Atom: The Blockheads

Most folks would start a blog post on the recently concluded anime Atom: The Beginning by saying what previous experience they have with Osamu Tezuka's best known work Mighty Atom (Astro Boy). I will be brief: I have no experience with it at all (except for Naoki Urasawa's manga adaptation Pluto). Atom: The Beginning is not one of Tezuka's own works, instead it is a currently running manga written and illustrated by Tetsuro Kasahara, although yes it does have some contributions/guidance from both Masami Yuki and Osamu Tezuka's son, Makoto Tezuka. 

Given that this is a different kind of Astro Boy story, much like Pluto in that way, I think it's fine that I came to it with more or less no experience. These days it's rather common for every currently airing anime with a manga source material to have their source material snapped up and licensed but strangely enough Atom hasn't been licensed here, ie, I have no idea how faithful or not this adaptation is to its source. Atom also seemed to be a bit of an unpopular anime; I'm not sure how much of this is due to its own merits and how much of this relates to the fact that it was streaming behind a double-paywall on Amazon's Anime Strike service, but typically for franchises I'm not familiar with I'll rely on the knowledge of other fans to fill me in on historical context, funny cameos etc etc. (I mean, I REALLY don't have the time to google every character, every event, and then try several different spellings and trying to search in Japanese too since that's what it often takes!).

TV Series Review: Voltron: Legendary Defender

As long time readers know, I like my giant robot shows and I haven't had any to watch the past spring season. Sure Kumukuro is airing, but since Netflix licensed the show I couldn't legally watch it week to week. Likewise, Macross Delta is airing this season but since the entire Macross franchise is tied up (I could've sworn I saw an excerpt from the contact on ANN and, as someone who has actually worked with licensing materials etc, holy cow what I thought I saw was baaaaaad) that's also off the table.

Enter the remake of a show I thought I was too young for (I have since been corrected, apparently the original Voltron reruns were showing in the US up to 1997 at least). Everyone else was hyped so I expected to try out an episode and go eh, not for me. Unfortunately if you put an entire season of a show in front of me at once I will binge (now that half of Kumukuro is out I've had to hold back from binging on that as well) and, whelp, I'm a fan now guys!

Voltron: Legendary Defender

Book Review: The Scorpion Rules

Yep, missed another post Wednesday, my evening schedule was a little different this week so I ended up trying to write too much one evening and it didn't work. Also, honestly the reason I used to churn out so many posts was because I'd stay up as late as it took, I'm really trying to get better about my sleep schedule so I'm doing that less. My thoughts on Vinland Saga should go up by a sane time Saturday though!

So, Erin Bow. I adored Plain Kate and had quite a few problems with Sorrow's Knot (and ultimately didn't like it because of those problems). After SK I thought "well, maybe that first time was a fluke, me liking it anyway, since I didn't even see the prose I adored in PK in SK" and when I saw it was more or less set in a dystopia that really didn't make me excited for the book. But it got good buzz so it ended up on my to-read list after all and here we are, I finished it which is always a good sign!

The Scorpion Rules by Erin Bow

Webcomic Review: O Human Star

I mentioned this comic recently in my A Boy and A Girl review, the human-robot relationships in a near future instantly reminded me of O Human Star, and found myself thinking about it again after I picked up a copy at SPX back in September. So, since it looks like the last time I did a review of it was a few years ago, allow me to convince you dear readers once again why you should give this very human story a shot.

O Human Star by Blue Delliquanti

Comic Review: A Boy and A Girl

Man I have such a big backlog of comics to review, usually I don't have this problem! Let's chalk it up to the DC libraries recently being excellent in aquiring books, although I do need to message them and say "hi, for some reason all of these manga are listed under two different spellings of the authors name so it's really hard to see what you have!" I have been informed by library friends that no, This Should Not Be Happening, it feels especially since manga have copyright pages with the official spelling of the manga-ka's name in them just like every other comic.....

A Boy and a Girl Written by Jamie S Rich, illustrated by Natalie Nourigat

Movie Review: Expelled from Paradise

I had barely even heard of this movie before a friend texted me that he was in town to see the movie at a special, one-night only event (on a night I worked of course) and I was wondering how the heck I could see it myself since this is the rare anime film that the JICC hasn't screened. But then suddenly it popped up on Netflix so my problem was solved! Now, Aniplex, since you did that for the Madoka Magica movies as well, think you can toss Garden of Sinners up there as well?

Expelled from Paradise

Anime Review: Gundam Build Fighters TRY

EDITORS NOTE: Hi guys, sorry everything is so late already this week and as a heads up, tomorrow's post is probably not going up to Thursday since I'll be out late babysitting and really don't like typing out huge posts on phones if I can help it (the autocorrect alone makes it a huge headache).

