Movie Review: Star Wars: The Force Awakens

I've never liked Star Wars. I say this because Star Wars should totally be my jam; it has the kind of expansive yet detailed setting I adore and its basic story, of watching an empire bursting with corruption fall and then the eventual fight against what has replaced it, is the kind of ambitious idea that I like! But at its heart, the earlier Star Wars films are horribly simple plot-wise and the newer ones needed a lot of editing (I've never dabbled in the extended universe but a lot of what I've heard about it does sound interesting).

So I wasn't interested in this new film, clearly this wasn't for me! But it wasn't until after the film was leaving theaters that I started hearing that actually, this was a really solid story and could appeal to the few folks like me who didn't already love Star Wars. So, it was time to wait until the library got it's DVDs and then see if I should start paying attention to Star Wars. 

Star Wars: The Force Awakens (episode 7)

Book Review: Aurora

I haven't had much luck over the years with young adult science fiction in general so the obvious solution to this is to try more adult sci-fi titles. I still haven't read that many, I keep meaning to fix it but my to-read list is to long that it'll take a while for that to take effect, but with my new goal of staying more caught up with current titles I'm hoping that sci-fi won't be such a rare occurrence here!

Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson

Movie Review: Mobile Suit Gundam Movie Trilogy

I hadn't seen any movies at the JICC in a while but they decided to finish off the summer with a kicker by airing the three compilation movies of the original Mobile Suit Gundam series over the course of three weeks and, well, free movies! I also didn't realize until the night before the first movie that each movie was nearly two and a half hours long, and I also had to miss the third movie since it fell on the weekend of Otakon (which I was sorry about since it was preceded by a presentation from a JAXA worker about if Gundam is our future which sounds exactly like my kind of nerdy). However, the GundamInfo youtube channel, the same place that streamed Gundam Build Fighters, is also streaming the movies for a short while so I was able to finish up the series anyway. Despite their length, watching the final movie at home was much more comfortable, there was still something great about sitting in a small theater with a bunch of other people and having the lights go out to show sweeping scenes of space and sacrifice on the big screen.

Mobile Suit Gundam Movie Trilogy

Comic Review: Cleopatra in Space (volumes one and two)

It's a little surprising I haven't blogged about this series before, I read the original webcomic Celopatra in Spaaaace! (there's a review for it somewhere) but it totally slipped my mind to check and see if the local library had any of the graphic novels for it. The third volume was recently released but my library did not in fact have it yet so I'm only covering the first two volumes here!

Cleopatra in Space by Mike Maihack

Anime Review: Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron Blooded Orphans

Normally I order these reviews from my most-favorite anime of a season to least so I should put up a little note that says: this was not my least favorite show of the season! I just go so slammed by con work back in February that I was barely keeping up with anything and even since then I've been non-stop busy and seeing folks make, disapproving noises at the last half of the show wasn't the kind of motivation I needed to finish the show. The fact that it's already dubbed and airing on Toonami in the US is however so let's get onto this very late post.

Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron Blooded Orphans

Movie Review: Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise

This is yet another film I saw thanks to the JICC and I went to it since I'd always heard good things about it but people never mentioned details. I knew that there was a struggle in the end with the older characters giving up and the younger ones advocating pushing on (and that I only know because of some folks saying those roles should be reversed) but that was it, people just weren't selling the movie to me! So let me do the job instead and say: this was a fantastic film, everyone shouldn't just want to see it, everyone needs to see it.

Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise

Book & Movie Review: The Martian

So I mentioned I was going to try this a few weeks ago but a refresher for folks who have forgotten; I'm always at a loss for how to review adaptions based off of books that I have read recently. I don't want to just review one or the other but it's tricky to write something substantial both times without either repeating myself or spending the bulk of the review simply making comparisons. So, since I read The Martian quite recently I'm going to try this, one review to talk about the story as it relates to both version and how the versions differed (with characterization, pacing etc) and yes, saying if one version should be avoided over the other. I know that some people are a little, hesitant, to call a movie etc bad if it's not a faithful adaptation of a book but let's face it, a lot of times those are bad because they take out what made the story work (like, in terms of coherency, basic building parts) and I am anything but hesitant to tell you guys if a story was crap.

The Martian Original story by Andy Weir

Anime Review: Wish Upon the Pleiades

As the spring anime season starts winding down it's time for me to finally start talking about it's current shows and I suppose the best way to completely sum it up is "not as bad as expected". There were plenty of shows I enjoyed enough to keep watching week to week but I'll talk more about the season as a whole in my Round-UP next Sunday. In the meantime, out of my roster of shows Wish Upon the Pleiades (literally After School Pleiades in Japanese which actually works a bit better with the show) was the first to wrap and it's a show I enjoyed so I'm glad to talk about it early on, also glad to see some non-franchise magical girl shows every few seasons!

Wish Upon the Pleiades (Houkago no Pleiades)

Movie Review: Interstellar

Normally this film would fall into the category of "movies I'm interested in but not enough to pay DC theater prices so I'll wait for the DVD" but, much like Princess Kaguya, this is a film where the experience of seeing it on a big screen is part of the draw. Or in this case, seeing it on a 70mm film playing IMAX theater at work with the sound so loud it was literally rattling some of the building (not an exaggeration, I had to deal with the rattling first hand when I was covering for a coworker). Even with an employee discount the ticket price still made me wince, was it worth it in the end?

