Anime Review: Maria the Virgin Witch

I did purposely shuffle this post to the end of my winter 2015 anime reviews since I was hoping I could stall long enough that the manga would be fully out in English so that I could compare the two but alas, even with my unexpected week delay here it wasn't long enough. I'm not sure if people have noticed but starting this season I'm reviewing the finished shows in the order that I enjoyed them so this series should have been one of my middle reviews, it's far from the worst show I saw over the winter even if it did have a lot of flaws.

Maria the Virgin Witch

Manga Review: Gundam: The Origin (volumes one through six)

I remember when this title was announced by Vertical a few years ago (it was actually a license rescue from Viz from ages ago) and it was something that sounded cool and exciting but not only were the books completely out of my price range at nearly $30 a book, the print runs were going to be tiny, 2-5,000 books (I want to say closer to 2.5k than 5) so there was no chance I could ever own the series, even once I had a chance to save up some day in the future. Well, thankfully the series did much better than expected so the print runs are larger and it's gone to re-printings (especially since my paychecks still aren't big enough to cover these books!) and this past summer I found volumes 3-5 at my local library. I got a librarian to show me how to use the book request system to ask them to buy the first two volumes and they obliged and even tossed in volume 6 as well. While I was waiting for my holds I discovered that the website Comic-Walker was also posting the chapters, completely independent from Vertical so their translations may be different but it's still a chance for more people to check out this series since it really is one of the best manga series I read in 2014.

Gundam: The Origin (volumes one through six) by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko

Anime Review: Aldnoah.Zero

In the past I determined that 12 shows is about the max I can watch in one season and this summer season seemed to prove that, I didn't even watch 12 shows every week and my weekends were still too full! On Saturday's two shows primarily competed for my attention, Captain Earth and this one and they were both a bit uneven, I can't actually remember any weeks where they were both strong, and in the end this was the more uneven, and ultimately weaker, of the two which is the exact opposite of what I would have predicted!

Aldnoah.Zero

Anime Review: Chaika the Coffin Princess

And I'm back! It feels a bit weird after that mini hiatus but also because wow we're almost halfway through the summer season of anime and I'm still playing catchup with all of the spring shows. Although this show would have felt odd to review no matter what the time, as people probably remember I was only lukewarm at best about it during the round-UP and only ended up continuing because I needed something to watch during my lunch breaks. I was seeing a lot of praise for it, hence why I choose that show over some other shows to be my catch-up show, but this is one of those cases were I never quite got the hype.

Chaika the Coffin Princess

Manga Review: Rurouni Kenshin

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

Rurouni Kenshin by Nobuhiro Watsuki

Movie Review: The Princess and the Pilot

After seeing quite a few good reviews for this movie lately (after not even knowing it existed before NIS America licensed it, the anime blogging community often seems to miss movie works that aren't done by a well-known director, for the record this was actually based on a light novel and not a completely original work as I had previously assumed) I was thrilled to see it on the Otakon schedule and even more so when I realized that it conflicted with practically nothing else I wanted to do thanks to it's Friday morning scheduling. There were a few technical snafus (I think it all was whatever they were using to show the movie and not the staff's fault, either that or the disc itself had a problem showing the subtitles) but everything got resolved pretty quickly and we were still out right around when the video was supposed to end anyway.

The Princess and the Pilot

Summary: Princess Fana del Moral is set to marry the prince of Levahm across the ocean who is currently engaged in a brutal battle with a third country. The prince wants her to be with him and, after the entire palace is fire-bombed in an attempt to assassinate her, her family accepts and the Levahm prepares their ace pilot, the mixed blood Charles, to escort her directly through the line of enemy fire. 

The Good: This is a movie that involves quite a bit of just two characters talking and once the story gets going (and it's the middle and end of the story which have the bulk of the talking) it never once feels dull and manages to feel remarkably natural as well, I suppose this is one of the cases where coming from a prose source material is a pro, not a con. It was well-paced, Charles and Fana felt like rounded characters by the end, the setting had been fleshed out, the plot didn't contain any leaps of logical, all around it had fantastic writing which translated into great material for every other aspect of the show.

