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June 10th, 2020
Manga Reading Update (Getting My Groove Back)
So it’s been 3 months since I’ve made a blog post other than my “Finish Them” Challenge Updates. I know I usually talk a little bit about other general stuff in those Updates before I get into talking about what anime I finished that week, but I figured it was about due time that I make a post that is completely independent of those posts. So here I am, talking about some manga that I’ve been reading lately.
As mentioned in some of my recent “Finish Them” posts, we had a 10-week stretch of being in quarantine and teleworking due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Before the pandemic kicked in, I at least got half a volume of manga reading done each work day while on my hour-long lunch break. But without a structured lunch break while working at home, I really fell off with my manga reading, getting absolutely ZERO manga reading done while teleworking. But over the last two and a half weeks of being back in our actual office again for work, I’ve been getting back to my lunch time reading and getting my manga reading groove back! With that in mind, I just wanted to talk about some of the stuff I’ve read so far, just going in order of when I read them:
Oshiete! Galko-chan (Please tell me! Galko-chan): I watched the anime adaptations of this series in 2017 (for the TV series) and 2018 (for the OVA) and I loved it enough for it to get very solid “9” and place it onto my Top 100 Anime/Manga Series List when I made my 2018 update. I was in the middle of reading my physical copies of the Galko-chan manga when my lunch time reading got interrupted by teleworking and now I’ve finally read the 4th and 5th volumes, all that has been released in tankobon volumes so far. I have been enjoying the series a lot and was very happy that volume 5 ended at a very good stopping point. I’m not sure if the series is on hiatus right now or if releases have just slowed down or what, but it doesn’t look like a 6th volume has been released in Japan yet either. Hopefully more comes out soon though because I really like this series. The characters are all a bunch of fun and it is such a unique slice of life manga with how frankly the girls talk about “girl stuff” and the wide variety in body types of the girls. Great stuff!
Sennen no Yuki (Millennium Snow): Unfortunately the next manga I got back to reading wasn’t all that great. I was pretty much just going through the motions with this one for the sake of finishing it. This is a light 4-volume shoujo series about a vampire and a girl who wants to be turned into a vampire so she can spend 1000 years of life with him. The series has a few shining moments, but for the most part I was just bored and not invested in the characters or what was going on. Now, I did jump right into the 3rd and 4th volumes after last reading the series 4 years ago, but I didn’t feel like that detracted from my experience with the manga. I don’t remember being heavily into the first two volumes anyway. But yeah, I ended up giving the series an “eh, it’s alright” “6”. With it being by the same creator as Ouran High School Host Club, a manga that I was a little lukewarm on, that wasn’t all that surprising. Oh well. As soon as I have a chance, I plan on trying to donate both my Millennium Snow and Ouran manga volumes to my local library if they’ll take them. Just not my thing and they’re just taking up space on my shelf that could be used for better things.
Houkago Saikoro Club (After School Dice Club): Speaking of better things! For my tastes, anyway, this series is totally my jam. I have written a rather glowing review of this series based on the first two volumes of the series, so I won’t go too deep into why I love this series. Sadly, after the first two volumes the guy who was doing the scanlation dropped it about a year ago. However, on a whim last weekend I check to see if any new chapters might have been translated. And I was overjoyed to see that a group named Yado Inn just happened to recently pick up the series and released two new chapters just a few days prior! So happy!! Now, chapters 19 and 20 are ones that were included in the 2019 anime and were adapted pretty much beat-for-beat, so they weren’t particularly exciting to read, but just the fact that this has been picked back up has me very excited! Yado Inn seems like a pretty dedicated scanlation group and they seem to have some passion for board games, even inviting people to play board games with them via Tabletop Simulator in the credits page of their After School Dice Club releases! So I have high hopes that they’ll be releasing the series at a pretty good pace to eventually catch up with the 15+ volumes that have come out in Japan so far and keep up from there. I’m really looking forward to reading the stuff from after the anime stopped and the board game segments that the anime skipped, especially the Onirim chapter since that’s one of the favorite games and the Japanese raws that I flipped through for that chapter looked really cool! Yay!!
Do Chokkyuu Kareshi x Kanojo: And after I saw that new chapters of my board game girl manga got released, I wanted to check up on this series which is another one I found last year and also had its progress stalled. However, in this case the delay in progress was due to it going on hiatus in Japan as the creator looked for a new publisher instead of a delay in English scanlation. Well, a few months back turns out this series did indeed get a new publisher and began to release new chapters! Like with Galko-chan, this is another series that is very refreshing in how it subverts common genre conventions. In this case, we have a shounen romantic comedy with a lead pairing that doesn’t beat around the bush at all! They are super straightforward with their feelings, becoming an official couple very quickly to the point that by the beginning of their 4th volume worth of content (the three new chapters that I recently read), they are dealing with more advanced relationship issues that aren’t explored in most mainstream manga. And other than this series being refreshing, it is just hilarious! I’m so glad this series is back up and running. I’d love to see this get an anime eventually, as long as it’s done right.
Tokumu Houkoukan Yumihari: So I went down a bit of a rabbit hole of scanlation reading last weekend, all on Sunday in fact. Yumihari was the next series that I thought to check out to see if there might be scanlations available now. Turns out since the last time I check (which was YEARS ago), all 4 volumes of the series have been translated into English by a scanlation group! I was originally exposed to this series via “Web Comic GENZO” which I talked about a bit in this blog post. I hadn’t read any of Yumihari since my time with those releases (well over a decade ago), so I went ahead and read the scanlations from the beginning. Hitoshi Tomizawa is such an interesting creator and I’d say this is probably his most well-rounded series that I’ve read so far, although I wouldn’t really say that’s a high bar because his stuff tends to be rather messy from a structural standpoint. But in a way, I find his erratic pacing and bad transitions to be part of the charm of his style. Following his stuff can be confusing, but that kind of enhances the weird shit that is going on in his stories. Anyway, while I still like Alien 9 and Milk Closet more than this, Yumihari was very interesting and got a solid “8” from me.
Alien 9 Next: And after reading all 4 volumes of Yumihari in one sitting, I figured I’d see what else I could read from Hitoshi Tomizawa via scanlation. Turns out this full-color doujin sequel for Alien 9 is a thing that exists! Now, I didn’t have particularly high hopes for this. While I gave the first sequel to Alien 9 (Emulators) a “9” like the core three books, that was a rather messy follow-up that kind of disregarded some of the character building that the original did. And yeah, this later sequel was even more of a mess! I still gave it an “8” because I did find it interesting, but I was probably rather lenient with it because it was a doujin release. It has one of the original girls go on an exploration mission in space and shit happens and then it kind of just stops. There’s a “To Be Continued” at the end of the third book, but that seems to be the last in this particular series. Maybe he’ll continue it someday?? We’ll see!
Uchuu wo Kaitaku suru Houhou (How to Colonize Space): And next up I read a couple of Hitoshi Tomizawa one-shot stories! This first one felt like a pretty standard thing for him with nasty, freaky monster designs and a tormented little girl. It was a nice solid little sci-fi story that reminded me a lot of classic sci-fi short stories. A nice little read with a bit of a touching bittersweet ending, getting a solid “7” from me.
Nekokan.Batch (Canned Cat Food Batch): And this one is another Hitoshi Tomizawa one-shot that also reminded me of classic sci-fi short stories, but this time more in the quirky, WTF style. This is a story about a girl who kind of gets catfished by a cat who for some reason is able to use a smartphone, but can only communicate with emojis. The cat is able to get the girl to reluctantly act as an agent to help him fight against rabbits or something and weird shit happens. Really, the WTF levels of this little short are kind of amazing. In the end, this short also got a solid “7” from me.
Nagato Yuki-chan no Shoushitsu (The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan): Getting back to my lunch time reading of the manga on my shelf, This week I finally got around to finishing the last three volumes of Yuki-chan! As a hardcore Suzumiya Haruhi fanboy, I love pretty much anything from the franchise and this is no exception. Some people might judge the Yuki-chan spinoff harshly, saying it doesn’t have much substance to it, especially not on the same level as the main Haruhi series. To that I’d say, well yeah, that’s kind of the point. If you are disappointed by Yuki-chan, you either went into it with the wrong expectations or the style of series (light slice of life) just isn’t to your tastes. With that out of the way, again, I love Yuki-chan! It’s a sweet, laid-back slice of life alternate reality view of the Haruhi cast using the “what if” scenario of The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya as a framework. The big difference here from what happened in Haruhi is that this is treated as the true reality instead of an alternate one; Kyon does not have memories from the crazy world where Haruhi is a god and he is just living his best normal high school life along with Nagato and others. I had no problems shifting gears into this light fluffy romance school life story, just like I had no problems adjusting to the nuts gag comedy of the Haruhi-chan spinoff. And that’s just about all I really have to say about that. Now that I’ve finished the manga, I’m going to go ahead and tackle the Yuki-chan anime adaptation as this week’s “Finish Them” item, so I’ll probably be talking about this series again on Sunday.
And that’s all for now! I’ll hopefully be keeping up on my manga reading at a good pace from now on. Not sure if I’ll do more of these Manga Reading Updates, but we’ll see! Laters!
As mentioned in some of my recent “Finish Them” posts, we had a 10-week stretch of being in quarantine and teleworking due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Before the pandemic kicked in, I at least got half a volume of manga reading done each work day while on my hour-long lunch break. But without a structured lunch break while working at home, I really fell off with my manga reading, getting absolutely ZERO manga reading done while teleworking. But over the last two and a half weeks of being back in our actual office again for work, I’ve been getting back to my lunch time reading and getting my manga reading groove back! With that in mind, I just wanted to talk about some of the stuff I’ve read so far, just going in order of when I read them:
Oshiete! Galko-chan (Please tell me! Galko-chan): I watched the anime adaptations of this series in 2017 (for the TV series) and 2018 (for the OVA) and I loved it enough for it to get very solid “9” and place it onto my Top 100 Anime/Manga Series List when I made my 2018 update. I was in the middle of reading my physical copies of the Galko-chan manga when my lunch time reading got interrupted by teleworking and now I’ve finally read the 4th and 5th volumes, all that has been released in tankobon volumes so far. I have been enjoying the series a lot and was very happy that volume 5 ended at a very good stopping point. I’m not sure if the series is on hiatus right now or if releases have just slowed down or what, but it doesn’t look like a 6th volume has been released in Japan yet either. Hopefully more comes out soon though because I really like this series. The characters are all a bunch of fun and it is such a unique slice of life manga with how frankly the girls talk about “girl stuff” and the wide variety in body types of the girls. Great stuff!
Sennen no Yuki (Millennium Snow): Unfortunately the next manga I got back to reading wasn’t all that great. I was pretty much just going through the motions with this one for the sake of finishing it. This is a light 4-volume shoujo series about a vampire and a girl who wants to be turned into a vampire so she can spend 1000 years of life with him. The series has a few shining moments, but for the most part I was just bored and not invested in the characters or what was going on. Now, I did jump right into the 3rd and 4th volumes after last reading the series 4 years ago, but I didn’t feel like that detracted from my experience with the manga. I don’t remember being heavily into the first two volumes anyway. But yeah, I ended up giving the series an “eh, it’s alright” “6”. With it being by the same creator as Ouran High School Host Club, a manga that I was a little lukewarm on, that wasn’t all that surprising. Oh well. As soon as I have a chance, I plan on trying to donate both my Millennium Snow and Ouran manga volumes to my local library if they’ll take them. Just not my thing and they’re just taking up space on my shelf that could be used for better things.
Houkago Saikoro Club (After School Dice Club): Speaking of better things! For my tastes, anyway, this series is totally my jam. I have written a rather glowing review of this series based on the first two volumes of the series, so I won’t go too deep into why I love this series. Sadly, after the first two volumes the guy who was doing the scanlation dropped it about a year ago. However, on a whim last weekend I check to see if any new chapters might have been translated. And I was overjoyed to see that a group named Yado Inn just happened to recently pick up the series and released two new chapters just a few days prior! So happy!! Now, chapters 19 and 20 are ones that were included in the 2019 anime and were adapted pretty much beat-for-beat, so they weren’t particularly exciting to read, but just the fact that this has been picked back up has me very excited! Yado Inn seems like a pretty dedicated scanlation group and they seem to have some passion for board games, even inviting people to play board games with them via Tabletop Simulator in the credits page of their After School Dice Club releases! So I have high hopes that they’ll be releasing the series at a pretty good pace to eventually catch up with the 15+ volumes that have come out in Japan so far and keep up from there. I’m really looking forward to reading the stuff from after the anime stopped and the board game segments that the anime skipped, especially the Onirim chapter since that’s one of the favorite games and the Japanese raws that I flipped through for that chapter looked really cool! Yay!!
Do Chokkyuu Kareshi x Kanojo: And after I saw that new chapters of my board game girl manga got released, I wanted to check up on this series which is another one I found last year and also had its progress stalled. However, in this case the delay in progress was due to it going on hiatus in Japan as the creator looked for a new publisher instead of a delay in English scanlation. Well, a few months back turns out this series did indeed get a new publisher and began to release new chapters! Like with Galko-chan, this is another series that is very refreshing in how it subverts common genre conventions. In this case, we have a shounen romantic comedy with a lead pairing that doesn’t beat around the bush at all! They are super straightforward with their feelings, becoming an official couple very quickly to the point that by the beginning of their 4th volume worth of content (the three new chapters that I recently read), they are dealing with more advanced relationship issues that aren’t explored in most mainstream manga. And other than this series being refreshing, it is just hilarious! I’m so glad this series is back up and running. I’d love to see this get an anime eventually, as long as it’s done right.
Tokumu Houkoukan Yumihari: So I went down a bit of a rabbit hole of scanlation reading last weekend, all on Sunday in fact. Yumihari was the next series that I thought to check out to see if there might be scanlations available now. Turns out since the last time I check (which was YEARS ago), all 4 volumes of the series have been translated into English by a scanlation group! I was originally exposed to this series via “Web Comic GENZO” which I talked about a bit in this blog post. I hadn’t read any of Yumihari since my time with those releases (well over a decade ago), so I went ahead and read the scanlations from the beginning. Hitoshi Tomizawa is such an interesting creator and I’d say this is probably his most well-rounded series that I’ve read so far, although I wouldn’t really say that’s a high bar because his stuff tends to be rather messy from a structural standpoint. But in a way, I find his erratic pacing and bad transitions to be part of the charm of his style. Following his stuff can be confusing, but that kind of enhances the weird shit that is going on in his stories. Anyway, while I still like Alien 9 and Milk Closet more than this, Yumihari was very interesting and got a solid “8” from me.
Alien 9 Next: And after reading all 4 volumes of Yumihari in one sitting, I figured I’d see what else I could read from Hitoshi Tomizawa via scanlation. Turns out this full-color doujin sequel for Alien 9 is a thing that exists! Now, I didn’t have particularly high hopes for this. While I gave the first sequel to Alien 9 (Emulators) a “9” like the core three books, that was a rather messy follow-up that kind of disregarded some of the character building that the original did. And yeah, this later sequel was even more of a mess! I still gave it an “8” because I did find it interesting, but I was probably rather lenient with it because it was a doujin release. It has one of the original girls go on an exploration mission in space and shit happens and then it kind of just stops. There’s a “To Be Continued” at the end of the third book, but that seems to be the last in this particular series. Maybe he’ll continue it someday?? We’ll see!
Uchuu wo Kaitaku suru Houhou (How to Colonize Space): And next up I read a couple of Hitoshi Tomizawa one-shot stories! This first one felt like a pretty standard thing for him with nasty, freaky monster designs and a tormented little girl. It was a nice solid little sci-fi story that reminded me a lot of classic sci-fi short stories. A nice little read with a bit of a touching bittersweet ending, getting a solid “7” from me.
Nekokan.Batch (Canned Cat Food Batch): And this one is another Hitoshi Tomizawa one-shot that also reminded me of classic sci-fi short stories, but this time more in the quirky, WTF style. This is a story about a girl who kind of gets catfished by a cat who for some reason is able to use a smartphone, but can only communicate with emojis. The cat is able to get the girl to reluctantly act as an agent to help him fight against rabbits or something and weird shit happens. Really, the WTF levels of this little short are kind of amazing. In the end, this short also got a solid “7” from me.
Nagato Yuki-chan no Shoushitsu (The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan): Getting back to my lunch time reading of the manga on my shelf, This week I finally got around to finishing the last three volumes of Yuki-chan! As a hardcore Suzumiya Haruhi fanboy, I love pretty much anything from the franchise and this is no exception. Some people might judge the Yuki-chan spinoff harshly, saying it doesn’t have much substance to it, especially not on the same level as the main Haruhi series. To that I’d say, well yeah, that’s kind of the point. If you are disappointed by Yuki-chan, you either went into it with the wrong expectations or the style of series (light slice of life) just isn’t to your tastes. With that out of the way, again, I love Yuki-chan! It’s a sweet, laid-back slice of life alternate reality view of the Haruhi cast using the “what if” scenario of The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya as a framework. The big difference here from what happened in Haruhi is that this is treated as the true reality instead of an alternate one; Kyon does not have memories from the crazy world where Haruhi is a god and he is just living his best normal high school life along with Nagato and others. I had no problems shifting gears into this light fluffy romance school life story, just like I had no problems adjusting to the nuts gag comedy of the Haruhi-chan spinoff. And that’s just about all I really have to say about that. Now that I’ve finished the manga, I’m going to go ahead and tackle the Yuki-chan anime adaptation as this week’s “Finish Them” item, so I’ll probably be talking about this series again on Sunday.
And that’s all for now! I’ll hopefully be keeping up on my manga reading at a good pace from now on. Not sure if I’ll do more of these Manga Reading Updates, but we’ll see! Laters!
Posted by pluvia33 | Jun 10, 2020 2:08 PM | 0 comments
August 5th, 2019
Summer 2019 Anime Impressions
Anime Relations: Arifureta Shokugyou de Sekai Saikyou, Dungeon ni Deai wo Motomeru no wa Machigatteiru Darou ka II, Vinland Saga, Isekai Cheat Magician, Toaru Kagaku no Accelerator, Tsuujou Kougeki ga Zentai Kougeki de Ni-kai Kougeki no Okaasan wa Suki desu ka?, Tejina-senpai, Joshikousei no Mudazukai, Enen no Shouboutai, Dr. Stone, Araburu Kisetsu no Otome-domo yo., Cop Craft, Dumbbell Nan Kilo Moteru?, Machikado Mazoku, Kanata no Astra, Katsute Kami Datta Kemono-tachi e, Bem, Uchi no Ko no Tame naraba, Ore wa Moshikashitara Maou mo Taoseru kamo Shirenai., Sounan desu ka?
As I mentioned in a previous blog post, I decided to try out 19 different shows from the Summer 2019 Anime Season!! I’ve watched at least 1 episode of all of those shows now, so I figured I’d come back and give my first impressions of these shows. I’ve also been watching all of these with my roommate Dan, so I might be referencing him every now and then. Anyway, there we go!!
Araburu Kisetsu no Otome-domo yo. (Maidens of the Savage Season)
*On-Hold* I’d consider this one of the standouts of the season. It’s very interesting that this series was actually released in a shounen magazine. It follows a group of girls who are dealing with the topic of sex in a serious and down-to-earth way. It’s been both funny and relatably awkward at the same time. Even though comedy isn’t technically its main focus, this series has provided me with some of my biggest laugh-out-loud moments so far. So, why do I have this marked as *On-Hold*? Well, it’s kind of an “it’s not you, it’s me” situation. I watched the third episode and just was not able to enjoy it. I really should have enjoyed the episode; it had some really interesting developments. But I just couldn’t get into it. Sadly, a lot of this is due to letting other people’s comments get to me. Most of this comes from me unfortunately reading the comments on the page of original creator Mari Okada. She apparently gets a lot of hate for “NTR” stories in her works and there has been mention that Maidens falls into that trap.... Honestly, I’m not really sure what the hell NTR even is. It seems to be kind of related to “cucking” and/or cheating?? But sometimes when people call something NTR, I don’t really know what they mean by that. I mean, did AnoHana and The Anthem of the Heart have NTR elements?? Really, I don’t know if I even have issues with NTR or not, but just my reading of this shit about this series and its creator was extremely distracting while watching episode 3. I just need to leave this series alone for a while and just come back to it in a few months or a year or something and let Dan know that he can continue watching it without me. I really wish I didn’t let some external comments affect me like this, but it is what it is....
Arifureta Shokugyou de Sekai Saikyou
*Dumb Fun* So far I’ve watched the first two episodes and it has been just stupidly edgy enough to be entertaining! The main character develops an ability very similar to Rimuru, but he stays a normal human instead of being a slime. Watching him go kind of nuts as he eats monsters to gain their abilities was pretty funny. In the second episode, he gets his own personal loli vampire girl to confirm his status as a top-tier edge lord. I really have very little idea of what the actual point of this series is going to be other than some power/revenge fantasy bullshit, but it seems dumb enough to be fun to laugh at if nothing else. Hopefully it doesn’t get as boring as Magical Girl Site did....
Bem
*DROPPED* So yeah, I just barely got through the first episode and decided to drop it. I was just so, so bored. I almost fell asleep a few times. Part of that might be because I was pulling weeds earlier that morning, took some allergy medicine, and didn’t get a whole lot of sleep the night before, but still, just so boring. The world, the characters, the style; none of it grabbed me. Meh.
