Book Review: Persona

Persona by Genevieve Valentine

Anime Review: Erased

Now it's time to really get going on the Winter 2016 anime season with noitaminA's third mystery show in as many seasons. For newcomers to the blog, I tried Ranpo Kitan (loosely based on the works of Edogawa Ranpo) but didn't like the first episode at all and watched The Perfect Insider (based on either a novel or a light novel from the 90s) until the end but got frustrated with both it's philosophy and it's "solution" to the murder mystery (I'm honestly surprised that more people weren't even harsher on that detail). Each of these shows has had greater credentials than the last and so we come to this show, based off of a manga with an excellent reputation and with a strong staff (I enjoyed the director's previous work on Silver Spoon quite a bit) and news that the anime would end concurrently with the manga and have the same ending. That's a promising start!

Erased (Boku Dake ga Inai Machi The Town Where Only I am Missing)

Anime Review: The Perfect Insider

I find it funny that even though the noitaminA timeslot has returned to just one show a season that the past three have all been mysteries, it's just such an odd coincidence! So I tried out this one to see if it was any better than Ranpo Kitan and the answer is yes but not as good as I had first hoped.

The Perfect Insider (Subete ga F ni Naru or Everything Becomes F)

Book Review: The Dead Key

This was the second of the free books I got from Amazon as part of my Prime trial membership, if anyone else here is thinking of doing the prime membership I highly recommend doing it so it falls over two calendar months (especially a 15th-15th if you can) so that you at least have the option of getting more than one book from this deal.

The Dead Key by D. M. Pulley

TV Series Review: Agent Carter

Sorry that this is late folks, there's no really good answer for it except general tiredness coupled with knowing this was going to be a long review and not wanting to start it. Since I did really love this show, hence why I knew it was going to be a longer one! 

Agent Carter

Manga Review: 20th Century Boys (volumes 15-18)

My new library has a few more volumes of 20th Century Boys which I was pretty thrilled to discover. True I'm still six volumes from the end but I think it'll be a lot easier for me to bug them and convince them to buy six volumes of manga for me to read instead of 10....

20th Century Boys by Naoki Urasawa

TV Series Review: Sherlock (season three)

Goodness it's been a long time since this show started, as the opening credits rolled by I was thinking that way back when this show first aired I had just started dabbling in video but by now I could do a fair recreation of the opening on my own if I put my mind to it (and put in quite a few hours of work that is). Back then barely anyone had heard of this show too and now it's everywhere. Before the first episode aired I was chatting with my mom and she said that they were taping it, my aunt's sister said that they would be watching it when I got home that evening if I wanted to join them, I started watching it while babysitting since my charge was already in bed, and when the parents came back, before the episode ended, they said that they were taping it too! Really, now everyone and their cat is watching the show (no seriously apparently my cat loves it when my mom watches Sherlock since it means he can sit in her lap for a full hour and a half without being moved).

Sherlock (season three)

Book Review: Quicksilver

While I scrambled and tried to post reviews of as many 2013 books as I could before the year changed I wasn't able to get them all up in time and in this case it's rather ironic since, while many of those books wouldn't have made my top five favorites list this one certainly would have. Back in 2012 I read Ultraviolet and while I really did enjoy it I was a bit leery when R.J. Anderson announced she was doing a companion/sequel novel to it since it wrapped up so nicely. But it sounded like since it was going to focus on another character (and I should note now, you shouldn't read this without having read Ultraviolet because it completely spoils it, although I am attempting to keep review as spoiler-free as possible for both books) which sounded interesting, and then she announced the main character, the point of view character, was asexual. And then there was no way I wasn't on-board for this, how could I say no to the first book I know of with a narrator with my own sexual orientation?

Quicksilver by R.J. Anderson

Movie Review: Argo

Back this past summer or so I stumbled across this article on Wired.com talking about how during the Iranian Hostage Crisis there had been some other Americans who had gotten out of the embassy and managed to escape well before the rest of the hostages (who were still alive) were released (according to wikipedia the screenplay was actually based on that article, need a source on that though). Shortly afterwords I saw an ad for a movie called Argo and thought what a funny coincidence and it took me an embarrassingly long time to make the connection (I should've at least noticed that the article dated from 2007). For those who don't understand how history classes in the US go (or at least classes in the Midwest and South), American history/American involve in history is king yet, while you would think that would mean that high schoolers would have learned about the crisis, really those classes focus on the American Revolutionary War and American Civil War ad nasuem so it had never come up in any of my (advanced even) history classes. So, armed with only the knowledge from that article and what had come up in my nonfiction reading (I remember the characters briefly commenting in Persepolis that with the embassy closed that there would be no more visas but the hostage crisis was never mentioned) I headed out to catch the film at school and see how well it worked on the silver screen.


