As I mentioned in my 2012 in Review post, I saw The Hobbit over the holidays (which I'm sure everyone is so surprised about after I re-read all the books first) but I didn't see it in 3D HFR like I hoped (I had a chance for 3D but I had no idea if any of the theaters near me were playing it in the HFR so I decided to see it in 2D). Oh well, I've got two more chances to do that and I can now say that this review is completely free of talking about that stuff since apparently the rest of the internet is sick of it by now (psssh, non-technology-geeks).
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
Summary: Before the one ring of power went on it's final journey with Frodo it belonged to his uncle Bilbo Baggins for a time. How he got the ring is a story but how he ended up under a mountain far from the Shire is an even more interesting story.
The Good: I was really surprised by some of the new stuff in this film, I've never read the appendixes (to Lord of the Rings) or The Simarilion so I didn't know the specifics of what Gandalf was doing when he was separated from the group and from the little bits shown in this movie I'm really excited to see what happened. All of the acting seemed spot on (and the extra material really helped me understand why Thorin acted the way he did, I remember being confused by his actions especially near the end of the original book so this is a really great thing) and all of the dwarves seemed to have a good amount of screen time. Not equal amounts of screen time of course but by the end I felt like I knew what at least half of the dwarves were like, in the book they really weren't that distinguished from each other so again, this was a really great thing.
The Bad: Good god, did I accidentally watch the director's cut instead of the theatrical one? I did like some of the stuff that wasn't in the book The Hobbit but was in other material* but some of the stuff that was completely original (I have a friend who thinks tha the pale orc was in LotR but this subplot was completely new) was unnecessary filler and there was plenty of other stuff can could've been trimmed down (like the dwarves at Bilbo's house or the parts with Radagast the Brown). Honestly it's enough stuff that I almost want to recommend people to wait for the DVD to come out (and given that the film came out almost a month ago it might be out of theaters soon anyway) but even then there probably won't be a shorter cut of it on the disc. I can't remember being this frustrated at a movie for this problem (tv show or anime? Sure, but even then few I've enjoyed have had THIS much filler) and I'm convinced you could make this a two hour film without losing anything, this is a huge problem.
The Audio: I, like everyone else it seems, really love that Misty Mountain song (in all of it's different incarnations, from the dwarf song to the credit song to the fan version which takes 15 minutes to go through all of Tolkien's verses, plus all the other fan recreations of the song) and need to go buy it off of itunes. All of the other pieces of background music also worked very well but let's face it, the Misty Mountains is the piece that everyone is going to remember by the time the next film is out.
The Visuals: There was one weird thing in the visuals for me, in the first five minutes there's a panning shot around/through the dwarf kingdom which is entirely CGI and everything actually looked blurry to me. I asked the other people I saw it with and they said it looked blurry as well, I'm confused if they made the shot blurry on purpose (to hide unfinished CGI) or what, it really stood out to me. Otherwise, no complaints, the movie did a very good job advertising how gorgeous New Zealand is and how everyone should visit (what do you mean that wasn't the purpose of this?) and all of the sets and costumes looked great, can't wait to see more of that!
So, there was good stuff in here but it was buried under a lot of, well, superfluous stuff (and I'm kind of wondering how many deleted scenes there will be on the DVDs at this rate, how much stuff is there left?). So, only three out of five stars, please oh please let the next film have better editing.
*Bilbo narrating how the dwarf kingdom fell? Excellent, don't think there would have been a good chance to work that in later. Adding in the stuff with the council about the Necromancer? Also great, it even helps set The Lord of the Rings in context by showing just how long it had been since Sauron was a threat and how, by coincidence or fate, he began to rise again when the ring began it's journey for the first time in at least a century.
So happy 2013 everyone! Meant to have this up slightly earlier in the day but oh well, it's not like my posts don't usually go up at this time. Obviously this is where I talk about 2012 stuff so before that two notes. One, I managed to semi-burn out on, well, everything sometime last spring/summer and while I managed to deal with it and keep moving through everything that has certainly colored my opinion on stuff and I doubt that I'll ever try and consume as much media at once that I did before my burnout. And I think a lot of my burnout came from extra stress from school and such and since I'm in my final semester of my senior year of college I'm going to have to deal with it a bit more. On a more personal note, I finally figured out that I'm asexual this year (and aromantic to boot, apparently I have no interest in personal relationships beyond friendship) which on the one hand I'd like to think doesn't matter that much when it comes to reviews. On the other hand, it certainly explains why I'm not that fond of romances and seem to be harsher on them than most people I know so I think I should just toss this out there and not have to mention it every time. So yes, I am going to be harsher on romances than most and that is simply going to be a bias of mine, although I certainly can enjoy them sometimes as I believe this list should show.