Much like Log Horizon, I did a whirlwind marathon of Gundam Build Fighters last year as the first season was finishing up and absolutely fell in love with it and was completely on board for the second season. It is seven years later and features a mostly new cast but I'm going to say that yes, you should see the first season first. It'll help you in the long run and come on, if you like this you'll want more of it and that's 25 episodes of more right there.

Gundam Build Fighters Try

Movie Review: Hal

I was pleased to hear a few months back that Funimation had picked up the recent anime film Hal and I was sad they didn't have a weekend where you could watch it for free like they've done in the past with other films. But they were screening it at Otakon and since it was for only an hour Saturday morning how could I say no?

Hal

Anime Review: Gundam Build Fighters

If some shows I've reviewed lately are a bit surprising but not wholly so since I've mentioned them before this has to be the oddest of the bunch. Considering that last fall people had next to no hopes for this show, that I remember seeing, there's no reason I would see the latest sort-of installment in a franchise I don't have any experience with (other than that one time my anime club watched a few episodes of Gundam Wing and I was deeply bored) and it seemed like a pretty blatant grab to get kids to buy toys, nope I have better things to spend my time on! But after the new year I was seeing more and more chatter about the show online and it seemed like people were really enjoying it and I actually had a number of friends who were also becoming interested in the show for the same reasons. Considering that Sunrise had done the rather unprecedented move of putting the show legally on youtube subbed in at least a half a dozen different languages I didn't have any reason to not try the show out when I found myself with some free time during my lunch and I was pretty quickly able to see why so many people were enjoying it.

Gundam Build Fighters

TV Series Review: Almost Human

I've gotten so used to watching American tv shows that are 22 episodes long that I had forgotten that a lot of them actually start out shorter and more episodes are ordered part-way through the run (I think it's called a back-end 8 or something). So that's why I was a bit surprised when I was catching up with Almost Human and realized that the next episode was going to be the last for this season at least, I wonder if the writers were as surprised as I was! Actually, I was looking through wikipedia when writing this (to see if there was any news on a second season yet, there's not) and remembered that not only had this show started up weeks after it was supposed to (in late November of all times) but apparently one of the showrunner's left the series for creative differences and Fox actually aired the episodes in a different order than the remaining showrunner intended, that's never a good sign when a developing relationship between two of the characters is supposed to be at the heart of the show. Or when the show is heavily plot based so really, don't do that guys!

Almost Human

Movie Review: Pacific Rim

I've been dying to see this film ever since it came out but, due to an error in communications on my part, I didn't have a chance to watch it over the summer and was holding off until I could get over to redbox or such. And then one week I jokingly said "oh maybe the film that [my step-sister] is bringing this week is Pacific Rim!" and I was right! Clearly I need to tempt fate more often, this is so much easier than putting my name on the holds list in the library, as far down as I am for some of the 2013 films currently I'm not sure I'll have a chance to see them before the next New Years.

Pacific Rim

Comic Review: Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong

Phew, I actually did not know if I was going to be able to review this title until last night when the last page was posted, talk about down to the wire! Especially since, like last year's Friends With Boys the full version of this comic is only going to be online for a short while longer (until the 7th, I suspect a part of it will remain up as a preview) so I really wanted to tell people about this as soon as I could. I mentioned Friends With Boys for a reason there, this is Faith Erin Hick's newest (I think?) work, although this time it's a sorta-kinda collaboration with the author Prudence Shen. What happened was that several years back Prudence Shen wrote a book, shopped it around, and an agent who had worked with Faith before read it and then bought the rights with the intent to develop it into a graphic novel instead which is something I'm sure must have happened before but I can't actually recall hearing another case like it. This did make me a little hesitant going in, since I seem to like Faith's work when she's writing and drawing it but not just drawing it, but it seems like a combination of Shen's writing and how Faith adapted it just worked for me.


Nothing Could Possibly Go Wrong by Prudence Shen and Faith Erin Hicks

Summary: Charlie was having a fairly good start to the school year, even if his girlfriend (Holly, the head cheerleader) suddenly broke up with him, and things go downhill quickly when his friend Nate starts a fight with the cheerleaders over misplaced school funding that both groups want and Charlie finds himself in the middle of a bizarre scuffle that involves student body elections, family drama, and a robot rumble. 

The Good: As noted earlier, Shen wrote the original novel but Faith adapted it to work as a graphic novel style (and sized) story and I would have never guessed that since it's such a good fit. The author notes on various pages note that there was only one major change to the story (a scene near the end and I completely agree with the change) so I guess this means I should keep an eye out for Shen's other works as well. As for the actual story, much like Friends I was pleasantly surprised to see that Charlie is dealing with divorced parents because, well, I've been there and once I started looking I noticed that most YA books that had a protagonist with divorced parents either glossed over it or it happened so many years ago that the protagonist was okay with it. Here it's still a very raw part of Charlie's life and I really wish I had had this story a few years earlier. Other than that, the character felt fleshed out, I really like the choice to portray Holly the cheerleader as cool and distant instead of bitchy and all the major players get enough fleshing out to feel like real characters by the end. 

