Young Animator Training Project 2013/Anime Mirari 2013

I feel a little weird only talking about three out of the four shorts for this year's Young Animator Training Project but these three have been out for a while and I can't even find raws of Ryo (Studio Gonzo's short) after looking around. I know it must be somewhere since I saw someone commenting along the lines of "Gonzo was, ....Gonzo" which honestly doesn't make me want to search out the short, bad Gonzo is usually pretty boring and more than slightly terrible in the writing department. So, if I do ever find it I'll watch it and add onto the review, in the meantime let me tell you about everything else! 




Young Animator Training Program 2013 (Anime Mirai)

Aruvu Rezuru - Kikai Shikake no Yōsei-tachi (Alv Rezul - Mechanical Fairies, also seen it written Areve Rezere): This was an odd entry, this was made by Studio Xebec to fill in a slot that had previously been taken by Studio Perriot and I remember this showing up on anime charts for last summer, no idea if it was supposed to be a single OVA back then or a full series and was reduced to an OVA. The charts were listing it as a full series and it’s based on a light novel series, yet out of the three I was able to see this was easily the weakest. This one felt like a pilot for a full series and, while the others felt a bit like that as well, they managed to also feel complete in 30 minutes, this one felt like we had just started a series and that we wouldn’t have everything explained until it was done (or even the basic concepts fully explained until episode three). The concept was kinda cool, perhaps it was moved from the summer so it wouldn’t compete with the slightly similar in concept Sword Art Online, but the writing felt amateur, weak, and cliché-ridden the whole way through. Oooooh, mysterious organizations! Slightly incestuous sibling relationships which are okay because they’re not blood related and then plot shenanigans to make it even more “okay”! (which in case your wondering, even if you’re not related by blood you still feel pretty creeped out by that stuff, if my step-brother ever acted like this I would smack him in a heartbeat) The art was fine, although I was confused why Shiki always looked like she was drawn in a different style than the background, props, and other characters. I’m rather sad I didn’t like this since when I first saw it on the charts I thought it sounded rather cool, too bad it’s execution was poor.

Death Billiards: Studio Madhouse has made a lot of great things for many years so it’s no surprise that they made something great this time. The story goes that two men, one young one old, show up at a bar with no memory how exactly they got to it and have to play a game of billiards with their lives on the line. They don't know much more than that but it’s soon clear that pool is a game they both have strong memories of and that there is obviously more to the game than it first seems. I’ve seen a lot of people not like the ambiguous ending but I rather liked it, given the sense of mystery that permeated the rest of the short it makes sense that it wouldn’t explain everything to it’s viewers (or even it’s characters, of the other two characters present one of them doesn’t know the final outcome of the game either). I’m satisfied with this as a short yet I can also see it being fleshed out into a full, episodic series with an underlying story revealing more about the bar and it’s two attendants, although I have absolutely no idea how likely that is to happen.   

Young Witch Academia: Hotly anticipated since it’s from the new studio Studio Trigger which, if I recall correctly, is formed from a number of people who used to work at Studio Shaft, and people were also excited because it looked just plain fun and it was! Akko has wanted to be a witch since she saw a fantastical magical show when she was young but now that she’s actually at magic school she finds the lessons either boring or just plain impossible. This story could have easily been stretched into a full length film but here neatly fits into the 22 minute run time with good pacing and nice visuals, the OVA almost looked more heavily influenced by American Saturday morning cartoons than anime in places and had a really distinct look the entire way through. And the animation itself looked fantastic, very few still shots and lots of complex movements, if this is the future of animation via animators in Japan then I think we’re good! Lots and lots of fun and I’m excited to see what else Studio Trigger produces, I think they have their first full series coming this summer but it sounds like there isn’t a lot of information about it out yet. Oh and it's legally on both youtube and crunchyroll now so catch it at one of those places when you have half an hour to spare.

