This Saturday post is the weekly Type-Moon news in addition to the regular APB post on Sunday. If you have any suggestions for what to highlight on the Type-Moon Weekly News Roundup drop me a line via email or Twitter.

• And So it End Before it Begins
  Or more like it was announced that StylipS is doing the ending song to the Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya. (Even though I scientifically proved last week it should have clearly been Kojima Megumi.) Apparently it is about more than just capturing cards.
• Magical Girls are All About the Costumes
  There are some more Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya character designs. Now you can see Luviagelita Edelfelt in her full glory.
• Competition for the Ahnenerbe
  More information about the Fate/Zero cafe 4-koma manga is getting an anime with the Garden Of Sinners re-release. Maybe this is where  Chikagi Katsuragi and Hibiki Hibino go to relax.
• The Wedding of Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus
  Tomopop gives the Saber Bride Figma the once over. Don’t worry Arco Wada fans. They made sure to include the ass crack window in the figure.
• ‘Cause Baby, You’re a Firework
  It seems they have not totally forgotten that Sakura is one of the three main heroines of Fate/Stay Night and got around to finishing her yukata figure. Now on to Saber Alter.
• You Trigger My Trap Card, Kid Gilgamesh!
  In order to truly betray my roommate Type-Moon is not only just releasing a Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya for the 3DS but they are making it a card battling game. In their defense if there is one type of game to make for Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya it would be a card battling game. (At least it is not a dating sim.)
• Sure Beats Fighting for Your Life on the Moon
  The latest game to get some sweet Type-Moon skins is Valhalla Knights 3. This time it is Saber and Caster from Fate/Extra CCC. I would not mind playing a GothLoli Caster.
• The Master of Rider’s Release Date … Wavers
  A little delay before the new Waver Velvet figure comes out from ALTAiR.

 If you haven’t heard the fabulous news, UNIQLO currently has Fist of the North Star t-shirts! There is a great variety to choose from (of course Raoh is the best) printed on a multitude of colors. They all pretty much fulfill the in-your-face-ness of the series. One feature that all the shirts have is a tag on the right-side, you can see it above, which has the Big Dipper constellation on it.

The best things about the Raoh t-shirt: Raoh, the lettering, Raoh, the panel layout of this iconic scene, Raoh, the words “There is no regret in my whole life!” on the back, Raoh.

I finished out my trio of free games with a copy of Psychonauts. It was actually me discussing buying the bundle just to get Psychonauts that made my roommate mention that he had extra copies of the games in the first place. Several years ago I had played Psychonauts up to the start of the asylum and then for some reason I stopped playing. For the life of me I can’t remember why I stopped playing. But I remember that I really wanted to finish the game but I never did.

It is interesting how much I remembered of the game once I sat down and started playing it again. I remember really struggling to get a lot of the collectible items in the game the first time but getting most of them effortlessly this time around. Also remember the power ups I got from collecting psi-cards being much more alluring the first time I played whereas they just seem like minor gimmicks and slight almost ignorable boosts in retrospect.

That said collecting all the figments in any levels is AMAZINGLY annoying. You clearly don’t have to do it to progress. But games like this give me a strange OCD wherever I play them. The problem is with the really complex backgrounds it is really easy to miss one or two random figments because they seamlessly blend into the background. Milla Vodello’s stage is super guilty of this with its crazy 60s psychedelic palette. But the Waterloo stage was also REALLY a pain especially with that one sneaky figment hiding out where you would normally never look. Collecting things like the vaults and bags is far easier and far more valuable as they give you nice bits of background information for all the characters.

But I still wound up trying to get them all this time. Although I was willing to use a fragment guide this time because I know how frustrating it can be without one.

Still the game is very inventive and engaging like I remembered. While the main game takes place around the psychic summer camp the various mindscapes let them play with a whole bunch of different genres and their toolboxes. The fact that you go around like a kaiju in the Lungfish world or play in a paranoid conspiracy world all in the same game in quite invigorating. Although the basic mechanics are the same in each world are very varied themes to each mindscape keeping the game fresh.

Also Psychonauts has a strong sense of humor. It is just one of those games where it is fun to go around and explore to see the random conversations and nice little bits of artistic flourish that show a nice amount of care was put into the game. And when they go for parodies they are usually well done.

But then my roommate reminded me of the MAJOR criticism with the game just before I hit it. The last stage is unexpectedly and annoyingly difficult out of nowhere. And at times unfairly hard just to be unfairly hard. For crying out loud there is an escort mission in a game where they had never been one before that point. Apparently this is even the kinder and gentler PC version. The original console version was even worse. I don’t want to even imagine that controller smashing level of persistent aggravation.

Still I preserved at got a 100% completion rate. I was glad to go back and finally cross that game off my do to list. Not to make it seem like a chore. I had a good time replaying what I did play before. It was still as fun as the last time. I’m just glad that I could correct my mistake of not finishing what I started long ago.

The Ongoing Investigations are little peeks into what we are watching and reading outside of our main posts on the blog. We each pick three things that we were interested in a week and talk a bit about them. There is often not much rhyme or reason to what we pick. They are just the most interesting things we saw since the last Ongoing Investigation.

 I read the first chapter of interactive digital comic Bottom of the Ninth. The series takes place in what seems like a futuristic 1930s where a game called New Baseball is all the rage. After one chapter, I can’t what is different with this game VS. real baseball though since we’ve only seen one pitch. A down on their luck team sends in a woman pitcher much to the shock and awe of the crowd.

The cool thing about the comic is the level of production that goes into it, there is a ton of voices, dialogue, radio announcements, and music throughout. There is also occasional animation, some very elaborate like driving through the city and some just small touches where hair is fluttering in the wind.

This is made for iPad so I can’t read anymore than the first chapter online yet, but it is worth checking out for the production values.

With the anime coming out next season I finally decided to bite the bullet and go back and start and finish Fate/Kaleid Liner Prisma Illya 2wei! so I can talk about how it is adapted from a knowledgeable place. I admit the main reason I stopped reading it before was that the Illya fan service is quite predominant. There has always been a little Illya fan service in the Fate franchise. I’m not going to pretend that it does not exist. But it always was minor enough to me ignorable. But here you could being reading the braille edition of the manga and still see the fan service.