Argo

Summary: The year is 1979 and tensions are high in Iran due to all of the political upheaval and unease over the past few years. As our story begins these tensions come to a point and citizens storm the American embassy and take all the workers hostage, all but six that is who manage to escape and hide out in Tehran, almost as trapped as their colleagues. The CIA gets word of these six and starts to devise plans to get them out and for once it seems like the flashiest plan, to claim that their part of a fake movie production crew, might be the one that saves them.

The Good: Normally I don't like thrillers since they remind me a bit too much of conspiracy theories, both of them rely on the idea that there are people out there who are so much smarter than the average person and perfectly control everything (well except for that one moment that starts the plot/leads a person to concoct an insane theory) and that stretches my suspension of disbelief a bit too far. Here however we have a realistic set-up (growing tensions lead to an embassy being attacked and people in one building are situated in a way that lets them escape and then hide out with allies) and it's this setting that makes the rest of the story work. I also liked a lot of the dialogue on the American side of things (although sadly I think all of the snappiest lines were made up since they were in situations that weren't based on real events), although that leads to my biggest problem with the film.

The Bad: While I am okay with some dramatization of the events for the sake of a movie (the confrontation with the guards at the airport? Okay especially since it wraps up a character arc) but some of them were just silly (the scene following it, that was just unnecessary). Wikipedia (both the Argo [2012 film] and the Canadian Caper pages) has a whole section on historical accuracy, with sources, and it sounds like quite a few little details were changed and I highly recommend anyone whose seen the film to at least glance through, a few things in the film didn't ring true with me and sure enough they weren't. I suspect the reason for at least a few of the changes was to make the movie longer (it clocks in at 2 hours exactly and I had been curious how they were going to make a full length film with what is essentially, as odd as it sounds, a straightforward story) and after looking at Wikipedia I think they could've cut some of the fake events and instead focuses more on the Americans in Tehran (really the film was about  Mendez, not the Americans) since they went through a lot more there which could've filled the time instead.

The Audio: No real comments here, the audio wasn't really important to the story (neither were the visuals actually, this is a story that also works just fine in print) but nothing stuck out to me for the wrong reasons so I suppose it was technically sound.

The Visuals: The film used some actual news reports from 1979 and I'm curious if some of the video of the protests in Tehran were also from 1979 since were were some shots there were letter-boxed (followed immediately afterwards by shots that were not). Regardless, the use of actual broadcast was a nice touch and was the only thing that really stood out to me visual wise (well, I have learned since that Mendez was part Hispanic so it's a bit frustrating that he was portrayed by a clearly all white guy).


So, while I enjoyed the movie while I was watching it (and was annoyed by some parts I knew to be dramatizations), after reading more about the history of the Canadian Caper I'm frustrated that they did dramatize some parts when they cut out other parts that could have helped fill the time and up the tension instead (and that there were a few lines in particular that paint some people/groups in completely the wrong light and could have been easily re-written so as to not do it). So I'm only going to give this movie a 3 out of 5 after all and probably won't rewatch it (then again I don't think it's the kind of story that benefits from rewatching anyway, regardless of historical accuracy).  

Anime Review: The Future Diary

I noticed that starting last year I always seem to be watching at least one action-y, gore-y show a season (which sometimes is horror like Blood-C and other times really isn't like Deadman Wonderland). Currently Zetman is filling that slot for me and back in the fall and winter The Future Diary which I had read the first volume (of the manga) a few years earlier and surprisingly managed to avoid all spoilers for the show as it was airing (well, except for one which sounded more like a promise of awesome than a spoiler and didn't make it into the show anyway). With a show that's so heavily twist-reliant I really recommend trying to avoid spoilers but I recommend avoiding spoilers for any series anyway (and as usual I shall try to keep this a spoiler free review, if I have to spoil anything it'll be in the footnotes).