Anime Review: My Little Monster

As a reminder, after this and my 2012 in Review post I'm taking a break for the rest of the week (both because I need to prep for an upcoming con and I have a headcold which makes writing cohesive and interesting reviews trickier than normal). In any case, when I first saw this one appear on the fall season chart I wasn't that interested in it, both it and Say "I Love You" seemed to have very similar and, well, bland premises and not even the lure of Brain's Base was enough to make me interested in it. I don't remember why I did check it out, probably due to good reviews or the fact that I had nothing else to watch on Mondays) but I will quite happily admit that I was wrong and that there is nothing bland about this series at all. Oh and on a random note, the title better translates to something like My Neighbor the Monster, I have no idea why the Japanese licensors thought this one was a good title nor to I know why I haven't seen any crossover My Little Pony fanart yet.


My Little Monster (Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun)

Summary: Shizuka is an isolated studybug who doesn't care about friendship or anything like that, all she wants are the best grades. So it doesn't make a lot of sense when her homeroom teacher sends her off with the classwork for an absent (and, according to all the rumors, violent) classmate but with promises of bribes she does so anyway. Her classmate Haru turns out to be rather different than she was expecting, he's just as isolated as her but he relishes hanging out with people and turns out to be quite social if given a chance. Of course, since Shizuka was the first person who "reached out" to him he's quite drawn to her now..... 

The Good: I ended up identifying with Shizuka and one of the other female leads (Natsume) more than I expected and just really ended up liking them. Honestly I liked almost the entire cast and since this is a show that's built around it's character interactions that's a great thing, it was a fun show to watch. Also, I'm not a huge fan of the romance genre but I liked how it was handled between Shizuka and Haru. Well, not some of Haru's stranger out bursts but how the two of them are both in love for the first time and just trying to find their feet but definitely getting more comfortable with each other and even a bit jealous (which normally would bother me but here both of them realize what they're doing and use it to figure out how they feel, which is also so ridiculously characteristic for them). It's a character driven show with a lot of romance but also a lot of time spent on it's side characters and some humor, it strikes a good balance and I'm sad that Brains Base doesn't make many sequels these days.

The Bad: I have seen a lot of people, quite rightly, call out Haru's stranger behavior (which runs the gamut from "he doesn't understand society so it's quirky!" to "NO DON'T DO THAT, NO") especially in regard to some, odd (to put it mildly), turns of phase he uses to talk about his relationship with Shizuka. In the end though I am okay with their budding relationship for one reason, the manga (and the characters) never imply or so that this is a normal relationship and Shizuka is quick to call out Haru when he does something wrong. There are many (too many in my opinion) shojo manga where the male lead isn't quite as bad as Haru but it's portrayed as completely normal and romantic, at least here the story shows that it's off and it's honestly about it. I can still understand why some people might be put off the story for this reason and it does really make me wish that whatever character development Haru is going to get that it came more quickly. I was also okay with the anime-original ending, partially because I had heard that there wasn't a really good place in the manga to end a 13 episode series, and also because it gathered all the characters together one last time to interact and that's as much as I was hoping from it.

The Audio: I honestly wasn't overly fond of the opening or ending songs for the show, although their tone matched well with the perky tone of the show (also, no translations from CR to help me see if the songs actually made sense in context). I really liked all of the acting however, some of the actors were actually pretty new (this is the second role that Natsume's actress had) and for the others their voices weren't as recognizable and I kind of liked that (since I wasn't associating the voice with another character the whole time that is). The character's had a roughness to their voices which made them sound more like high school students than characters in a lot of anime do (plus it looks like a number of the actors aren't even that old) so everything acting wise sounded perfect to me. 

The Visuals: The art was, in a word, fun. It used simplified/chibi versions of the character just often enough to make it amusing (and not so often it felt like the art budget was being stretched) and was plenty colorful as well. I also swear that the school uniforms don't look as ugly as they do in that promo image, somehow the show makes them work.


