Manga Review: Spirit Circle

Funny story, I actually had this post all ready to go last night and completely forgot until 11:30 to actually hit post so I decided to wait until morning. Which means, this post originally appeared on Organization of Anti-Social Geniuses!

This is one of the many manga I first tried out when I was using friends' guest passes on Crunchyroll and frankly my luck for finding good series on there was pretty terrible. Honestly it still is but I'm lad I stumbled across this one, I actually had no idea it was by the same manga-ka as The Biscuit Hammer and after I enjoyed this series so much I was convinced to try The Biscuit Hammer again and I think that one is growing on me too!

Spirit Circle by Satoshi Mizukami

Manga Review: Orange

As an aside, this review was supposed to go up on OASG first but is going up here first. This only matters since I did read this manga using the press account with Crunchyroll so "a review copy was provided". This won't apply to my other two manga titles this month however, I read both of those thanks to many guest passes from friends!

I went to the Crunchyroll Manga panel at Katsucon a few weeks back (and ran out of the room to take a phone call AND ended up sitting next to some other people from "Anitwitter") where Dancia and Evan spent part of the panel talking about some of the manga they personally liked. Orange was brought up and Danica said something to the effect of "the Japanese editors had no idea people were even reading it overseas since they didn't think it would appeal to anyone else". That made me giggle a bit since a few months earlier I had mentioned in passing that I hadn't read it yet and wanted to I immediately had friends offering me guest passes for the express purpose for reading the series. I am sure that that the editors are completely correct that the overseas fanbase is small but at least it's a dedicated one!

Orange by Ichigo Takano

Movie Review: Thermae Romae

As a heads up, since I am so busy catching up with all the anime I've fallen behind on there will NOT be a review next week. Since March kicks off my month of nothing but digital manga and webcomic reviews this means that there won't be any anime reviews until April (which should be when 99% of my shows end which means that it'll get a little crazy around here).

I seem to run into "help I have no more shows to review and no time!" around this time every year actually, usually I pull a short or two out fill the space and that's exactly what I did with the Thermae Romae anime last year (it's since been licensed by Discotek although I'm unsure if it's streaming). I enjoyed it more than I expected so when the JICC announced they were having a showing of the live action movie I couldn't resist. It was a comedy to start with and with how over-acted Japanese live action comedies tend to be I couldn't wait to see how it turned out.

Thermae Romae

TV Review: The Day of the Doctor: The Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Special

As long time readers of the blog probably already know, my feelings towards Doctor Who are mixed. At times I love it and at other times I grumble with my friends over what the show is doing and a lot of the news about the 50th had me grumbling. There were two ways they could have done this, one would have been a silly thing that was more about celebrating the show itself and the other was using the 50th as a chance to have a big story that would affect the entire show. Given the fact that the pre-revivial Doctors were saying that they hadn't been invited, and the news that they were suddenly adding in another Doctor, which really messed with the "mythology" of the show, it was clear they were taking the second route and I was getting rather nervous about it. I felt a bit reassured when they put out the Night of the Doctor short just before, and interested to see that in doing so they seem to have canonized a lot of the Big Finnish radio dramas (which I still really need to get around to listening to), but I was still a bit nervous going into the simulcast, who knew what was going to happen!

The Day of the Doctor (Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Special)

Summary: The Doctor has just been summoned to UNIT (with Clara in tow, having just picked her up for another round of adventures) where he runs into a series of curious things, a painting of Gallifrey as it burned, pictures with their frames broken from the inside and missing figures, and a time vortex which seems to lead him to a past self we never knew of who is just about the destroy his home planet. Wait huh?!

The Good: I really did like about 2/3rds of this story (the part I liked the least was of course the ending so I can't really talk about it here) and the story was a far better one than I expected. The story was a large enough one that it made sense that there were multiple Doctors involved and it was fun to see Smith and Tennant bounce off of each other (and the show did a good job at keeping the side characters involved but without dominating the story and detracting from that interaction, I feel like the writers have finally hit their groove for how to balance Clara into the story and I like that). Really that's what made it for me, the UNIT side of the story would have been a pretty good episode if it had been just a regular tv one and I enjoyed it quite a bit. It's just the other half of the story, dealing with the impending blowing-up of Gallifrey, that I had some problems with.

The Bad: I'm still confused as to what the purpose of the UNIT lab assistant wearing a homemade version of the Doctor's scarf was, I've seen people say she was supposed to be a stand in for the fans (and the show has done that several times since the revival) but I'm still rather confused about it. Minor quibbles aside, it's been two weeks and I'm still a bit torn on how I feel about how the story ended. On the one hand it does neatly tie up a problem that the story has had since the revival and gives the Doctor new purpose again, on the other hand I feel like it cheapens some of the emotions the Doctor went through and considering that the current doctor is going to regenerate in his next appearance, well, I feel like that quest just won't have the same emotional punch as it could have been. So I am left with the same feeling I have had after many an episode of the show, while I really did like parts of it I can't help but feel like they tried to write a "cleverer" story than needed and in the process made it weaker instead. I know that a lot of people liked John Hurt in this as the War Doctor but honestly I never warmed up to him, I can see they were trying to imitate the dynamic that The Three Doctors had but for one it just didn't work since we didn't have that connection to him (I saw a lot of people saying that you could tell the lines were written for Nine and, while I didn't feel that way when watching the show itself, I have to admit it would have worked so much better if he had consented to come back*). Two, you have to be a broken person to truly believe that eliminating every man, woman, and child of two races is the best solution to an unwinnable problem and Hurt didn't seem that broken to me, I just had a hard time believing that this character was supposed to have already been pushed to that point which made a lot of the conflict feel rather flat. Finally, I also feel like the plotline with Queen Elizabeth I was just odd, yes I know it culminates in a call-back (multiple ones actually!) but her acting just felt odd to me the entire time.

