Anime Review: My Hero Academia

Back when the spring anime season was getting underway, I talked on the OASG podcast about how I still wasn't sure what shows I would end up liking but I was sure Concrete Revolutio and Flying Witch would be among them. I was right but imagine my surprise when I also really ended up liking the "populist" hits My Hero Academia and Kiznaiver! My tastes usually don't like up that way but this time they did and I hope that Funimation found a whole slew of fans for MHA since I can't remember the last time I saw this much pre-airing hype for a new anime (as in, Funimation was even making dubbed character spots to advertise for the show even before the first episode, that takes money!). I have seen a lot of buzz for it online and I have to say folks, I've considered getting a Weekly Shounen Jump subscription before but held back (not enough series I like/the series I like are monthly) but if I can figure out a way to catch up with this series (ie, library please hurry up with my holds!) this might be the manga that makes me do it.

My Hero Academia

Anime Review: Concrete Revolutio: Superhuman Phantasmagoria: The Last Song

I don't believe it, I somehow managed to hold out all the way until the spring season batch of shows without running out of things to blog! I'm pretty thrilled by this turn of events, although I didn't watch many spring shows so I'm going to actually run out of things to blog pretty soon. 

Hmm, well for the moment, as per-usual my first review of the season is my favorite show/the one that really needs as many views as it can get (places like Funimation have said that the views that count towards determining if a show is going to get a physical release or not are all of the views while the show was airing+one week, although I've missed that window). I talked about the first half of Concrete Revolutio earlier in the year so I suppose this is my last shot to convince folks that yes, this is yet another superhero anime worth watching.

Concrete Revolutio: Superhuman Phantasmagoria: The Last Song

Anime Review: K Return of Kings

Phew, it seems like I'm just barely going to get through the fall shows before it's time to start reviewing the winter ones. I have an over-stuffed winter viewing plate and I certainly don't want to put off talking about my favorites because I haven't finished the fall dredges. That's what we've arrived at by now, the not truly terrible series (I don't have time to watch those) but certainly unsatisfying by the end (and feel free to lump The Perfect Insider in with that group, I think I'll be grumpier about that title than this one/next week's review for quite a while).

Oh, and hopefully it should go without saying but, this is a sequel! And there's a movie! Watch both first if you plan to watch this because that's what you're supposed to do with sequels! (and watch me accidentally ignore that guideline with one of the winter shows....)

K: Return of Kings

Anime Review: Concrete Revolutio

Wowzer, so I expected to take only the week before Katsucon off reviewing but two weeks ago I realized I just did not have the energy so, blogging had to go! Sorry about that but hey now you have the best ConRevo post I could make which is what I wanted to do from the start.

Concrete Revolutio

TWELVE DAYS OF ANIME 2015 Anime Review: Castle Town Dandelion

Yep, still using this as an excuse to catch up on reviews, I only wish that I was using this time to talk review some of the best shows of the year instead of my least favorite summer shows!

Castle Town Dandelion (Jokamachi no Dandelion)

Comic Review: Ms Marvel (volumes 2 and 3)

So this week's anime review is Gatchaman Crowds Insight which is a complicated thing to talk about so I'm taking my time and will get it up later in the week, that's why that one is late. Honestly even if I tried to rush it I don't know if I could get a coherent post out earlier because that show just requires a lot of thought, not impulsive button-pushing.

And this review is also later than I'd like, not only because my review backlog is large but because I didn't realize my library was getting new books in this series until I saw volume 3 appear on the shelves and then started looking for volume two. Wohoops, at least I know now that I should start looking for volume four soon!

Ms. Marvel volumes 2 and 3 written by G. Willon Wilson and illustrated by Jacob Wyatt, Adrian Alphona, Takeshi Miyazawa, and Elmo Bondoc

 

Movie Review: K: Missing Kings

As I mentioned in my Fall 2015 Anime Round-UP, K is back after a two year break! But in those years this movie came out and the second series is a direct sequel to this movie, which was a direct sequel to the first series. Basically, you need to watch the movie first and, for American viewers, it just went up on hulu a few weeks ago for those of us who missed it in theaters. Do to the fact that you are only going to be watching this movie if you're already a fan of the show I am going to put some spoilers in the review! I imagine most people reading this review will either be seeing if my views matched up with theirs for the movie or if they can possibly read the review to skip watching the movie immediately, newcomers this is not the place to start!