So, I give this show four out of five stars and sadly of the three shojo series in the fall this was the one that didn't get licensed, even though it's the one I would snatch up in a heartbeat. Sure it's streaming over at Crunchyroll but you hear me NISA? I'd buy this, please license it please! (Or Sentai or Funimation, honestly I'm not that picky about where I get it from) 

Comic Review: Aki Alliance

Bit of a weird title here, I think it's actually a print book but well over a year ago I was linked to where you could read the whole thing online, read a bit, did some other things, and never read the rest. Lately I've been trying to clean up my "webcomic to read" folder so I tried downloading the book to see if that made it a bit easier to read (it didn't, you have to continuously scroll down, I was hoping it would be in separate pages for ease of reading). And then I decided to just get through it in one go since with as many things as I have going on these days I'd probably just forget about it for months again otherwise, the problem with having a large backlog.


Aki Alliance by Ryan Estrada

Summary: Aki has a problem, well, two actually. The first problem is that she has tried out and quit just about every club in school. The second problem, spawning from the first, is that she has no friends from alienating every girl at school by doing this and she wants to make friends. So one of the girls in her class proposes a challenge, make friends with every girl in the class before they graduate and Aki accepts.

The Good: When all is said and done the story has a pretty good sized side cast and despite the fact that most of them only appear a few times they all felt distinct and individual. Rounded? Ehhh, that varies but it certainly didn't feel like Aki was running into the same few stereotypes over and over and these character interactions literally carry the story. The other bit that carries the story, in my opinion, is the humor and it's present in spades throughout the entire story. It's zany, only sometimes grounded in logic, and certainly makes the story more entertaining, although I'm not sure I would actually label this story a comedy so that fact that the humor helped carry the story for me isn't a good sign.

The Bad: I was rather frustrated with the ending, it ended up being what I would point to as an example of "telling not showing" which isn't a good thing to be. Aside from that, I was disappointed by Aki in the end. No I didn't expect her to grow and change that much in the story, that's not her character, and she did change a bit but only the smallest iota (that ending more of less proved it). So, what was the point of this story then? It's not heavily plot driven, it's character driven with characters who don't change much, whom I also didn't find entertaining, am I missing something here?

The Art: Half of the chapters are done in what I'd call the stories "normal" art style and the other half are done in wildly varying styles which sometimes match up with the chapter at hand and other times don't. I think I would have been a bit more forgiving of these shifts if they had been more evenly spread out, the other styles appeared more and more as the story was going on and to me it felt like Estrada was growing tired of his story and was having to spice it up any way he could (which I'm sure wasn't the case but the thought did cross my mind). Again, this is just personal preference on my part, and some of the art styles really did match the chapters at hand really well, but I wish they had been more evenly spread out.


In the end I give this just 2.5 stars out of 5. Should you read it? Weeeeell it's free, but then again you can find free anime streaming and free books on Amazon and I wouldn't recommend you consume all of those, there's some real tripe out there! In the end this just wasn't a story for me and I can see it appealing to more of a middle grade audience but even then this wouldn't be the first thing I'd think of if asked to recommend titles for middle schoolers. 

Anime Review: Clamp School Detectives

I'm quite behind on getting this review up, I finished the series right before all the spring shows finished airing so it got pushed back quite a bit) but considering this is a more obscure work of Clamp's I don't think anyone minded too much. Actually, not only is the manga a more obscure work of theirs (although it was published by TokyoPop), it was only two or three volumes long yet this series is two cour, much longer and I'd say it has a lot of filler in it except, well, there aren't many episodes that wouldn't be called filler here. 

Clamp School Detectives

Summary: The Elementary School Student Council at the Clamp School wields an enormous amount of power, although generally it’s three members (the ultra rich Nokoru, ninja-like Suoh, and cheerful gentleman thief Akira) don’t let that go to their heads.

The Good: The show is at it’s best when it’s doing something silly and it knows it’s silly (such as the play episode) and, odd as it sounds, once the love interests for Suoh and Akira show up (Nagisa and Utako respectively) the show gets better and is at it’s most entertaining. The girls are interesting, and once you get over the age difference* they make pretty cute couples as well. For people who are already avid fans of CLAMP’s other work it’s fun to spot crossovers and references within the show (mostly from Miyuki-chan in Wonderland and Dukylon School Defenders, although the setting here would later cross over with X/1999) but they never become so important that it would distract a newcomer to the 'verse.