The Bad: The ending felt a little rocky to me but that could be because again I wasn't sure when it was going to finish and really wanted it to be soon so I could actually review it, I'm sure it reads much better when all read at once. Likewise, while the pacing felt fine more or less I'm sure the robot fight scenes will flow much better when people aren't reading them page by page and that's a really tricky kind of pacing for people to master and considering that this was created to be a print book I would have been incredibly impressed if the book's pacing flowed well both ways. 

The Art: The art is rather nice, the characters look distinct from each other with a variety of body shapes, faces, noses, and no two hair styles look alike, and all of the many action scenes look fine. There are a few pages where it's a bit hard to follow what the robots are doing but I think that's because I'm less experienced with robot fights so in a way I don't know what to expect and that makes it harder to figure out what happened (versus say a fistfight which I've seen plenty of in movies over the years and that gives me the context to figure out what's going on in a comic book fistfight*). So anyway, by and large the art is rather nice and very solid with just one or two rough patches, the paneling is pretty nice as well.


A fun read and while I haven't ordered a copy yet (because finances, guys moving out on your own is TERRIFYING) but I highly recommend people who enjoyed it to do so and then to post in the preorder campaign page so that they can unlock even more tiers/prizes in their special campaign. More about everything, and the comic itself, can be found over here and remember that the whole thing will be online only until the 7th so if you want to try it now is the time!




*unless you're Sailor Moon but that was two weeks ago)

Anime Review: Robotics;Notes

The other noitaminA show from last season which frankly was a bit of an odd fit. While noitaminA hasn't had it's own real, genre I suppose in recent years, R;N is the third series in video game publisher 5 pbs "sceince;adventure" visual novels, the first two of which were Chaos;Head and Steins;Gate all of which are set in the same worldline so there are small references to each other, a far cry from noitaminA's original line-up of josei titles. But hey, I liked S;G quite a bit and when I saw people saying they didn't like the game of R;N, no big deal, I figured that a lot of them simply had over inflated expectations and were disappointed, which happens all the time with sequels, so I went into this with positive hopes and came out feeling, well, much less positive.




Robotics;Notes

Summary: The year is now 2019 and while some technology has changed a lot, people seem to be using min-tablets as computers/cell-phones which have a virtual reality app built into them, but in other ways life is still rather normal. Kai is the put upon friend of Akiho who doesn't want to help her complete her sister's dream of making a life sized robot from their favorite show but he's not heartless enough to completely ignore her either. One thing leads to another and Kai slowly begins to realize that there is something strange going on both in the background with mysterious reports appearing on his tablet foretelling the end of the world and even things going strange in his favorite video games. The more things he discovers the more things he starts to uncover until he seems to have stumbled upon the greatest conspiracy of human history. 

The Good: The mecha genre (or the giant robot genre in general) like all others has gotten a bit stale and boring after decades of stories and it can be hard to make it interesting again. I'm not saying that R;N did quite that but I did like how they paired together the mecha genre with slice of life and I generally amused at how for once our heroes have to build their giant robot, there's no secret government organization that's already made it for them. As contradictory as this is about to sound, while R;N was originally a visual novel with dating sim aspects in it (there were about four girls, each with a different route and ending to the story and only one of them was the "true ending") and did focus on each route a bit none of those events took away from the rest of the story or felt like they were abandoning some of the mysteries in favor of romance. The romance isn't as well integrated as S;G's was (although that story had a bit of a cheat to make it work better) but I certainly think that this means it was easier to adapt than a lot of more traditional dating sims.

The Bad: As mentioned earlier, I already knew that a number of people either hadn't liked or had simply been underwhelmed by the original visiual novel, wrote that off, and expected a show that I wouldn't adore as much as S;G but that would still be rather solid. Sadly no, even knowing that this story just wasn’t anything above mediocre by the end and failed to make some of it’s plot threads come together in a cohesive and emotionally pay-off-y sort of manner (heck, there are some details that were either addressed so quickly I missed it or not at all, important ones) and by the end of the series I just didn’t care what was happening. I guess lighting doesn't strike twice since whatever that spark of specialness that made S;G come together and work, plot wise and character wise, for me just never happened here and I was frustrated that I never got the payoff that I had every logical reason to expect was coming.


The Audio: I liked the first opening and ending songs a bit better than the second set but none of them have really stuck with me the way some of the other OPs/EDs from the winter season did. The voice acting was all fine and a bit more memorable, there was only one crossover character from S;G and they actually had the same seiyuu (which rather surprised me given the 18 year gap between the shows) and I don't have much more to say here. The actors gave the characters the right emotions that matched up with what the characters were doing on screen so they did their job just fine, even if I thought what the characters were doing was dumb a lot of the time. 