The Production Values: I guess the BBC realized they needed to give the show a larger budget than usual considering how many sets the characters go through. I thought everything looked fine, the zygons didn't quite work but having seen some 3rd/4th Doctor stories with some terrible alien costumes I'm just thankful it wasn't worse. Honestly I don't have much to say on it other than the fact that I really did like how the story had so many different sets and all the visual bonuses in them, that should make rewatching it with friends sometime rather fun.


Despite how lengthy that bad section is I did enjoy this way more than I expected and even if my expectations hadn't been super low I feel like I would have said the same thing. In many ways the ending is fitting but if it had just been a bit different, if it had been Nine's struggle, a character whom we've already seen deal with the fall-out, and knowing that Eleven would be the one to deal with a different kind of fall-out from the event, then I think I would have been much more satisfied with the event.

For those who have already seen the series and need more to watch, or haven't and want more to watch anyway, in addition to the short mentioned earlier I recommend The Five(ish) Doctors for people who are fans of the original show (in short, the fifth, sixth, and seventh Doctor's all team up to try and appear on the finale with a heck of a lot of in jokes and shout-outs for classic fans) and I still need to see An Adventure in Time and Space, a documentary on making the show, myself. Sadly it looks like neither of those are legally available online at the moment but since Netflix currently has all of NuWho streaming I bet both of them will pop up in the next few months or so, just when we need something to tide us over between the Christmas Special and whenever the next season starts!




*and from what I've read I understand why he didn't, sounds like the tensions were high when he had to leave and it has to do with the particular set of classism that still exists in Britain and not quite anywhere else.

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.

TV Series Review: Ashes to Ashes (season one)

Some people might remember that I used to alternate between British and American tv shows fairly regularly and might have noticed that the only British television on this blog as of late is Doctor Who related so what happened? A few things actually, one is that I did try out Being Human (the UK version) in early January and after a couple of episodes realized that I had no motivation to continue watching and that this was probably a good reason to drop the show. Right after that my semester became so busy that I didn't have time to add anything else to my watching roster so even though I've wanted to check out this show ever since I finished Life on Mars I just didn't really have the time too. What's this connection to Life on Mars (again, British version) you might ask? Well, it's a campion series basically, some of the cast, same premise, although it does have a different setting and a different main character. You don't need to have seen LoM to enjoy Ashes to Ashes, although the first five minutes here spoil what eventually happened there, for the moment anyway, I'm told that the third season of AtA finally explains all of the details for these shows and that's what I'm here for so let's get started!

Ashes to Ashes (season one)

Summary: Alex Drake was the psychiatrist who treated Sam Tyler and when she's shot on the job she's pretty sure he left an even larger impression on her than she thought since she's ended up in a situation much like he described. She's in 1981, still working as a police officer and has no clue how to get home just like Sam but something doesn't seem right. Even if she is basing this world she's in off of what he told her how would she know all the characters Sam knew down to their last personality quirks?

The Good: While I wasn't sure how well I was going to like Alex as the main character (it turns out that watching a character embarrass themselves over and over no matter the situation just feels awkward to me) but I did end up liking the relationship she and Gene had more than the relationship he and Sam had had, after two seasons of watching him slug the main character it was nice to see him thrown off his game and have to take a bit of a different approach. And, while like I said it was awkward to watch Alex go "hey I'm in a dream, I'm going to do something that I would never do in real life because it doesn't matter!" it was fun to see her genre-savyiness come through and say things like "this is important!" "why?" "because it's in my dream and therefore it must be!"

The Bad: Much like Life on Mars I did find my mind wandering a bit during the episodes and since I still don't know any contemporary British history I was a bit lost at the beginning of some of the crimes since I simply didn't have a frame of reference. I fear that's probably the series biggest barrier to entry, for an older viewer (someone whose in their late twenties or older) this probably wouldn't be a problem, they would at least realize that the creepy clown following Alex around is from the David Bowie's music video for the song "Ashes to Ashes" which I didn't find out about until I was almost done with the first season.

The Production Values: Before I watched this show I thought that I knew a little more about the 1980s than the 1970s but it turns out I know nothing so once again I'm useless if you want to know how screen accurate this show is*. Everything seemed technically sound both setting/prop wise and sound wise but honestly it shouldn't be an accomplishment if a show manages to achieve just that much.


In the end I don't have a lot to say about the show so far, I like some parts of it more than LoM and some less, overall I think I like LoM a bit better at this point but there are still two more seasons for me to watch so that could easily change. For the moment I give this a 3 out of 5 and probably won't buy it since, well, it was actually never released on DVD in the US (as far as I can tell it was broadcast once on BBCAmerica and that was it) so I would have to import it from Australia or Great Britain and I'm only going to go through that hassle for something I really adore.