Which is a shame because there are still some great things to enjoy in the series. The action can be fun when they are fighting. The comedy is usually enjoyable even if it does dip into some of the standard sexy comedy lameness. The little inside jokes to the general Nasuverse are still amusing but not entirely necessary for enjoyment of the series. But the most important reason of all to like the series is BAZETT!

It seems like Prisma Illya is some sort of secret island where Fate/Hollow Ataraxia’s underused characters are given a chance to be relevant supporting characters. Karen Ortensia, Bazett Fraga McRemitz, and Luviagelita Edelfelt all get more than a passing mention. Even the Type-Moon mainstay of Saber is nothing more than a quickly defeated monster. It is nice to see Bazett not only be awesome but actually get some screen time outside of her introduction in Fate/Hollow. It was be rather funny if here role in Prisma Illya got her more figures than her serious role in Fate/Hollow.

It would be sad but still funny.

I will say the oddest thing about Prisma Illya is the title changes. The “original” Prisma Illya was pretty much Card Captor Sakura with Fate/Stay Night classes as Clow Cards. Oh and the overt sexualization of the main character. But in 2wei! is mostly becomes Illya vs. dark Illya with some lets fight Gilgamesh action. Because we always fight Gilgamesh at the end of a Ftae series (expect when we fight a Buddha.) The next part Fate/Kaleid liner Prisma Illya 3rei!! is all about fighting in an alternate universe and some silly girl maybe called Tanaka trying to save Miyu Edelfelt.

Each part has a very different feel. The tone is the same and certain major plot threads connect them all. But each part feels like its own book in a greater series than a stand alone story. That does make me wonder how much they are going adapt this as an anime. The first part seems too short to make its own series but part 2 ends on a huge cliff hanger. It would almost be mean to end it there. Unless they slap on an original ending. And we all know how well that turns out most of the time.

But I will continue reading it because in the end because that is the type of Type-Moon fan I am. If it were badly written I would stop. I just wish it had a little less of this.

 I read Fables vols. 5-6 which solidified Boy Blue as my favorite character as he infiltrates deep into the Homelands.

Both of these books jump around in time a lot. A few chapters cover what Jack has been up to for years and then we jump back to see what was going on elsewhere. Similarly, we see all of Boy Blue’s story while plenty else has happened in Fabletown. We also get a big story from Bigby’s past during WWII.

The books also end up having major changes for Fabletown and its residents. Bigby and Snow’s story comes to a bit of a close which leaves us with a new government running things.

Oh and did I mention the identity of The Adversary is revealed? DUHDUHDUHHNNN! But I’m not sure what we find out is really the whole story.

If you lucky enough to live near one then going to Kinokuniya can open you eyes to some interesting manga you might have never seen otherwise. My roommate discovered a little manga series from Young Magazine called Green Blood. This is not a series about Spock’s life on Vulcan. It immediately stands out as a post-Civil War manga set in the Five Points neighborhood in Manhattan. If you ever watched the Gangs of New York or seen the TV show Copper who know that this is a prime setting for a gritty seinen manga.

Two brothers live in poverty in Five Points. The younger brother Luke Burns is a hard-working boy on the docks who wants to save up money and move out west to get away from the corruption of the New York slums. His older brother Brad seems like lazy freeloader but he is secretly the top hit-man for the Grave Diggers gang. But with New York ready to break into a bloody turf war it seems like many secrets of the Burns family about to come out into the open.

Reconstruction Era New York is definitely an unusual setting for manga but a nice change of pace indeed. It is a setting where you can be over the top and not be that off from the actual reality of the time. It also lets the series touch on issues of racism, classism, and the difficulties of recovering after the Civil War.

That said the writing is distinctly melodramatic. Luke Burns is the idealistic and somewhat naive young man to the extreme. His brother is the cold blood killer who secretly wrestles with his conscience and has a girlfriend who is a hooker with a heart of gold. The scenarios are intense but so far the characters are sort of simple. It does not detract from the enjoyment of the series but if you’re looking for the more complex characters of something like Vinland Saga you’re going to be disappointed.

Still this is a fairly unexpected discovery for me. I wonder if Kodansha Comics USA or maybe Vertical would be interested in bringing something a little different out that might garner a bit of a niche market here.

Drink #041: Con Hangover
Survive the Con

With con season on the brain, we realized we’d never really done a con survival guide for the podcast. And the con survival we’d done for the blog is now years old so we hope we have at least learned a few new things since then. So get hyped for con season as we delve out advice on potential convention options, running panels, avoiding bootlegs in the Dealers Room, and much more. Dave from ANN’s Astro Toy helps out in our Dealers Room segment about bootlegs, too!

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And now your helpful bartenders at The Speakeasy present your drink:

Con Hangover

2oz Gin        
1oz Irish Cream        
1oz Scotch        
2oz Vodka   

Directions:     
Mix together with crushed ice in a glass and garnish with mint leaves.

Hisui’s picks:

• I’ve Got the Brains. You’ve Got the Looks.
  A wonderful interview by Stephen Colbert of Neil deGrasse Tyson at Montclair Kimberley Academy. A little old but a great listen to any fan of science.
• And You Though Japanese was Efficient for Twitter
  A guide and app for writing in Gallifreyan for all the Whovians.
  
• How Many Times Can you Play the Original Mangaka in a Fighting Game?
  Rohan Kishibe And Kars were recently announced to be in JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All Star Battle. I am curious to see how Rohan Kishibe plays as he is not the most combat oriented character.
• How Much AC is That Anyway?
  I know some people are a little sick of the examination female costumes and sexism in video games conversation but I think this article deal with the issue in way where the tongue is firmly in cheek while still making a strong statement.
• Are We Going to Pretend Maya Fey Never Existed?
  I know that there was some controversy about Ace Attorney 5 being download only but I’m glad that we are getting it unlike Ace Attorney Investigations 2. There are also some good shots of the new designs and info on the plot. I secretly hope that Maya Fey will appear and they are keeping her involvement in the game as a surprise. I liked her.

Narutaki’s picks:

• Tuxedo Mask is Nothing if not Dramatic
  Gifs are worth a thousand words.
  
