Manga Review: Assassination Classroom

I may be jumping the gun a little bit here considering that the anime isn’t over yet (although it is ending in just two months) and the manga won’t be fully released in the US for another 2-ish years if Viz Media’s (print) publishing schedule holds steady (they've already run the final chapters in WSJ) but frankly having a review out earlier is better than later. Honestly I wasn’t even sure I would be able to finish the manga as it concluded serialization but as I went poking around online to see where the anime had adapted up to I was hit with manga spoilers everywhere and this was after the series two biggest twists.
Dammit fandom spaces.
So at that point it seemed like the only thing to do was to ricochet through a manga that the American Shounen Jump editors themselves said had no chance of being licensed here and talk once again (since I’ve highlighted AssClass before) about why the series isn’t nearly as dark as you would expect from the title.

Assassination Classroom (Ansatsu Kyousetsu) by Yuusei Matsui

Anime Review: Yuki Yuna is a Hero

Whew, I've only got a week's gap in-between anime seasons to review a backlog title but with how full this season has been for me I haven't had a chance to really work on my backlog honestly. Spring doesn't look like it's going to be much better at this rate, it's crazy how even the "weak" anime seasons always leave me watching more than I think I am....

Yuki Yuna is a Hero (Yuki Yuna wa Yuusha de Aru)

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

Anime Review: Rokka Braves of the Six Flowers

And now we get to the "this wasn't nearly terrible enough to drop it but boy did it have problems" series from the summer anime season. Just about all of these titles had one big thing in common, they started strong and then slowly started to stagger with different amounts of crashing and burning.

Rokka: Braves of the Six Flowers

Anime Review: Gatchman Crowds Insight

I, like everyone else, was surprised when I heard that were was going to be a sequel to the 2013 incarnation of Gatchaman since it seemed like the series had tied itself up quite nicely. However, after having seen this sequel it's a must see, that story wasn't complete before which I suppose makes this the best sequel ever in a sense.

But first things first, if you have seen Crowds but not the director's cut of episode 12 you need to see that. Given the half recap episode in the tv run they had to re-edit episode 12 on the DVDs (Japan only, Sentai could not get the license in the US) which includes how Hajime finally defeated Berg Katze and a few other key details. Next, make sure to watch episode 0 on Crunchyroll before going onto episode 1 since it has new stuff as well. And then you're all set for what may be the most decisive anime of 2015!

Gatchaman Crowds Insight

Book Review: The Last Dragonslayer

The curse of reviewing mediocre things "man there are so many things I'd rather be doing right now than trying to find the energy to talk about THIS". And I'm afraid this might be happening a lot in the next few weeks, I've been reading my usual book and a half a week but very few of the fiction works have really been grabbing me (I tend to alternate reading fiction and non-fiction but I find non-fiction tricky enough to review that those thoughts tend to get shoved into the weekly round-ups). It's not a burn-out per say, alternating with non-fiction is helping, but it's frustrating week after week I start up an interesting looking book and am completely bored with it by the end.

The Last Dragonslayer by Jasper Fforde

Anime Review: Happiness Charge Precure

"Didn't you say you were trying to be more on time last week?" FIFTEEN HOUR WORK DAYS MAN and this is why I keep planning on building up my buffer of reviews and it doesn't happen. But this show is already a year old so a few days don't matter as much, I already have to explain to people why I'm watching last year's iteration of Pretty Cure instead of this year's Go Princess (which is apparently quite good!). So here it is: two years ago I watched Heartcatch Precure and loved it so I tried out the new series that year, Doki Doki Precure as well as the original. I plan to go back to the original someday but it starts slowly and all of the official streams are pretty low quality, Doki Doki just ended up being really nuts so I gave up on it after a bit. So then I returned last year to HaCha and while I liked it I just fell behind with everything else I was watching.

And so, after I finished Wish Upon the Pleiades it seemed like a good time to go, finish HaCha and see if I could maybe, maybe catch up with GoPri before the end of it's run next January.

Happiness Charge Pretty Cure

Anime Review: Show by Rock

Yep, in a way I watched two shows about music last season, although this show and Sound! Euphonium were so different that I tended to compare this one more to Wish Upon the Pleiades instead. They were both rather cute, fluffy shows that you could almost believe were for kids at first, especially since the original game/character project is from the same company that created Hello Kitty.

Show by Rock!