The Future Diary

 Summary: Deus, the god of space time, is dying and with his death reality will collapse as well unless he can find someone to replace him. To determine his successor he selects twelve people, gives each of them a diary that can predict the future (based on how each of them used their own diaries), and the last person standing is the new god. The quiet, anti-social Yukiteru Amano isn't too happy with this turn of events but quickly finds that it's fight or be killed and teams up with another with another participant, the stalker-ish Yuno Gasai, to try and survive the game.


The Good: I was surprised that some of the side characters ended up being fleshed out and rather likable characters, even if they were still completely nuts. The pacing worked well and the twists certainly kept the show entertaining, and sometimes their ridiculous implausibility made the show quite entertainingly, although I suspect the story wasn't going for comedy in those instances. The best way to sum up this series is that it was entertaining in the way a summer blockbuster film is entertaining, fun but in a few years time you'll have seen so many others that you won't remember much about this one.

The Bad: Despite the fact that I grew to like some of the side characters more than I expected I could never get myself to care about any of the characters the way I normally do with a show. Almost everyone became so crazy that they almost stop being characters and are reduced to plot devices so it's a good thing that the plot was interesting. That said, the show is so twist heavy that I wonder how much re-watch value the show has. Yes it can certainly be fun to go back and see things be foreshadowed but so many of these twists came out of nowhere I simply don't see if there would be that much entertainment and for me my favorite shows are ones I want to re-watch because I can always find something new in them.

The Audio: Funimation sadly did not translate any of the opening and ending songs and when I tried translating the first ending song, piecemeal and with google translate, it just turned out to be a very odd love song (which makes more sense in retrospect) so this is one of those odd cases where I liked how the songs sounded more than what they meant. But overall none of the music left a really deep impression on me, if I had watched the show on DVD I would have skipped both of them after the first few times and none of the background music really grabbed me either.

The Visuals: As odd as this sounds when talking about a story in a visual medium, none of the art or the animation left an impression on me, good or bad. Everything was simply there, the art wasn't stunning but it wasn't the cheapest I had ever scene and all of the designs (sets/backgrounds, characters) were like that as well, they didn't add or take anything away from the overall product. And I suppose that is a bad thing, stories should be told in the medium that fits them best and, if the art wasn't contributing to the story, I wonder if I would feel any differently about it if it had simply been a novel instead.

In short, this felt like a series I watched and, while it wasn't bad, simply don't feel the need to purchase or rewatch. I can probably recommend it to a some of my friends and for anyone who is curious in checking it out Funimation has it streaming for the US and Canada and has licensed physical media rights as well (I believe both DVD and BRs). 

Movie Review: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Swedish Version)

While I've certainly heard about Stieg Larsson's trilogy over the years I've never tried the books before or really had any interest in doing so. Sure they sounded interesting but never grabbing so I never made the effort to track them down. However, I ended up with copies of the first two books during my family's annual gift-swap and my school's movie schedule for the upcoming semester had just gone up online and I hit upon a plan. First, watch the Swedish version of the movie (which I had found on Netflix before and had heard was very good), read the book, and then watch the American version of the movie (which I've heard some mixed reactions on) when it came to my campus in late March. Hopefully this way I'd have seen each version with a long enough gap between them that I wouldn't confuse them but still close enough together that I'd be able to tell how accurate the movies were and which one I preferred. So the other day I took the first step and sat down to see the Swedish version of the movie which really impressed me, the other versions are going to have to do a lot to live up to this!

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Summary: Mikael Blomkvist is an investigative journalist who has to spend the next six months in shame and exile from his magazine after he is charged with libel in an article he was set up on. Someone however still wants to make use of him for those six months before he goes to jail, Hnerik Vanger, the head of the powerful Vanger group, who wants Mikael to investigate a 40 year old mystery, the disappearance and presumed murder of his beloved niece, Harriet. And who is the eponous girl with the dragon tattoo? That would be one Lisabeth Slader, a computer hacker who works for a company Vanger used to check Mikael out with first and who still has access to his computer. Mikael becomes aware of her once she emails him the answers to an important clue and her pulls her into the investigation to unravel the mystery.

