Book Review: The Game of Love and Death

Well, I'm honestly not sure why this book was on my to-read list. Clearly I put it on since I heard good recommendations about it but honestly Helen, this is obviously going be a romance and those aren't your thing! I tried to trust my past self and hope that whatever they had read about the book was amazing but, there were a few problems here.

The Game of Love and Death by Martha Brockenbrough 

Book Review: Inherit the Stars

As I was writing this review I learned there is an older series that starts with the same title and nope, this is not a review of the Giant Series by James P Hogan. Totally different premise, still science fiction, but a young adult book instead of an adult novel. So, with that clarification out of the way, onto what felt like a rather short book!

Inherit the Stars by Tessa Elwood

Anime Review: Snow White with the Red Hair (part two)

So, new week, new anime? Considering I only review series after they've finished I can't precisely say that the second half of this Summer 2015 adaptation by Bones is brand-spanking new but it's still pretty new! As I've been saying with all of the sequels so far, yes this is a direct sequel to the first half, think of this more as a split show than a proper sequel, so go try that out before you watch this part. I suppose you could read this review first but I do have a review of the first half as well.....

Snow White with the Red Hair (Akagami no Shirayuki-hime)

TWELVE DAYS OF ANIME 2015: Anthem of the Heart

Alright folks, it's the start of 12 Days of Anime so have a late movie review post (which works out well for me since I'm not sure I have 12 days worth of material yet....)

I almost didn't see this movie, it was playing only for two days near me (a simultaneous release with the rest of the US so there weren't any advance reviews), tickets are expensive, and while I liked the 30 minute making-of feature it just didn't sell me on it (it has a lot of the same team that worked on AnoHana and while I did like that show it was so melodramatic I wasn't sure I could handle all of that compressed into a single movie). Thankfully some folks started writing reviews on it after they saw it on the first day and that pushed me to go you know, why not? 

Anthem of the Heart

Anime Review: Snow White with the Red Hair (part one)

Stress, work, job-hunting, car shopping, and sewing are all big timesinks folks. So is reading too much manga so you can review it in the next few weeks but I feel like that one is an understandable excuse for me at least.

Snow White with the Red Hair (Akagami no Shirayukihime)

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

Anime Review: Witch Craft Works

Alright, back to the blogging game. The summer anime season is winding down and the leaves are starting to fall on my block, let's get to a few older shows before jumping into the new stuff and the new new fall stuff first shall we?

Witch Craft Works

Anime Review: The World is Still Beautiful

Running too behind for a weekly round up this week so let's get going, I've actually made some progress on my backlog!

The World is Still Beautiful (Soredemo Sekai wa Utsukushii)

Movie Review: Patema Inverted

Once again, thanks to the JICC I had a chance to see a film which I missed in theaters (if it was playing near me in the first place) and once again it was a film I had heard mixed things on. At first I only heard terrible reviews for it but after a time I heard more mixed reviews on it. So I went, steeling myself knowing that I would not completely love this movie no matter how much I really really wanted to going in which is a just plain odd feeling.

Patema Inverted

Anime Review: Yona of the Dawn

As probably everyone already knows, I have been a huge fan of the Akatsuki no Yona manga for years so I was happy was an anime adaptation was announced, thrilled when I heard it was going to be two cours (since adapting any part of the story into just 13 episodes was going to be a mess), and then shocked when it was picked up by Funimation from the get-go, I guess successes like Kamisama Kiss are making people a little less hesitant about shojo again. So why do I love this show so much? Well, this adaptation does a pretty good job at explaining it!

Yona of the Dawn

Manga Review: Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches

Sorry for the lateness here again, as I said in my round-up post yesterday I actually did finish writing this on Monday but my late work shift left me too drained to do all of the copy editing. And this is going to be the last of my manga Mondays, the winter anime season ends this week so next Monday I'm diving back into the anime reviews with new shows and comics every other week (well, and manga reviews every week on OASG, at this rate I'm set to review about 70 different comic and manga series this year which is a bit of a terrifying number).

Yamda-kun and the Seven Witches by Miki Yoshikawa

Webcomic Review: Girls With Slingshots

Well this wasn't the original plan but since the comic did end just last week it's perfect timing for me! If you follow the RSS feed the comic is now repeating with it's very earliest strips (but now in color) and holy cow I didn't even remember that the art was so different at first, so if anyone else is looking at the front page for the first time in a while and is confused that would be why, it's not your memory it's actually the comic!

Girls with Slingshots by Danielle Corsetto

Manga Review: Spirit Circle

Funny story, I actually had this post all ready to go last night and completely forgot until 11:30 to actually hit post so I decided to wait until morning. Which means, this post originally appeared on Organization of Anti-Social Geniuses!