*although I may have embarrassed my mother by showing her Alex Drake's perm and going "did yours look like this?" Although I only thought that since I remembered a few perms from the early 90s...

TV Series Review: Doctor Who: An Unearthly Child

As I said previously, I really want to watch even more Classic Doctor Who this summer and, presented with a small selection at the local college library and no recommendations I panicked and decided that I might as well start with the beginning. In light of the fact that this episode is just a few months under 50 years old I'm going to cut out the production values part of the review since, well, it's a 50 year old tv episode, it's not going to look fantastic (and I might do this for other first doctor episodes since I rather doubt I'll have more to say on them). With that in mind, onto the review and I'm going to try and make sure that all of my reviews go back to their proper days this week, sorry about all of that everyone!


Doctor Who: An Unearthly Child

Summary: Ian and Barbara are school teachers who both are having trouble with one of their more brilliant students, a young teen named Susan who seems to both know more about their subjects than they do and also is bored by a lot of parts of them. Under the pretense of being concerned about her sudden bad grades the two attempt to find out where she lives with her grandfather but all they find at the address is an old junkyard with, well, junk and a police box inside. As any sci-fi fan knows this is not a police box however and soon all four of them find themselves in 10,000 BCE and caught up in a fight between cavemen.  

The Good: As I believe I've said before, I like it when the Doctor is written as a slightly darker, or even just grumpier, character and the Doctor here is a quite grumpy old man. It's a little hard to reconcile that with the man who stole a TARDIS to explore the universe, although considering that element must have been added in earlier I'll live (heck, here Susan says that she came up with tardis as a nickname which is completely different from what the rest of the series implies, again especially considering these are details I can let them slide here). Funny enough I think I liked the way this serial introduced the companions and the Doctor more than how a lot of the Nu Who companions were introduced, probably because I like the "ordinary people thrown into adventure" trope quite a bit (although I do feel like that scene dragged a bit, although that was certainly just to fill time within the episode) and after seeing Nu Who repeat the "person tries to track down the Doctor" trick a few times it's gotten a bit dull. Plus Ian and Barbara clicked for me almost immediately, I hope they stay around for a while since I want more adventures with them in it, well, I would like one detail to go away though. 

The Bad: There was a lot of screaming in this serial, like enough to fill a slasher horror film. It was a bit jarring since in The Aztecs there was no screaming at all and I've got the second and third serials checked out to watch next so I'll be interested to see if Barbara and Susan (but mostly Barbara) gradually stop screaming or if that was written out early on for being annoying (it also felt a little incongruent with Barbara's character earlier in the episode and with the fact that Susan is an adventurer, I really hope that all the screaming vanishes sooner rather than later). 


I feel like someone told me before that this serial wasn't really worth watching, or maybe that it wasn't that good, and while it certainly wasn't the best there's no reason I'd advise people to not watch it. It drags a bit and the characterization is a bit off but considering that later Doctor Who serials do refer back to it, and that in general it's good to know where something comes from, but it's hardly a bad serial and with the break until November it's not as if fans don't have the time to watch the older stuff.

Anime Review: Blast of Tempest

This was a bit of an odd show for me, I was really excited for it going into the fall season, I had tried out some of the  manga beforehand and liked it, got a bit bored with it, and then right around where I had stopped reading (about the midpoint of the show) it picked up again for me and then I liked it for the rest of it's run. Interestingly enough, even though I consider one of Studio Bones' trademarks to me "really strange anime original endings" I think this might have been the same ending the manga had, they both ended right around the same time and from the poking around I did it seems like they stayed pretty similar up to the end at least. Although, guys who was in charge of the English title for this show? It already had the perfect subtitle/English title already, The Civilization Blaster, and while the title makes sense around 2/3rds of the way through (or even earlier depending how much time you spend thinking about it) it's still so awkward that I feel silly just saying it.


Blast of Tempest (Zetsuen no Tempest: The Civilization Blaster)

Summary: One year ago Aika Fuwa died under mysterious circumstances and neither her brother Mahiro or his friend/her secret boyfriend Yoshino have really gotten over it. Mahiro has disappeared and one day when Yoshino is by her grave he's interrogated by a strange lady at gun point about Mahiro as a swarm of butterflies appear and herald the beginning of a strange and sinister plot  

The Good: One thing I wasn't expecting this show to do as well as it did was all of the relationships between the characters and the show wouldn't have worked nearly as well without it. Heck, around the two-thirds mark the characters have all split up, there are so many factions I couldn't begin to keep them all straight, and I thought "oh well I guess they'll be fighting against each other now and then will team up against whatever the even greater villain is at the end in a tsundereish fashion" and nope, the story was too smart for that which I was pretty thrilled about. And related to that, Yoshino and Mahrio (Mahrio especially) really grew more than I expected, for a show that I started because it had kind of a cool plot and some really cool looking action I got way more out of it than I expected.