The Good: It's hard to write a good mystery and harder yet to create one that has remained unsolved for a long time (although, since the characters can only see clues it does seem to eliminate a lot of the problems that visual mysteries often have) but this mystery was both solvable but easy to see why it hadn't been before. I was worried how Lisabeth and Mikael's relationship would work out, I was afraid she was going to turn out to be the cocky, only knows how to use a computer, character and that Mikael would have to teach her and make her less arrogant in the process but she turned out to be not arrogant at all and plenty capable of doing old fashioned research on her own. The plot was gripping, appropriately complex without being over so, and was paced well (even though it's still a two and a half hour long movie) and makes me excited to see the rest of the franchise. 

The Bad: Not specifically a bad thing but a word of caution, this movie has an R rating and it is a deserved one. There are several disturbing sex scenes in the movie (which I did fast-forward through) and the murders themselves are very gruesome as well. To the stories credit none of these events are portrayed as "cool" or "sexy," they're shown to be disturbing events and the audience should be feeling a bit uncomfortable. Again, not a bad thing but I thought I would give a heads up. The story does take a bit of time to get going, it spends quite a bit of time developing Mikael before things really get moving, and Lisabeth still seems quite the mystery by the time the movie is over. Of course, there are more stories in the trilogy, and there were plans for even more before Larsson died, so this was likely the intended effect and some of her back story is revealed towards the very end.  

The Audio: I watched this in Swedish with subtitles and, while the subtitles on Netflix seemed a bit off at times (would put up two lines of dialogue when there was a clear pause between the first and the second, occasionally they would forget to subtitle the first line in a conversation which is very sloppy), I was intrigued to note that it seems like Swedish has a similar word order to English. Doesn't have much to do with the movie itself but it is fun to see movies every now and then in a language you have no familiarity with. The music worked and complimented the scenes nicely so overall a nice job there. 

The Visuals: Even though the entire movie has a rather muted color pallet and low saturation the movie is still visually interesting to look at. I was also impressed at the amount of work put into the photographs from 40 years earlier, it's clear that the props team spent a long time making those look just right, and then the sequence when the images have been animated looked amazing as well, so kudos to them. The actors also looked good especially when it came to facial expressions. I've sometimes thought that European movies and tv shows has more shots of a character's facial expressions when another is talking and I really like those kinds of shots since they are often rather telling. Great job overall with the visuals, I'm not sure how large a budget they had for the movie but it felt like they had a nice sized budget and used it well.

All in all I was really surprised at just how much I enjoyed this movie and I'm eager now to read the book and see how the two versions compare. Bit less excited for the American one since I've heard mixed reviews on it but I'll worry about that when I get to it. 

Continuing shows for Winter 2012

I should have a post up about the new winter anime I've been checking out next week (since I'm always one of the last people to post anyway) but today I've got a quick rundown of the two cour fall shows I'm continuing with and what they're doing right now. I've seen the latest episode for each of them (which means anything from episode 11 to 14) and I'll try to keep the spoilers down since that's never fun for anyone.

Chihayafuru: I still love this series but I’m loving Chihaya herself a little less now, I just wish she would train and get better already instead of having a freak out in nearly every match! For a josei show there are an awful lot of shonen tournament tropes in here and I’m really hoping the series moves away from them in order to let the story flow more naturally and to let the characters have more development.

Future Diary: It's odd but I am enjoying the show despite the fact that almost none of the characters are likable (I'm actually like Akise the most now and I was pretty sure I'd hate him when he first appeared). In a weird way the show has been fun, a little twisty, and I am really curious to see where it goes in the end (although I don't see myself buying the DVD/BRs of it).

Guilty Crown: Yes I’m still watching this and no I’m not entirely sure why. I almost wish I was blogging this show weekly because each episode does do one or two things right which makes me happy (characters freaking out after they kill people! Characters who don’t immediately want to team up with what amount to terrorists! Shuu’s mom appears to be a capable and smart lady!) but then they do so many things wrong or just plain odd (people in the Funeral Parlor: can someone PLEASE explain why you’re following Gai? No seriously Shuu’s right, your blind devotion to him is creepy!) that the overall review of this thing is going to be hard. It isn’t great and isn’t always even good but it does do enough things right that I want to see just what the heck they pull out of this series in the end.

