TV Series Review: Elementary (season two)

As readers of this blog already know, back when I started working full time in the spring my watching took a hit and once Agents of SHIELD really picked up I ended up having to put Elementary to the side for a while, even though I had really really enjoyed the first season and this season was just as good. It certainly doesn't help that the only (legal) way I can watch the series online is to do it through CBS's website which only has the last five aired-on-tv episodes and my god the most annoying ads ever. I know some people complain about hulu's ads but here they have four or five commercial breaks and five to seven ads each, all 15-30 seconds long. "So, it's basically just like cable tv then?" Pretty much and it is terrible, please put this show on Netflix streaming so I can recommend it more easily!

Elementary (season two)

Anime Review: Riddle Story the Devil

Back when this show started airing in the winter I didn't give it a second glance since the premise seemed, well, dumb. But as with One Week Friends the longer it went the more it seemed like I was only hearing positive things about it so I decided to give it a shot anyway. I was watching it a bit slowly and so I was about halfway through when it ended and then I heard all of those same people start grumbling about the ending. And I decided that oh well, I haven't gotten to a part where I dislike the story yet so I might as well keep going, even if I'm probably also going to dislike it considering that I haven't seen one person remain positive about the ending....

Riddle Story the Devil (Akuma no Riddle)

Summer 2013 Anime Round-Up

First things first, Gatchaman Crowds doesn't air until tomorrow so I'll be updating this post for that tomorrow, heck I would have had this up earlier except apparently crunchyroll doesn't let you use multiple guest passes in a one week period which threw a wrench into my plans. Second, normally I talk about the shows that carried over for me from last season but I actually wrote a rather rambly write-up of the spring season over on my tumblr which covered those shows. TL;DR, still following Space Bros and Doki Doki Precure but other than that I'm starting with a clean slate, let's get started then! oh one more thing, each of these impression is made after seeing just one episode of the show, some of these shows do have a second episode out by now but I just didn't have time to get to them.

Blood Lad
Vampire boy is obsessed with Japanese stuff.
This is an aggressively shonen show from the way the visuals are designed (lots of sound effects on screen, word bubbles at times, things you usually see only in either a 4-koma or shonen based adaptation, I'm trying to figure out why Brains Base has pushed this show back by an entire year since it certainly wasn't because of the art!) to the humor (look at this girl! she has boobs! and not much else on!). Heck even the character designs are a bit more shonen-y than usual now that I think about it and it's been so long since I've watched a show like this I had forgotten, this isn't really my type of show (and yes, this is technically based off of a senien manga, knowing that doesn't make it feel any less shonen plus sometimes you do get weird overlaps with those categories). I'm going to give it a couple more episodes to see if I warm up to it, the entire Manga Bookshelf seems to really like the manga and their tastes often line up with mine and it's certainly a a different take on vampires (but let's face it, by now almost every story with vampires is "a different take!") but at this point I don't see myself following it's entire 10 episode run.

Blood Lad has been licensed by Viz Media and is streaming on their site and on hulu so Canadian viewers are sadly out of luck this time.


Danganronpa the Animation
Super highschoolers trapped in murderous school.
Initially I thought "oh I'll give this a shot since I'd rather watch this than read the summaries/translations and don't have a PSP to download the game/patch (plus, these games never get licensed in the US)" and then NISA licensed the game (and someone else got Steins;Gate in the same day which had previously been my basis for "these games that super popular anime are based on don't get licensed"). Well then, don't have much reason to check out the show then (even if I don't have a PSP Vita to play the actual game on) and I'm a bit relieved, this just didn't flow well for me. It's odd but I dislike books and tv shows with this kind of setting, murder-mystery with the player character having warped morals by the end, but I do like games with it (I adored 9 hours 9 persons 9 doors which is a bit similar, I joked to friends that the setting and some of the characters kept giving me flashbacks). There it's fun to play as an asshole-ish character and see how much you can screw everything up, it's less fun to watch other people do it (although I know that mountains of Let's Play videos out there contradict me on this point). So with all of that in mind, I wasn't able to take anything seriously enough to enjoy it, and you're clearly not supposed to take a lot of this story seriously to start with, and hopefully someday I'll be able to give the game a try and enjoy it much more.