Interstellar

Anime Review: Captain Earth

It's a fact that if you stick a Bones mecha show in front of me I'm going to watch it, there are several different general styles to how various creators approach mecha shows and I just rather like Bones approach. It's never just a war or a soldiers life for them, it's about the people who end up having to do these crazy things and a lot of self-discovery, this sounds pretty great to me especially since I know that budgets usually don't allow for down-and-out robot punching fests every single episode! And in case anyone reads this review and wonders at a few of the name choices, apparently Bones enjoyed having "The Tempest" and "Hamlet" references in another show so much they added in a number of A Midsummer Night's Dream ones here, although most of them are surface, name-only references without any deep, thematically related connections.

Captain Earth

Anime Review: Space Dandy

When I was looking at the panel listing for Otakon I noticed that Shinichiro Watanabe had a panel on Sunday which was listed as something along the lines of "the second Watanabe panel" and I though "Oh so are they finally going to announce Space Dandy?" Some fans online had already found out about the project (I believe through searching who was buying what site titles) and sure enough the project was announced during his Saturday panel and they spent the first bit of the Sunday panel showing all the material again (and it was pretty fun to see the trailer that practically no one else had seen, and it wasn't a crappy cam-rip either!). It also lead to the most surreal moment of my life where I was on twitter, live-tweeting a tiny bit, sat back during the Q& A to just listen and read my own feed, to have someone in line say that they were live-tweeting as well, they had actually shown up on my feed, and that a staff member who had worked on the show had responded to something he had reported that Watanabe had said about him. So it was a given that I was going to watch it and when Funimation said that it would actually air on American tv before Japanese tv dubbed well that makes it even better, gotta take special situations like that as they come!

Space Dandy

Winter 2014 Mid-Season Anime Round-UP

So I was thinking the other day that gee, while everyone obviously makes a fuss right when new anime series start, and a bit of one when they end, it's kind of hard to look at a season when it's half-way through and go "right, what did I miss?" Yes I follow quite a few anime blogs that post episode by episode thoughts and feelings, plus on twitter I see quite a few people talking about shows I don't follow, but you can't just jump into the post on episode 5 and get a feel from it if this something you really really need to start or not (plus, if you just try to read through a few posts chronologically you usually just end up horribly spoiled). So that's what I'm going to do here, I'm going to talk about all the shows I'm currently watching and hopefully convince a few more people to try them out, or not as the case may be since, while I am investing time each week into some of these shows, there are at least a couple I expect to have messy endings. And if there's anything I don't mention here feel free to chime in in the comments and convince me what to try out, there's a few I'm teetering on the edge of trying but just haven't been sure enough to dedicate the time to them. Oh and just to note I'm a week behind all the shows except Kill La Kill since even Funimation has free-viewer-delays now (they started it up DURING the new season with no prior notice, bah) so hopefully the last episode of these shows didn't do anything really weird that'll completely change my views.

Now, onto the shows and in the order they air each week, starting on Sunday!

Anime Review: Valvrave the Liberator

I saw a few episodes of this back in the spring when it was first airing, I believe four, and then had to give up since I just couldn't get through the rest of the episodes without the intense urge to snark commentary at whoever was online with me at the time. And some of the things I had heard about the show were far from great as well so I wasn't in any hurry to finish it up. But as fall starts to roll around, the second half of the show hits the internet in just a couple of weeks, I started to get curious about it again and, well, since I only had 8 episodes left and I already knew all the headdesk worthy plot twists what did I have to lose except about four hours of my free time, right?

Valvrave the Liberator

Summary: In the future humanity has enclosed the Sun in a dyson sphere where they live and there are three main factions, ARUS (which seems suspiciously like a militarized United States), Drossia (who pretends they're not actually space nazis), and innocent little Jior who of course wants nothing to do with the growing hostilities between the two. But as Haruto and his classmates discover when their school's module is attacked and they discover power mechs lying hidden beneath it, powerful enough to change the course of the entire war, something doesn't add up here.....

The Good: The last time I talked about a show which seemed like it was trying too hard to be the next Code Geass I was discussing Guilty Crown and man was it terrible. Valvrave as well isn't quite CG but thankfully it's better than GC by a long shot and actually an okay show by the end. In the last third the show starts to find it's feet and the characters become a tad less ridiculous and more competent which greatly helps and it starts explaining some of it's absolutely nuts backstory (I have to admit, I did not expect the show to turn out to be NEARLY this crazy when I started it and I do have to give it some credit for that). Finally, one large thing this, GC, and CG have in common is that at the heart of it there are two characters who stand larger than the rest and each of them does it a bit differently. In CG we have Lelouche and Suzaku who are formiddable enemies to each other, in GC we have Shu the unwilling protagonist and Gai the leader whose mantle Shu takes up. Valvrave has Haruto, again a bit of an unwilling protagonist and L-Elf, a strategist whose been waiting for a moment like this to launch some plan of his and it actually pulls off that balance much better than I would have expected, they come to depend on each other, plan on each other, and yet don't still fully trust each other (nor should they) and that was an interesting character dynamic to watch unfold and something I had been looking for in anime was curious why no one had done it yet.

The Bad: To be blunt, there is a rape in the show, I don't want anyone to go in not knowing that since it's not anything you could have guessed after just the first couple of episodes. I am frustrated and confused for why the writer decided that the violence against a female character HAD to be rape instead of just, violence (even if it was creepily hinted at a bit earlier on, gaaaaaah). Other than that elephant in the room, the show's main problem is that it thinks it's a serious show with meaningful themes and quite frankly it's not. It's a bit of a mess, makes quite a few things unintentionally hilarious (you know it's a bad sign when everyone tells you you HAVE to stick around after the credits of the first episode), and a number of plot events are just so illogical that it's simply impossible to take the show as seriously as it wants you to. And for some people they might be okay with that, if I had been with friends I would have enjoyed this quite a bit just for all the snark potential it had but if you don't want that then avoid it, there are far better mecha shows out there.