• EEEYOKOKANNOEEE!
  Otakon you are blowing my music mind! They have a pretty amazing line-up of musical talent this year. Happy 20th anniversary indeed!
• Have a Meal with Giant Robos
  If I ever make it to South Korea, I hope this place is still around.

Actually both of them can come back in Ace Attorney 5:

This Saturday post is the weekly Type-Moon news in addition to the regular APB post on Sunday. If you have any suggestions for what to highlight on the Type-Moon Weekly News Roundup drop me a line via email or Twitter.

• Darker Than Black
  Another translated Type-Moon employee profile.
• Fighters Ready!
  A nice cast listing for the Hana no Miyako! manga. There are some spoilers in there.
• The Guts of DDD
  Some nice fan art of the monsters of the mostly untranslated Decoration Disorder Disconnection. I would like to see this get animated but it being an unfinished work are most probably holding it back for now.
• Fate/Extra Caster is a Lovecraftian Horror
  And you thought she was just a cute fox girl.
• Holy Grail Flavored Fruits Candy
  Heroic Spirit Capturing Playable Saber. Where is the Catch You Catch Me version?

My roommate recently bought the Humble Double Fine Bundle to get a PC version of Brutal Legend and the upcoming Broken Age game. But that left him with Steam keys for the other three games in the pack that he already bought in an earlier sale. Therefore I wound up with three new games for free. As I already played Psychonauts that gave me two new games to try out. The first game I played was Costume Quest.

On Halloween night two siblings are out trick-or-treating when one of them is kidnapped by evil candy stealing trolls. So it is up to the remaining relative to team up with other children to defeat the monsters, get back the candy, free the kidnapped hostages, and save Halloween in general. Along they way the gang can get new costumes that give them new powers both in and out of battle.

I went out of my way to be ambiguous about the gender of the protagonist. As it turns out the main characters are fraternal twins. So you pick if you want to play as the boy or the girl in the beginning and then spend the game recusing your twin of the opposite gender. As video games begin to make VERY SLOW progress to realizing a little gender equality won’t kill them this is a nice nod to both genders in the mean time. You don’t have to make a Princess Zelda saves Link mod for this game. It lets you choose which gender is heroic from the start.

There are some distinctly unique facets to this game. The fact that it is a turn based RPG was defiently surprising. Seeing a company like Double Fine work on a somewhat passed by genre was a little surprising but not outside of their normal MO. Then again up until recently adventure games were considered an all but dead genre. Now they are hardly FPS in ubiquitousness but nor are they rare crystal unicorns anymore either.

The setting is very fresh feeling. Combat trick-or-treating is not the most overused setting in video games. The costume based combat is fun. You will distinctly go out of your way to get new costumes just to use them in battle. Also they are timing based functions to increase damage and defense which makes combat much more interactive. There various costumes and battle stickers let you change-up your combat style quite a bit as well.

The biggest disadvantage of the game is the initial game is three parts but once you played the first part you pretty much have seen 85% of how the game works. While the puzzles and bosses are different in each section the quests are almost always the same in each part. There is always a bobbing for apples mini-game, you always can trade cards with the other kids, you always have to trick-or-treat at X number of houses to fight the boss which lets the party move onto the next section of the game. The game is short so the little changes between sections is enough to keep to interesting but adding 2 or three more section could have easily turned the game into a slog.

There was also a slightly bell-shaped difficulty curve. The beginning of the game is fairly easy. After that the second section in the mall was fairly tough for a while. I was often losing battles and usually only winning by the skin of my teeth. I later found out that later in the section I got a third-party member. Her addition made everything significantly less difficult after she joins. Other than some bosses I never faced anywhere near that level of difficulty again. I think I was supposed to avoid those initial battles  and the go back and with the added party member and clean house. It was an odd bump in difficulty and I’m not sure it was intentional.

There was also an additional Grubbins on Ice DLC episode. It takes place after the main game and adds an extra act on the game that takes place in the monster world this time. On the plus side it adds some great new costumes and a very different setting than the main game. On the downside the overall mission formula is exactly the same as it was for all three sections in the first game. The story is fun but if you were getting tired of the somewhat repetitive game-play than this section with seem like more of a grind. Also while you can pick the gender of the main character the person kidnapped in this DLC is always female. That sort of takes away a bit of the flair of the original game.

Overall it is a fun little story that you can easily find for dirt cheap. I knocked out the whole game in a single weekend where I also went to Free Comic Book Day and played D&D. So if you want some sort of Disgaea styled 100+ hours experience then your going to be sorely out of luck. But as an innovate return to the turn based RPGs it is a good piece of bite sized entertainment.

The plot really picks up in Shoulder-A-Coffin Kuro vol. 3. Not only do we learn more about Nijuku and Sanju’s creation, we get some surprising turns in Kuro’s search as well. The ending is really surprising in a cliffhanger-like moment which was a welcome piece to this unconventional 4-koma.

Allegedly this series is ongoing but I worry we may never get the answers we are looking for.

The Ongoing Investigations are little peeks into what we are watching and reading outside of our main posts on the blog. We each pick three things that we were interested in a week and talk a bit about them. There is often not much rhyme or reason to what we pick. They are just the most interesting things we saw since the last Ongoing Investigation.

In that same deal I also got the puzzle game Stacking. This is strictly a puzzle game as opposed to RPG with some puzzle elements. Like most Double Fine games it has a very distinct and unique esthetic that helps each game stand out in its given genre. Even when it is doing something you have seen it other games the presentation and delivery makes it feel like you’re getting something special.

In a hyper-Dickensian world humans and animals are actually living Matryoshka dolls with smaller dolls being able to fit into larger dolls.  Charlie Blackmore must save his family when his father disappears and the rest of the family is forced to work off their debt to an evil Baron. Since Charlie is the smallest member of the Blackmore family he must use his power to jump into other dolls to use their powers.

The first things that jumps out at the game is the atmosphere. Everything feels like a silent movie up to the fact that all the text looks like the subtitles used in a silent movie (and is a good artistic excuse not to have voice acting in a modern game.) The fact that all the characters are Oliver Twist characters in extreme parody mode makes the feeling complete.