The Visuals: Production IG actually worked on both noitaminA shows this season and thankfully R;N did not suffer the random decrease in quality that Psycho-Pass had once or twice. I actually really liked the design of the Gunvarrel (you can tell that the same designer also did some of the mechs in this season's Gargantia), although the CGI for some of the later scenes wasn't as well integrated as I would have liked. The character designs were likable, the scenery looked fine, honestly there was nothing spectacular here that I can talk about but the show didn't look bad by any means either.


I'm going to be a bit mean and give this a 2.5 out of 5 for just not explaining some important details in the end and being, well, boring. Don't feel the need to pick this one up for Funimation (they're streaming it and have the physical rights I believe) or even rewatch it, next show please!





*How Helen would have re-ordered the anime, the spoiler edition. Basically we discover what was going on with Misaki, Akiho’s sister, very close to the end and it seems like she had a very tense, interesting story to tell. So I would propose a rather radical re-writer where the first half of the story is half set in 2019 with Kai and the others meeting up and slowly learning about the reports and the other half (so alternating back and forth within an episode) with Misa’s story, slowly showing how everything started going wrong years ago to add more tension and to well, help pad out the story. I figure that by around the halfway point her story would be done and the story could then focus exclusively on the 2019 part with the current events, just given how this show meandered a lot I think this would have at least forced it to be tighter in plotting and execution and that Misa’s story was probably a heck of a lot more interesting than a lot of the stuff that actually transpired.

Webcomic Review Month 2013: O Human Star

Sorry about no review yesterday folks, Mondays are quite tiresome with my schedule and I thought I needed to also write a little post on tumblr about something that would come up in this review (so I wouldn't just ramble on in the footnotes) but then it turned out that I didn't have too much to say on the topic after all. I am going to probably push back the rest of the reviews by a day to compensate (although this means I'm supposed to post another review next Monday, that might not work). In any case, let's just get to the review!


O Human Star by Blue Delliquanti

16 years ago Al Sterling died and despite all the work he had done in robotics he never got to see the robot revolution. That is, until he wakes up those 16 years later in a robotic body with an artificial, yet complete copy of his mind and no idea why he was brought back. His old partner Brendan also has no clue why or even how Al was resurrected since he already tried many years ago and got a rather different result.

The premise alone for this story has a ton of things in it that I like, it's a seemingly happy future (or at least, not one where the world has gotten worse), it's got a large focus on technology (personally I like my science fiction to have a focus on, well, the science, hence part of my problem with dystopias, which was going to be my tumblr post for those curious), and queer characters! All of this has blended together very well and even though the story is only on it's third chapter it's already fleshed out it's main three characters incredibly well and has good pacing. I feel like I'm seeing more comics that are partially colored, like this one where instead of being in grayscale everything is in well, blue-scale (or red-scale for the flashbacks) and I rather like this trend since seeing everything in black and white gets boring after a while and I know that coloring a single page takes hours. Delliquanti uses a wide range of shades on each page, the character all look different from each other, and the backgrounds strike a nice balance between being simple and yet still working*. This one grabbed me from the start and I can't wait to see where it eventually goes!


O Human Star can be read online and the first two chapters are in print. Also, like TJ and Amal, while there isn't any outright pornography the story doesn't bother to hide that two of the guys are having sex so some of the pages certainly NSFW, just wait until you get home to read them.





*as opposed to "simple because the artist doesn't know how to draw backgrounds" which is completely understandable but I'd rather an artist draw backgrounds and improve rather than just leaving them blank, although that's REALLY a personal preference.

TV Series Review: Doctor Who: Tomb of the Cybermen

As a head's up, tomorrow (erm, later today EST) starts webcomic review month so I guess I just won't get my last anime review of the month in (which is fine since I've had barely any time to watch a full series anyway) and I'm planning to try and post every other day so I can get through all the titles I have. Planning anyway, as you guys can tell this semester has been a bit of a ride and this blog just isn't as important as any of my classes.

In any case, this was the second Classic Doctor Who serial BBC America decided to show this year, although I missed it since the tv was otherwise occupied and this one is not streaming on Netflix (in fact, I'm not sure if any Second Doctor serials are streaming on Netflix, they only have 13 Classic serials avaiable for streaming to start with). It can be found elsewhere on the internet however, and surprisingly easy, and obviously is available on DVD for the US and I would assume in the rest of the English speaking world and elsewhere.