The Bad: After seeing quite a few people declare this to be practically a masterpiece I was a bit let down since I didn't think it was one. I still think it was a great movie but the one thing that bothered me was Fana's character development. She certainly grew and changed and I have no trouble with that, yet in a way that story started so quickly that I wasn't sure if her distant and quiet personality when the plane ride began were due to the recent, destruction assassination attempt she was coping with or if she simply was a quiet, retireing person and learning about the world has made her blossom. I suspect it's the former, if it was the later then just under a week should not have changed her that much, but I wish the story had started out oh so slightly differently just to establish this since then the story wouldn't just be about her growing but also moving past that event and helping her find determination that she'll keep for the rest of her life. 

The Production Values: The movie looks fantastic through and through and the art staff went to a lot of effort to make sure that the scenery was varied even though about a fourth or third of the movie is spent on or over the ocean. I seem to recall that Fana's voice struck me as a bit high, I expected something a tad deeper and more mature, but it wasn't a bad choice and her seiyuu certainly acted more than well enough (since this is a NISA release there is no dub) as did all the others. 


In the end I'm giving this a solid three and a half out of five for being a good movie, recommended to all anime fans who enjoy slightly slow paced, character driven stories (and possibly to people who aren't exactly anime fans but enjoy a number of anime movies). However, I don't like it enough to justify buying NISA's fancy release right now (even though artbooks are always tempting), perhaps if I can find it for an amazing deal or if they do a regular edition release in the future I will grab that though. As far as I know this title is not streaming anywhere online, although if they were showing it at Otakon it might pop up at other American anime conventions this year as well.
  

Anime Review: Crest of the Stars

Oh geeze, I bought the first volume of this when I came across it at my library's bookstore two summers ago since I had heard good things and then grabbed the completely collection during a big Bandai sale after they announced that they were closing their doors and just haven't had the time to watch it since. But, since I crunched the numbers and realized I was going to need a few more series to tide my blog over until March I decided it was high time I watched the rest of this series, especially if it turned out I liked it and I wanted to get the sequels (Banner of the Stars I & II) before they went horribly out of print. So, better late than never!


Crest of the Stars

Summary: In the far off future mankind has spread all amongst the stars and, like the rest of human history, there continues to be tension and violence between various groups. One group has been steadily rising in power for centuries, the Ahb Empire whose citizens aren't exactly human after genetic modifications to make them better suited to live in space and they have been conquering as many places as they can in order to seize control of vital travel points. Jinto's planet was one conquered by them and, thanks to negotiations by his father, he's now an Abh nobleman on his way to military school when the slow rumblings of discontentment throughout the galaxy reach a boiling point.

The Good: I wasn't expecting the series to be as heavily character driven as it was but Jinto and Lafiel (an Abh who initially was there to escort Jinto to school but then the two of them end up stuck together even longer) really bounce off of each other nicely and the show balances out it's more dialogue heavy early episodes with quite a bit of action later (which still has a lot of talking in it admittedly, just more phasers as well). I feel like the 90s/early 2000s were the golden age of space opera anime (that is, science fiction set in the sprawling stage of space) and while there have been shows like Bodacious Space Pirates in the past few years they're all just lacking something, epic that these shows from that time period had. I'm curious how this story continues in the sequels, clearly this was one, big introduction arc to get the viewers familiar with the characters and the setting and I wonder how exactly this story is going to end which is enough motivation for me to keep watching.

The Bad: So a lot of people have been complaining about adapations of light novels lately, because people love to complain, and I'm not surprised to see that this anime was based on a series of what I believe to be light novels for two reasons, the amount of technical detail (not a bad thing) and a really random middle of the story arc (a bad thing) which I've seen come up in a number of other long running series. I kinda see what they were trying to do with the, erm, let's just call it the middle of the season, introduce more conflicts and ideas that will shape the characters later as well as set up the third part of this season, but it was just odd enough that I just wanted to finish it and I just feel like they could have written this much better. 