Cop Craft
*Looking Good* With two episodes into this series, I feel like it is a keeper. It has some nice production values and an interesting setting and plot set-up. The two main characters have already established a pretty good dynamic between each other, too. It has a bit of a Rush Hour feel to me with the different backgrounds of the main duo for a buddy-cop story, except instead of a guy from China, we have a petite elf-like “alien” girl. I don’t tend to get into a lot of super-serious cop drama stuff, so hopefully this is able to keep my attention. So far, it’s doing rather well, though.
Dr. Stone
*Looking Good* The first two episodes of this feel like they’re mostly just setting the stage, but it’s been interesting so far. Everyone in the world is turned to stone and 3700 years later two high school boys break out and begin a quest to re-build civilization and save everyone. Although I’m not quite super into it at the moment, it is definitely holding my interest and the original manga has a lot of fans, so hopefully it will be good! As a huge Rick and Morty fan, it is hard for me to not compare Senku to Rick with the love of science and kind of similar hair. The setting even reminds me a lot of The Ricks Must Be Crazy when they got stuck in the primitive “teenyverse”. But, Senku actually has a sense of justice and wants to save everyone in the world, so that’s COMPLETELY different from Rick. XD
Dumbbell Nan Kilo Moteru? (How Many Kilograms are the Dumbbells You Lift?)
*Nice* This is a fun, fluffy little series. An anime focused on fitness and diet tips is an amusing novelty and within the first three episodes there is some pretty solid comedy. The stuff with the teacher in episode three is especially funny. I don’t see this become a particularly huge favorite of mine, but it is a fun watch that I’ll likely watch to the end.
Dungeon ni Deai wo Motomeru no wa Machigatteiru Darou ka II (DanMachi 2nd Season)
*Nice* Dan and I actually had to go back and finish the first season of DanMachi because we’d only watched the first 4 or so episodes before. That was a pretty interesting experience for me. With how much fun the characters were and the nice production qualities, I felt like the series would have a chance to break into my Top 100 (the 9-10 score range), but the story just didn’t quite hit the mark. After the first season, I’m still unsure what the “point” of the series is. Bell’s sole motivation seems to be to get stronger so he can catch up with the person he admires.... That’s pretty much it. And although there seems to be some antagonistic actions going on in the shadows, things in that regard are kept so DEEP in the shadows that it’s hard to really get a grasp for any kind of real conflict in the series. I’m not usually a big stickler for plot, but this is just so empty that it drags down what could have otherwise been a rather exceptional series. I mean, the first season still got a rather solid 8 from me, but I feel like it could have been more. ANYWAY, we went on to watch the first episode of DanMachi II and maybe there will be a little more clear motivation and conflict moving forward?? We’ll see! We’ll most likely watch to the end regardless.
Enen no Shouboutai (Fire Force)
*Great!* This is easily my favorite show of the season. The new anime from the original creator of Soul Eater, this is absolutely a worthy follow-up. The series follows a fire fighting unit which actually fights fire demons who were once people, and they do it with really cool fire abilities. Yes, they literally “fight fire with fire.” Anyway, the series looks great, the characters are lovable with a really good dynamic within the unit, and the nature of their job can pack an emotional punch as they regularly have to deal with family members of the people who turned into fire demons. After the first four episodes, in addition to establishing the core unit of characters, we get some interesting antagonists and some conflict between the units. The leader of the 5th Unit is kind of laughably over the top with her S&M queen schtick and there are a few other random fan service moments that feel kind of awkwardly thrown in, but again this is from the creator of Soul Eater so that kind of stuff is sort of expected. I’ll definitely be looking forward to this every week.
Isekai Cheat Magician
*Ehhh* Well, Dan dropped this one after the first episode. The piss-poor production quality and lazy generic story practically caused him physical pain. I was kind of looking forward to this, simply for the novelty of a boy and girl with an established relationship (even if it’s just “childhood friends”) were transported to another world together. But man, the production really is rather bad. Honestly, I can get past the generic nature of the story set-up and I can forgive a good amount in the art/animation department. But what is REALLY putting this series on thin ice for me is the sound design. Man, it is just so bad.... BUT! I decided to give it a bit more of a chance and I actually began to enjoy it more with the second and third episodes! I felt like the sound design was handled better and even though it was rather generic I was getting into the description of the magic system of this world while the duo was beginning their training in episode 2. Then, I continued to enjoy myself as they began their journey as adventurers in episode 3. Now, some of this enjoyment might be tied to the fact that I just recently got the new second edition rulebook for the Pathfinder RPG, but whatever. Even though I feel like the best this series can hope to get from me is a “Good (7)” score, it is still an easy somewhat enjoyable “comfort food” anime watch for me. I’ll most likely keep up with it and finish the series as it airs.
Joshikousei no Mudazukai (Wasteful Days of High School Girls)
*Ehhh* We’ve watched the first two episodes of this slice-of-life series so far and I was honestly on the edge of dropping it after episode 1. I was bored during most of it and wasn’t able to form any connection with the characters or get many laughs out of it. However, episode 2 did a lot to pull the series back for me, largely due to the manga artist girl’s bad drawing skills. The dream sequence in particular gave me some really solid laughs. The series is still on the edge, though, and episode 3 will probably decide if I’ll be continuing it or not. I was really looking forward to the “chuunibyou” girl, but her dialog with her teacher at the end of episode 2 was one of the weakest parts of the episode to me. I really like the animation style of the opening for this series, though! Dan has already dropped this one, so it could at least be another series for me to lazily watch on my own. We’ll see!
Kanata no Astra
*Looking Good* After the first two episodes of this series, I’m pretty sure we’ll continue this to the end. Space-faring adventures like this tend to be a bit rare in anime/manga. Well, I suppose they’re kind of rare in general. This series follows a small group of young people who find themselves stranded in space and need to get home by themselves. Most space sci-fi is focused on being an epic space opera or really heavy on science-fantasy stuff and/or gritty elements. Not that there is anything wrong with that stuff, but this series feels really refreshing so far. I look forward to seeing where it goes.
Katsute Kami Datta Kemono-tachi e (To the Abandoned Sacred Beasts)
*Nice* This series was on kind of shaky ground with the first episode. It just did not feel like a very good introduction with its heavy war focus which doesn’t really carry over into what the series is about in the end. While the series is about a group of people who were genetically altered into beasts so they could fight in a war, it’s mostly about the captain hunting down the members of his old unit once they lose their minds to the beast within. I feel like the series would have been better off if the first episode was split up and sprinkled into the series via flashbacks now and then instead of putting all of that in the first episode. I feel like this is what it would have been like if FMA started with the Ishvalan War stuff. It just wasn’t a very interesting opener to me. BUT, after getting through episode 3, I’ll most likely continue this to the end. It probably won’t be “Great”, but it does seem pretty interesting and I like the dynamic that is developing between the main pair.
Machikado Mazoku
*Dumb Fun* We’ve watched the first two episode of this so far and it is just stupidly fun and bonkers! It turns out that a girl is from a demon lineage and one day her ancestry manifests, sprouting horns and a tail. She is told that she needs to kill a magical girl so that her family can be released from their “curse”. Unfortunately, this girl is stupidly weak (and kind of stupid) and the first magical girl that she meets is INSANELY strong, effortlessly stopping a truck with one hand to save the life of the demon girl. The first episode was just stupid wacky fun and then things take a turn in the second episode with the two girls developing a weird kind-of-friendship. If the series can keep this energy up, it will just be a joy to watch.
Sounan Desu ka? (Are You Lost?)
*Dumb Fun* Four girls are stranded on a desert island and need to survive. Like with Dumbbells, this is another kind-of-educational series, but instead of fitness we get little tidbits about surviving in the wilderness. This is a half-length-episodes series and the production quality isn’t a solid as Dumbbells, but this is still interesting enough and the novelty of the premise will probably make the 15min a week worth my time. And the shining moments of comedy like the uber-survivalist snatching a bug out of the air and eating it in a completely dead-pan manner are just priceless.
Tejina-senpai
*DROPPED* Welp, speaking of half-length-episodes series, here’s one that did NOT get saved by its novel subject matter. A story focused on stage magic seemed like it could be interesting, but nope! This was the first series that I decided to drop this season. I gave it two episodes and it just didn’t click with me at all. The comedy only provided a few empty chuckles and even with half-length episodes the jokes were already feeling stupidly repetitive during episode 2. I wasn’t getting into the characters with the girl being really dumb and not in any kind of fun way; she was honestly getting pretty annoying. The main boy was about as bland as they come. I was kind of curious how some of the new characters might work out, but I didn’t care enough to find out. The series was just too much of a bore. So yeah, bye!
Toaru Kagaku no Accelerator
*Ehhh* So far, the pacing of Accelerator feels much better than Index III, although that’s not a very high benchmark to clear. Also, since this is the “Accelerator Show”, hopefully the series will stay laser-focused on stories involving him and not become the scattered mess that the core Index series has. *sigh* I’m still sad about the overall state of this franchise and how it has fallen with me after Index III. I don’t know if Accelerator can do much to redeem the franchise, but I’ll probably watch it all the way through. It has had some good moments so far, but it hasn’t done much to really grab me. If it doesn’t perform particularly well in the end, I could end up dropping the franchise as a whole after this. We’ll see!
Tsuujou Kougeki ga Zentai Kougeki de Ni-kai Kougeki no Okaasan wa Suki Desu ka? (Do You Like Your Mom? Her Normal Attack is Two Attacks at Full Power)
*Dumb Fun* I went into this expecting some dumb fun, but I honestly did not think I would find Isekai Mama to be quite as amusing as I am! This is pretty much going head-to-head with Machikado Mazoku to be my favorite stupid-fun comedy of the season. A boy and his mom are sucked into a video game world as part of some nonsensical government scheme or something.... But whatever! It’s just an excuse for stupid isekai hijinks! Mamako is just an adorable and fun character and she plays off of her son well, even if it gets into some really eye-roll-worthy fan service moments at times. The two supporting girls that they’ve recruited so far (as of episode 3) also seem to have some potential. The male lead (Mamako’s son) is a little “just there” most of the time, but he has had a few fun moments and hopefully he’ll get better as the series goes on. While Dan dropped this after the third episode, this is some simple light fun which should be easy for me to watch to the end.
Uchi no Ko no Tame naraba, Ore wa Moshikashitara Maou mo Taoseru kamo Shirenai. (If It's for My Daughter, I'd Even Defeat a Demon Lord)
*DROPPED* The third and last of the shows that I’ve dropped so far. This is a series about an adventurer in a fantasy world who adopts a young demon girl he finds by herself in the forest after her birth father(?) died. Over the first three episodes it was mostly just about them becoming a family and Latina being cute. But her cuteness wasn’t enough to save this series, especially after hearing what happens in the future of the series. However, even trying to pretend that I don’t know what happens, the first three episodes of this series just did not impress me. Aside from putting in a lot of effort to make Latina look as adorable as possible, the art and animation are actually worse than Isekai Cheat Magician. This is painfully apparent when we have our first big battle sequence in episode 3. And aside from that, the life of Latina at the tavern where she and Dale live is getting pretty repetitive and his constant doting over her was getting flat-out annoying in episode 3 (and a little creepy when keeping future story beats in mind). So yeah, just not worth continuing for me.
Vinland Saga
*Ehhh* And lastly, we have another one of the shows which actually have really good production values! So why does this get an “Ehhh” from me? Well, I’m not typically a huge fan of historical drama and don’t have a lot of interest in Viking culture. The first three episodes were pretty solid and engaging, but I wasn’t really able to connect with the characters or anything that was going on. The third episode left off with a set-up/cliffhanger for what should be an intense fight in episode four, but I’m not sure if it will be enough for me. Even though nearly everything about this series seems great, I might still end up dropping it after the next episode because it might just not be my thing. Also, on a minor note, another strike it has against it is that it is on Amazon and is currently the ONLY thing that we’re watching on that platform. So yeah, it’s a little bit of a bother to open up the PS4 Amazon app JUST for this series when there are at least three shows we’re watching on Crunchyroll and Funimation. I guess when it comes to stuff that Dan and I are watching together, Machikado Mazoku is in the same situation with it being the only thing we’re watching on HIDIVE. But anyway, I’ll see how episode four of Vinland Saga turns out, but it’s not looking all that good....
Araburu Kisetsu no Otome-domo yo. (Maidens of the Savage Season)
*On-Hold* I’d consider this one of the standouts of the season. It’s very interesting that this series was actually released in a shounen magazine. It follows a group of girls who are dealing with the topic of sex in a serious and down-to-earth way. It’s been both funny and relatably awkward at the same time. Even though comedy isn’t technically its main focus, this series has provided me with some of my biggest laugh-out-loud moments so far. So, why do I have this marked as *On-Hold*? Well, it’s kind of an “it’s not you, it’s me” situation. I watched the third episode and just was not able to enjoy it. I really should have enjoyed the episode; it had some really interesting developments. But I just couldn’t get into it. Sadly, a lot of this is due to letting other people’s comments get to me. Most of this comes from me unfortunately reading the comments on the page of original creator Mari Okada. She apparently gets a lot of hate for “NTR” stories in her works and there has been mention that Maidens falls into that trap.... Honestly, I’m not really sure what the hell NTR even is. It seems to be kind of related to “cucking” and/or cheating?? But sometimes when people call something NTR, I don’t really know what they mean by that. I mean, did AnoHana and The Anthem of the Heart have NTR elements?? Really, I don’t know if I even have issues with NTR or not, but just my reading of this shit about this series and its creator was extremely distracting while watching episode 3. I just need to leave this series alone for a while and just come back to it in a few months or a year or something and let Dan know that he can continue watching it without me. I really wish I didn’t let some external comments affect me like this, but it is what it is....
Arifureta Shokugyou de Sekai Saikyou
*Dumb Fun* So far I’ve watched the first two episodes and it has been just stupidly edgy enough to be entertaining! The main character develops an ability very similar to Rimuru, but he stays a normal human instead of being a slime. Watching him go kind of nuts as he eats monsters to gain their abilities was pretty funny. In the second episode, he gets his own personal loli vampire girl to confirm his status as a top-tier edge lord. I really have very little idea of what the actual point of this series is going to be other than some power/revenge fantasy bullshit, but it seems dumb enough to be fun to laugh at if nothing else. Hopefully it doesn’t get as boring as Magical Girl Site did....
Bem
*DROPPED* So yeah, I just barely got through the first episode and decided to drop it. I was just so, so bored. I almost fell asleep a few times. Part of that might be because I was pulling weeds earlier that morning, took some allergy medicine, and didn’t get a whole lot of sleep the night before, but still, just so boring. The world, the characters, the style; none of it grabbed me. Meh.
Cop Craft
*Looking Good* With two episodes into this series, I feel like it is a keeper. It has some nice production values and an interesting setting and plot set-up. The two main characters have already established a pretty good dynamic between each other, too. It has a bit of a Rush Hour feel to me with the different backgrounds of the main duo for a buddy-cop story, except instead of a guy from China, we have a petite elf-like “alien” girl. I don’t tend to get into a lot of super-serious cop drama stuff, so hopefully this is able to keep my attention. So far, it’s doing rather well, though.
Dr. Stone
*Looking Good* The first two episodes of this feel like they’re mostly just setting the stage, but it’s been interesting so far. Everyone in the world is turned to stone and 3700 years later two high school boys break out and begin a quest to re-build civilization and save everyone. Although I’m not quite super into it at the moment, it is definitely holding my interest and the original manga has a lot of fans, so hopefully it will be good! As a huge Rick and Morty fan, it is hard for me to not compare Senku to Rick with the love of science and kind of similar hair. The setting even reminds me a lot of The Ricks Must Be Crazy when they got stuck in the primitive “teenyverse”. But, Senku actually has a sense of justice and wants to save everyone in the world, so that’s COMPLETELY different from Rick. XD
Dumbbell Nan Kilo Moteru? (How Many Kilograms are the Dumbbells You Lift?)
*Nice* This is a fun, fluffy little series. An anime focused on fitness and diet tips is an amusing novelty and within the first three episodes there is some pretty solid comedy. The stuff with the teacher in episode three is especially funny. I don’t see this become a particularly huge favorite of mine, but it is a fun watch that I’ll likely watch to the end.
Dungeon ni Deai wo Motomeru no wa Machigatteiru Darou ka II (DanMachi 2nd Season)
*Nice* Dan and I actually had to go back and finish the first season of DanMachi because we’d only watched the first 4 or so episodes before. That was a pretty interesting experience for me. With how much fun the characters were and the nice production qualities, I felt like the series would have a chance to break into my Top 100 (the 9-10 score range), but the story just didn’t quite hit the mark. After the first season, I’m still unsure what the “point” of the series is. Bell’s sole motivation seems to be to get stronger so he can catch up with the person he admires.... That’s pretty much it. And although there seems to be some antagonistic actions going on in the shadows, things in that regard are kept so DEEP in the shadows that it’s hard to really get a grasp for any kind of real conflict in the series. I’m not usually a big stickler for plot, but this is just so empty that it drags down what could have otherwise been a rather exceptional series. I mean, the first season still got a rather solid 8 from me, but I feel like it could have been more. ANYWAY, we went on to watch the first episode of DanMachi II and maybe there will be a little more clear motivation and conflict moving forward?? We’ll see! We’ll most likely watch to the end regardless.
Enen no Shouboutai (Fire Force)
*Great!* This is easily my favorite show of the season. The new anime from the original creator of Soul Eater, this is absolutely a worthy follow-up. The series follows a fire fighting unit which actually fights fire demons who were once people, and they do it with really cool fire abilities. Yes, they literally “fight fire with fire.” Anyway, the series looks great, the characters are lovable with a really good dynamic within the unit, and the nature of their job can pack an emotional punch as they regularly have to deal with family members of the people who turned into fire demons. After the first four episodes, in addition to establishing the core unit of characters, we get some interesting antagonists and some conflict between the units. The leader of the 5th Unit is kind of laughably over the top with her S&M queen schtick and there are a few other random fan service moments that feel kind of awkwardly thrown in, but again this is from the creator of Soul Eater so that kind of stuff is sort of expected. I’ll definitely be looking forward to this every week.
Isekai Cheat Magician
*Ehhh* Well, Dan dropped this one after the first episode. The piss-poor production quality and lazy generic story practically caused him physical pain. I was kind of looking forward to this, simply for the novelty of a boy and girl with an established relationship (even if it’s just “childhood friends”) were transported to another world together. But man, the production really is rather bad. Honestly, I can get past the generic nature of the story set-up and I can forgive a good amount in the art/animation department. But what is REALLY putting this series on thin ice for me is the sound design. Man, it is just so bad.... BUT! I decided to give it a bit more of a chance and I actually began to enjoy it more with the second and third episodes! I felt like the sound design was handled better and even though it was rather generic I was getting into the description of the magic system of this world while the duo was beginning their training in episode 2. Then, I continued to enjoy myself as they began their journey as adventurers in episode 3. Now, some of this enjoyment might be tied to the fact that I just recently got the new second edition rulebook for the Pathfinder RPG, but whatever. Even though I feel like the best this series can hope to get from me is a “Good (7)” score, it is still an easy somewhat enjoyable “comfort food” anime watch for me. I’ll most likely keep up with it and finish the series as it airs.
Joshikousei no Mudazukai (Wasteful Days of High School Girls)
*Ehhh* We’ve watched the first two episodes of this slice-of-life series so far and I was honestly on the edge of dropping it after episode 1. I was bored during most of it and wasn’t able to form any connection with the characters or get many laughs out of it. However, episode 2 did a lot to pull the series back for me, largely due to the manga artist girl’s bad drawing skills. The dream sequence in particular gave me some really solid laughs. The series is still on the edge, though, and episode 3 will probably decide if I’ll be continuing it or not. I was really looking forward to the “chuunibyou” girl, but her dialog with her teacher at the end of episode 2 was one of the weakest parts of the episode to me. I really like the animation style of the opening for this series, though! Dan has already dropped this one, so it could at least be another series for me to lazily watch on my own. We’ll see!
Kanata no Astra
*Looking Good* After the first two episodes of this series, I’m pretty sure we’ll continue this to the end. Space-faring adventures like this tend to be a bit rare in anime/manga. Well, I suppose they’re kind of rare in general. This series follows a small group of young people who find themselves stranded in space and need to get home by themselves. Most space sci-fi is focused on being an epic space opera or really heavy on science-fantasy stuff and/or gritty elements. Not that there is anything wrong with that stuff, but this series feels really refreshing so far. I look forward to seeing where it goes.
Katsute Kami Datta Kemono-tachi e (To the Abandoned Sacred Beasts)
*Nice* This series was on kind of shaky ground with the first episode. It just did not feel like a very good introduction with its heavy war focus which doesn’t really carry over into what the series is about in the end. While the series is about a group of people who were genetically altered into beasts so they could fight in a war, it’s mostly about the captain hunting down the members of his old unit once they lose their minds to the beast within. I feel like the series would have been better off if the first episode was split up and sprinkled into the series via flashbacks now and then instead of putting all of that in the first episode. I feel like this is what it would have been like if FMA started with the Ishvalan War stuff. It just wasn’t a very interesting opener to me. BUT, after getting through episode 3, I’ll most likely continue this to the end. It probably won’t be “Great”, but it does seem pretty interesting and I like the dynamic that is developing between the main pair.
Machikado Mazoku
*Dumb Fun* We’ve watched the first two episode of this so far and it is just stupidly fun and bonkers! It turns out that a girl is from a demon lineage and one day her ancestry manifests, sprouting horns and a tail. She is told that she needs to kill a magical girl so that her family can be released from their “curse”. Unfortunately, this girl is stupidly weak (and kind of stupid) and the first magical girl that she meets is INSANELY strong, effortlessly stopping a truck with one hand to save the life of the demon girl. The first episode was just stupid wacky fun and then things take a turn in the second episode with the two girls developing a weird kind-of-friendship. If the series can keep this energy up, it will just be a joy to watch.