Danganronpa the Animation has been licensed for streaming by Funimation but the first episode won't be up until this Friday the 12th.


Eccentric Family (Uchoten Kazoku)
Humans, Tanuki, and Tengu live in Kyoto.
Based on a novel written by the same man who wrote the original The Tatami Galaxy novel this first episode didn't grab me as much as it seemed to grab some other people which was actually what I expected, Tatami didn't grab me until I tried watching it again about two years later after all. Although I suspect it won't take me nearly as long to get around to the second episode, while this first episode might not have grabbed me and taken me for a ride like other shows have done it was still interesting enough to make me curious about the rest of it. This was an introductory episode, we see a lot of the main cast, get a sense of the different factions in Kyoto, possible conflicts and mysteries are mentioned but nothing super exciting has happened yet, it's all set-up. But I am curious what this show is setting up and I like Kyoto quite a bit so I'm not going to turn down a chance to see it as a setting. So, unless the next few episodes are deadly boring I'm going to stick with this one and see just what it develops into.

Eccentric Family is streaming on crunchyroll.


Gatchaman Crowds
Super-powered humans fight rubix cube aliens.
While it didn't start out that way this ended up being my most anticipated summer show and it's not perfect but so far it's pretty fun. Well, fun if you consider being on a rainbow colored roller coaster for 30 minute fun (although strangely enough the episode was just 22 minutes long, not 25) and it's already clear that this series is a shorter one since the pacing is frenzied and feels even faster with how bouncy lead character Hajime is. I really do hope the next few episodes slow down a bit since there was a lot to take in here, it's the complete opposite of tsuritama (which shares a good chunk of it's important staff) and I can easily see how the fast pace and Hajime are putting people off, although it seems to have no connection to the original Gatchaman so newcomers like myself don't have that to worry about. Regardless, I'm in this one for the long run since I'm just in the mood for a super-colorful, fighting aliens show with a female lead, fingers crossed that it ends well!

Crowds is streaming on crunchyroll and currently unlicensed, however considering that Sentai recently licensed the original series many suspect they'll license this series as well. 


Kinmoza! (Kin-iro Mozaic)
Cute girls have intercontinental friendship
Not initially on my to watch list but after hearing so many people call it adorable I had to check it out and yep, that was a pretty adorable show. I liked it so far, this first episode is a flashback to how the main characters (a Japanese girl and a British one) met and became friends (in a rather romanticized Great Britain) and yep, not much happened but it was adorable none the less. I want to give the second episode a try but I have to ask, what is it going to do now? Are these girls with their friends going to form a club about Great Britain things? (since forming a club is all the rage now in anime-schools) Just do slice of life daily cute things with some culture shock? I'm okay with either of them but would like to know what they're going to do since I am worried about getting bored quickly, this isn't my normal type of show for a reason after all.

Kinmoza! has been licensed by Sentai and is streaming on Crunchyroll.


Free! Iwatobi Swim Club
Boys strip and swim.
I almost feel like this series needs no introduction considering how much the PV for it was being bandied about across the internet with various cries of "YES!" and "OMG IT'S OBJECTIFYING US [men]!" being thrown around. So to make things clear, no this anime was NOT made because tumblr wanted it (guys just look at it, you think that you can animate something with that much detail in the amount of time that passed between tumblr flipping out and the premiere? Hell no) and it doesn't really objectify men either, Zac of ANN articulates quite well why not so I'm just going to link to his review (it was his first so scroll of the bottom if you don't see it immediately). So, my thoughts? Well, fanservice in general isn't my thing (neither is swimming, I like the gymnastics part of the summer olympics much better) but I'm glad that they made the show so campy since that made it pretty fun to watch regardless. I doubt I'll continue it since there's so much else out there I want to watch right now but if I want to watch a mindless, well-animated show with a sense of humor then this one is at the top of my list.

