Manga Review: Qualia the Purple

And that's all for November Month of Manga folks! Even though I got way off schedule with some of my posts I had fun, namely because usually when I was off schedule it was because I was doing some more casual writing (like, reaction/speculation posts for various manga updates) on my tumblr and even though it wasn't NanoWriMo I remembered how much fun I have writing. I think in the upcoming year I might change the format of the blog around a little so I can do more posts in the same style of these, free-form rather than strictly structured, or maybe I'll try over on my tumblr to do more episodic anime posts, lord knows I've practically done that for Kyousogiga at this point anyway.....

In any case, oddly enough I did not find this manga through tumblr, rather a number of people on my twitter feed were talking about it as the scanlations were starting, probably because everyone was saying "oh, this seems to have a bit of a yuri vibe to it!" While they weren't wrong I don't think that any of us predicted the direction that it ended up going in.....

Qualia the Purple (Murasakiiro no Qualia) original story by Ueo Hisamitsu illustrated by Tsunashima Shirou

Hatou Gaku makes friends with an odd girl at her school named Marii who is absolutely convinced that everyone is a robot. She says that she even sees people as robots so while it gives her some odd insights into other people (like predicting someone is a good runner since they can see boosters on her legs) it does isolate her quite a bit but Gaku forms a friendship with her anyway. Then Gaku has a chance to learn that, while Marii's reality isn't hers it truly exists and that Gaku might be able to save Marii from the people who want to use her but if she also alters her world-view.


Since it's rather hard to articulate in the summary I'll just come out and say it, this manga is an adaptation of a science-fiction novel that came out within the last few years in Japan and won some awards for how it deals with quantum mechanics. I've read a bit about quantum mechanics over the years and the little bits I know (mostly that it deals a lot with the idea of two choices being able to exist at once until acted upon/observed) was enough for me to follow the story easily, if you're not familiar with the theory at all then just think of this as a story that involves time-traveling using the multi-timelines idea. Which honestly is a bit confusing as well, if you're not a fan of science fiction that's medium "hard" you probably just won't like this series, you have to be willing to spend a little bit of time thinking about what's going on in order to understand.

And now I probably have a few people going "hey, what about that yuri you mentioned earlier?" Well, Gaku is running through time and space to save a female friend who she's very close to, and in some incarnations does seduce/manipulate another girl to help her, but there's much less yuriness in the story than I would have expected after the first few chapters. There's enough in those early chapters for shipping of course but since Gaku and Marii aren't together (as in, in the same place) for most of the story you can't really say they have that kind of relationship.

So what IS this story about? Well, it starts out being about the friendship between two girls and that's ultimately what drives the rest of the story. I could say that it's about uncovering a huge conspiracy and fighting time and space itself to change it for very personal reasons (rather similar to Steins;Gate actually) but that makes the story sound too grandiose, it's much more introspective and quiet than that. Gaku isn't trying to change the world, she's just trying to save her friend and using how she now perceives the world to do it. The story throws a few weird twists at you, if you accept that quantum physics is determined in a large part by how you perceive the world then the twists will feel strange but thematically appropriate, if not the story might as well be fantasy and run on magic. It's nothing like what I thought it would be but I like it, although given how long it's been since the latest chapter came out I'd probably have to reread the past few chapters to familiarize myself (a classic case of "I remember what the overall plot and goal is but I can't seem to remember how we got here since everything moves so fast"). As with all the titles I talked about this month I'd buy it if it was in English and loan it out to as many friends and I would think would enjoy it. 



As for licensing chances, well, this is probably the only time I'll ever say it but I feel like the series would work better at Vertical than any other current US company. Vertical is a bit of an odd company, they want to both publish edge/underground types of manga and they want to publish things that will be mainstream hits, this would not be a mainstream hit. However it does fit in with their more underground titles, the semi-hard sci-fi premise with a high school girl protagonist reminds me a bit of 7 Billion Needles actually, and since it's already complete at three volumes they could even possibly put it out as a single omnibus (like 5cm a Second, assuming that that would be more profitable sales-wise, the Vertical panel at Otakon showed me just how little I actually know about how sales work and was really cool that way). I know I suggested the series to them in their last survey and I'll probably do it for their next survey as well. But not the one beyond that, if they haven't licensed it by that point I'll accept that they aren't interested and move on, although given that the fan translator has said this series is a bit hard to translate (sounds like it lifts a lot of the lines straight from the book) I'm not sure I'd buy it myself to work on anytime in the near future.

