Anime Review: Blood Blockade Battlefront

Before this show aired I had so many people asking me "so are you going to watch BBB?" that I felt like my status as a Rei Matsumoto fan was in peril! It's true that I wasn't really expecting to like the series (the premise sounded a bit generic and the original manga is from the creator of Trigun which is a series that I didn't like) but of course I was going to at least try it. And wow, I didn't realize that I needed a mash-up of Kyousogiga and Baccano! in my life but apparently I did and it was fun

Blood Blockade Battlefront (Kekkai Sensen)

Book Review: Shadowshaper

I grabbed this book from a display at my library and it was only later that I discovered that it was actually on my to-read list anyway. I like coincidences like that, especially now that it's close to the end of the year so I'm trying to get through as many 2015 books as I can. Although, I must confess that I'm not quite sure why this book made it onto my list in the first place.

Shadowshaper by Daniel José Older

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

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

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

Anime Review: Yozakura Quartet: Hana no Uta

As a general explanation before I get into the reviews: Yozakura Quartet is based off of a manga by the same name and the manga is still on-going so this series does not have a hard and fast ending as I expected. The manga was adapted first into an anime in 2008 of the same name is apparently terrible and should be ignored, that one is the one that Sentai Filmworks has licensed in the US. Over the past few years Studio Tatsunoko has been making a few OVA series as well as another full anime series that adapts the story much more faithfully and is the one I'm talking about here, the main tv series Hana no Uta (Song of the Flowers), Hoshi no Umi (The Sea of Stars), and Tsuki ni Naku (Howling/Crying at the Moon). This is the order you should watch them in, I promise it's for the best but it can be a little hard to find Hoshi no Umi online these days since it's been a few years and none of these series were even licensed for streaming. Since there is no official license, I'm going to try and use the actual Japanese terms for the various supernatural aspects of the works instead of English terms the way I usually would for consistency. The subs I saw used "dæmon" instead of yokai and "Sakura Newtown" instead of "Sakurashin" but since everyone will at least hear those same words this seems to be the best way to avoid confusion!

Yozakura Quartet: Hana no Uta

Anime Review: Tokyo Ravens

Given how far behind I fell with my reviews, I've opted to just start over this week following my regular schedule and not exhaust myself trying to catch back up (since the spring anime season just ended I didn't have any reviews I could pop up instead last week but I think I'm set for now!)

As I've said about half my reviews lately, this one must seem like it's coming out of left field to people who read my season round-UP posts, spring was  an odd season for me in more ways than one. I actually did completely drop this show last winter but was a bit bored and checked back in on a discussion thread got it every now and then (since no blog I followed had kept up with it, the problem with only following people with the same tastes) when I noticed a friend with similar tastes to mine was still watching and once it was done asked if it had been worth it. They said that they had been meh on the show when they started but it had ended up being one if their favorites and that's exactly what I needed to hear and then jumped back in right where I left off. 

Tokyo Ravens

Book Review: Untold

Hmm, for the first book in this series I was able to get an ARC and I was able to get an ARC for this one as well, abet I wasn't able to actually get a hold of it until well after the book was released (moving makes directing/picking up mail rather challenging it turns out). And of course my backlog of books to review doesn't make this review anymore timely but, since I haven't yet had to use tumblr savior for the third book in the series (which I had to do for this book about four months before it came out) I think that means I'm not too late to talk about it yet!

Untold by Sarah Rees Brennan

Fall 2013 Anime Round-up

And it’s time to start another season of anime and the one that is usually the strongest for me, autumn! As was the case last season I don’t exactly have any continuing shows, I’m starting to get back into Space Brothers but it sounds like that show is past it’s prime and Doki Doki Precure was always up and down in terms of enjoyment so I’ve semi-dropped that one as well (although I’ve thought about picking it back up to watch raw so I can practice my Japanese, after all if it’s aimed at four year old little girls then the vocabulary shouldn’t be completely and utterly outside my range of knowledge right?). In any case, I’m also moving through as much of my backlog as I can while juggling new American fall tv shows as well and there are one or two series which I don’t mention here since I didn’t finish an entire episode (Coppelion is one since I tried the manga which didn’t grab me so I just gave up a few minutes into the first episode). But for those I did get through an entire episode or more let’s talk about those!

Beyond the Boundary (Kyoukai no Kanata)

Character stabs monsters with blood sword

I was pretty excited for this show, with the budget Kyoto Animation always seems to have I thought it would be awesome to see them do a full on fantasy show but the first episode was a bit of a let down. It was slow, felt like it had been adapted from a light novel in a bad way (just a lot of the same tropes character and plot wise, boring!) but once the action picks up in the second episode it seems to flow much better. The action scenes looked as amazing as I had hoped, the character interactions went smoother, and I already had a lot of the exposition out of the way which always helps. I was a bit unsure after the first episode but having seen the second episode I’m in for the long haul here and hope it gets even better.

Beyond the Boundary is on crunchyroll

Galilei Donna

Sisters suffer attempted kidnappings simultaneously

One of the two new noitaminA shows and the one I was more excited for going in and I liked it! It was a little bit of a rough start (that cold opening was not a good idea) but I liked all the design work and, aside from that opening, the action sequences flowed well too. It's the next few episodes that will make or break this show though, the premise has been mostly established so it's time to start fleshing out our lovely leading ladies and hopefully they'll be more nuanced than they were here (and explain the setting, I know a bit about it from outside material but that's it).

Galilei can be watched on crunchyroll

Gingitsune: Messenger Fox of the Gods

Girl is an oracle in training

The commercials for this series didn’t really grab me but since I tend to like slice of life style supernatural shows I thought I would give this one a shot anyway. However I’m going to have to go with my first instinct and drop this after all since the first episode was just a bit too clumsy. Things move too fast, the characters feel too flat with their constantly changing emotions, I just didn’t like it and I’ll just go find something in my backlog if I really want to watch soft, slice of life supernatural shows anytime soon.