Anime
Lots of good stuff this year but not a lot of great stuff for me. I've calculated that I at the very least tried out 53 shows this year, 17 of which I dropped and 6 that are still ongoing. Of those 36 I didn't drop there are 12 titles I would buy for sure (three of which are unlicensed and all made my top five, I feel so hipster) and probably a dozen more I would buy given the right price and excess money on my part. Despite all of that, unlike last year where I could easily pick my top five it was hard to choose my top five which I think was because most of the shows I liked were more character driven, not the plot driven ones that grab my heart and run away with it, so I am hoping for some more plot driven shows in the upcoming year. So, in a rough order, my top five.
Hyouka Yep, the show I almost didn't watch ended up being one of my "will buy in a heartbeat, someone license this thing already" titles. I was hesistant about the idea of everyday mysteries but that turned out to be the perfect way to have mysteries that were believable in their setting and gave all the characters a chance to slowly grow and understand themselves more. Plus, dat artwork, I'm actually sad whenever I look at the ads for Tamako Market (Kyoto Animation's winter show) because it's so simple compared to what they did here. So yes, fingers crossed that this thing of beauty gets licensed and that the writer writes enough more for another season or two.
Chihayafuru In retrospect I wish this had been on my 2011 list instead of Last Exile Fam (and is also the reason for my "show must finish in 2012 rule") but where Fam was stronger in the first half it was the second half of Chihayafuru that the character development really got going and it was another series that was just amazing in that department. I still have my quibbles with it, Chihaya took longer than I liked to start developing but I still adored the show in the end, is it time for the second season yet? (Also another entry into the "dammit people license this!" category)
tsuritama I was really worried going into this show, the only other series by this director I had seen was [C] which, to put it politely, did not quite fit. But lo and behold not only did this show work but they also pulled off the tricky pacing of "first half episodic/unconnected, second half plot heavy/connected" trick and in 11 episodes too! True Un-Go did it last year but plenty of people can't get that balance between developing the characters and then easing into the plot to work in a 26 episode series, they had some series constraints here. And honestly, this series made me care about a group of guys who had to go fishing for an alien to save that world, that by itself is a pretty big accomplishment, Sentai you're putting this one out soon right?
Natsume Yuujinchou Shi I almost forgot this season even aired this year (I'm sorry, yes I'm a bad fan) and I'm not sure how since not did this season adapt some of my favorite arcs of the manga but it also finally (finally!) delved more into Natsume's past and his family which is what we've all been waiting for. At this point the writing has become a lot more comfortable with itself and is willing to have multiple episode (/chapter) arcs and it feels so much stronger for it. And the show got licensed at the end of last year and started coming out this year too, huzzah! Now I just need to save up for the releases this year, NISA you are amazing (and should probably license all the unlicensed stuff on my list, just saying).
My Little Monster And that's why I made sure to get that review up tonight, because I realized that this one was going to slide in and make it to the fifth spot on my list. I just enjoyed the hell out of this show, it made me laugh and sympathize with the characters more than I expected and yes, it was another title I didn't expect to like and didn't even plan on trying when the season started. I'm quite happy to be wrong here and wish desperately that it would get a second season (and licensed but I'm starting to sound like a broken record here).
Books
I actually read more books published in 2012 than I initially thought (around a good dozen) yet despite that, much like my trouble with anime, I'm having a hard time making a list of five titles that I adored beyond belief, partially because I'd like to have read a larger group of titles. But, of the ones I read, I found myself liking the YA more than the adult fiction and I was surprised just how much I liked most of the books. So special mentions to Unspoken (which I swear is half mystery and half snark, it's like Veronica Mars' British cousin), Team Human (which was also half snark and half a really smart take on some tired vampire tropes) Raven Boys (which I remain a little on the fence about and have decided the best way to figure out where I stand is to read the next book, now), The Book of Blood and Shadow (which took a lot of problems I had with the author's previous books and fixed them, also taking two genres I don't really like, the thriller and the "guys what if historical event was actually like this?!?" genre and made them work very well), and Seraphina (guys it's dragons and politics, that's pretty much made for me). Very happy I got a chance to read all of those this year, although I am at a bit of a loss since I got to everything I wanted to this year I have no idea what to start my new year off with!