Anime Review: Psycho Pass

And now to start the first of many anime review covering shows from the fall and winter which just wrapped up, as a heads up I'm going to try and get my post out about all of the new shows either tomorrow or the day after (Wednesday or Thursday), trying to get better about not being super late on that post but all of these delayed simulcasts are not helping me out there. This show however was not delayed at all so I finished it a few weeks back and I have to say, when the fall season started I was expecting to like Robotics;Notes (the other noitaminA title) more than Pyscho-Pass, since that one was based on an existing property and I had liked Steins;Gate (although it's true that I had also liked Fate/Zero, ie I had enjoyed the writing by the same people in both cases) but in the end I really liked Psycho-Pass better and I'm going to have to remember it when I talk about my favorite shows of 2013 since it has a really good shot at being on that list.



Psycho Pass

Summary: Roughly one hundred years in the future Japan is once again a closed nation and enjoys relative peace and not as much large crime as it used to thanks to the Sybil System, a seemingly all-knowing computer program that helps weed out the good people from those who might commit a crime. Sybil helps people make most of the important decisions in their lives so young college graduate Akane Tsunemori is overwhelmed when she realizes that she scored high enough and has a good enough rating from the system to do anything she wants. When she realizes that she was the only person in her class to be recommended to the police however she decides that's what she'll do, she'll enforce the system along with some of those people Sybil has already declared irredeemable possible criminals and in the process ends up seeing what a dark system it can be. 

The Good: I was thrown when I realized it was the girl with the bad haircut in the promo pieces  who was the point of view character in the first episode (I didn't use one of those pictures for this review because it really is that hard to tell) and wasn’t sure how I felt about it, after all we've all seen the "naive newcomer learns the job on the go and presents a way to give the audience exposition as well" done to death. But I made up my mind on how I felt about Akane after she tazed a coworker to prevent them from killing a victim due to a fault in a system, something she even wrote a large paper about. Honestly that sentence sums up Akane, she’s determined, becomes rather badass, and ultimately goes through a character arc which I don’t see happening to female characters that often. Essentially, we have a woman in a position of power challenging the system she’s a part of with her power, normally when you see a woman challenging a system in a story she will have no power in it, she’s a rebel on the outside rather than a plotter on the inside and I rather liked that difference. She and Kogami, the guy with the spiky hair that I had thought was the main character from the promo pieces, carry the show, both become very well fleshed out and it’s interesting to watch characters who know they are flawed go about their work and the contrast between the two of them; Kogami knowing he’s flawed but not knowing a better way to do things and Akane fighting to find that better way. The other characters get varying amounts of character development but at least some and even the main villain, Makishima, has some not-quite-sympathetic-moments but points at which it’s very easy to understand his logic even if his methods are hideously wrong. And in the end I think that's what will determine if you like the show or not, the show has no bones about showing what a messed up world Japan has created in it's effort to have peace from the first episode so you have to root for one of the characters/one of the methods for trying to protect or change this system and if you don't end up agreeing or sympathizing with any of them then the entire story will have been a waste of time.

The Bad: The ending did a remarkable job of both wrapping up and feeling like an ending and leaving plot threads dangling which bothers me a bit. Since this does involve spoilers for the end of the series I’ll talk more about this in a footnote but, after ruminating on the ending a bit, I think I’ll be unhappy in the long run if they never give the story the last bit I think it needs*. Apparently at Sakura Con some of the staff present indicated that if the show sold well (I think they meant both in the US and Japan) then they would be able to produce more and it sounds like there are more stories they want to tell (some side stories but I don't know if they also meant a direct continuation). In any case, other than that, I had some major issues with the setting which can be summed up with me yelling “TECHNOLOGY DOESN’T WORK THAT WAY!” Thankfully I had an idea what the Sybil System would be early on and in most cases the technology works well enough with the plot to keep this from being a large problem but there were so many nonsensical background details that I truly wondered if all the creators were neo-luddites and had no idea how things like holograms or mass worked. Oddly enough, the criminal scanning technology, the one that seemed really far out there, is starting to be developed and perhaps it was because I was suddenly paying attention but I saw a number articles like this one from Wired pop up during or right after the shows run which certainly made me a bit worried for the future.