The Bad: I'm still not sure however why I had a little slump in the first half of the series, around the one-third mark. Maybe it was because I had already read the manga up to that point and, since this show does rely more than a bit on a few key plot twists, it might not be something that holds up well if you already know them. Or maybe I was just bored, from what I can tell I was the only person who was bored/frustrated by the show at that point. There are however two other good reasons to get frustrated with those show, one is the afore mentioned reliance on plot twists (there are two, maybe four depending on how you count them) and I'm less fond of series that rely on "twists" more than "plot" to be entertaining. The other is that the series doesn't exactly go through a genre shift halfway through but it shifts from being more or less all action to 50-75% action, 50-25% new genre. I thought it pulled it off well but that might have been because I knew it was coming (I saw people complaining about it in advance online and managed to guess rather accurately what it would be) but again, some people aren't going to like it so just try to keep an open mind in the second half of the show.

The Audio: Right, I know I'm in the minority here but I really liked the first opening song, yes Engrish and all. The Engrish was comprehensible enough that I think it made sense (or as much sense as you could hope for) plus there was some fantastic timing with pairing up the lyrics and the beats to the images. The second opening grew on me after a few episodes but I was never really a fan of either ending, they were both a little too light and cheerful for me. All the voice acting was pretty solid as well, I've seen some other people praising the shows soundtrack but when I looked for it and gave it a listen I was only lukewarm about it. It worked just fine within the show but it isn't something I'm going to remember by the end of the year.

The Visuals: Pretty good looking art throughout the entire series and all the fight scenes looked great, I didn't see any drop offs in quality and the choreography and the camera work, as odd as it sounds to apply those words to a work of animation, were spot on. And that's about it, the animation was nice, the fights were good, the characters didn't look ridiculous, the color schemes generally made sense (although I do keep staring at some things, like Mahiro's really yellow jacket and go "why?"), there's just nothing really stand-out here.


I'm giving this a solid 3.5 out of 5, maybe a 4 and yes would like to own this on DVD. Which is in and of itself it's own problem, it's been licensed by Aniplex which generally means really expensive releases (I have some issues with the way they do their pricing scheme but that's a rant for another post). Hopefully this release will be a bit cheaper and simpler than some of their others since it wasn't a mega-hit like Madoka Magica or Sword Art Online (or Magi to an extent I guess), although hopefully this also doesn't mean they won't release it at all, I'm just going to be a bit nervous about this one until I see an actual product listing online. I also do hope someone brings the manga over since I'd like to read that again as well, it's a Square Enix title and Yen Press has brought over a lot of their stuff in the past so I think there's a pretty good chance it'll be licensed, just that YP is a bit slower these days to bringing out stuff that was on air recently.

TV Series Review: Doctor Who 7A

Geeze, is it just me or are they making anime shorter these days? ....wait this is a regular tv show not anime, whaddya mean they're making these seasons shorter too? It feels like season seven had barely began before it was over and there's a two month gap until the Christmas special and I don't know when the second half of the season starts after that. So after two years of this kind of pacing I can say quite certainly, no I don't like this half season nonsense and sadly there was a bunch of other stuff in this season I didn't like either.

Doctor Who

Summary: The Doctor continues to travel around all of time and space in his little blue box and companions Amy and Rory return. As the years go on however they're starting to get a little tired of being thrown into adventures at the drop of a hat with no prior warning. But they don't want to completely cut the Doctor out of their lives and finding a balance between these two lives is proving hard. 

The Good: My favorite parts of this season (and the parts I thought were the best) were the ones that really looked at the relationship Amy/Rory/the Doctor have now since, someone correct me if I'm wrong, this is the first time the series has had companions to the Doctor who don't always travel around with him and I loved how they explored that (yes there have been reoccurring characters like that, such as the Brigadier, but that's slightly different). There was also a particular line of the Doctor's from the fourth episode that I liked, where he says that he's tired of giving people second chances, they take advantage of it, and then he has to go and lay down the smack anyway. His change in attitude, from being a "coward" who gives people second chances to someone who is becoming much harder is something that's been happening since the series restarted with the ninth doctor and, given what the 12th Doctor is supposed to be like (as was established in the original series) I think this is on purpose and I really like where it's going. Given how this half season ended I foresee this trend continuing and I really do want to see how the Doctor changes next.

The Bad: For me there was something off in nearly every episode and, well, they bugged me. In the first episode sure it's a cool idea to see all the damaged daleks from wars and such, there's just the teensy-weeny problem that Skaro is supposed to be time locked so that episode shouldn't have happened at all (plus Amy's line, I've known some people with a similar problem say it killed a relationship but Amy just wasn't in a relationship where that should've mattered). The second episode was tons of fun and, while I can see the Doctor galloping through the universe with Nekfertiti as a companion, why grab everyone else as well? (Hell, why did the daleks grab Amy and Rory before that? This all feels much too convenient) I didn't like the third episode at all, aside from the Doctor's aforementioned lines, it felt like someone said "hey you know what's cool? WESTERNS" "yeah let's do one!" , they tried too hard to play with gray and grey mortality (I was feeling pretty unsympathetic to both sides by the end) and I also felt like the framing was pointless. While I had no problems with the fourth episode (which shared a writer with the second episode funny enough) the fifth episode, ehhhhhhh. Doctor Who is not a serious science fiction show but it uses time-travel a lot anyway, that's okay. But it's not okay when it says "okay, here are the mechanics the show operates by" (in this specific instance, time paradoxes) and then disregards them when the plot calls for it, it really felt like Moffat was fighting the plot to get the story to go where he wanted it and that's not very encouraging. 