The Bad: This show has some incredibly uneven pacing, possibly as a result of the show being a 26 episode adaptation of a three volume manga (the crossovers from Dukylon and Man of Many Faces don't add that much material in). The first eight episodes are the weakest and the last arc isn’t much better; funny enough it’s when the girls appear that the series seems to pick up and when they have a smaller role in the last arc (really the only true arc of the series, there are one or two two-parters but nearly everything else is a stand-alone episode) that the show slows down again. It's odd considering they’re supporting characters at best, not show-driving characters, but I guess for a character driven show you really need all the characters you can get so that there are simply more to interact with each other.

The Audio: The show got a dub only a few years ago from a small studio called Costal Carolina (who hasn’t done much work over the years, I think this is their most recent work and it’s from 2008) and it’s surprisingly solid for a show that features three young boys as the main characters (not to dismiss US of the voice actors, but I very rarely find the “young boy voice” convincingly done in English). It’s certainly listenable and I liked it just a bit more than the Japanese, I saw about half the show in English and half in Japanese so for once I can make that comparison! Other than that, the opening theme rather infectious but the rest of the music didn’t leave a strong impression on me.  

The Visuals: Like many shows from the 90s, I wasn’t too crazy on the visuals when I first saw the show but once I saw the re-mastered version I was impressed (sadly I could only find a crappy, not-remastered image that worked for this review). The lines were crisp, there was no glow (before it was impossible to make out half of the opening because of the glow), and the colors were amazingly bright, I’m always amazed when I see just how bright the show actually was. So, once I saw the good version of the show, everything looked pretty nice from the backgrounds to the character designs (I’m more fond of Clamp’s uber-shojo style than their noodle-people style) and, while the character designs do date the show I don’t see that as problem when recommending it to people.

In the end, I think I would have liked this show much more if it had been 13 episodes long and simply cut out a lot of stuff. There's no real plot to the show, and when it gets the closest to that it drags and has a facepalm worthy resolution, so it wouldn't be hard to cut a lot of stuff and still leave the episodes where the characters get some development and the funniest episodes (like that play one) still in. And if you want to watch it yourself, it's not streaming legally anywhere online that I could find but the DVD collection is easily available online.   

*I just tried to pretend it wasn’t so big and, considering how mature Nagisa and Utako were that was easy to do, plus compared to Cardcaptor Sakura this is nothing....

Manhwa Review: Travelers from the Moon

And here we have the third and final manhwa that I found at my library recently, really there's not much else to say to introduce it. I have to admit that all of this has sparked by interest in what else is out there, I had always wondered how large the manhwa industry is in Korea and it must be larger than I had previously thought, but I'm not sure where to go from here to keep looking into titles.

Travelers of the Moon by Lee Na Hyeon

Summary: “There’s nothing more important than friendship!” In a world where vampires are nearly extinct, Yuh-Ur wakes up one morning to discover that the injured bat her father brought home from a trip is not only fully healed but also a vampire. Unsure what to think about this she becomes even more worried by this development when it appears that a fellow classmate has been attacked by a vampire, although Ida doesn’t seem like the type to go around hurting people….

The Good: Plot-wise this was the strongest of the three manhaw I had checked out, feeling neither like a rip-off of something else and having a plot that made sense and did make me curious about what happened next. The characters also had a pretty good debate about whether or not to trust Ida and their ideas and experiences fleshed out the side characters much more than I was expecting. There is a limit to how much story you can tell in one volume in an on-going story but this story did a lot more in it's first volume than a lot of stories I've read.

The Bad: I did wonder if the first chapter was meant to be a one-shot that later got picked up for a full story since it focused on a completely different character, Ida’s personality seemed rather different, and Yuh-Ur didn’t even make an appearance. I also had a hard time keeping all the character’s names straight, partially due to the odd order and pacing of the story and finally, while there certainly is room for a longer story I think I would have been happier if this had been a single volume work. That’s just personal preference on my part, although perhaps future volumes would be able to explain the series’ odd title. Also, that quote in the summary is the only bit of information on the back cover of the manhwa and you really need more than that if you hope to get buyer/library goer's attention.