The interesting thing is that all the major puzzles in the game can be solved different ways (expect for the last boss battle.) Most puzzles have three to five solutions. If you want to infiltrate an exclusive club you might jump into the body of a mechanic to open up a vent to sneak in. At the same time you can also distract the bouncer with a sexy lady letting you waltz in the front when he is preoccupied. The game lets you redo puzzles so you can find all the solutions but you technically only need to solve any puzzle once to get to the end.

On every level there are also some additional side quests you can complete including optional missions, silly tasks, and jumping into all the unique dolls in the level.  It lets you decide how quickly you want to progress through the game. Finding a single solution is usually fairly simple but finding ALL the solutions can be tough.

There is a fairly good built-in hint system that has three levels of clues that I sometimes used when I had NO idea what they wanted me to do for some of the alternate solutions. I never used it to get my initial solution but I had no shame in letting it help me with some of the more esoteric answers. The first clue always helped point me in the direction of the missing angle of attack.

Also like Costume Quest there is an additional DLC adventure about finding the King of the Hobos in the hobo kingdom. Even more than the main story this add-on revels in its oxymoronic charm. They also have zombies and shamanic bums. Just because. The DLC also like Costume Quest basically repeats the formula of the original game but it just feels so much fresher in Stacking. The scope of the puzzles just make it feel less repetitive.

Stacking is just a fun game. It has a wonderful mix of offbeat comedy and clever puzzle solving. It is hardly a long game (especially if you relive some frustration with the hint system) but you will probably love it for the time you spend playing it.

I finally got around to picking up more Bunny Drop (vols. 6-7).

I really enjoyed 6 as it continued to explore the budding romance between Rin and Kouki with complicated results. We also get a little flashback to some of the years that were skipped over to see Rin and Kouki in middle school.

Volume 7 sees the return of Rin’s mom who I hate, we all hate right? But Rin is a young woman and beginning to notice the relationships everyone has with their mothers and becomes naturally curious about her own. There are some really great moments between her and Daikichi as she worries he will somehow no longer be her father, and reassures her she will always be his child.

I will finish up my old Takashi Takeuchi doujinshi roundup with Clockwick canaan-vail. This story was originally part of the same anthology that Kinoko Nasu wrote Notes for. Notes gets much more attention as it is the story from which Type-Moon gets it name from. (Also since there are some references to Notes in other Type-Moon projects.) It is often mentioned alongside Notes but more as a footnote than any detailed discussion about the work itself.

Clockwick canaan-vail is a short tale of the last delivery mission of a messenger robot who is going to shut down in a few days as the technology to fix her is not around anymore. It examines her life through the lens of her final effort before she passes on.

Clockwick canaan-vail along side Valkyria and Maid-san wa Majo shows that Takeuchi can write short stories as well as sprawling epics. Nasu on the other hand seems to only write long form stories. Kōri no Hana might be a very self-contained story but having never read it I can’t really say. But it is more insight into the dynamic of the two that makes the unified Type-Moon.

I guess at this point all that is left is to track down a translation of Natural Tomato (if such a beast even exists).

Dear me, every time I think I’m getting the hang of Fire Emblem for Gameboy Advanced, it smacks me back down to show me my place. But I still think I’m dying less?

I’m at a point where I get to promote a lot of my units in quick succession and it is really satisfying. Some of them are almost too good though mowing enemies down all by themselves and only leaving scraps for the lesser characters!

I’ve been really impressed with the story of the game so far as I creep closer to the end and the confrontation with Nergal. There are so many little stories being woven in as well as relationships. I honestly can’t believe so much game is packed on to this little cartridge.

Yellow Tanabe’s short manga Laughter in the End of the World was my Manga of the Month a little while back. It has some chilling moments!

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We dreamed the impossible dream: someone licensing  The Rose of Versailles. But against all odds that dream came true. If you remember back in October, we submitted some questions to Riyoko Ikeda when the series was licensed by Nozomi Entertainment and even posted our questions in celebration of the announcement. Now that the first DVD set is out we’ve decided to remind you to picked them up.

The Rose of Versailles is more than just one of the seminal shojo series that has shaped countless titles. It is also a wonderous and unique life manual filled with universal truisms and precautionary tales for any age.

Oh. Watch out. We so have some major spoilers for the series beyond the death of historical characters whose deaths should be shocking to no one.

How to Start a Revolution

First, be the Duke du Orleans because apparently if you are him, you can plot every moment of a revolution (in ways that would impress Madame Defarge). Second, hire Count Evilmoustache to shoot some innocent women and children in the back.

Watch out for others who might try to hijack your revolution like Saint-Just, that guy is wack! Robespierre you say? Oh well, he’s got nothing on your badness Duke du Orleans.

The Best Man is a Woman

Oscar is the most brave, most noble, most loyal, most beautiful, and most bestest person in revolutionary France. No mere mortal could compete be they man or woman. Oscar could be the counterbalance to Guts, like Griffith expect ya know without all the creepy weirdness.

Child Bearing Years Don’t Matter, Just Skip ‘Em

No one wants to hear about all that! It isn’t as if those children are probably a product of your life long affair or anything.

People Who Give You Diamonds Aren’t a Girl’s Best Friend

That darn necklace that Louis XV had made for Madame du Barry just brought misery and shame on everyone whose lives it touched. It quickly becomes a tool for Jeanne’s large-scale con job, revenge scheme, and plot to out Marie as a closet lesbian. But don’t worry the Duke du Orleans eventually finds a way to get involved at the end; he always goes where the evil is.

Flirting with the Main Character Can Get You Killed

Oscar is just too noble for your base and filthy desires therefore anyone who gets too close to her is stuck down by the angry wrath of the gods (aka as the editors at Margaret). Just look at the victims: the fate of Marie Antoinette is a matter of historical record; they go out of their way in the epilogue to mention what a gruesome death Axel von Fersen has; and André Grandier has to die the day after he sleeps with Oscar.

Rosalie Lamorlière got what was coming to her for her arrogance in trying to court Oscar. While she does not die literally, she does figuratively, as she does pretty much get cut out of the series and reduced to cameo appearances. Like Icarus she tried to fly too high and came crash down due to her hubris. She should have stuck to being interested in side characters like Bernard Chatelet from the beginning.