The Audio: I greatly prefer the first opening and ending songs to the second set although I'll admit the second opening grew on me (never became fond of the second ending song though, probably didn't help that it felt like the designers ran out of ideas for what to show along with the song and threw in whatever they had lying around). Actually, since Egoist did both ending songs you can actually purchase both of those on itunes (or at least the US one) which was rather nice considering that I really liked that first ending theme. The voice acting was also pretty strong, a quick browse through the cast list reveals no newbies but a lot of people who I've heard in other works and didn't recognize which is good. Although I did hear a rumor that the voice actress who did the voice of the dominator (the guns the police use) also has done a lot of voice work for GPSes in Japan which, if it's true, I refuse to believe wasn't done on purpose.

The Visuals: Aside from one episode in the second half where quite frankly the production values were in the toilet (you know it's had when the director apologizes on twitter beforehand for how it looks, oddly enough after seeing the rest of the show I still can't figure out why they ran out of time for that one particular episode), which will be fixed for the physical releases, the show looks pretty solid. The technology looks slick, even if it makes no sense, the backgrounds are detailed, and it uses color and color schemes pretty effectively. I'll admit that I'm not crazy about the character designs, they did grow on me some but I keep wanting to give Akane just a few more inches of hair, but I think I'm in the minority there.


All in all this ended up being a really solid, good show for me that I enjoyed and would like to see more of, provided that it tells the kind of story that I hope it does anyway (I've just been burned by too many sequel series in the past couple of years that seem to have forgotten what the show was about). So I'm giving this show a four out of five and I'm happy that Funimation plans to put it out sometime next spring. In the meantime people in the US/Canada can catch the show streaming on their site or on hulu.






*to get detail specific, so SPOILERS the story ends similar to how it begins with Akane now in charge of Division 1 and we’re shown how she’s both grown and yet hasn’t become jaded by the system. That’s all fine but there are a number of scenes shown during the ED that suggest that there is something more going on and earlier in the episode Akane makes a speech about how society needs Sibiyl now but someday they’ll be able to pull the plug on it once and for all. To me that sounds like the story declaring that we’ll see it happen, especially given how Akane’s personal philosophy has been shown throughout the show. However, someone on twitter pointed out how this could be social commentary about how Japan needs to change but ultimately isn’t doing so and, if I take that point of view, it doesn't seem likely that there will be a second season. I really do want one though since I think it would be poetic to see Kogami become something similar to Makishima and to see Akane finish her growth.

Book Review: Life on Mars: Tales from a New Frontier

Back in January when I was at the library trying to find the tv show Life on Mars I was also hunting around to find a few books which didn't seem to be on the shelves like they were supposed to be. So I decided to check out the new books section as a last resort and, while I didn't find the books I was looking for, I found a book called Life on Mars just staring me in the face. I'm not sure if this was the universe's way of mocking me or an apology for the tv show being out but in any case I decided to check this one out, especially since there were a lot of authors in there I didn't recognize (the only authors who I was familiar with were Nnedi Okorafor and Cory Doctorow*).

Life on Mars: Tales from the New Frontier edited by Jonathan Strahan

Not much to say about this cover, it works well showing what the book is about but honestly with a title like that the cover doesn't need to do much explaining. I did like the color scheme used though, it was a smart move to use that dusty red-color to tie everything together since that is a color people associate with Mars.

Summary: 12 authors and 12 different takes on Mars, our next frontier, and what kinds of lives we’ll live there.

The Good: There were some genuinely interesting stories in this anthology, I liked the few that dealt with the health aspects of living on Mars (“Goodnight Moons” by Ellen Klages and “Martian Heart” by John Barnes, even though those stories were a bit more tragic) and the ones that focused more on the kind of technology in the future (“The Taste of  Promises” by Rachel Swirsky), and one towards the end which was about the very first steps to Mars (“Discovering Life” by Kim Stanley Robinson). In short, I liked the ones that spent a bit more time thinking about their setting and making it the focus of the story instead of, well, the background. There were details in nearly every story that I found cool (like the journal in “The Old Man and the Martian Sea” by Alastair Reynolds, it reminded me a bit of the books in The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson) and it is harder to fill a story with details when it’s only 20-30 pages long but in an anthology it’s the details that separate the okay stories from the great ones.   