The Art: The art is rather conventional, no odd panel shape or placement, lots of screen tones used to fill in objects and backgrounds, there’s not a lot worth noting. While I do have complaints on how the story was paced the panels themselves flowed well and all in all I don’t have any complaints about the art, just no praise either.

As a heads up, I'm heading to a con tomorrow and Sunday so tomorrow's review will be up rather early. I would say that Sunday's review will be up late but since I'm posting this one near midnight anyway (I will blame my brother's graduation for that one) I don't think most people will notice a difference there. 

Manga Shorts: Soul Eater and Soul Eater Not!

I haven't actually been following either of these series for a few months now, I'll probably continue with Not! though when the volumes start being released in the US, but I still wanted to talk about these series anyway. I really did like Soul Eater for a while so I do want to talk about why I liked it and why I ended up dropping it.

Soul Eater by Atsushi Ohkubo

At the DWMA (Death Weapon Meister Academy, Shibusen in Japanese) students from all over the world gather to study fighting as they split off into pairs of Weapons (people who can literally transform into a weapon, such as a scythe or guns) and Meisters (the people who wield them and are able to sycronize their soul wavelengths to become even more effective fighters). Soul and Maka are the main weapon-meister pair whose goal is to collect 99 human souls (all from Death's list of bad people) and one witch soul (who are supposed to be always chaotic evil) to turn Soul into a deathscythe, a weapon used by Lord Death himself, although they've been having some trouble with that. Also in the background there are growing concerns about what some of the most powerful witches are doing which the adult characters are investigating which brings me to why I enjoyed this series so much, there were adult characters who did things and were very competent at doing them. Soul Eater actually has a large cast and in the early bits of the story (lasting the first 15 or 16 volumes) you had no trouble remembering this, they were all amazing! But, as the story went on, it feel into one of the classic shonen tropes of "because you're the main character(s) you are now the most powerful ones in the story, which doesn't make much sense and we're going to make everyone else suddenly much dumber/less powerful to highlight this even more." I just had to give up after Ohkubo built up several side characters, gave them extra panel time, and then they were useless in the end, it was just too frustrating to continue. For the moment I've stopped collecting the series but I think now I'll pick it back up and continue to about the end of the Rescue Kidd arc since thinking about this series reminds me that I really did like the early parts and maybe it will be that great again later on, I can hope so anyway.
 
 


Soul Eater Not! by Atsushi Ohkubo

 A lighthearted spin-off from the main Soul Eater story, Soul Eater Not! is set sometime before Soul Eater starts and follows weapon Tsugumi, a new student to the school, and her fellow classmates (primarily the meisters Anya and Meme) as they adjust to school life and explores the backstories of some of the characters from the main series such as Kim and Jaquelin (who are my favorites so yay). I honestly wasn't expecting to like this story much at all but it's so fun and fills in a lot of the setting. I haven't been keeping up with this since Yen Press licensed it and I probably won't buy a subscription to their magazine to read it every month* but I do plan on buying the volumes as they come out.


Got one more series to talk about next Wednesday and then November is over and Manga Shorts are done! Seems like November went by really fast this year and I enjoyed doing these posts so I'll probably do this again next year, who knows what I'll have found by then.


*for that I would rather have the JManga approach and just buy a cheaper subscription to read just that, although funny enough the reason I haven't tried out JManga is because I want a all-you-can-eat subscription like I have for Crunchyroll, boy am I picky.

Anime Review: Blue Exorcist

The final summer title and only two months after it finished! Note to self, don't watch so much anime in one season again, overall this summer was a pretty good season with a number of great shows, good shows and average shows. It also had a number of not-so-good shows but thankfully Blue Exorcist wasn't one of those, although it wasn't one of the great shows either.

Blue Exorcist (Ao no Exorcist)

 Summary: Rin only recently discovered that he’s the son of Satan and found out when Satan killed his foster father while protecting him. Rin has now sworn revenge on Satan and is studying to become an exorcist in order to defeat him while trying to master his own demonic heritage.