Sounan Desu ka? (Are You Lost?)
*Dumb Fun* Four girls are stranded on a desert island and need to survive. Like with Dumbbells, this is another kind-of-educational series, but instead of fitness we get little tidbits about surviving in the wilderness. This is a half-length-episodes series and the production quality isn’t a solid as Dumbbells, but this is still interesting enough and the novelty of the premise will probably make the 15min a week worth my time. And the shining moments of comedy like the uber-survivalist snatching a bug out of the air and eating it in a completely dead-pan manner are just priceless.
Tejina-senpai
*DROPPED* Welp, speaking of half-length-episodes series, here’s one that did NOT get saved by its novel subject matter. A story focused on stage magic seemed like it could be interesting, but nope! This was the first series that I decided to drop this season. I gave it two episodes and it just didn’t click with me at all. The comedy only provided a few empty chuckles and even with half-length episodes the jokes were already feeling stupidly repetitive during episode 2. I wasn’t getting into the characters with the girl being really dumb and not in any kind of fun way; she was honestly getting pretty annoying. The main boy was about as bland as they come. I was kind of curious how some of the new characters might work out, but I didn’t care enough to find out. The series was just too much of a bore. So yeah, bye!
Toaru Kagaku no Accelerator
*Ehhh* So far, the pacing of Accelerator feels much better than Index III, although that’s not a very high benchmark to clear. Also, since this is the “Accelerator Show”, hopefully the series will stay laser-focused on stories involving him and not become the scattered mess that the core Index series has. *sigh* I’m still sad about the overall state of this franchise and how it has fallen with me after Index III. I don’t know if Accelerator can do much to redeem the franchise, but I’ll probably watch it all the way through. It has had some good moments so far, but it hasn’t done much to really grab me. If it doesn’t perform particularly well in the end, I could end up dropping the franchise as a whole after this. We’ll see!
Tsuujou Kougeki ga Zentai Kougeki de Ni-kai Kougeki no Okaasan wa Suki Desu ka? (Do You Like Your Mom? Her Normal Attack is Two Attacks at Full Power)
*Dumb Fun* I went into this expecting some dumb fun, but I honestly did not think I would find Isekai Mama to be quite as amusing as I am! This is pretty much going head-to-head with Machikado Mazoku to be my favorite stupid-fun comedy of the season. A boy and his mom are sucked into a video game world as part of some nonsensical government scheme or something.... But whatever! It’s just an excuse for stupid isekai hijinks! Mamako is just an adorable and fun character and she plays off of her son well, even if it gets into some really eye-roll-worthy fan service moments at times. The two supporting girls that they’ve recruited so far (as of episode 3) also seem to have some potential. The male lead (Mamako’s son) is a little “just there” most of the time, but he has had a few fun moments and hopefully he’ll get better as the series goes on. While Dan dropped this after the third episode, this is some simple light fun which should be easy for me to watch to the end.
Uchi no Ko no Tame naraba, Ore wa Moshikashitara Maou mo Taoseru kamo Shirenai. (If It's for My Daughter, I'd Even Defeat a Demon Lord)
*DROPPED* The third and last of the shows that I’ve dropped so far. This is a series about an adventurer in a fantasy world who adopts a young demon girl he finds by herself in the forest after her birth father(?) died. Over the first three episodes it was mostly just about them becoming a family and Latina being cute. But her cuteness wasn’t enough to save this series, especially after hearing what happens in the future of the series. However, even trying to pretend that I don’t know what happens, the first three episodes of this series just did not impress me. Aside from putting in a lot of effort to make Latina look as adorable as possible, the art and animation are actually worse than Isekai Cheat Magician. This is painfully apparent when we have our first big battle sequence in episode 3. And aside from that, the life of Latina at the tavern where she and Dale live is getting pretty repetitive and his constant doting over her was getting flat-out annoying in episode 3 (and a little creepy when keeping future story beats in mind). So yeah, just not worth continuing for me.
Vinland Saga
*Ehhh* And lastly, we have another one of the shows which actually have really good production values! So why does this get an “Ehhh” from me? Well, I’m not typically a huge fan of historical drama and don’t have a lot of interest in Viking culture. The first three episodes were pretty solid and engaging, but I wasn’t really able to connect with the characters or anything that was going on. The third episode left off with a set-up/cliffhanger for what should be an intense fight in episode four, but I’m not sure if it will be enough for me. Even though nearly everything about this series seems great, I might still end up dropping it after the next episode because it might just not be my thing. Also, on a minor note, another strike it has against it is that it is on Amazon and is currently the ONLY thing that we’re watching on that platform. So yeah, it’s a little bit of a bother to open up the PS4 Amazon app JUST for this series when there are at least three shows we’re watching on Crunchyroll and Funimation. I guess when it comes to stuff that Dan and I are watching together, Machikado Mazoku is in the same situation with it being the only thing we’re watching on HIDIVE. But anyway, I’ll see how episode four of Vinland Saga turns out, but it’s not looking all that good....
Posted by pluvia33 | Aug 5, 2019 9:18 AM | 0 comments
April 19th, 2019
Ungentlemanly - Webtoon Review
Time for another non-anime/manga review! I think I might make this a regular thing. I’d really like to make a blog category for these reviews, but stupid MAL blogs are capped at having 10 categories max. Maybe I’ll restructure them so I can make a “Non-Anime/Manga Reviews” category. We’ll see.
Anyway, this time around I am reviewing a web comic (Webtoon) by my good friend and awesome artist Davy Wagnarok. While I do know David personally, I’ll do my best to give as honest of a review as possible. And that shouldn’t be too hard since I do genuinely love this series!
Ungentlemanly follows Sean Den Freude, a handsome billionaire who spends most of his free time pranking women in various ways. The series is essentially a gag-comedy manga at its core, drawing a great deal of inspiration from series like Golden Boy, GTO, and Prison School, with of dash of absolute absurdity and parody-based comedy which could feel at home in Pop Team Epic. But that’s not to say that Ungentlemanly is nothing but a hodgepodge of the styles found in other works; the series truly has an identity and style all its own and it is rather glorious. The series currently only has five chapters (or “episodes”) released so far, but I still wanted to get my feelings out there so I can more easily spread the love.
So without further ado, let’s get into my usual category breakouts:
-----Story - 8 out of 10-----
As I mentioned, the main “gimmick” of Ungentlemanly is that the lead character Sean Den Freude plays various pranks on women as a way to get revenge for his broken heart. These pranks tend to be on an exorbitantly grand scale which should be expected of an eccentric billionaire manga character. While the series only has five episodes released so far and with it largely following an episodic gag-comedy format, it’s hard to justify a score higher than an 8 in the Story category. However, for what it is, the series definitely earns this 8. The comedic timing is impeccable and the story always flows well from panel-to-panel. And the series isn’t always prank-focused. So far the series has been alternating between prank episodes and kind of cool-down backstory/character building episodes. But that’s not to say the “cool-downs” are any less crazy and absurd compared to the pranks. There is always something ridiculous going on to keep you laughing and engaged. And in addition to the core story, each episode closes with a short and absolutely random parody of some kind, with things based off of series such as Attack on Titan, Ghost in the Shell, and Dead or Alive: Xtreme Beach Volleyball.
-----Art - 9 out of 10-----
Now for a little behind-the-scenes tidbit, David told me about the idea for this comic months before it started its release. He had the idea while reading various things online which described how a Gentleman is supposed to act, many of which were really absurd and dated. He told me about his idea to turn them all on their head and make them UN-Gentlemanly things for a character to do. After he told me a few of the comic ideas, he asked for my opinion. While I was generally amused by most of the jokes, I told him: Honestly, these kinds of jokes are going to depend a LOT on the art when it comes to whether they work or not. And man, does the art deliver! This series absolutely would not work without the visuals. The composition is what creates the wonderful comedic timing and the crazy characters and INSANE facial expressions truly bring the series to life, generating deep laughs on their own. If you enjoyed the facial expressions in Golden Boy, GTO, Prison School, or similar series, then you are in for a treat here.
And to get into the style in general terms, there are a few rough edges at times but the series is usually very clean and the character designs are great. As someone who got into manga during the big Tokyopop-driven boom of the early 2000s, I remember when a lot of subpar OEL (Original English-Language) “manga” was getting released. While some of that stuff generally looked alright, nearly all of it felt a little “off”. It felt like they were copying the style of anime/manga without really understanding it or making it their own. It was usually very obvious that it didn’t actually come from Japan based on the art alone. These feelings were compounded by seeing a lot of similar “anime/manga knockoff” amateur art on sites like Deviant Art. However, when it comes to David’s art, I honestly feel that it is some of the best anime-influenced art out there. While it has its clear inspirations, it feels like it came from a place of its own and a true understanding of the artform. I could absolutely see something like Ungentlemanly being released by someone in Japan. You can see more of David’s anime-style artwork in the card game Somnium.
Oh, and one last note on the “art” end of things for people who are used to the traditional comic/manga page setup and might not be familiar with the “Webtoon” format. This series is done in a long continually scrolling set of comic panels. It’s similar to 4-koma comic strips, but just keeps going panel after panel. I hear that it reads best of a smartphone or tablet, but as I don’t own a smartphone I just read it on my laptop; that mostly works just fine.
-----Characters - 9 out of 10-----
The characters in this series are simply a blast to watch. Sean’s melodrama and smugness is strangely endearing and his relationship with his two best buds feels very genuine. The women being pranked are also brimming with personality and they are presented in a way which is somehow both exploitative and respectful. Even though Sean is pranking them, I never feel a strong sense of malice from Sean or the creator. The pranks are typically rather harmless fun in the end and the girls are usually more confused than hurt in any way. All of the characters are created with great care, not only in the art department but also in how they are treated on the page.
-----Enjoyment - 10 out of 10-----
While I typically do not score things on MAL which I have not finished, especially when it has such a low “chapter” count so far, I can honestly say that at the moment I truly am enjoying this series more than every manga which I’ve given a 9-score. This might be a low-tier 10 for me at the moment, but a 10 nonetheless. I’ve found much of Ungentlemanly to be on par with some of the best comedic moments in GTO. Whenever I see that a new episode is released, I read it as quickly as possible. It always brightens my day to see Sean’s latest antics and the latest ridiculous parody segment at the end. It is all just an absolutely wonderful experience.
-----Overall - 9 out of 10 (Conclusion)-----
So in the end, Ungentlemanly is an exceptional series which has a lot for comedy fans to enjoy. Wonderful comedic timing, great art (especially the facial expressions and character designs), and just an overall delight to read. It’d be easiest to get an idea of if you’d like this based on whether or not you have enjoyed the series which I mentioned above, but really you can just check out the first episode of the comic to see if it’s your thing. I’m really looking forward to seeing where Ungentlemanly goes from here and hope many more people will discover and enjoy the series as time goes on!
Anyway, this time around I am reviewing a web comic (Webtoon) by my good friend and awesome artist Davy Wagnarok. While I do know David personally, I’ll do my best to give as honest of a review as possible. And that shouldn’t be too hard since I do genuinely love this series!
Ungentlemanly - Webtoon Review
Ungentlemanly follows Sean Den Freude, a handsome billionaire who spends most of his free time pranking women in various ways. The series is essentially a gag-comedy manga at its core, drawing a great deal of inspiration from series like Golden Boy, GTO, and Prison School, with of dash of absolute absurdity and parody-based comedy which could feel at home in Pop Team Epic. But that’s not to say that Ungentlemanly is nothing but a hodgepodge of the styles found in other works; the series truly has an identity and style all its own and it is rather glorious. The series currently only has five chapters (or “episodes”) released so far, but I still wanted to get my feelings out there so I can more easily spread the love.
So without further ado, let’s get into my usual category breakouts:
-----Story - 8 out of 10-----
As I mentioned, the main “gimmick” of Ungentlemanly is that the lead character Sean Den Freude plays various pranks on women as a way to get revenge for his broken heart. These pranks tend to be on an exorbitantly grand scale which should be expected of an eccentric billionaire manga character. While the series only has five episodes released so far and with it largely following an episodic gag-comedy format, it’s hard to justify a score higher than an 8 in the Story category. However, for what it is, the series definitely earns this 8. The comedic timing is impeccable and the story always flows well from panel-to-panel. And the series isn’t always prank-focused. So far the series has been alternating between prank episodes and kind of cool-down backstory/character building episodes. But that’s not to say the “cool-downs” are any less crazy and absurd compared to the pranks. There is always something ridiculous going on to keep you laughing and engaged. And in addition to the core story, each episode closes with a short and absolutely random parody of some kind, with things based off of series such as Attack on Titan, Ghost in the Shell, and Dead or Alive: Xtreme Beach Volleyball.
-----Art - 9 out of 10-----
Now for a little behind-the-scenes tidbit, David told me about the idea for this comic months before it started its release. He had the idea while reading various things online which described how a Gentleman is supposed to act, many of which were really absurd and dated. He told me about his idea to turn them all on their head and make them UN-Gentlemanly things for a character to do. After he told me a few of the comic ideas, he asked for my opinion. While I was generally amused by most of the jokes, I told him: Honestly, these kinds of jokes are going to depend a LOT on the art when it comes to whether they work or not. And man, does the art deliver! This series absolutely would not work without the visuals. The composition is what creates the wonderful comedic timing and the crazy characters and INSANE facial expressions truly bring the series to life, generating deep laughs on their own. If you enjoyed the facial expressions in Golden Boy, GTO, Prison School, or similar series, then you are in for a treat here.
And to get into the style in general terms, there are a few rough edges at times but the series is usually very clean and the character designs are great. As someone who got into manga during the big Tokyopop-driven boom of the early 2000s, I remember when a lot of subpar OEL (Original English-Language) “manga” was getting released. While some of that stuff generally looked alright, nearly all of it felt a little “off”. It felt like they were copying the style of anime/manga without really understanding it or making it their own. It was usually very obvious that it didn’t actually come from Japan based on the art alone. These feelings were compounded by seeing a lot of similar “anime/manga knockoff” amateur art on sites like Deviant Art. However, when it comes to David’s art, I honestly feel that it is some of the best anime-influenced art out there. While it has its clear inspirations, it feels like it came from a place of its own and a true understanding of the artform. I could absolutely see something like Ungentlemanly being released by someone in Japan. You can see more of David’s anime-style artwork in the card game Somnium.
Oh, and one last note on the “art” end of things for people who are used to the traditional comic/manga page setup and might not be familiar with the “Webtoon” format. This series is done in a long continually scrolling set of comic panels. It’s similar to 4-koma comic strips, but just keeps going panel after panel. I hear that it reads best of a smartphone or tablet, but as I don’t own a smartphone I just read it on my laptop; that mostly works just fine.
-----Characters - 9 out of 10-----
The characters in this series are simply a blast to watch. Sean’s melodrama and smugness is strangely endearing and his relationship with his two best buds feels very genuine. The women being pranked are also brimming with personality and they are presented in a way which is somehow both exploitative and respectful. Even though Sean is pranking them, I never feel a strong sense of malice from Sean or the creator. The pranks are typically rather harmless fun in the end and the girls are usually more confused than hurt in any way. All of the characters are created with great care, not only in the art department but also in how they are treated on the page.
-----Enjoyment - 10 out of 10-----
While I typically do not score things on MAL which I have not finished, especially when it has such a low “chapter” count so far, I can honestly say that at the moment I truly am enjoying this series more than every manga which I’ve given a 9-score. This might be a low-tier 10 for me at the moment, but a 10 nonetheless. I’ve found much of Ungentlemanly to be on par with some of the best comedic moments in GTO. Whenever I see that a new episode is released, I read it as quickly as possible. It always brightens my day to see Sean’s latest antics and the latest ridiculous parody segment at the end. It is all just an absolutely wonderful experience.
-----Overall - 9 out of 10 (Conclusion)-----
So in the end, Ungentlemanly is an exceptional series which has a lot for comedy fans to enjoy. Wonderful comedic timing, great art (especially the facial expressions and character designs), and just an overall delight to read. It’d be easiest to get an idea of if you’d like this based on whether or not you have enjoyed the series which I mentioned above, but really you can just check out the first episode of the comic to see if it’s your thing. I’m really looking forward to seeing where Ungentlemanly goes from here and hope many more people will discover and enjoy the series as time goes on!
Posted by pluvia33 | Apr 19, 2019 10:01 AM | 0 comments
April 2nd, 2019
Love, Death & Robots - Review
I’ve enjoyed anthology collections of short anime works like Sweat Punch and the Genius Party series quite a bit. Even if the shorts can be kind of hit-and-miss, they’re usually at least interesting. I also don’t mind fun animated sex and violence like what’s in Heavy Metal. So when a friend of mine mentioned the animated anthology series “Love, Death & Robots” which recently premiered on Netflix, it totally seemed like my kind of thing. I ended up binging the series last Saturday and there is kind of a lot to unpack with 18 different shorts included, so I figured I’d write a review to both organize my thoughts and to share my thoughts with others.
This review is generally spoiler-free, as much as any review can be, except for what I’ve put under spoiler tags. Within those tags, I’ll discuss my reactions and thoughts on specific story elements and/or the final twists of the shorts, so don’t read those unless you’ve already watched it or absolutely don’t care about being spoiled.
UPDATE (21 May 2022): Today I watched Volume III of Love, Death & Robots. I liked it a lot so I’ve gone ahead and added reviews for the Volume II and Volume III segments to this post.
Before I get into each individual segment of this animated anthology, I’d like to give some general thoughts on this “season”. First off, I’d say that it is definitely worth a watch if you are a fan of animation and especially if you enjoy science fiction, fantasy, and/or supernatural stories with a bit of “edge” to them; meaning, a lot of sex, violence, and profanity. And this “edge” might be the first thing that could potentially put someone off to the series. While I definitely don’t mind these elements in my entertainment, some of it does feel gratuitous to the point of being distracting to the overall story.
Another thing that I’d say about the series overall, and something that is largely a matter of personal tastes, is that I was a bit disappointed by the lack of variety in animation style. Out of the 18 shorts, seven of them were all in a super-realistic AAA video game cutscene style CGI animation. Of the other 11, only three or four were in some form of 2D-style animation (“Alternate Histories” is a little bit of an in-between state of 2D/3D style). With this being called a reboot/reimagining of Heavy Metal and as someone who enjoyed Heavy Metal 2000 quite a bit back in the day, it was disappointing to not see anything which emulated the style of that work and to see the over-abundance of 3D-style animation.
With all of that said, I did overall enjoy the series quite a bit. Binging the series all in one sitting was a little taxing because for some reason I thought there were only 10 or so segments instead of 18 so I continually thought to myself, “It’s not over yet??” when it queued up the next episode. Most of the segments were at least interesting or entertaining on some level, looking really cool and/or making me think or surprising me a bit. If I gave the entire anthology a score on the same scale that I rate my anime, I’d give it a mostly-solid 8; maybe a 7.5 if I gave fraction. Again, I’d say it’s definitely worth a watch if these kinds of stories are interesting to you.
So without further ado, here are my individual thoughts on each segment:
01 “Sonnie’s Edge”
This segment is about people who control monstrous beasties with their minds, using them to participate in brutal fights to the death. Our lead character Sonnie is offered a chance to throw her next fight to make a lot of cash, but she declines. In the process, we get what is probably some of the worst use of pointless profanity in the series when her friend tells off the dude.... We also get a somewhat gratuitous sex scene in the final part of the segment if that happens to bother you, but if it does then this probably isn’t a series for you.... So, the monster battle is pretty cool. It starts off a bit slow, but gets rather hype by the end. It’s all a lot of fun and well-choreographed. The ending is also rather cool. While I thought I knew exactly what was going to happen with the twist, I was only half right and some of the things earlier on make more sense after the big reveal. I honestly wasn’t expecting this segment to make me think as much as it did.
02 “Three Robots”
In this segment, three robots of varying designs travel together around a human city after all humans have died. This one also has some unnatural profanity, but it didn’t bother me in this case because they were robots; their entire way of speech is kind of meant to be an unnatural mimic of how humans talk. So yeah, it works. And this segment as a whole really works. The robots’ banter is amusing and the story is interesting. It had a bit of a quirky slice of life feel to it which I really enjoyed. Seeing them hang out with a cat is especially funny.
03 “The Witness”
This was the first segment that didn’t really work for me all that well. This segment used rotoscope animation which was pretty cool in a way, but the story itself was just barely interesting. It follows a girl who witnesses a guy murder another girl who looks exactly like her. She runs and he chases. There is a ton of sex-stuff pretty much just because. But in the end, it didn’t have all that much going on behind its style.
04 “Suits”
This 3D-cartoon-style segment follows a group of farmers as they use mech suits to battle monsters who come through some kind of breach and attack. At first, it’s a very casual affair as the main farmer dude kills a small group of the monsters that come through while drinking his morning coffee, but then a huge breach occurs and shit gets real! He needs the support of two other mech-piloting farmers and his wife giving some back-up fire from their base (farm). While this isn’t particularly a favorite of mine and I did zone out a bit, it was still pretty cool and did have a rather genuine emotional bit to it, so definitely still worth the watch.
05 “Sucker of Souls”
Eh, another segment that wasn’t completely worthless, but not by much. It’s really a shame since this was one of the few 2D-style segments. In this segment, a group of mercenaries escort a professor guy as he researches some ruins and they run into Dracula. This has some more very awkwardly done pointless profanity stuff going on. I ALMOST past it off as “mercenary talk”, but some of it was just SO bad. I guess it was mainly the action here that saved it from the “5” score, but really, this wasn’t all that memorable. I think it being a 2D segment is one of the only things that is saving it here. It doesn’t even really have any spoiler stuff that is all that worth talking about. Meh. Easily second place for my least favorite in the series.