Doctor Who: Tomb of the Cybermen

Summary: The (second) Doctor and assistants Jamie (the kilt wearing Scotsman) and Victoria (a Victorian-era young lady) arrive on a distant planet to investigate what is believed to be the tomb of the cybermen and run into a group of archeologist doing the exact same thing. However, some of them want to do more than merely investigate the cybermen and there are many people in the group hiding secrets.

The Good: I've been told that Victoria has a really good character arc through out the show and it seems like she just joined the Doctor and Jamie the previous episode so it's interesting to see her start changing even as the serial progresses. The Doctor has some more quite moments with her which I also really like, I love it when the show contrasts his adventurous side with a quieter side that shows that he does care about the people who travel with him, and I still like Jamie as well. 

The Bad: I had a bit of a hard time keeping track of which characters were backstabbing who by the end of the episode (I think, including the Doctor and company there were three or four, maybe five, different factions?) and at one point I thought one character was actually a cyberman but either they abandoned that idea halfway through filming or they just had some really weird writing at that point. There were a few too many handwaves involving the technology for my taste ("how do we figure this out? Oh it's based on logic so it's going to be easy!") but that's hardly a new thing in the show. Again it seems like BBC America has chosen some rather solid serials to show so I don't have many bad things to say about them.

The Audio: Everything sounded fine, honestly I was so distracted by some of the costuming that I didn't really notice anything weird here.

The Visuals: I know that classic Doctor Who had a (practically literal) shoestring budget and I've seen that in the past. However, the cybermen costumes were literally the crappiest costumes I have ever seen and guys, I've been to half a dozen anime conventions where half of the cosplays there were thrown together out of someone's closet. Not to bash those outfits but those costumes that people put together for fun with no budget still look eons better than costumes from a professionally produced show which supposedly had a budget. Honestly I don't want to see any more older cybermen stories (since it sounds like this wasn't the first time they had appeared) if this is the kind of quality I'm going to get, at least the actual video quality wasn't that bad for having been discovered (if I recall correctly) in someone's private collection a decade or two back.


Based on the current pattern I'm not expecting them to show the Third Doctor classic serial until late March (right around when the new, erm, half season starts) and that I'm really curious about, like the First Doctor I've only see the Third Doctor in the The Three Doctors special and I didn't like him as much there. So BBC America, show me what you have in those archives!

Movie Review: Metropolis

A professor at my school, don't know him or even what department he's in, seems to have organized a film festival of sorts where the school's movie theater (an actual theater, not the auditorum where they normally show movies) shows a different, classic German film every two weeks or so and the first film up was Metropolis which is basically the granddaddy of modern science fiction. I don't know if the version I saw was the most complete one out there (it was missing two scenes), poking around it seems like this is the most complete one that is missing only about five minutes out of it's 2+ hour run time, and the professor talked a bit too much during the film (some of his points were interesting, like large objects representing authority, others not so much) but none of those are the film's fault, even if the talking really got on my nerves at times.

Metropolis

Summary: In the future there is the great city of Metropolis where the rich live in every comfort and the workers toil beneath the city to keep it running. Freder is a youth living in the upper part of the city who is distraught to find what kinds of lives the workers live and feels called upon to be the foretold mediator between the two groups. But his father, the creator of Metropolis, doesn't wish to see the workers gain that kind of power and conspires with the inventor Rotwang to use his newly created robot to infiltrate the workers and destroy them from the inside.

The Good: I was really not expecting Metropolis to have such a complex plot with deep themes so the movie really blew me away. Part of the reason I had been holding off watching it for years was that I was worried that I would be disappointed but it didn't disappoint here at all. It balanced several points of view well, looked great for the time, had a strong plot, and had some real concepts that were interesting to think about later on. It's not surprising that so much of this movie has been an inspiration for later stories (it's considered by some to be the first disaster movie, has the first transformation sequence in a film, etc) and I was rather in awe. And while a lot of the acting seems a bit over the top one place where I felt it was well done was for Maria and Fake!Maria, the same actress did both roles in the exact same costume, I don't think even her make-up was changed, and obviously without sound, but she was able to create such different personalities with just her movements alone that there was never any doubt which character she was supposed to be at the time, that takes an amazing amount of skill and I can't remember the last time I saw someone pull off something like that so well without using other visual or audio cues. 

The Bad: As I mentioned above, the physical acting is done a bit differently from today's films, the actors' movements are much more stylized and, in some cases, over the top which takes some getting used to and I think will probably bother a lot of modern day viewers. Another thing that modern day viewers have to be prepared for is that the movie is quite long, two and a half hours and it's pacing is on the slow side. I think that it could've worked a little better if parts had been sped up (I've heard that there is a shorter version out there, not sure if it's just missing scenes or if it's been deliberately cut to fix this problem, but apparently it really didn't work).  The movie just takes it's time setting up atmosphere and laying out the groundwork for the plot but there were still a few scenes where I just wanted to yell at the movie to get on with it.  