The Audio: While there must have been some new pieces of background music in this season it was music from previous seasons that I noticed the most (also, I hadn't realized it before but a lot of the character's themes are rather similar to each other which I like, it helps give the music some continuity). Honestly I didn't notice the music most of the time, only when things were quite for a moment and then the music picked up as if to say "nope, the worst is yet to come!" but I think during the break I'll make an effort to look up the soundtrack since I do like what I remember.

The Visuals: While various bits of CGI weren't movie quality, nothing this season looked terrible. The dinosaurs on the spaceship looked fine, I've heard that they used a lot of real daleks from collections and such for some of the scenes in Asylum of the Daleks yet I couldn't tell the real daleks apart from the CGI ones. I feel like Doctor Who is becoming a bit smarter with their budget, or maybe the second half of the show is going to look absolutely terrible in comparison.


So in short, this season had a lot of weak spots and some good spots and I'm very confused about how I feel about it. By now I would like someone else to replace Moffat as the showrunner, the way he writes just feels a bit awkward and yes, I'm one of those people who isn't too impressed by how he writes women (I wanted to say some stuff about River Song here but I was afraid that might make the review too long, I'll probably put something on my tumblr in the next month or so when I have a chance). But I'll be back for the second half, fingers crossed that it has more strong episodes than this part did however. 

Manhwa Review: Ark Angels

Originally I wanted to have a post about the comics avaliable on Free Comic Book Day but decided that since A) it was already over a week later and B) I still can't figure out where the print copies I got went (I just had to move all my stuff again and it seems like those comics are what got lost this time) so it seemed a bit pointless. I will say however that I was pretty disappointed with the two I had to get online (my comic book store, which is now tiny, out of the way, and has absolutely nothing I want to buy, didn't have copies of them), Infernal Devices and Finding Gossameyer were both completely underwhelming, although when you only have FOUR pages it's kinda hard to make a good impression (I can't remember the last time the first four pages of a comic really made me want to read the rest, stuff like this and the JManga previews confuse me greatly). So instead you get the next installment in "random manhwa found at my library" and it's spelled correctly this time too!

Ark Angels by Sang-Sun Park

Summary: Shem, Hamu, and Japheth are three sisters who, when filling in for their father at a conference to discuss Earth’s future, were given the task to travel through time and save endangered animals (seen through their eyes as anthropomorphized animals) and turn back Earth’s doomsday clock. When not traveling they’ve transferred to a new school and one of Japheth’s classmates may not be what they seem…..

The Good: The three sisters were a bit more rounded than I expected, especially the main character Japheth, and there was just enough intrigue to keep me interested. The chapters that focused on rare animals dragged a bit but overall the volume was well-paced and I was curious enough that if I came across another volume I’d try it out as well, although not so curious I plan on actively seeking it out. It does seem to be completely published in the US and only runs three volumes and oddly enough that short length does make me more willing to read more of it, although it makes me wonder how basic the plot will become (or if it will stay as basic as it is) with such a short length.

The Bad: This manhaw reminds me an awful lot of Petshop of Horrors and, as I mentioned before, maybe if I hadn’t read so much of PoH first then I might have liked this better*. I doubt it though, PoH was interesting, could tell the same basic story over and over again before it lost it's luster, and had a polish that this series simply doesn't have. In the end I'd recommend Petshop of Horrors over this story and can't think of any situation where I would recommend this story at all.

The Art: The art feels rather standard and, well, exactly what you would expect for a series featuring anthropomorphized animals aimed at a female audience. I really liked the illustration on the cover with the soft watercolors and I wish the art had looked a little more like that (it wouldn’t have worked in watercolors the way it is, the panels are just too full and almost cluttered, but I can almost see it looking something like DOOR: ToiletGenie if the art had been tweaked some). As I find myself saying so often these days, nothing wrong with the art but I’ve just seen so much that looks like this that I want something a bit different.

Stronger than last week's title but still nothing worth writing home about. I do feel rather bad that it seems like I don't like manhwa at all but rather I just don't run across many titles that I like which makes me think that manhwa is very much like manga, there's a lot out there but not a lot that anyone person is going to like. Of course, if ones that nobody likes get published and nobody likes them then the publishing companies won't keep licensing them, a chicken and egg situation...

*on a funny note, this was an older Tokyopop release which had recommendations on other series by the editors including one for the author’s other series, Tarot Card Café, where the editor compared that to Petshop of Horrors, I guess that one had the shop part and this one had the magical animals part?

TV Series Review: Life on Mars (season two UK version)

Unlike the previous season it was incredibly simple for me to get a copy of Life on Mars season 2 (walking into my school's library, go to the basement, grab the DVDs and go). I love it when it's this simple to watch something legally, then again I have no idea why it's so much harder to find illegal streams of a British tv show from a few years ago versus a subtitled stream of a 10+ year old foreign cartoon. In any case, onto the review!

Life on Mars (season 2, original UK version)

Summary: Following where the first season left off, Sam Tyler is a DC in Manchester 1973 but he's really from 2007 where, as far as he can tell, he's in a coma following a car accident. He continues to obsess over what has happened to his life while solving cases and dealing with his coworkers in 1973 but doesn't seem to be making much progress as his 1973 life gets even more complicated as it goes on.