The Production Values: I'm rather curious why the show changed it's ending song halfway through the season since I loved the first ending song, it worked nicely and even though the second song did grow on me I simply liked the first better. And I also loved the opening song, it was catchy, bouncy, upbeat, everything I want in an action OP and I feel like it reflected the show well also since it wasn't serious, just fast paced and a bit crazy. As for the visuals, I'll admit the main reason I watched the show (both times) was because I wanted to see some eye candy mech fights and everything did look pretty good. It was rather colorful, I didn't see too much CGI although it must have been there with all the mechs, and I liked all the designs so all in all this was the part of the show I had the least problems with, hurray!


In the end I can only give this show 2.5 out of 5 stars for the unnecessary rape scene and for just completely missing how silly it is and how that doesn't fit at all with the tone it was going for. Do I plan to watch the second season? Maybe??? There are so many shows coming out this fall that I certainly won't be twiddling my thumbs like I was this season so I'm not sure I'll have time, although I'll likely make time for it at some point and finish it up then and see just how crazy it decides to go (I'm betting on pretty far).

Anime Review: AKB0048 Next Stage

Sorry about the delay again guys, moving took a bit more out of me than I expected but at least with that done there shouldn't be any more missed posts for at least a couple of months. Saying that I feel like I should find some wood to knock on....
As some people might remember back from my winter 2013 anime round-up I said I was interested in the AKB0048 anime since I had heard some good stuff about it but hadn't pursued it until the new season started and then once I started watching episodes the show got licensed, although it wasn't until well after I had caught up with the first season (via fansubs) and moved onto this one that crunchyroll got all the first season's episodes up. But both seasons are up now and let me talk about the second one and see if I can convince a few more people to pick up the latest thing to come out of Shoji Kawamori's mind.


ABK0048 Next Stage

Summary: The 77th generation understudies (as well as the 75th) continue to train as idols perfecting their singing and dancing in hopes that they can become successors soon and learn about some of the other strange things idols need to do like tv appearances to become more popular. And in the background the DES are still around and while some of them are looking for a way to defeat the girls others, such as Chieri's family's company Zodiac, think that they've found a way to use the girls to their own advantage.

The Good: I was a bit afraid that this season was going to be simply a copy of the first season and thankfully it's different enough that it didn't feel that way. The basic story, girls try to become idols and fight the anti-fun police in the process, stays the same but a number of the details are different and the girls do continue to develop and the story certainly doesn't end with everything being the same as it started. It was still fun, although I had forgotten just how much I dislike Japanese variety shows until they showed up here, yet even though it wasn't a copy of the first season it just wasn't as strong.

The Bad: This is going to sound a little odd but bear with me; not every story is structured such that it needs a villain for it to have a plot. The first season didn't really need one because it was focusing more on the girls and their goals and dreams and the setting was just another challenge to work with. This season however the show acted as if it had a villain in the DES and tried to use that to move the plot along, but the DES made for a really weak villain and that just made some parts really awkward. Look, if you spend two seasons showing me how basically the anti-fun police can't seem to succeed against a bunch of space idols then I just can't believe they're a threat, sorry! The other reason I feel like this season is the weaker of the two is how the ending comes off a bit rushed, I'm honestly curious if they planned to wrap up the entire show in a second season from the start or if they were toying with the idea of a third season, that would at least explain why things had to wrap up so fast and why there are a couple of subplots left unresolved at the very end. 

The Audio/Visuals: Like I said previously I'm going to start combining these two categories since I rarely have enough to say about both, although this is one of the cases where I probably would. Sadly the crunchyroll stream did not sub the opening and ending songs but, unless I'm misremembering, both of them appeared in the actual show subbed and I just didn't like them as much as the ones from the first season. Actually, even disregarding the actual lyrics and just listening to them I still don't like them as much as the previous ones, they just didn't sound as interesting to me, oh well. The show doesn't introduce any major new characters so there's nothing new voice actor wise for me to talk about, except that I had forgotten until I was outlining this review in my mind that the majority of the cast aren't professional voice actors and I'm amazed, they sound very sure of themselves by now and I hope I hear at least some of them in future shows. As for the visuals again not much has changed from the first season, it's still amazingly colorful and looked fairly solid animation wise. Now I'll admit that I'm not as put off by the CGI dancers as some people seem to be* but it is jarring whenever they cut between the identically smiling CGI dancers and the hand animated parts where the characters have different facial expressions, usually ones of determination or exhaustion which look pretty different. If they could just make the models match that a little better then I'd have no complaints at all, this was a pretty good looking show.

So, just 3 out of 5 stars, since I feel like I rated the first season more highly, but yet I would still like to buy both seasons of this when Sentai puts it out (hopefully on BR since I wasn't kidding about how colorful this show is, I want all of that in high definition). For those still curious about the show, and hopefully people are since it's by no means a bad one, just one with more problems than it should with the writing later on, it's streaming in it's entirety on crunchryroll, Sentai's site theanimenetwork, and on hulu.

*I blame the fact that I watched some of the very earliest CGI shorts for fun as a kid, stuff so old I've never been able to figure out the titles and stuff so old it was kinda terrifying for an eight year old.