Movie Review: The Avengers: Age of Ultron

My schedule has such few, odd free hours at this point that I thought I just wouldn't have the time to see The Age of Ultron until sometime in June at this rate but as I was playing catch-up with Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. I got to the tie-in episode and realized, I really wanted to see the movie right now! The tie-in seems to be that the "Operation THETA" that was mentioned a few times prior to the episode was Coulson working out a way to get into a HYDRA base to learn where Loki's scepter is and then I think they end the episode on the line "It's time to call in the Avengers." Oh and there's also a wonderful bit of Coulson sass earlier in the episode saying to someone "Here's Fury's toolbox, you can have it until he wants it back. Oh, spoilers." I'm so grumpy that they still aren't working this guy back into these movies since he really is my favorite Avenger. 

The Avengers: Age of Ultron

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!)

Webcomic Review: Cucumber Quest

While Cucumber Quest has a fairly large following I'd imagine that Gigi D.G's first comic, the Hiimdaisy (her old pen name) Persona 4 fancomic probably has an even wider name recognition and that's how I first found her work. I really liked that series of comics and was sad that it's unfinished (for the uninitiated, I really like this fandub of the comics) and I'm still surprised by the notoriety of it, I believe that the English dub for the Persona 4 The Arena game even had a reference to one of her jokes in there. So it wasn't a surprise to me that this work is also influenced by classic RPGs, although it might be an even stronger connection than I first thought.

Cucumber Quest by Gigi D.G.

Anime Review: Rage of Bahamut: Genesis

This is another title that wasn't on my to-watch list for the fall initially but good buzz, and some persistent friends, convinced me to try it out. Hmm, it seems as if I've been saying that about quite a few shows that aired this past fall....

Rage of Bahamut: Genesis

Anime Review: Neppu Kairiku Bushi Road

Back when the winter charts were first coming out (so, October-ish) I was rather excited with the premise for this one and was sad to hear that it was just going to be some sort of tv special in early January instead of a full tv show. And then I found out that it had been in development hell since 2003 which was holy crap longer than I have been an anime fan, and by several years even! Heck it's original creator died in the intern, the author of the original Trinity Blood light novels, although it sounds like that was actually the cause of the delay since he was supposed to be heavily involved in it. I knew that the TB series was left technically unfinished with his death, so I guess I should be happy that this story at least finally got made. I believe I've heard rumors that they want to retool it for a theatrical release later down the road so maybe this project isn't finished yet.

Neppu Kairiku Bushi Road

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

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.

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

Manhwa Review: Ark Angels

Originally I wanted to have a post about the comics avaliable on Free Comic Book Day but decided that since A) it was already over a week later and B) I still can't figure out where the print copies I got went (I just had to move all my stuff again and it seems like those comics are what got lost this time) so it seemed a bit pointless. I will say however that I was pretty disappointed with the two I had to get online (my comic book store, which is now tiny, out of the way, and has absolutely nothing I want to buy, didn't have copies of them), Infernal Devices and Finding Gossameyer were both completely underwhelming, although when you only have FOUR pages it's kinda hard to make a good impression (I can't remember the last time the first four pages of a comic really made me want to read the rest, stuff like this and the JManga previews confuse me greatly). So instead you get the next installment in "random manhwa found at my library" and it's spelled correctly this time too!

Ark Angels by Sang-Sun Park

Summary: Shem, Hamu, and Japheth are three sisters who, when filling in for their father at a conference to discuss Earth’s future, were given the task to travel through time and save endangered animals (seen through their eyes as anthropomorphized animals) and turn back Earth’s doomsday clock. When not traveling they’ve transferred to a new school and one of Japheth’s classmates may not be what they seem…..

The Good: The three sisters were a bit more rounded than I expected, especially the main character Japheth, and there was just enough intrigue to keep me interested. The chapters that focused on rare animals dragged a bit but overall the volume was well-paced and I was curious enough that if I came across another volume I’d try it out as well, although not so curious I plan on actively seeking it out. It does seem to be completely published in the US and only runs three volumes and oddly enough that short length does make me more willing to read more of it, although it makes me wonder how basic the plot will become (or if it will stay as basic as it is) with such a short length.

