Anime Review: Fate/Stay Night Unlimited Blade Works Part Two (2015)

God that is the longest title ever and this is my last review of the spring 2015 anime season! We're right around the halfway mark for the summer 2015 anime season so I know a lot of people have been doing mid-season review posts and I'm going to post mine next week, just wanted to finish what I started first.

Fate/Stay Night Unlimited Blade Works Part Two (2015)

Book Review: Defy

"Oh hey it's a book that's on my to-read list because it comes well-recommended from one or more of my book blogs, let's go for it!"

Defy by Sara B. Larson

Manga Review: Rurouni Kenshin

Well this review has been a long time coming, back in the fall of 2011 I gave in one night, wondering what this series was all about (probably after seeing half a dozen posts on tumblr about the live action movie) and read more than I meant to. I was wondering what to do the next day, especially since I try not to read licensed manga online, when I was in a local use bookstore, looked up in the manga section and found two omnibuses about to beam me in the head and magically enough they started right where I had stopped reading the previous night. Not one to ignore the universe I grabbed those and picked up the next omnibus soon afterwards, I really liked how long they were, but soon after that was when I had to cut my manga spending down to next to nothing to save up money and didn't come across any more omnibus editions at the used bookstore. However, when I moved this time around I noticed that the local library seemed to have all the volumes and recently I decided to take advantage of that and finish off the series in more or less one go.

Rurouni Kenshin by Nobuhiro Watsuki

Anime Review: Katanagatari

This is one of those titles which I heard about when it was coming out, thought "cool", saw it was licensed, thought "even cooler" and then waited for a legal stream to show up which never happened. So, since this technically is the spring noitaminA show (it's a rerun and, considering how odd the original airing was, one hour long episode each month for a year, I'm mostly okay with that, sad that it took up the entire timeslot though) I had to at the very least give it a shot and I was really hoping that I'd like it when I went into it.


Katanagatari (literally, Sword Story)

Summary: Several hundred years ago a legendary sword smith made a 1000 swords, most of which were preparation for his crowning works, the 12 shikizaki blades and it's said whoever possesses those 12 could rule Japan. Togame, a strategist for the emperor, is off on a quest to find and retrieve all 12 and after two failed attempts she's come up with an unusual plan to get the rest back, to team up with the son of the man who foiled the last rebellion, Shichika, and make him fall in love with her so that he won't be tempted by anything to steal the swords. Of course, since he's a practitioner of a martial art that uses no swords and can't seem to use one himself perhaps she didn't need to bother with that part....

The Good: I was rather surprised to notice at the end that the story took a completely blank, flat character and made them into more or less a rounded character by the end, which I'm sure was entirely the story's intention but it actually worked out better than I expected! Actually the whole story worked better than I expected, it is a bit predictable at parts (especially since I had heard one or two rumors about the ending) but it was fun, the character banter was a heck of a lot easier to follow than Bakemonogatari (probably because it didn't involve all those stills filled with words), and I really liked how the show looked. Fun isn't precisely the word I'd use to describe this show but it was more than enjoyable, I'd watch it again, and I'd recommend it to friends because of how well it all fits together in the end, even if no particular element especially stands out/is especially stunning.

The Bad: The series is formulaic, in each episode they end up fighting someone for a sword and winning one way or another which does take away a little bit of the tension (apparently the original novels that the story is based on were being turned out by Nisio Isin at a rate of one per month so I can see why the story went this way). The formula starts to get a bit varied in the second half but it never deviates that much. Also, you need to be able to have a rather large suspension of disbelief for this show, especially when things are "explained" in the last episode and things don't make quite as much sense as they could.

Production Values: I'll admit it, one reason I wanted to try this show and like it was because of just how stylish it looked. It's hard to show exactly what I mean from just screenshots but they at least get across how distinctive the character designs are. There was one episode towards the middle where everything looked a bit off (the lines were all drawn differently and the animation didn't seem quite as smooth, it was especially obvious in a flashback which had scenes from every episode) but other than that, admittedly large, hiccup I liked how this looked. As for the music, I was watching fansubs from the original broadcast and I didn't care for either of the openings nor really any of the endings (there was a different one for every episode). Funny enough, I looked up the new opening and ending themes and liked those much better and I liked a lot of the background music as well (to the point where I got cross that about halfway through either the show or my fansubs stopped having the preview in them and since they always played my favorite track with the preview and dammit I wanted to hear more of it!).