Book Review: Glow

Looking back on my summer I didn't read nearly as much science-fiction this year as I did last year which is kinda interesting, I guess I'm just in more of a fantasy mood right now (I'll just blame the hype for The Hobbit for that one). I think this was the only really sci-fi work I read this summer and if I had known that I would've chosen another book.

Glow by Amy Kathleen Ryan

Summary: In the future Earth has undergone even more trauma and in an attempt to make sure that some of humanity survives on other world two ships were constructed and sent into space to make a decades long journey to another world. But people will be people, that is to stay manipulative, deceitful, and just plain petty and the children born in space in the journey, namely the viewpoint characters Waveryly and Keiran, are pulled into the fight between the two ships where everything for both of them is at stake.

The Good: I did like some of the science in the book, mainly the idea of using a constantly increasing acceleration to create artificial gravity (although I have no idea if that would work in real life) because where's the fun in science fiction if they don't at least think about how different the future will be? The setting was really where I enjoyed the story the most, it's been a little while since I read sci-fi set in space (I guess Space Opera is the term for it?) and it felt like Ryan really put some thought into how everything would work.

The Bad: I'm not a religious person these days and, although I've had my fair share (if you could call it that) of crazy people yelling that I'm going to hell for not belonging to their faith I like to think that I'm fairly chill when it coms to people and their religious beliefs. I do wonder however if Ryan had even more crazy people screaming at her since by the end of the book it seems to be actively pushing the belief that religion can only be used to hurt people and people never have a choice in it. From the Space Pilgrims (no really, the New Horizon and Empyrean were split between the religious, all of whom seem to belong to the same group, and the secular plus those of other religions, and from the beliefs to the dress of the people on the New Horizon there are some pretty clear parallels) to the sermons at the end it's clear that differences of/about faith are going to be the instigator of even more trouble later in the series and I feel like Ryan said "see, faith can be good too! Nah I'm kidding, people will still force it against others regardless." Also, while there are events in any story that the main character(s) have no control over and have to deal with some authors pull this off better than others I just didn't like how it was done here. Waveryly especially had to go through a ton of stuff, had no control over any of it, and it was frustrating to see that there was no way for her to take control given how young she was. The story could have worked if the characters were older and, now that I think about it, I would have liked that since the characters would have had more options and felt more like, well, characters rather than items being manipulated by the plot. All in all it was a very unsatisfying book to read and I really did consider throwing it while reading it several times.


So, a bust from me and I won't be checking out the rest of the series at all. Guess that'll give me time for more books later on, and I did read some other books with sci-fi elements this summer, although I didn't necessarily like those a ton either.   

Anime Review: Bodacious Space Pirates

It figures that the one show I was following that started in the winter was the last one to finish airing in the spring, but with this I am now DONE with all the spring shows and I think I got these all out no more than a month after they finished airing which might be a first. But in any case, the background behind this show was a bit interesting, apparently the show was set to air last summer, was held up because of the 2011 earthquake (not entirely sure how since the show was partially done in France, I believe production company Satelight is actually partially based in France) which meant the show was completely animated before it started airing.  This did also mean however the the show went for an anime original ending, when the very initial production on the show started (I believe in 2008) there were only two or three books in the original light novel series published so from episode 20 onwards everything is brand new. So how did the show hold up, both the adaptation parts and the brand new material?

Bodacious Space Pirates (Moretsu Pirates)

Summary: Marika Kato has lived a fairly normal life up until high school when her father that she's never met dies and she discovers that not only was he a pirate but, according to the Letter of Marque he owned, she's the only one who can legally inherit his ship and continue with the family business. She's hesitant about the idea at first but as time goes by it grows on her and she turns out to have a good mind for strategy and finds the jobs fun.

The Good: Let me make one thing clear up front, this is not an all-action all the time series. It certainly has it's action packed moments but spent as much time showing the characters discussing strategy or showing Marika just talking and being a normal girl with her friends. The show passes the Bechdel Test in nearly, if not, every episode and the girls all feel realistic, especially compared to many teenaged girls in anime. So if you go into the series knowing it's not going to be all pirates all the time and that it's a bit slow paced it's much more enjoyable (especially since all this allowed for Marika to really grow throughout the series which was nice). I was also pleasantly surprised that there was no romantic subplot surrounding her (although two of the other girls did turn out to be a couple which was also a nice surprise, especially since they were actual, fleshed out characters as well). All in all the show was more of a change of pace than I expected and I liked it for that.   

The Bad: The last arc seemed to be hit or miss, most people loved it but I really didn't like it since it suddenly introduced a lot of world building that wasn't hinted at earlier on (understandable because it was anime-original, which also made me worried that it might contradict the canon and that would mean there wouldn't be room for a sequel later on) and the mood just felt a little different from the rest of the series. The pace does lag at times, especially between arcs, and sometimes the plans Marika comes up with are a little weird (climax of the third arc I'm looking at you) although nothing compares to some of the random twists they pulled in that last arc. Again, some people liked that arc more since it was more action packed than the other arcs and, conversely, if you are looking for a show that's mostly action this is the wrong sci-fi series to be watching. 

The Audio: The opening theme for this series is ridiculously catchy (even if the live action music video for it is strange, cheesy isn't a strong enough word for it) and the show switched back and forth between two ending songs. I preferred the first one used which was also rather upbeat and catchy, they were good, action-y songs that matched this action-y series rather well. The show also made some subtle changes to the animation accompanying both songs over time (mostly adding in characters at the start of a new arc) which I thought was a clever touch and I really appreciated the extra effort there.

