Anime Review: The World is Still Beautiful

Running too behind for a weekly round up this week so let's get going, I've actually made some progress on my backlog!

The World is Still Beautiful (Soredemo Sekai wa Utsukushii)

Book Review: The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making

Since this is really late I'll be brief, I was aware of this book when it was first a serialized novel online but was always too busy to get around to reading it. I've also been hesitant to try it out since I've seen reviews of the later novels (the book was later picked up by a traditional publisher, hence why my library had a copy) that say they've gone downhill. The good news is that this book could be read entirely on it's own so if you're nervous like me worry not, no obligation to keep reading!

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by  Catherynne M. Valente, illustrated by Ana Juan

Movie Review: Giovanni's Island

When the JICC announced the date for this film I was a little surprised, I've never heard anyone else talk about the movie aside from Enzo at Lost in Anime. When I asked if I should go he told me yes, absolutely, that more people should see the film so I took advtange of the showing!

Giovanni's Island

Summer 2015 Anime Mid-Season Round-UP

So, we're over halfway there and this season isn't quite as dire as I feared! I did drop Ranpo Kitan since I found I had absolutely no interest in the second episode, and Rokka turned out to be part-mystery anyway, I still haven't had a chance to watch Knights of Sidonia 2 and I've decided to hold off until the very end of the season to see if Charlotte is worth watching or not. With that in mind, here's the cream of the crop and then everything else.

Weekly Round UP and This Girl Plays the Manga Tag Game!

Well this week's posts were way more delayed than I expected. Basically, I've been using a computer more at my new job so my wrist started aching (it does this every now and then, I'm not too worried) and it was bad enough Monday night that I put off the Fate/ review, had to play catch-up to get my Lucky Star review for OASG written on time, I had a bad headache when I tried to initially write my already-delayed review of Strays so I lost my one day of breathing room I usually had and then Born Wicked was just a bad book I didn't want to talk about. Hopefully no problems like that this week, currently I have no headaches and it's my knee that hurts not my wrist! 

To further prove how exciting my life is, Muse of Subdued Fangirling tagged me in the Manga Tag game and I have pulled together quite a few pictures to make this work!

Book Review: Born Wicked

Sorry for the delay in all of the reviews this week guys, details tomorrow but it's nothing exciting, just too many things going wrong at once. And speaking of things going wrong....

Born Wicked by Jessica Spotswood

Webcomic Review: Strays

Normally I try to use Webcomic Wednesdays to focus on currently updating series but since this series literally ends in a few weeks and I have such a backlog of comics that I wouldn't be able to talk about it regularly until nearly October, I'm going to be flexible here and explain why I kept up with this series for nearly six out of it's eight years.

Strays by  Samantha Whitten and Stacey Pefferkorn

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

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

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

Weekly Round-UP: August 9th - 15th

Well I hit a milestone this week here on NI by having 1000 posts posted, wohoo! I'm surprised it took this many years actually since I've been putting posts up since 2010 and started new posts New Years Day 2011 (the timing was an accident, that was just when I ran out of old livejournal reviews to put up!). Sadly, although perhaps unsurprisingly, it was a rather negative review of the comic In Real Life that was lucky post one thousand, I really did go that comic hoping to like it but the "mighty whitey" parts were too much for me (which is weird since I double checked and Jen Wang is in Asian-American, that just leaves me more stumped about all of this!).

As for more positive reviews this week, I continue to wind down my reviews of the spring shows with another fluff/popcorn flick Seraph of the End (vampires! intense friendships! costumes that cosplayers are eagerly planning!), a book that reminds me a lot of another, A Long Long Sleep, and then on OSAG I do my best to cajole more people into reading The Morose Mononokean. They only have the first volume up right now and the wording of the summary makes me worried that this is a test so clearly the best thing to do is give the series as many page views as possible to get them to put up the other three volumes and beyond!

Book Review: A Long Long Sleep

I forgot I read this book about a week after I finished it. Normally that's a bad sign except, well, I have no idea why I forgot this book. Thank god I'm doing the summer reading program at the library (yes folks, the DC system has kids, teens, AND adult summer reading programs, I got a free burrito and baseball tickets from doing it!) which has me logging all of my reading and I was able to look it up this way. 

