’t as distracting as you would expect (unlike [C] the traditionally drawn characters are always traditionally drawn and the CGI stuff is always done in CGI, this really helps) and the music seems to work well. Sounds like this was a surprise hit for Sunrise (neeeever underestimate the buying power of the fujoshi!*) so here’s to hoping the plot for the second half is as solid as the first!

For those interested, I'll do my summer anime roundup the same way I've done the past two but, since only half the shows I'm interested in have aired, it's going to a bit. I should have the first post up late next week (yeah, it's going to be multiple posts again, like I said, 10 shows, that's just too many to put up at once @_@).

*Hell, there’s so much slash fanart that some of my friends were half-convinced it was a BL show, pretty funny thing to see first thing in the morning on your facebook

Webcomic Revew: Today Nothing Happened, True Magic, Trying Human, Two Kinds,

After glancing over my list of webcomics I realized that I should be able to make one large post today and take care of all the "T"s that way, huzzah! So today we have one journal comic, another fantasy parody, a fantasy, and one of the few sci-fi titles I follow!


Today Nothing Happened
Unlike the other semi-journal comics I follow, this one isn't fictional at all, although some situations might be exaggerated, and it proves something my mom and I have been saying for years, reality is way stranger than fiction. The comic originally started as a school project, the creator liked it so much that she kept it going, so it covers college life and young adult life after college and I think it's a bit uplifting, that even now people can still live happy lives and sometimes I feel like the world needs that reminder. I might also be biased towards this comic since Shazzbaa and I seem to live in the same state (so whenever there's a post about crazy weather I'll go "YES, THAT'S EXACTLY IT!") and I was bemused to see Blitzkrieg from Conventional Wisdom cameo a couple of times (and vice-versa over in his comic). Plus, I like videos of cute kittens so it stands to reason that I'd love a bunch of comics about the strange things cats do and if the main page doesn't make me crack up the incentive voting piece normally does. So I'm recommending this to all fans of journal comics or of everyday humor, this is honestly one of my favorite webcomics and I really hope that it gets printed soon!


True Magic
Out of the several fantasy parody series I follow, True Magic is my favorite because I think it does the parody aspect of it the best (which isn't to say the others I've reviewed or bad, this just means I have opinions).  The basic plot of the story is that some peasants, fed up with how they have no rights against their ruling nobles, are journeying to the capital to try and change the laws but are having a hard time just getting to that point. The peasents are all genre-savy (which is played for laughs agaisnt the very not genre-savy nobles), things rarely go as planned, cliches/tropes are usually subverted as well, and each page usually makes me laugh about it at least once. This one also has a bit of an erratic update schedule but the plot is simple enough that I don't have trouble remembering what just happened. The art is a bit more basic than some other comics but it works just fine here, again I'm more amused by the writing than anything else.

Trying Human
I suspect the reason I read fewer science-fiction webcomics than fantasy ones is because there simply are fewer out there but this one seems reasonably well known. Not to be confused with the BBC show Being Human, Trying Human splits it's focus on Rose (recently an alien abductee), Hue (an alien who has fallen in love with Rose*) and Rose's boyfriend Rodger (who was just recruited to go work in Area 51). There is a central plotline to the story although I'm not exactly sure what it is (flashbacks at the beginning of each chapter suggest that something went wrong at Area 51 about 60 years ago) and, since the government is covering up the fact that aliens are real I'm sure there's a government conspiracy in there somewhere, but none of these plotlines have really connected yet and it feels like it'll be a while yet before they do. The plot feels well paced however, and does a good job balancing three or four different points of view, so I'm not worried about the plot, it just seems to be moving at it's own pace. So for now we have various high-jinks involving aliens and Rose, various alien related work involving Rodger, and ominous foreboding involving Philena, the woman in the flashbacks, it's a fun enough read in any case!