The Visuals: The anime character designs were changed, rather dramatically for some of the characters (like Princess Serenity, a redhead with a ponytail in the book, and Chiaki who had very different bangs, glasses, and school uniform) and I do prefer the novel's design for some of the character like Marika. Funny enough I do like the design changes made to some of the spaceships (especially the Odette II's design, the novel version just looked a bit silly) and by and large all the designs are interesting and fit in well with everything else in the series. There are some times, especially as the series progresses on, where if you stop at the wrong point the characters look a bit off which normally I'd hope that a show would fix for it's DVD/BR release but, given that the show was finished before it even aired, I don't think that'll be the case.


So, since the show has been licensed by Sentai (and it can be viewed either on their website or on Crunchyroll), do I plan on eventually buying this show? I suppose yes, that last arc really did make me not enjoy the series as much and made me less keen to buy it. But I did enjoy the rest of the show, and I can easily just not watch the last few episodes, so someday I shall try to grab it on sale. Not sure if I'll see the movie that is coming out though, I've seen most fans speculating that it'll be connected to that last arc, but I hope it does well for the series regardless.      

And now for something different, continuing Spring 2012 shows

In what has become a bit of a tradition here, I've got a number of shows that started this past spring carrying over into the summer season and I thought I'd touch base on them and see how they're doing (especially for people who haven't tried them out yet but were thinking of doing so, summer is usually a quieter season so there's also more time to catch up on older shows). To go along with this, I'm hoping to get one big post about all the new shows I'm trying out up next Wednesday although I'm not 100% certain it's going to happen yet but that is the goal. Regardless of that, onto the shows!

Accel World
I will be checking out Sword Art Online this summer (they share a creator but it sounds like they actually aren't in the same 'verse, I've seen conflicting reports on that) and in addition I'm still keeping up with Accel World. By now I'm watching it more as a fluff show (an action-packed, good looking fluff) since it is a show about a fighting game and the plot is a bit light. All of the characters except the lead Haruyuki and not-quite-a-lead Kuroyukihime have a tendency to fade into the background when the show isn't focused on them (also one of the few times I've seen a character act flatter after they had character development) and, since I believe the novel series isn't finished, I know that the characters aren't going to accomplish their goal of reaching level 10 in the game and discovering the secret behind Brain Burst. But like I said, it still looks great, progresses at a good pace, and I'm hoping that the characters will feel less flat as the series goes on.

Accel World is licensed by Viz Media and in the US can be watched on Hulu.


Eureka 7 AO (AO stands for Astral Ocean)
It appears (curse you Funimation and your one week delayed streams or I could confirm this!) that yes, AO is indeed a sequel to the original show, even though it takes place on an alternate Earth, so anyone who is curious about checking this one out should probably first go ahead and watch the original series first (yes it's 50 episodes and yes it takes a while to get going, that's it's biggest flaw but again, why watch if a sequel if you're unfamiliar with the first installment?). The show has a mix of old and new staff on it and I was able to tell almost immediately that it shared some staff from last fall's Un-Go since they both have political undertones almost all the time and a general feeling that, while some of the adults might be good people with good intentions they are certainly not making them all known to Ao and the other kids. I recall there being a lot of that in the original show as well (not as much and more in the first half when no one would tell Renton, and therefore the audience, anything) but there is certainly a bit of a different tone here but I'm enjoying it. The show is also starting to work in the weird episode/trippy experience moments from the original show (although not to the same degree because again, it was hard at times to figure out what was going on in the first half of E7 and those episodes, see Acperience) and it's easy to see how Ao is obviously Eureka and Renton's child and that's a good metaphor for the series itself, it's parentage is clear but it is it's own show with it's own ideas so it'll be interesting to see how those two continue to blend.

Eureka 7 Astral Ocean is licensed by Funimation and can be viewed on their website (word of warning though, they've converted a lot of the streams into hulu ones so that cuts out the Canadian viewers).


Hyouka
I didn't review this one back in the spring (there seems to always be one show I pick up later) so a quick rundown, Oreki is a long energy kind of guy who is pressured into joining the Classics Club at his school by alumni sister since it's in danger of being shut down for having no members. He thinks it'll be a chance for him to doze off more but lo and behold it's gotten a couple of other new members and Oreki is stuck with them and solving the odd little mysteries the club runs into. I've seen a lot of mystery anime in the past year and in comparison to some of the big mysteries, big stakes ones (which feel like a cup  of soda, fizzy and full of energy but will go stale if dragged out too long) this one feels more like a glass of lightly flavored lemonade, it leaves a bit of a taste on the tongue but doesn't overwhelm you. The show has also been fairly clever in the way it manages to have bigger mysteries in it (one thing I've found hard to believe in many shows is just how many murders the characters come across and this show neatly averts that), although I'm curious for how long they can keep that up. Regardless, it's my one fansub of the season (unless Moyashimon Returns doesn't get picked up, then we have a problem) and I do hope it gets licensed soon by somebody.


Space Brothers (Uchuu Kyodia)
Finally we have what is rumored to be a four cour (or full year) show, Space Bros! I've been listening around on forums trying to figure out just who this show is aimed at, I can obviously tell it's main audience is adults but it also has a charm to it, the charm that gets kids interested in space to start with, and it sounds like it's being aimed at families in Japan as well and I can easily see this show working well with families. I'd be impressed if kids under the age of 10 were able to sit through the show completely on their own for a full year, it's still a bit slow and deliberately paced with adult characters, but for those reasons I'm happy to sit back and take in the show. Actually, the show has re-kindled by own interest in space and the various technologies in it (I blame the US's fading space program for my waning interest ;-; ) and if a show is making me excited about something other than just the show then it's doing a pretty damn good job at being entertainment.