Last Exile: Fam of the Silver Wing: The art is up and down (generally it’s the characters that look less detailed while the backgrounds are still nice, hoping that Gonzo has enough time/money to retouch bits for the DVDs) and some of the characters need more development (I swear that Fam is a shonen hero who got genderbent and put in here, her general confidence with small moments of self-doubt that she tries to hide from everyone else) but I still love this show. The world building is well done, the latest flashback episode shows that they put a lot of thought into the politics of the various countries and the characters have developed enough for me to be satisfied. I am a little worried about how this show is going to end, it’s almost half way done and no matter what the character’s end goal is they still have a long way to go, but I’m going to keep crossing my fingers and hope for the best.

Persona 4: Much like Guilty Crown I’m not entirely sure why I’m watching this show. I haven’t played the game (although I am watching the Let’s Play of it that Giant Bomb did, I prefer to listen to stuff in English when sewing so this was the perfect thing to watch recently) and it’s clear that the pacing is not the best here but, well, somehow I’m enjoying this. Mostly it’s the unintentional comedy in it (or sometimes the intentional bits) that keep me giggling but I am enjoying this for some reason or another. Enough to want to say buy fanart of the series, as well as continue watching the series and the LP, but not enough to buy DVDs/BRs down the road.

Again, next Wednesday I should have some quick blurbs up about the new shows this season I've tried out and at the top of yesterday's post I posted my new schedule that goes into effect next Sunday.

 

Manga Review: Arisa (volumes one and two)

I've actually read a bit of this series before, I don't remember how far along I got before I found enough self-control to get off scanlation sites but it was farther than volume 2. I suppose this then makes this a reread but I found it enjoyable both times so I don't see a problem with reviewing it.

Arisa by Natsumi Ando

Summary: Tsubasa Uehara, a girl with a reputation of being a delinquent with bad grades, is just a bit jealous of her twin sister Arisa Sonoda whom she hasn’t seen in three years. Her sister seems to be everything she wishes she could be, smart, pretty, kind, and surrounded by good (female) friends. But when Arisa attempts suicide Tsubasa realizes that something is up and impersonates Arisa at her school to realize how a simple, wish-granting, cell-phone game could lead to all of this.

The Good: In the words of Carlo Santos (who writes the Right Turn Only column on Anime News Network), Arisa is “a shojo version of Naoki Urasawa” and from what I’ve read of Urasawa’s works* that seems about right. The story is darker than expected and it seems like nearly every major character is plotting or scheming something in the shadows and it really isn’t clear who’s manipulating the strings right now or what they hope to achieve in the end.  

The Bad: As you can see from the premise, the story does have it’s fair number of tropes and clichés which can seem a tad unbelievable at times. Some bits of the story might be explained later on, such as how all the wishes are fulfilled so I’m not going to write it all off yet, but if you can deal with the “twins switching places and no one notices” start then you should be able to tolerate everything else that happens. The story is also paced a bit on the slow side but hopefully things will speed up in later volumes.

The Art: The art looks like fairly standard shojo art but like standard shojo art so for me that wasn’t a problem at all. The lines were clean, there weren’t too many screentones, the panel arrangement was logical so it wasn’t hard to figure out what to read next so I think the art was successful in telling the story.

I also really liked how there was a short preview of the next volume in the back of each book, probably because it was in Japanese and I remembered enough of what happened next that I was able to translate the bubbles without too much trouble (using a dictionary of course, my Japanese is still super basic). Currently the story is still ongoing with 8 volumes published in Japan and five in the US and I have no idea if the series is close to finishing up soon but I plan on continuing the series until the end.

*the first volume of Monster, my library didn’t have any more and all of Pluto, I really want to read more of his stuff.

Book Review: Rosebush

Another book where it was the cover that drew me in but this time it wasn’t the title but the blurb talking about a girl figuring out which one of her friends tried to murder her. Wohoo, a mystery and a(n almost) murder one, those are the best kind! Sadly this was not the whodunit I was expecting, although it had a lot in common with a standard mystery story nevertheless (which reminds me, where are the YA mystery novels these days anyway? I remember reading tons as a kid but the genre is lacking in the YA department, can’t be an age thing since there are plenty of mysteries in the adult section of any bookstore or library).

Rosebush by Michele Jaffe

The cover does a great job replicating Jane's crime scene and makes it clear how the title ties into the book.