Score: 6 / 10
06 “When the Yogurt Took Over”
This was pretty amusing. This short is all about how genetically modified yogurt became sentient and took over the world! It has themes of the folly of man and such. It’s all presented in an amusing, ridiculous manner as we’re taken over by a dairy product, but it doesn’t elevate to anything particularly great in my opinion as it’s all kind of like, “Well yeah;” when it comes to the themes. Everything plays out pretty much exactly as you’d expect if a super intelligent being decided to take over. Again, nothing of a real spoiler nature worth talking about here, but it was pretty amusing.
Score: 7 / 10
07 “Beyond the Aquila Rift”
In this segment, three space travelers head off on a long journey in stasis. When the main individual wakes up, he is greeted by a familiar face and told that a routing error sent them LONG off course. The two of them get reacquainted (queue sex scene!!), but things don’t seem quite right.... I thought this segment was done rather well and has one of the more thought-provoking twists in the series, so a lot to talk about in the Spoiler tag....
Update: After marinating over this for the last few years and then this auto-playing after I finished Volume III on Netflix and got me to go ahead and re-watched the whole segment, I’m upping this from an 8 to a 9. This is at least my fourth favorite segment in the original set, probably actually tied for third or even my actual third favorite. I really like this one a lot.
08 “Good Hunting”
This is one of my two favorite segments in the series. It follows a boy living in early 20th century China. He and his father hunt kitsune-like fox-woman creatures who seduce men. But after one of their hunts, the boy becomes interested in one such creature. Then as the industrialization of the world marches on, the old magic of the world goes away and this girl loses her ability to shape-shift. The boy starts working on trains and other gear-works in a British settlement in Hong Kong. He meets the girl again who has had to “entertain” men to survive, but after something horrible happened to her, the two team up to get revenge. It’s all a really cool story, one that could easily be extended into a series of its own. If you’re at all interested in steampunk themes, definitely check this one out.
09 “The Dump”
This was an amusing little segment, but didn’t have all that much to it. I could pretty much see the main gist of the twist coming a mile away and there wasn’t much else to keep me entertained, but it was entertaining/interesting enough in the end. I’m sure if you get into the hillbilly/white-trash esthetic that this short uses, then you’d like it just fine. It was a fun, light little segment.
10 “Shape-Shifters”
This was a cool segment. I’m usually not a big fan of military themes, but this had enough of a supernatural twist to keep me entertained in spite of my disinterest in military stuff. So, not really a spoiler as it’s mentioned pretty early on, but this is about werewolves in the military. It mainly follows two werewolves in the US military who are currently deployed. Despite the amazing skills that they bring to the military’s disposal, they still get treated like shit. You know, because racism and stuff. Despite some of the heavy-handed nature of the segment, it is still very interesting and has some very cool visuals if you’re into werewolves and gore. The only thing that I had to go, “Really?” about was when the main guy got completely naked when he went out on a “hunt” and shit. Like, yeah, I guess it makes sense that he wouldn’t want to destroy any of his cloths during his transformation, but did we really need to see that dick flopping around? XD
11 “Helping Hand”
This is pretty much a light version of Gravity (the 2013 movie starring Sandra Bullock). A girl is repairing a satellite and something goes wrong which risks sending her to die, suffocating alone drifting in space. It’s a rather tense story of survival which plays out rather well, but it doesn’t have much going for it beyond that.
12 “Fish Night”
Here’s my least favorite segment in the series. It gets the absolute “Meh” of a 5 score from me. Really, there’s just not really much going on in this short. The ghost fish are pretty and that’s about it. Aside from that, the two characters are boring as all hell and the “twist” is really predictable and just didn’t have any real impact on me as the viewer. Really, it’s not even worth discussing further to the point of putting anything in spoiler tags for this one. Just, meh.
Score: 5 / 10
13 “Lucky 13”
My third favorite segment! This one also doesn’t really have any need for a spoiler tag section, but that’s not to any fault of the story itself. This particular segment is just very straightforward and doesn’t really have any huge twist. And you know what? That’s kind of refreshing. Every short doesn’t have to have some kind of shocker ending in order to be an effective short work. Also refreshing, this is one of the only segments with a female character that is never portrayed as a victim or a sex object. I mean, she gets into a pinch multiple times as a military pilot, but she isn’t victimized in any way on a personal level. This is just a good, exciting adventure story of a pilot and her plane. Also, Samira Wiley (Poussey from Orange Is the New Black) does a great job in the lead role and it’s interesting that they used her as a visual character model. I think this segment would be a great watch for any fan of hers. I also don’t recall any excessive profanity in this segment, so pretty much the only mature content in this short is rather basic war violence. If on its own, the segment would probably be at worst a TV-14 rating. Anyway, I was actually rather surprised with how much I enjoyed this despite my dislike of military themes. A very cool segment.
Score: 9 / 10
14 “Zima Blue”
And now we have the second of my two favorite segments in the series. I’m really not sure if I like this or “Good Hunting” more. They are just so different. While Good Hunting had loads of sex and violence with a female lead who was literally objectified, Zima Blue could have easily had a TV-PG rating if judged on its own. Seriously, the only objectionable content I can remember is maybe Zima’s robot butt and maybe a slightly graphic surgery scene? Maybe? While Lucky 13 was refreshing in its treatment of the female lead, Zima Blue takes things to a completely different level with how much restraint it shows. It tells a very mature (smart) story without ever feeling like it HAD to earn that TV-MA rating for the series. They didn’t make a pointless sex scene between Zima and the reporter girl. They didn’t throw in awkward profanity. They didn’t decide to draw a robot dick for Zima. They could have even easily had Zima paint a nude portrait during his early art career instead of a standard portrait of a couple and I wouldn’t have faulted them too much for it. Anyway, let’s get back to what this is actually about. On the surface, the story doesn’t really have much going on. It’s a story about an artist (Zima) inviting a reporter to hear his life story. It’s in a way reminiscent of Millennium Actress, one of my favorite anime movies, but with a heavier sci-fi twist. But while this story is short and basic, it is also beautiful and thought-provoking. And one last contract to Good Hunting: While I’d love to see the story of Good Hunting expanded into a larger series of its own, Zima Blue is perfectly concise in its short story length. I couldn’t imagine wanting any more or less from this story. It is just perfect as it is.
Score: 10 / 10
15 “Blindspot”
This is a fun little Fast-And-Furious-with-robots kind of segment. It wasn’t particularly amazing or memorable, but it was a fun and stylish little short as the car-driving robots perform a truck heist. With some cutting back on the language, I could easily see this as being an older-kids (TV-Y7) cartoon series. Just nice little mindless entertainment.
Score: 7 / 10
16 “Ice Age”
I guess this was interesting. Here we have a segment that is largely live-action as Topher Grace and Mary Elizabeth Winstead play a couple who move into a new place which happens to have a rapidly advancing civilization developing inside the old refrigerator there. It’s definitely a type of story that has been told before, such as by The Twilight Zone, The Simpsons, and South Park. The story has some cute moments, but largely don’t have anything that stands out. It doesn’t really -say- anything and also isn’t all that entertaining. It’s not totally boring, but it isn’t particularly “good” either.
Score: 6 / 10
17 “Alternate Histories”
In this quick segment, we simply see simulations of Hitler being killed off early (prior to the first World War) in six different amusing ways and we get to see the consequences of those deaths. It’s all just really silly fun.
Score: 7 / 10
18 “Secret War”
For me, the final segment didn’t end the series on a particular high note, but it was at least impressive from a technical standpoint. Secret War follows a group of Russian soldiers who are doing battle against horrible demon creatures which were summoned to our world by an occult ritual. This one is yet another to use super-realistic CGI-style animation and it is probably the most impressive of the segments animated in this way, not just in the realism of the character models, but also the scenery and execution of the large-scale battles. Unfortunately though, I feel like this segment mostly just boils down to battle-porn. The fights are definitely intense and the final battle is especially hype and a bit touching, but I felt absolutely no connection to the characters. If you are someone who enjoys military stories though, you’d probably like this more than I did.
Score: 7 / 10
Originally releases in 2021, two years after the series’ debut, Volume II of Love, Death & Robots is less than half the length of Volume I and doesn’t really have as many highs or lows for the first set. To be fair, I am writing this set of reviews a year after watching this because it didn’t initially inspire me enough to review it, but Volume III did make me want to write about it and I figured it would be a little odd to write about Volume III without also adding Volume II into this review. So sorry that the reviews for these segments will overall not be as thoughtful as the rest and will include a lot of “from what I remember” kind of language (explicitly or implicitly). And there is actually not a single segment that I felt the need to include spoiler tags for, either because I didn’t care enough about any of the twists to talk about them or the story didn’t have any major twists worth discussing. But anyway, here we go....
1 “Automated Customer Service”
We start off with a 3D CG segment in a style similar to Despicable Me following an old lady being attacked by robotic appliances.... And honestly, that’s about all there is to say about this segment. It was really a rather weak way to start Volume II. I mean, it wasn’t “bad” but I wasn’t particularly interesting either. It had some slightly unique bits to it I guess, but nothing that really stands out. Really, it’s just barely above “meh”.
Score: 6 / 10
2 “Ice”
The best thing I can say about Ice is that it has style. It is the only segment in this volume that uses fully 2D-looking animation. It also has a pretty neat world with some cool visuals and a decent amount of spirit. However, while it seemed to want to convey a strong theme of adolescence and the bond between brothers, I was largely left wondering what the point of it all was. Still cool, though.
Score: 7 / 10
3 “Pop Squad”
This segment is about.... baby killers??? Something like that. Basically, we follow an agent whose job it is to investigate and execute children and bring their parents to justice because humans have found the secret to immortality so overpopulation is a big problem now. So yeah, kind of an interesting dystopian concept, but it does feel a little difficult to connect with the characters here for most of the segment. When our lead finds and interacts with an outlaw mother and her daughter we do get a bit more humanity to latch onto which is nice, but felt like a bit too-little-too-late for me. Still a pretty nice story, though.
Score: 7 / 10
4 “Snow in the Desert”
This is one of only two segments that I REALLY got into and is the big “I’d watch a full series based on this” one for me. This goes full super-realistic 3D CG and is a rather cool story about a wanderer going across a desert landscape. While there’s a lot more action and the setting is very different, this segment feels very reminiscent of “Beyond the Aquila Rift”, which makes sense as they were both animated by the same studio (they also revolve around the relationship between two people and have a sex scene). However, this one ends on a much brighter note than “Beyond the Aquila Rift” and that is pretty nice. I like it quite a bit.
Score: 9 / 10
5 “The Tall Grass”
Another “barely above meh” segment for me here. It does have an interesting style to it, with weird almost-painted/almost-claymation CG look. But man, I really didn’t care about this story of a train going through a field of tall grass.... Yeah, I don’t know. Not bad, but not really all that good either.
Score: 6 / 10
6 “All Through the House”
Okay, so this might come off as kinda weird to some people, but this might be my favorite segment in all of Love, Death & Robots!! Seriously, I just LOVE this segment!! I mean, it’s really pretty damn basic, feels pretty derivative of The Nightmare Before Christmas and tales of Krampus. It’s also one of the shortest segments in the series. But man, this simple little story about a young brother and sister walking in on “Santa” is just so well done and charming as all hell! And the cartoony 3D CG is adorable. I just love it. I’d like to make watching this a Christmas tradition. Wonderful!
Score: 10 / 10
7 “Life Hutch”
And here we have another segment that is rather aggressively mediocre.... This should seriously be better than it is, but I simply found myself not caring at all about it. Another super-realistic 3D CG segment, this is basically just “Helping Hand” and “Lucky 13” from Volume I squished together, but isn’t as good as either. This time around we have a CG model of Michael B. Jordan (much like Samira Wiley in “Lucky 13”) fighting alone for his own survival (like in “Helping Hand”), but this time it’s against a malfunctioning security bot. It has some nice tension to it which helped keep it from being a total-meh for me, but man, it really felt like this should have been better.
Score: 6 / 10
8 “The Drowned Giant”
And we end this volume on an interesting note. This somewhat-realistic 3D CG segment about the corpse of a giant washing ashore was actually stated as my friend David’s favorite segment out of this block. But for me, it was “just good”. This one falls squarely in the “I appreciate it more than I love it” category. The main character/narrator pretty much spends the entire segment philosophizing about the meaning behind this huge creature and its death and how humans treated it over time. It was initially this huge spectacle, this crazy thing that rocked what everyone thought they knew, but then it eventually just became another thing that exists and was mostly ignored. It does make some pretty interesting points, but I largely didn’t connect all that much with it. But yeah, still interesting.
Score: 7 / 10
So this might partly be me coming fresh off of watching this, but I’m gonna come right out and say that I think this is overall the best volume of Love, Death & Robots! While I didn’t give any of these a full “10” this time around, I only gave one “7” and the rest were either “8” or “9” scores. Nearly all of them made me think or at the very least were successful in entertaining me. I did not feel the 2+ hours of watching these and was surprised when it was all over. Especially when I did the math and this was a full 30 minutes longer than Volume II. All in all, very good stuff and feels like the best distillation of what Love, Death & Robots “is”.
1 “Three Robots: Exit Strategies”
So we start off this volume with the series’ first every continuation!! We get another story about those silly little robots exploring the world where we stupid humans have all went extinct. I’d say it is pretty much just as good as the original. The commentary of the robots is still amusing and they do a bit more social commentary this time around which I enjoy. However, the “twist” ending this time around wasn’t as good as the original. It was so cheesy and eye-roll-inducing that I was almost tempted to take off a point....
2 “Bad Travelling”
Oh boy, this shit was pretty damn gruesome. A ship at sea is attacked by a big ass crab monster, ripping apart a few of the crewmembers in the process and then taking up residence in the lower deck. One of the surviving crewmen gets sent down there to check it out and the monster talks to him (in a really gross way) and they strike a deal for him to take the monster to a specific island so that the monster can feed on the inhabitants there. What ensues is a brutal examination of humanity that is very tense throughout. While it’s hard to latch on and really connect with any of the characters and the themes in the end were pretty basic, overall this was a very well done story.
3 “The Very Pulse of the Machine”
The first of two segments that I just REALLY loved, but again not quite enough to get the full-10 score. In a way, this is “Helping Hand” done better and mixed with a bit of “Fish Night” (my least favorite segments in the entire series). We have an astronaut having an accident in her rover on Jupiter’s moon Io. She had a partner with her who dies in the crash and has to drag her body behind her so that she can use the air supply of the suit because her own was damaged. She uses drugs in her suit to get through the pain of her own injuries and keep her awake and energized as she tries to make it to a way-point for rescue. But then the body of her dead partner starts to talk to her, claiming to be the moon itself. Is Io really talking to her, or is it just hallucinations from the drugs? I found this segment to be very thought-provoking and it had a nice cell-shaded 3D CG style that was able to do some really cool things with the hallucination imagery and other stuff that would have been difficult to do in traditional 2D animation or realistic-style 3D CG. Just a really good story.
4 “Night of the Mini Dead”
This is pure silly stupid fun. The volume’s shortest segment, we get a super-speed look at the creation of a zombie apocalypse. As the title suggests, this is done in the style of stop-motion animation with minis. Really not much else to say about it. Just good dumb fun.
Score: 7 / 10
5 “Kill Team Kill”
Oh man, speaking of dumb fun, this is just ridiculous! The only pure 2D-sytle animation in this volume, we follow a military strike team which comes across the total massacre of another team. Then they quickly find out what caused this massacre: a rampaging killer cyborg bioweapon grizzly bear created by the CIA!!! Seriously, I probably shouldn’t like this as much as I do. This is for real the second of my two favorite segments of this volume. But this is basically “Sucker of Souls” from Volume I done RIGHT!! If you’re going to have the stupid dumb mercenary cursing and shit, then make the story so stupidly over the top that the dumb cursing is the least out of place thing in the fucking story!! The characters are stupid and over the top, but they also have a nice charm to them. It’s just a fucking blast!
Score: 9 / 10
6 “Swarm”
This feels a bit like this volume’s “Beyond the Aquila Rift” (complete with sex scene) but doesn’t quite fully stick the landing for me. The story is very interesting as the male lead is guided through the titular Swarm by the only other human in the story. She’s been living in this hive for a while, learning about their ways, but the guy who’s visiting wants to basically create his own swarm for humanity to use as a bioweapon/slave labor. He just needs an egg from the queen as the “seed” for his own hive. How well do you think that’s likely to work out for him, being a part of this series? But, before I get into spoilers, I will say that this is a solid “8” for me. The different creatures that are part of the Swarm are rather cool and there is some pretty major tension at parts. The social commentary is also rather interesting. Good stuff!
7 “Mason's Rats”
This is a pretty damn cute story! At risk of being repetitive, I feel like this is basically “The Dump” done right. The cartoony 3D CG is kinda similar to “The Dump”, just not as nasty looking. The story is about an old farmer who has a major rat problem, but these aren’t your normal rats; they’re evolving, using simple tools and weapons, including crossbows that shoot nails. So the farmer needs some serious pest control. He gets sold some hardcore rat killing robots for the job! But is it really right to massacre these rats who seem to be kinda smart and shit? Again, this story is just weirdly cute and I enjoyed it a lot. Good stuff!
8 “In Vaulted Halls Entombed”
And here’s another rough one.... So in this super-realistic 3D CG segment a military team is on a mission to rescue a hostage. They follow him and his captors into a cave, but get more than they bargained for. They find the empty bloody bones of the hostage and two of his captors. But for some reason instead of saying “fuck this, we’re out” they decide to continue going deeper into the cave, running into the creepy little spider creatures who seemed to have killed those guys. This is another very tense segment as they fight for survival and there’s a constant deep air of mystery around everything. Once again, just another very solid segment in this volume.
9 “Jibaro”
Now this is a weird one. I was honestly convinced that this story must be some kind of folk tale in some culture or something. But that doesn’t seem to be the case. It was likely inspired by siren stories, but aside from that it looks like it was fully original, even apparently being the only segment in this volume not based on a pre-existing story. Anyway, this was made by the same people who were behind “The Witness” in Volume I and I think this is another rotoscope animation, but the rotoscoping done over the live action looked like it was mostly 3D CG?? It had some pretty crazy effects. And the story itself was pretty haunting. The main character is a deaf knight traveling with a squad and is therefore the only person not taken out by the siren’s initial song. The rest of the story is a back and forth between the knight and the siren which is pretty brutal. So is this basically a successful version of “The Witness”? Eh, kinda, but not really. While this story has some pretty psychedelic imagery, the story itself (while clearly supernatural) is rather straightforward with no mind games. What you see is pretty much what you get. Really interesting stuff, especially as there is practically zero dialog. Good stuff and a very interesting way to end the volume.
This review is generally spoiler-free, as much as any review can be, except for what I’ve put under spoiler tags. Within those tags, I’ll discuss my reactions and thoughts on specific story elements and/or the final twists of the shorts, so don’t read those unless you’ve already watched it or absolutely don’t care about being spoiled.
UPDATE (21 May 2022): Today I watched Volume III of Love, Death & Robots. I liked it a lot so I’ve gone ahead and added reviews for the Volume II and Volume III segments to this post.
Love, Death & Robots Volume I - Review
Before I get into each individual segment of this animated anthology, I’d like to give some general thoughts on this “season”. First off, I’d say that it is definitely worth a watch if you are a fan of animation and especially if you enjoy science fiction, fantasy, and/or supernatural stories with a bit of “edge” to them; meaning, a lot of sex, violence, and profanity. And this “edge” might be the first thing that could potentially put someone off to the series. While I definitely don’t mind these elements in my entertainment, some of it does feel gratuitous to the point of being distracting to the overall story.
Another thing that I’d say about the series overall, and something that is largely a matter of personal tastes, is that I was a bit disappointed by the lack of variety in animation style. Out of the 18 shorts, seven of them were all in a super-realistic AAA video game cutscene style CGI animation. Of the other 11, only three or four were in some form of 2D-style animation (“Alternate Histories” is a little bit of an in-between state of 2D/3D style). With this being called a reboot/reimagining of Heavy Metal and as someone who enjoyed Heavy Metal 2000 quite a bit back in the day, it was disappointing to not see anything which emulated the style of that work and to see the over-abundance of 3D-style animation.
With all of that said, I did overall enjoy the series quite a bit. Binging the series all in one sitting was a little taxing because for some reason I thought there were only 10 or so segments instead of 18 so I continually thought to myself, “It’s not over yet??” when it queued up the next episode. Most of the segments were at least interesting or entertaining on some level, looking really cool and/or making me think or surprising me a bit. If I gave the entire anthology a score on the same scale that I rate my anime, I’d give it a mostly-solid 8; maybe a 7.5 if I gave fraction. Again, I’d say it’s definitely worth a watch if these kinds of stories are interesting to you.
So without further ado, here are my individual thoughts on each segment:
01 “Sonnie’s Edge”
This segment is about people who control monstrous beasties with their minds, using them to participate in brutal fights to the death. Our lead character Sonnie is offered a chance to throw her next fight to make a lot of cash, but she declines. In the process, we get what is probably some of the worst use of pointless profanity in the series when her friend tells off the dude.... We also get a somewhat gratuitous sex scene in the final part of the segment if that happens to bother you, but if it does then this probably isn’t a series for you.... So, the monster battle is pretty cool. It starts off a bit slow, but gets rather hype by the end. It’s all a lot of fun and well-choreographed. The ending is also rather cool. While I thought I knew exactly what was going to happen with the twist, I was only half right and some of the things earlier on make more sense after the big reveal. I honestly wasn’t expecting this segment to make me think as much as it did.