Gingitsune is streaming on crunchyroll.com

Kill la Kill

Students fight with power of uniforms

One of the most hyped shows to premier this season and I have mixed feelings on it. On the one hand, a lot of the time it's overly the top in an amusing fashion and it's fun to watch and the limited art (yes I'm saying it, it does have moments with wonderful animation but it's always made itself highly stylized so it can get away with tons of still frames and cheap effects that would make a 1970s show proud) looks cool. On the other hand it has our lead Ryouko in an incredibly revealing outfit (I can't think of many cons where that outfit would pass muster) and seems to take some pleasure in putting her (and one or two other female characters so far) in really sexualized positions with a ton of male gaze camera angles and I find it creepy, plain and simple. I want to like the show and I'm sticking with it for now but while I spend half the time enjoying it I'm spending the other half of my time completely skeeved out which isn't a fun combination.

KLK is an Aniplex title and can be found streaming on crunchyroll, hulu, and daisuki, although it doesn't start at the exact same time on each site and each site has it's own restrictions.

Kyousogiga

More adventures in mirror Kyoto

First off, I’m going to refer to this as the tv series, the original short that started it all as the OVA, and the mini-series from last fall as the ONA, got it? If not please refer back to these sentences as often as needed.

In any case, it’s baaaaaack, finally! I’ve been hoping for almost two years now that we’d get a full show based off of the OVA and it’s happening! Well sort of, last week was episode 0 which was just the OVA with an opening song and the show is scheduled to have 10 episodes, 2 recaps, and one special which I guess is what last week was. I’m a bit confused about the recaps though, originally I thought that was how they were going to work in materials from the ONA but since a good chunk of this week’s episode came from the ONAs I’m not sure anymore. In any case, that’s not actually a bad thing since this episode took the premise of the last ONA, added some scenes and voices to make what was going on clearer, and then expanded on it so newcomers and old fans alike are on more or less the same page for how Mirror Kyoto got started. The show also added in some interesting bits, when I think about it it didn’t actually add in a lot of new footage but by re-using the old footage and then having the characters actually confirm what fans had been speculating about (with dialogue) it feels like there was more added than there actually was yet I wasn’t bored at all. Basically what I’m saying is, you can be a complete newcomer to the story or already familiar with it and you’ll do fine, just watch episode 0 if your new and then hang on for the ride with the rest of it.

For some reason no one has licensed this show and I’m incredibly sad about it. However, I feel like it stands a good chance at being licensed eventually, much better than it’s chances of being licensed as a collection of OVAs/ONAs was just a year ago.

Log Horizon

Gamers trapped in game

This is not a new genre in anime and manga, although oddly enough it appears way more here than any other medium of fiction I can think of, and truth be told it’s not exactly like either of the two main things people are comparing it to (Sword ArtOnline or the .hack franchise in general) but rather a pretty even mixture of both of those. Heck, I’d argue it’s one third each of those and then the last third is where it becomes rather evident that the light novel’s original author was the same guy who wrote Maoyuu and I suspect that’s what the show will feel most like in the end, a show more about the mechanics about people being trapped in a game rather than trying to beat a quest or, erm, whatever .hack//SIGN was trying to do. I was okay with Maoyuu at points but honestly I still prefer the manga adaptation I read of it first (the lone time I have preferred the version of something with more boobs in it) and I just don’t think Log Horizon is going to keep my interest from what I’ve seen so far. The setting will probably be fairly standard for a game, the plot probably won’t have an overarching story like I prefer, and I didn’t really connect with any of the characters in the first episode, at this point there’s just no reason for me to come back for another episode unless I hear other people talking down the line and saying that it got really good.

Log Horizon can be viewed on crunchyroll.com

Nagi no Asukara (no idea what a good translation is)

Underwater kids attend school on land

I’m on the fence with this one, on the one hand so far it’s a story about a bunch of middle schoolers going through some major changes in life and being awkward about it and I'm not sure I want to see a show about middle schoolers falling in love with a bit of raunchiness in it  but on the other hand that’s a lot like what middle school is like so I can't exactly fault it for that. On someone else’s hand though, there are so many other good shows this season that I'm not sure I want to watch something that doesn't completely have my attention. So far I’m staying with the show because of it’s fantastical setting and because I’ve heard it’s going to be two-cour and I’ve love to see what PA Works turns the show into then, it does sound like it's building up to a larger story or at least into having some interesting overarching themes. And in a season of good looking shows it’s also quite pretty, I guess at this point I’ll keep watching and if I do lose interest I’ll be sure to check in on what other reviewers are saying at the end of it’s run to see if it’s worth picking back up.

Nagi no Asukara is being streamed on crunchyroll.

Samurai Flamenco

A "realistic" superhero

This show has big shoes to fill for me because it happens to be in the same genre as my favorite show of the year (so far, Gatchaman Crowds) but that show I think was even one of the best takes on the superhero genre in recent years and I even wrote a nearly 3000 word post comparing it to Agents of SHIELD yesterday so you can bet it's quite prominent in my mind right now. And does it work? Weeelllll, not really, no, not yet for me anyway. As summarized, the basis of this show is a "'realistic' superhero" in the completely opposite way that Tiger and Bunny did realism (there, I've named dropped all the important shows) with an ordinary guy dressing up as a superhero and trying to get people to do the right thing. My problem with the show is that I don't agree with it's philosophy at all, yes it is a problem that people jaywalk and smoke but the way you handled it wasn't right either buddy, you got into a fight with a drunk over that (and lost. And had your outfit set on fire, clearly you did this wrong). It's just, how am I supposed to take these characters seriously (or at least seriously enough to not feel secondhand embarrassment when one starts yelling at middle schoolers in a park to shape up) if it's trying to make a story based on such basic values? And speaking of values, I noticed this after I saw some other people commenting on it but compared to Galilei the coloring of this show is super basic, it's like someone chose a color, chose other colors that were all the same tonally and used them and made the show look really flat. That could be deliberate, some contrast between the real world and the colorful world of cartoon justice, and the basic values could be on purpose as well and the show intends to build them up later, it's got 22 episodes after all. But, going after just this first episode, I'm not impressed nor am I super excited by the show and that makes me rather sad.

Much like  KLK, Samumenco is licensed by Aniplex and streaming in their usual places.

