12 Days of Anime: Changing Thoughts on Adaptations

Hi y'all, sorry that these posts have gotten away from me so badly. As usual I've been busier than I'd like in the rest of my life and it's taken a toll on my blogging time. Honestly it's taken a toll on everything this year, especially my manga-reading and anime-watching free time. I've gotten pickier than ever about what I spend my time watching and reading and it's really made me reconsider how I feel about adaptations of works, both those that I've already seen and those I haven't.

Webcomic Review: Cucumber Quest

While Cucumber Quest has a fairly large following I'd imagine that Gigi D.G's first comic, the Hiimdaisy (her old pen name) Persona 4 fancomic probably has an even wider name recognition and that's how I first found her work. I really liked that series of comics and was sad that it's unfinished (for the uninitiated, I really like this fandub of the comics) and I'm still surprised by the notoriety of it, I believe that the English dub for the Persona 4 The Arena game even had a reference to one of her jokes in there. So it wasn't a surprise to me that this work is also influenced by classic RPGs, although it might be an even stronger connection than I first thought.

Cucumber Quest by Gigi D.G.

Spring 2013 Anime Round-up

And the spring shows have started folks! Trying to get this out a bit earlier than usual so for all of the shows here I’ve seen just one episode and I’m cramming everything into one post, should be fun to check back in three or six months to see what I actually kept/dropped. And as a quick note, I’m still following three shows from the winter season, Chihayafuru 2, Doki Doki Precure, and Space Bros. So far Chihayafuru feels a little weaker pacing wise than the first season (they only spent a few episodes at Omi Jingui and had completely wrapped that arc up by episode 15 but here we’re at 13 and still in the team matches, I’m wondering if the rest of the season will be spent at Omi Jingui and I really hope not) but it still has my attention and it’s managed to flesh out the two new club members better than I had hoped and the rest of the gang continues to grow (even if Arata still isn’t showing up on screen much, I finally found a word to describe him though guys, he’s a tritagonist!). Doki Doki Precure isn’t as good as Heartcatch so far but it’s self aware enough to make me laugh along with it and have fun casually watching it each week, although I’m having real trouble with the villains each time (instead of focusing on the monster/victim of the week like Heartcatch did we see a quick shot of them thinking a selfish thought, being mature and saying “naaaaah” and then they turn into a monster anyway, this idea is as awkward as it sounds in writing). However, unlike most of the shows I watch I don't feel super motivated to find fansubs for it each week and if this season gets busy I'll probably drop it and check back on it later to see if it's worth picking back up. And finally it looks like Space Bros is in for the long haul, it sounds like the anime is somewhere around volume 10 out of 20 volumes so far and I want to say I heard that the manga-ka is predicting it to go on for around 30 volumes. I’m really curious how much longer this one is going to be sticking around, it would be hugely impressive if it went all the way to the end, at the current pace they have about a year’s worth of material to animate still and in the past the manga-ka churned out an impressive four volumes a year but last year only produced two. I guess in theory the manga could stay far enough ahead (and it seems like the anime pads a bit with recap bits to help with this) and the show just got placed in a new timeslot which is right before Detective Conan on Saturday afternoon/evenings which is apparently a really really good sign. Regardless I still enjoy it’s humor, all the space stuff, and all the stuff involving it’s multiple sets of siblings now which makes me reflect on my own relationship with my siblings, although I do feel like a mediocre big sister when compared to Mutta.

Arata the Legend (Arata Kangatari)
Arata (no not that one) switches places with Arata (again, not that one) from another world.
Correct me if I’m wrong but I’m pretty sure this is Yuu Watase’s only non-shojo work and it’s always interesting to see when an author (of any medium) who is very heavily associated with one genre (in her case shojo) switch to a different one (shonen) and seeing just what tropes carry over. You could actually make this into a shojo very easily so I'm wondering what this genre switch will bring besides male main characters (which she's had before, Alice 19th had them for sure and a lot of her earlier works have a good amount of action as well). Also, I noticed on a scanlation site the other day that in Japan that the story is over 150 chapters yet the show is only going to be one cour, how the heck is that a good idea? With a story that long I can almost guarantee that individual arcs in the story are going to be longer than 13 chapters and, even if the pick up the pace and put multiple chapters into one episode (like they did here) they’ll still have a freakisly hard time making that work. Really at this point that’s what’s keeping me from getting really excited about this series, while it has potential I just don’t know if it has the time to make it work.

Arata the Legend is streaming on crunchyroll but only for United States and Canadian viewers and it might be for subscribers only. If it is subscribers only, the wording is a bit strange, I 'll have to drop it since I'm using a free subscription now to save money and won't be continuing with it.  

The Devil is a Part-timer (Hataraku Maou-sama!)
Satan escapes a crusading Hero and flips burgers.
Someone pointed out this one to me a few months back when they noted that a voice actor I had heard and liked had landed the leading role here so I checked out the manga (adaptation of the light novels this is based on that is) and found that the humor worked surprisingly well there. And here the humor continues to work, the first episode starts off a bit slow as it gets through the backstory of “how the hell a conquering demon lord is now trying to become a full time McRonald’s employee” but once it hits the second half it pulls off the situational humor pretty well. So I have high hopes that the entire show manages to stay funny and keep my interest, if that manga adaptation is any indication then it should fulfill those expectations very nicely.

Funimation has picked up the show for streaming and can be viewed either on their website or on hulu.



