Anime Review: Sankarea

In case some people are wondering how I'm currently tackling my anime backlog, since it's certainly been all over the place, I'm trying to rotate between my queue on hulu, my queue on Crunchyroll, and any DVDs I/a friend/a local library might have, I'm determined to get this to-watch list down to a more manageable size by the new year! And this title was a long time coming anyway, I actually wanted to watch it when it came out last spring but by the time Funimation got the simulcast up on their site (I think they were three weeks behind this time, sheesh) my schedule was already set and I just didn't have room to add anything in. So I waited until I found time and made sure to do it before the DVD/BR set came out just in case I fell in love with the show so much that I wanted to get the LE edition of it. 

Sankarea

Summary: Chihiro has an obsession with zombies that goes beyond healthy and is rather creepy, poetically enough. So his family isn't entirely surprised to find out that he experimented on the late family cat, what is surprising is that he succeeds and accidentally resurrects a local girl as well!

The Good: When the show focused on what I expected, some rom-com with zombies, then I really enjoyed the show. Chihiro isn't the most likable character but he's alright and I rather liked Rea as well. I feel like the writing was a bit above the average for a shonen rom-com (which isn't the best moniker for the show but I don't know of a better one), both of the characters grow as people and closer to each other and stay that way, there's no one episode development to have it rescinded later for the sake of drawing out the story. And when the show focuses on that it's genuinely good and if anyone's worried about the gore don't be, there's actually barely any in the show.

The Bad: Whenever either the grandfather or the childhood friend/cousin (Wanko) appeared on screen my interest in the show sharply dropped since then it would bring out all of it's unfunny running gags and really generic love triangle antics (made even more annoying by the fact that there IS no love triangle and Wanko seems to acknowledge this half the time and the other half she's just to immature to know when to butt out). Sadly this happens pretty often and combine that with the fact that the show just didn't have quite enough material for 12 episodes (I do wonder why they didn't switch the Mero-centric episode out with the first OVA episode, 13, however, that would have made much more sense) so it seemed to wander a bit at times and I didn't enjoy it as much as I hoped. 

The Production Values: Holy moley, someone at Studio Deen actually has some design skills! It varies from episode to episode, and it pops up more in the earlier episodes than the later one, but a lot of the scenes are styled and laid out very stylistically (for those who don't understand how that works, think of how deliberate Utena or Penguindrum were with their designs, just not at that level) and that was really nice to see. I even flipped through the first volume of the manga (since Kodansha Comics just put it out a month ago) and yup, this was all the anime's doing, I really wonder who was in charge of that. Other than that the story looks and sounds pretty average but even then those artistic moments are enough to make it stand out in a crowd, or at least from nearly everything else Studio Deen has produced.



In the end I'm giving this show a 3 out of 5 for having some great parts and then a lot of parts I didn't like (I still have no idea what was up with the second ova, episode 14, just, what the hell). There was enough I disliked that I don't feel the need to rewatch the series and/or buy it yet I would watch a second season since the show hinted at some even greater plots lurking in the backgrond and I'd like to see those. However, I doubt I'll read the manga since what I saw on my flip through didn't catch my eye, I'd have to see a lot of people praising it for me to pick it up. For those who want to try this out head on over to hulu where funimation has the 12 episodes of the tv series streaming (not the OVAs sadly).

Comic Review: My Boyfriend is a Monster 1: I love him to pieces

Sorry for the delay posting this, school and sewing projects just piled on me yesterday and I had no time to sit down and write this. Actually, going to get a post up either later tonight or tomorrow about that, I'm having to change my schedule up again in November, partially for NaNo and partially because I'm afraid that I'm still going to have crazy amounts of homework to deal with.

As for the book, I found it at the local library, looked like a cute zom-rom-com (I do believe that's an actual genre too) and read through the whole thing in about one half hour sitting. It might be part of a series, since I've found a number of similarily titled books on Amazon (all made by different people however) but I read it as a standalone and it worked just fine like that.

My Boyfriend Is a Monster 1: I Love Him to Pieces by Evanne Tsang, Illustrated by Janing Görrissen

Summary: Dicey may be the star of the baseball team while Jack is on track to be the school valedictorian but they get along surprising well when they have to work together on a health project. Well enough that they start getting interested in each other, too bad their first date is the day the zombie apocalypse breaks out in town.

The Good: I like stories that purposefully subvert the jock and nerd stereotypes since honestly those tropes never seemed that true to me and it's just hard to take a story that builds it's characters off of them seriously. So it was fun to see Dicey and Jack get along the way that regular classmates would and then grow more interested in each other as the story went along. They also held their own pretty well in the zombie apocalypse and it was a cute, quick story in that respect.

The Bad: There were some illogical moments in the story though, why didn't Jack/his parents want him to get evacuated and instead wait in the town for the government officials to come? Clearly it was so the story would get to the "my boyfriend is a monster" part but that part felt dumb to me and, since it was the reason a lot of other things happened, I felt like it weakened the story overall.