The Good: Blue Exorcist is a good example of solid and alright shonen, the fights don't take too long, the villains aren't too overpowered, the lead, who might not be the most interesting character, is likable enough and so is the rest of the cast. Rin, while hotheaded, at times seems a lot more street savvy than many shonen heroes which was a nice change and all of the (main cast) characters had their good points, their bad points and some character development. For the first half or two thirds of the show it was an enjoyable shonen series which, while predictable at a lot of points, I enjoyed watching.

The Bad: Due to a need to pad out the series the later half is different from the manga and one thing I didn't like is how the other characters reacted to the news that Rin is a demon. In the manga this was all handled quite well, some characters accepted him sooner than others and it felt natural. Here things got odd because of fillers so at first they were okay with it, then they weren't, and then they became okay with it again? While the story doesn't fall apart in the final arc, all filler, it just didn't make quite as much sense as the previous arcs and made it impossible to continue based on later manga material*. Honestly, as many fans of the series have already said, this anime was made just a bit too earlier since there just wasn't enough material for a two cour anime. Personally I really didn't like the last arc, it felt like a stupid conflict, like the characters suddenly stopped using part of their brains and yet like nothing was really happening.

The Audio: The background music for this series was solid and worked well but the opening and ending song were, strange. The first OP had both very active bits and very slow bits (which were reflected in the animation, it was a wide variety for only a minute and a half and felt jarring), the first ED was just strange (it was by the Korean band 2pm and, when I showed it to friends who were familiar with the band, they were also confused by it) and the second set were just average. I was a bit miffed that Aniplex was going to distribute the title themselves, were doing the subtitling themselves and were the Japanese license holders yet didn't bother to sub any of the songs.

The Visuals: Animated by A-1 (Aniplex’s studio which has gotten much bigger in the past few years) the series looked pretty nice overall, although whenever I would pause while watching in HD on crunchyroll I usually ended up with a very strange looking frame. Provided you didn’t pause the video however the art looked good, the animation seemed to move well, none of the many action scenes looked off and very rarely was a scene just shots of talking heads. It’s a shame that the series is only getting a DVD release in the US, I imagine it would look quite nice on Blu-Ray.

While I do mean to start buying the manga soon, I don't think I'll get the anime for this series anytime soon. It's a really expensive, sub only, DVD only set, two sets actually, and I just don't like the series enough for that. I also feel like Aniplex is hurting themselves by not dubbing it, I can see this working quite well on Cartoon Network and they've already put Durarara!! there, I feel like Aniplex is trying to rush this release as if they're worried that the fans will forget if the series isn't put out right now.

*funny enough, it's biggest twist might happen soon in the manga after all but even with that it would be hard to have a second season, they would have to rewrite the next arc very heavily.

Webcomics that need to update more often

A short post tonight (mainly because it's been a busy day, so glad I've already got a few reviews written up for April, I need a buffer) and, like the title says, these are webcomics that update sporadically and really need to update more often (why? because they're good and there is always a need for good stories). These were just the comics I can think of that still seem to be alive (don't worry, there will be special posts for comics-that-shouldn't-have-ended) and look like they might update again in the near future. So, onto the comics!


Directions of Destiny
One of the earliest webcomics I came across that I thought was actually dead until lately but, since some concept art has gone up in the past few months, I think it might revive sometime (this already seems to be it's second incarnation so who knows!). But before all of that, could someone else whose seen Revolutionary Girl Utena look through this and see if I'm the only one getting major Utena vibes off of it? The shots with the elevator to the principal's room, the super powerful student council, the general setting of the school and the phrase "the direction of destiny" all really remind me of Utena, heck the idea of a power to change the directions of destiny sounds a lot like the power to bring about the world revolution*. Honestly that's all that has happened so far, we've met the characters, seen some mysterious things happen and heard mysterious phrases promising power, it's a nice start but really needs to move beyond it!