The Audio: I watched the Japanese sub (since I don't even want to think about the quality of dub, it might not be terrible but it must have been made before they started getting consistently good) and that was perfectly good. Actually I was rather surprised to see that Jinto and Lafiel were voiced by women in their 30s/20s respectively, they both sounded really realistic to me (they had a lower pitch to their voices that I normally associate with a real child/teen doing voice work) and, this might sound a bit silly since I've never read the original novels, but their voices sounded like they were perfect for the characters to me. They were able to give the characters extra dimension, emotions, suggest things through the voice acting alone that I wouldn't have picked up just for the animation, I feel like I'm stating the obvious here but there was real acting involved here and I'm more impressed here than I am with most anime I see for that reason. Aside from that, I found the intro music terribly boring, skipped the ending most of the time so I'd have more time to watch another episode and thought it was cool how the opening narrations were in a completely made up language (which I think was based on French but don't quote me there, I still thought it was cool regardless).

The Visuals: As far as I can tell this show hasn't received a remaster (it's from 1999 or 2000 if I recall correctly) and obviously the DVDs I have aren't which is sad since while the art isn't terrible it is rather dated and some clean-up would make it look nicer for sure. The art style itself is dated but I didn't see anything wrong with the animation itself and it's not like people won't watch a show more than 10 years old (especially if you're a sci-fi anime, American, fan) although I do think that this art style probably helps turn some people off of the show.


So a solid 3 out of 5 stars for this show, now for me to figure out how I'll watch the rest of it (buying it is the obvious option but my budget for entertainment is now non-existent so this is going to take longer than I'd like). 

Movie Review: The Sky Crawlers

Unlike last year, I actually made sure to look up the hours of the university library near me over my winter break and managed to watch quite a bit of stuff in just a few weeks. This was the only thing I grabbed from their animation selection (by now I've seen just about everything they have that I'm interested in) since I remembered hearing some good things about it when it came stateside a few years ago which is pretty much all I need to try something out.

The Sky Crawlers

Summary: Sometime in the future war has practically been eliminated but, to prevent people from getting bored and starting real wars, now companies wage war against each other with Kildren, an experiment gone wrong that produces people that never age (mentally or physically) beyond their teens. These Kildren live hazy lives, it's hard to remember their own pasts and it's also hard to comprehend the dangers they face in every fight, is there anything more to their lives than this blur of similar days? 

The Good: Well that was a cynical take on war, I've seen a few other stories take the same idea (that wars are now fought by groups for the entertainment of others/to prevent people from fighting "real" wars) but even though this story never showed gore or the characters breaking down from their messed up world they live in it was certainly a sober story. 

The Bad: This film was excruciatingly slow and I really should have just bailed on it and watched something else. The problem was what little I remembered from the reviews mentioned a plot point which I thought was going to be the driving force of the movie and wanted to see if I had remembered correctly or if I had confused this film with another. It turns out that I was right, just that plot point (which was sorta-kinda alluded to but not exactly) which I thought was the most interesting part of the whole film isn't brought up until the last twenty minutes of a two hour film. I think I can see what Oshii was trying to do with this film, expressing how war can just become a part of life that no one questions and such, the problem is that A) I completely disagree with that sentiment and B) he chose such a boring way to do it that I don't see a single reason to question my beliefs and try to think differently (which means the film has failed as both entertainment and as an intellectual problem for me, never a good thing). 

The Audio: There was almost no background music throughout the entire movie, or if there was some it was so low that I didn't have my volume up loud enough to hear it, and while I could see why this stylistic choice was made I would have preferred a bit more sound myself. As for the voice acting, I watched this in Japanese and there was a lot of random English in the movie. The characters (who speak Japanese the entire rest of the time) only speak in English in the cockpits (TvTropes tells me that English is the international language for aviation so I guess that makes sense) and then when showing tourists around there's more English which sounds, well, a bit awkward. Certainly not the worst Engrish I've ever heard but it was just rather bizarre. I've seen countless shows, in English and Japanese, in a setting where the characters wouldn't be speaking either of those languages and I think the best thing to do is to have them just stick to one language and let the audience pretend it's being translated for it's convince. This can cause trouble if the story is also imply that multiple languages are being spoken but that wasn't the case at all here, I'm just confused why they made either of those choices.  