The Bad: I know that most, if not all, of the stories would have been written without knowing what the other contributors were doing and that you should therefore view each story separately but I was still surprised (and annoyed) at the sheer number of unlikeable lead characters in the stories. I think I only really liked two or three leads (all from different stories), the rest were simply too ignorant, mean-spirited, or just plain boring and I didn’t care about them. I was also sad that out of all of the stories none of them were set on a fully terraformed Mars far in the future, there’s a limit to how many stories you can read set in the exact same setting before it simply gets tedious (I read these over the course of a week and a half alongside another book so it’s not like this was even the only thing I was reading at the time and they still got tedious).

Not a super strong anthology, honestly I would rather recommend people a whole slew of other science fiction books to read instead but who knows, this could still appeal to some people out there I suppose. And it looks like this might be my last science fiction review for a while, glancing at my to-read list it looks like it's once again dominated by fantasy (with some realistic fiction in there, no clue where that came from), little sad that I'm ending such a long streak of sci-fi reviews with a whimper instead of a bang.



*ironically enough, I think both stories by them fit into the canons they had created in the books of theirs I have read. I can easily see The Martian Chronicles game being a progression of the games in Little Brother and For the Win by Doctorow and Okorafor's young adult books are set in a post-apocalyptic Earth where people have developed magical like powers, the same ones described in her short story (although I didn't realize this until I finished reading the story, her works are also set in a 'verse with alternate worlds, an odd combination with post-apocalyptic and it's been a few years since she had a YA book come out).   
 

Movie Review: Ghost in the Shell

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

Ghost in the Shell

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

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

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

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

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


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



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

Anime Review: Noein: To Your Other Self

Back when the summer started I had a list of anime titles that I was going to get out of the local college library and get through in their entirety. The list went Neon Genesis Evangelion, Cowboy Bebop and then Trigun. Later I found that Trigun was streaming on Netflix (and then it got removed but the dub is still streaming on Hulu, very strange) so I took that off the list and added on another title I had seen which I was interested in, Noein. I had seen the first two or three episodes at my anime club sometime in the past year but honestly it was the bloopers I saw on youtube that really made me want to try out the series. Not the strangest reason I've checked out a series, although I did glance over the tvtropes page as well and thought it sounded interesting, and I'm really glad that I had just enough time to finish it before I went back to school.

Noein: To Your Other Self

Summary: Haruko and her friends were living rather normal lives in their last summer before middle school when people from another dimension (La'Cryma) begin to appear with the intention to kidnap Haruko in order to save their world from the encroaching dimension of Shangri-la.

The Good: A fellow anime blogger has said that Noein is a lot like Denno Coil in some ways and the two shows really feel similar in the way that they construct their plot. It's clear from both shows early on that there is a larger plot lurking beneath the surface and the characters are partially aware of it but the character's aren't immediately drawn into it so the show takes it's time to let things unfold and give the characters development in the mean time. It's not quite the "first half unconnected, second half plot heavy" set-up that many shows use but it does work very well with a cast of kids to get them to the point where they can deal with the problems from the main plot. This also let some subplots get resolved rather quickly (such as Yuu's troubles with his mother, something a regular anime would have dealt with much later in the plot) and that made the show very put together. A big difference between these two shows is how Noein has an adult cast that is even bigger than it's cast of children, competent adult characters even, which also provides an interesting dynamic that many shows don't have and the adults get character development as well. The characters make and hold this show even when things are getting strange and very few of them don't feel well fleshed out by the end of the show.  

The Bad: At some point the writers must have realized that, for the show to have a really good climax, there needed to simultaneously be problems going on on Earth and La'Cryma and the villain of sorts for the Earth problems is a very unsatisfying one. All of his actions seem to be "for the luz" (or evulz) which was a cheap way to introduce drama and to bring Haruko's father into the plot (and then not really do anything important in the end). A few other details weren't very well explained in the series (how exactly Atori had a personality change for one) and I don't think that quantum physics works quite the way the show makes it out to be (a bit of a problem since the show revolves around quantum physics).

