Sunday, November 29, 2015

Weekly Round-UP: November 23-29

Well, I did better with posts this week, although it feels easier to get away with half assed posts if you don't really like what you're talking about. I mean, I did enjoy Classroom*Crisis a fair bit but Belle Epoque was a mixture of fine and boring and Brave Story was just bad. This week is looking a bit crazy for me so hopefully I've gotten enough pre-writing done over the too-short Thanksgiving holiday to stay on track. Should probably get back to that, I'm only four hours into an eight plus train ride after all....

Friday, November 27, 2015

Book Review: Belle Epoque

I don't really have anything to open up this review with so I'll just make a general announcement first. It only recently occurred to me that it is both late November and that I've barely read any 2015 books. So, while I have checked out several armfuls of them from the local library I doubt that I will have reviews of any of them up before the end of the year and thus, like this year I'm going to push my general listing of the best books of 2015 back. Probably not until June this time, this year I realized I didn't actually need a full six months, but March or April seems likely.

Belle Epoque by Elizabeth Ross


Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Movie Review: Brave Story

While I can't say that I've seen many movies in theaters this year, there simply weren't many I was interested in, I can at least say that I've seen quite a few anime movies thanks to the JICC so once again, thanks guys, I really do appreciate it (even if I don't always like the films).

Brave Story


Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Anime Review: Classroom*Crisis

Okay, baby-steps to getting these reviews back on time, baby steeeeps. Oh and I'd like to note, while I still have over half of my summer shows to review, this is the last of the "this was good for sure" tier of shows. Nothing else was terrible, I don't have the time to finish terrible, full seasons of anime, but going forward I had quite a few more problems with the next few shows on the list.

Classroom*Crisis


Sunday, November 22, 2015

A round-up

Hey guys, so I'm really far off track from where I wanted to be review-wise right now. There's a bunch of things going on, work is getting crazier as my contract is only a few weeks away from finishing, which means I'm also job hunting (which is never fun but the fastest I have ever found a job, and that was a very basic, retail job where I already had experience, was 2.5 months, I have really terrible luck at this), and I'm trying to relax in the evenings by working on sewing which also eats up time. There is no especially good way to balance these things, I'm hoping that with my Thanksgiving vacation I can at least build up a small backlog of posts but beyond that I'm at a bit of a loss for how to make this all work.

So, what have I put out since I last did a round-up? For starters, I'm really enjoying Concrete Revolutio and a few episodes back some other folks convinced me to do a special post on it since I was apparently the only person watching the show who also has very specialized knowledge of Cold War nuclear bomb accidents that the show was clearly referring to. I mean that entirely seriously too, for all that this show has a lot of things going on in it at once and it's very reference heavy, if you are familiar with what it's talking about then the ideas aren't that hard to spot, like realizing that the protests in the show are at the same time there were a lot of real world student protests. At the same time though, I do wonder if it's even possible for anyone aside from the director/writer to even pick up on everything in the show because there are so many ideas floating around (thankfully while they are cool to notice you only really need to be familiar with say 20% of them to get the show and a lot of it is basic like, different superhero tropes). I have a few more thoughts on ConRevo, and all of the other fall shows I'm watching, right over here in it's own round-up.

For more anime posts, I did start my reviews on the summer 2015 series and once again I'm going from best to worst so, logically, my top two series of the summer were Gatchman Crowds Insight and Knights of Sidonia: The Battle for Planet Nine (it aired on Netflix in July so it's totally a summer show!) which were both really great. Then I continued the sci-fi trend with reviews of the webcomic O Human Star and a combined book and movie review of The Martian, all of which are also really good.  But there was one dud in the mix which was the non-sci-fi title, The Last Dragonslayer which had a plot that dragged and simply sloppy world-building. Thankfully the next dragon related book I have in my to-read pile should be much better, although with the number of books in that pile I'm not sure when I'll get around to posting it!

Saturday, November 21, 2015

Fall 2015 Anime Mid-season Round-UP

Guys I'm sorry, I just cannot seem to get back on track with these reviews. This is getting ridiculous so, as I try to sort this all out, an "extra" post of sorts. We're halfway through the fall season and here are my thoughts on what I'm still following and what's been dropped. And remember, if you do watch streams, the "best" time to watch them is to finish within one week of airing. Funimation has said several times that those are the views that matter the most when they determine the future of a title so if you love it, make all your friends watch it ASAP!

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Book & Movie Review: The Martian

So I mentioned I was going to try this a few weeks ago but a refresher for folks who have forgotten; I'm always at a loss for how to review adaptions based off of books that I have read recently. I don't want to just review one or the other but it's tricky to write something substantial both times without either repeating myself or spending the bulk of the review simply making comparisons. So, since I read The Martian quite recently I'm going to try this, one review to talk about the story as it relates to both version and how the versions differed (with characterization, pacing etc) and yes, saying if one version should be avoided over the other. I know that some people are a little, hesitant, to call a movie etc bad if it's not a faithful adaptation of a book but let's face it, a lot of times those are bad because they take out what made the story work (like, in terms of coherency, basic building parts) and I am anything but hesitant to tell you guys if a story was crap.


The Martian Original story by Andy Weir



Thursday, November 12, 2015

Anime Review: Knights of Sidonia: Battle for Planet Nine

At some point I will get back on track with this blog, I've just been distracted and tired a lot lately. So let me keep this short and get to the meat of the post, Knights of Sidonia is back and I couldn't be more thrilled about it.


Knights of Sidonia: Battle for Planet Nine


Sunday, November 8, 2015

Anime Review: Gatchman Crowds Insight

I, like everyone else, was surprised when I heard that were was going to be a sequel to the 2013 incarnation of Gatchaman since it seemed like the series had tied itself up quite nicely. However, after having seen this sequel it's a must see, that story wasn't complete before which I suppose makes this the best sequel ever in a sense.

But first things first, if you have seen Crowds but not the director's cut of episode 12 you need to see that. Given the half recap episode in the tv run they had to re-edit episode 12 on the DVDs (Japan only, Sentai could not get the license in the US) which includes how Hajime finally defeated Berg Katze and a few other key details. Next, make sure to watch episode 0 on Crunchyroll before going onto episode 1 since it has new stuff as well. And then you're all set for what may be the most decisive anime of 2015!



Gatchaman Crowds Insight




Saturday, November 7, 2015

Book Review: The Last Dragonslayer

The curse of reviewing mediocre things "man there are so many things I'd rather be doing right now than trying to find the energy to talk about THIS". And I'm afraid this might be happening a lot in the next few weeks, I've been reading my usual book and a half a week but very few of the fiction works have really been grabbing me (I tend to alternate reading fiction and non-fiction but I find non-fiction tricky enough to review that those thoughts tend to get shoved into the weekly round-ups). It's not a burn-out per say, alternating with non-fiction is helping, but it's frustrating week after week I start up an interesting looking book and am completely bored with it by the end.
The Last Dragonslayer by Jasper Fforde


Thursday, November 5, 2015

Webcomic Review: O Human Star

I mentioned this comic recently in my A Boy and A Girl review, the human-robot relationships in a near future instantly reminded me of O Human Star, and found myself thinking about it again after I picked up a copy at SPX back in September. So, since it looks like the last time I did a review of it was a few years ago, allow me to convince you dear readers once again why you should give this very human story a shot.

O Human Star by Blue Delliquanti