The Audio: The film is a silent film which doesn't mean there's not any sound at all, it just means that there's no talking. Back in the day it would have most likely been accompanied by a piano player in the theater improvising but here there is an actual soundtrack, I believe it's supposed to be a reconstruction of the original score. There were a few points where the music didn't seem to quite match up with the scenes but by and large it worked well and it didn't feel like anything was lost by not being able to hear the actors.

The Visuals: The film was shot back in 1927 so it's in black and white and some parts of the film are remarkably well preserved. I'll admit that I'm fond of black and white photography, I've had to spend three semesters shooting it so it grew on me, so that aspect didn't bother me, although there are some parts which have been very badly preserved. The film also had a huge budget for it's time, I'm not sure how to adjust for inflation but it was around 5 million Reichsmarks and the movie used it well in building multiple elaborate sets, some of which were built in miniature and then filmed through a mirror which I never would have guessed, and having some rather advanced special effects for the time. The costumes were rather plain, although for costumes you really need color, but overall I was very impressed at the sets.

All in all I was really impressed with this movie and can see why it's still so well remembered even 80 years later. I'd completely recommend it to anyone who likes science fiction or movies in general. I feel like you HAVE to see this just to see where things didn't exactly start but where a lot of things got moving. Doubt I'll ever see the animated version of Metropolis however, apparently Tezuka hated his own work, vowed to never make it into a movie and then the director of the movie waited until he died in order to do it and the movie wasn't that great, think I'll stick with the good version then. 

Book Review: Wired (now titled Torn)

And here is the final installment in Robin Wasserman's trilogy, whew, only took me a month and a half to read and then review all of them which I suppose isn't too bad. So there's not much more to say at this point to introduce the book, onto the review!

Wired (now titled Torn) by Robin Wasserman

As before, this is the UK paperback cover, the kind I have, and again I prefer it to both the old US cover and the new set of covers as well. It's not the greatest cover, I just think that it's really hard to pull off a rainbow color scheme well and this cover isn't doing it, but the lighting on the old US covers bugs me and I feel like the new covers are too non-indicative of the story. 
 
Summary: Lia is back living at home as repayment to her father for the events in the last book and things continue to get more and more dangerous for mechs. Despite her and Biomax's best efforts to change the public's mind there is more and more violence against mechs but then the unthinkable happens, the mechs actually begin to die and Lia and Jude, with a few unlikely allies, are in for their most dangerous fight yet.

The Good: I was happily surprised to see a theory I had thought of reading the first book confirmed, slightly different but it did provide a bit more backstory to the series. I also liked how Lia's sister, Zo, got more character development since she was overdue for it and there have been hints for the past two books that she's more than she appears, the same goes for their mother and Lia's tune-up expert.  

The Bad: This book confirmed a nagging feeling I had had for the past two books, this really should have been one, huge, book instead of a trilogy. None of the books have the right balance of thinking and action and there are large parts where nothing happens. Turning this into one book possibly isn't the best solution, even paring down the books it would make for a 600-800 tome, but I feel like the pacing would have worked better and would've made for a more satisfying story. That aside, I should have been it coming but I disliked the ending (it's the exact same trope I disliked way back in Brain Jack) since I'm not fond of those kinds of tropes and it just makes me roll my eyes and drags me out of the story.

Bit of a short review but really that's it, I feel like the story had some good parts but that this story shouldn't have been a trilogy and that really hurt it pacing wise overall. Would I have liked it more as a single book? I think so, I'd still have problems with some of the subplots (I couldn't bring them up since they started getting more spoilery than I like to in reviews, not that I have any trouble with spoilers in the comments below) but it would avoid one problem I had with the series as a whole, characters appearing one book but not being important until later and feeling rather static until they became important.

Book Review: Crashed (now titled Shattered)

The next book in Wasserman's trilogy, I'm actually only 80 or so pages away from finishing the last book so that review should be up in two weeks as according to schedule, and there's not much more to say to introduce it. It's another book that I got from Wasserman herself with her knowing I was going to review it and it sounded like she thought my first review was a fair one (phew) so here's the next one!

Crashed by Robin Wasserman (now titled Shattered)

 Once again, this is the original US version, I have a copy of the British paperback (whose cover I like more this time around, neither of them are amazing but the tattoos on the American version just look so badly done, really needed a gradient and probably should've been put in overlay blending mode as well) and here is what the new American covers look like.

Summary: Lia Khan has now moved away from her home, unable to live comfortably with her family who only considers her a copy of the daughter they lost, and lives with other mechs, people whose brains have been downloaded into a robotic body (some willingly, most are the "survivors" of accidents and had the money to afford the process) in a remote mansion. While not much of note goes on in the mansion, other than all the relationship drama, there are big things going on in the world including what looks like a set-up to frame Lia and the other mechs for a heinous crime and more people pushing for the de-humanization of mechs.