Devil Survivor 2 the Animation
Kids summon demon’s with their cell phones.
Initially this wasn’t on my to-watch list since I’ve never played any of the Shin Megami Tensei games of any franchise but, since I saw a number of good reviews for it and that reasoning hardly stopped me from watching Persona 4 the Animation, I gave it a shot and yeah, that was pretty solid. Thankfully here they’ve chosen to give the main character, in the game the player avatar, a real personality instead of trying to develop him as the show went on a la P4tA and the story gets to the action pretty quickly. I can still see that this was adapted from a game (“oh here is the exposition, this one is probably the tutorial fight” etc) but it doesn’t feel like I’m just watching a Let’s Play of the game so for the moment I’m sticking with it.

DS2tA (DeSu2A?) is streaming on crunchyroll for people in : USA, Canada, UK, Ireland, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Netherlands, and Scandinavia..

Gargantia on the Verduous Planet (Suisei no Gargantia)
Mech pilot accidentally space-warps to backwater Earth
This was one of the shows I was most excited for going into the spring season. Scratch that, I was curious about a number of shows but only really excited for this one, it's a low-key season for me this time around, and I had such a hard time waiting for the second episode that I eventually found a fansub of the second episode (ripped from a DVD given out a few weeks earlier) with subpar subtitles and still enjoyed the heck out of it. Somehow this one just worked for me, I've seen a lot of people say that the first half moved a little too slow for them but I like space battles and space operas so I was just fine with epic-scale outer space fighting (and no the CGI does not look bad, it's not quite as nice and neat as Majestic Prince's was but it's perfectly fine guys, the show in general looks fantastic) and I was also okay when the story did a pretty large genre shift for the second half of the episode/for the rest of the series it seems. I’m okay with how they’re handling the shift to a quieter, not exactly slice of life but certainly smaller in scale story following the remnants of humanity on Earth living on boats and endlessly moving on the all-encircling ocean.

Gargantia is steaming on Crunchyroll for United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, the Netherlands, Spain, South Africa, Turkey, Brazil, and Portugal. 


Karneval
Two boys get entangled in secret, colorful, organization.
I’ve been a bit worried about Karneval for a while now since I’ve read the manga and I can say first hand that this series has it’s strong points and it’s weak ones and the beginning is most certainly one of the later. The anime works with the source material as best as it can, namely by compressing the first three chapters into one episode which does cut out some problems (I don't think the manga-ka even knew what they wanted Circus to be in the very beginning) but the pacing as a result just does not work. I’m tempted to say that the staff spent more time trying to figure out how to make the story look cool than how it was going to make sense and I’m really hoping that it gets smoother as the series goes on but that’s another thing I’m worried about, the length. This has been confirmed to be a one cour series and based on what characters have been posted on the website I can guess at least how far they’ll go and frankly I don’t think there is a really good stopping point after just thirteen episodes. All all I'm nervous about this series, I've seen manga fans say "yep that made about as much sense as the manga did at this point" and non-manga fans optimistically say that they think they like where it's going but yeah, I'm going to hold off recommending this show until it ends and I can say whether or not it worked.

For those willing to risk dazzlement and confusion, Karneval is being streamed by Funimation for Region 1 viewers.

Majestic Prince (Ginga Kikōtai Majestic Prince)
Five failing teens are flung into mecha fights.
Another of the mecha shows this season and one where I really wasn’t sure what to expect when I went into it. The good news is that the snark I saw in the trailers was present in the actual show, but a bit of snarking alone isn’t enough to make me keep watching a show especially when it’s got weird character designs (seriously, here are the original designs, here’s some promo material, and here’s an actual screenshot, I think a side character in the first few minutes stole everyone else’s noses in order to have a large schnoz, this is even worse than the Moyashimon Returns character design changes) and nothing new about the premise in general. Heck, while it is also fast paced and has some nice fight scenes it’s seriously lacking in the explanation department (or perhaps the common sense department, I want at least a line about why they took the worst teen mecha pilots and gave them the best robots they had AND someone at least noting that they seem to be working much better as a team than they were just a few hours earlier) and sure that can be remedied in further episodes but with so much other stuff coming out this season I’m not going to stick around to find out.

Majestic Prince is streaming on crunchyroll for USA, Canada, UK, Ireland, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand and has been licensed by Sentai Filmworks.


My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU (Yahari Ore no Seishun Love Come wa Machigatteiru or literally My Youth Romantic Comedy is as Wrong as I Expected)
Teacher forces student to join service club.
Intially this wasn't on my to watch list since, well, the premise on the lists and charts of the upcoming spring season didn't interest me and it sounded like Brain's Base was just redoing a less interesting version of My Little Monster (Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun) half a year later. But after seeing a couple of good reviews, plus the fact that I wasn't interested in that show before trying it either, I gave it a shot and nope, my instincts were spot on. The show actually reminded me more of Bakemonogatari in how it sets up two of it's lead characters, the guy's appearance to a small extent, how it tries to be artsy with flashbacks and such, and guys, if you're going to be similar to another show you had better be better than them and that's not what happened here. I'd like to say that I'm not saying that one light novel series copied the other here but this one is certainly the weaker of the two and I'm not a huge fan of the -monogatari series to start with. Also, as I was watching this I thought "the author here feels young" and yep, the original author is only 27 and since this series is now on it's fifth or seventh book he must've started when he was even younger and it shows. Neither he (I believe it's a man) nor the director/writers of the show were able to make the characters believable or even interesting and the idea of a group/school club that helps people is a pretty tired premise yet they didn't do anything to spice that up either. 