The Audio: For one reason or another I just didn't like the ending music that well and fast-forwarded through it after almost every episode. I liked the opening music better but at times it felt too light-hearted for the episode in question which lead to my interesting discovery of an "official" alternate opening (which would better with some episodes for sure). The background music worked fine, although some people may find the ominous chanting music a tad annoying, and thankfully here the more light-hearted music was used appropriately. Feeling a bit lazy I watched the dub which, like the show, is a bit earlier than most of what I watch and the dub is a bit weaker compared to dubs produced in the past few years. Most of the adult characters were fine but the kid's voices sounded more forced and, while they certainly got better by the end of the series, they were never quite as good as a dub made this year. Some lines were changed, or left out all together, in the dub which made me glad I was watching subtitles but thankfully it was never too major. Finally, the dub made the gender ambigous character Tobi (whom characters address with -kun in the sub) a girl which I didn't mind at all but might bother some people*.  


The Visuals: Noein looks a bit strange since there are two very distinct sets of character designs: those from Earth, who looks a bit more like standard anime designs, and those from La'Cryma who look more like characters from an indie comic. It's a bit jarring at first to see the two groups of characters interact with each other (and even more jarring to cut from a scene featuring the Earth characters to a stylized fight sequence involving the La'Cryma characters) and either you get used to it or you don't. There are one, maybe two fight scenes were there is a lot of CGI is incorperated as well and some other sequences in the show that use CGI (which, since the show is from 2005, are the most jarring bits of all**). The art style is going to turn some people away from the series, there are no cutesy designs here, but for the way it's done it's done well and the fight scenes are interesting to watch if you like the looser style of animation favored by some people.  


I really ended up enjoying this show and probably will buy a copy of it in the future (the fact that it's dead cheap online certainly helps me out there). It's a show that's slightly different from the way that other shows are paced/plotted out but it's because of those differences that I really liked it, although writing about it's similarities with Denno Coil makes me want to go and re-watch that show as well....


*IMO, the only thing more awesome than one lady talking about quantum physics is two ladies discussing quantum physics as equals, I did actually squee there so I liked that slight change.
**or maybe that's the part when the back of the DVD proclaims it to have great CGI, the best yet! 

And now for something different, common problems in a science fiction setting

I apologize for this being a day late but, since everything was a day late this week I suspect most expected this. Anyway, science fiction! I've been on a bit of a science fiction kick ever since school let out (so about three months) and all the things I've read/watched have reminded me that while I really do love some sci-fi it has an awful lot of problems, mainly in the setting. Now, I don't really care about how hard or soft the science is in these stories since, I mean, I watch Doctor Who which really isn't hard science fiction at all and I'm loving Steins;Gate (the premise of which is that two guys modify their microwave so much that it can now send text messages through time which has caused a bad future). But part of the reason these two series works is because their settings work (DW's changes every week but work goes into each setting and S;G is careful to show exactly when each episode is taking place) and so many creators don't seem to understand that settings make or break their stories. So here's a list of common problems in science-fiction stories, not really tropes or cliches, and just why this bug me so much (warning, it's going to get long).

Over-powered governments with no opposition

I'll admit it, I pay more attention to politics than many people and I also have faith in many democratic/republican governments in the world. I also have noticed that in general, during the course of the world, governments have shifted from monarchies, with a single person in absolute power, to officials elected by the common people for set terms. Clearly this isn't the case in every country right now but look at the recent uprisings in the Middle East and Africa, people like having a say in their government and protest/fight for it even if they don't have huge numbers or the military might intervene and possibly kill them. So, in a science fiction setting that is even farther in the future (ie, most of these governments probably became more progressive at some point) then why are there only oligarchies or no government at all? In Black Hole Sun (which, as I've said before, has absolutely nothing to do with the title) there is an oligarchy on Mars, one powerful enough to stop the terraforming on Mars, and it sounds like a good sized population of rough, tough people who don't seem to care that they have a crappy government. Heck, the police force there don't even do their jobs (yes I know it's actually a metaphor for samurais and rounin and such but still) so WHY haven't the people done something yet? To make matters more interesting, Mars is still in a colonial stage and colonists (if US history is anything to go by) really don't like governments telling them what they can and can't do (having a nice planet being one of the things you can't have) so why are they putting up with it? This is just the most recent example I can think of, I'm hard pressed to think of a science fiction story that has a good, active, competent and nice government that isn't actually evil, these authors just seem a bit obsessed with the idea of people abusing power and then using it a cheap way to establish setting.