The Dragon Messiah
It's been a while since I read this comic (I didn't realize until a few days ago that it updated back in February so it's not dead yet) so I'm hazy on the plot but I remember it involved multiple groups of people, magic, elves, mysterious eyes, and one really kick-ass girl. So clearly I enjoyed this when I was reading it (I'll probably go reread it and hope that it really is going to resume regular updates soon) and it's also notable for being one of the comics I follow that's in two languages, English and Italian^ so, if it really does resume regular updates soon, there's no reason not to follow it if your a fantasy fan.

Key
Another one I intially wasn't going to include since it's been so long since it last updated (past the deadline the creator gave themselves and with no new deadline set) but it looks like they have been redoign the earlier chapters and that counts as progress. Another fantasy adventure, this one involving other worlds, conspiracies (or at least it looks that way), and a quest to forge a powerful lock before the worlds are overrun with demons. A very colorful comic (it's really pretty to look at, bet it would look lovely in print) the characters are a bit flat at the moment but hopefully plot advancement will mean character development as well. I don't know how much of the comic is going to be redone (I thought only the first chapter but it looks like the second chapter is being worked on now) but the comic isn't bad at all so if you like it I would say just go ahead and read the rest, you've got the time anyway!

No Rest For The Wicked
A comic that's been on shaky updates for well over a year (tvtropes says the author lives in the Phillipines and got hit by a bad typhoon back in 2009 which is understandable) I still want to link it here because it's a good example of redone fairy tales. This one takes the setting from a more obsure fairy tale, The Dead Moon, where the moon has vanished and Princess November (from The Princess and the Pea) can't sleep because of the lack of the moon (she's even more sensitive than in her original tale so this is really throwing her off) so she sets out to find the moon. She's joined by characters from other fairy tales in a world that's a mash-up of stories with a grim touch but isn't an overdone, full-blown "dark fairytale" which I like. Yes the story is dark but it isn't trying to hard to be dark, it's just trying to tell the story and this is how it goes, this is how you re-tell fairy tales people! Fingers crossed this one updates again soon, it's short right now but I really feel like it could go on for a while and want to see it finished. 

Outsider
Again, checked this one recently and was surprised to see it had updated, I didn't even remember this one until I was talking science fiction with my dad and thought that one of the ideas sounded familiar. We have a classic tale here, Earth has finally ventured out into space only to find that there are many other species out there and they are at war with each other. Trying to stay out of the war (since we are completely outgunned), Alexander Jardin is the sole survivor of a scouting mission to find out more about these two groups and is picked up by the ships of one group (the Loroi). Since the space administration here was smart and trained all it's people in case such a situation happened, he is now tentaively Earth's embassador to this group and is trying to figure out who blew up his ship, get back to Earth, and not commit them to a side in this war without being absolutely sure this is what they should do. So a nice set-up, story is still in the early stages at under a hundred pages long#, but I like it and hope that it keeps going, more science fiction for me please!


Picatrix
Yes the link is broken, don't know why and I can't find the mirror site for this comic to post instead, if anyone has it please tell me! Anyway, another fantasy story, this one concerns Winnie Foster who has just been sucked into another world of magic, angels and demons and just isn't having a good day. It's hard to detail more of the plot without spoilers (also since we've apparently had a major timeskip) but it's got a plot that wouldn't be out of place in a manga and with manga-style art as well. I read it more as fluff than anything else (fun and filling but not something I muse about between updates) and I do like the comic. It was supposed to come off hiatus in January but then the artist was doing another comic for the Yen Press contest and then that one stopped updating so I really don't know what's going on now. I'm hoping that things will get back to normal soon but, if the main website is down, that's not a very good sign.....




Again, no post tomorrow since I already know tomorrow is going to be hell but then Tuesday and Wednesday you get the "Comics that shouldn't have ended (and thanks for never giving a reason why they stopped updating!" pages, expect a bit of ranting and more sarcasm than usual but I've kinda been looking forward to those posts actually.....





*If the writer/artist here isn't a fan of Utena and just managed to make this comic incredibly similar all on their own I swear I will eat my hat, my good hat too.
^I've actually seen a number of comics that are in multiple languages, sometimes because of the author (like here, I think the author is actually Italian) and then other times by friends, like scanlations except legal I suppose.
#According to tvtropes it averages out to eight pages a year, suddenly I'm a bit more scared for this comic.