Another dropped show for me but those interested in checking it out can go over to crunchyroll, provided you live in United States, Canada, South Africa, Finland, Norway, Sweden, or Denmark. 

Red Data Girl
Girl breaks computers and boy is broken.
So I caught one of the rips of the niconico stream a week or so back and man, maybe the fact that I was watching the worst quality video I’ve ever seen that wasn’t a copy of a copy (etc) of a VHS tape but this first episode just didn’t grab me. Looking at other’s screenshots I can say now that yes the art looks fine, lesson learned there, but the first episode just felt a bit awkward. We can see the characters acting but we don’t know why, why is cutting Izumiko’s hair so important (it’s not like this is Crime Edge, heck that makes this the third anime this year to place a focus on hair so I'm declaring 2013 "year of hair" at this rate) and why is Miyuki’s dad so insistent that he’s going to help her? Since there are a few more episodes out I’ve seen some people say it gets stronger I am going to give it a few more episodes (especially sine Funimation is streaming it) but there's another problem, the legal streams (and the tv broadcast) are a full three weeks behind, almost a month in Funi's case, the internet streams which is going to make avoiding spoilers for the series nigh impossible. I have absolutely no idea why there's such a huge delay, it was weird enough last season that there was a three day delay between when the first tv stations showed From the New World and when the main station/crunchyroll did and this is even stranger. Oh well, at least I'll have something to watch on Wednesdays.

As noted above, RDG is being streamed by Funimation, also make sure you use the hastag #rdg_anime on twitter or apparently you'll offend a small town in England.


Valvrave the Liberator (Kakumeiki Valvrave)
Average teen meets mech, gets messed up
And the award for the show which made me snark the most this season so far goes to Valvrave! Seriously folks, this show has some okay moments (when part of the what looks to be a good sized cast chilling in school), some bad moments (maybe I'm getting jaded but I couldn't take any of those military operations/people seriously), and then, well, one rather large WTFDIDIJUSTSMOKE moment at the veeeery end of the episode, make sure to watch past the credits guys. I seriously don't know how to feel here, the show looks great but the plot alternates between being generic and feeling like the creators are trying to hard to replicate their past successes, namely Code Geass. Here's the thing, I liked Code Geass (or at least the first season, the second season promised to reveal some things which it didn't and that annoyed me) and even Guilty Crown (which I believe also shares a lot of the same staff) didn't have me snark-raging as much as this did. Honestly in that respect the show reminds me a lot of K but with K I tried the second episode and went "you know, I think the writers are aware that what they're writing is kinda silly and they're just rolling with it, I can deal with this" and enjoyed the show, I don't think that's what Valvrave is doing. I'm going to give it another episode or two (mainly because of how pretty it is) but if this doesn't get at least more amusing then I'm going to find other shows to spend my Fridays watching.

Valvrave is streaming on crunchyroll for  US, Canada, United Kingdom, and Ireland. 


SO, now that I've finally gotten through everything, my final verdict? I am following Gargantia, Chihayafuru, Maou-sama, and Space Bros for sure (and most likely Doki  Doki) and I'm gonna be pumped for them each week. And I'm going to continue with Arata, Karneval, RDG, Devil Survivor, and Valvrave for now, if any of them fail to keep my interest for a few episodes I'll drop them with no hesitation. And dear lord, all of those shows except Precure and Space Bros (maybe Devil Survivor, Valvrave is apparently confirmed as split cour) are going to end this summer, I am going to be very busy come late June/early July with reviews.

Webcomic Review Month 2013: Manly Guys Doing Manly Things

So, I don't think anything weird happened online in the past two days unlike last time but I could be forgetting something, heck I had to triple check all my old webcomic review posts to make sure I hadn't already talked about this one. Probably because I've seen friends post links to various pages in the comic for a few years now yet I must not have started following it until last year and I think that's because, much like Thursday's comic, I looked at it, expected something kinda bad and then was pleasently surprised to be completely wrong.


Manly Guys Doing Manly Things by Kelly "Coelasquid" Turnbull

Commander Badass is a time traveling navy seal from the future but these days he runs a temp agency for helping macho men adjust back into every day life. Hilarity ensues.

Yep, I've been around the internet long enough that a title like "manly guys doing manly things" reminds me of  MRA people and that plus the fact that I normally don't get a lot of video game humor (simply because I don't have time to play the games and get the jokes) made me stay away from the comic for a long time. But thankfully when I went through the archives one day and read all of it I discovered that I was quite wrong, not only was it funny but it was able to have guys be macho without being sexist, awesome! A lot of the humor works since it's more based on a situation set up in the comic than based on some reference  yet the comic manages to also fit in a few running gags and even a full arc without losing steam or interest. And it holds up on a reread which I always think is a good test for gag-a-page comics, it's a pretty funny comic and I think a lot people with nerdy interests would find it amusing (assuming they haven't already checked it out, it seems to be one of the webcomics that just about everyone heard of or run into at least once).


Manly Men Doing Manly Things can be read on it's website and sadly does not seem to be in print at this time.