So, giving this a 4 out of 5 for enjoying it quite a bit and I guess I need to plan on picking up NISA's very nice sets sometime in the future. It looks like it never sold well enough to get regular sets made, just the premium ones, and hopefully they'll stay in stock long enough for me pick some up, I think I even saw someone say that it seemed like they had stocked a few more at TRSI lately (if the company didn't look at this re-airing and expect to gain a few more fans like myself then they would be a bit silly).

Manga Review: Hiro no Isu

Earlier in the month I was browsing some of the submissions to the Natsume Yuujinchou group on deviantArt and came across a piece of fanart with some characters I didn't recognize. The artists comments explained that they had drawn the main characters from three of Yuki Midorikawa's works, Natsume Yuujinchou, Hotarubi no Mori e (both of which I had recognized), and then a third character from another work of her's Hiro no Isu. I hadn't really done any searching to see if Midorikawa had done any other works besides Natsume and Hotarubi, turns out she's been published since 1998 and has done seven series of various lengths and this one was her longest one before Natsume at 10 chapters over three volumes. It's never been released in the US and the scans were rather easy to find so I decided to give the story a shot and ended up immedately falling in love with it.

Hiro no Isu (The Scarlet Chair/Throne) by Yuki Midorikawa

Summary: Setsu is a girl from a small town in the countryside and has traveled to the capital to see an old friend. She was one of the few who knew that her childhood friend Luca was actually the illegitimate child of the king and years ago he was summoned by one of the retainers to become the new king and take the scarlet throne since he was the only living descendant left. But when Setsu comes to the city she's in for a surprise, there's an impostor in his place and he seems to have been expecting Setsu to come someday.

The Good: This series is clearly a shojo manga, it has a female protagonist and was published in Hana to Yume based on the cover, but it doesn't feel like a typical shojo series at all. There's a bit of romance but not much, it's more implied than anything else*, the main character isn't that girly but this is never a reason for teasing or angst, she just doesn't seem to care, and she's proficient with a sword which never seems to raise any eyebrows. Actually, there are several female characters who are skilled fighters and no one ever questions this, I'm so used to seeing series where female characters have to fight their way to the top to be accepted that it's always odd when there isn't sexism, I certainly prefer it this way though. And I also prefer the lack of romance, there is a big focus on friendship instead and I really liked seeing those grow and develop between all the characters. The series ended a bit differently than I expected and was a bit bittersweet as well but I felt satisfied with it once I was done so I'm happy.

The Bad: The series is an odd length and I wonder if this was originally going to be a one-shot story that was approved for a full series or a full series that was cut short. Perhaps it was only intended to be a short story from the start but occasionally the pacing felt a little odd and made me wonder. While I don't think the story could have worked if it was any shorter I do think it could've also worked as a longer series which would have been nice, some of the reveals towards the end came too quickly and felt too messy. Overall though the plotting is strong enough, it just feels like it could've been even better.

The Art: I know this has surprised some people before but I'm actually not super-fond of Midorikawa's art style, it's a bit too sketchy and inconsistent for my taste. It does work surprisingly well for action scenes, of which HnI has many, but it can become difficult to distinguish the characters from each other. I found it interesting to compare her art here to her work in Natsume, she's certainly improved  but there is still some charm to the art here.


If this was ever to be licensed in the US, highly unlikely but hypothetically, I'd buy it for sure and squee over it all over again. It's shojo, which I love, but different from other shojo titles which I love even more. Wonder if I can find out more about any of Midorikawa's other works now....


*something interesting however, apparently the reason there has been so little romance in Natsume, this is all at least third-hand information, is because Midorikawa's editors made her put in more romance than she wanted in her previous work so she's really trying to avoid it this time. Chronologically this would have been the work right before Natsume so I wonder if the editors made her put in the hints in the end, no way to know however.