The Good: I complained in the previous review that not much actually happened action wise, it was a lot more of characters trying to feel their way around and figure out where to go next, and thankfully the plot does progress here. I wasn’t happy with a lot of the progress but things were happening and you can see things being set up for the final volume as well. I was surprised at how well Lia’s romantic relationship went (it was obvious from the first chapter that it would happen but it occurred much more naturally than I was expecting) and I really hope it’s still there in the final book.  

The Bad: Those who read my other reviews know that I’m following an anime called Guilty Crown right now (technically I just dropped it but details) and I’m struck by the similarity between the character Gai there and the character Jude here. Both are leaders of resistance/outside groups of people who have a large group of followers who hang onto their every word, presumably because of their large amounts of charisma, but the main character is always wary of them. But what really struck me is that I’m in agreement with the main characters of both of these works because neither Gai nor Jude appear likable or charismatic in anyway so I, like Shuu and Lia, am completely confused as to just how this all works and I ended up sympathizing with Lia more because of it. This goes under the bad since I’m not sure if Jude was supposed to come off this way or if the writing just didn’t convey something it was supposed to*. Other than that, Lia has a tendency to go on for  paragraphs, if not pages, about why she doesn’t know things (the condition of living in the cities, recent history). The story never makes clear if these things are common knowledge or not, it does insinuate however that Lia really needs to brush up on a lot of areas, but what really annoyed me is just how long each defense of why she didn’t know any of these things took. Finally, this book unfortunately helps show why I really like books with older protagonists, teenagers, even teenagers without hormones running their brains, are often really dumb and simply aren’t creative enough with their plans for me^.

Reading so many of these books back to back makes me glad that I decided to write each of these reviews before I started the next book, I'd be much too muddled up otherwise. And like I said, almost done with the final book and then I get to dive right into my current to-read pile (minus a couple of books that I forgot to put in).

*pretty sure Gai in Guilty Crown wasn’t supposed to come off this way though. Actually, funny enough, Gai seems to be less crazy than Jude, and considering the (unitentional) crazy that is Guilty Crown I never expected to type that.

^for the record, there have been VERY few characters in fiction who have been creative enough for me, I can only think of one instance off the top of my head, but it does get frustrating to read about characters being convinced that there are only two solutions, the bad solution and the not-so-bad solution, when I can immediately think of a few more. Then again, see this comic. 

Movie Review: Mardock Scramble The First Compression

A few weeks ago I saw a few people post on twitter that the first Mardock Scramble movie, based on a novel which is actually avaliable in English, was streaming on hulu and I was intrigued. I thought I had seen one review of the movie that said it was terrible but I definitely remembered seeing a lot of positive reviews for it so I wanted to check it out to see if there was any reason one person would have such a wildly different opinion.

Mardock Scramble: The First Compression

Summary: Rune Barlot was a teenaged prostitute but after a run in with the wrong man is now a cyborg and is in constant doubt with what she should know do in life. She didn’t have much purpose in life before but she’ll need to find one soon or be killed off for real.

The Good: There seem to be a few more science-fiction anime getting produced now than there were a few years ago (although this movie is from 2010) and I like this trend, also because it’s nice to see “happy” sci-fi as a contrast to all the dystopian sci-fi that’s all the range in the US now. Also happy to see more sci-fi that deals with robots (or cyborgs in this case)

The Bad: Two things about this movie really annoyed me, how Rune was mopey and quiet for the entire movie (I understand the movie is part of the trilogy but it should still have enough character development to stand on it’s own) and how it used “rape as back story” for Rune. With a few tweaks the story could have worked just as well without that event* and it was also disturbing how the movie in general, not just the characters in it, seemed to blame the rape on Rune, saying that as a 12 year old she lead her father on, and always get nervous when it seems like a story is supporting that mindset.

The Audio: Hulu only had the English dub streaming which, while okay, I wouldn't go out of my way to suggest. Œufcoque (the mouse, since they had a male voice I'm referring to them as "he") was probably supposed to sound a little flat since he's are an artificial intelligence of sorts but his voice in particular started grating on me after a while. None of the music particularly stood out to me, probably because I was too absorbed by the visuals.

The Visuals: Even watching a standard definition stream on hulu it was clear that this movie had a very good budget and the early scenes in particular are gorgeous to look at. The backgrounds are nicely done, the characters stay on model and all the fight scenes look very nice. Every shot was wonderfully detailed and I’m sure the movie looks even more extraordinary in high-def.

I actually have a little postcard advertisement for this movie on the wall of my dorm room, got it with a package from TRSI, but I was so annoyed by this movie that I'll be taking it down once and I get back and I certainly won't be checking out the second movie if it (likely) gets licensed in the US. And I do now think that I didn't imagine seeing a bad review for this movie after all, I certainly can't have been the only person to have been as frustrated by it. 