2012 "M" Comics
2011 "M" Comics

And now for something different, continuing Spring 2012 shows

In what has become a bit of a tradition here, I've got a number of shows that started this past spring carrying over into the summer season and I thought I'd touch base on them and see how they're doing (especially for people who haven't tried them out yet but were thinking of doing so, summer is usually a quieter season so there's also more time to catch up on older shows). To go along with this, I'm hoping to get one big post about all the new shows I'm trying out up next Wednesday although I'm not 100% certain it's going to happen yet but that is the goal. Regardless of that, onto the shows!

Accel World
I will be checking out Sword Art Online this summer (they share a creator but it sounds like they actually aren't in the same 'verse, I've seen conflicting reports on that) and in addition I'm still keeping up with Accel World. By now I'm watching it more as a fluff show (an action-packed, good looking fluff) since it is a show about a fighting game and the plot is a bit light. All of the characters except the lead Haruyuki and not-quite-a-lead Kuroyukihime have a tendency to fade into the background when the show isn't focused on them (also one of the few times I've seen a character act flatter after they had character development) and, since I believe the novel series isn't finished, I know that the characters aren't going to accomplish their goal of reaching level 10 in the game and discovering the secret behind Brain Burst. But like I said, it still looks great, progresses at a good pace, and I'm hoping that the characters will feel less flat as the series goes on.

Accel World is licensed by Viz Media and in the US can be watched on Hulu.


Eureka 7 AO (AO stands for Astral Ocean)
It appears (curse you Funimation and your one week delayed streams or I could confirm this!) that yes, AO is indeed a sequel to the original show, even though it takes place on an alternate Earth, so anyone who is curious about checking this one out should probably first go ahead and watch the original series first (yes it's 50 episodes and yes it takes a while to get going, that's it's biggest flaw but again, why watch if a sequel if you're unfamiliar with the first installment?). The show has a mix of old and new staff on it and I was able to tell almost immediately that it shared some staff from last fall's Un-Go since they both have political undertones almost all the time and a general feeling that, while some of the adults might be good people with good intentions they are certainly not making them all known to Ao and the other kids. I recall there being a lot of that in the original show as well (not as much and more in the first half when no one would tell Renton, and therefore the audience, anything) but there is certainly a bit of a different tone here but I'm enjoying it. The show is also starting to work in the weird episode/trippy experience moments from the original show (although not to the same degree because again, it was hard at times to figure out what was going on in the first half of E7 and those episodes, see Acperience) and it's easy to see how Ao is obviously Eureka and Renton's child and that's a good metaphor for the series itself, it's parentage is clear but it is it's own show with it's own ideas so it'll be interesting to see how those two continue to blend.

Eureka 7 Astral Ocean is licensed by Funimation and can be viewed on their website (word of warning though, they've converted a lot of the streams into hulu ones so that cuts out the Canadian viewers).


Hyouka
I didn't review this one back in the spring (there seems to always be one show I pick up later) so a quick rundown, Oreki is a long energy kind of guy who is pressured into joining the Classics Club at his school by alumni sister since it's in danger of being shut down for having no members. He thinks it'll be a chance for him to doze off more but lo and behold it's gotten a couple of other new members and Oreki is stuck with them and solving the odd little mysteries the club runs into. I've seen a lot of mystery anime in the past year and in comparison to some of the big mysteries, big stakes ones (which feel like a cup  of soda, fizzy and full of energy but will go stale if dragged out too long) this one feels more like a glass of lightly flavored lemonade, it leaves a bit of a taste on the tongue but doesn't overwhelm you. The show has also been fairly clever in the way it manages to have bigger mysteries in it (one thing I've found hard to believe in many shows is just how many murders the characters come across and this show neatly averts that), although I'm curious for how long they can keep that up. Regardless, it's my one fansub of the season (unless Moyashimon Returns doesn't get picked up, then we have a problem) and I do hope it gets licensed soon by somebody.


Space Brothers (Uchuu Kyodia)
Finally we have what is rumored to be a four cour (or full year) show, Space Bros! I've been listening around on forums trying to figure out just who this show is aimed at, I can obviously tell it's main audience is adults but it also has a charm to it, the charm that gets kids interested in space to start with, and it sounds like it's being aimed at families in Japan as well and I can easily see this show working well with families. I'd be impressed if kids under the age of 10 were able to sit through the show completely on their own for a full year, it's still a bit slow and deliberately paced with adult characters, but for those reasons I'm happy to sit back and take in the show. Actually, the show has re-kindled by own interest in space and the various technologies in it (I blame the US's fading space program for my waning interest ;-; ) and if a show is making me excited about something other than just the show then it's doing a pretty damn good job at being entertainment.

Space Bros is streaming on crunchyroll for a number of countries and was just picked up the other day by Sentai Filmworks/Section 23 for a DVD release sometime down the line. 
      

Anime Review: Persona 4 the Animation

As a quick note, I'm hoping to have my little round-up of the new spring shows next Wednesday (the 25th), just a bit delayed since I don't have a crunchyroll subscription this seasons, Hyou-ka airs really late, and Funimation still needs to put up their simulcasts so I can check them out as well. So hopefully it'll be up the 25th, if not then I have no idea.