Tokyo Ravens

Kid doesn’t want to become an onmyouji

In the effort of full disclosure, I’ve read some of the manga that was based on the same light novels that this anime was so I can’t really say too much about the story since I know how it’s going to go. I will say that I thought it was paced well, like most urban fantasy shows this one has a lot of general background to set up first to explain why the characters are in the positions they are (and there are a couple of key details coming next week) and I’ve heard rumors that this one will be two cour which is great since I really can’t figure out how it could end well after just 13 episodes. And as for the actual story, I get the same feeling from it that I get from Blue Exorcist actually. Not because of any particular details, they’re actually rather dissimilar in that regard and in the general premise, but they’re both supernatural shonen shows with a lot of action and a similar sized cast which has been done over and over yet they both just have a spark to them, in the setting and the visuals, that makes them interesting. Everyone is going to see a show or two at some point in their anime watching lives, it just happens, and if this show continues to be a solid show I’ll happily recommend both of them as less generic than usual supernatural shows that are fun watches (well, with the cavet that Blue Exorcists’ ending gets a bit weird, I’ve seen even non-manga readers comment on that).

Tokyo Ravens has been licensed by Funimation and is streaming on their new site (which be forewarned seems to still have some bugs, I haven’t been able to get a video to load in Chrome yet).

Unbreakable Machine Doll (Machine-doll wa Kizutsukanai)

Puppeter and raunchy doll start school

Every season there is a show I start against my better judgement, this the show this time around where despite the ecchi tag attached to it I was curious. However, while I didn't like those moments what really made me regret it was the CGI and oh ye gods, everything else this season looks perfectly, completely fine by comparison. Holy cow you’re supposed to bring your A-game the first episode and then have the budget vanish, I don’t want to know what this show is going to look like by the end. And the large amounts of exposition were handled almost as clumsily as the show tries to introduce you to a lot of background all at once yet everything still feels rather flat (the characters) and generic (the setting) so in the end I just couldn’t care more than one iota about the show and have dropped it.

Machine Doll is streaming on Funimation’s website who has also licensed it.

Valvrave the Liberator (part two)

We still have vampires piloting mechs

So, not much to say about this show so far since it picks up exactly where the previous season leftoff and doesn’t look to be deviating from the tone and characterization at all. So, if you liked the first season go ahead and keep watching this, alternatively if you watched the first season for it’s WTF value keep watching as well, that’s more or less why I’m here. As usual with sequels this is a terrible place to jump in so if you’re curious I recommend you check out my earlier review (especially since this show crosses the line at least once in a major fashion) and if that doesn’t have you running away as quickly as you can then you might enjoy the show. Also, while a lot of shows look great this season I swear that with the amount of action sequences in Valvrave (the first five minutes are almost solid action IIRC) I think this first episode had the equivalent budget of three Machine Dolls.

Just like last time, Aniplex is distributing the show in the US/Canada and has it streaming on multiple outlets, the same as Samumenco and KLK.

Yozakura Quartet: Hana no Uta

Humans and yokai live in a town

So I’ve never seen the original anime for this show or read much of the manga (I started reading some and then felt guilty when I realized it had been licensed at one point in the US, given that I never see people talking about a license rescue for it here I guess that means it has next to no fans) but this reboot of sorts is supposed to be newcomer friendly so I decided to give it a shot. From what I can gather though, this show isn’t going to just retell the early part of the story and then follow the manga after the original anime diverged (a la Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood) but is somehow doing side stories to sort of introduce new fans before joining up with the manga material that wasn't previously cover, is that right? I know that it’s connected to a series of OVAs that came out recently, (those two have similar art styles which are also closer to the look of the original manga than the first series, no idea if any of the voice actors have changed) although those are set farther down the line, regardless of all of that this first episode was just plain fun. It has some whackiness to it that I adore in supernatural series and after the way it gleefully barreled through the first episode I felt like I was starting to get a grasp on the characters and the basic politics of the town they lived in (although remembering everyone’s names might be beyond me at this point), loved the music during the more action-y scenes, and I’m certainly interested in what it’s going to do next!

While the first anime was licensed by Sentai no one has picked up this iteration for legal streaming, however I’m hoping we’ll have an announcement from them before the season is done.

So it's a bit of an odd season, it's jam packed with good shows but just about everything airs on Thursday for some bizarre reason. I also have a problem that I haven't had since the summer of 2011, fansubs. I have a one-or-none rule for fansubs (which I sometimes toe the line with Precure/older shows which I know will never be licensed at this point) yet there are two shows I really liked but are both fansubbed, Kyousogiga and Quartet. As it stands however, Kyousogiga is my baby practically with how I've dreamed of this full show for two years and it's even better than I could have hoped so far which means that, unless one of those two gets licensed, Quartet is going to have to go onto the back burner (at least that way I'll be able to hear from other fans how accessible it really is and what, if any, episodes I need to see from the original show to get my bearing). Otherwise this is what my schedule looks like:

Tuesday: Tokyo Ravens

Wednesday: BtB, Kyousogiga (which since it's fansubbed will probably be out Thursday instead)

Thursday: KLK, Galilei, Samumenco, Nagi, Valvrave

8 shows and a completely unbalanced week especially since my American tv shows also air on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Well, at least at this rate I'll have plenty of time to catch up with older shows as well! What's everyone else watching? Also, is it just me or does Nagi remind everyone a little bit of From the New World and KLK a tiny bit of Utena? Could just be the character designs for both of them but I know i'm not the only person for Nagi in any case....

Anime Review: Mushi-Uta

I remember when crunchyroll added this to their catalog a few years back, it was unusual since it wasn't a simulcast but a completed title (which was obviously passed over by American licensors for a physical release) and it sounded like a really cool work of fantasy and I always meant to see it. Cleaning up my queue recently I found it again and realized that I had never seen anyone actually review it which meant two things, one either it was a hidden gem or that it was absolutely terrible (there's a reason people don't talk about some works of fiction after all) and that if I did I'd probably get a fair number of views on my post. And I'll admit it, that's an appealing thought so I jumped into the show and then realized that this one sadly wasn't going to turn out to be a hidden gem*.