Alain is a Boy’s Name

As someone on this blog has had problems their whole life because of that name, we just wanted to point out this fact. Alain de Soissons is a cool cat, isn’t it grand?

Sorry Kamille has never has been and never will be a man’s name.

Narutaki’s picks:

• The Triumphant Return of Hyperbole and a Half
  His first comic back from a long 18-month break explains in emotionally resonante, occasionally hilarious, detail his battle with depression.
• I Left My Heart in San Fransokyo
  Disney officially announces its first animated feature foray into the Marvel backcatalog with the little known property Big Hero 6. The team of heroes is based in San Fransokyo, a mash-up of Tokyo and San Francisco, which is totally fun to say. The later half of the article talks about the production of Frozen as well as the exaggerated death of the hand drawn animation department.
• LEGO Adds Steampunk to the Repertoire
  I’m sure someone is complaining, but I think it is totally awesome!

Hisui’s picks:

• The Dmitri Mendeleev of Middle Earth
  If geeks and nerds love one thing more than anything else it is organizing things into charts and systems. So it was only a matter of time before someone did this is the denizens of the Lord of the Rings universe.
• Why Are You so Jaded?
  An interesting insight into a possible reason certain people are drinking the Haterade.
• I Assume “Weird Al” Yankovic’s Eat It is the Hors D’oeuvre Making Stand
  Nothing makes a finger sandwich quite complete like Guido Mista’s stand Sex Pistols. Of course you use Harvest for vegetarian snacks. That is just proper etiquette.
• Poster Mania!
  A nice collection of posters.
  • Mathematical!: If your favorite mathematician here?
    
  • What Does God Need With a Poster?: These would be great for a Star Trek Blu-ray re-release.
  • Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Lithograph: An amazing lithograph that contains the complete Last Unicorn in one picture.

 I haven’t thought of Lord of the Rings enough lately.

Filed under: All Points Bulletin Tagged: Big Hero 6, Disney, Frozen, Hyperbole and a Half, LEGO, Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, The Last Unicorn ]]> http://reversethieves.com/2013/05/12/all-points-bulletin-jaded-san-fransokyo/feed/ 0 reversethieves narutaki hisuicon sep-pic narutaki http://reversethieves.com/2013/05/11/type-moon-weekly-news-roundup-the-unsinkable-arturia-pendragon/ http://reversethieves.com/2013/05/11/type-moon-weekly-news-roundup-the-unsinkable-arturia-pendragon/#comments Sat, 11 May 2013 16:30:15 +0000 reversethieves http://reversethieves.com/?p=28340 ]]>

This Saturday post is the weekly Type-Moon news in addition to the regular APB post on Sunday. If you have any suggestions for what to highlight on the Type-Moon Weekly News Roundup drop me a line via email or Twitter.

• Putting Saber on a Pedestal
  This time I am posting Tomopop’s review of Bandai’s Chogokin Saber for your perusal. The article has a nice comparison with the Saber Figma as well.
• When Will We Get a Waver Velvet Magical Girl Show?
  Some more clips of the upcoming Fate/Kaleid Liner Prisma Illya anime.
• The Fun Never Stops
  I won’t guarantee that is the case with Fate/Extra CCC but I will mention that even though the game is released the official videos for it are still being released.
  • When I’m not Otherwise Occupied as a Purple Duck: A new Master and Servant that were not in the original Fate/Extra.
  • The Sophomores: And a video for some of the returning Masters and Servants in Fate/Extra CCC.
• Treasure Festa is Not Just a Gunstar Heroes Convention
  Some nice Saber figures from Treasure Festa in Ariake 9
  • Lily of the Valley Saber: The smile is free but Excalibur is priceless.
  • Milton Bradley Twister Saber: Beach Blanket Saber’s secrets are finally revealed.
  • Wedding Registry Saber: The Gift version of Saber Bride.

I started reading the new Brian K. Vaughan and Marcos Martin comic The Private Eye (issues 1-2). The distribution of this comic is worth talking about. It is released digitally as a download of either PDF, CBR or CBZ. And it is a pay-what-you-want pricing model.

I love that the art takes into account that screens are vertical and not horizontal like a book. So when you look at a page at maximum size it literally fills the entire screen.

The setting of Private Eye caught my attention, it is a post-internet future but not a post-apocalyptic dealie. Technology has advanced in different areas while the internet has died out after “the cloud” spewed out every bit of everyone’s information into the world for all to see 60 years prior. The aesthetic is futuristic such as changing your appearance with the push of a button but mixed with things like rotary phones. The world is such that identity can be very malleable.

P.I. is hired to dig into his client’s past to see if he can unearth all the dirt she tried to bury, but before he can even start she gets murdered. Her sister, a former client, ropes him into finding her killer. A simple mystery setup with all the peripherals make it engaging.

I’m going to pretend that we have a huge dedicated audience that constantly asks us to do things because they love us so much. (As opposed to a small audience that only occasionally asks us to do things as horrible jokes.)  I’m then going to pretend that this fictitious vocal fan base asks for my Ongoing Investigations entries to have a consistent theme to all the items I talk about. And since I’m making this up whole cloth they have also asked for a week were I talk about nothing but non pornographic Type-Moon doujinshi.

Since everyone asked for it (no one) here it is.

If anyone has been around in Type-Moon fandom long enough they know there is one simple phrase that can spark such fierce arguments that it has reached divine meme status. That phrase is “Shiki Can Kill Servants.” The comic that has inspired this phrase more than anything else is the ongoing doujinshi series T-Moon Complex X. I finally sat down and read the current seven books that have been released as it seemed like something I should do.

T-Moon Complex X is the classic Japanese Vs. formula. You take two series and mix them together, have the heroes meet and clash, then introduce a big bad guy they both fight so they have to put aside their differences. In that respect it follows the formula to the tee. Team Shiki clashes with Team Shiro but they have to stop their bickering when they discover that a certain dead apostle has tapped into to a resurrected Holy Grail.

And that also means it goes into full on fan fiction mode. Who would win in a fight between Shiki and Shiro? What if crazy powerful magic circuited Ciel were a Master? Could Saber defeat Nrvnqsr Chaos? What sort of food would kid Gilgamesh buy everyone for dinner? Would Bazett instantly fall in love with Shiki if they ever met?