The Good: It's fun to compare this show to Grimm, which is another cop-show-with-a-twist that I've been following lately, since with Grimm I can play it in the background and still basically follow along, here the show really demands your full attention if you want to really get something out of it and it's interesting enough to hold your attention for a full episode. Each story was interesting, it never felt like the writers were taking the same plot from an earlier episode and just mixing different details in, and while the solutions weren't so simple they could be solved within the first five minutes there were enough hints for the viewer to put together the case and it's solution by the end. The characters were also fun, I was glad to see that Annie had an even more central role in this season, and overall I thoroughly enjoyed this show from beginning to end.

The Bad: I have, mixed, feelings however on the ending of this series, even despite the fact that I had accidentally found out how the show ended before I even started it. The ending wasn't bad and certainly made sense with the themes the show had set up, I just have some mixed feelings on it. Part of the reason for the mixed feelings is that there is a lot left unexplained, Sam Tyler's story does seem well wrapped up by the mechanics of how the setting worked were barely touched upon and I do want to check out Ashes to Ashes to see it explained. That was my main gripe with the show, which is more because I'm a little more obsessed with settings than most people, overall it was a very strong show.

The Audio: I think the show used even more period insert songs this season than the previous and all of the choices seemed to fit in really well. I wasn't familiar with many of the songs but when looking at the lyrics it was very clear why they had been chosen and they usually provided a bit of foreshadowing as well. The rest of the music didn't stand out quite a much but the bits I do recall that it all seemed to flow well.

The Visuals: There's no change in the visual styling from the previous season, everything still has a slight sephia tone and overall the styling seemed spot on. I've seen some comments on wikipedia that there were some background details that appeared in the show that weren't period appropriate but nothing in there ever stuck out so much that it drew me out of the show.


So, not much else to say except that I need to figure out where I can find a copy of Ashes to Ashes to keep on going before I completely forget about the details here!  

Anime Review: Steins;Gate

And here we go, the first of the spring/summer anime reviews! Got a lot of series finishing up at once, had four finish up last week, one later this week and then I believe five next week, needless to say it's going to take me quite a while to get through all of them. But let's start with a good one, one whom I only tried because (my exact thought process) "well, I watch Doctor Who which involves time-traveling in a blue box, clearly this means that I need to watch a show that involves an even more ridiculous method of time travel, ie, sending text messages through a microwave through time."  The first few episodes didn't grab me though, it wasn't until I was behind on my anime and asked my friend to choose what I should watch next (they choose "the anime with the gel bananas") that I really got into the groove and then halfway through the show I realized that I was watching one of the most plot-heavy shows of the season which was exactly what I wanted to watch, so glad I stuck with it.

Steins;Gate

Summary: "Mad Scientist Houuin Kyouma" (Okarin "Okabe" Rintaro) enjoys his life of inventing weird, useless objects with his friend Hasida "Daru" Itaru while his friend Shiina "Mayushii" Mayuri hangs out in the apartment he calls their lab. But one day at a lecture discussing the theory of time travel a series of events unfolds and Okabe realizes that one of their inventions, the phone microwave (name subject to change) really does work and he's the only one who can see that it's changed the past. At first this seems like the perfect way to grant wishes and goof off but soon they realize that all of their actions have created some very big consequences. 

The Good: Unlike the aforementioned Doctor Who, time-travel is at the heart of Steins;Gate and the careful attention to it and that helps make it a very plot-heavy show, possibly the best show in that regard this year. And even though it's plot heavy it still manages to focus on it's characters much of the time, especially in the down periods between big events, and because of all the character interaction it's an insanely quotable show. Funny enough, it's one of the more "realistic" depictions of time travel in fiction and shows very clearly the butterfly effect and discusses a few different theories of time travel and parallel worlds as well, hardly scientific but after seeing so many shows use time-travel as a means to an end, not exploring what could really happen as a result of their actions, it's a nice change. 

The Bad: If you don't like the characters then you're going to have a hard time liking this show, it's the kind of show where the plot is started and constantly affected by the characters actions and feelings. Not all the characters get an equal amount of character development either (Daru is the most underdeveloped of the bunch, all of the girls and Ruka get their own arcs which helps) which is more going to bother fans of those particular characters than anyone else (also, since the anime follows the "true route" of the game there are other game routes people can look up to find out more about some of the characters).

The Audio: There may be only one opening and one ending theme for Steins;Gate but this show knows how to use it to maximum effect. They use the old trick of "playing the credits and music over the final scene for extra impact" at one point but they also do a few more unusual themes. At one point it seems like the show is completely wrapped up but an attentive viewer will hear that the ending theme is different and, if that tips them off, they'll notice the animation is subtlety different as well, something I've never done before. Likewise, for those final few episodes afterwords the second verse of the opening song is used instead of the first (again with a few differences in the opening animation) and they also play the game's opening song (for the Xbox 360 version, the name of the song is "Sky-Clad Observer" for the ending song instead. Technically no new music is used there but that makes it all even more clever and I wish more anime would mix up their tracks like that as well (the lyrics themselves also work brilliantly, even though all of them have female singers it's clear that the songs are about Okabe and his struggles through the show). As for the voice acting, there is some incredibly emotional acting in the last few arcs and it's among the best I've ever heard in an anime. 