Mushi-Uta

Summary: In a small city winter is coming and while most people are concerned with Christmas that's not the case for government group SEPB and the rebel group Mushibane. Ten years ago some people started having their dreams turned into literal, physical insects with strange powers that eat off their hosts dreams and if things progress too far can kill them. SEPB tracks down these people and offers them a choice, join them or have their insect killed and live out the rest of their lives as mindless drones in a secret facility, Mushibane tries to rescue as many people as they can from that fate but it's not an easy task. SEPB's top operative, Daisuke has just received an odd mission though, to enter a high school and sit tight waiting for more details, and in the meantime meets some characters whose roles he could have never guessed but plays right into the SEPB's hands. 

The Good: Alright, this show did one thing very well and it was it's female characters**. Rina and Shiika are both main characters without a doubt, get more fleshed out than Daisuke (although I have a theory on that in the section below), and while part of their stories do revolve around falling in love with him and the resulting accidental love triangle that's far from being their only character traits. They become close friends which is a bit of a rarity in a non-shojo story, and stay friends once they realize that they're part of a love triangle, and really balance each other out by showing that you can find strength in your convictions, it doesn't matter if your instincts are to fight and willingly walk into traps or to try and avoid conflicts even if would be so easy for you to win a fight. They meet and connect around the middle of the story and honestly that period, between the halfway and two-thirds mark was the best part of the story by far.

The Bad: As to my theory why Daisuke got much less development than Rina and Shiika, this is actually based off of a series of light novels (still ongoing I believe and it looks like a long one too) so his probably came later since he's supposed to be The Main Character. However, this also means that the show ends on a total non-ending, there's a major character death and the actions leading up to it I thought undermined what the character has been doing and changing up to that point and the other two characters come back practically from the brink of death (with no explanation for how for either of them, going by what the show had previously explained they should be dead). Also, the true conflict of the show is only hinted at in later episodes, Daisuke's goal to kill off the original three who create the insects, heck a side character mentions that if he told some of the others about his plan they would help (a group of rather over-powered, cliched side characters who pop up for a couple of episodes and then vanish again which was so aggravating) but that doesn't happen. Normally I don't get as frustrated by "go read the original material to find out the rest!" stories but this one got under my skin, it's the worst example of "introduce the real plot and then not advance it at all" which makes the entire show feel like a waste and like you just wasted your time watching it. Plus, I've described the plot of this show and it's a bit hard to take a show seriously that involves people having insects which eat their dreams which they fight with like pokemon, the show plays this completely straight and tries to be "grimdark" which made it even harder to take seriously, it's such an out there concept and takes so long to explain that this show really failed to be an engaging story.

The Production Values: I was a little curious why the show chose to translate nearly everyone's insect code name (cicada, winter firefly, ladybird) except Daisuke's, guess that Crunchyroll correctly guessed that no one would be able to take a main character with the name "cockroach" seriously (although since it actually explains a few things about his powers I would have liked it if they had chosen to translate it). They also didn't translate either the opening or ending songs so, while pretty, I have no idea what either of them meant. Voice acting wise, only one thing stood out to me which was Daisuke whose voice changes so much in his different roles that I actually did doubt at first that it was the same character. Which is both good and bad, bad since it did make me wonder how I was supposed to believe that a highschooler would have that range but for once there was a reasonable reason for why the other characters didn't catch onto the charade. As for the art, it's a Studio Deen work from 2007 and while they've started making some pretty works in the past year this was when their stuff looked rather generic and boring, it probably doesn't help that I've grown so accustomed to watching shows in HD that watching a show in standard definition didn't help it either.


I'm giving this show a two out of five for having a few characters that turned out much better than I expected but failing in just about every other aspect of the series which means I can't recommend it either. If you like bad anime and want to watch a full 12 episode series then go for it, it's on crunchyroll and I'm sure you could even make a great drinking game to go with it and I do slightly regret not live-tweeting this show on tumblr because it does provide plenty of material for over the top reactions as well.



*something I figured out as soon as the title screen appeared and I saw what the show's subtitle was, Dreamer's Hopeless and Intense Desire and "dreamer" is often shorthand for my handle "wandering-dreamer" 

**which makes me go "really the one thing you did well, when everything else was terrible, was one thing that so many shows CAN'T do well? I don't get you at all" and makes me more frustrated at everything it did wrong.

Radio Drama Review: Neverwhere

These days I spend a lot of time in front of a computer screen working on homework and while sometimes I don't want to listen to anything and just want to focus on my homework often I do want something playing in the background. I prefer podcasts to music, since it's too easy to end up fussing over music and not getting anything done, but after burning through a dozen podcast episodes in a few days I enjoy listening to something else and radio dramas are just the thing. Sadly I know of basically no other radio dramas (the only other one I listened to regularly, the Fruits Basket fan one, seems to have died again) and have no idea where to start looking for recommendations so when the adaption of Neil Gaiman's book Neverwhere popped up on the BBC website I gladly gave that a listen.


Neverwhere


Summary: Richard Mayhew was living a fairly average life in London when he takes in an injured young woman off the streets for the night. Come the next day he's discovered that no one seems to notice him and that those who do have no idea who he is. He manages to track the woman down again (Door) and she tells him that since he helped someone from London Below, which is quite literally what it sounds like, the people of London Above won't notice him as well anymore and with no better options he joins Door on her quest of revenge for her family's death and hopes that he'll find a way to return to his former life in the process. 

The Good: I hadn't realized at first that this story was based on an actual novel (erm, that was adapted from a tv series apparently), I thought it had been written as a radio play, and it seems to have been adapted rather smoothly. There are enough details, both spoken and as sound effects, to set the scene and it's easy to tell who is in what scenes and when the story has switched from one character's point of view to another. The acting was rather nice as well, I never had trouble figuring out what emotions any of the characters were going through, despite the lack of facial cues, and yet it never felt like the actors were overacting and hamming it up to make those emotions clear. Finally, while the podcasts I listen do don't have terrible production values by any stretch of the imagination, they clearly have people working on them who know how to work the equipment and what to do in post-production, there was still a noticeable difference switching between those and these episodes. There's a richness  to all the sounds which may be simply from having more advanced equipment or might be from having actual sound engineers to work on the show. Regardless, this sounds great in every respect, from the acting to the foley and other sound-effects, if this is the level of quality most BBC radio productions have then I really want to track down more of them. 