Comic Review: The War at Ellsmere

A rather slim comic this time but most American comics I've seen are one volume affairs. The art looked a bit Scott Pilgrim-ish but that's not a bad thing, no real other first impressions so onto the review!


The War at Ellsmere by Faith Erin Hicks

Summary: After being offered a scholarship to the prestigious Ellsmere boarding school, Juniper takes the chance to increase her chances at getting into Med school. But this school is filled with almost nothing but snooty rich kids who get their kicks with bullying the scholarship kid each year and Jun's attitude won't help her out here.

The Good: The book may be short but it manages to wrap itself up quite well in 156 pages. That's pretty impressive but, as I mentioned above, most American comics I read are shorter so I guess they have practice. Yet it was still open enough in the ending to create a sequel if there was ever a demand for it, I honestly could see the story going either way but I think it was stronger as a one volume work in the end. 

The Bad: In the end, this book felt like a poor man's Gunnerkrigg Court (probably because I read it first). It didn't have the length or the complexity of GC and the setting was much weaker as well. And the story suffers from the classic cliche "oh look, all the adults only listen to the clearly evil character and this is used to create even more problems!" which has always bugged me, it's never a good sign when the author has to resort to unrealistic stereotypes to create drama*.

The Art: The art really does remind me of Bryan Lee O'Malley's art for some reason and I'm not sure quite why. I like the style well enough (probably because it's "animesque" and I really do prefer how anime art looks to most comic styles) but there was nothing really special about it that made it stand out to me (weirdly enough the designs of Jun and her friend also mimic the designs some of the characters in GC, pretty sure that's a coincidence however).

It's not a bad book in the end, I just feel like I've read better and this book just didn't satisfy my need for either a complex plot or a really in depth character study so eh, a dud for me. However, I didn't realize this until I was search the author's name, she did do a webcomic called Demonology 101 that I have bookmarked for reading someday so I'll probably check that out rather soon and see if I like her long form better.


*Also, as an adult now I'm actually a bit insulted by the stereotype, as if I can't understand someone's problems just because I'm old enough to vote now.

Book Review: Hex Hall

Another book recommendation from The Enchanted Inkpot but I liked this book less than some of their other recommendations. I liked the cover and the premise but I would've had second thoughts if I had seen this cover instead, which really isn't what the book is about at all, actually, both of the covers for this book confuse me.

Hex Hall by Rachel Hawkins

 One thing about this cover puzzles me, they went to a great deal of trouble to match up the girls and even flip the title text around in the water, so why throw in a cat? It was stated pretty early on that Sophie is allergic to cats and there weren't any cats in the book so why? And the darn thing is on the cover for the second book as well, seriously, does anyone know?

Summary: Sophie is a witch and after a love spell gone wrong, only the latest in a long line of failed spells apparently, she is sentenced to Hecate Hall, a school for fledgling witches, shifters and fae, for the next two years. The reason behind this is to make her safe to society (ie, not cause catastrophes every few months) but Hex Hall might be more dangerous for Sophie than the real world.

The Good: The boarding school of magic has been done to death by now and, even though this book reminded me a bit too much of the House of Night Series, it was done well enough. The characters were somewhat genre-savy and the plot ended up being a bit more complex than I expected (wasn't expecting there to be two sets of villains, that's a bit unusual) and it has plenty of material for a sequel.

The Bad: I did like the first part of the book but by the end there were too many cliches present for me to really enjoy it. Oh look, the bad-boy-our-protagonist-has-a-crush-on-really-has-a-heart-of-gold-after-all! And the libby becomes semi-likable! It just wasn't original enough for me in the end with either it's setting or characters, plot twists notwithstanding, and I don't really feel the urge to read the sequel.


Not much to say about it I know but this book just didn't really stand out to me. It did some stuff well but other things were just average. If I see some really good reviews for the sequel I'll check it out but otherwise I'll read something else (and never know why there's that silly cat on the cover).