Manga
Alright confession time, I'm not 100% sure what came out this year. I mean sure I can think of things that came out this year that I want to read but the ones that I can think of off the bat either ended this year or are rereleases of older titles which almost don't feel like they count. Heck, with the gap between publishing in Japan and the US I can never tell what counts anyway, even the series that were scanlated that I read this year generally started years ago. But I have noticed that over the past year that more and more of my budget has gone towards anime and away from manga and I'd like to spread it out a little more evenly and try to catch up with my manga buying this year. Also, I recommend this 2012 list of manga since it matches up rather well with my own tastes (I haven't read We Were There or 13th Boy but I plan on trying them out after seeing all the praise for them over the past year).
Movies
This just wasn't a good year for movies for me, I saw only five movies that came out in 2012 (although there are one or two more I wouldn't mind seeing like Argo) and I still liked Hugo more than any of them. Of course, Hugo seems to be that rare movie that I absolutely, whole-heartedly adore which only comes out once every few years but that aside, there just wasn't much that interested me this year. I was frustrated by both Brave and Rise of the Guardians for their overly simple plots and characterization (sure they're "for kids" but that should never be an excuse for a subpar story which I felt was the case here), The Hobbit had serious pacing issues, Wreck-It-Ralph was rather fun, and, as a non-comic book fan, I found The Avengers to be a lot of fun (even if it did everything I expected it to without any twists). So far the new year already looks better for me movie wise, I can at least think of a few titles that I really want to see which I couldn't do at this point last year, and hopefully I'll also come across some gems from years past in all of my Netflix surfing.
TV Shows
This year marks an interesting point for me since I am now actively following multiple tv shows and I'm getting more and more interested in plenty of shows I haven't gotten a chance to try yet. Despite that, I don't have a top five here either since I didn't have five tv shows from 2012 that I whole-heartedly enjoyed (also, like in the movies bit, I saw an older show this year, Veronica Mars, which blew everything out of the water by comparison). I am really enjoying both Elementary and Once Upon A Time and looking forward to more Downton Abbey this Sunday (although I do worry that this show is going to go on and on without a really good stopping point, I like my shows to have stopping points) and I suppose I'm looking forward to more of both Sherlock and Doctor Who, although I have issues with both of those shows lately so my enjoyment is always tempered by a voice in my mind going "but it could've been even better if they'd done this differently!" I did decide not to follow the second season of Grimm since I was frustrated at the ending of the first season but even that show wasn't bad, just, frustrating there. I'm not sure how many older shows I'll be able to try out in 2013 (since 22 45 minute long episodes takes a significant chunk of time to get through) but fingers crossed that I'll be able to try even more great series from years past.
Finally, if anyone has any suggestions for webcomics I should review when I do my month of reviews in March, send them to me now (here in the comments, twitter, doesn't really matter) so I have a chance to go through them. Right now I've more or less exhausted my to-read folder so I actually have a lot of time to look at new stuff and I always want recommendations for new stuff.
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)
Originally I wasn't sure if I was going to watch this let alone talk about it, just been feeling a bit burned out on Moffat's projects lately (for no real reason), but then I remembered that the new companion was supposed to be introduced in this episode and that's rather important. And, after watching the special, I realized I had a lot of thoughts about it (both good and bad) so I guess I'm also going to talk about it!
Doctor Who Christmas Special 2012: The Snowman
Summary: The events of Angles Take Manhattan are still affecting the Doctor strongly and he has sworn off helping humanity again, although it seems like he can't stay away and can't stop being curious about all the strange and unusual things around him. Like, snow with a memory and a habit for producing snowmen with toothy grins, although it's going to take that and a human girl named Clara to get him back into the saving-the-world business.
The Good: I really liked how the Doctor was written and handled here, it's immediately clear that the end of the previous (half) season has had a strong effect on him but that he's still the same Doctor we've seen for the past few years, he can conquer grief or at least be distracted from it. And it was fun to see Clara unsettle him and show just how much he likes to show off to his companions (and the audience as well), all in all it was a pretty entertaining episode and reminded me that yes, I would like the second half to hurry up and get here already.
The Bad: I'm in two minds about Clara, on the one hand she's fun, sassy, and the dynamic she creates with the Doctor is fun (since through her actions she shows how set he is in some of his ways, also just how much the Doctor loves to mentor his companions to become greater than they were) but, well, she did come off to me as a bit shallow by the end. Sure it's hard to completely flesh out a character in one episode (and should you really completely flesh someone out in their first appearance) but the show has done that with some of it's side characters before, it's certainly possible. So yes, rather mixed feelings and I'm also a bit worried about Jenna-Louise Coleman's character for a completely different reason, apparently it was a last minute choice to have her play a character in the first half and I'm worried that Moffat is going to make the series more timey-wimey than it needs to be again. Yes Doctor Who is a show that has a lot of camp and a lot of strange stuff in it but it still needs well, call it a base of logic to stand on, rules that it can't contradict, and I'm afraid that it's about to do some very odd stuff that's going to mess with the continuity*.