Free! has not been licensed yet however it is streaming on Crunchyroll.


Makai Ouji: Devils and Realist
William doesn't believe in demons, oh-well.
So a few months back when this anime was announced I went off, read the manga, and started worrying. I've seen a lot of people compare this one to Black Butler and Pandora Hearts for thematic reasons (they both have the Victorian England inspired setting with gothic elements) but structurally they're the similar as well, they're all shows whose manga took a heck of a time to get to the meat of the plot (I gave up on Black Butler before finding out if it ever got there actually). So, judging from what I know, the pacing of this episode, and what was shown in the OP and ED (which by the way has a heck of a spoiler for one of the characters) this one is probably going to have a fast pace and either an original ending or an inconclusive one (which I think is more likely) since I can't really think of a place to end it as the manga currently stands AND the story is bland enough that I doubt it's going to sell well enough for a sequel. Which is rather sad since I tried out since I liked the premise, demons trying to become the new king of hell by bothering a British kid, and while the manga did grow on me it really wasn't because the characters or the plot turned out to be super interesting, the style just got a bit better and I liked the eye-candy. At this point I'm willing to give the show another episode or two for the eye candy reason (even though I'm not that happy with some of the voices in here, it's been a while since the voices have been the complete opposite of what I've imagined), the character designs really do look great in full color I'm most likely going to end up dropping it by the end of July.

Devils and Realist is unlicensed but streaming on crunchyroll. Seven Seas manga also picked up the manga recently and plans to release the first volume in early 2014.


Servant x Service
Civil workers work.
Hmm, this series didn't grab me as much as I had hoped a series about working adults would which makes me a little sad. Of course, one of the most common comments I've seen on this show is "Working!! but less zany" so perhaps that's what I should be watching instead, heck I have much more experience with weird food-industry work than weird office/government work (the libraries I've worked at have been fairly tame comparatively speaking). In any case, this looks to be a straight-forward, slice of life (in the really literal sense) story of a few different civil workers and for the moment I'm going to give it a few more episodes to see if the characters click with me but I feel that if the characters don't click with me then there's going to be no point in watching the show.

Servant x Service is streaming on crunchyroll and unlicensed.


Silver Spoon (Gin no Saji)
Boy enrolls in agricultural school, hijinks.
The lone noitaminA show of the season (since now it's AnoHana's time to do reruns) and a bit more anticipated than most noitaminA shows since it's based off of a manga by the creator of FullMetal Alchemist. I read a bit of the manga a few years back and while it wasn't bad I just wasn't really grabbed by it either which was the same reaction I had here. We've only had one episode to meet the characters and see the setting so not much has actually happened, although the egg gag got old really fast (guys, I'm a girl, I know EXACTLY where eggs come from), although that did end in some really excellently animated food which really makes me wish there was a food anime with that kind of animation out there. However, since it's not bad by a long shot, noitaminA, and could certainly get more interesting once the characters start developing and such I plan on following this one for the long run (literally, it's split cour so 11 episodes now and another 11 next January) and I'm really hoping that the show ends up growing on me (it is set at a farming school after all....).

Silver Spoon remains unlicensed but it is streaming on crunchyroll.


Stella Women’s Academy, High School Division Class C3
Cute girls form war games club.
Wow I have seen mixed reactions on it, I honestly tried out the show because I at first saw some people saying it was fun and then others saying that, as a result of the gun culture in the US, it made them uncomfortable and I wanted to form an opinion on my own. And I have to say, even though I'm not a big fan of guns I can easily see the appeal of running around shooting each other with fake guns (probably because a lot of my friends in high school did just that) but this show still came off as a bit odd. It's trying too hard to emphasize the juxtaposition of  "they're cute girls! And they like imitating Rambo movies!", honestly it wouldn't have felt as weird if it hadn't done that. Which puts me in an odd position of being interested in watching another episode but probably not sticking with the show for the long run, this is just turning out to be an odd season for me.