I did notice that team Fate/Stay Night sort of gets the short end of the stick as opposed to the powerhouses that are Team Tsukihime. Shiki kills Berserker like Hercules was a jobber in professional wrestling. And most of the important villains are Tsukihime characters who slap around Fate characters for the most part. Hell a bunch of Fate/Zero characters mostly show up so they can die a few pages later. But so is the preference of the author. At least everyone get a little chance to shine on both sides.

The major question with this series is do you consider an evening of browsing fanfiction.net a fun diversion or a prison sentence for a minor vandalism charge. Because this is what it reads like. It is a good piece of fan fiction but it reads like fan fiction none the less. It is sort of wish-fulfillment with a plot to hold it all together. If you can handle that then it is all fun.

The Ongoing Investigations are little peeks into what we are watching and reading outside of our main posts on the blog. We each pick three things that we were interested in a week and talk a bit about them. There is often not much rhyme or reason to what we pick. They are just the most interesting things we saw since the last Ongoing Investigation.

I read part 3 of the Burn Notice webcomic which tells us the story of how Michael and Fiona first met. This takes place while Michael is under fire from a guy that Fi and him pissed off back in Ireland.

I really enjoyed finally getting that whole story, it works for them. It was interesting to see Michael so emotional invested at the beginning of their relationship, it was a nice surprise. Michael has always had a different demeanor when it comes to Fiona, but this was him really pursuing her and trying to fix the mess he made.

Nice little story to tide me over until the next season starts.

 Sword Dancers is a strange beast indeed. There is Sword Dancers 1 and 2 and they are like night and day. The main connecting factor is the presence of Archer-ko who is a female version of Archer. It turns out she is Illyasviel von Einzbern from an alternate timeline when she becomes a Counter-Counter-Guardian (which just sounds very silly.)

Sword Dancers One is mostly a battle between Saber and Archer-ko over some stolen Häagen-Dazs. As Saber is not one to let a grudge over food go unavenged it turns into a serious fight but ends with a comedic ending. Also apparently Archer-ko is fairly middle of the road on the Kinsey scale.It is a fun little story but completely and utterly fluffy.

On the other hand Sword Dancers Two is all serious business with fighting, cursed girls, and angst burgers with a thick and tangy angst sauce. It seems to take place in its own little universe were the 5th Holy Grail war has some serious business going on. It is mostly an excuse for fights and sad monologues.

It is certainly an interesting little project. I could do without the mega melodrama in part 2 but it is a nice little series to look at. If nothing else Archer-ko seems to have her own little fan following which is fairly strong for a doujin character.

Finally got around to watching the Kuroko’s Basketball OVA 22.5 which features Kise being recruited as a starter at Teiko Middle School and how to gets to know Kuroko.

This is really just a bonus episode with minimal amount of effort put in sadly. The animation is generally horrendous.

It is a nice enough sotry, but I was disappointed that there wasn’t much about Kise, who we don’t know very well. Instead it was more about him learning about Kuroko. We know Kuroko and his shtick already so it wasn’t that revealing.

I can’t wait for the second season to start though!

Maid-san wa Majo is an unusual little doujinshi by Nasu and Takeuchi after they made after Tsukihime when they still did projects under the Bamboo Broom title. It shows very clearly that Takeuchi is clearly infatuated with maids at this point in his career. This is something that would clearly never go away.

The story is about a super powerful witch named the Blue Witch (a name that would appear again) who was cured by the gods to wear a maid outfit and serve a milquetoast master. But the maid outfit makes her act like the “stereotypical” maid causing quite a bit of trouble and some romance.

The story is sort of making fun of and paying tribute to moe maids while the whole maid boom was just starting. (Never say that Takeuchi is not one to capitalize on a trend. It is only a matter of time before we get Idol Singer Saber like he joked about.) It is also a little love story an its center but that almost seems like a maid joke delivery system.

Much like the Valkyria series I talked about last week Maid-san wa Majo mostly seems like a chance for Takeuchi to play around with an idea that is fun. Unlike Valkyria this is a far more flimsy idea that works well as a one shot as opposed the sprawling epic that Valkyria could have been.

We also see a little tribute to Hisui in the back as the maid of maids. It is just little production sketches and original scribbles for the stoic house servant. They are a nice little added bonus. The fact that the Blue Witch looks much like a flashy Hisui is possibly part of the reason for her inclusion as well.

It is a fun little read that gives you a little glimpse into the silliness that the Bamboo Broom site used to have. It is worth flipping through if you are a fan of Type-Moon and how their art has evolved over the years.

Drink #008: The Joker,
Making Sense of Humor

We are talking about comedy this month. We are not talking about the Shakespearean comedy, the Divine Comedy, or the Studio 4C short film but comedy as it relates to anime. So often anime comedy strikes viewers as quite different than the comedy they are used to but why is the question. What about the aesthetic makes it so different from the comedy we know? What makes it so different from the comedy you see on Japanese dramas as well? We will also examine the different styles of humor you see in anime. Plus the most important question: Why do people think K-ON! is funny?

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And now your helpful bartenders at The Speakeasy present your drink:

The Joker

2 shots vodka
2 shots cointreau
2 shots advocaat
6 parts orange soda
Top up with lemonade

Mix together with lots of ice and stir.

Only the naive, the jaded, and the unethical can easily say, “I’m going to get into comics and not spend a lot of money.” Therefore any chance to save money or help narrow down what you want to follow is extremely valuable. Free Comic Book Day is the next best way to find what to read outside of a generous friend with a sizable and eclectic collection. Every year it is a great chance for new fans to dip their toes in the water and see what they like as well a prime opportunity for fans who have been out of the game for a while to see what has changed since they left.

If your lucky enough to have multiple comics stores in your area you can hit them all up and get a nice selection of titles to read. Living in NYC let us make a long day trip of our journey but even having one store in your neighborhood that participates will let you get a handful of titles to peruse for nothing at all. (Good and generous souls will also pick up some items at any store they visit to make the day worth it to any owners participating in the event.) Either way it lets you expedience some comics you may not have read otherwise and broaden your horizons.

FCBD in NYC ends up being a special all-day event if you want it to be. Hint: we want it to be.