Space Bros is streaming on crunchyroll for a number of countries and was just picked up the other day by Sentai Filmworks/Section 23 for a DVD release sometime down the line. 
      

Spring Anime 2012 round-up

Once again I am later than everyone else but to make up for it I have all my reviews in one place (so, erm, it's long, I had just hit a fourth page on Word when I was writing these up).Did not try Jormugand, Sankarea, Hyouka, Kuroko no Basuke, or Nyarko-san but might later on if I somehow get bored, they all sounded like something that may catch my fancy but I already have enough shows I'm committed to watching to keep me entertained (plus Funimation still hasn't put up Sankarea, y'all sure you know what the word "simulcast" means?). Still following Bodacious Space Pirates and Aquarion Evol in addition to Legend of Korra, thank god MLP:FiM just finished up or I'd be spending my entire Saturday watching cartoons. Funny enough my one and a half fansub shows this season are both mecha (half since I watch Evol on a weird schedule so it only half counts), and the fact that I was already committed to one and a half shows is why I didn't try out Hyouka (the entire reason this is delayed so much, I had expected it to be simulcast which obviously didn't happen). Enough mindless rambling though, let's ramble about the actual shows!

Accel World: Set a few decades in the future, high school life in Japan is similar to today’s except that the technology has rapidly progressed and everyone is now permanently wired into the ‘net. This works in Haruyuki’s favor since he uses his favorite online games to escape the bullying at his school and it turns out that someone has noticed his skills, student body president who is only known by her handle Kuroyukihime, and recruits him to help her in a different kind of game called Brain Burst. I checked out the first chapter of the manga adaptation which didn’t really catch my attention but the anime did. It’s paced well, looks good (do wish Haruyuki was a bit less deformed but I’m not going to obsess over that like some viewers have) and while the plot is a bit on the simple side it works just fine. I can’t tell at this point if I’m going to keep enjoying the series as much as I have, especially since it’s “plot twists” seem rather predictable at this point, but for the moment I’m having fun with it.

Accel World has been licnesed by Viz Media and can be viewed by USians either on hulu or on their site using the hulu player, Canadians are in a pinch here.

Dusk Maiden of Amnesia (Tasogare Otome x Amnesia): Many years ago Yuuko was a student at a strange high school and died under mysterious circumstances and now her body lies beneath the Paranormal Activity clubroom. She claims that she’s not interested in why she died or any of those details, she can’t even remember them to start with, but when Teiichi comes along and is able to see her she starts to become a little more curious and starts the club in order to find out. Honestly that’s all that has happened in the first two episodes (the majority of the first episode was taken up by a hilarious segment showing the episode first from the point of view of the club member who can’t see ghosts and then from the POV of the two who can) and the show has more fanservice than I care for* but somehow the show has grabbed me anyway and if it’s going to be a short series then I’ll be sure to stick around and see what ends up being revealed.

The show has been licensed by Section 23 and for the moment can be viewed on Crunchyroll.

Eureka Seven AO (Astral Ocean): The follow-up to the original 2005 show Eureka 7: Psalm of the Planets (which I have seen, it was just back in 2009 back when Anime News Network was starting to stream shows), Ao has grown up in Okinawa under the guidance of a local doctor when his mother (who is clearly Eureka) vanished while he was small (no mention of his father but it’s Renton almost for sure) and has endured harassment ever since for being an “outsider”. But when a monster emerges from the alien scrub coral and starts spreading havoc it seems like Ao is one of the best chances they have to save the island. But for older viewers a few things seem off, the series is set on a modern looking Earth in 2025 (instead of 12005 on a changed Earth like the original series) with scub coral attacks dating back to the 1940s. I think it’s an alternate universe here so on the one hand I want to say that people who have read a bit about the original but not seen it can follow but at this point it’s not quite safe to say. Ao is a more likeable protagonist than Renton so far and I never disliked Renton to start with, although I am a little hesitant on who seems to be the female lead Naru but I’m warming up to her fast. At first glance the two shows seemed very different but I can now see a number of similarities and I think I’ll end up liking this a lot.

Fate/Zero II: Continuing mere minutes from where the first half left off, Fate/Zero is a record of the fourth Holy Grail war (10 years before the 5^th war in Fate/Stay Night) where pairs of Masters and Servants (heroic spirits summoned just to fight in this war) fight to the last pair standing to receive the wish granting grail. And fight they do, almost half the servants are gone by the time I write this and there has been fighting amongst the pairs as well, much like the first half the show loves to have long monologues on philosophy and morals between characters and then spend the next ten minutes showing a beautifully done fight sequence. I’ve really gotten into the show now, enough that I’m planning on watching F/STN over the summer once this finishes and even though I’ve guessed/been spoiled enough to figure out how this story is going to end I can’t wait to see it play out, as triumphant or tragic as it may be.

While not licensed per-say in the US, each new episode can be viewed on the Japanese NicoNico site with English subtitles and on Crunchyroll a week later. 