The Bad: There were a few minutes for multiple characters that just felt, well, rather odd for them. There's a turncoat character whose reasons I never quite found to be understandable, I of course knew how Richard's story would end but still felt like it was a little too neat (which might have been more of a result of condensed pacing than anything else) and other small moments like these. I also wish that the story had explained a little better why people in London Above stopped noticing Richard (the story might have explained it and I just missed it or it could all just be a very unsubtle metaphor for people not noticing the homeless and such, although I don't think that's quite right either), although I was fine with how the rest of the magic in the story worked.


I suppose another bad thing is that while the BBC website has the first five episodes up and will until mid-March next year they only had the final episode up for one week and I'm not sure where people can listen to it. I would imagine that they'll have a complete set for download on itunes or maybe even produce a CD sometime later this year but it does seem like a bit of a strange strategy. Regardless, I give this production 3.5 stars out of 5 and if anyone knows of any other great radio dramas (I believe the director also did the recent radio drama of The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy which I would love to hear) by all means comment and tell me about them!  

Book Review: The Broken Lands

A few years back I read Boneshaker by Cheri Priest and was pretty meh on the book in general. And then shortly afterwords confused since I saw people talking about a book called Boneshaker that was completely different from what I read, turns out it was this book by Kate Milford. I'm still a little surprised that Milford's book kept the same title since I can't have been the only person confused by these two but in any case I wasn't that interested in the book and the cover art was just odd enough to keep me uninterested. The cover for the prequel however grabbed me a bit more and something about the synopsis made me curious and, well, while some might disagree I think it's best to read a series chronologically so this was also the most logical place to start!


The Broken Lands by Kate Milford, illustrated by Andrea Offermann

Summary: It's the 19th century New York and, while the Brooklyn Bridge isn't quite finished yet the city of New York and Coney Island are becoming more and more joined regardless. And as any afficando of fairy tales knows, a crossroads, especially as one so massive as the Brooklyn Bridge over the East River, is a source of power and some, people, have come calling to NYC to take it over for their own purposes. Cities have protections however for these times but out villains already know about those and seek to twist them to their own dark needs. Sam is only a cardshark living on Coney Island and Jin is even less connected to the city but when both of them end up in the wrong place they become determined to do what they can to save the city and keep all of it's people safe.

The Good: There is just something about the way that this story unfolds which makes it work and it's one of my favorite books so far this year. Maybe it's the setting, I suppose you could call this book urban fantasy and it does a remarkably good job at focusing on both the mundane (urban) parts of Sam and Jin's lives and on the fantastical elements that have worked their way in. Often when I read urban fantasy I see stories that would rather focus on the magic and how another world, in a sense, lurks behind street corners and focuses on the fantastical instead of the ordinary. That's fine but here the city of New York is so pivotal to the story (and the time, the story is set roughly during the Reconstruction after the Civil War which isn't a time period I see many books set in, especially middle grade/young adult) that if the story had tried to focus more on the magic than the normal then it would have been hard to see where the characters got the motivation to save it. Much like the setting, the story balances out the page time that both Sam and Jin get quite nicely and both develop very well (and the development also feels very natural given that the story takes place over about a week, it's not too much yet with the circumstances the two face it's believable that they do change). After looking at the summary for Boneshaker I was sad that I didn't see either of their names in there since I would love to read more about their adventures and I'm crossing my fingers that they do appear after all.

The Bad: There were some moments towards the end where things just seemed to work out too well for both Sam and Jin which threw me out of the story a bit. Yes good/advantageous things will happen to characters in stories, that's what happens in real life. However, it was just the way that some things right near the climax occurred that frustrated me, other than that this was a really good book and I don't have any major complaints about it. I am curious to find out how it connects to Boneshaker, once I was completely finished with the book I looked up a summary for it but couldn't figure it out which also makes me wonder what purpose this story served then.


So I didn't give the illustrations their own section this time since 1) I don't have the book with me so I can't really talk about them without looking at them and 2) while okay I didn't feel like they added anything really important to the story that was worth mentioning. That doesn't mean I didn't like them, technically the ones in Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan series didn't add anything either and I loved those, so I just didn't really have anything to say. Regardless, I give this book four stars out of five and now that I've finally reviewed it I'm going to go ahead and get a hold of Boneshaker and hope that I like it just as much.

Webcomic Review Month 2013: Ignition Zero, In The Air

Skipping a few more letters and weirdly enough this is the first year I've had comics that start with I and none of them started within the past year. I guess it just goes to show just how much is out there and how long it can take to track down really awesome comics. 

Ignition Zero by Noel Arthur Heimpel

Robbie and Orson met online years ago and really clicked but due a rather large different in location they never met until Robbie moved up to Maryland to go to school near Orson and hang out. At which point he discovers that a lot of the stories he had heard from Orson over the years are not only crazy but true, it's going to take Robbie a bit longer to adjust to living in Glory than he expected it seems.

Plenty of the webcomics I read I can't remember where exactly I got the recommendation from but this one I remember clearly, it was from tumblr with a person posting that holy crap, they found a story with asexual main characters in that. Not only that but it's an urban fantasy story, with cool watercolor art, where the fact that Robbie and Orson are aces isn't the main point, it's just part of their lives. Considering how few stories I've found out there with asexual characters (and the fact that I take, issue with half of them) this was pretty amazing and I'm thrilled that Heimpel decided to make that issue only part of the story and instead focus on the more exciting part, the fey and a secret part of the city that few people know about. The comic has been on hiatus for a bit lately but it's scheduled to return sometime between the end of March and early June, can't wait for it to come back!

Ignition Zero can be read online on its website and should be out in print rather soon asa well.

In The Air by Brenda Hickey

Sandra is a bit spacey for a high school student, it seems like half of the time she has her head in the clouds and the other half of the time she's being picked on by some of her classmates. Neither of these things changes when a cute guy named Fred moves in next door, instead this seems to create new problems in her life, ones that are slightly more magical than romantic ones.