Two Kinds
Hmm, normally I just think of this as a fantasy comic with a lot of anthropomorphic characters but I suppose most people would call this a furry comic^. Oh well, the art is pretty and you see plenty of cat/fox girls in anime anyway, it's not that much of a stretch. The plot here involves three main groups of people, humans, Keidran (the afore mentioned anthropomorphic characters) and the Basitin (who looks more like anthros than humans) who all hate the other species and are engaged in a number of skirmishes, if not war, against each other. The amnesiac Trace (human, not a nice guy before the amnesia) wakes up to find the world in this state and eventually falls in with the Keidran Flora and the Basitin Keith and so far the three of them have been traveling around and keep running into trouble with the various governments. Now that one big arc just ended I'm not quite sure where the plot is going next but, as I said earlier, the art is pretty and the story is entertaining enough (even thought tvtropes brought up some fridge horror involving Keidran slaves kept by humans, squick).

For some reason I can't get Two Kinds to load today and it might be because they're switching website providers (or some such thing) so here's another web address in case anyone else is having the same problems. Not many comics left now, one U, four W, one X and one Z, anyone want to guess what each of them are?




*yes from meeting her during the abductions, the comic makes it seem way less creepy than I could ever hope to describe it but still.... 
^frankly I've never been quite sure what the anime/manga fandom in general has against furries but okay guys, you can go rant about it and I'll be over here reading my comics.....

Webcomic Review: Fey Winds, Footloose, FreakAngel, Fungus Grotto

Two fantasy parodies, one straight up fantasy, and one after the end kinda urban fantasy story, yep, sounds like my reading list!


Fey Winds
The story initially started off as a straight fantasy (Kit and gang are traveling the world searching for magical objects) but it very quickly (and by that I mean, within the first chapter) starts to become more of a parody of epic fantasies but parodies are very tricky to do* and this one just isn't quite working for me. I think it's because by now the story and the characters are going way out of their way to point out all strange things in an epic fantasy instead of presenting them in such a way that the reader notices and gets a chuckle without anything being said. As an example, the story makes a blatant twilight reference (sparkling in sunlight) yet there's no way for the characters to even know about Twilight, much less internet jokes about it, so why is it being played for laughs? The artwork is very nice (not a very noticeable art shift here but the shading has gotten much richer as the story goes on) so I will recommend this comic (heck, I'm still reading it) but it's not my favorite parody on the genre. The first volume is also in print for those of you who prefer flipping pages to clicking buttons.


Footloose
Funny enough, this webcomic is also a parody but I didn't realize that until I reread it awhile back and started enjoying the story a lot more then. The story begins with Keti and her parents (the stars of some gigantic mash-up fanfiction called InubYAKash ) fleeing Earth where they had been living in hope that Keti wouldn't get caught up in her own life threatening adventures. Since that didn't work she's enrolled in the school of Kung Shoe, making friends and antagonists and going off to save the world! I like this series better than Fey Winds because it's much more over-the-top and generally insane. Some of the characters are aware they're in a story and will make jokes to that extent, the rest of them just make snarky comments about the weird things happening to them, even if some of the outrageous things that happen to Keit via "primary protagonist syndrome" make me roll my eyes. Don't believe that there is a print edition of this (and I'd buy a copy if there was, it's well worth a reread for more laughs) and there is also a currently updating side story called Magical Transvestite Cherry which I'd recommend once you catch up to the main comic. Actually, it looks like they have a few other side-stories I wasn't aware of, guess I know what I'm reading later!