Score: 8 / 10
02 “Three Robots”
In this segment, three robots of varying designs travel together around a human city after all humans have died. This one also has some unnatural profanity, but it didn’t bother me in this case because they were robots; their entire way of speech is kind of meant to be an unnatural mimic of how humans talk. So yeah, it works. And this segment as a whole really works. The robots’ banter is amusing and the story is interesting. It had a bit of a quirky slice of life feel to it which I really enjoyed. Seeing them hang out with a cat is especially funny.
Score: 8 / 10
03 “The Witness”
This was the first segment that didn’t really work for me all that well. This segment used rotoscope animation which was pretty cool in a way, but the story itself was just barely interesting. It follows a girl who witnesses a guy murder another girl who looks exactly like her. She runs and he chases. There is a ton of sex-stuff pretty much just because. But in the end, it didn’t have all that much going on behind its style.
Score: 6 / 10
04 “Suits”
This 3D-cartoon-style segment follows a group of farmers as they use mech suits to battle monsters who come through some kind of breach and attack. At first, it’s a very casual affair as the main farmer dude kills a small group of the monsters that come through while drinking his morning coffee, but then a huge breach occurs and shit gets real! He needs the support of two other mech-piloting farmers and his wife giving some back-up fire from their base (farm). While this isn’t particularly a favorite of mine and I did zone out a bit, it was still pretty cool and did have a rather genuine emotional bit to it, so definitely still worth the watch.
Score: 7 / 10
05 “Sucker of Souls”
Eh, another segment that wasn’t completely worthless, but not by much. It’s really a shame since this was one of the few 2D-style segments. In this segment, a group of mercenaries escort a professor guy as he researches some ruins and they run into Dracula. This has some more very awkwardly done pointless profanity stuff going on. I ALMOST past it off as “mercenary talk”, but some of it was just SO bad. I guess it was mainly the action here that saved it from the “5” score, but really, this wasn’t all that memorable. I think it being a 2D segment is one of the only things that is saving it here. It doesn’t even really have any spoiler stuff that is all that worth talking about. Meh. Easily second place for my least favorite in the series.
Score: 6 / 10
06 “When the Yogurt Took Over”
This was pretty amusing. This short is all about how genetically modified yogurt became sentient and took over the world! It has themes of the folly of man and such. It’s all presented in an amusing, ridiculous manner as we’re taken over by a dairy product, but it doesn’t elevate to anything particularly great in my opinion as it’s all kind of like, “Well yeah;” when it comes to the themes. Everything plays out pretty much exactly as you’d expect if a super intelligent being decided to take over. Again, nothing of a real spoiler nature worth talking about here, but it was pretty amusing.
Score: 7 / 10
07 “Beyond the Aquila Rift”
In this segment, three space travelers head off on a long journey in stasis. When the main individual wakes up, he is greeted by a familiar face and told that a routing error sent them LONG off course. The two of them get reacquainted (queue sex scene!!), but things don’t seem quite right.... I thought this segment was done rather well and has one of the more thought-provoking twists in the series, so a lot to talk about in the Spoiler tag....
Update: After marinating over this for the last few years and then this auto-playing after I finished Volume III on Netflix and got me to go ahead and re-watched the whole segment, I’m upping this from an 8 to a 9. This is at least my fourth favorite segment in the original set, probably actually tied for third or even my actual third favorite. I really like this one a lot.
Score: 9 / 10
08 “Good Hunting”
This is one of my two favorite segments in the series. It follows a boy living in early 20th century China. He and his father hunt kitsune-like fox-woman creatures who seduce men. But after one of their hunts, the boy becomes interested in one such creature. Then as the industrialization of the world marches on, the old magic of the world goes away and this girl loses her ability to shape-shift. The boy starts working on trains and other gear-works in a British settlement in Hong Kong. He meets the girl again who has had to “entertain” men to survive, but after something horrible happened to her, the two team up to get revenge. It’s all a really cool story, one that could easily be extended into a series of its own. If you’re at all interested in steampunk themes, definitely check this one out.
Score: 10 / 10
09 “The Dump”
This was an amusing little segment, but didn’t have all that much to it. I could pretty much see the main gist of the twist coming a mile away and there wasn’t much else to keep me entertained, but it was entertaining/interesting enough in the end. I’m sure if you get into the hillbilly/white-trash esthetic that this short uses, then you’d like it just fine. It was a fun, light little segment.
Score: 6 / 10
10 “Shape-Shifters”
This was a cool segment. I’m usually not a big fan of military themes, but this had enough of a supernatural twist to keep me entertained in spite of my disinterest in military stuff. So, not really a spoiler as it’s mentioned pretty early on, but this is about werewolves in the military. It mainly follows two werewolves in the US military who are currently deployed. Despite the amazing skills that they bring to the military’s disposal, they still get treated like shit. You know, because racism and stuff. Despite some of the heavy-handed nature of the segment, it is still very interesting and has some very cool visuals if you’re into werewolves and gore. The only thing that I had to go, “Really?” about was when the main guy got completely naked when he went out on a “hunt” and shit. Like, yeah, I guess it makes sense that he wouldn’t want to destroy any of his cloths during his transformation, but did we really need to see that dick flopping around? XD
Score: 8 / 10
11 “Helping Hand”
This is pretty much a light version of Gravity (the 2013 movie starring Sandra Bullock). A girl is repairing a satellite and something goes wrong which risks sending her to die, suffocating alone drifting in space. It’s a rather tense story of survival which plays out rather well, but it doesn’t have much going for it beyond that.
Score: 7 / 10
12 “Fish Night”
Here’s my least favorite segment in the series. It gets the absolute “Meh” of a 5 score from me. Really, there’s just not really much going on in this short. The ghost fish are pretty and that’s about it. Aside from that, the two characters are boring as all hell and the “twist” is really predictable and just didn’t have any real impact on me as the viewer. Really, it’s not even worth discussing further to the point of putting anything in spoiler tags for this one. Just, meh.
Score: 5 / 10
13 “Lucky 13”
My third favorite segment! This one also doesn’t really have any need for a spoiler tag section, but that’s not to any fault of the story itself. This particular segment is just very straightforward and doesn’t really have any huge twist. And you know what? That’s kind of refreshing. Every short doesn’t have to have some kind of shocker ending in order to be an effective short work. Also refreshing, this is one of the only segments with a female character that is never portrayed as a victim or a sex object. I mean, she gets into a pinch multiple times as a military pilot, but she isn’t victimized in any way on a personal level. This is just a good, exciting adventure story of a pilot and her plane. Also, Samira Wiley (Poussey from Orange Is the New Black) does a great job in the lead role and it’s interesting that they used her as a visual character model. I think this segment would be a great watch for any fan of hers. I also don’t recall any excessive profanity in this segment, so pretty much the only mature content in this short is rather basic war violence. If on its own, the segment would probably be at worst a TV-14 rating. Anyway, I was actually rather surprised with how much I enjoyed this despite my dislike of military themes. A very cool segment.
Score: 9 / 10
14 “Zima Blue”
And now we have the second of my two favorite segments in the series. I’m really not sure if I like this or “Good Hunting” more. They are just so different. While Good Hunting had loads of sex and violence with a female lead who was literally objectified, Zima Blue could have easily had a TV-PG rating if judged on its own. Seriously, the only objectionable content I can remember is maybe Zima’s robot butt and maybe a slightly graphic surgery scene? Maybe? While Lucky 13 was refreshing in its treatment of the female lead, Zima Blue takes things to a completely different level with how much restraint it shows. It tells a very mature (smart) story without ever feeling like it HAD to earn that TV-MA rating for the series. They didn’t make a pointless sex scene between Zima and the reporter girl. They didn’t throw in awkward profanity. They didn’t decide to draw a robot dick for Zima. They could have even easily had Zima paint a nude portrait during his early art career instead of a standard portrait of a couple and I wouldn’t have faulted them too much for it. Anyway, let’s get back to what this is actually about. On the surface, the story doesn’t really have much going on. It’s a story about an artist (Zima) inviting a reporter to hear his life story. It’s in a way reminiscent of Millennium Actress, one of my favorite anime movies, but with a heavier sci-fi twist. But while this story is short and basic, it is also beautiful and thought-provoking. And one last contract to Good Hunting: While I’d love to see the story of Good Hunting expanded into a larger series of its own, Zima Blue is perfectly concise in its short story length. I couldn’t imagine wanting any more or less from this story. It is just perfect as it is.
Score: 10 / 10
15 “Blindspot”
This is a fun little Fast-And-Furious-with-robots kind of segment. It wasn’t particularly amazing or memorable, but it was a fun and stylish little short as the car-driving robots perform a truck heist. With some cutting back on the language, I could easily see this as being an older-kids (TV-Y7) cartoon series. Just nice little mindless entertainment.
Score: 7 / 10
16 “Ice Age”
I guess this was interesting. Here we have a segment that is largely live-action as Topher Grace and Mary Elizabeth Winstead play a couple who move into a new place which happens to have a rapidly advancing civilization developing inside the old refrigerator there. It’s definitely a type of story that has been told before, such as by The Twilight Zone, The Simpsons, and South Park. The story has some cute moments, but largely don’t have anything that stands out. It doesn’t really -say- anything and also isn’t all that entertaining. It’s not totally boring, but it isn’t particularly “good” either.
Score: 6 / 10
17 “Alternate Histories”
In this quick segment, we simply see simulations of Hitler being killed off early (prior to the first World War) in six different amusing ways and we get to see the consequences of those deaths. It’s all just really silly fun.
Score: 7 / 10
18 “Secret War”
For me, the final segment didn’t end the series on a particular high note, but it was at least impressive from a technical standpoint. Secret War follows a group of Russian soldiers who are doing battle against horrible demon creatures which were summoned to our world by an occult ritual. This one is yet another to use super-realistic CGI-style animation and it is probably the most impressive of the segments animated in this way, not just in the realism of the character models, but also the scenery and execution of the large-scale battles. Unfortunately though, I feel like this segment mostly just boils down to battle-porn. The fights are definitely intense and the final battle is especially hype and a bit touching, but I felt absolutely no connection to the characters. If you are someone who enjoys military stories though, you’d probably like this more than I did.
Score: 7 / 10
Love, Death & Robots Volume II - Review
Originally releases in 2021, two years after the series’ debut, Volume II of Love, Death & Robots is less than half the length of Volume I and doesn’t really have as many highs or lows for the first set. To be fair, I am writing this set of reviews a year after watching this because it didn’t initially inspire me enough to review it, but Volume III did make me want to write about it and I figured it would be a little odd to write about Volume III without also adding Volume II into this review. So sorry that the reviews for these segments will overall not be as thoughtful as the rest and will include a lot of “from what I remember” kind of language (explicitly or implicitly). And there is actually not a single segment that I felt the need to include spoiler tags for, either because I didn’t care enough about any of the twists to talk about them or the story didn’t have any major twists worth discussing. But anyway, here we go....
1 “Automated Customer Service”
We start off with a 3D CG segment in a style similar to Despicable Me following an old lady being attacked by robotic appliances.... And honestly, that’s about all there is to say about this segment. It was really a rather weak way to start Volume II. I mean, it wasn’t “bad” but I wasn’t particularly interesting either. It had some slightly unique bits to it I guess, but nothing that really stands out. Really, it’s just barely above “meh”.
Score: 6 / 10
2 “Ice”
The best thing I can say about Ice is that it has style. It is the only segment in this volume that uses fully 2D-looking animation. It also has a pretty neat world with some cool visuals and a decent amount of spirit. However, while it seemed to want to convey a strong theme of adolescence and the bond between brothers, I was largely left wondering what the point of it all was. Still cool, though.
Score: 7 / 10
3 “Pop Squad”
This segment is about.... baby killers??? Something like that. Basically, we follow an agent whose job it is to investigate and execute children and bring their parents to justice because humans have found the secret to immortality so overpopulation is a big problem now. So yeah, kind of an interesting dystopian concept, but it does feel a little difficult to connect with the characters here for most of the segment. When our lead finds and interacts with an outlaw mother and her daughter we do get a bit more humanity to latch onto which is nice, but felt like a bit too-little-too-late for me. Still a pretty nice story, though.
Score: 7 / 10
4 “Snow in the Desert”
This is one of only two segments that I REALLY got into and is the big “I’d watch a full series based on this” one for me. This goes full super-realistic 3D CG and is a rather cool story about a wanderer going across a desert landscape. While there’s a lot more action and the setting is very different, this segment feels very reminiscent of “Beyond the Aquila Rift”, which makes sense as they were both animated by the same studio (they also revolve around the relationship between two people and have a sex scene). However, this one ends on a much brighter note than “Beyond the Aquila Rift” and that is pretty nice. I like it quite a bit.
Score: 9 / 10
5 “The Tall Grass”
Another “barely above meh” segment for me here. It does have an interesting style to it, with weird almost-painted/almost-claymation CG look. But man, I really didn’t care about this story of a train going through a field of tall grass.... Yeah, I don’t know. Not bad, but not really all that good either.
Score: 6 / 10
6 “All Through the House”
Okay, so this might come off as kinda weird to some people, but this might be my favorite segment in all of Love, Death & Robots!! Seriously, I just LOVE this segment!! I mean, it’s really pretty damn basic, feels pretty derivative of The Nightmare Before Christmas and tales of Krampus. It’s also one of the shortest segments in the series. But man, this simple little story about a young brother and sister walking in on “Santa” is just so well done and charming as all hell! And the cartoony 3D CG is adorable. I just love it. I’d like to make watching this a Christmas tradition. Wonderful!
Score: 10 / 10
7 “Life Hutch”
And here we have another segment that is rather aggressively mediocre.... This should seriously be better than it is, but I simply found myself not caring at all about it. Another super-realistic 3D CG segment, this is basically just “Helping Hand” and “Lucky 13” from Volume I squished together, but isn’t as good as either. This time around we have a CG model of Michael B. Jordan (much like Samira Wiley in “Lucky 13”) fighting alone for his own survival (like in “Helping Hand”), but this time it’s against a malfunctioning security bot. It has some nice tension to it which helped keep it from being a total-meh for me, but man, it really felt like this should have been better.
Score: 6 / 10
8 “The Drowned Giant”
And we end this volume on an interesting note. This somewhat-realistic 3D CG segment about the corpse of a giant washing ashore was actually stated as my friend David’s favorite segment out of this block. But for me, it was “just good”. This one falls squarely in the “I appreciate it more than I love it” category. The main character/narrator pretty much spends the entire segment philosophizing about the meaning behind this huge creature and its death and how humans treated it over time. It was initially this huge spectacle, this crazy thing that rocked what everyone thought they knew, but then it eventually just became another thing that exists and was mostly ignored. It does make some pretty interesting points, but I largely didn’t connect all that much with it. But yeah, still interesting.
Score: 7 / 10
Love, Death & Robots Volume III - Review
So this might partly be me coming fresh off of watching this, but I’m gonna come right out and say that I think this is overall the best volume of Love, Death & Robots! While I didn’t give any of these a full “10” this time around, I only gave one “7” and the rest were either “8” or “9” scores. Nearly all of them made me think or at the very least were successful in entertaining me. I did not feel the 2+ hours of watching these and was surprised when it was all over. Especially when I did the math and this was a full 30 minutes longer than Volume II. All in all, very good stuff and feels like the best distillation of what Love, Death & Robots “is”.
1 “Three Robots: Exit Strategies”
So we start off this volume with the series’ first every continuation!! We get another story about those silly little robots exploring the world where we stupid humans have all went extinct. I’d say it is pretty much just as good as the original. The commentary of the robots is still amusing and they do a bit more social commentary this time around which I enjoy. However, the “twist” ending this time around wasn’t as good as the original. It was so cheesy and eye-roll-inducing that I was almost tempted to take off a point....
Score: 7 / 10
2 “Bad Travelling”
Oh boy, this shit was pretty damn gruesome. A ship at sea is attacked by a big ass crab monster, ripping apart a few of the crewmembers in the process and then taking up residence in the lower deck. One of the surviving crewmen gets sent down there to check it out and the monster talks to him (in a really gross way) and they strike a deal for him to take the monster to a specific island so that the monster can feed on the inhabitants there. What ensues is a brutal examination of humanity that is very tense throughout. While it’s hard to latch on and really connect with any of the characters and the themes in the end were pretty basic, overall this was a very well done story.
Score: 8 / 10
3 “The Very Pulse of the Machine”
The first of two segments that I just REALLY loved, but again not quite enough to get the full-10 score. In a way, this is “Helping Hand” done better and mixed with a bit of “Fish Night” (my least favorite segments in the entire series). We have an astronaut having an accident in her rover on Jupiter’s moon Io. She had a partner with her who dies in the crash and has to drag her body behind her so that she can use the air supply of the suit because her own was damaged. She uses drugs in her suit to get through the pain of her own injuries and keep her awake and energized as she tries to make it to a way-point for rescue. But then the body of her dead partner starts to talk to her, claiming to be the moon itself. Is Io really talking to her, or is it just hallucinations from the drugs? I found this segment to be very thought-provoking and it had a nice cell-shaded 3D CG style that was able to do some really cool things with the hallucination imagery and other stuff that would have been difficult to do in traditional 2D animation or realistic-style 3D CG. Just a really good story.
Score: 9 / 10
4 “Night of the Mini Dead”
This is pure silly stupid fun. The volume’s shortest segment, we get a super-speed look at the creation of a zombie apocalypse. As the title suggests, this is done in the style of stop-motion animation with minis. Really not much else to say about it. Just good dumb fun.
Score: 7 / 10
5 “Kill Team Kill”
Oh man, speaking of dumb fun, this is just ridiculous! The only pure 2D-sytle animation in this volume, we follow a military strike team which comes across the total massacre of another team. Then they quickly find out what caused this massacre: a rampaging killer cyborg bioweapon grizzly bear created by the CIA!!! Seriously, I probably shouldn’t like this as much as I do. This is for real the second of my two favorite segments of this volume. But this is basically “Sucker of Souls” from Volume I done RIGHT!! If you’re going to have the stupid dumb mercenary cursing and shit, then make the story so stupidly over the top that the dumb cursing is the least out of place thing in the fucking story!! The characters are stupid and over the top, but they also have a nice charm to them. It’s just a fucking blast!
Score: 9 / 10
6 “Swarm”
This feels a bit like this volume’s “Beyond the Aquila Rift” (complete with sex scene) but doesn’t quite fully stick the landing for me. The story is very interesting as the male lead is guided through the titular Swarm by the only other human in the story. She’s been living in this hive for a while, learning about their ways, but the guy who’s visiting wants to basically create his own swarm for humanity to use as a bioweapon/slave labor. He just needs an egg from the queen as the “seed” for his own hive. How well do you think that’s likely to work out for him, being a part of this series? But, before I get into spoilers, I will say that this is a solid “8” for me. The different creatures that are part of the Swarm are rather cool and there is some pretty major tension at parts. The social commentary is also rather interesting. Good stuff!
Score: 8 / 10
7 “Mason's Rats”
This is a pretty damn cute story! At risk of being repetitive, I feel like this is basically “The Dump” done right. The cartoony 3D CG is kinda similar to “The Dump”, just not as nasty looking. The story is about an old farmer who has a major rat problem, but these aren’t your normal rats; they’re evolving, using simple tools and weapons, including crossbows that shoot nails. So the farmer needs some serious pest control. He gets sold some hardcore rat killing robots for the job! But is it really right to massacre these rats who seem to be kinda smart and shit? Again, this story is just weirdly cute and I enjoyed it a lot. Good stuff!
Score: 8 / 10
8 “In Vaulted Halls Entombed”
And here’s another rough one.... So in this super-realistic 3D CG segment a military team is on a mission to rescue a hostage. They follow him and his captors into a cave, but get more than they bargained for. They find the empty bloody bones of the hostage and two of his captors. But for some reason instead of saying “fuck this, we’re out” they decide to continue going deeper into the cave, running into the creepy little spider creatures who seemed to have killed those guys. This is another very tense segment as they fight for survival and there’s a constant deep air of mystery around everything. Once again, just another very solid segment in this volume.
Score: 8 / 10
9 “Jibaro”
Now this is a weird one. I was honestly convinced that this story must be some kind of folk tale in some culture or something. But that doesn’t seem to be the case. It was likely inspired by siren stories, but aside from that it looks like it was fully original, even apparently being the only segment in this volume not based on a pre-existing story. Anyway, this was made by the same people who were behind “The Witness” in Volume I and I think this is another rotoscope animation, but the rotoscoping done over the live action looked like it was mostly 3D CG?? It had some pretty crazy effects. And the story itself was pretty haunting. The main character is a deaf knight traveling with a squad and is therefore the only person not taken out by the siren’s initial song. The rest of the story is a back and forth between the knight and the siren which is pretty brutal. So is this basically a successful version of “The Witness”? Eh, kinda, but not really. While this story has some pretty psychedelic imagery, the story itself (while clearly supernatural) is rather straightforward with no mind games. What you see is pretty much what you get. Really interesting stuff, especially as there is practically zero dialog. Good stuff and a very interesting way to end the volume.
Score: 8 / 10
Posted by pluvia33 | Apr 2, 2019 10:48 AM | 1 comments
April 14th, 2018
Pathfinder Second Edition - Preview Thoughts and Speculations
Anime Relations: Lodoss-tou Senki
So this isn't related to anime AT ALL, but it's something that I've been thinking a lot about and I currently have some particular thoughts on the subject that I want to get out. This blog is mostly just for me at this point, so whatever; here we go!!