Moving along, I've never played any of the games from the  Shin Megami Tensei 'verse/it's spin-off 'verses so I was mostly unfamiliar with the Persona franchise when I started watching this. However, as I went along I also started following the Persona 4 Endurance Run over on Giant Bomb, always watching bits after the episodes had already aired, and even though I haven't finished watching them (I think I'm at part 110 out of 150-ish) that gave me a pretty good idea of the differences between the original game and this adaptation. And yes I am well-aware that the ending for this hasn't "technically" ended yet, the anime ran out of time for the "true ending" route (which as far as I understand has two more boss battles and a lot of explanations for what was going on this whole time) and went for the less informative "good ending" route. That ending is enough to wrap up the story and I really don't want to wait until August to write this review (especially since there's a good chance I won't remember enough of the story to do so) and at this point I doubt that one more episode is going to seriously effect my views here, especially since I already know all the things it explains.


Persona 4 the Animation

Summary: Yuu Narukami has moved to the town of Inaba for his second year of high school and doesn't expect to get much out of the sleepy town. When following up however on an odd urban legend Yuu and his new friends soon get drawn into a strange world inside the tv where people's darker selves manifest, often with disastrous results. But ordinary people can't simply fall into this tv world, someone is throwing them in and it's up to the investigation team to put a stop to these attempted murders.

The Good: None of the individual elements in the show are new (new student transfers in right as things start to go strange in town and only a band of teenagers can solve it) but the concept it pulled off well and doesn't feel tired. There's an unexpected amount of humor in the series (partially because Yuu mimics the original game protagonist who starts off as a blank slate and only develops a personality as the game advances which leads to some amusing socially awkward moments) which I think is important when doing a story involving teenagers (so many people forget that teenagers are snarky by nature, especially when they're stuck in a small town that half the cast doesn't want to be in). I also liked how Yuu's family (his cousin and uncle whom he's living with) got as much if not more development than some of his friends and they were involved in his life.

The Bad: The original game takes 60 to 80s hours to play through and to it's credit the pacing there works. A lot of the time there however is spent on sidequests, which end up being vital to the main plot, and it just doesn't quite work in the anime. All of the characters get quite a few scenes of character development in the game but the anime everything is reduced down to a single scene (so a number of the character's problems come off as much more simplistic than they really were*) and the show clumsily shoehorns in sidequests which aren't completely vital to the main plot. The game's plot is a bit formalistic, which again works because it's a game and it has the time to make work, but the anime just doesn't pull it off quite right. I can easily see why people wanted an anime adaption of this show but I feel like the directing was just off enough to make it not work for me. 

The Audio: The show makes use of some of the same tracks from the video game and they are quite catchy, although the second ending song occasionally caused accidental mood-whiplash more than once towards the end. An interesting effect of watching both the anime subbed and the English release of the game was that I ended up preferring some characters more in one language than than the other. I can't stand the Japanese voice of Kuma/Teddie, Naoto's voice is much more convincing in Japanese (not that the American voice acting is bad, it simply makes a twist completely predictable), and the acting for Chie's American voice wasn't as strong as her Japanese one. Although I don't plan on re-watching the series I would like to check out an episode or two of the dub to how it fares compared to the game (plus, unless one major role is recast, there will be a funny case of talking to himself and I'm curious how that will be pulled off).

The Visuals: It's certainly nice to have a fully animated series since the animated cutscenes in the original game were few and far between but the actual quality here varied quite a bit. In general the fights look interesting and well drawn but pause during one of the quieter scenes and look at the background characters, chances are they'll have a rather odd facial expression. Some of that seems to be getting cleaned up for the DVD/BR releases but very few scenes look as nice as that promotional artwork above.  




In the end the anime didn't do much for me but oddly enough the Endurance Run I mentioned earlier did. Part of the reason I stopped watching, aside from time constraints, was that it really made me want to play the game myself (never mind that it's an 80 hour game) but the anime never made me want to seek out the game. I'm not sure who this adaption was for, it didn't feel like it was for newcomers like me (since there was so much cut out and the pacing was so choppy) but it sounds like the same things I disliked were the same things that put some fans of the original game off as well. For fans and non-fans alike in the US the series is streaming over on The Anime Network and they are reporting that the original game cast will be returning for the dub, although it sounds like they first need to tell the actors about that plan.


*Kanji seems to suffer the most from this. From what I've heard, in the game his development is him struggling with figuring out if he's actually gay since he likes sewing and other traditionally "girly/gay man" hobbies or is he simply a straight man who likes sewing. Almost all of that is removed in the anime sadly, combined with Yosuke's homophobia it did not feel like a progressive show, or even a tolerant show, in the slightest.

Webcomic Review Month 2012: Gaia and Godseeker

Starting this week I'm also going to be posting updates on Wednesday otherwise the month will be over before I get to everything (and really need to start writing up reviews for everything else I have backlogged, I've got at least eight things already) so hopefully everyone can remember to come over more often (or just come and find two updates on Friday, that works too). The reviews from last year.

Gaia by Puri "Powree" Andini and Oliver Knörzer
Recently there have been growing tensions between the nations of Midgard, a long powerful country, and Cania where our protagonist Ilais Oter and his friends go to school to study magic and martial arts. But there is more to life than just school and sometimes that life can be rather deadly....

A younger comic but since it seems to be both moving and updating at a brisk pace, has already established a conflict and has introduced a number of characters I'm going to take the plunge and recommend it anyway.  The original concept was for a video game, not a comic, and while that can be seen in areas it's actually not a bad thing (I can see a few things going on in the background which I guess would have been side quests in the game and I think that right now they just add a bit of character and make the comic a bit more fun). At this point it's a bit hard to tell where the story is going but I'm hoping it's a grand, world-saving adventure like the synopsis hints at.
Gaia is also published in German and fans are welcome to submit translations of the page beneath each page.