Not sure if I'm cheating with this series or not since I did read everything that was available of it last summer but then back in November Hickey changed sites (because originally she hosted her comic on wirepop which no longer exists) and she's re-uploading the comic with three pages a week. As the comic currently stands there is nowhere enough information for me to be happy doing a review on it and it looks like it's going to be almost a year before she starts posting new material (there was a way for returning readers to see the next chapter before it was posted but I wasn't able to get it to work/realized that would mean it would be even longer until there were new updates for me). But I have read the first three chapters and did like them, like Fragile from the other day it felt like a comic that took a lot of the elements of shojo manga to use in it's own work but not slavishly follow them at the expense of it's own creativity. The first few chapters also seemed to be paced well, revealed some backstory involving Sandra and Fred, started the main conflict of the story, it was a strong enough story that I want to recommend to others. It's just, like Ignition Zero above, don't feel bad if you can't try out the story right now and that it might be a few months until you can, that's probably for the best anyway.

In the Air can be read on its own site and you can purchase the print version with the first five chapters as well if you like what's already been put up.



2012 "G" comics
2011 "G" comics

2012 "H" comics
2011 "H" comics

Book Review: Team Human

Another book which I had to coax the interlibrary loan system to give me (and then make a special trip to the library to get) which I'll admit I was hesistant about reading when I first heard about it. I was a bit grumpy that this wasn't the 1930s book that Justine has been working on for a while and I still haven't finished SRB's Demon's Lexicon series so I wasn't sure how well I was going to like her contribution. Heck, even though I had read Justine's Magic or Madness trilogy, How to Ditch Your Fairy, and Liar I wasn't the biggest fan of her work either, why was I excited about this? Internet hype and the fact that I really like the blogs of both of them I guess, but the more I heard about this book and the few snippets I read of it made me more interested in it which is always a good sign.

Team Human by Justine Larbalestier and Sarah Rees Brennan

Summary: In the town of New Whitby you might have a larger than normal vampire population but life for its human residents is the same that you might find in any town and for Mel is had been rather vampire free. That is until a vampire decides to transfer to their high school (for unexplained reasons), her friend Cathy falls hard for him, and then it's up to Mel to keep her friend from going completely over to the night side and to try and cheer up her friend Anna whose dad has mysterious vanished. So life is a bit busier than usual but nothing she can't handle, or so she thinks until things start getting really weird in New Whitby.

The Good: Hmm, character with parents who are at least semi-active in her life, ditto for siblings, has an actual group of friends which is mixed gender and has to do homework before a lot of her adventures? Ladies and gentlemen I give you one of the most accurate portrayals of the average American teenager in years and it's from an urban fantasy (oi realistic fiction, you're looking a bit bad by comparison). So the setting worked, the characters worked, the plot had enough hints and clues to make it predictable but not in a way that it was so obvious to take all of the fun out of the story. 

The Bad: There were one or two lines by the characters that betrayed the fact that neither author is a native USian (I think someone said like "a dime for your thoughts" or something like that, tiny detail and the fact that that was basically the only time I remembered that is a good thing). I also do wish that the book had had a small line about how exactly someone is turned into a vampire, again a tiny detail in the grand scheme (and perhaps it was in there and merely mentioned so quickly I missed it) but I would have liked it. Other than that, I'm sure Mel comes off as too rude and prejudiced for some but, well, that's pretty typical human behavior (not to mention teenager) in the face of the unknown and potentially dangerous sad to say. Plus, you know a character like that is going to change (if they're the main character) so while I winced a few times I knew it was going to be for a reason in the end.


So four out of five stars and going on my to-buy list for sure. The book is a stand-alone so it's a complete story and it really is nice to read a stand alone after reading a whole bunch of books from various parts of their series, it's rather satisfying to see a beginning, middle, and end all in one place.  

Book Review: Witch Eyes

Back in late October/early November I heard from that this book (which I had wanted to read for a while but hadn't found at any of my libraries) was available as a free kindle download. So I figured out how to run kindle on my computer (which was dead simple, I use chrome and it just plugged right into the browser) and I discovered that I really liked the format of the kindle reader better than the adobe reader I had been using for e-books previously, had two columns of text instead of one which made it much easier for me since my problem before was that you couldn't scroll down so you had to read an entire page without moving the text around (which most people are used to when reading stuff on a computer these days). Still couldn't scroll down without going to the next page but this was still a rather nice improvement, I think that e-books are finally growing on me. 


Witch Eyes by Scott Tracy

 Summary: Braden was born with what for lack of a better term his uncle has dubbed "witch eyes," eyes that can unravel a spell in an instant or see the future randomly and uncontrollably. He wears sunglasses to help keep his power under control (although he still gets headaches and the like from it) but that doesn't stop him from seeing one day what will happen if he doesn't leave his uncle and go to the town of Belle Dam and upon arrival Braden finds that he's part of a centuries long power struggle which might very well kill him and that he has no way of getting out of, for better or for worse. 

The Good: I had been interested in reading this book for a while since it had something that I wanted to see more of, a character on the LGTB spectrum (in this case Braden in gay) yet the book isn't a "problem book." Sure apparently this causes some tension with his uncle but Braden's main problems involve magic and such which is exactly what I want more of in books, people who aren't white/cis/straight/all of that yet the book isn't about how they're different, it's just part of their lives. In any case, I liked the magic here, I liked the setting (since it's a town where at least some of the people have realized there is something big going on behind the scenes, I can never buy a setting where no one has figured that out), everything just went together well. There was nothing daring about the book (I refuse to believe that some people would consider a non-straight protagonist daring because that's just stupid) but it was certainly enjoyable and I want to read the next book. 

The Bad: Well, there was a villain, they were defeated but the larger problem remains and so I feel a little unsatisfied at the ending. I know this is part of a series (I believe a trilogy and, if that's the case, then it's completed) but that doesn't completely help. Bit annoyed at the character of Trey, I suppose you could just say "oh he's a teenager and hormones make them strange" but some of his actions seemed rather inconsistent and just for the sake of drama. Although this is a series so hopefully things will get a bit better in both of those regards in the next book.


So, three and a half stars out of four and if I can find the next book I'll be sure to read it too, coming from me that's a pretty good recommendation!