Pathfinder RPG Background
For those of you who may not know (if any random people actually end up reading this), the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game is an offshoot of Dungeons & Dragons Edition 3.5 using the Open Game License (OGL). While 3.5 was still going strong, Pathfinder was just setting/adventure supplements published by Paizo for use with the 3.5 system. However, after Wizards of the Coast created the 4th Edition of D&D and abandoned 3.5 and the OGL in 2008, Paizo decided to not only stay with 3.5, but make their own revised version of 3.5 called the Pathfinder RPG. Released in mid-2009, the core rulebook was basically D&D 3.5 with some additional tweaks, prompting it to also be referred to as 3.75 by many. Over the years, although it was always built on the OGL framework, Pathfinder introduced more and more to their system to really make it its own thing.
On a personal note, one of my favorite campaigns that I'd ever played in was a 3.5 game taking place in a long-running homebrew setting of a friend's (my now-roommate Dan). Ever since Pathfinder RPG came out, that had become my system of choice since D&D 4th Edition didn't look all that interesting. Although some things in the eventual 5th Edition of D&D seemed cool, it never really grabbed me and I didn't really feel a need to switch, especially with how deep into Pathfinder I was by the time it came out.
As Dan always ran homebrew-set campaigns and was usually the one running games, I didn't really get into Pathfinder's base setting of Golarion at first. However, after getting into the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game (I was actually a playtester for both the first and second public playtests), I got a lot more interested in Golarion and the iconic characters which were used for the characters in the card game as well as representing each class in the Roleplaying Game. But as time went on and my time got a bit more divided, I haven't been able to play many RPGs recently, though I hope to change that soon.
Pathfinder Second Edition Announcement - The Basics
About a decade after Pathfinder's original debut, Pathfinder Second Edition has been announced! It's been almost a month and a half since the the announcement and there have been a number of previews released on Paizo's blog. There are going to be a large number of changes, but they are also looking to keep the spirit of what really makes Pathfinder PATHFINDER intact.
They are also really taking advantage of making a true new edition, a new game from the ground up, to truly make Pathfinder its own thing as it gets rid of the D&D 3.5 baggage. For example, they are getting rid of the term "Race" as the descriptor for Human, Elf, Dwarf, Goblin, etc. Instead, this is now referred to as Ancestry. And while Feats are definitely still a thing in Pathfinder 2.0, the term is used for many more things now. You still have your broad FEATS like in the current Pathfinder game that characters got at every odd level, but now instead of having Rogue Talents, Alchemist Discoveries, and Feats that have very specific class prerequisites, all of those are now considered Class Feats. There are also Ancestry Feats based on what Ancestry you picked and Skill Feats which enhance your ability to use skills.
The new Action system is probably the most interesting change that has been revealed so far and one of the things that I'm most interested to see in play. In first edition you had a Standard Action, Move Action, and Swift Action that you can do each turn, or combining your Standard and Move Actions to do a Full-Round Action, or doing an Immediate Action off turn which takes up your Swift Action for next turn, and then having Free Actions.... Yeah, it could get kind of complicated. In Second Edition, though, you'll just have 3 Actions per turn and one Reaction that you can do off turn. Anything that requires an action just takes 1 Action, be it to move, attack, or retrieve an item while some more powerful abilities (such as casting spells) may require you to spend multiple actions to use. Then your Reaction could only be used for very specific actions even when it's not your turn, such as attacks of opportunity. I would also assume that there are things you can do which would cost no action to perform (such as maybe drawing a weapon if you have the Quick Draw feat). I am really interested to see how this change affects the flow of combat.
MORE Customization, Not Less
So one of the main reasons that I really felt the desire to get some thoughts out of my brain was because of this blog post about how someone is super worried about the second edition of Pathfinder. The main thing that really had me scratching my head is his assumption that there will be LESS of an ability to customize characters with the new system. He claims to have been following the Paizo blog posts and such, but I really feel like he hasn't been doing a very good job of that. Everything that I've seen points to there being MORE opportunities for customization in second edition.
Like all of the different stuff that I mentioned above, even after picking your Ancestry and Class, there will now be many choices to make within those choices with their associated Feats. You can have two Elf Rogues, but based on the different feats each of them take, they can be VERY different! Also, Archetypes (which were originally introduced in the Advanced Player's Guide) are now going to be a core part of second edition, providing even MORE customization right out of the gate!
I think this guy is confusing system customization for option customization. Yes, of course the first edition of Pathfinder is going to have a TON more customization options out there right now than second edition will have in the beginning. Pathfinder has been growing as a rules system for nearly 9 years now! But with just its initial release, I am pretty much 100% certain that the second edition rulebook will have WAY more customization than the original Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook did. And as the new system gains more content, the customization options for each character's Ancestry/Class combination can easily surpass first edition Pathfinder within less than half the time thanks to how the new system is set up.
Big Speculation - New Archetype System Will Cannibalize Some Classes and 2+ Iconic Characters per Class
One of the more recent blog previews centered around the Alchemist Class, one of my favorite classes in the game. If you look closely, there are some interesting bits and pieces in this preview that go beyond just talking about the Alchemist. One of the biggest things is the mention of the Oracle class, my other favorite class in the game. Ever since the announcement of second edition, the Alchemist has been listed as becoming a core class in the game, being included as a base class in the new core rulebook. However, NOTHING has been mentioned about the Oracle being included as a class in the second edition's first book. So what could this mean? Well, it might mean that Oracle will not be its own class anymore and will instead be an archetype for the Cleric class that changes it into a spontaneous caster! Or maybe just a different set of abilities (Mysteries instead of Domains and such) because I'm not sure if we even know if prepared vs spontaneous spellcasting will even be a thing anymore. There might be information about it out there if you listen to podcasts and the playtest gameplay that is out there, but there hasn't been a spellcasting focused blog preview yet.
But if the Oracle might be getting "Cannibalized" as a Cleric archetype, then why wouldn't the same thing happen between the Wizard and Sorcerer? And could the new archetype system also put the Witch and Magus under the Wizard umbrella? How about the Cavalier under the Fighter? Or the Hunter under the Ranger or Druid? Or Investigator and Slayer under the Rogue? If this Cannibalization of classes does happen, then what happens to the Iconic characters that were associated with those cannibalized classes? I think they'll just still be there, having multiple Iconics for each class, representing the different new archetypes. With Class Feats likely being a much more versatile form of customization than the old Rogue Talents and such, I don't think as many archetypes will be needed in Pathfinder 2.0 as there were in first edition. Every archetype can now have an iconic character to represent it.
And this brings me back to the Alchemist. As shown in the preview, the Alchemist has a new iconic to represent it as a core class, our first Goblin Iconic! But wait! What happened to my boy Damiel?! Well, I think he'll still be there! Some people were a bit disappointed that the new Alchemist does not get its Mutagen ability until 5th level as some Alchemist builds are based around being Mutagen-enhanced melee fighters. I personally was never a fan of the Mutagen class feature and always loved trading it out for something else when I could, but I do think that there will be an archetype for 1st-level Mutagen use. And if you read Damiel's Meet the Iconics entry, you'll see that his backstory is based heavily on the Mutagen class feature. So yeah, I think Damiel WILL still be in Pathfinder, in the new core rulebook to represent the mutagen-focused Alchemist archetype.
My General Hopes and Way Forward
In case it wasn't obvious from what I've written already, I am in general very hopeful and looking forward to the new edition of Pathfinder. I plan to participate heavily in the upcoming public playtest, getting at least one group together and running the campaign that's going to be provided for the playtest. Although I typically only buy PDFs of my RPG books these days, I've pre-ordered a softcover copy of the playtest core rulebook so that I can pass it around to my playtest players. I am very excited to try out everything and do my part to make the new version of Pathfinder the best that it can be.
But what about all of the first edition stuff? Well, I'm not 100% sure about that quite yet. If second edition turns out as well as I'm hoping, it very likely may replace first edition as my system of choice. If this is the case, well, I've had good times with first edition. Hopefully Paizo eventually converts or makes better versions of everything from first edition into second (I'm especially hoping for new "Mythic" rules in the not-too-distant future). And hopefully everything that isn't converted (such as my plethora of third party content) will be easy enough for me to convert it myself. And what if I really don't like Pathfinder 2.0 at all? Well, no one is going to take all of my PDFs away! I'll be able to play first edition games forever. Paizo may never release any more first edition content, but I have more than enough to mess with as it is, lots of stuff that I'm likely to never get around to using. And there will probably be some diehard third party publishers who will continue to create content for Pathfinder first edition in this case because if I don't like 2.0, I'd very likely not be the only one.
So I guess, no matter the outcome, I'm not really worried. I'm really hoping that Pathfinder 2.0 will be an amazing system and that I will be able to have a hand in making it awesome through the public playtest. I'll continue to wait for every little bit of new information that gets released and eagerly await the August release for the playtest books! Yay!
Pathfinder RPG Background
For those of you who may not know (if any random people actually end up reading this), the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game is an offshoot of Dungeons & Dragons Edition 3.5 using the Open Game License (OGL). While 3.5 was still going strong, Pathfinder was just setting/adventure supplements published by Paizo for use with the 3.5 system. However, after Wizards of the Coast created the 4th Edition of D&D and abandoned 3.5 and the OGL in 2008, Paizo decided to not only stay with 3.5, but make their own revised version of 3.5 called the Pathfinder RPG. Released in mid-2009, the core rulebook was basically D&D 3.5 with some additional tweaks, prompting it to also be referred to as 3.75 by many. Over the years, although it was always built on the OGL framework, Pathfinder introduced more and more to their system to really make it its own thing.
On a personal note, one of my favorite campaigns that I'd ever played in was a 3.5 game taking place in a long-running homebrew setting of a friend's (my now-roommate Dan). Ever since Pathfinder RPG came out, that had become my system of choice since D&D 4th Edition didn't look all that interesting. Although some things in the eventual 5th Edition of D&D seemed cool, it never really grabbed me and I didn't really feel a need to switch, especially with how deep into Pathfinder I was by the time it came out.
As Dan always ran homebrew-set campaigns and was usually the one running games, I didn't really get into Pathfinder's base setting of Golarion at first. However, after getting into the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game (I was actually a playtester for both the first and second public playtests), I got a lot more interested in Golarion and the iconic characters which were used for the characters in the card game as well as representing each class in the Roleplaying Game. But as time went on and my time got a bit more divided, I haven't been able to play many RPGs recently, though I hope to change that soon.
Pathfinder Second Edition Announcement - The Basics
About a decade after Pathfinder's original debut, Pathfinder Second Edition has been announced! It's been almost a month and a half since the the announcement and there have been a number of previews released on Paizo's blog. There are going to be a large number of changes, but they are also looking to keep the spirit of what really makes Pathfinder PATHFINDER intact.
They are also really taking advantage of making a true new edition, a new game from the ground up, to truly make Pathfinder its own thing as it gets rid of the D&D 3.5 baggage. For example, they are getting rid of the term "Race" as the descriptor for Human, Elf, Dwarf, Goblin, etc. Instead, this is now referred to as Ancestry. And while Feats are definitely still a thing in Pathfinder 2.0, the term is used for many more things now. You still have your broad FEATS like in the current Pathfinder game that characters got at every odd level, but now instead of having Rogue Talents, Alchemist Discoveries, and Feats that have very specific class prerequisites, all of those are now considered Class Feats. There are also Ancestry Feats based on what Ancestry you picked and Skill Feats which enhance your ability to use skills.
The new Action system is probably the most interesting change that has been revealed so far and one of the things that I'm most interested to see in play. In first edition you had a Standard Action, Move Action, and Swift Action that you can do each turn, or combining your Standard and Move Actions to do a Full-Round Action, or doing an Immediate Action off turn which takes up your Swift Action for next turn, and then having Free Actions.... Yeah, it could get kind of complicated. In Second Edition, though, you'll just have 3 Actions per turn and one Reaction that you can do off turn. Anything that requires an action just takes 1 Action, be it to move, attack, or retrieve an item while some more powerful abilities (such as casting spells) may require you to spend multiple actions to use. Then your Reaction could only be used for very specific actions even when it's not your turn, such as attacks of opportunity. I would also assume that there are things you can do which would cost no action to perform (such as maybe drawing a weapon if you have the Quick Draw feat). I am really interested to see how this change affects the flow of combat.
MORE Customization, Not Less
So one of the main reasons that I really felt the desire to get some thoughts out of my brain was because of this blog post about how someone is super worried about the second edition of Pathfinder. The main thing that really had me scratching my head is his assumption that there will be LESS of an ability to customize characters with the new system. He claims to have been following the Paizo blog posts and such, but I really feel like he hasn't been doing a very good job of that. Everything that I've seen points to there being MORE opportunities for customization in second edition.
Like all of the different stuff that I mentioned above, even after picking your Ancestry and Class, there will now be many choices to make within those choices with their associated Feats. You can have two Elf Rogues, but based on the different feats each of them take, they can be VERY different! Also, Archetypes (which were originally introduced in the Advanced Player's Guide) are now going to be a core part of second edition, providing even MORE customization right out of the gate!
I think this guy is confusing system customization for option customization. Yes, of course the first edition of Pathfinder is going to have a TON more customization options out there right now than second edition will have in the beginning. Pathfinder has been growing as a rules system for nearly 9 years now! But with just its initial release, I am pretty much 100% certain that the second edition rulebook will have WAY more customization than the original Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook did. And as the new system gains more content, the customization options for each character's Ancestry/Class combination can easily surpass first edition Pathfinder within less than half the time thanks to how the new system is set up.
Big Speculation - New Archetype System Will Cannibalize Some Classes and 2+ Iconic Characters per Class
One of the more recent blog previews centered around the Alchemist Class, one of my favorite classes in the game. If you look closely, there are some interesting bits and pieces in this preview that go beyond just talking about the Alchemist. One of the biggest things is the mention of the Oracle class, my other favorite class in the game. Ever since the announcement of second edition, the Alchemist has been listed as becoming a core class in the game, being included as a base class in the new core rulebook. However, NOTHING has been mentioned about the Oracle being included as a class in the second edition's first book. So what could this mean? Well, it might mean that Oracle will not be its own class anymore and will instead be an archetype for the Cleric class that changes it into a spontaneous caster! Or maybe just a different set of abilities (Mysteries instead of Domains and such) because I'm not sure if we even know if prepared vs spontaneous spellcasting will even be a thing anymore. There might be information about it out there if you listen to podcasts and the playtest gameplay that is out there, but there hasn't been a spellcasting focused blog preview yet.
But if the Oracle might be getting "Cannibalized" as a Cleric archetype, then why wouldn't the same thing happen between the Wizard and Sorcerer? And could the new archetype system also put the Witch and Magus under the Wizard umbrella? How about the Cavalier under the Fighter? Or the Hunter under the Ranger or Druid? Or Investigator and Slayer under the Rogue? If this Cannibalization of classes does happen, then what happens to the Iconic characters that were associated with those cannibalized classes? I think they'll just still be there, having multiple Iconics for each class, representing the different new archetypes. With Class Feats likely being a much more versatile form of customization than the old Rogue Talents and such, I don't think as many archetypes will be needed in Pathfinder 2.0 as there were in first edition. Every archetype can now have an iconic character to represent it.
And this brings me back to the Alchemist. As shown in the preview, the Alchemist has a new iconic to represent it as a core class, our first Goblin Iconic! But wait! What happened to my boy Damiel?! Well, I think he'll still be there! Some people were a bit disappointed that the new Alchemist does not get its Mutagen ability until 5th level as some Alchemist builds are based around being Mutagen-enhanced melee fighters. I personally was never a fan of the Mutagen class feature and always loved trading it out for something else when I could, but I do think that there will be an archetype for 1st-level Mutagen use. And if you read Damiel's Meet the Iconics entry, you'll see that his backstory is based heavily on the Mutagen class feature. So yeah, I think Damiel WILL still be in Pathfinder, in the new core rulebook to represent the mutagen-focused Alchemist archetype.
My General Hopes and Way Forward
In case it wasn't obvious from what I've written already, I am in general very hopeful and looking forward to the new edition of Pathfinder. I plan to participate heavily in the upcoming public playtest, getting at least one group together and running the campaign that's going to be provided for the playtest. Although I typically only buy PDFs of my RPG books these days, I've pre-ordered a softcover copy of the playtest core rulebook so that I can pass it around to my playtest players. I am very excited to try out everything and do my part to make the new version of Pathfinder the best that it can be.
But what about all of the first edition stuff? Well, I'm not 100% sure about that quite yet. If second edition turns out as well as I'm hoping, it very likely may replace first edition as my system of choice. If this is the case, well, I've had good times with first edition. Hopefully Paizo eventually converts or makes better versions of everything from first edition into second (I'm especially hoping for new "Mythic" rules in the not-too-distant future). And hopefully everything that isn't converted (such as my plethora of third party content) will be easy enough for me to convert it myself. And what if I really don't like Pathfinder 2.0 at all? Well, no one is going to take all of my PDFs away! I'll be able to play first edition games forever. Paizo may never release any more first edition content, but I have more than enough to mess with as it is, lots of stuff that I'm likely to never get around to using. And there will probably be some diehard third party publishers who will continue to create content for Pathfinder first edition in this case because if I don't like 2.0, I'd very likely not be the only one.
So I guess, no matter the outcome, I'm not really worried. I'm really hoping that Pathfinder 2.0 will be an amazing system and that I will be able to have a hand in making it awesome through the public playtest. I'll continue to wait for every little bit of new information that gets released and eagerly await the August release for the playtest books! Yay!
Posted by pluvia33 | Apr 14, 2018 7:49 AM | 0 comments
March 13th, 2018
First (theoretical) Impressions of the MAL Manga Store
Anime Relations: Orange, Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card-hen
On March 8th 2018, MyAnimeList had the initial launch of their digital manga store, though at the moment only Canadian users are able to browse and buy from the store (with other English-speaking territories to follow sometime this month). When I first heard about this venture, I was somewhat interested. The prospect of having manga readable on a website that I already frequent was intriguing, kind of like how I only ever stream anime when I'm on my PS4 (hence why I have not yet bought into HiDive). However, I wasn't quite sure about the digital-book format.
As the MAL Manga Store Launch Announcement says, all of the manga currently available is from either VIZ or Kodansha Comics. Between the two companies, there are more than 200 titles available, and between them I do feel like they can bring a great variety of manga to the store. However, the announcement doesn't go into pricing. Thankfully for us non-Canadians, a user has posted a number of screenshots in the forums which show the prices....
So, the prices. When it comes to the VIZ items, the prices are somewhat reasonable. The $7.99 Canadian dollars shown in the screenshots translates to a little over $6 USD. Comparing that to the $9.99 that these titles cost for physical volumes, I suppose that's a decent price if you're into buying manga e-books. However, the Kodansha Comics titles shown in the screenshots are listed at 15.99 which translates to a little over $12 USD. Depending on the book, that's either $1 MORE or $1 less than the typical physical version.... Yeah, that's kind of lame. The Kodansha books basically cost the same as it would to buy physical versions. Granted, a number of these titles look like they're on sale for $11.99 (a bit over $9 USD), but if you wait for a sale on RightStuf, you can still get the physical versions cheaper in most cases! I guess some people might actually like having e-books instead of physical books, but that's not me.
Another source of information for those of us who do not have access to the store yet is the Manga Store FAQ. Aside from the full list of countries which will eventually have access to the website, there isn't too much information that is particularly illuminating. I particularly thought it was amusing that they felt the need to explain what a "Volume" and "Chapter" of a manga series is. XD Some things that might be of actual interest are the facts that there will be no offline reading option, period. Aside from that, it's pretty standard type stuff.
So, what do I think about what I've seen and heard so far? Hmmm, probably a hard pass for me. I might see about buying one or two volumes just to try it out and throw a little money MAL's way, but I really don't expect to be a repeat customer. It mostly boils down to: 1) why not just buy the physical stuff? I still like having physical stuff with most of my entertainment. 2) Even if I wanted an e-book, why not just buy it from Amazon so I wouldn't be stuck with online-only reading?
Personally, I really wish they could have provided a subscription-based "read all you want" library system instead of a weird, restrictive, online-only e-book store. Basically, I'd like to see MAL's version of becoming the Crunchyroll of manga. Crunchyroll actually has a manga section, but it has lost a decent amount of its content recently. Sadly I didn't use the manga function of Crunchyroll very often, but that was more of an issue of me not being up for the reading than any issue with the subscription/library format that Crunchyroll used. From what little I did use it (such as reading all of the Orange manga on it), I did like using the app on my tablet.
MyAnimeList actually has a Membership Subscription right now, so it seems like it should have been pretty easy for them to add a manga library to that subscription infrastructure. I would have been willing to pay up to $10 a month for MAL Supporter + Manga if they offered that. Actually, looking at it again, I'm very much considering subscribing to become a MAL Supporter. I get a lot of use out of MyAnimeList and I would like to throw some money their way. Also, the little bonuses of having legit ad-free viewing, up to 20 favorites on my profile, and being able to change the status bars for my anime and manga list stats all sound pretty appealing to me. I mean, I'd really, REALLY wish MAL would throw some support to the blog function, but whatever; even without that, I really do love MAL.
In the end, I hope that they get at least some success from this Manga Store, at least enough so that building the infrastructure for it doesn't put them in the hole financially. Good luck, MAL!