Seriously screwed-up environment

To start this with, I agree with green ideology more than any other ideology and I've been part of a email list (for my state) since 2008 so I've fired off many emails to local representatives going "hey, stop that, stop that right now, STOP MAKING MORE STUFF FOR ME TO CLEAN UP DAMMIT!"^ It doesn't always work, think there is a bill right now that is going to pass that I don't like, but bugging the hell out of your local government officials does work for protecting the environment some of the time (and that's hardly the only way to do so), so why does it (apparently) not work in the future? Personally I think that green ideology is one that you can get a lot of people to agree with at least some of the time (I mean, we all do live on this planet) and you can spin it so many different ways* so why do so many stories take place when the Earth is nearly uninhabitable/destroyed/lost because everyone moved off planet/people don't want to live their anymore? It just makes no sense that, similar to the government, people have been more and more concerned with the environment in each generation yet so many sci-fi stories just ignore this. There are series that have a good reason for crappy environments** but by and large many creators seem to screw over the environment just to force setting even though it doesn't make sense.


General ignorance about Earth

First off, this complaint does not apply to series that have either completely destroyed the planet or have been away from it so long that they have actually lost it (yes, I can think of several stories for both of those categories, doesn't inspire faith in humanity I know), if you don't have Earth then it's a little more understandable why you don't know at least basic knowledge about the origin of humanity. Likewise, if the story takes place with a censorship-pro government then I'm not going to expect the character to know a lot about their surroundings, this is everything else. However, I was reading a book the other day (Spacer and Rat, it's gonna be a little bit before that review goes up) and one of the characters scoffs at the idea of their being a body of water larger than a hydroponic tank/big enough to put a ship in, which makes no sense. The character in question does live on a space station but Earth is still around (hell, the character he is talking to is from Earth) and he's been given a basic education, so you're telling me that not once in his education a teacher pulled out a map of Earth and explained just how huge an ocean is? Heck, they've colonized other planets at this point and you're telling me there are no lakes there? I believe I  remember a scene in Firefly where one of the characters (Jayne, the dumbest character in the crew) doubts that Earth-That-Was existed but the smarter characters (Simon and River who have had a formal education) never seem to doubt that it was real, now that feels more realistic (plus, they aren't anywhere near Earth at this point, although even Jayne probably knows what an ocean is). 




Think that's mostly it, I'm also not that fond of dystopias but that mainly falls under my complaints in the politics and environmental areas (it can literally be summed up as "you did WHAT now and nobody complained?!?") and there are some well done dystopian stories (just like there are stories that avoid all the problems listed above). I want to like science fiction, I really like seeing stories where, one way or another, humans got it right and are living in a decent future that's full of hope so why are there so few of them? You can have drama/intrigue/mystery in a happy setting just as easily as in a dark setting so someone make it happen!






^I mean that literally too.....
*by that I mean (I meant spin in a good way), say there's a factory that is polluting into a river which is legal under current laws. Tell people, hey, it's killing wildlife! and some people will complain. Point out that the water treatment plants might not be able to clean it up and it could get into the drinking water and more people will complain. Or, point out that this pollution is going to cost the area tons of money to clean up so why not make the factory responsible instead and some people will like that idea too. You can get a lot of people behind the idea of "keep this area livable." 
 **Cowboy Bebop comes to mind, there the Earth is not so nice because one of the gates (structures that allow for hyperspace travel) exploded and left it's mark. The plot of one episode revolves around one scientist who worked on the gates as they were being built, discovered some corruption/negligence (I forget exactly which) in the system and I think that was meant to imply that no, these gates were not being built to snuff and that the technology was new enough that there wasn't a lot of government oversight/civilians who were keeping an eye on what was going on and that's why it went boom. That is a good reason for environmental destruction in fiction, it just really couldn't have been prevented and happened because not everyone knew about the risks (or at least enough to protest it).   