The Bad: This manhaw reminds me an awful lot of Petshop of Horrors and, as I mentioned before, maybe if I hadn’t read so much of PoH first then I might have liked this better*. I doubt it though, PoH was interesting, could tell the same basic story over and over again before it lost it's luster, and had a polish that this series simply doesn't have. In the end I'd recommend Petshop of Horrors over this story and can't think of any situation where I would recommend this story at all.

The Art: The art feels rather standard and, well, exactly what you would expect for a series featuring anthropomorphized animals aimed at a female audience. I really liked the illustration on the cover with the soft watercolors and I wish the art had looked a little more like that (it wouldn’t have worked in watercolors the way it is, the panels are just too full and almost cluttered, but I can almost see it looking something like DOOR: ToiletGenie if the art had been tweaked some). As I find myself saying so often these days, nothing wrong with the art but I’ve just seen so much that looks like this that I want something a bit different.

Stronger than last week's title but still nothing worth writing home about. I do feel rather bad that it seems like I don't like manhwa at all but rather I just don't run across many titles that I like which makes me think that manhwa is very much like manga, there's a lot out there but not a lot that anyone person is going to like. Of course, if ones that nobody likes get published and nobody likes them then the publishing companies won't keep licensing them, a chicken and egg situation...

*on a funny note, this was an older Tokyopop release which had recommendations on other series by the editors including one for the author’s other series, Tarot Card Café, where the editor compared that to Petshop of Horrors, I guess that one had the shop part and this one had the magical animals part?

Comic Review: Amulet (volumes 1-4)

A few years back when I was working in the local library I found the first volume in this series, read it, and didn't think much of it. Looking at the publication dates I don't think there were any other volumes out at the time to change my mind but over the years I've seen plenty of praise for the series, the kind of exhuberent praise that makes me squirm in my seat and go "how could something I found so average be so extraordinary to others, did it really improve later on or such?" Differences in taste could easily account for that difference but I was really puzzled and, after finding all four books staring at me in the local library (book five should come out this fall, I'm thinking the series won't be much longer than six volumes) I decided to give it a second go and try to figure out what all the buzz was about.

Amulet by Kazu Kibuishi (volumes one through four)

Summary: After a tragedy rocks their family, Emily along with her brother Navin and mother move to the old family home in the countryside to start a new chapter in their lives. They weren't expecting this new chapter to be so adventurous however as Emily inherits her Silas' amulet which gives her both great powers and unexpected responsibilities in the world of Alledia where they quickly become embroiled in an old war with enemies lurking everywhere.

The Good: While I still don't get quite all the hype I see for these books they are certainly well-written with an interesting plot. While Emily and her family are vital to trying to save Alledia she acts more as a catalyst than a promised savior which I like, it makes it much easier to take her role in all of this seriously. I also like how her brother Navin has also had sometime in the spotlight, initally I was worried he would be overshadowed because Amulet truly is Emily's story but his development (as well as that of a number of side characters) has been well placed and adds to the story. 

The Bad: It's a bit of an odd complaint but even after four books I still feel like we haven't gotten to know and understand Emily all that well, I feel like Navin has gotten much more character development (possibly because Navin has more downtime and Emily has been so busy there's no time for quiet, character establishing scenes). I do dislike how their mother is written however, it is hard to write capable adult characters in children's literature but the mother here just comes off as a bit too flat, someone to spout advice that doesn't even end up working in the end. Also a bit frustrated at the villain introduced in the fourth volume, everything was paced so quickly I had to re-read the story to figure out what happened and I didn't see a motivation or a reason for another villain at all. Despite all of that I am curious to see what happens next in the story, not so curious as to actively seek it out but rather enough that if I come across it at the library at some point I'll check it out. 

The Art: The comics are in full art and, while the art isn't going to blow your socks off it has progressed nicely and gets better and better with each book. The settings look nice and distinct, the pages flow well and all the characters look different from each other. The art hasn't blown me away but it's not underwhelming either so I have no complaints with it.

It's mostly for superficial reasons but the early parts of this story still remind me strongly of The Spiderwick Chronicles which is also probably because they're both middle grade, also probably why this story didn't grip me as much. I'd easily recommend these books (both series) to my younger step-sister but probably not to my college aged comic reading friends.  