Hiiro no Kakera: When Tamaki's parents suddenly get jobs oversees, something that seems a bit suspicious to her, she moves in with her grandmother and discovers that she was brought there to be the next "Tamayori Princess," someone who deals with the spirits in the area and whose power seems to be growing. In a twist that shows it's dating-sim roots there are five attractive men assigned to look after her and the chemistry begins! While I can easily see the appeal of dating-sim games I don't really see the appeal of the animated adaptions since they take out the best part, actually getting to choose what to do and which guys to get closer to. So this one gets a pass from me, although I am tempted to make a plushie out of that adorable fox ghost mascot.

Hiiro no Kakera is streaming on Crunchyroll. 

Kids on the Slope (Samakichi no Apollon): One of my most anticipated shows of the season, Kids on the Slope makes up half of the noitaminA spot and focuses on transfer student Kaoru who has just moved to Kyushu in 1966 for his father’s job and expects this move to be like all the others, another chance for him to be isolated and lonely in his new surroundings. But things go a little differently this time around thanks to the friendly class president Ritsuko and delinquent classmate Sentarou who introduce the piano playing Kaoru to a new kind of music, jazz. I’ve only had a chance to check out the first episode so far but I really liked the vibe it gave off. The setting was different, the music was great and the characters already feel a bit rounded. I am really worried at how this show is going to compress all nine volumes of the manga into just 12 episodes, especially since it sounds like their aren’t any subplots that can be easily cut out, but fingers crossed and hoping for the best!

Section 23 has already licensed the show and it can be viewed on Crunchyroll.

Lupin the III-A Woman Named Fujiko Mine: I saw the first episode of this show on accident actually, I was watching a livestream and the streamer decided to show the latest incarnation of the Lupin the III franchise (which can be summed up as Lupin is a famous thief who likes to steal difficult things because of the challenges they present).  As I had already figured out from the reviews I’d read, this isn’t the show for me but it’s a pretty cool show. I’m not a big fan of Lupin, like many my only experience with the franchise is The Castle of Caligstro (which I didn’t  like that much) and the whole phantom/gentleman thief genre is hit or miss with me to start with. All of that said, you don’t need much familiarity with the Lupin franchise to follow this show and it looks gorgeous (to quote a friend, “they blew the budget of three anime studios in the first five minutes of this show”) in it’s super detailed retro style. Funny enough the copious amount of fanservice in the first episode didn’t bother me either which I think might be because the show not only has a female writer (Mari Okada whose work I’m plenty familiar with) but also a female director (Sayo Yamamoto who did Michiko to Hatchin which I still need to get around to seeing) and I wonder if that had just enough of an influence on the show to make the fanservice less annoying. In any case, Funimation is now streaming the show and if this sounds at all interesting I recommend people check it out (just be careful where you do however, the first episode is seriously NSFW because of Fujiko’s frequent stripping to distract the male characters).

Show is being streamed by Funimation on their website, you do need a free account to view it however due to the boobies.

Medaka Box: Tried this one out because, well, it was on Crunchyroll and I was bored? I also had a raging headache at the time and I’m not sure if that contributed to my feelings on the show or not but this just didn’t quite work. The premise is simple enough, Medaka is the new president of her high school and her first act is to create a suggestion box for the students and her first request is to clean up the kendo dojo, and by clean out they mean kick out all the delinquents who have taken up residence there. The problem is that Medaka just isn’t that interesting a character, she feels a bit like a Maniac Pixie DreamGirl to the male lead whom I suspect is actually the main character, and is simply so out there (with her proclamations that she will fix everything for no reason other than the joy of helping others) that I couldn’t take the show seriously and didn’t find it funny either. The premise reminds me a lot of Sket Dan, which I read the first chapter of a year or so ago, but at least there the series focused on comedy, here the show just feels disjointed and like it’s trying to do two different things at once.

This show is streaming on Crunchyroll as I mentioned earlier.

Polar Bear Café (Shirokuma Café): The lone josei offering of the season is a strange one, a comedy series set in a world where humans and animals live everyday lives with each other, the first episode shows the character Panda (who, true to his species, is rather lazy and would rather lay around all day eating bamboo) trying to find a job and eventually ends up with part time work as a panda in the local zoo. A large chunk of the show also takes place in the eponymous Polar Bear Café which shows off the best bits of the series humor with it’s strange puns and odd situations (plus, if you’re familiar with Japanese seiyuu then there is plenty of humor to be had in hearing them voice various animals). I did laugh a few times but I don’t think that this kind of humor would stay funny to me for an entire season (and in general I prefer series where humor is a secondary genre, not the main one like here), but I’m sure plenty of other people will enjoy it enough to make up for me.

Currently the show is unlicensed but it is streaming on Crunchyroll.

Saint Seiya Omega: I’m not familiar with the original Saint Seiya at all, beyond a basic plot synopsis that is, but I really liked the art style for the show and that I was familiar with. From the same people who did Casshern Sins and Heartcatch Precure (which I really need to see) I had been reminded of just how much I liked their retro-esque designs last fall when they did an episode of Mawaru Penguindrum and I decided that was enough of a reason to give this show a shot. And it seems that not much knowledge of the original Saint Seiya is needed to get this show, it seems to be a sequel where we start off with main character Kouga who is being put through some brutal training to become a “saint” who will one day protect the goddess Athena and he’s not particularly happy with this choice. It’s a super shonen-esque show with calling your attacks, hot blooded determination trumping experience and mysterious mentors calling upon Kouga to use some kind of inner strength he has, although I have no idea if the original show had magical girl-esque transformation sequences as well (looking at the team’s previous work I could easily see this being their own flair). In the end the show didn’t do enough things differently for me to want to continue, think I’ll just track down Heartcatch Precure sometime to get my fill of the artstyle that way instead.