Movie Review: Time of Eve

When my mom came to pick me up for spring break she mentioned that she had seen some trailers for the New York Children’s Film Festival and I nodded, I’d seen some people talking about movies on twitter and I really wanted to be there. And then she mentioned a movie about robots and two thoughts went into my head. One, that they had finished Satoshi Kon’s last movie but immediately ruled that out since I certainly would’ve heard of it somewhere else before hand so that lead to thought number two, it must be Time of Eve (which I knew had a few airings in the US). Apparently I did this in about two seconds so when I went “Time of Eve? I love that one and I reaaaaally wanna see the movie version!” my mom was a bit surprised and laughed. So, since I knew the original OVAs were still streaming on crunchyroll, I offered to show them to her and  that’s what we did. As a quick note, I (re)watched the OVA version of this, not the movie but I’m still filing this under “movie” since the only differences are that a some scenes are cut down (from what I’ve heard it’s mainly the episode about the couple), the final scene has the dialogue changed (which I didn’t realize until I found fansubs, it made more sense the movie way) and there are images during the credits/a short scene after the credits that provide a bit more insight into the movie. So it’s nothing much and I feel like I have seen the movie now since I saw all of that stuff as well.

Time of Eve (Eve no Jikan)

Summary: In the near future, "probably Japan", androids have come into common usage. Governed by the three laws of robotics, they are humanities willing servants, even though some people nurse a vehement anti-android sentiment. One day Rikuo checks the log on his family’s android and discovers that she went somewhere without an order and a curious message is left in the log, Are you enjoying your Time of Eve? He and his friend Masaki track the place down and discover that it’s a café with a curious rule, there will be no distinction between humans and robots. At first the two of them think it’s simple to spot the robots amongst the  humans but quite soon the show becomes "what measure is a non-human?"

The Good: Despite how little of it I read, I like science fiction and this series is pure speculative science fiction. Sure the world looks practically identical to our time period but that helps take the focus off of technology and put it onto the androids specifically. I also find the whole fact that humanity doesn’t know how advanced their own technology is amusing, usually the story is about an A.I. going rouge, not showing it already evolved and instead trying to fit into the world around it. Knowing whose human and whose not made this a fun rewatch since I was able to pick up on a few more details and that made me appreciate the build-up to the last episode even more (as well as enjoy the overall "what measure is a non-human?" more). The characterization was spot on and each episode focused on the right character for the right amount of time and in the right order, it was superbly well-thought out and I could’ve watched nine more episodes of this easily.

The Bad: Why hasn’t the movie gotten a release in the US yet, I’m sure that indie animated film festivals would eat it up and THIS is the movie that deserved an Oscar (sorry Toy Story 3 and Summer Wars but it's true). Or better yet, why isn’t there more yet! The movie sets up plenty of sequel hooks yet there’s no sign of more being made yet and I will be crushed if the rest of the story is never told. And that’s the biggest weakness here, if the story isn’t continued then this won’t add up to much in the end. Some of the characters did go through character development but this show was only the equivalent of four episodes, it’s all introduction and set up and really needs more to make use of it.

The Art: The camera is going to get on some people’s nerves, it reminds me of all the really early CGI shorts my brother and I used to watch as kids, the ones where they weren’t sure if the camera should follow animated or live action sensibilities. I think it works within the series, it reminded me of a robot looking around and, if that was the intent, using that technique when following/using the P.O.V. of human characters could help emphasis the lack of difference between the two. Other than that, all the characters look mostly normal (the series could’ve used a bit more shading) and there aren’t that many sets used in the series but I’m pretty sure this was a low budget endeavor so it’s nice that it looks this great.

The Music: I was surprised at how much of the music I remembered from the series, I might have even started humming along to the café’s theme when it started playing. Silence is also used pretty well within the series in the more dramatic moments which really stood out to me. I can’t think of much else to say but I do remember liking the music even more the second time around.

In short, I love this series. Normally I prefer a story with a stunning plot over everything else (it is in the blog’s tagline after all) but I also do truly love slice of life stories that really focus on and develop the characters in a thoughtful manner and this series did just that and raise philosophical questions in the process! I know the OVA BR have English subtitles but the movie one does not so my fingers are crossed that someone will release this in the US, I would buy it immediately, who cares if I don’t have a BR player yet! Speculative sci-fi buffs would eat this up I bet and I want more people to see this series, this is how you write characters and do science fiction without alienating non-fans of the genre. So, all six episodes are just under two hours long at CR, go watch it, NOW.

EDIT: The movie is now available to buy on itunes in the US and after a wildly successful kickstarter campaign will likely be available in physical format in other locations as well.