This is one of the many manga I first tried out when I was using friends' guest passes on Crunchyroll and frankly my luck for finding good series on there was pretty terrible. Honestly it still is but I'm lad I stumbled across this one, I actually had no idea it was by the same manga-ka as The Biscuit Hammer and after I enjoyed this series so much I was convinced to try The Biscuit Hammer again and I think that one is growing on me too!

Spirit Circle by Satoshi Mizukami

Manga Review: Orange

As an aside, this review was supposed to go up on OASG first but is going up here first. This only matters since I did read this manga using the press account with Crunchyroll so "a review copy was provided". This won't apply to my other two manga titles this month however, I read both of those thanks to many guest passes from friends!

I went to the Crunchyroll Manga panel at Katsucon a few weeks back (and ran out of the room to take a phone call AND ended up sitting next to some other people from "Anitwitter") where Dancia and Evan spent part of the panel talking about some of the manga they personally liked. Orange was brought up and Danica said something to the effect of "the Japanese editors had no idea people were even reading it overseas since they didn't think it would appeal to anyone else". That made me giggle a bit since a few months earlier I had mentioned in passing that I hadn't read it yet and wanted to I immediately had friends offering me guest passes for the express purpose for reading the series. I am sure that that the editors are completely correct that the overseas fanbase is small but at least it's a dedicated one!

Orange by Ichigo Takano

Audio Book Review: A Love for the Pages

To continue with my full disclosure policy on this blog, a friend of mine was the narrator for this audio book and gave me a review copy on audible in exchange for a review. I plan on making a full page for how to contact me for review requests (especially with all of the webcomic requests I'm getting these days from people who have clearly never looked at this blog before in their lives....) but I am open to stuff like this. On that note, I am going to refrain from really talking about my friend's voice since I'm sure if she wants any personal critique she will ask, I'll just say that I like the sound of her voice and didn't find it grating which is one very important thing when you're about to listen to them for six hours!

A Love for the Pages by Joy Penny

Book Review: Afterworlds.

Despite enjoying Westerfeld's previous works, and the fact that he was giving a talk/book signing at the bookstore only a mile away from my house, I wasn't planning on reading this book at first (or going to the signing since I already saw him give one a few years ago). But the end of the year rolled around and I wanted to read a few more books that had come out in 2014 and, well, it wasn't going to be the worst thing I had read all year and honestly the promise that something will probably be good is enough to get me reading a story anytime (just look at my recent track record with manga reviews over on OASG, oy vey).

Afterworlds by Scott Westerfeld

Anime Review: When Supernatural Battle Became Commonplace

Sorry for the delay on this one folks, I've been busy although the missing book review from last week wasn't because I was busy, it was because I sat down and realized I just had nothing to say on the book. That's always a problem here, sometimes I just read something all the day through, find it passable, but just have nothing to say about it. I've also been reading quite a bit of middle grade recently and I'm still debating if I want to review that here as well since again, shorter books, less to talk about and these reviews are already pretty short.

Thankfully that's not my worry here tonight, this show wasn't on my radar as the fall season began but after I saw quite a few people talking about how great the new Studio Trigger show was (no one could decide on a nickname for a few weeks, even the licensors it seemed, many people seem to have adopted "Inou Battle") I gave it a shot and what do you know, it's actually a pretty fun light novel adaptation!

When Supernatural Battles Became Commonplace

Manga Review: My Little Monster (volume 4)

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I think my branch library has gotten a new employee lately who is fairly manga-savy, not just because of the "sad Naruto is over? Read these manga instead!" display but because I've seen more recent manga releases popping up in our small section recently. Obviously this was one of them, I hadn't gotten around to buying the latest volume of My Little Monster yet for, well, actually that's part of the review!

My Little Monster (volume 4) by Robico

Comic Review: Hana Doki Kira

I waffled over reviewing this anthology or not since I don't want to be excessively mean-spirited to a fan project and I know that it's highly unlikely that the creators of these stories will see this review and then keep it in mind the next time they plan something (like you would for a critique). And yet, this was a project I had high hopes for and this book really just didn't pan out for me and I would like to articulate precisely why this was since I do think these are correctable mistakes and not all of them are the fault of the artists.

Hana Doki Kira

Movie Review: Belle

Sorry about the delay here, between getting everything watched and written up for the Fall Anime Round-UP earlier in the week and the fact that I'm visiting home this week I completely ran out of time to sit down and watch a full movie until it was too late (next week's looks like it will be late as well probably). And I certainly didn't fall behind because I wasn't interested in this movie, I first heard about the story of Dido Elizabeth Belle a year or two ago, I think it was when the movie was announced and the actress playing Belle, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, mentioned that she was a bit jealous of some of her white colleagues who got to wear beautiful period dresses but there were never any roles like that if you weren't (completely) white. And that stuck with me and convinced me to be excited about the film, even if historicals aren't usually my kind of movie.

Belle