The Visuals: I do wonder if this film was made just so the animators would have a chance to make photo-realistic CGI airplanes, I was running around doing a few others things during the opening scenes so from a distance I was wondering if I had the right disc in, the CGI was so good that it fooled me from the back of the room. Aside from all of that (which does make up a good portion of the movie admittedly), everything looks a bit dull. The Kildren (or at least the male ones) have practically the same face (and, unless a character in-universe comments on how similar two or more characters look, I take this as a sign of laziness) and Kusangai looks like a younger, more emotionless, and crazier version of the Major from Ghost in the Shell. 

So I give this one and a half or two stars out of five and am really regretting checking this out and not Perfect Blue right now.

TV Series Review: Avatar: The Last Airbender (Book One: Water)

So, back in 2005 I had just recently been introduced to Miyazaki and had been seeing a lot of advertisements on Neopets for a new, American cartoon airing on Nickelodeon called Avatar: The Last Airbender. So I sat down to watch it the first night it aired and it was a bit different than I had expected, which was okay, but it hadn't quite grabbed me. The third episode wasn’t what I expected at all, I had been expecting something like Pokemonwhere the villain, Prince Zuko, chases the characters across the world in strange hijinks every week, not genocide and seeing other characters who Zuko went up against who seem like the real villains. So I kept watching and then the mid-season episode, “The Spirit World” happened. By this point I was already enjoying the show and, since this was the age of nigh-nu-programmable VHS players, I had to resort to watching this episode as I babysat a two year old neighbor instead of missing the episode and the bits that I caught blew my mind. The idea that the series would have a clear and concise beginning, middle, and end and that the episodes would not be random ones that could be watched out of order but rather following a cohesive plot was completely new to me and I loved it and that's what kept me coming back for the next three and a half years.

So where does that leave this review? Well, despite being a huge fan of the series I’ve never re-watched it entirely and there are a number of episodes I’ve only seen once so I had planned on re-watching the whole show before The Legend of Korra premiered. However, since Nick only announced the show a month before it’s air date (given their other, scheduling issues in the past, I thought I’d have a few months heads-up) that didn’t happen so now I’m trying to balance it out with everything else I’m watching. So here's the first season of the first show with both my current thoughts on the show and remembering how this seemed to a 13/14 year old with no experience with long form stories being told in anything other than books or magazines and certainly no experience with cartoons actually looking good.   

Avatar: The Last Airbender (book one, water, re-watch)

Summary: In another world there is a very specific kind of magic that allows people to manipulate one of the four elements (water, earth, fire, or air) called bending. Out of all these benders there is only one person who can control all four elements at once, one who is the reincarnation of the planet itself’s spirit (fittingly called The Avatar). But something has gone wrong, one hundred years ago the Fire Nation declared all out war on the rest of the world (the two Water Tribes, the great Earth Kingdom, and on the four Air Nomad temples) and completely wiped out the air nomads, the nation the avatar had recently reincarnated into and the avatar vanished. Things have been bleak ever since, that is until two kids from the Southern Water tribe, siblings Sokka and Katara, discover the avatar encased in an iceberg, named Aang, and set off to train him in the other elements so that he can save the world.

The Good: Re-watching the show I was surprised to see just how sarcastic the characters were all the time (I remembered that Sokka was, it’s in his nickname, but not how snarky Katara and even Aang could be) and the dialogue really felt like something my friends or I would have said in high school which is really hard to pull off. The characters do act rather mature for their age, to the point where it’s odd to see Aang act more like a 12 year old (especially compared to the later seasons), but they never seemed so mature that it jolted me out of the show. In addition to all of that (and as I mentioned earlier, a sturdy central plot) the show never treats it's viewers like idiots which isn't the most common thing for a show aimed at 8-12 year olds, the fact that a show aimed at such a young age group has such a large following in older fans is testament to how strong and engaging the writing, and really the whole show, is.   

The Bad: There are some random episodes in this season (special mention goes to “The Great Divide” which, when I first saw it, didn’t think it was so bad but was cringing when I re-watched it) and has the most “filler” of the three seasons. I don’t mind the “filler” episodes as much, they help establish characters and introduced others that would reappear in larger roles later on, but only about half of the 20 episodes were truly crucial to the overall plot. I did notice on the re-watch though that Zuko is especially slow to grow and develop and I wish he had grown a bit more here (especially considering how the entire show is set over just one year meaning that most of his latter character growth is in the course of just a few months). And I was a bit confused by Iroh, he doesn't undergo character growth like Zuko does but he's portrayed quite differently by the end of the series which again seems like such a huge change I wonder if that was something added in last minute.