C3 has been licensed by Sentai and is streaming on Crunchyroll.


Watamote
High school girl has delusions of popularity
Yet another show that wasn't initially on my to-watch list but decided to give it a shot after seeing a number of other people mention it. And, ehhhhh, I don't think I'll be continuing with it after all. As many other people have commented, so far this is a dark comedy with only one joke, oh look how Tomoke has no friends/no social skills/doesn't even know it! Sure I've seen people like that in my years of high school and college, although usually the painfully socially awkward nerds I saw instead of not talking at all had no idea when was a good time to talk or that they weren't actually funny (and most started getting better at it after a few years!) and I was never like that, so I'm not getting that much kick out of the "oh ha-ha, it's like someone you know!" humor which I think I should be feeling just a bit. However I did think it got one point especially spot on, when Tomoke is mocking all the girls in her class who hang out with guys and look cute, calling them bimbos and sluts, and yet you get the feeling that she really wants that in her own life. That I think a lot of people of all genders go through, I know that on some parts of the internet there's a lot of "oh I'm better than other girls because I am/do_____ instead!" (my first thought actually was of this meme but apparently this was actually a parody of the situation, still gets across what I meant however) which also feeds into a lot of other assumptions about what's feminine, what's not, stereotypes (both as a result of media and as a reaction to said media) and all kinds of nasty stuff. I have no doubt that giving Tomoke that viewpoint was quite deliberate but that's not enough to keep me interested in what happens next sadly.

Watamote has both it's anime and manga licensed in the US, by Sentai and Yen Press respectively, and the anime is currently streaming on crunchyroll.

Webcomic Review Month 2012: Finished Webcomics

Last year I put the finished webcomic entry at the end of the month but I decided to stick it at the beginning of the month this time around since I'm reading several comics by creators who've already finished up one series and it's interesting to compare their various works. That and one series I'm reviewing is a direct sequel so I figured I should simply talk finished comics first. Some of these webcomics finished up in the last year and others were already finished and I only discovered them during the past year and here are the ones I talked about last year (warning, I got better at writing this past year so these old ones don't flow as smoothly).

Bobwhite by Magnolia Porter

A slice-of-life esque comic about the lives of three college girls, Ivy, Marlene, and Cleo, as they navigate from their sophomore year of college to graduation. They fall in and out of love, attempt to be adults, and try to figure out what they actually want to do with their lives once they’re done and gone. 

It took me a bit of time to get into this comic, mostly since these three girls are just not ones I would like to be friends with (they’re a bit dumb, over-dramatic and have too much romantic drama for my taste, in a nutshell they’re realistic college girls, just not the kind I am) but this summer I was having a few bad days and just wanted something I could read for hours and this comic really clicked with me. They have real, messy lives with odd, and often comical, problems, I had to double check that this wasn’t an autobiographical comic since I could easily believe it was which I think is the highest praise you can give realistic fiction. It also has one of the greatest strips in existence (read the second line of panels) which has somehow ended up on one of my teacher’s doors since all my friends who’ve been through a beginning photography class sympathize immensely.

Bucko-A Comical Murder Mystery by Jeff Parker and Erika Moen

Rich Richarson, called "Bucko," didn't want to get mixed up in a murder mystery, he just wanted a job and another chance to talk to a cute girl he met at a party, but he keeps getting mixed up in weird crimes which delights his new friends who think that this is a great time to play detective and prove Bucko's innocence.