The Audio: Hmm, didn't notice anything really new music wise. The intro may have changed but I was a little distracted by the (trippy) visuals to notice. All the music worked however so no complaints here.
The Visuals: Well I finally figured out why Vastra looks odd to me, despite all of the prosthetics on the actresses face it still has a very human facial structure (and eyes), I do wish in that the designers went even father with the design. Other than that small revelation on my part, no real comments on the episode. It seemed weird that Jenny was wearing pants at one point but I don't know nearly enough about Victorian era fashion to actually say if the rest of the clothes were accurate or not and as for the setting, well, you see one Christmas story set in a snowy, especially Victorian, London and you've seen them all.
It feels odd to rate a single episode so I shall sum this all up by saying that while awkward at times this was still enjoyable, even if it makes me worried about what's coming next. Which I guess is also your average Doctor Who episode.....
*for those who want spoilers, doesn't the end of it imply that reincarnation or something similar exists in the Whoverse? Which I think would just make things complicated or I could be over-thinking it, only the second half will tell and who knows when that is coming out.
Originally my last review of the year was going to be volumes 5 and 6 of Kieli (yes not only did I finally get both of them but I found time to read them as well!) and I didn't think I'd have a chance to read this book until 2013. But unexpectedly one of my libraries had a copy of this, I got it out, and then proceeded to read it over a day and a half this. This was impressive because not only is the book around 460 pages (which even for me is a bit thick) but those two days were Christmas Eve and Christmas Day where between the two of them I spent over 10 hours in parties and another couple of hours each day getting to/helping prepare for each. So I didn't just read this book fast, I read this book fast for me and I think that alone says something about how I liked it.
Seraphina by Rachel Hartman
Summary: In the country of Goredd there has been a tenuous peace agreement between humans and the dragons for 40 years which seems threatened nearly every day due to a lack of understanding of each side. For Seraphina the peace is even more important for her than most, her mother was a dragon (a fact her father didn't know until she bled silver blood while she died giving birth to Seraphina) and her father human making her a hybrid and a fact she hides every day. There seems to be no upsides to her strange parentage and it only seems to have given her terrible headaches and strange mental landscapes to attend to, hardly a desirable thing. But with dignitaries from both sides gathering to celebrate the treaty she'll simply have to deal with everything while trying her best to stay out of the dangerous politics that it seems like she was born into.
The Good: Now THIS is what people should do if they want a medieval-Europe inspired setting! Goredd isn't a dressed up and renamed England or France, it's an original setting which draws heavily inspiration from real world culture (such as the music and the idea of Saints) without falling into some of the traps ("noooo you can't have women with power in a middle ages setting, wait almost all of the named royals are female? Well, everyone has to be whit-oh hell side characters from other countries and clearly described to be not-white!"). The story makes use of it's large page count to create a fairly detailed plot with multiple subplots that come together by the end (like a calmer version of Diana Wynne Jones' books) and there is plenty of politicking and scheming to make me happy. In these ways it feels like a rather mature young adult book, I can easily see that if just a few things were changed that it could be a work of adult fiction. That isn't to say that it should be an adult fiction book, it's simply a book that I think has more crossover appeal than others.
The Bad: There were some points where it felt like Lucian, who can be a bit touchy but isn't hot tempered, got mad (or madder) at Seraphina than he should've just for the sake of advancing the plot but even then you could come up with a realistic reason for that (being in charge of all the security for the peace treaty celebration will make anyone cranky). I also had a bit of a hard time buying that Princess Glisselda was only 15, she does act like a 15 year old a lot of the time but there are other times when she was too wise beyond her years (which is something I could say for a lot of characters in young adult books actually, so while a bit frustrating it was something I could easily deal with and did half expect).
So I happily give this book four out of five stars, would buy it, and I'm hoping that there is in fact going to be a sequel. There was a note in one of the appendixes which lead me to think so but honestly I won't be crushed if there isn't. Yes there is so much more plot that could happen but after spending this much time with the characters I can see how they could further develop so even if there's not a sequel I can easily imagine how it would have gone down. For those interested there's a prologue which fills in one or two details and gives you a good feel for what the characters and the book is like.