The Audio: As I’ve said time and time again, I often don't pay much attention to the music in a show but I have been doing so more and more with each year. Even before I re-watched this show I could clearly remember specific bits of music when I watched this show in it’s original 2005 run, that’s pretty special music. I still adore the music used and it really does add to the scenes, I remember seeing “The Southern Air Temple” and being suspicious why there was such triumphant music being played during Zuko’s parts (I didn’t know the term anti-hero back then but the music tipped me off that Zuko was more than a bad guy, without it I never would have picked up on that). 

The Visuals: Re-watching this on Netflix has reminded me that this show didn’t have the largest budget when it started but they made good use of it. There is some rather conspicuous CGI on various fire nation vehicles (I remember seeing the tanks as the kid and being confused why they looked a bit different from everything else but couldn’t figure out why) but the numerous battle scenes look amazing every time. The choreography in this show is great, since the show aired I’ve seen some clips and demonstrations martial art styles and whenever I see one that was used in the show (Tai Chi*, Northern Style Shaolin, etc) I can immediately see where the inspiration came from and a few times I’ve been able to look at a clip and tell what style it was, the show managed to capture the martial arts just that well. I was surprised on the re-watch to see just how “cartoony” the characters and their facial expressions sometimes got, one thing I had liked about the show was how it seemed less cartoony than anything else on Nickelodeon/Cartoon Network/Disney/Kids WB but after seeing literally hundreds of other comics and cartoons since my take on that has changed a bit. It’s not a bad thing, just not a thing I had been expecting to discover.

So, when I find the time next (I'm currently watching 11 different anime series among other things) I'll continue on with book two and continue my re-watch. Actually, I've got another Avatar related review later in the week as well.....

*not technically a martial art but oh well

Anime Review: Last Exile: Fam the Silver Wing

It's been a while since Studio Gonzo did a full and proper tv show, the last one was Shangri-la from 2009 which had a rather cool premise but completely failed by the end (and the main reason why I get nervous whenever I see a sci-fi story trying to throw mysticism in, reaaaally didn't work here). Despite that I was curious to see Gonzo's newest offering, a sequel to the original Last Exile series which I enjoyed quite a bit. I don't consider the show a masterpiece as I have seen many other people do, the middle/two-thirds mark falls too flat for that, but like Hugo from yesterday it's a great example of a story starting out with a small premise and growing into something that encompasses the characters entire world. I was a bit confused by some of the early promotional material ("okay, how did Earth go from having one moon to seven, did we really mess up the planet SO MUCH that we destroyed the moon in the process or something?") but thankfully those details were cleared up by the series, even if some other important ones weren't.


Last Exile: Fam the Silver Wing

Summary: Set two years after the first series and now on the planet Earth, Fam is an orphan who was taken in by the Sky Pirates when she was just an infant and loves nothing more but finding adventure in the skies with her friend Giselle as her navigator. But the two of them quickly get out of their depth as they become entangled in a brewing war between the imperialistic Ades Federation and find themselves siding with the young heir to the opposing Turan kingdom Millia.

The Good: If the viewer considers Millia instead of Fam to be the main character in this story (despite the fact that her name is in the title Fam feels and acts more like a supporting protagonist) then the story works very well showing how Millia starts out as a pampered and privileged young girl who must quickly grow up and seize control of her world lest it be completely wiped out. There are some returning characters from the original show and, while sometimes they aren't given enough screen time (and by that I mean multiple times they disappear for three or four episodes without the show having a 30 second scene showing what they are currently doing) they manage to have important roles but never upstage the main trio. The show is exciting and fun overall but when you look too closely at some of the details it starts to lose it's glean. 