Edit (15 Mar 2018): So the store is now live for the US. I looked around a bit and the interface looks okay and the base prices of the Kodansha Comics items seem to be the same as the MSRP for the physical books. But yeah, I don't know. Looking around, the only thing that I might buy from the store is Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card because I'm currently unsure if I'll go back and re-buy physical versions the first series and then buy the physical books for Clear Card or not, so this can be a good legal way to keep up with the series without my physical collection looking weird. Also, my love of the series was kind of brought into question with the anime adaptation of Clear Card as I've mentioned many times in my Anime Watching Challenge updates (though I have warmed back up to the series in recent episodes). But yeah, I don't know; I'd still much rather they had a subscription service instead of the e-book store, but whatever!
As the MAL Manga Store Launch Announcement says, all of the manga currently available is from either VIZ or Kodansha Comics. Between the two companies, there are more than 200 titles available, and between them I do feel like they can bring a great variety of manga to the store. However, the announcement doesn't go into pricing. Thankfully for us non-Canadians, a user has posted a number of screenshots in the forums which show the prices....
So, the prices. When it comes to the VIZ items, the prices are somewhat reasonable. The $7.99 Canadian dollars shown in the screenshots translates to a little over $6 USD. Comparing that to the $9.99 that these titles cost for physical volumes, I suppose that's a decent price if you're into buying manga e-books. However, the Kodansha Comics titles shown in the screenshots are listed at 15.99 which translates to a little over $12 USD. Depending on the book, that's either $1 MORE or $1 less than the typical physical version.... Yeah, that's kind of lame. The Kodansha books basically cost the same as it would to buy physical versions. Granted, a number of these titles look like they're on sale for $11.99 (a bit over $9 USD), but if you wait for a sale on RightStuf, you can still get the physical versions cheaper in most cases! I guess some people might actually like having e-books instead of physical books, but that's not me.
Another source of information for those of us who do not have access to the store yet is the Manga Store FAQ. Aside from the full list of countries which will eventually have access to the website, there isn't too much information that is particularly illuminating. I particularly thought it was amusing that they felt the need to explain what a "Volume" and "Chapter" of a manga series is. XD Some things that might be of actual interest are the facts that there will be no offline reading option, period. Aside from that, it's pretty standard type stuff.
So, what do I think about what I've seen and heard so far? Hmmm, probably a hard pass for me. I might see about buying one or two volumes just to try it out and throw a little money MAL's way, but I really don't expect to be a repeat customer. It mostly boils down to: 1) why not just buy the physical stuff? I still like having physical stuff with most of my entertainment. 2) Even if I wanted an e-book, why not just buy it from Amazon so I wouldn't be stuck with online-only reading?
Personally, I really wish they could have provided a subscription-based "read all you want" library system instead of a weird, restrictive, online-only e-book store. Basically, I'd like to see MAL's version of becoming the Crunchyroll of manga. Crunchyroll actually has a manga section, but it has lost a decent amount of its content recently. Sadly I didn't use the manga function of Crunchyroll very often, but that was more of an issue of me not being up for the reading than any issue with the subscription/library format that Crunchyroll used. From what little I did use it (such as reading all of the Orange manga on it), I did like using the app on my tablet.
MyAnimeList actually has a Membership Subscription right now, so it seems like it should have been pretty easy for them to add a manga library to that subscription infrastructure. I would have been willing to pay up to $10 a month for MAL Supporter + Manga if they offered that. Actually, looking at it again, I'm very much considering subscribing to become a MAL Supporter. I get a lot of use out of MyAnimeList and I would like to throw some money their way. Also, the little bonuses of having legit ad-free viewing, up to 20 favorites on my profile, and being able to change the status bars for my anime and manga list stats all sound pretty appealing to me. I mean, I'd really, REALLY wish MAL would throw some support to the blog function, but whatever; even without that, I really do love MAL.
In the end, I hope that they get at least some success from this Manga Store, at least enough so that building the infrastructure for it doesn't put them in the hole financially. Good luck, MAL!
Edit (15 Mar 2018): So the store is now live for the US. I looked around a bit and the interface looks okay and the base prices of the Kodansha Comics items seem to be the same as the MSRP for the physical books. But yeah, I don't know. Looking around, the only thing that I might buy from the store is Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card because I'm currently unsure if I'll go back and re-buy physical versions the first series and then buy the physical books for Clear Card or not, so this can be a good legal way to keep up with the series without my physical collection looking weird. Also, my love of the series was kind of brought into question with the anime adaptation of Clear Card as I've mentioned many times in my Anime Watching Challenge updates (though I have warmed back up to the series in recent episodes). But yeah, I don't know; I'd still much rather they had a subscription service instead of the e-book store, but whatever!
Posted by pluvia33 | Mar 13, 2018 10:54 AM | 0 comments
January 25th, 2011
Funimation Limited Edition Packaging Review
Today I got a package from Right Stuf. In addition to 9 volumes of manga, the box included two of the new Limited Edition Funimation sets: Black Butler Season One Part 1 and The Sacred Blacksmith. Now, just so you know, this is just my opinion of the packaging and nothing else. Out of the two series I've only seen Blacksmith (as it was airing in fansubs), so I can't even share an opinion on how good of an anime Black Butler is.
If you're unfamiliar with Funimation's new Limited Edition campaign, they're now putting out their releases with Limited Editions coming before the normal, usual release. The Limited Edition version comes with a quality box for the DVD/BD's and most of them also have some other little bonus to go with it. The Limited Editions are sold at $5 more retail price and when they're gone, they're gone! Anyway, here we go:
I'll go ahead and start off with Black Butler since I don't really have any major opinions on it. The release is pretty much just like the usual half-season sets that Funimation has been putting out lately, except that it includes a "sturdy" chipboard box instead of the usual flimsy-card packaging. It's still the same usual DVD thinpacks and it has a flimsy filler-box that you can take out and replace with the second half of the series after it comes out. No real physical extras with this purchase other than the box itself, which is okay with me. The box is very pretty and shinny. But sadly, I had one little problem. "Sturdy" is up there in quotes because my poor little DVD box got a little crushed somehow before it got into my hands! I mean, it's not totally destroyed, but the nice box is cracked in the top back end and is a little sunk in on the left side of the opening. It really sucks and the fact that the Limited Edition sold out for Funimation means that I probably couldn't get it replaced. But really, I probably wouldn't bother anyway. It's not in that bad of condition and it probably might have gotten cracked the next time I moved anyway.
So, on to the next box!! The Sacred Blacksmith luckily came to me in proper condition. But unfortunately, I don't like this release as much as I like Black Butler. Black Butler is a 24 episode series so the box is big enough to hold 4 thinpack DVD cases. Well, Blacksmith is a 12 episode series so the two DVD's that the box came with is all that's in the series. The problem? They still used the same 4-thinpack size box! So the stupid flimsy little filer-box that takes up the other half of the nice chipboard box is there to stay. Pretty lame. Now the box itself, it looks great. It's nice and sturdy, didn't break before it got to me, and it has some nice clean artwork on it. It also came with a little 32 page artbook. It's alright. It has some nice illustrations in the beginning which look like they were done by the original novel's artist. After that comes the original Japanese anime cover artworks for the DVD/BD release over there. Then there is this small double-sided centerfold poster in the middle with Lisa on one side and then a super fan service version of Cecily. After the centerfold there are a few anime screenshot pages and then more fan service! Kind of weird that they used such a fan service angle with the artbook since the actual series isn't overly fan service-like. But I guess sex sells and Funimation tends to be pretty good at exploiting that. About half of them I've seen from the pages of Megami magazine, so not really anything new, and they're so much smaller. In the end, I think I regret getting the Limited Edition in this case. The stupid filler box really annoys me and the artbook isn't really that great in my opinion. Others who might enjoy the fan service pictures more fully and might not be bothered by the filler box thing, I'd say it would be worth it. But for me, not really. Maybe if the artbook was better, had a bunch of character designs, weapon designs, background designs, interviews, or something more and if it was actually a nice hardcover book that took up the entire filler box space instead of having the stupid filler box, I think I'd like this a lot more. Instead the artbook is a thin stapled together thing with a little bit of good art which I ended up just putting inside of the stupid filler box. Lame.
So yeah, in the end, pretty disappointing. The Limited Edition that I was really looking forward to ended up being underwhelming and the one that ended up actually being okay ended up being kind of broken. Oh well. Hopefully Ga-Rei Zero's Limited Edition release (which I have pre-ordered) will be better or I might have to give up on Funimation's cool new little gimmick. Laters!
If you're unfamiliar with Funimation's new Limited Edition campaign, they're now putting out their releases with Limited Editions coming before the normal, usual release. The Limited Edition version comes with a quality box for the DVD/BD's and most of them also have some other little bonus to go with it. The Limited Editions are sold at $5 more retail price and when they're gone, they're gone! Anyway, here we go:
I'll go ahead and start off with Black Butler since I don't really have any major opinions on it. The release is pretty much just like the usual half-season sets that Funimation has been putting out lately, except that it includes a "sturdy" chipboard box instead of the usual flimsy-card packaging. It's still the same usual DVD thinpacks and it has a flimsy filler-box that you can take out and replace with the second half of the series after it comes out. No real physical extras with this purchase other than the box itself, which is okay with me. The box is very pretty and shinny. But sadly, I had one little problem. "Sturdy" is up there in quotes because my poor little DVD box got a little crushed somehow before it got into my hands! I mean, it's not totally destroyed, but the nice box is cracked in the top back end and is a little sunk in on the left side of the opening. It really sucks and the fact that the Limited Edition sold out for Funimation means that I probably couldn't get it replaced. But really, I probably wouldn't bother anyway. It's not in that bad of condition and it probably might have gotten cracked the next time I moved anyway.
So, on to the next box!! The Sacred Blacksmith luckily came to me in proper condition. But unfortunately, I don't like this release as much as I like Black Butler. Black Butler is a 24 episode series so the box is big enough to hold 4 thinpack DVD cases. Well, Blacksmith is a 12 episode series so the two DVD's that the box came with is all that's in the series. The problem? They still used the same 4-thinpack size box! So the stupid flimsy little filer-box that takes up the other half of the nice chipboard box is there to stay. Pretty lame. Now the box itself, it looks great. It's nice and sturdy, didn't break before it got to me, and it has some nice clean artwork on it. It also came with a little 32 page artbook. It's alright. It has some nice illustrations in the beginning which look like they were done by the original novel's artist. After that comes the original Japanese anime cover artworks for the DVD/BD release over there. Then there is this small double-sided centerfold poster in the middle with Lisa on one side and then a super fan service version of Cecily. After the centerfold there are a few anime screenshot pages and then more fan service! Kind of weird that they used such a fan service angle with the artbook since the actual series isn't overly fan service-like. But I guess sex sells and Funimation tends to be pretty good at exploiting that. About half of them I've seen from the pages of Megami magazine, so not really anything new, and they're so much smaller. In the end, I think I regret getting the Limited Edition in this case. The stupid filler box really annoys me and the artbook isn't really that great in my opinion. Others who might enjoy the fan service pictures more fully and might not be bothered by the filler box thing, I'd say it would be worth it. But for me, not really. Maybe if the artbook was better, had a bunch of character designs, weapon designs, background designs, interviews, or something more and if it was actually a nice hardcover book that took up the entire filler box space instead of having the stupid filler box, I think I'd like this a lot more. Instead the artbook is a thin stapled together thing with a little bit of good art which I ended up just putting inside of the stupid filler box. Lame.
So yeah, in the end, pretty disappointing. The Limited Edition that I was really looking forward to ended up being underwhelming and the one that ended up actually being okay ended up being kind of broken. Oh well. Hopefully Ga-Rei Zero's Limited Edition release (which I have pre-ordered) will be better or I might have to give up on Funimation's cool new little gimmick. Laters!
Posted by pluvia33 | Jan 25, 2011 5:29 PM | 1 comments
January 20th, 2011
Winter 2011 First Impressions
Anime Relations: Wolverine, Rio: Rainbow Gate!, Gosick, Hourou Musuko, Kore wa Zombie desu ka?, IS: Infinite Stratos, Fractale, Dragon Crisis!, Yumekui Merry, Freezing, Mitsudomoe Zouryouchuu!, Beelzebub, Cardfight!! Vanguard, Oniichan no Koto nanka Zenzen Suki ja Nai n da kara ne!!, Kimi ni Todoke 2nd Season, Mahou Shoujo Madoka★Magica, Level E
After doing some intense catch-up to get most of our Spring 2010 shows finished up, Dez and I have finally finished all of the first episodes of all of the new shows we’re trying out this season. For the first time in a while, I’m actually able to try out all of the shows since we’ve both seen the first seasons of the two sequels on the schedule (after Dez ran through the first season of Kimi ni Todoke in about a week). Anyway, here are my first impressions of the Winter 2011 season’s anime:
Beelzebub
Ahhh, a new Shounen Jump series. I was a little hesitant to watch this because I don’t know if it will run forever like Bleach and Naruto and such, or if they might actually break it into seasons like Bakuman. But anyway, it seems interesting enough so far. A Demon King in baby form taken care of by a juvenile delinquent on Earth. Might be fun. We’ll see.
Dragon Crisis!
Based just on the first episode, Dragon Crisis! is my second favorite series this season. The characters are interesting enough so far and the dragons-in-human-form thing looks like it should be really cool. And Rose (voiced by Rie Kugimiya) is rather cute in a very Ponyo kind of way.
Fractale
Not quite sure what to think of this yet. A world that seems very run-down, but has a very advanced computer system which lets people project avatars into the real world in place of themselves. Seems interesting with a bit of a YKK feel to it. That alone gives it a few points in my book. Hopefully recent news of Funimation losing their simulcast for the series won’t delay fansubs too much.
Freezing
A new fan service action series. It was okay, but pretty boring and the action sequences weren’t that great. Too many military elements for me, too. Queen’s Blade is a much better fan service action show if you want to watch girls fighting practically naked (or fully naked sometimes). We ended up dropping Freezing.
Gosick
I had high hopes for Gosick, but after the first episode I’m not that sure anymore. It was okay, but kind of boring. I’m at least still interested in it and hope that things pick up soon. It still has the potential to be a good mystery series. We’ll see what episode two has to bring.
Hourou Musuko (Wandering Son)
One of my most anticipated shows of the season. I actually used to do copy editing for the scanlation release of the original manga (think I worked on the first two or three volumes before work got in the way too much and I had to drop out). It’s a very touching and interesting story about transgender adolescents. I just wish the anime actually started from the beginning. For some reason they started about half way through where the manga is so far. It makes things kind of confusing.
IS: Infinite Stratos
So far, this is my least favorite show out of what we’re still planning on watching. I don’t know. Like Freezing, the military academy style of it bores me and none of the characters seem too interesting yet. I don’t know, maybe things will pick up as the series goes on. The foreshadowing mecha fight sequence at the beginning looked kind of cool so we’ll see if that can keep my interest when that actually starts in the plot next episode.
Kimi ni Todoke 2nd Season
The continuation of my favorite shoujo anime series. It starts on a bit of a sad note as the seating arrangements in the class changed again, separating Sawako from all of her good friends. Hopefully it picks up. If you haven’t already seen the first season, I highly recommend it.
Kore wa Zombie Desu ka?
Yay! My favorite show so far of the new season! The first episode of Zombie was so much fun. The main character is Aikawa Ayumu, a murder victim of a serial killer. Yeah, he’s dead. But a friendly (?) and very quite necromancer decided to bring him back to life as a zombie for some reason and she is now living in his house doing nothing. Aikawa runs into a magical girl (a “Masou” Shoujo instead Mahou Shoujo for some reason) named Haruna. Due to some strange circumstances, they end up fighting monsters together in a very strange way. Oh, and fun fact, Aikawa is played by the same voice actor as Ryuuji from Toradora!
Level E
Aliens walking among us. If you like things like Men In Black and the X-Files, you might enjoy Level E. From the first episode, I like it well enough. The relationship between the two main characters (an alien and a normal guy who just moved into a new town) was pretty fun to watch. I’d like to see where it goes from here.
Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica
An original animation by Shaft, here’s their take on the Magical Girl sub-genre. And it’s pretty much what I would expect from them. Stylish and strange, not what you’d typically expect, and pretty interesting. Take Nanoha and mix it with Bakemonogatari and you’re on the right track. I’m looking forward to watching more.
Mitsudomoe Zouryouchuu!
Ahhh, Mitsudomoe. Why do you do this to us? We want more of the Marui triplets and you give us the worst sentai episode ever created. Yeah, episode one is mostly just a really bad episode of the show-within-a-show Gachi Rangers with Hitoha’s horrified reaction to how bad of an episode it was. Why did they do this to us? And this season is only 8 episodes? Lame. Oh well. Hopefully episode two will make up for it. If you haven’t seen the first episode of Mitsudomoe, it’s highly recommended. Though a little tasteless at times, it’s one of the funniest shows I’ve seen in a while.
Onii-chan no Koto...
Yeah, this show isn’t even worth typing out the full title. I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to like this before I even watched it based on some of the stuff that’s been said, and oh was I right. A girl with a horrible brother complex who ends up not really being the real sister of the brother she’s in love with. Okay, that’s fine, but this is supposed to be some kind of fan service relationship comedy. The problem is that the character designs are horribly ugly so the fan service isn’t effective at all and the comedy is totally not funny. As I watched, the whole episode was spent with me being offended by the art, offended by the poor attempts at humor, or just bored. Of course, we dropped this one. Go try Kiss x Sis if you’re actually interested in an almost-insect fan service comedy.
Yumekui Merry
And finally, we have Yumekui Merry. The stylization of this anime is being considered a not-so-well-done rip-off of Soul Eater by a lot of people, something Dez actually picked up on in the first minute of watching the episode. But it seems like it might be cool. I’ve always had an interest in dreams so more anime based around them are always welcome. Only thing that really bothered me about the first episode was the music. It just felt very awkward and intrusive in a lot of places. Hopefully I can put that out of my mind.
And right now, that’s everything we’ve watched. That’s just about everything from the Winter 2011 season. But there are some others that we decided to not watch without giving them a try. Shows we’re not bothering with this season:
Cardfight!! Vanguard
We have zero interest in card battle shows like Yu-Gi-Oh! so a show that was actually called “Cardfight” was pretty much a no-brainer. Not even worth it.
Rio: Rainbow Gate!
A fan service show based on a random mascot character from pachinko machines or something. Yeah, not interested.
Wolverine
After the first episode of last season’s Iron Man was one of the most boring episodes of anime I’ve ever sat through, we’re probably not going to be giving any of the Marvel/Madhouse anime adaptations a chance from now on. I don’t know, maybe we might, maybe. But we have much more interesting things to watch right now.
Well, it’s kind of hard to get a full grasp of what’s really good from just one episode, but so far I’m pretty pleased and still have high hopes for the season. It’s shaping up to be better than last season, I think. But only time will tell. At the very least, at least I have Zombie and Dragon Crisis! ^_^
Beelzebub
Ahhh, a new Shounen Jump series. I was a little hesitant to watch this because I don’t know if it will run forever like Bleach and Naruto and such, or if they might actually break it into seasons like Bakuman. But anyway, it seems interesting enough so far. A Demon King in baby form taken care of by a juvenile delinquent on Earth. Might be fun. We’ll see.
Dragon Crisis!
Based just on the first episode, Dragon Crisis! is my second favorite series this season. The characters are interesting enough so far and the dragons-in-human-form thing looks like it should be really cool. And Rose (voiced by Rie Kugimiya) is rather cute in a very Ponyo kind of way.
Fractale
Not quite sure what to think of this yet. A world that seems very run-down, but has a very advanced computer system which lets people project avatars into the real world in place of themselves. Seems interesting with a bit of a YKK feel to it. That alone gives it a few points in my book. Hopefully recent news of Funimation losing their simulcast for the series won’t delay fansubs too much.
Freezing
A new fan service action series. It was okay, but pretty boring and the action sequences weren’t that great. Too many military elements for me, too. Queen’s Blade is a much better fan service action show if you want to watch girls fighting practically naked (or fully naked sometimes). We ended up dropping Freezing.
Gosick
I had high hopes for Gosick, but after the first episode I’m not that sure anymore. It was okay, but kind of boring. I’m at least still interested in it and hope that things pick up soon. It still has the potential to be a good mystery series. We’ll see what episode two has to bring.
Hourou Musuko (Wandering Son)
One of my most anticipated shows of the season. I actually used to do copy editing for the scanlation release of the original manga (think I worked on the first two or three volumes before work got in the way too much and I had to drop out). It’s a very touching and interesting story about transgender adolescents. I just wish the anime actually started from the beginning. For some reason they started about half way through where the manga is so far. It makes things kind of confusing.
IS: Infinite Stratos
So far, this is my least favorite show out of what we’re still planning on watching. I don’t know. Like Freezing, the military academy style of it bores me and none of the characters seem too interesting yet. I don’t know, maybe things will pick up as the series goes on. The foreshadowing mecha fight sequence at the beginning looked kind of cool so we’ll see if that can keep my interest when that actually starts in the plot next episode.
Kimi ni Todoke 2nd Season
The continuation of my favorite shoujo anime series. It starts on a bit of a sad note as the seating arrangements in the class changed again, separating Sawako from all of her good friends. Hopefully it picks up. If you haven’t already seen the first season, I highly recommend it.
Kore wa Zombie Desu ka?
Yay! My favorite show so far of the new season! The first episode of Zombie was so much fun. The main character is Aikawa Ayumu, a murder victim of a serial killer. Yeah, he’s dead. But a friendly (?) and very quite necromancer decided to bring him back to life as a zombie for some reason and she is now living in his house doing nothing. Aikawa runs into a magical girl (a “Masou” Shoujo instead Mahou Shoujo for some reason) named Haruna. Due to some strange circumstances, they end up fighting monsters together in a very strange way. Oh, and fun fact, Aikawa is played by the same voice actor as Ryuuji from Toradora!