The Art: The art actually looks a lot like what I would find in a webcomic, there's a bit of manga/anime influence to the characters but it's clear that the artist isn't trying to imitate that style and there is a lot of Western influences in the art as well. I really liked the art style, it was the cute but not too cute style I like, lots of nicely inked details and backgrounds and actually didn't clash with the story despite it's slightly cutesy appearance.

It's not a super special story or one that does anything different but it was cute and mostly worked so I enjoyed it. It's odd to call a zom-rom-com fluff reading but that's what it was for me, a little fun thing to read when I needed something to do and enjoyed doing it as well.   

Manga Review: Biomega (volume 1)

I dropped by the local library looking for more comics to read for here (I'm working my way through the rest of the Akira manga but it takes me more than four days to read five volumes of manga, these days anyway) and I stumbled across this one at the library. It looked interesting, is part of the Sig Ikki line (whose books I've enjoyed before, like Ooku, Children of the Sea, and Afterschool Charisma) so why not?

Biomega by Tsutomu Nihei

Summary: The year is 3005 CE and the majority of Earth's population are now zombie-like drones, courtesy of NSS virus. However, there still appears to he hope for mankind in the form of people who can transmute the virus and it's Zoichi Kanoe's job to find these people and protect them.

The Good: The story is low on words but big on action and the action sequences are well done, the eyes just glide across the pages and the transitions from panel to panel feel very smooth. Because of that the volume is a fast read, not that a volume of manga takes particularly long to read anyway, and the action barely stops making it go faster still. There is a small epilogue to the volume, titled "Interlink" which provides a hook for the next volume with some information that wasn't on the back cover and which suggests that there is more to the story than there first appears.

The Bad: There are stories that go for "show don't tell" and others that go for "tell not show." And then there is Biomega which barely shows nor tells, it takes almost the entire volume for all the information on the back cover. True most of the backstory can be gleaned in the first few chapters (clearly something has gone wrong on Earth that has resulted in massive environmental damage and zombies) but the story so far is moving quite slowly. There does seem to be a rather large plot hole in the series (namely, a colony on Mars that hasn't had contact with Earth in seven centuries also has the virus yet, the virus is seven centuries old, then it really should have spread even farther than it has) but hopefully future volumes will clear up exactly what triggered this epidemic. Also, why is there a talking bear who can shoot guns? Has science progressed far enough that there are now genetically modified bears or does this just come under "rule of cool"?

The Art: There is nary a screen tone to be seen in this work, a few gradients in the background perhaps but everything else is meticulously done in pen and ink. The rough edges make the art work perfectly with the setting, a broken world with many unpolished edges of it's own and it's a good thing too since the art is the main focus of the book. As per usual, the Sig Ikki books are slightly large than the standard US manga volume which makes for easier holding and really show off the art. Also, the cover is slightly darker than the above image, that cover seems to be from a different edition actually but it's essentially what the US cover looks like.


So, barely anything is explained and nothing, other than the sketchy pen and ink style, set this manga apart from half a dozen other cyberpunk stories. Do I want to read the next one? Eh, nothing compels me to seek out the rest of them but if I come across the rest of the volumes (wikipedia lists six in total) I'll certainly check them out.

Webcomic Review: The Zombie Hunters

With how popular zombies are these days I'm surprised this is the only zombie webcomic I follow. Actually, I can't even think of that many other webcomics about zombies (especially compared to the number of YA books about them these days), if anyone has any good recommendations be sure to leave them in the comments!

The Zombie Hunters
With a more cinematic flair than most other comics I read (the opening of the comic reminds me so much of an action movie), the comic is pretty much what the title says. It's after the zombie apocalypse, it appears that the majority of the world is overrun and our characters are all infected. Here zombism works that the bite doesn't kill you but once you do die you rise up if were infected and those survivors are shunned a because of it.  Our characters however could care less about that, they're happiest when they're in the field scavenging whatever has been left behind and kicking zombie ass, despite all the dangers. Currently the comic is in a really big flashback explaining how one member joined the team and another died and, when that finishes up, I really don't know where the story is going to go next. Maybe they'll find a cure for zombism but I really can't tell at this point, just hope there is a plan for it!


Hmm, I think I annoyed the artist for this comic in a livestream once by thinking that Jenny and Milo were siblings not lovers. There was some comment along the lines of "do I need to draw them doing it so people stop making this mistake?1?" but, in my defense, I've made this same exact mistake with other webcomics, guess I'm just too used to seeing siblings in anime who look nothing alike and extrapolate from there. And that wraps up the alphabet folks, yay! Tomorrow I'll make a post about completed webcomics and then I'll have a couple of other special posts to round off the month and then it's back to regular reviews.