The Visuals: While Steins;Gate might not be as visually interesting as one of Studio White Fox's other work Katanagari* but mostly it has solid artwork and a few really neat scenes. However, towards the end of the anime some of the voice actors are giving really emotional performances but the characters faces look very flat and don't match the intensity of the scenes at all. This happened a few times in the later episodes, not just once, and it bugged me to hear the voice actors trying so hard yet it didn't match the characters facial expressions at all.

 I went in not expecting much at all and ended up watching one of my favorite shows of the year, not bad! Funimation licensed this a few months ago in a bit of a new anime licensing spree so I'm hoping that the DVD/BRs come out sometime late next year and I fully intend to buy and rewatch the show, I'm sure there are some details I missed on the first go through and some that will make so much more sense now that I've seen the whole show.


*for those wondering, this is White Fox's third work that they have produced instead of helping out on

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).   

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

TV Series Review: Doctor Who (season six)

As promised, a Doctor Who review that's a day late since I expected that I would need the extra time to get my thoughts in order and boy was I right, I'm still having fridge brilliance/horror moments after the reveal at the mid-season finale. So, just to make this extra clear, this is covering the first half of season six of Doctor Who (nicknamed 6a), aka the part that has aired (not counting the Christmas Special in here since I consider that part of season five). Ordinarily I wouldn't review only half a season but, since the second half isn't starting up until the fall, I'm going to make an exception here. Also, this will be a spoiler free review like all my other reviews are. Onwards to the review!

Doctor Who

Summary: Our hero is called The Doctor, he's a 900+ year old alien who flies a big blue box that's bigger on the inside (and really a time/spaceship) who keeps inviting people to come along with him on adventures since he gets bored. These companions would be Amy and Rory, a newly married couple from the present day who traveled with him during the previous season and are ready for even more adventures with the Doctor, no matter where or when they may end up going.

The Good: To start with, The Doctor's Wife (the hotly anticipated Neil Gaiman penned episode) may be my favorite Doctor Who episode of all time now. To say exactly why would be spoiler-ish but the episode was done in such a way that everything that happened made complete sense, not just within the episode itself but within the Doctor Who mythos as a whole. Another reason why the episode was so good was because the acting was very good in this episode but to be honest, the acting in this season is stronger than the previous season and that's always a good thing. Matt Smith seems more sure of himself (even as the Doctor seems a bit more unhinged), Amy is no longer just the little girl who waited years for her "raggedy doctor" and Rory is no longer just Amy's fiancee. River, who shows up in a few of the episodes, also feels so much more fleshed out and the character has come a long way from the confusing person she was back in season four.   

The Bad: As odd as it sounds coming from me, Doctor Who is one of the few shows I watch because I like it's episodic nature so having more plot heavy episodes felt a bit odd and out of place at time (they probably wouldn't have felt so out of place if the season had been a full 13 episodes but it wasn't so they did). It also seems strange that The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People was a two part episode but the episode afterwords, the mid-season finale, was only one episode and it really felt like that last episode needed a bit more time. The first half was a bit rushed, the pacing seemed much smoother in the second part, and there are some people saying that this was a two-part story and that the first episode of 6b is the second part (which is a really baffling idea). TRF/TAP also didn't feel like it needed a full two episodes to tell it's story*, plus some of the characters acted differently in the first episode versus the second episode, but the weakest episode of this half-season was The Curse of the Black Spot easily. The idea wasn't bad at all, and the episode played with a few tropes, but had a few too many plot holes even for Doctor Who. 

The Audio: The opening theme remains the same from the previous season (which is hardly surprising, it still sounds very similar to the original show's theme almost 50 years ago) and, as I've said before, I don't notice background music as much as some people do. But, while I did think "oh that's rather nice music" at various points during the series, I never though "ack, that doesn't match up at all!" and the music never pulled me out of the viewing experience so clearly the background music is doing it's job, registering on one level with the viewer but mostly serving as a way to draw them even deeper into the story.

The Visuals: I got to see this on the BBCAmerica HD channel on a nice tv so I must say, the video quality on this show is pretty spiffy these days (I believe they started shooting HD in the interim year between season four and five). Only the mid-season finale episode called for a ton of special effects and thankfully that involved more costumes than CGI which tends to look better these days if you don't have a full movie budget. Out of the whole season the only thing that bugged me (visually) was that during the last episode at one point it looked as if the film suddenly switched to a higher frame rate (the characters movements seemed different and usually that means a higher frame rate) but that doesn't make any sense. I did hear someone mention that BBCAmerica speeded up a scene with the Doctor running (which was around the same point) so I wonder if this is actually a problem here, not from the original production^.

So yes, I liked this half-season and really want more (and more Sherlock, ie, the reason the shooting/producing schedule for Doctor Who is so strange this year), too bad I won't have access to the nice tv/BBCAmerica at all when the second part starts. And that reveal, even though I had seen a lot of people speculating and getting it right online, I really liked. I saw someone post that it seems to be the people who pay more attention to speculation who saw it coming and the people who only watch the show from week to week who were surprised by it and that they were sad at first that they had managed to guess the twist. And then they said no wait, it was foreshadowed and wouldn't it have been even more annoying if the twist had been something that had come out of nowhere, something no one could have been able to predict? That sums up how I feel about it now, yes it would've been awesome if it was something that no one had been able to predict but the reveal was set up so that it does make sense and that's even better honestly. Oh okay, a friend and I spent two and half hours right after the show talking about all of this so of course I'm okay with this, now to get the rest of my friends to see the finale so we can keep talking about it!