I liked Moen's (NSFW) other comic, DAR, so I was happy to see her working on another comic and I'm sad that this one wasn't any longer since I found this to be a really funny story. The humor is more adult but in a similar vein to DAR, people make sex jokes and innuendos yet it never feels like the comic is trying to be "sexy," this is just adult life. Well, maybe not ordinary adult life, the story has some veins of magical realism in it (although I was creeped out to discover that Juggalos weren't created by the comic) but all of those moments were played for humor and didn't break the narrative flow. The overall mystery is also clever and I just really enjoyed this story and hope they print it in physical book form someday.

Delilah Dirk and The Turkish Lieutenant by Tony Cliff

Erdemoglu Selim is a lieutenant in the Turkish army who now feels that he owes his life to a Ms. Delilah Dirk, even though she was technically the one who endangered it in the first place, and has taken to following after her as she leads a much more adventurous and dangerous life than he ever wished to have.

Another comic where it's short length surprised me, although a one shot sequel to it was announced just this morning, but it certainly packs a lot into it's short length. The art here is stunning, especially the landscapes, and the characters are fun. Delilah Dirk is a crazy adventurer and Mr. Selim undergoes some nice character development, more so than her actually, and I really wish there were more of their adventures to read. Oh well, and if anyone here hails from France the story is already avaliable in a printed edition, the English printed version is still being worked on.  

  

Freak Angels Written by  Warren Ellis  and art by  Paul Duffield 

Six years after the world ended, and 23 years after the 12 people who did it were born, Whitechapel (England) has seen better days. 11 of the original FreakAngels look after the town and try to care for all the refugees but some of them are starting to get bored. Their boredom vanishes however when a brainwashed and crazy normal girl, Alice, appears and the rest of the group discover that she's being controlled by the remaining FreakAngel, the one they thought they had killed off years ago.

This is one of the earliest webcomics I started reading because, even though the gore is more realistic looking than I prefer, the art in here is simply gorgeous. It's strong from start to finish with distinct character designs, loving attention to details, and amazing backgrounds, give it a look through for at least that, just look at this page (which is a tiny bit NSFW, one character isn't fond of wearing panties). The story is equally strong, I'm not that fond of the dystopian genre (especially with the recent overabundance of books with that setting) but the setting is very well thought out and there is a clever explanation for it towards the end which I appreciate more in retrospect. A quick warning however, as I already mentioned the gorey scenes are quite detailed and this is a violent comic at times making it NSFW so just be careful where you try it out (I also remember some nudity but honestly can't recall how much).     

 

Lint by Colby Purcell

Starting off as light hearted comedy following a rag-tag band of misfits with the exiled elven prince Sangwine Schloffel main character  as they stumble around the country on various quests. The comic gradually undergoes Cerebus Syndrome however and the characters grow and develop as they plot to overthrow Sangwine's brother Fang.

This comics has one of the more dramatic cerebus  syndrome changes I've seen and it's accompanied by a fairly dramatic art evolution as well so I would advise people check out both the first few pages and the last few pages of the story before deciding if they're going to drop this story or not. I like drama in my high fantasy and didn't mind the silliness in the earlier parts either, even if some of the characters are exceptionally dense about the feelings of those around them. This one does have a sequel that is being worked on, the aply named Lintier but I'll be talking about that later in the month.
    

  

The Locked Maze by Emily Ivie

 The story begins with the night that Holly’s, our main character, house burns down and how even years later she has insomnia and still hears the strange laughter she first hear that night. Eventually her past catches up with her as she is drawn into the conflicts of the local fae, one that has had deadly consequences on the human world. 

It’s a gorgeous looking comic and I liked the overall story but I did have a few issues with it, namely that it came off as vehemently anti-Mormon (I do believe that every Mormon character in the comic was evil for the sake of being evil) and I get uneasy whenever I see a group of people, any group of people (in reality or fiction), get lumped together like that. The comic is supposed to be partially about religious superiority and the dangers of thinking that your way is the only right way but that still doesn’t explain why every Mormon character had to be a complete and utter douchebag and that has really made me hesitant about recommending the comic to others. Was also a bit surprised by the ending, I simply didn’t expect the last arc to have as few problems as it did, but the ending worked with the previously established themes.