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: [C] Control

Here is the other noitaminA show of the season, [C]. A nice balance to AnoHana (the spring season is actually a nice balance to the shows in the winter season, fantasy/adventure and growing up transgender slice of life vs dealing with grief & growing up slice of life and magical economic battles) C doesn’t quite feel like a show that should be in the noitaminA block but it was directed by Kenji Nakamura who seems to do a new show in the block every two years (he directed the Bake Neko arc in Ayakashi-Samurai Horror Tales, the spin-off show Mononoke and then Kuuchu Buranko(Trapeze) although this is his first work that I’ve seen (really need to see Mononoke someday). Like AnoHana it’s an anime original story with plenty of strengths and weaknesses and was an interesting watch.

[C] Control-The Money and Soul of Possibility

 Summary: Yoga Kimimaro was an ordinary college student who works two jobs and whose goal in life is to hold a stable government job and be able to raise a family with enough money to provide for them. But one day he is dragged to the Financial District and forced to accept their offer, money with his future as a collateral and engage in weekly fights (deals with an asset the Financial District provides him with, Mashu, literally a manifestation of his future) to keep from going from bankrupt and losing everything.

The Good: The show seems to be trying to say that there is no right or wrong way to save the economy, just different ways with pros and cons (much like Eden of the East) and it does succeed on this point (even if the only two options the characters seem to come up with is sacrifice the present for the future or save the present so there will be a future, literally in both cases). And towards the end of the series when it's clear that the world is in trouble and the heroes need a plan to save it they actually come up with a rather good plan to counter the current problem and that couldn't really be done any earlier because of how much damage it causes. Finally, while the show itself doesn't try to explain real world economics (Spice and Wolf does that better), if someone was to look up various phrases uttered in the show (such as the attacks the assets use in deals) they would actually learn a little about various techniques and plans used by real world companies in business deals.

The Bad: This show really needed a few more episodes (maybe just two more to make it a full 13/one cour) since it spent so much time focusing on Yoga exploring the world and what various people are trying to accomplish in the Financial District and then immediately switches to the final fight. Not only is it a jarring change of pace but it means that Yoga spends two-thirds of the series wondering just what he should be doing and then he suddenly makes up his mind without any problems. The ending was too ambiguous in places* and really, some of the events leading up to the climax needed more explanation as well. Finally, it's said several times in the show that the Financial District works by taking someone's future as collateral and then giving them money but how exactly does the FD have that kind of power? None of the characters even question this and perhaps the supplementary material explained it better but, as it stands, there is no reason given why the main mover and shaker of the series even exists which isn't a good thing.   

The Audio: Funimation translated both the opening and the ending song but neither of them sounded like they were actually talking about the show. I preferred the opening to the ending for the way the beat matched up with the visuals (and the visuals of the opening at least connected back to the show) but neither song really got stuck in my head the way a really good opening or ending will. There was a lot of Engrish in the show at times and some characters were better than others (Jennifer had the weakest performance) and all of the government officials spoke decent English, glad to see that having background characters who sounds like they know the language is becoming more common these days.

The Visuals: The show looks fine in some places and not-so-fine in others, which might be due in part to the aftereffects of the Tohoku earthquake (I’ve seen a few studios admit that hurt them) and also from saving their budget for the last big fight. That last fight is a pretty amazing one, although that still doesn’t excuse all the scenes earlier on in the series where the characters would suddenly and randomly be CGI instead of traditionally animated (especially since that fight didn’t need to go on as long, ie, didn’t need all of that budget). Other than that, both the opening and closing sequence are interesting to look at^ and the financial district has some cool designs but everything else looks fairly average, there’s nothing bad or especially good about it.  

So it seems that again the noitaminA show I enjoyed less is the one that has gotten licensed first (Funimation annouced DVD/BR rights for this this past weekend) and I honestly don't know if I'd buy this one. It wasn't a horrible show, not at all, but it really could be better and honestly I can't figure out why this series wasn't at least paced better (it's in the noitaminA timeslot, you KNOW it's only 11 episodes!). Maybe if all the CGI was cleaned up and it has some good extras I'll get it but Funimation usually doesn't get a ton of extras on their DVDs so I'll just have to play this one by ear. 

* this post has the best theory (in my opinion) on what happened in the end, spoilers for the very end of course, but even that theory contradicts some information that was on the Japanese site (it sounds like there was some side information on the site but, since it wasn't translated as far as I know, that doesn't help me here)

^check out here about some of the tarot imagery that popped up in the show, there are a few other posts on the blog about symbolism that popped up in the later episodes as well,