Summary: To an outsider Jane seemed to have it all, money, loyal friends and loved by everyone else. When she turns up in the hospital after what appears to be a suicide attempt it's clear that this isn't the case but Jane is slow to catch on. She knows she didn't try to commit suicide and she thinks her life is great so who tried to murder her?

The Good: Some authors don't know how to write crazy characters but Jaffe seems to do it with ease, most of them even have sympathetic reasons for being crazy! She also manages to juggle a large cast fairly well and all of the important characters were distinct from each other, although I did have some trouble remembering the character names at parts. Jane's little sister was a very nice character and one of the better done "smarter than they appear but still a child" character's I've seen in a while, she may seem to be the strangest character to Jane but I was always happy when she got page time.

The Bad: When everything is said in done in a thriller or a mystery novel there should be no reason for the audience to doubt that the culprit was in fact the culprit and the other characters should have been cleared of suspicion as well. Here however Jaffe did such a great job at making everyone seem suspicious and like they had a reason to hurt Jane but none of them are ever “cleared” in the end. There is an actual culprit in this story but it could have been any one of the characters and the story wouldn’t have been any different in the end, that’s not good writing. Another complaint I have utterly clueless Jane is about seemingly everything in her life. Jaffe was clearly going for the “rich and popular girl discovers that all is not as it seems” trope but there’s no reason Jane should have believed that some things was alright in the first place. Through flashbacks the story shows that there have been hints for years that nearly everyone is unhinged and it’s unbelievable that Jane never noticed something and at least wondered about it (the flashbacks show her actively dismissing such thoughts).

In the end I was just so frustrated at how stupid Jane came off (it takes talent to not realize that there is something wrong with nearly everyone around you), who the culprit really was, how Jane found out, and how the day was saved that I really disliked this book. If there is a mystery I want logic in it, a reason for everything that is shown and then a reason for why things aren't quite what they seem in the end and this book provided none of them. I actually checked the author bio to see if this was the author's first book (since maybe they just didn't have a grip on their writing yet) but no it isn't and the fact that she wants to be a CSI investigator (something that would involve more logic than present in this book) worries me, think I shall avoid her books in the future.

And apologies that this is late, long day, paper kicking my butt and tomorrow looks to be more of the same so expect that review later in the day as well. But at least I like tomorrow's subject so that should make writing it take less time than usual.  

Manga Review: Variante (volume 1)

I had a bit of an odd conversation with a librarian lately when I was being checked out, I think it was when I was checking out this book, that I thought might be interesting to share. It was an older woman who I hadn’t seen around a lot (and believe me, after almost five years of volunteering, I recognize a lot of the librarians) who was taking an extra-long time to check me out and mentioned that one of the books I had on hold wasn’t in the library after all, the AX manga anthology. I was a little surprised; all I remembered about the anthology was that I got the recommendation from it off of ANN, but apparently the library thought it had sexual material that was unsuitable for teenagers and didn’t simply shelve it in the adult fiction instead. That said, then she had no trouble with checking out this comic which I found in the teen comic section that has a big label on it saying PARENTAL ADVISORY and a cover promising gore to come. Now I’m really curious to see if the AX manga had sex that was somehow worse than all the gore in this one….

Variante by Igura Sugimoto

Summary: One night, for an unknown reason, Hosho Aiko and her family are killed by a monster but Aiko wakes up three days later in a morgue seemingly fine. However, one of the arms of the monster has grafted onto her body, replacing one of her own, and seems to have a life of it's own at times. Because of these strange things there are several government agencies who are interested in her, those who are devoted to eliminating monsters like the one that attached itself to her. 

The Good: While this is a fairly gory story, there’s no denying that, none of it is the kind that will leave a reader disturbed for days on end (it reminded me of what little I’ve seen of Six Billion Needles and Guyver, both pretty gory but not without some reason). The government organizations here are portrayed as fairly capable and fairly logical (some sections are cold-hearted bastards but they’re cold-hearted bastards who know how to do their jobs) and the choice they offer Aiko is a surprisingly nice one, a chance to fight with them and discover the secret behind her parent’s death instead of simply being dissected for her abnormality. Finally, this is a dark story and the manga-ka isn’t afraid to prove it by showing a lot of characters dying, and not simply background characters, so kudos for that.