Book Review: City of Lost Souls

Funny enough I got both this and Clockwork Prince from my library at almost the same time (which, due to the number of copies available for each/the number of holds for each I didn't expect to happen) and I read this one second because, well, I was looking forward to this one less. TMI is a series where I've slowly out-grown it as I've grown up but I keep coming back since I do like a lot of the side characters and I really hate to leave a series unfinished, especially one where I'm already two-thirds of the way done with it. Silly reasons, especially considering how many other books out there I could be reading but oh well.

The City of Lost Souls by Cassandra Clare

Summary: At the end of the previous book Jace (and the previously thought dead Sebastian) ha vanished and Clary discovers just to where, apparently a bond has been forged between them and let's Sebastian control Jace and is using him to help him do what their father could not. Clary charges after them while their friends left behind have their own problems to deal with and once again it seems as if the fate of the world lies partially in their hands.

The Good: The parts that revolved around the side characters (Simon, Magus, etc) I found to be a lot more interesting and there was some nice world-building in the story as well. I really do like the world Clare has created and it's surprisingly detailed, I just wish that the story had more of a chance to explore it. The most interesting side detail in there is that I *think* there was actually a cameo from a rather important character from The Infernal Devices in there (not Tessa although she's mentioned in here again, not by name and I don't consider this a spoiler since she did appear, again unnamed, for a scene way back in City of Glass). I'm mentioning this since I'm rather impressed, if I'm right then it was a very subtle and clever cameo (a quick search on tumblr says that the rest of the fandom thinks it was a cameo but is split over who it was) and I really am curious to see what happens in the next book because of those little details and the side characters. 

The Bad: Ehhhhh, as I mentioned earlier, I feel like I've outgrown a these books and a lot of it has to do with the fact that the characters haven't aged much over the years so sure I used to connect to fellow 16 year olds rather easily, these days not so much. I also feel like this book had the opposite problem of Clockwork Prince, while that story didn't have a real climax in it (and I thought needed a bit more tension) this one tried to pull an end-game climax and it was hard to take it seriously since guys, there's one more book, even if the characters succeed with their crazy, evil schemes it's clear they won't completely win. I feel like this one could've used a smaller climax to it (and then sent some of the extra over to CP?)  although this is the awkward problem that most trilogies have so I wasn't really expecting otherwise.


So, I'll be reading the last book whenever it comes out and I'll see the first movie when it comes out next August. The first trailer is out and it looks about how I expected it so so far so good. I'm just hoping that next time I won't end up reading the two books back to back, I just prefer not to read works by the same author/same series back to back and didn't have a choice this time around with all the people who had a hold on the book after me. 

Book Review: The Shattering

It's probably a good thing that the two books I had to read right after Death Watch (or get more library fines) were two that I had been interested in for a while and this one was the one I was more interested in. I've read Karen Healey's other work, Guardian of the Dead, and absolutely adored it since it's a modern day urban/low fantasy that completely understands how important setting is to a story and I've really wanted to read her next work and just didn't have a chance until now. It's also set in New Zealand (although instead of being centered around a college in a big city it's in a small town) and I have no idea if the two stories are connected or not but I wouldn't be surprised either way.


The Shattering by Karen Healey

Summary: When Keri's brother suddenly and mysteriously commits suicide she's naturally shaken and suspicious about everything and her suspiciousness leads her to fellow classmate Janna and out of towner Sione who both also had older brother's die under mysterious circumstances. Armed with nothing more than hunches and records of the town they begin to realize that there is something truly sinister going on in their west coast town. 

The Good: I really like the plot here, a "main character(s) against a greater power" conflict is fairly common in fantasy (and this is urban fantasy/magical realism) but the greater power is slightly different than usual and I thought it an interesting and quite sinister take. Just as great are the characters, Keri, Janna, and Sione are all viewpoint characters and they're all honest enough that it wasn't jarring to see one scene from one characters point of view and then see it again from another's (and thanks to the fact that Keri was first person and the other two were third person it was easy enough to tell them all apart). There was romance which, even though it ended up being crucial in the end, there were plenty of other relationships as well and in addition, they characters had other problems completely unrelated to the main plot! They cussed, people never let their teenaged characters cuss!* I really loved this whole book and while I don't think we'll have another book related to it, it wrapped up quite well, I wouldn't be unhappy to see some short stories of the characters or see them show up in other stories.   

The Bad: Of the three leads I found Sione the least relatable since a lot of his internal problems had to do with self-esteem (which I never sympathize with as much), and considering relatively small reason is why I didn't sympathize with him as much I think that says how realistic I found Keri and Janna. It was a bit convenient with how easy it was to work magic in this book, would have been nice to have known a little bit more about how it worked, but it never turned into a deus ex machina and it was understandable why the characters didn't know any more. 


In short, I was completely satisfied with this book and plan on buying my own copy (along with a copy of GotD, I have a lot of buy these days it seems) sometime. I'm also sure that if I had read it back in 2011 it would have gone on my favorite books of the year list and would have no trouble recommending it to fans of YA fantasy or even realistic fiction.    




*which, let me tell you publishers, you might not like the idea but teenagers cuss, a lot, having recently been one I can attest to this. And I am noting this specifically since I've seen several authors, I think including this one, say they have to fight to keep it in so let me say, Yay I'm happy it was in since yes, it helped flesh out the characters. 

Anime Review: Fate/Zero (second part)

Hopefully there's not much I need to say to introduce this series, I think the title says it all, it's the second half of a series in a franchise. I was thinking about making a little graphic called "How to understand what's going on in Fate/Zero if you haven't seen Fate/Stay Night" but since I still haven't seen (read?) F/SN I wouldn't be able to tell if I was even putting down accurate/relevant backstory. I will say this however, this show should be watched as one whole, complete show, not as two halves to the whole, partially because if you don't have a three month break between the episodes then you don't have time to ruminate on all kinds of unanswered details, look them up, and spoil yourself silly. I will say that it is perfectly possible to enjoy this series without having seen/read any of the other installments of the Fate franchise but those details I spoiled myself on from the Type-Moon wiki did give the show more of an emotional payoff for me in the end.