The Bad: If the viewer considers Fam instead of Millia the main character and lead of this series then it starts to fall rather flat. I have no problem with Fam being an optimistic character, indeed with how dark the series gets at points it's needed, but her character development is spotty and occurs much too late in the series (and there's really no reason she should've had so little, even side characters need to grow in a story). But a bigger problem than Fam is the overall villain and their plan which just doesn't make sense. At the heart of the conflict is a land war similar to the Israel-Palenstine conflict of today, who is supposed to live where? Do the original settlers who were displaced for hundreds of years have a right to take the land or do the people who moved in the intern and have no other "native land" than that have a right to stay? The problem here is that not only does the story contradict itself, the returnees from the first show have found livable land far away from everyone else so there clearly is more land to go around, but I'm also highly skeptical that the only liveable land is right around what the fans believe to be the Mediterranean Sea, the creators seem to have completely forgotten there's more than 2/3 continents here. Not only is this conflict had to take seriously because of it's flaws but the villains actions in the end just don't make sense and it's frustrating because some of the other characters could have made better villains. While many of the staff from the first series returned the writers did not and it's a difference that is keenly felt.  

The Audio: Both the original and LE:Fam share musical composer Hitomi Kuroishi and, as a fan of Celtic inspired music, I was very pleased with this choice and the music sounds gorgeous. The music has a very similar feel to the music from the first series and is well-placed. The opening and ending songs aren't as memorable as the ones from the original but they work alright and don't feel out of place. The voice acting is solid as well, I believe all of the returning characters except for Alvis used the same voice actors as before, although it sounds like the English dub will have a hard time doing the same*.

The Visuals: The art was surprisingly a mixed bag here, while the CGI looked rather good in many places (and blending CGI with traditional 2D animation is one thing Gonzo used to be good at) there are many times where if you pause and look closely the regular art looks a bit sloppy or the characters look off. LE:Fam is hardly the only show to do this (and I'd argue that it never gets as bad as the background messiness of Persona 4 the Animation) but it is distracting to have some very gorgeous scenes right alongside overly simplistic details. In the end I still liked the look of this show very much and  hope that some of it was cleaned up/corrected for the DVD/BR releases.


It may not sound like it but I did really like this show, it just went down in it's second half and is certainly not as good as the original. There is one more problem with it that didn't quite fit in with the review, there were several events in the show where viewers went "wait, that's different from the original show, how did that happen?" and everyone had to throw up their arms and go "we don't know!" There is a manga that is set to bridge the two series, Travelers of the Hourglass/Sunadokei no Tabibito but it only started running the same time the anime aired so that so far has raised more questions than it has answered. Honestly I wish that manga had started back last February or March when the anime was announced so it had more of a lead and started to cover things (in an ideal world it would've been finished before LE:Fam or been a show itself) but hopefully in another couple of years this show will make at least a bit more sense. For US/Canadian readers the show can be viewed for free on Funimation's website. 



*to clarify, Last Exile was original licensed and dubbed by the now-dead Genon with California actors and both shows are now licensed by Funimation who is based in Texas. Worse yet I've heard that Dio's voice actor no longer does much acting and I might have heard that another actor had passed away and there's still another half dozen or so returning characters that they'll either have to match or make special accommodations to make this work.

Webcomic Review Month 2012: Outsider

Hmm, more musing on names but I'm surprised that last year I didn't have any webcomics that started with "N" or "O" yet this year I had a few (couldn't review one since it appears to have vanished off of the internet but it still counts). Actually, I had simply forgotten about this comic last year since it's one with a very strange update schedule, according to tvtropes the comic started back in 2001 but only averages 8 pages a year (it appears there's also a bible of sorts for the series to make up for that but I have yet to find out if it's actually online or not). I still like the series and, obviously since I'm reviewing it here, do recommend it but potential readers should keep all of that in mind.

Outsider by Jim Francis
 In the far off future humanity has begone to colonize and expand out into the wide universe only to discover that not only does other life exist but it's engaged in a brutal, long war. There are two sides to the war, the brutish Umiack and the mysterious Loroi and neither side acknowledges neutral groups so humanity must soon make a choice whom to side with if they wish to live. However it seems like Ensign Jardin, a low ranking officer of a survey team, may have accidentally made first contact and discovered that things look even bleaker for humanity but that humans have a few tricks up their sleeves yet.