*which actually felt more Russel T. Davies-ish than Steven Moffat-ish, Moffat likes to go for scary stories, RTD really liked questioning "what is a human?" which was the main issue in that story (and this isn't a bad thing, just an observation, also aware that Moffat didn't write that particular two-parter).
^and if anyone has seen the American the British broadcast, please post in the comments and I'll say what scene it was, don't want to say anything even vaguely spoilery in this review.

Spring Anime 2011 Reviews, part two!

Sorry this is up rather late, today has been busy, tomorrow will be so busy that the word "busy" won't cover it and Tuesday will be just plain hectic, wheee. So, onto the other four shows I've tried out this season! And, for those curious, I only had one show carry over from the winter season and that was Gosick which I'm starting to warm up to (characters are now established and the mysterious aren't so laughably simple anymore).

Hanasaku Iroha
Initiallythis wasn't on my to-watch list since the promo art wasn't that interesting but the first episode got a lot of good reviews over on ANN and I do like slice of life so I decided to give it a shot. After the first episode I disliked almost every character in the show (which is a bit unusual for me, can't remember the last time that happened actually) and after episode two I only disliked some of them and was rolling my eyes at the idea that one girl could come into their lives and (eventually) change all of their attitudes. And then I read the reviews about the mood whiplash in episode three and decided that I'd stick with AnoHana for my slice of life story for the season. I may come back to it at some point, it's a 2 cour series so it'll be running until October, but I already have so much to watch that I don't have time for a show that doesn't grab me from the start.
This one is streaming on crunchyroll.com in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Iceland, Netherlands, Brazil, and Portugal.

Sekaiichi Hatsukoi (The World's Greatest First Love)

Sometime I just want to watch fluff and for some reason, BL (boys love, shonen ai, NOT to be confused with porn^) seems to work nicely for that purpose. Ritsu, a jaded 25 year old who has recently switched jobs, finds himself somehow working as an editor for shojo manga (NOT what he wanted) and his boss seems to find him familiar, HMMMMM. So far the story still spends quite a bit of time on the manga-making business (which I find pretty cool) although the romance is a little well, your mileage may vary. My problem with it is that I really don't like the "forced kiss/sex upon one partner who later enjoys it and that makes it all okay!" trope at all, regardless of genders involved. The story hasn't done too much of that yet so as long as the romance progresses to the point where both parties are happy with the situation I'll be alright with it.
Also streaming on crunchyroll.com in North America, South America, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Finland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Netherlands, Portugal, Middle East, Africa, Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, and Indonesia.
 

Steins;Gate
The concept of a "microwave that can send text messages through time" intrigued me when I first heard about the show (and then baffled me when i wondered how a microwave was supposed to send text messages in the first place). The first few episodes didn't grab me but by the third episode the show had found it's stride, all the main characters seem to have been introduced and the plot was moving forward. The show is also really good at making it's characters feel very human (seeing them do laundry, hacking feels more realistic than it usually does, just a lot of small details). Now I'm really curious to see where the story will go so I'll be sticking with this one for the whole run (I believe it's confirmed at 2-cour like Hanasaku Iroha).
Again, streaming on crunchyroll.com in North America, South America, Finland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Netherlands, Middle East, Africa.   


Tiger and Bunny
I had zero intention of even checking this story out when the listing of spring anime came out, never been a huge fan of superhero stories and what the heck do they mean by "geared towards a Western audience," less moe more boobs? But this one also got a lot of really good reviews on ANN so I checked it out and was bemused with what I saw. A bit of a deconstruction of the superhero genre, in the city of Sternbild superheros (also referred to as NEXT, no idea if that's short for something or means "next type of humans" or such) are now saving the city on live tv for everyone to see and are sponsored by corporations (who also pay for some of the damages they cause). Kotetsu is an older superhero whose sponsor goes out a business and his only option to stay in the biz is to accept the offer from another corporation who pairs him up with a younger superhero (with the exact same powers) and they become teh firs superhero due. Hilarity ensues, from the characters simply having completely opposite personalities to hanging lampshades on all the older superhero tropes. You don't need to be a fan of the superhero genre to enjoy this (as I said, I'm certainly not) and I'll be sticking with this through the rest of it's run for sure.
Tiger and Bunny is being simulcast through Viz in the US which means it's streaming on their site, hulu.com and animewnewsnetwork.com (which I believe also has simulcasts for other countries as well but I'm not 100% sure). 

Whew so, I'll be trying to follow everything from the past two days, with the exception of Hanasaku Iroha, as well as catching up on Torchwood, finishing my Last Exile re-watch, starting a Natsume Yuujincho rewatch sometime, starting Angel and continuing the new season of Doctor Who. Oh and you know, read actual books and comics for this blog and see whatever random movies I can dig up at the local/college libraries this summer plus finish sewing three cosplays by the end of May. I have absolutely no clue how I'm going to pull this off but it'll be interesting at the very least....

*funny note, they both share a scriptwriter, Mari Okada, so it's funny to watch people make comparisons between the writing.
^I have seen yaoi porn, I didn't like it.