Godseeker by Lisa and Lee Blauersouth

 Long before modern history the gods created the world and humans who would worship them also came into existence. Time passed and now the fertility goddess Sombath has been called to Earth again only to discover that her powers are weak, her priest is trying to manipulate her and that something has happened to her memories as well. She does remember enough to realize that something happened differently from the myths told so she and the girl who called her, Myna, set off to find the truth.

I can't think of many other stories set in the stone age* and I rather like that the story has such a distinctive setting. I do however see a number of stories with gods in them yet it's unusual to see stories where the gods are active, central characters like Sombath is here and it's interesting to see how mortal she seems here (not in the sense that the Greek and Roman gods were with their decadence and imperfections but in the sense that Sombath is not all knowing and must seek out the truth about what really happened with her and the other gods). I also really like the artwork, there's a real variety of body types and everything, from the clothes to the setting, look natural. The story also has the feel of an old world epic, one where the characters challenge the gods themselves, and I can't wait to find out what is really going on behind the scenes.  



*other than the Clan of the Cave Bear books which I will NOT be talking about again, oi.

Continuing shows for Winter 2012

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Anime Review: .hack//SIGN

The .hack (pronounced dot hack) franchise is one that I would really love to see someone do a complete retrospective of since there is so much of it and it's really hard to tell what's worth seeing and what isn't. So I did the next best thing, asked my friends if any of them really knew anything about the franchise or could at least give me a timeline of it. One of my friends did (I actually reposted it in a thread over on ANN) so now I at least have a basic idea of how the story all fits together. I've actually wanted to try out the shows for a long time now (I remember reading a bit about them in the readers corner in the magazine Cricket which I haven't gotten since I was 15 or so) but never had the chance until I found out that my current roommate had all the dvds for Sign. So they very nicely loaned them to me and even pointed out that the letters on the spines of the DVDs spell out "Log Out" which I thought was pretty neat.

.hack//SIGN

Summary: In an alternate future there is an online video game played by millions across the globe called "The World." It's an RPG where the players immerse themselves using special headsets to interact and can immediately disconnect if something goes wrong. But something has gone wrong and the character known as Tsukasa is stuck in The World. Already a withdrawn person, Tsukasa is broken and it's only due to the intervention of several other characters, some of whom think that Tsukasa's impossible condition is connected to another impossible event, the The Key of the Twilight, that he manages to keep from withdrawing from the world all together. 

The Good: Some stories that have the characters in or playing a video game like to be coy about it and reveal that it's only a game as a big twist, .hack//SIGN does not do that and I really liked that it didn't take that route. The fact that this is just a game, a game that has gotten terribly real for one person, is an interesting juxtaposition and I also liked how some of the characters were doing more research into the behind the scenes events outside of the game. There's also a lot of interesting background information about the story itself (the DVDs come with a pretty interesting timeline, detailing from when this world split from ours, right up to 2007 when The World was released), although it almost makes me wish that the show had been able to focus more on that instead of some of it's filler episodes. 

The Bad: I've seen a number of stories that involve people getting stuck in video games (both physically and mentally like here) so the idea doesn't feel as fresh anymore, I feel like I would have enjoyed this story much more if I had seen it when I was younger and wasn't as jaded about the philosophical conversations that many characters had. There were also a few small things about the story that bugged me (such as the fact that this was supposed to be one of the series that showed the characters outside the game yet barely did so and the whole deal with Balmug*). Tsukasa was also very hard to like, there were several times when I wondered why some of the characters still bothered to put up with him, and I thought that the way he eventually got out of the game was a bit of a cop-out, it was just so simple, basically an accident, that it bothered me after all the build-up that was one of the main points of the series.

The Audio: I had heard about people talking about the music for this series for years but I was still blown away by the soundtrack. There is tons and tons of music for this show, some only instrumental and some background insert songs (in surprisingly good English too) and the opening and ending songs were both great as well. I almost feel like it's a shame that it's a rather average show like this that gets such a gorgeous score, I'll be sure to see what other works the composer has done.

The Visuals: The visuals however aren't nearly as impressive as the music. The visuals aren't bad, not at all, but they make the show look very much like an early 2000s, average budget show. Despite the characters being in a video game (ie, there is no reason why their clothes have to obey the laws of physics and common sense) the clothes weren't that outrageous but the setting did explain some of the odder choices which was nice. There were also some nice settings within the show where it was clear that the creators remembered that this wasn't a standard fantasy show but a show set inside the video game (such as the upside down castle) and I thought those were nice touches.

I'm not exactly sure if I want to try out any more series in this franchise, especially since for some of them you need to see video game play throughs first and other bits are only explained in mangas/novels but I think in the end this is a franchise where I like the concept better than the execution. Hmm, that might explain some of the problems I had with Quantum's ending.... 



*they mention him in the very first episode (which got me excited since one of the characters in .hack//Quantum based their design off of him) and he even was on the cover of one of the DVDs, only to appear for a barely five minute cameo, lame! I've since been able to figure out what works he's really in and find his backstory but I was still miffed by this.