Level E
Aliens walking among us. If you like things like Men In Black and the X-Files, you might enjoy Level E. From the first episode, I like it well enough. The relationship between the two main characters (an alien and a normal guy who just moved into a new town) was pretty fun to watch. I’d like to see where it goes from here.
Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica
An original animation by Shaft, here’s their take on the Magical Girl sub-genre. And it’s pretty much what I would expect from them. Stylish and strange, not what you’d typically expect, and pretty interesting. Take Nanoha and mix it with Bakemonogatari and you’re on the right track. I’m looking forward to watching more.
Mitsudomoe Zouryouchuu!
Ahhh, Mitsudomoe. Why do you do this to us? We want more of the Marui triplets and you give us the worst sentai episode ever created. Yeah, episode one is mostly just a really bad episode of the show-within-a-show Gachi Rangers with Hitoha’s horrified reaction to how bad of an episode it was. Why did they do this to us? And this season is only 8 episodes? Lame. Oh well. Hopefully episode two will make up for it. If you haven’t seen the first episode of Mitsudomoe, it’s highly recommended. Though a little tasteless at times, it’s one of the funniest shows I’ve seen in a while.
Onii-chan no Koto...
Yeah, this show isn’t even worth typing out the full title. I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to like this before I even watched it based on some of the stuff that’s been said, and oh was I right. A girl with a horrible brother complex who ends up not really being the real sister of the brother she’s in love with. Okay, that’s fine, but this is supposed to be some kind of fan service relationship comedy. The problem is that the character designs are horribly ugly so the fan service isn’t effective at all and the comedy is totally not funny. As I watched, the whole episode was spent with me being offended by the art, offended by the poor attempts at humor, or just bored. Of course, we dropped this one. Go try Kiss x Sis if you’re actually interested in an almost-insect fan service comedy.
Yumekui Merry
And finally, we have Yumekui Merry. The stylization of this anime is being considered a not-so-well-done rip-off of Soul Eater by a lot of people, something Dez actually picked up on in the first minute of watching the episode. But it seems like it might be cool. I’ve always had an interest in dreams so more anime based around them are always welcome. Only thing that really bothered me about the first episode was the music. It just felt very awkward and intrusive in a lot of places. Hopefully I can put that out of my mind.
And right now, that’s everything we’ve watched. That’s just about everything from the Winter 2011 season. But there are some others that we decided to not watch without giving them a try. Shows we’re not bothering with this season:
Cardfight!! Vanguard
We have zero interest in card battle shows like Yu-Gi-Oh! so a show that was actually called “Cardfight” was pretty much a no-brainer. Not even worth it.
Rio: Rainbow Gate!
A fan service show based on a random mascot character from pachinko machines or something. Yeah, not interested.
Wolverine
After the first episode of last season’s Iron Man was one of the most boring episodes of anime I’ve ever sat through, we’re probably not going to be giving any of the Marvel/Madhouse anime adaptations a chance from now on. I don’t know, maybe we might, maybe. But we have much more interesting things to watch right now.
Well, it’s kind of hard to get a full grasp of what’s really good from just one episode, but so far I’m pretty pleased and still have high hopes for the season. It’s shaping up to be better than last season, I think. But only time will tell. At the very least, at least I have Zombie and Dragon Crisis! ^_^
Posted by pluvia33 | Jan 20, 2011 10:00 AM | 1 comments
November 20th, 2009
Fall 2009 Anime Impressions
The current Fall 2009 season of anime on Japanese TV is now at the half way point. For the second season in a row, I'm watching damn near every show being released. And since I finally got caught back up with the current anime after having to deal with moving from New Mexico to Ohio, I figured I'd write my impressions of what I've seen so far of this season, talking about each show in alphabetical order as they appear on my "Currently Watching" list....
11eyes - This is probably more towards my lesser favorite half of what I'm watching this season. It's based on an H-game and has a heavy fantasy-in-modern-day thing going on similar to what Fate/stay night did. A lot of 11eyes feels very cliche. It's not horrible, it just isn't all that interesting. As it stands now, it will be lucky if it can end with getting my usual "blah" 6 rating.
Aoi Bungaku - A pretty interesting series. A number of famous works of Japanese fiction are being adapted into this anime series. The first story called No Longer Human took up the first 4 episodes of the series and it was very well done. It held a very haunting atmosphere with a very serious mood. Episode 5 (which is as far as I've watched so far) began a new story, and although it actually has some comic relief, it has some moments that are even more disturbing. I'm looking forward to watching more.
Cheburashka Arere? - Okay, I don't know if this series really matters so much. These little 3 minute episodes are pretty much pointless cuteness. Some of them are kind of amusing though, such as when some weirdo was stealing things from the main characters.
Fairy Tail - A solid shounen series?? So far it seems okay. I've never been a huge fan of shounen anime and even less of a fan of shounen manga. So far this is okay, I guess. It's kind of hard to tell with only 6 episodes. But if for nothing else I may just stay for the fact that it's amusing to have Rie Kugimiya and Aya Hirano working together.
Kaidan Restaurant - Thriller Restaurant came as a bit of a surprise. I started watching it a little bit after the season started because gg started subbing it a little late. It's a kids show about ghost stories. I was a little hesitant since I ended up dropping Element Hunters last season, but I'm actually really enjoying this show. Yes, it's definitely aimed at younger children, but some of the stories actually have a good amount of creepiness to them and the show and its characters have a certain charm about them. It's nice.
Kämpfer - I'm not so sure about this series. It has its moments, but I just don't know. It seems rather pointless....
Kimi ni Todoke - I think this just may be my favorite show of the season. Sawako is one of the most adorable anime/manga characters I've ever come across and the rest of the primary cast is great as well. It's just a wonderful shoujo series and now I really want to start reading the manga.
Kobato. - The latest CLAMP series is pretty much just as good as I could have hoped for. I'd read a little bit of the manga and the anime doesn't let me down at all. Hopefully it keeps up and continues to be awesome.
Kuchu Buranko - Trapeze is a very odd series. From its art style which incorporates live action, to its subject matter of psychology, to its weird main character. But hey, it's still pretty interesting.
Letter Bee - I've really grown to like this series a lot more than I thought I would. It seemed okay when I watched the OVA and the first couple episodes were decent, but now having seen up through the first seven episodes it just really grew on me. Lag and Niche are just so damn lovable.
Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu: Purezza - It made me happy to hear about this sequel coming out this season. I really enjoyed the first series and this one is pretty much just more of the same nice, fun show. Haruka is as adorable as ever and this season even has Rie Kugimiya joining the cast as two characters! Although one doesn't really talk that much and the other has only really been in one episode so far....
Nyan Koi! - Here we have another solid romantic comedy. A guy gets cursed and can now talk to cats and has to give aid to them 100 times or he will become a cat. He's also allergic to them. It's amusing, but I don't know if I'm really enjoying this show as much as I should. It kind of feels like something is missing, but I can't really put my finger on it....
Sasameki Koto - Here we have the new wonderful lesbian series of the season. The tone for the most part is much more light hearted than last season's Aoi Hana and I really like it. I'm not really saying it's better than Aoi Hana, it's just a nice change of pace. It has much more comedy and the characters are very fun.
Seiken no Blacksmith - Apparently a good number of people, including some of the people in gg who are subbing it, do not really like The Sacred Blacksmith very much. I'm not really sure why. Personally I'm enjoying the series quite a bit. Maybe it's the lack of action or major story line movement?? I heard someone in the comments of a recent gg news post say that it's been nothing but filler since episode 2. Personally I think people are just expecting the series to be something that it's not. To me, the series is just a slice-of-life show that just happens to take place in a fantasy setting with some action every now and then. I don't consider it to be a fantasy action adventure series. But whatever. I like it and that's all I really care about.
Seitokai no Ichizon - And now another show like 11eyes that I really don't think it's horrible, I just don't really like it immensely. I don't know. As shocking as it may sound for a Haruhi fanboy to say this, I'm really not a big fan of [url=http://myanimelist.net/anime/1887/Lucky_☆_Star]Lucky Star[/url]. Personally I just didn't see the big deal. I understood the references, but for the most part the delivery just didn't seem very funny. All of the conversations just seemed way too normal for them to be interesting. With Seitokai no Ichizon it's pretty much the same thing. Although I think I might be enjoying it slightly more than Lucky Star, maybe. I don't know.
Shakugan no Shana S - Okay, so this is an OVA and not a TV series, but the first episode was released in October so I'm going ahead and talking about it anyway. I love Shana and the first episode of this OVA was very nice. Also, the new Shana-tan G that came with it and Shana-tan Revenge which was released just before are also quite awesome. Can't wait for Shana III to come out!!
Sora no Otoshimono - This show is just ridiculous retardation. I actually feel like I'm enjoying this show a lot more than I should. It's just so damn stupid and pointless but there's still something about it that makes me enjoy the crap out of it. Maybe it's best not to think too hard about it....
Tatakau Shisho - The Book of Bantorra - One of the more serious shows of the season. It looks pretty and has an interesting story. It's not exactly a show I'm looking forward to each week, but I'm hoping it will pick up. We'll see.
Toaru Kagaku no Railgun - The spin-off series/prequel/side story of Index from the 2008 Fall season, Railgun follows the wonderful Mikoto. The series turned out a bit different than I was expecting. Much more of a slice-of-life show than Index was, with action thrown in here and there, but that's not to say it's a disappointment. It just kind of caught me off guard for a few episodes. Personally I liked Mikoto much more than the title character of Index in the first series. I especially loved her interactions with Touma. Because of that this series can do no wrong after the wonderful Mikoto and Touma moments that have happened so far.
Yumeiro Patissiere - After Thriller Restaurant, this is the second biggest surprise of the season for me. I really didn't expect to love this series about making yummy sweets as much as I have. The fairies are cute, the character interactions are fun, and the setting of a pastry cooking school is very interesting. Good stuff.
And that's all. There are a few shows that are being released now that I'm not keeping up with. For the most part they are sequels to series I have not watched/finished yet (Queen's Blade, Asura Cryin', Inuyasha, Koihime Musou, Darker Than Black, etc.). One of the few new original shows I just totally passed on (at least for now) is Miracle Train. First I just didn't find it very widely subbed, and then when I did find out about it I didn't really feel like watching something that ANN's Bamboo Dong called "emotional pornography for women."
But yes. So those are my impressions of this season so far. Now that I think about it, this post probable wasn't very insightful, but whatever. I just felt like typing it. If anyone actually read this, hope you got some kind of enjoyment/use out of it. Laters!
11eyes - This is probably more towards my lesser favorite half of what I'm watching this season. It's based on an H-game and has a heavy fantasy-in-modern-day thing going on similar to what Fate/stay night did. A lot of 11eyes feels very cliche. It's not horrible, it just isn't all that interesting. As it stands now, it will be lucky if it can end with getting my usual "blah" 6 rating.
Aoi Bungaku - A pretty interesting series. A number of famous works of Japanese fiction are being adapted into this anime series. The first story called No Longer Human took up the first 4 episodes of the series and it was very well done. It held a very haunting atmosphere with a very serious mood. Episode 5 (which is as far as I've watched so far) began a new story, and although it actually has some comic relief, it has some moments that are even more disturbing. I'm looking forward to watching more.
Cheburashka Arere? - Okay, I don't know if this series really matters so much. These little 3 minute episodes are pretty much pointless cuteness. Some of them are kind of amusing though, such as when some weirdo was stealing things from the main characters.
Fairy Tail - A solid shounen series?? So far it seems okay. I've never been a huge fan of shounen anime and even less of a fan of shounen manga. So far this is okay, I guess. It's kind of hard to tell with only 6 episodes. But if for nothing else I may just stay for the fact that it's amusing to have Rie Kugimiya and Aya Hirano working together.
Kaidan Restaurant - Thriller Restaurant came as a bit of a surprise. I started watching it a little bit after the season started because gg started subbing it a little late. It's a kids show about ghost stories. I was a little hesitant since I ended up dropping Element Hunters last season, but I'm actually really enjoying this show. Yes, it's definitely aimed at younger children, but some of the stories actually have a good amount of creepiness to them and the show and its characters have a certain charm about them. It's nice.
Kämpfer - I'm not so sure about this series. It has its moments, but I just don't know. It seems rather pointless....
Kimi ni Todoke - I think this just may be my favorite show of the season. Sawako is one of the most adorable anime/manga characters I've ever come across and the rest of the primary cast is great as well. It's just a wonderful shoujo series and now I really want to start reading the manga.
Kobato. - The latest CLAMP series is pretty much just as good as I could have hoped for. I'd read a little bit of the manga and the anime doesn't let me down at all. Hopefully it keeps up and continues to be awesome.
Kuchu Buranko - Trapeze is a very odd series. From its art style which incorporates live action, to its subject matter of psychology, to its weird main character. But hey, it's still pretty interesting.
Letter Bee - I've really grown to like this series a lot more than I thought I would. It seemed okay when I watched the OVA and the first couple episodes were decent, but now having seen up through the first seven episodes it just really grew on me. Lag and Niche are just so damn lovable.
Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu: Purezza - It made me happy to hear about this sequel coming out this season. I really enjoyed the first series and this one is pretty much just more of the same nice, fun show. Haruka is as adorable as ever and this season even has Rie Kugimiya joining the cast as two characters! Although one doesn't really talk that much and the other has only really been in one episode so far....
Nyan Koi! - Here we have another solid romantic comedy. A guy gets cursed and can now talk to cats and has to give aid to them 100 times or he will become a cat. He's also allergic to them. It's amusing, but I don't know if I'm really enjoying this show as much as I should. It kind of feels like something is missing, but I can't really put my finger on it....
Sasameki Koto - Here we have the new wonderful lesbian series of the season. The tone for the most part is much more light hearted than last season's Aoi Hana and I really like it. I'm not really saying it's better than Aoi Hana, it's just a nice change of pace. It has much more comedy and the characters are very fun.
Seiken no Blacksmith - Apparently a good number of people, including some of the people in gg who are subbing it, do not really like The Sacred Blacksmith very much. I'm not really sure why. Personally I'm enjoying the series quite a bit. Maybe it's the lack of action or major story line movement?? I heard someone in the comments of a recent gg news post say that it's been nothing but filler since episode 2. Personally I think people are just expecting the series to be something that it's not. To me, the series is just a slice-of-life show that just happens to take place in a fantasy setting with some action every now and then. I don't consider it to be a fantasy action adventure series. But whatever. I like it and that's all I really care about.
Seitokai no Ichizon - And now another show like 11eyes that I really don't think it's horrible, I just don't really like it immensely. I don't know. As shocking as it may sound for a Haruhi fanboy to say this, I'm really not a big fan of [url=http://myanimelist.net/anime/1887/Lucky_☆_Star]Lucky Star[/url]. Personally I just didn't see the big deal. I understood the references, but for the most part the delivery just didn't seem very funny. All of the conversations just seemed way too normal for them to be interesting. With Seitokai no Ichizon it's pretty much the same thing. Although I think I might be enjoying it slightly more than Lucky Star, maybe. I don't know.
Shakugan no Shana S - Okay, so this is an OVA and not a TV series, but the first episode was released in October so I'm going ahead and talking about it anyway. I love Shana and the first episode of this OVA was very nice. Also, the new Shana-tan G that came with it and Shana-tan Revenge which was released just before are also quite awesome. Can't wait for Shana III to come out!!
Sora no Otoshimono - This show is just ridiculous retardation. I actually feel like I'm enjoying this show a lot more than I should. It's just so damn stupid and pointless but there's still something about it that makes me enjoy the crap out of it. Maybe it's best not to think too hard about it....
Tatakau Shisho - The Book of Bantorra - One of the more serious shows of the season. It looks pretty and has an interesting story. It's not exactly a show I'm looking forward to each week, but I'm hoping it will pick up. We'll see.
Toaru Kagaku no Railgun - The spin-off series/prequel/side story of Index from the 2008 Fall season, Railgun follows the wonderful Mikoto. The series turned out a bit different than I was expecting. Much more of a slice-of-life show than Index was, with action thrown in here and there, but that's not to say it's a disappointment. It just kind of caught me off guard for a few episodes. Personally I liked Mikoto much more than the title character of Index in the first series. I especially loved her interactions with Touma. Because of that this series can do no wrong after the wonderful Mikoto and Touma moments that have happened so far.
Yumeiro Patissiere - After Thriller Restaurant, this is the second biggest surprise of the season for me. I really didn't expect to love this series about making yummy sweets as much as I have. The fairies are cute, the character interactions are fun, and the setting of a pastry cooking school is very interesting. Good stuff.
And that's all. There are a few shows that are being released now that I'm not keeping up with. For the most part they are sequels to series I have not watched/finished yet (Queen's Blade, Asura Cryin', Inuyasha, Koihime Musou, Darker Than Black, etc.). One of the few new original shows I just totally passed on (at least for now) is Miracle Train. First I just didn't find it very widely subbed, and then when I did find out about it I didn't really feel like watching something that ANN's Bamboo Dong called "emotional pornography for women."
But yes. So those are my impressions of this season so far. Now that I think about it, this post probable wasn't very insightful, but whatever. I just felt like typing it. If anyone actually read this, hope you got some kind of enjoyment/use out of it. Laters!
Posted by pluvia33 | Nov 20, 2009 3:35 PM | 0 comments
September 9th, 2009
Pringles Stix
Okay, so it might seem a little weird for me to be talking about a snack food by Pringles in my blog that’s meant for anime/otaku related discussion. Well, have you ever tried these “Baked Wheat, Pringles Stix, Crispy Cracker Sticks”? Second question, have you ever tried or heard of Pretz? The salty snack version of Pocky? If neither of these ring a bell, go watch Please Teacher and Please Twin, or just go to an anime convention.
Today at work one of the older women in the office said that they had these “cracker” packs in the kitchen area and if there were any left I could have some. I went in there and picked up the last little package of these Pringles Stix. Although this snack food has apparently been around for over a year and a half, this was my first time coming into contact with them (I’m not a big snack food guy and I don’t watch much TV) so I didn’t know what to expect when I ripped open the little single serving package. But when I did I just thought, “Oh oh oh! What is this?!” The thin long crackers inside looked very familiar and when I pulled my first one out it was confirmed that it looked exactly like Pretz! Dude, what? Did Pringles just totally rip off Glico?? After giving them a taste, yes, they really did seem just as I remembered Pretz. Granted I haven’t had actual Pretz in months, but these things are just so damn similar.
So after scarfing down the Stix, I went straight to the internet to investigate. The first thing I checked was the official website for Pringles Stix. And what does it say right under “Pringles Stix” on the page?? “One-of-a-kind great taste.” Yeah. That made me laugh sooo hard.... After looking around at various other searches on Stix and Pretz I figured that there had to have been other people who have seen the similarities between the two products so I searched the two together. Yep, I wasn’t the only one. So instead of going into greater detail about how these two are basically the same snack, this is the only page that wasn’t blocked at work.
In conclusion, I’m feeling a mixture of excitement, annoyance, and amusement right now. Even if it doesn’t have as many flavors, it’s nice to have a local alternative to Pretz. Although it is kind of irritating that Pretz totally got ripped off. But it’s also just so damn funny at the same time (one-of-a-kind great taste!). Yeah, so next time I’m in Wal-Mart I’ll make sure to look for these things and while I’m at it see if they have any Pretz on the shelf. Maybe I’ll do my own taste test comparison. And I think that’s all I really have to say on this issue. If I get more information and still feel like talking about this stuff, maybe I’ll write about it again. But I probably won’t. I’ll most likely think it’s not really too important and probably won’t have anything really new to say about it. So yeah, later!
Today at work one of the older women in the office said that they had these “cracker” packs in the kitchen area and if there were any left I could have some. I went in there and picked up the last little package of these Pringles Stix. Although this snack food has apparently been around for over a year and a half, this was my first time coming into contact with them (I’m not a big snack food guy and I don’t watch much TV) so I didn’t know what to expect when I ripped open the little single serving package. But when I did I just thought, “Oh oh oh! What is this?!” The thin long crackers inside looked very familiar and when I pulled my first one out it was confirmed that it looked exactly like Pretz! Dude, what? Did Pringles just totally rip off Glico?? After giving them a taste, yes, they really did seem just as I remembered Pretz. Granted I haven’t had actual Pretz in months, but these things are just so damn similar.
So after scarfing down the Stix, I went straight to the internet to investigate. The first thing I checked was the official website for Pringles Stix. And what does it say right under “Pringles Stix” on the page?? “One-of-a-kind great taste.” Yeah. That made me laugh sooo hard.... After looking around at various other searches on Stix and Pretz I figured that there had to have been other people who have seen the similarities between the two products so I searched the two together. Yep, I wasn’t the only one. So instead of going into greater detail about how these two are basically the same snack, this is the only page that wasn’t blocked at work.
In conclusion, I’m feeling a mixture of excitement, annoyance, and amusement right now. Even if it doesn’t have as many flavors, it’s nice to have a local alternative to Pretz. Although it is kind of irritating that Pretz totally got ripped off. But it’s also just so damn funny at the same time (one-of-a-kind great taste!). Yeah, so next time I’m in Wal-Mart I’ll make sure to look for these things and while I’m at it see if they have any Pretz on the shelf. Maybe I’ll do my own taste test comparison. And I think that’s all I really have to say on this issue. If I get more information and still feel like talking about this stuff, maybe I’ll write about it again. But I probably won’t. I’ll most likely think it’s not really too important and probably won’t have anything really new to say about it. So yeah, later!
Posted by pluvia33 | Sep 9, 2009 2:40 PM | 0 comments