I think the most interesting thing for me with FCBD with the wide variety of titles you can sample. There was your standard titles from the Big Two and some other smaller superhero comics of course. That is always what you think of when American comics come up. But there was a wide variety of titles that came along with any standard pack for FCBD as well and some unique titles that individual stores gave out. I read everything from classic comics like Prince Valiant and Buck Rogers to more offbeat titles like Marble Season, Old Soldiers, and The Steam Engines of Oz. It is interesting to see what people show you when they put their best foot forward (theoretically at least.)

I was fascinated to see how differently all the titles read in relation to each other. Prince Valiant and Buck Rogers were COMPLETELY unlike anything else in the lineup. They were clearly from eras of storytelling that just don’t exist anymore. The panel layout and narrative pacing exemplify the period that each of them was pulled from. As Narutaki said, “These are compressed stories in ways even beyond modern comics.” At the same tim, a story like Marble Season has a stream of consciousness storytelling that reads more like someone telling you a story in real life as opposed to reading a novel or watching a movie. At the same time Old Soldiers and The Steam Engines of Oz read like standard American comics but have content that was wildly divergent and don’t contain Capes.

Also all the free comics made me realize one thing. Judge Dredd can be a REALLY goofy series. Like you have to do a double take goofy. I’m sure he is a Batman like character that is very dependent on who is writing him and when they are writing him but that does not erase the fact that he was like clown shoes in the version I read.

 FCBD should be when you drag your friends along and pull them into reading comics for the rest of their lives (or for one day). I’m sure few people take part in the event if they don’t have friends already in the hobby, but maybe I’m wrong. And I also wonder how often it sticks for new readers. However, there is one group of people this seems ideal for comic readers who also have kids.

When possible, it is encouraged to spend a little at the places you get free comics. As little as buying a floppy issue is enough to show support and, hey, a lot of places have a sale on FCBD making it even easier to do so.

I will admit that FREE FOOD very easily grabs my attention. So when Manhattan Comics said they has snacks I was very curious what they had to offer. I was not expecting much but was secretly hoping for something good. What I got was VERY good. They had homemade Twinkies and Oreos and those on their own were amazing. They also had the biggest selection of free comics with some titles you did not see anywhere else. If you are in Manhattan for FCBD next year they are THE place to stop. Carmine Street Comics was pretty small but the staff was extremely friendly and that is always a plus.

I will say that if you’re in Manhattan the places to avoid are the big named stores oddly enough. Midtown Comics and Forbidden Planet basically gave away a fairly standard packet of comics with little to no choice of what you got. The problem is that since they are the well-known sites they are also the most frequented shops. So their selection quickly drops to next to nothing and their sales are usually the less than the smaller stores. It is not that those stores are not worth going to but I would skip them if you are pressed for time. You going to get more treasures for your effort if you go to the more overlooked stores.

A random side note for any manga fans. All the stores we went to had a greatly reduced manga section than they had last year. If you wanted a simpler sign that the manga boom is over it is that.

If you’re lucky enough to spend FCBD in NYC, then you soon realize just how many stores there are to choose from.

If you are going to head to one store then make it Manhattan Comics, they pretty much having it all in terms of FCBD event store. They have a huge selection of comics that doesn’t run out early in the day and they have a bunch of additional free comics to choose from that aren’t the “official” issues; they have a big sale on comics and trades, this year it was 40% off; they have creators doing signings throughout the day; and they have free treats. Their location is also a prime spot since it sits across from Madison Square park a perfect places to go read your comics and grab some lunch at Shake Shack.

Of course what everyone wants to know is what we enjoyed the most from our selections. OK. What everyone REALLY wants to know is what we hated the most but as always we tend to focus on the positive on the site. Hopefully you would check out what we enjoyed the most and not what bored us. (You can always ask us what we hated on Twitter if your really curious.)

I had never heard of Ernest and Rebecca before FCBD but it was quite enjoyable. I picked it up mostly because of the cute little cover but was glad to see the content matched as well. The story is about a sickly girl named Rebecca who befriends a magical microbe named Ernest like she was in Moyasimon. We did not see a lot of Ernest in the sample story but Rebecca was quite rambunctious and adorable in her story. A real hidden gem.

Mouse Guard was probably the smartest sample comic I read. It wisely told a standalone story that introduced you to the world of Mouse Guard but was satisfying in its own right. It showed the strong artwork and storytelling of the comic while feeling like a complete story. Sales wise a story that shouts “If you want the full story buy my comic” might work better to bring in new readers I felt a bit more pleased with this approach. I liked its soft sell. In a way it seemed more confident of its product that way.

Princeless was a comic I had heard a bout a few times before. I know Narutaki talked about it in the past if nothing else. I was pleased to see that it was a fun story with some good humor and lively artwork. A comic to read if you’re tired of comics without strong female leads.

For some, FCBD is a day to grab special issues featuring characters or series that are beloved. For me, FCBD should ideally introduce me to new titles that I’ll be running out to read more of. Some years it works out and some years is doesn’t, 2013 worked out quite well!

Adventure Time comics have been doing really well and now I know why. They aren’t just a quick grab at a popular television property, these comics are actually hilarious providing humor in sync with the show. Plus, this little story was a fun take on the “choose your own adventure” genre. As I rarely get to enjoy the show, I may start picking up the comic to fill the void!

I remember someone complaining on Twitter that they saw no reason to care about FCBD since all they hear is people complaining about how comics are sexist and dumb. Oddly enough I think that is the PERFECT reason to go to FCBD. Why? Because nothing will dissuade of that notion quicker than some well-chosen comics. You can go with the standard DC and Marvel samplers. They are usually competent but boring and are mostly there to either tie into the latest movie coming out from the studio. But if you want something different or unusual than there are usually about half a dozen titles outside the norm. You get some of the smaller presses who usually do more inventive things with superheroes to stand out as well lots of titles that have nothing to do with anything you normally would think of with American comics.

 We all started reading comics once we got home and then promptly forgot to do things like record a podcast and eat, whoops! There were actually so many titles to choose from that I didn’t even get to the ones I was most looking forward to until the next day. I can’t think of a better way to spend a weekend.