Saint Seiya Omega is streaming, like a lot of other things this season, on Crunchyroll.

Space Brothers (Uchuu Kyodai): Set a few decades into the future, brothers Mutta and Hibito both had the same dream as kids, to become astronauts and explore space. Of the two however only Hibito has been able to achieve this dream while Mutta has been recently fired from his lucrative job as a car designer for head butting his boss. But even if Mutta has pretended to forget his dream his family hasn’t and he soon finds himself taking the JAXA [link] exams to become an astronaut. Hmm, realistic, near-future science-fiction (can it even be called that?) with an older protagonist? Sounds fun and sounds different, the pacing is a bit slower than most of the other shows out here but it sounds like the show will be running for a full year so it has the time to set a steady pace. I am a bit amused that Mutta has the same VA and similar appearance to Kotetsu from Tiger and Bunny last year, then again I remember the VA (Hiroaki Hirata) joking last year that after that role he’s now the “ojisan” actor and maybe that’s coming true…

Streaming on Crunchyroll.

Tsuritama: The other half of this season’s noitaminA timeslot and from the same director who did [C], Mononoke, and Trapeeze, Yuki is also a transfer student as he moves to Enoshima, has also moved around a lot and despite that also still gets panic attacks whenever he tries to introduce himself at his new school. Given the, odd nature of his panic attacks (outwardly he just makes strange expressions but inwardly he imagines being swallowed up by a rising wave) he’s also short on friends and not expecting to make any but self-proclaimed alien Haru, also a transfer student, has taken an interest in Yuki (as well as moved in with them) and seems intent on dragging him and two other guys all over town fishing. This show gave me a lot less to go on than Kids on the Slope and if it wasn’t noitaminA I would’ve considered dropping it since it was just so odd (actually, given who the director is and my strong feelings on the ending of [C] this still isn’t out of the picture). Right now I’m going to give it a few more episodes and see if I get into the swing of it since I have absolutely no clue right now what it’s trying to do.

Like Kids on the Slope, Tsuritama has been licensed by Section 23 and is streaming on Crunchyroll.

Zetman: In a dark and edgy setting, Jin was created as an experiment, a “player” with superhuman and near demonic abilities, but rescued as a baby by a man he grew up to call Grandpa. His grandpa was killed by a rouge player and soon after Jin’s own powers activated and ever since he’s tried to not get close to others to keep them safe. Another case where we’re getting a severely compressed adaptation (the entire manga series in one cour, sounds like they’ve already had 20+ chapter timeskips) but it wasn’t the pacing or such that put me off the series, as a non-manga reader the first two episodes flowed alright even though you can see it was compressed, I’m just tired of seeing “dark and edgy” shows. I might give this a go again later if I get bored, although given how much I have to watch I don’t foresee that happening. So it’s a case where the show isn’t bad, just not for me.

Just like this post started, Zetman has been licensed by Viz Media and is being streamed by them as well.

And that's all from me! So, seven new shows to follow, two continuing, four or five I might try/follow anyway (since it seems like every season I end up following one show I don't even mention here), and a giant backlog for when I get bored. And, given that all the shows I watch air between Thursday afternoon and Sunday evening I do get a bit bored by Wednesday, or I could use that time to catch up on live action shows.... 

*yes Japan, boobs are squishy and bounce when you don’t wear a bra, moving on

Webcomic Review Month 2012: Outsider

Hmm, more musing on names but I'm surprised that last year I didn't have any webcomics that started with "N" or "O" yet this year I had a few (couldn't review one since it appears to have vanished off of the internet but it still counts). Actually, I had simply forgotten about this comic last year since it's one with a very strange update schedule, according to tvtropes the comic started back in 2001 but only averages 8 pages a year (it appears there's also a bible of sorts for the series to make up for that but I have yet to find out if it's actually online or not). I still like the series and, obviously since I'm reviewing it here, do recommend it but potential readers should keep all of that in mind.

Outsider by Jim Francis
 In the far off future humanity has begone to colonize and expand out into the wide universe only to discover that not only does other life exist but it's engaged in a brutal, long war. There are two sides to the war, the brutish Umiack and the mysterious Loroi and neither side acknowledges neutral groups so humanity must soon make a choice whom to side with if they wish to live. However it seems like Ensign Jardin, a low ranking officer of a survey team, may have accidentally made first contact and discovered that things look even bleaker for humanity but that humans have a few tricks up their sleeves yet.

While not a common story it's not an unheard of plot premise, a raging alien war with humans stuck between a rock and a hard place just looking for a way to survive. I like that so far the comic has gone to lengths to show that there is no easy/good/right choice, although there are hints that not all is lost however which I also like. Jim Francis admits that the series has a lot of artistic influences from a lot of sources including anime which shows in the art, even though the page orientation are much more like a Western comic than an Eastern one the art designs have some anime touches for sure* which, given my taste in comics, doesn't bother me at all. As stated earlier, despite it's age the comic is still on the shorter side (just a hair under 100 pages) so currently it doesn't take long to catch up and if you like sci-fi set in space with aliens and inter-galactic conflict I say give it a shot and just check back in every month or so to see if it updated.

*I'm actually watching the space opera Crest of Stars right now so I think the Loroi look a bit like Abh, probably simply because of the blueness and elf-ears, it's not among the influences listed in any case.  

Webcomic Review Month 2012: Cleopatra in Spaaaace! Cucumber Quest

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

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

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

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

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


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






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