Manga Shorts: Pokemon Adventures

I feel a little silly for talking about this title since it is a kids one but, well, I do follow this manga and follow it for fun so why not! Technically this would have been my first manga way back in the fourth or fifth grade, Viz released the first two arcs (Red/Green/Blue and Yellow) and then stopped translating them for a number of years, I think now they're just finishing up the third arc, Gold/Silver/Crystal. In Japan the manga has been running from over a decade and is currently progressing through the Black/White arc (which I think is considered it's own thing? I believe that technically the Heart Gold/Soul Silver arc was the last in the Adventure manga, which is actually called Pokemon Special in Japan) which Viz is also releasing in the US. And with that much explanation I think I should get along to the review!

Pokemon Adventures (Pokemon Special) by Hidenori Kuska, illustrated by Mato (volumes 1-9) and Satoshi Yamamoto (volumes 10 to present)

  Based off of the Pokemon video games, not the anime, each arc in this series follows the same basic formula set-up; you have three kids (modeled off of the male sprite, female sprite and the rival*) who are all 10 or 11 about to set off on an adventure, at least one of them ends up defeating all the gym leaders and everyone ends up fighting whatever threat there is in that region (and I do mean everyone, pokemon is a world of badass). That's the basics anyway, there's actually quite a bit of variety between the arcs, the Yellow and Emerald arcs are both a bit different since they use original characters instead of game characters (the plots are also a bit different, funny enough both of them are sequels to a story set in the Kanto region), sometimes all the kids are really big into battles and sometimes just one is, and the relationships between the main trio also vary quite a bit (from R/G/B and G/S/C where some of the characters really don't like the others to D/P/P where they all travel together from the beginning). One thing I do really like about the series is how there are different characters in each arc, there is some crossover but it avoids a big problem I had with the pokemon anime (and this was when I was still in elementary school too) with how Ash always had to start over in a new region. No constant reset buttons here, heck, the original characters even age, the original ones are around 18 by now, which I do like. And the plots are solid for kids shonen, battles rarely take more than a chapter, unless there are a number of legendary pokemon involved the characters never feel crazy overpowered, and I think that most of the main characters are really likable. But what I remember most as a kid was how much I liked that Blue (Green), the female character from the first arc, actually did things and, while she might not have been as powerful as the two boys, it didn't matter because she was so much clever than them. If Viz had kept publishing this series when I was a kid I would've kept reading them for a few more years, I probably would've gotten into manga even sooner instead of waiting five years to try out Fruits Basket. I thought it was cool then and I still think it's a fun series now, now, if only Viz would release my favorite arc from it, or if I could actually find scanlations for Heart Gold/Soul Silver. 
Honestly I feel like someday I should do a general overview of the whole series on my livejournal since I feel like I've barely talked about it at all but geeze, it would be so long, currently the series is at 37 volumes and bound to be longer since some of the arcs didn't have enough time to properly finish in the magazines.  



*apparently there were plans for their to be a male and a female main character in the original Red and Green (which was later revised and re-released as Blue) so Blue (called Green in the US) is in fact based off of those original designs. As a side note, I've always wondered if my parents got me Crystal instead of Silver because that was the first game with a female player in it, I still remember just how surprised I was that I got to choose my gender and feeling quite pleased about it.

Fall Anime 2011 Reviews: Part two!

For those who missed it, I did update the first post with my thoughts on Last Exile: Fam (what I'm most disappointed about with it is just how much the fandom for it is complaining, about having a predominately female cast, possibly a yuri hint or two, a bit of fanservice and it's not like the original show didn't have most of that as well) this post should cover everything else I've tried so far this season. Looks like I'll be watching more shows than I planned on which makes me pretty glad that I'm not watching much non-anime stuff right now (Doctor Who is done, Project Runway is almost done, My Little Pony is starting up again but that's not a bit thing, might finish up Legend of the Seeker on Netflix soon), although I do have some older anime titles I'm trying to finish up now as well, balancing all of this and school work could get tricky soon....

Persona 4
In case anyone is worried that I suddenly forgot how the alphabet goes yes I know this should have gone before Phi Brain but I only tried out this show a couple of days ago and didn't want to mess with my previous post any more than I had. In any case, I've never played any of the Persona games so I went in with only a basic knowledge of the plot and managed to keep up and understand everything pretty well. Yu Narukami is sent to live with his uncle and cousin in a small town as his parents work overseas (weird, I thought it was standard for anime characters to live at home by themselves), awkwardly meets some people, accidentally discovers his can now phase through tvs and ends up fighting some monsters with his new friends. The pacing bothered me more than anything else, it felt really choppy in the first episode (as if they were just showing the cut scenes from the game and cutting out the game play parts, I had a similar problem with Toganu no Chi last year) but the pace in the second episode seemed much smoother and felt like a better speed. I've seen some people worried about how the studio is going to compress a 80+ hour game into a bit under 11 hours but I'm going to remain optimistic for the moment. In the US this is being simulcast by Sentai/Section 23 through their site, The Anime Network but it looks like they're using the hulu player so you can also watch it that way. 

Sekaiichi Hatsukoi 2
Starting pretty soon after the first season left off, Ritsu is still working for the manga publishing magazine Emerald and he's now in a supervisor position so there's even more work for him now. More importantly, it seems that in two episodes Ritsu and Takano have made at least as much (if not more) progress than they did in the entire first season, I was rather impressed since I was expecting the story to continue the "will-they-or-won't-they?" story to the very end. Also happy to see they're still censoring out the sex scenes (which is just because I don't like porn of any kind that much*) although I'm sure the hardcore fujoshi fans aren't so happy. The visuals are still below average, this is a Studio Deen work so that shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone and I haven't really noticed the music that much. Next week the story is switching to one of the side couples so fingers crossed that it continues to improve on the first season.
The second season of Sekaiichi is streaming on crunchyroll and you can watch the first season there as well. 