Fate/Zero

 

Summary: Continuing immediately from where the first half left off, the Fourth Holy Grail War wages on and seven participants still stand and, along with their servants, are fighting for the chance to use the wish-granting Holy Grail. Some of them have clear plans, some plan on using it for another purpose, and still others have no plan at all yet still fight for the entertainment this war brings them. But in a set-up like this where there can be only one pair left at the end not many characters have happy fates waiting for them.

The Good: I rather unexpectedly became quite attached to some of the characters in this show, mostly side characters admittedly, and every character who either survived the show or came close underwent a good deal of character development in this half. I was sad to see that Saber didn't get as much as I had hoped (which I suspect is because it all originally happened in Fate/Stay Night, the one problem with prologues is that they are bound by things such as that and F/Z had a few other odd character moments arise from that) but other than that I was satisfied. I do wish they had touched more on the history of the Grail War itself (which I read up some online which both explained a lot of things and was just plain interesting) but I suspect that's another thing that was covered in F/SN so couldn't really be dealt with here.

The Bad: To agree with quite a few other people on the internet, the two episode Kiritsugu flashback was much to long but my even greater problem was that I actually didn't know that he WAS the main character until I went "geeze, he's in the opening A LOT, like, more than anyone else." The first half of the show had made me think the story was going to focus more-or-less equally on all seven pairs, not that it's very much Kiritsugu's story, and that's a rather large narrative failing, I believe it is made clearer in the novel where he has internal narration, which also appears to make him more sympathetic earlier on. That lack of internal narration also made it much harder to, well, not be bored whenever Kirei was on screen. To explain why his character bored me would be dangerously close to spoilers but he's of an archetype I'm not particularly fond of so, while he did make some great looking fight scenes possible, in the end I just didn't care about his character at all.  

The Audio: There were new opening and closing themes but no new major characters (and obviously the same music composer) so not much changed. I didn't like the opening and closing themes as much as I liked the original ones and several of the actors really had a chance to prove that they had range but other than that there's not much else to say that I haven't already said. 

The Visuals: As expected, the second half of the show looks just as good as the first half and all of the fight scenes are stunning to look at. While I still liked the fight in The Legend of Korra a bit more for their choreography the fights here were a close second for their fluidity and just plain old visual interest. There were also quite a lot of them (I'd ask where UFOtable got the money and then I remember how many sets of the first half they sold) and many of them incorporated CGI very well (which sounds like a no-brainer for American animation but a lot of series in Japan are still hand-drawn and I've seen a bit of hostility to companies using CGI in these circumstances). Actually, in addition to making me more curious about the rest of the Fate franchise, all of the art here has made me more and more interested in UFOtable's other well-known series, Garden of Sinners, and it's always impressive when a studio leaves such an impression on a viewer that they want to see other, completely unconnected* productions they have made.




So, I'm not getting the second box set since I don't have $400 to spend, honestly I probably wouldn't even if I did, but I do hope Aniplex puts out a Region 1 priced set in the future (and I've heard rumors that some of the extras on the original set weren't subtitled so if any of those were included I hope that's fixed).




*okay, semi-connected in the sense that they're apparently in alternate universes but in the Type-Moon mega-verse overall, or something like that 
 

TV Series Review: Supernatural (season one)

And it's back to the tv shows! Ever since I started this blog and started making a real effort to try out more American/British tv shows (that weren't animated) I've been amazed at just how much stuff is out there and just how much time it's going to take to try out everything that catches my eye. And for that reason I'm quite grateful to Netflix Instant, since I have quite a few friends who love Supernatural it was invertible that I would try out the show someday and I was quite happy that I didn't have to resort to renting one DVD at a time from Netflix (which, while it isn't the worst way to watch a show is not my preferred way). In any case, onto the review!

Supernatural

 Summary: Sam and Dean Winchester were raised by their father after their movie died under mysterious circumstances while Sam was just a baby and grown up learning the family business, killing demons. Sam wants nothing to do with any of this but when Dean shows up at his apartment telling him that dad hasn't been home for a few days he's drawn back in, especially when he learns that their dad was on the trail of the demon that killed their mom.


The Good: Regardless of medium I'm always curious to see how American-set shows deal with the supernatural since the US doesn't really have it's own mythos to draw from. There is an eclectic collection of urban legends and tall tales that are uniquely USian and parts of European fairy tales are often weaved in as well (less often someone will draw inspiration from one of the many Native American mythologies). All the influences Supernatural uses fit well and managed to feel like a cohesive, American, mythos of sorts. The episodes were very well paced (very formulaic but still well paced) and none of the episodes felt like misses. Both Dean and Sam showed some character growth and overall this show kept my attention and was interesting to watch, I fully plan on continuing.

The Bad: The season did however end on a cliffhanger (not as bad as Grimm's admittedly, not by far) and, when I think about the season as a whole, very few of the episodes related back to the overarching "we're trying to find the demon that killed our mom" plot that is supposed to tie it all together. I have been told that the first five seasons are supposed to make up an ever larger arc (it sounds like what the first five seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer did) which would explain it but I do like each episode in a show to have some connection to a larger plot if there is one and, despite the fact this show is very episodic, there is one. Also, perhaps it's just because Netflix would pause at the worst moment each time and buffer, but was it really necessary to have a "PREVIOUSLY ON SUPERNATURAL" segment at the beginning of each episode? I'm of the opinion that recaps should only be used when shows have multiple plot lines running and need to remind the viewer what is important this week, something that was not a problem at all on Supernatural and simply annoyed me every single time.

The Audio: The theme I remember best from the show is the one used to close the credits with, the show didn't have many other themes I found distinct and had an even shorter than usual clip for the title card. I was more interested in the visuals than the sound but I thought everything worked well on that end.

The Visuals: I don't know if someone on the production staff took issue with bright colors or such (I kid, I know it was on purpose) but the colors are much less saturated than normal and everything looks a bit gray. It's a distinctive look, much more distinctive than American tv shows look, and for a show about demons and such it works. Other than that note, don't have much else to say about the visuals of the series, there wasn't a lot of CGI used which I thought helped but that's because I'm rather picky about CGI.


So again, I plan on watching at least the next season (I'm aware I probably just committed myself to the next four, don't expect me to be done with this before November), it just won't be for a little bit since I have a few other things I want to try first.