*slight spoilers, the story could have gone like this instead: her parents could have always been neglectful/abusive which gave her very low self-worth and lead her to prostitution, both to try and find worth and to make money and this could have also lead her brother to get involved in gang violence and shoot someone and therefore land in jail. With that the story would have the very same outcome, Rune would have had the same motivations and it wouldn’t have the victim-blaming mindset, brilliant!

Movie Review: Ghost in the Shell

I've never seen this movie before actually (as some people have probably guessed, I'm a relatively new-er anime fan and didn't have any older fans around me to make me watch all the classics, I'm the one making my friends watch them) which seems a little ironic considering how much science fiction I was reading this summer and this is a classic sci-fi film for sure. I don't think the movie needs much of an introduction, I will note that I saw the original 1995 version, not the remaster since I heard that they made some dumb changes to how the film looked and I got it off of Netflix streaming.

Ghost in the Shell

Summary: Not far into the future the world is still much the same as it is today but robots and cyborgs are much more common and are part of many people's ordinary lives. Major Kusanagi is a cyborg who works for Section Nine, a covert operations department in the Japanese National Public Safety Commission who are currently trying to track down "The Puppet Master," a genius hacker who hacks into the ghosts of people with no known motive. 

The Good: So when I read Brainjack apparently I was expecting to get this movie instead of, that, so I was quite happy to see that this movie lived up to everything I had heard about it over the years. It feels a lot like old school science fiction, a view of the future that is neither positive nor negative, plenty of technology that looks cool even though it comes off as slightly dated and philosophical musing about what this technology means plus a fairly strong, if a bit strange, plot*. The action scenes and the quieter ones are nicely balanced, the pacing in general is strong, the plot is interesting without being overly complicated and I really want to try out the tv series now.

The Bad: Another similarity many classic science fiction stories hold in common is having a really strange, journey to the center of the mind/generally trippy ending and GitS has elements of that as well. My problem with this trope is that, even if the characters have deep, philosophical moments earlier in the story, everything that happens and all the actions they make are grounded in reality and what actually exists, it makes for a rather jarring transition and generally an unsatisfactory ending to me. GitS didn't bother me as much as it has in the past, and there is a second film I haven't seen yet, but that did bother me a bit. That and the fact that while the fact that one of the (male) minor villains gets a cool, thermal deflecting camouflage coat the Major (female) is either wearing nothing at all or a skintight body suit, it's really strange fanservice that contradicts the logic present in the movie and it just irked me^.

The Audio: Since this was streaming on Netflix I saw the English dub and I thought it was a pretty strong dub (it's the original dub so the Puppet Master has a male voice, I agree that changing the voice to a woman's defeats the purpose a bit). There are several times when the lip flaps don't match up perfectly with the actors speaking (and it probably happened even more when I was looking away) but the flow and the tones sounded natural so I'm happy that went that route instead of matching up the flaps more and making everything sound stiffer. The music in the movie is a bit unusual since, instead of the traditional techno music used in cyberpunk films, it features more instrumental pieces and it's most memorable piece is a distinctive, haunting choral song, one that just seems to match the film's more philosophical feel in places very well.

The Visuals: The film is from 1995 and it shows, everything is hand drawn, the aspect ratio is a little different and the colors seem a bit muted and the whole picture a bit fuzzy. The film struck me as one I would love to see a remaster of so I could see it in it's full glory, an ironic thought since the Ghost in the Shell 2.0 rerelease from 2008 instead of simply restoring the film added in a lot of CGI that many fans didn't like (although it sounds like there is a straight up remaster on one of the blu-rays). Those details aside, the film looks fine with highly detailed backgrounds, a level of detail you just don't see as much in more modern films and amazing looking fight sequences. 


Strangeness of the ending aside (and let me say, before people jump on me, it wasn't as weird as it could have been and hasn't been as weird as I've seen, see the footnote below, but that trope is still one I don't really like) I absolutely loved this film and am now trying to figure out how to get the "good" version of the remaster, if not I'll just get a DVD of the old release some day. I don't know when I'll get around to the second movie or the tv series but they're both on my to-watch list now, yay for good sci-fi!



*the movie actually reminded me a lot of a book I read most of a few years back, The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer by Neal Stephenson. Lots of similar elements, didn't read it all the way through since I peeked ahead at the ending and it seemed to end with an orgy that lead to a higher level of existence, nothing too strange for sci-fi in general but too strange for me.
^that and I'm recommending this movie to my dad, the guy who got me reading strange science fiction like the above example, and I feel really weird telling him there's robot nudity in there and I really don't want that to turn him off from watching a really good movie.