A Long Long Sleep by Anna Sheehan

Comic Review: In Real Life

For once I found out about this comic long before it came out (instead of discovering it years later on a library shelf) since publisher First Second made the odd choice to start marketing the book 11 months before it was even out. Like the current American election cycle, starting that early seemed a bit excessive to me, although Cory Doctorow's original short story ( "Anda's Game") had been out on the internet even longer so maybe that was the line of thinking. Regardless, I liked the preview I found on Tor.com and I was already familiar with Doctorow (loved Little Brother, couldn't make it more than a few chapters in For the Win) and Jen Wang (I really liked Koko Be Good) so this was a must-read for me as soon as my library got its copies.

In Real Life story copyright Cory Doctorow, art and adaption by Jen Wang

Anime Review: Seraph of the End

No matter how much anime I watch, at heart I'm still a book/comics fan and I'm much more likely to spend an evening binge reading 20 or so chapters of a manga than marathoning a single show. Which is how I was already familiar with this story, I was actually sad to realize that this first half of the anime ends precisely where I left off in my binge reading, I watched the show to see the parts of the story I hadn't read yet!

Seraph of the End (Owari no Seraph)

Weekly Round-UP: August 2nd - 8th

I realized after posting last week's write up that I actually forgot to include a few links but let's start with what I posted this week. This week I talked about Show by Rock (which is cute but totally a fluff show, also I want figurines of half of the characters please and thank you), the webcomic Kiwi Blitz (which I also wouldn't mind figures of!), and a rather decisive book-becoming-a-tv-series The Magicians (just about every review I've seen of it/person I've talked to have mentioned how it seems to be a love it or hate it series). 

What I forgot to post last week were the Shoujo You Should Know posts and, since Muse and I have finished up that column for the summer, a few final thoughts on things I forgot to include in the posts below the cut.

Book Review: The Magicians

Well, since this book is being adapted into a tv series later this year clearly this means it's time for me to read it and tell everyone how bad the adaption will be! Naaah, actually since this book popped up on my to-read list I must have had it on my list for several years now and I would never go so far as to say an adaption will be terrible before I see it, although I might concede that it's going to be a tricky thing to adapt....

The Magicans by Lev Grossman

Webcomic Review: Kiwi Blitz

Sorry for the delay guys, ended up having a much more full work day than I expected yesterday and wanted to make sure this review was actually coherent before I posted (which I'm sure everyone will grudgingly admit they prefer)

While I don't regret trying to review a webcomic every month, since I'm not worried about running out of comics to talk about anytime soon, I am starting to realize just how delayed all of my regular comic reviews are becoming now. Partially since I alternate them with movies/tv shows every week anyway, since I usually don't consume enough of either of those to have a full review each week, I'm really wondering if I should come up with a new plan so I can talk about even more, wonderful comics here....

  Kiwi Blitz by Mary Cagel

Anime Review: Show by Rock

Yep, in a way I watched two shows about music last season, although this show and Sound! Euphonium were so different that I tended to compare this one more to Wish Upon the Pleiades instead. They were both rather cute, fluffy shows that you could almost believe were for kids at first, especially since the original game/character project is from the same company that created Hello Kitty.

Show by Rock!

Weekly Round-UP: July 26th-August 1st

Figuring out a schedule is hard, in fact I'd argue that you never really find one but rather you get to a point where you're making smaller and smaller adjustments. On that note, anime review is coming out Tuesday this week instead of Monday since I know I'll be too busy Monday for sure, hopefully with my new work schedule this won't happen as much but this Monday is special.

For those who missed it, I finally got this week's book review up earlier today (Prudence), I also pushed forward a radio drama review this week so that I could highlight a Sparkler Monthly title during their kickstarter (which ends in one day!, I choose to talk about Tokyo Demons) and for anime I wrote a lot about Sound! Euphonium. That show ended up being a show I could talk almost endlessly about, I'd love to compare it to Honey and Clover actually about how the characters are both real characters and fantastic representations of the people you find in creative fields in school although it's been years since I've seen H&C so I might need to rewatch/reread that first. Everything else below the cut~

Book Review: Prudence

Well this is later than I wanted, both for this week and in general. I think I read this book back in April or so, my library got the book surprisingly fast, and I'm not sure why I forgot about it since I have plenty to say about it....

Prudence by Gail Carriger