One of Those Days by Tim Larade

 It starts out with a simple wish from Mallori on a shooting star, that she won't be boring and from that day forward she never knows what the next day will bring for her. It could be epic adventures, a pet toaster or anything in between.

This is another comic that undergoes cerebus syndrome in the final parts of it and sadly I only found it during it's last few months so I check the last few pages, liked what I saw, and then was frustrated how silly the earlier part of the story was and didn't find a lot of the gags (both the single strip and small arc ones) that funny. This comic also has one of the more extreme art evolutions I've seen in a comic so that also really threw me, I'm much more likely to recommend this comic to someone who likes humor rather than drama since this comic is 90% and only the last arc really gets serious. So the comic wasn't exactly my cup of tea but I really did like the last arc so it all balances out.

 

Book Review: Rosebush

Another book where it was the cover that drew me in but this time it wasn’t the title but the blurb talking about a girl figuring out which one of her friends tried to murder her. Wohoo, a mystery and a(n almost) murder one, those are the best kind! Sadly this was not the whodunit I was expecting, although it had a lot in common with a standard mystery story nevertheless (which reminds me, where are the YA mystery novels these days anyway? I remember reading tons as a kid but the genre is lacking in the YA department, can’t be an age thing since there are plenty of mysteries in the adult section of any bookstore or library).

Rosebush by Michele Jaffe

The cover does a great job replicating Jane's crime scene and makes it clear how the title ties into the book.

Summary: To an outsider Jane seemed to have it all, money, loyal friends and loved by everyone else. When she turns up in the hospital after what appears to be a suicide attempt it's clear that this isn't the case but Jane is slow to catch on. She knows she didn't try to commit suicide and she thinks her life is great so who tried to murder her?

The Good: Some authors don't know how to write crazy characters but Jaffe seems to do it with ease, most of them even have sympathetic reasons for being crazy! She also manages to juggle a large cast fairly well and all of the important characters were distinct from each other, although I did have some trouble remembering the character names at parts. Jane's little sister was a very nice character and one of the better done "smarter than they appear but still a child" character's I've seen in a while, she may seem to be the strangest character to Jane but I was always happy when she got page time.

The Bad: When everything is said in done in a thriller or a mystery novel there should be no reason for the audience to doubt that the culprit was in fact the culprit and the other characters should have been cleared of suspicion as well. Here however Jaffe did such a great job at making everyone seem suspicious and like they had a reason to hurt Jane but none of them are ever “cleared” in the end. There is an actual culprit in this story but it could have been any one of the characters and the story wouldn’t have been any different in the end, that’s not good writing. Another complaint I have utterly clueless Jane is about seemingly everything in her life. Jaffe was clearly going for the “rich and popular girl discovers that all is not as it seems” trope but there’s no reason Jane should have believed that some things was alright in the first place. Through flashbacks the story shows that there have been hints for years that nearly everyone is unhinged and it’s unbelievable that Jane never noticed something and at least wondered about it (the flashbacks show her actively dismissing such thoughts).

In the end I was just so frustrated at how stupid Jane came off (it takes talent to not realize that there is something wrong with nearly everyone around you), who the culprit really was, how Jane found out, and how the day was saved that I really disliked this book. If there is a mystery I want logic in it, a reason for everything that is shown and then a reason for why things aren't quite what they seem in the end and this book provided none of them. I actually checked the author bio to see if this was the author's first book (since maybe they just didn't have a grip on their writing yet) but no it isn't and the fact that she wants to be a CSI investigator (something that would involve more logic than present in this book) worries me, think I shall avoid her books in the future.

And apologies that this is late, long day, paper kicking my butt and tomorrow looks to be more of the same so expect that review later in the day as well. But at least I like tomorrow's subject so that should make writing it take less time than usual.