Squid Girl 2 (Shinryaku Ika Musume!?)
Squid Girl also continues more or less where the first season left off but after four episodes I'm just not loving it as much as I liked the first season. I remember that I marathoned a good chunk of the series the first time and maybe that's what I need to do now to get back into the show. It has the same set-up as before, three sketches in each episode, but only one or two of them have felt really funny to me, some were a bit amusing and others just fell flat, the humor just doesn't feel as creative anymore. The show is taking a break in the upcoming weeks (to give the stations that started late a chance to catch up) so maybe a little break is what I need. 
Like it's predecessor, Squid Girl is streaming on crunchyroll.

Tamayura~Hitotose~
I didn't watch the original Tamayura OVAs when they came out since I saw mixed reviews about them but decided to try out the tv series for a few reasons. While I normally have no interest in the cute girls/boys doing cute things kind of plot this was a story about cute girls doing photography, my thing, which was interesting and the show is being directed by Junichi Sato who did the series composition for Croisée in a Foreign Labyrinth this past summer and I really enjoyed that show so I thought I would give it a try. Tamayura just didn't work for me however, while Croisée managed to have a "healing" feeling by being a very low-key, character growth oriented show it felt like Tamayura was trying too hard to capture that same feeling and came off feeling forced to me. Maybe if this series got licensed I would give it another chance but for the moment I'm not going to follow fansubs for any series I don't completely adore.

UN-GO
The other noitaminA show this fall (funny enough, the same two studios, Production IG and Bones did both the shows for the summer block and the fall block, this is Bones' show) and it's adapted from Ango Sakaguchi's post WWII mystery stories, this time set in the near future after a war. Shinjurou Yuuki is "the defeated detective" since it always seems like he makes incorrect deductions and he's accompanied by his assistant, and by far the strangest element in this show, Inga. While the mystery was nothing special (I honestly think it's harder to do a mystery in a visual medium and in serial mediums, keep meaning to write a blog entry on that) I did like how the surrogate audience character was NOT the detective's assistant for once and that she could be an interesting character later on. I didn't really like how Gosick turned out but I've never been able to find out how much of the ending was Bones and how much of the ending was the original work so I'm hoping I'll like a story that's almost all Bones a bit more.
UN-GO is streaming for multiple countries on crunchyroll.

So there you have it, 10 shows, 2 I'm dropping, 8 I hope to follow and who knows, I might even try out Fate/Zero later on when I have the time. Not now though, apologies that this entry is up so late but this week has been crazy for me and tomorrow's entry might be up really late (like, a whole day late) as well. Fingers crossed that everything will go smoothly tomorrow but I'm not counting on it.

*believe me, I've seen hardcore yaoi before, although there's a bit of a story behind that one.

OVA Review: .hack//quantum

When I first saw reviews of this OVA series I passed them by since I’ve never seen any of the other .hack series (been interested in them for years but there are so many installments over multiple forms of media that I’m confused about which series I need to see/are good versus some, if any, I need to avoid). But a livestream I sometimes frequent was showing the first episode one night and I found that it didn’t matter that I hadn’t seen the previous series or wasn’t really a gamer, it was fun and I made sure to snap up the other two episodes when they came out.

.hack//quantum

Summary: The latest story in the .hack universe, Asumi loves to play The World with her two friends, Iori and Eri, where they spend a lot of time just playing for fun. But after one night when Asumi accidentally triggers some traps on other players who are fighting a boss she finds herself on the run from other players who want to capture her and the bounty on her head. During the chase she runs into another player, Hermit (the cat) and the two of them end up in a strange part of The World where PK'd players don't revive but instead fall into mysterious comas that the authorities seem to be trying to cover up.

The Good: This series is very accessible to people who aren’t unfamiliar with the franchise or even big gamers. The World is presented as a simple MMORPG so the anime doesn’t have to spend much time explaining the situation (it does a lot of show don’t tell, like it shows that the characters are using headsets instead of having the characters awkwardly work in exposition) and simply lets the characters take it away. The story fits neatly within three episodes and can either serve as a nice prologue to a full length tv series (which, judging from the sequel hook this seems to be the hope) or stand on it’s own.

The Bad: In the end the villain is an unsatisfying one (never mind hints that there might be an even greater big bad lurking out there) and the fact that Asumi didn't know who it was when everyone else seemed to was very frustrating. The story also has a sequel hook which, if it goes unrealized will also make the ending frustrating, this felt like a chapter in a story being completed, not the entire story.

The Art: The art looks great throughout so no problems here. If The World looks a bit more colorful than the real world and if there are a few conspicuous CGI shots as well it's easy to reason that, since The World is a video game, this actually makes perfect sense.

The Music: The OVAs don't have an opening song (each episode goes straight from the title screen to the action) but it does have a j-pop ballad for the closer, "shizuku." Not the most memorable ballad but it does it's job and certainly doesn't sound like a mismatch for the show.

After watching this I really want to watch more .hack shows so I have to ask, does anyone know of a good series of reviews that could give me some background information? It seems like the first series is just old enough that a lot of anime review blogs don't cover it, plus Netflix doesn't have the DVDs (since this got a US release by Bandia it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that it's not legally streaming anywhere, gah) so any help someone could give me would be much appreciated!