But for those newcomers, since my review of the first season is a little old by now let me do a general recap of the entire show up to this point and hopefully sell you on "the most anime to ever anime". In a slightly alternate world, a discovery in Germany back in World War II has enabled some people to gain powers through a mysterious slate and others through pledging themselves to a "king". There are always seven kings in Tokyo (where the Dresden Slate was moved to) and hapless high school student Shiro is accused of not only being the new Colorless King but also of killing a beloved clans-member from another clan who is now out for his blood. He doesn't have any memory of this but everyone else has video so he's on the run with a sometimes-cat-sometimes-girl "strain" (people who have powers without a king, can be animals, there is honestly a pegasus in one of the spin-offs) and a man from yet another clan. Kuroh had orders to kill the next Colorless King if he was evil but has been won over by Shiro through sheer force of charisma than anything else. Look it's a rather ridiculous set-up but trust me, this trio somehow works and this is one of the rare times where I care only about the these characters and barely about the (more popular) side characters. It's a pretty silly story and a go-to example for "style over substance", especially with it's over-use of colored filters making every scene look even more rainbow-y than an instagram at a pride parade, but the show is also sneakily good at foreshadowing and more subtile hints too. Shiro's situation is eventually explained and it was a funny payoff since I had seen people speculating about it for weeks at that point and while their proof was winning me over I couldn't quite believe until that moment that the show had some idea of what it was doing.

This is also a multi-media project so in these intervening years there has been a beaucoup of manga, light novels, and drama cd spin-offs as well. There aren't necessary to enjoy the show but I have looked into a lot of them so I will reference them in these reviews since that's where you get a lot of the world-building details from and again, some surprising foreshadowing. And so, with all of that said, onto the movie!

K: Missing Kings

Book Review: Tokyo Demons volume 2

"Alright Helen, what's your excuse for not having this review up on time?" Well, it was one I was having some trouble with this review which is never a good sign. Plus, I'm trying to cut back on caffeine but had a soda at work Friday and spent literally nine hours trying not to bounce off of the goddamn walls, made focusing on writing a little hard! And with the fall anime round-up coming up on Monday it's been a little chaotic around here.....

Tokyo Demons: Add A Little Chaos by Lianne Sentar, illustrated by Rem

Radio Drama Review: Tokyo Demons Book 1: You're Never Alone

As I alluded to several weeks back, I like to listen to podcast, audio books, and when I can find them radio dramas when I’m working on big sewing projects, I find it’s a way to actually help keep me focused and look forward to my work. So with nearly everything exhausted pre-Otakon, I turned to Sparkler Monthly, an online “shoujo/josei magazine” of sorts which I knew had a few audio titles. I went for what seems to be their best well-known one, Tokyo Demons, which I remember also received glowing praise from Ash of Experiments in Manga. There is also a prose version of the story but when I first inquired about this story (quite a while ago) I was told that the audio version was the more “complete” one since it also had a few exclusive side stories. I’m not sure you could say that now however since the audio version has only covered one out of the three books in the series. And for a quick plug before I get to the review, Sparkler is holding a Kickstarter to help fund Year Three of the magazine and it’s in it’s final days with a bit more to go. Most of the titles I enjoy on Sparkler are ones I was already familiar with (Knights Errant, Witch’s Quarry) so I’m more than happy to see them return and encourage more people to give the titles a shot.

Tokyo Demons: You're Never Alone written by Lianne Sentar, adapted by Rebecca Scoble, illustrated by Rem

TV Series Review: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (season two)

I blame cosplay for this post going up late but at least at this point it's still before midnight. Let's just go ahead and dive into it shall we?

Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Manga Review: Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches

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

Yamda-kun and the Seven Witches by Miki Yoshikawa

Anime Review: When Supernatural Battle Became Commonplace

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

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

When Supernatural Battles Became Commonplace