FreakAngels
Surprised that this is the first mature warning I've had to do so far^ but mature content warning for this comic. Lots of blood, gore, sexual situations, cusing, the whole shabang! So if you're under 16 you might want to avoid this comic, or at least be throughly prepared to explain when your parents come up behind you someday when you're reading it.
The FreakAngels are a group of twelve 23-year olds with physic ablities who caused the end of the world several years back and are now atoning for it by protecting and rebuilding the town of Whitechaple. However, a rather familiar antagonist has come back to cause more destruction for them and this reunion is going to reveal several big secrets about all of them. So it's a story about several severely messed up people and one normal person who seems to be getting dragged into all of this as well,  a more basic plot compared to some of the other stuff I read but the plots twists are all very good. Also, while all the gore tends to squick me out, the art for this series is gorgeous. Six full color pages each week with an incredible amount of detail on each page, it's really impressive art for any medium and I'd imagine it looks even better in person in the print editions. So, with the aforementioned warning, I would recommend this to fans of after the end/dystopia stories will probably love this.


Fungus Grotto
A younger webcomic that just cracked 100 pages, Vielle was a college bound human who took a nap under a tree while fretting if she should go to college or not and wakes up in a strange world. But, as is obvious to the reader but possibly not Vielle, it appears that she has merely shrunk and entered the world of the faeries and swiftly meets one named Myth (whom the story is currently focusing on). Like I said, the story is still in that introductory stage but I like it so far, partially because I like Vielle a lot (more than Myth sadly, sadly because the story has been focusing on him for a while) and because of the gorgeous art. Every page is full of vivid colors and great shading, I'd buy the print copies for the art but I'm waiting a little longer to see what the plot is going to do before I commit to buying them. Despite that last line, yes I recommend this comic to fantasy fans because it's good so far and has lots of potential for later on.


Over the past few days I've seen my pageviews go up (still not a lot of readers) but I'm still ridiculously excited over it, who would guess so many people would want to read reviews of webcomics?




*I'd argue even harder than the real thing many times.
^Well, I might have done one for a book a while back but still, it took me this long to get to something graphic? I feel like I'm failing as a college student....

Anime Review: Magical Witch Punie-Chan

So the theme at anime club this week was magical girl. Up for voting we had Ah! My Goddess (which oddly enough is actually the magical girlfriend genera, yes that's a slightly separate section), Princess Tutu (my offering, standard magical girl show for the first half and then it subverts the heck out of the second half), and then this, Magical Witch Punie-Chan (courtesy of Ian, starting to tease him about his taste). We ended up watching this* and I was happy, I'd heard reviews for this a year or two ago and always wanted to check it out

Magical Witch Punie-Chan

Summary: To become the next queen of Magical Land, Punie must go to Earth and spend a year in high school. It's the high school however that should be worried, Punie should be able to take care of herself juuust fine.

The Good: This is probably one of the biggest parodies of the magical girl series and holy cow it nothing but a parody. It's actually a good thing it's so short, in my opinion, but it's certainly a funny four episode ride. I wouldn't recommend to die hard magical girl fans but to people who either are bored by it or can laugh at it's weaknesses then yes, watch this. There's barely any plot, it's really nothing new, but the rapid fire rate that it manages to mock everything in the genera makes it hilarious none the less.

The Bad: Whew, thank god it's only four episodes (8 half length episodes so four full length episodes), I'm not sure how much more of that I could watch and not start getting bored (also, try not to watch it all in one go, it's a bit much to marathon).

The Art: It's shiny and certainly looks like lower budget magical girl anime (or at least less creative magical girl anime, although that was probably part of the parody) and there is a transformation scene at least twice in each episode (and remember that each episode is only 13 minutes long). It's an OVA so I don't know what the budget was like for this but it might've been a good thing considering the art is more bland than magical.

The Music: Poppy, bubbly songs, some people say that the OP is really catchy but I didn't really think so. That might've been because I was laughing my butt off at the ED (which is parodying action/samurai genera actually, it's still funny). Again, like the art, nothing special on it's own.


So, I feel absolutely no need to own this DVD at all yet I'm still happy I got a chance to watch it. So if you're in the mood for something that goes out of its way to bash standard anime tropes then go right ahead. Otherwise there are far better anime in terms of either art or plot.



*I swear, we haven't watched a single serious show yet. Sure Paprika and Baccano were cool and well written but we still spent half the time laughing at the screen.