While not a common story it's not an unheard of plot premise, a raging alien war with humans stuck between a rock and a hard place just looking for a way to survive. I like that so far the comic has gone to lengths to show that there is no easy/good/right choice, although there are hints that not all is lost however which I also like. Jim Francis admits that the series has a lot of artistic influences from a lot of sources including anime which shows in the art, even though the page orientation are much more like a Western comic than an Eastern one the art designs have some anime touches for sure* which, given my taste in comics, doesn't bother me at all. As stated earlier, despite it's age the comic is still on the shorter side (just a hair under 100 pages) so currently it doesn't take long to catch up and if you like sci-fi set in space with aliens and inter-galactic conflict I say give it a shot and just check back in every month or so to see if it updated.

*I'm actually watching the space opera Crest of Stars right now so I think the Loroi look a bit like Abh, probably simply because of the blueness and elf-ears, it's not among the influences listed in any case.  

Webcomic Review Month 2012: Mahou Shonen Fight, Modest Medusa, Monster Pulse, My Finn

Just moving right along here, I've honestly run out of witty things to say about webcomics here by now (except that yes, I read some really odd ones but I think I said that at the very beginning) so let's keep this brief, provide a short link to the comics from last year, and then move onto all of the lovely comics here today.

Mahou Shonen Fight by DustyJack and JadePrince

Mike just wanted a normal life at his new high school, something average and boring. However, as luck often has it for heroes who wish for ordinary lives, he instead gets an exciting, adventure filled life as he is possessed by the spirit of summer who, along with the other spirits and teens possessed by them, decide the best thing to do in this situation is use their powers to save the world.

This comic is simply fun, although this is coming from someone who really likes magical girl stories and still starts giggling whenever she finds magical boys. The art is cutesy and the story is a bit cheesy but that's what you need in these situations, magical girl shows usually have an overall light-hearted tone so why shouldn't a magical boys series? I am glad that the series seems to be introducing a main antagonist however, now to see if it really follows in the vein of magical girl stories and has one boss after another until the series finally ends....

  Modest Medusa by Jake Richmond
One night Jake came home to discover that his toilet had flooded and there is now a child gorgon living in his house (since his toilet is the portal to another world, who knew?). They're none too polite, eat all the chocodiles, have no idea how this world works, and act like a general freeloader. But at the very least Jake and his niece Marah are getting some exciting stories out of this.

I swear, I feel like I walked into an alternate world and found their version of Squid Girl, it's a bit unnerving. Comparisons aside, Modest Medusa is a comedy which sometimes has arcs, it's currently in it's longest arc to date, but often the day to day gags are unrelated and it works alright. It's not my favorite comedy comic out there, some days I simply don't find the strip amusing, but it's not terrible by any means and considering how subjective humor can be I'm sure that plenty of people will love it more than I like it. And on a side note, I had no idea chocodiles were real until I put together this review, guess that's what I get for living on the east coast.

 Monster Pulse by Magnolia Porter

From the creator of Bobwhite a very different kind of comic, a fantasy story where various kids have had body parts (a heart, an eye, etc.) changed into monsters and they both fight and try to evade the government agency that made this happen.

The premise is a simple one but still rather neat, I can only think of one story with a similar premise* and it's certainly unlike most for kids/all ages comics I've seen. For one thing the story fully embraces the creepiness and horror of kids suddenly having their body parts come to life and the fact that this was done on purpose by a government agency, the story wouldn't be nearly as interesting if the government had been sympathetic or if the story had been more light-hearted. The comic is still in it's early stages but updates regularly and is paced briskly so I can give it a very solid recommendation regardless of that.

My Finn by Daiku

Set in an alternate fantasy world version of Ireland called Glen, Glen is a peaceful island nation which has recently come under attack from the invading nation in the south, Sem Icim. Along with the also un-conquered nation of Patrio the people of Glenn start to fight back and at the center of this conflict is a young girl named Lalin who has no memory of her past but apparently did SOMETHING big....

I'll admit that part of the reason I started reading this webcomic is because I find the art adorable, the style looks a bit like the "made in America manga!" which were all the rage five or six years ago but the style works well here. The plot is also interesting, it moves quite quickly (it doesn't seem like who Lalin "really" is will be a secret much longer and that's normally a plot point that really gets dragged out), it's always nice to see more than two sides in a conflict, and it's simply unusual for me to enjoy a story where "it got worse" seems to be a running theme. Sometimes it's hard to take a story of invasion seriously where the invaders are roundly trounced every time they fight the "good guys" but so far that's not what's happening here and I'm really curious where everything is going to go next (as a quick warning though, the story is currently on hiatus and stopped at a rather dramatic point so potential readers might want to check back in at the beginning of April to give it time to get going again).