The Bad: It’s really hard to get a feeling for how good this story will be from the first volume. It’s a solid start to the story but it’s treading familiar territory, can it do anything really different that will make it stand out? It does show promise but the premise is built upon tropes and, while it plays those tropes well so far, it just hasn't done anything new with them. 

The Art: The art is fairly detailed which is a good thing, the more detailed a monster it is the easier it is to show just how disturbing they are. The monsters (and the gore) are suitably scary and grotesque looking and everything else is well-detailed as well. So there is certainly no problem with the artwork and it does it's part in the story quite well.

So, I was interested by the series but just don't really want to make an effort to find the rest of the volumes. It was published by CMX but they managed to publish all four volumes and all of them can still be found for a good price (come to think of it, the only CMX manga I've found that has an engorged price is Two Flowers for the Dragon, I wonder if that was one of their bestsellers) so anyone who is interested in the series should go right ahead and check it out!

And now for something different, the continuing spring anime

Don't expect me to do this every season, especially since the current trend is for more and more one cour shows, but when I started looking at summer shows I noticed that I had a few shows carrying over from the spring season as well. So why not write about why I'm continuing them (especially since I'm trying out a grand total of 10 new shows plus one or two older shows, I've got pleeeenty to watch right now) and hopefully convince some people to try out shows that they might have heard of but never checked out. Onto the post!

Blue Exorcist:

If my watching schedule becomes too full and I have to drop something, sorry Blue Exorcist but you’ll one of the first to go. That said, BE isn’t bad at all but it is fairly average shonen series and I like shows that go beyond the average and break as many tropes as they can get their hands on (and I knew this going in, I’ve read through the first major arc in the manga which is probably where this season will end). Rin is more genre-savvy than your average shonen protagonist (he’s even lampshaded what he’s SUPPOSED to do at a few points) and there is a good sized main cast (but not so big you can’t remember all of them), those of who have gotten character development in the manga are decent enough characters. The show looks good (A-1 is becoming a rather strong studio aren't they?), even if the ending sequence looks weird and the opening is a bit uneven, the closing song is really weird (well, from the Engrish in it, neither songs are translated) but the background music works. So, if you like shonen, watch this, it’s got a better than average plot and great visuals, it’s solid entertainment (and I have no idea why Aniplex is releasing this without a dub in the US, it would work pretty well with the other shows airing on Adult Swim right now).

Steins;Gate:

The first few episodes were a bit slow and I almost dropped it but around episode 4 something changed for me and I got really interested in the characters and then episode 12 (the half-way point), whooooa. The show is surprisingly quotable (I’ve actually seen more memes based on audio clips from the show than images which is a first), quite a few of the characters have already gotten some character development and everyone is sure to get more in the later episodes and the plot here seems really solid. I’ve heard a lot of people say that this is one of the best visual novels out there (in terms of plots) and that the second half doesn’t disappoint and, after seeing episode 13 (which is firmly in the second half of the season), I’m hyped for the second half! Funimation picked up the license for this one just last weekend, although I’m betting it won’t get a release before the later half of 2012, so right now this one is firmly on my to-buy list!

Tiger and Bunny:

As I said in my spring review, I wasn't planning on watching this at all until I heard great reviews for it and this is one of my favorite shows of the spring season. I was expecting the show to be really episodic (criminal-of-the-week) but very early on it introduced a more central plotline (Bunny tracking down his parent’s killers) and the character development for Tiger and Bunny (more for Bunny because he needs it more) also showed up way earlier than I expected. Heck, half the heroes have had a focus episode already (it looks like the episode for this week will be another one as well) and hopefully everyone will keep appearing often and developing. The CGI isn’t as distracting as you would expect (unlike [C] the traditionally drawn characters are always traditionally drawn and the CGI stuff is always done in CGI, this really helps) and the music seems to work well. Sounds like this was a surprise hit for Sunrise (neeeever underestimate the buying power of the fujoshi!*) so here’s to hoping the plot for the second half is as solid as the first!

For those interested, I'll do my summer anime roundup the same way I've done the past two but, since only half the shows I'm interested in have aired, it's going to a bit. I should have the first post up late next week (yeah, it's going to be multiple posts again, like I said, 10 shows, that's just too many to put up at once @_@).

*Hell, there’s so much slash fanart that some of my friends were half-convinced it was a BL show, pretty funny thing to see first thing in the morning on your facebook