 

*Variante which is an older and kinda obscure title that's currently out of print 

TV Series Review: Doctor Who (Genesis of the Daleks)

In case people were wondering, no I got sidetracked and haven't done my write-up about the author event yet, honestly I'm just not sure how interesting it would be to most people. Of course, I'm not sure how many people are interested in seeing me explore even more Classic Doctor Who but I suspect that it's at least a few more people. This time around I tried out one of the Fourth Doctor's adventures (with Sarah Jane and Harry as companions, Sarah Jane should be familiar to fans of the new series since she's appeared in a few episodes, got a spin-off show and her actress, Elizabeth Sladen, died this past spring), one that dealt with the origins of the Dalek's themselves. Russel T. Davis has said that this is where the Time War that would eventually wipe out the Time Lords started (ie, the meddling in the Dalek's creation) and even without knowing that it's a rather depressing episode, clearly the Dalek's are still around in the current series so it's everyone knows how this is all going to end.

Doctor Who- The Genesis of the Daleks

Summary: The Doctor and company have been pulled from the Tardis mid-flight to undertake a secret mission from the Time Lords, go back in time to Sakro and either manipulate the newly created Dalek's so they become a more peaceful race or destroy one of the universes' greatest menaces at their birth.

The Good: Despite the serial's foregone conclusion this story has a pretty tight plot, good pacing and suspense, exactly what it needs to hold people's attention for six, half-hour episodes. Once again the companions prove that they're perfectly capable of getting in and out of trouble all by themselves (although Sarah Jane isn't quite as capable as she was in NuWho) and it's interesting to see that the Doctor doesn't worry quite as much when his companions go missing, compared to NuWho anyway, and simply seems confident that they'll do alright. Tom Baker plays an interesting Doctor where it's always easy to remember that he is an alien, not human, which is something other actors sometimes seem to forget. There's just something about the way he acts that makes him seem different, it's no wonder that for so many people Tom Baker is "their Doctor."

The Bad: If you hadn't already guessed that Daleks were supposed to be alien Nazis then this serial really beats you over the head with the idea. Barely any of the characters other than the Doctor, Sarah Jane and Harry are remotely likable which gets a little frustrating, the war on Sakro that starts everything also seems to have Black and Black Mortality, really it's a wonder that the Time Lords didn't tell the Doctor to blow up everything from the start. Sometimes it seems like the characters are too trusting of Davros or not doing enough to prevent his plans but honestly, wouldn't the viewers have felt the same way the characters did if they didn't already know how the Daleks acted?

The Audio: The opening theme seems to have changed a little bit again and other than that there isn't a lot of memorable music from the serial. One interesting bit however, and I don't know if this was on purpose or not (I suspect it probably was), was seeing how similar the Daleks' voices were to Davros' own voice, as if he tried to make the Daleks in his image. It's not obvious every time he speaks but when he gets angry and starts yelling or drawing out his words like the Daleks do his voice becomes more and more synthesized which I thought was a rather clever little detail.

The Visuals: When the show doesn't have to rely on crazy special effects it's a lot easier to take the story seriously and thankfully this serial doesn't need a lot of special effects. By this point any Doctor Who fan is going to be used to the design of the Daleks, although Davros looks a little different from his later appearances, and combine that with rather generic looking sets (wastelands, small rooms that could have any number of purposes, a sanitary looking lab) and there's nothing to distract the viewer or to draw them out of the viewing experience.

I enjoyed this serial quite a bit as well and I really like having stories were there is more than one companion in the Tardis, for some reason it just seems that having three or more people means that the characters get to develop and act more as they bounce off of each other and it's a pleasent change from NuWho where the majority of the time it's one girl and the Doctor in the Tardis (and yes this means that I love having Amy and Rory together in the Tardis and Jack or River Song appearing for a few episodes always seemed to make things more interesting as well).