Hisui’s picks:

• Banagher Links Golf 2012 Edition
  Gundamn examines the penultimate episode of Gundam Unicorn that is filled with mecha, monologues, and mutinies. All the key staples of Gundam. In a nice bit of synergy that always speak with Stephanie Sheh the English voice actress of Mineva Zabi from Unicorn.
• That’s So ’80s
  Ani-Gamers looks at Hyper Combat Unit Dangaioh OVA. It is not THE definitive 80′s OVA but it gives you a good idea of the type of show you might find back then. And it has ladies piloting robots.
• FINALLY T-shirts that Give You a Stand
  I mean what were scientists waiting for so long?
• 3 Different Geeks Considered
  The All Geeks Considered podcast serve up three different types of nerdiness in their latest episodes:
  • They Were 11: A classic space opera based on the manga by Moto Hagio.
  • Film Noir: A look at The Maltese Falcon, Strangers on a Train, Brick as three different takes on the film noir genre.
  • Destination Moon: A movie about going to the moon almost two decades before we went to the moon based on the novel by Robert Heinlein.

Narutaki’s picks:

• 30 Days of Sexism
  If you’re feeling cynical, you could rename this post “30 Days on the Internet as a Woman Who Likes Video Games.” But I am not cynical and I do think it is a good read. It ended up with a bunch of discussion on Twitter as well.
• “Not to say that my life wasn’t different without the internet, just that it wasn’t real life.”
  Paid to stay away from the internet for an entire year, Paul shares what he learned about staying connected. When I go on vacation, I attempt (and mostly succeed) at staying offline but a whole year is another story.
  

I found this picture devastatingly cute:

This Saturday post is the weekly Type-Moon news in addition to the regular APB post on Sunday. If you have any suggestions for what to highlight on the Type-Moon Weekly News Roundup drop me a line via email or Twitter.

• A Not so Hollow Victory
  While the Visual Novel still does not have an English translation there will be a Fate/Hollow Ataraxia manga starting in Japan on May 20th.
• A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man 
  A comic profile for Koyama Hirokazu who is best known as the artist for Mahou Tsukai no Yoru as well as the DDD novels. But what the heck does the Weight: C+ skill mean? I’m guessing that he is chubby?
• 3X3 Eyes
  There is this trend of throwing up three by three charts on Twitter recently. I did one for my favorite anime heroines. I think anyone who knows me will figure out the joke before they click the link.
• I Want to Imagine Kotomine’s Candy Tastes Like Mapo Tofu
  Fate/Zero can sell anything! Not that you really need to try that hard to sell candy.
• The Phantom Dark Spot on the Golden Caliburn
  If you recently bought Good Smile Company’s Saber Lily ~Golden Caliburn~ you will want to read this.
• The Other Garden of Sinners
  If the 3-D version of the first Kara no Kyoukai film was not strange enough they are also playing animated version of the SD 4-Panel Manga from the Fate/Zero Café. I guess that is not a horrible reason to watch the movie again.
• The Mouse that Roared
  Commie subs has started the revolution the first chapter of  Rojiura Satsuki Chapter Heroine Sanctuary. The liner notes are amazingly impressive.
• Is This the Rider-Waver Tarot Deck?A nice collection of tarot card using character from all the main Fate series. I would love to see someone do a full tarot deck that also incorporates the minor arcana.
  • Part 1
  • Part 2
  • Part 3
  • Part 4
  • Part 5
  • Part 6
  • Part 7
  • Part 8

As a Type-Moon fan there are a lot of major parts of the company’s works that are relatively easy to find. All of the anime can be found with only minor difficulty (and a good deal of it legally), the visual novels are at least partially translated, and most of the manga has at least a few chapters available in English. But there are still a few rare gems for the truly hard-core. One of them I finally found are some translations of some of Takashi Takeuchi’s old Valkyrie Profile doujinshi Valkyria.

Valkyria, Valkyria 2, and Valkyria NEAV SAGA each focus on a different Valkyrie who follows around a chosen hero in hopes that they might be able to capture their soul to make them their Einherjar before they die. All the heroes are slightly (and often rightfully) worried that their Valkyrie might be tempted to kill them to make sure they can properly capture their soul as opposed to just waiting for them to die normally.

The Valkyrie series is interesting to see for a variety of reasons. The first is that the series is a clear look at Takeuchi’s art style before Tsukihime. While his art style has clearly evolved from this, to this, to this you do not get a full understanding of his journey as an artist until you view his even earlier work. When you realize that Ciel was heavily based on Clobette from Valkyria 2 it is easy to see a straight line of progress.

It is also one of the few times you get to see Takeuchi do his own story and artwork in a manga format. That means you see the stories that Takeuchi would tell without working together with Nasu as well as how he lays out panels when his art is not just character designs and mostly static images in a visual novel. It does make me wonder what a long running manga series from Takeuchi would look like. It also might provide some good clues into what parts of Tsukihime and Fate/Stay Night are Nasu’s and which parts are strongly Takeuchi influenced.

The stories themselves have a distinctly short format. But considering these were sold at Comiket it then makes perfect sense. You have to quickly tell your story to an audience that you may never see again. Therefore all the stories are very self-contained even when they have a slightly bit of a shared story. On the other hand there is an assumption that you have at least a passing familiarity with Valkyrie Profile. But that is a common conceit in a good deal of doujinshi.

I’m not going to pretend this is the greatest work out of what would go on to be half of Type-Moon. The stories are charming but ultimately very light stories. It was nice on the other hand to see the humble beginnings of Bamboo Broom and think about how that would eventually become the larger machine it is today.

 I was sent a review copy of the self-published e-book book An Otaku Abroad which is a travel guide for first timers heading to Japan.

There is a great overview in this book from deciding when and how to travel all the way to visiting temples. And a whole section is dedicated to studying abroad which I thought was a very thoughtful piece and a really common way a lot of young people get to Japan, too. This was the author’s ticket to Japan so she had a lot to say on the subject.

Since this book is written by an individual there were some sections that she didn’t have as much advice for such as flying domestically within in Japan. While she did research the subjects she was less familiar with, it might be helpful to have another contributor or two to add to these portions to round things out.

Since it is a digital book, one of the cool things is having links right in the text that can take you to handy supplemental sites. I learned of a few places and added them to my bookmarks for my mythical trip to Japan someday.

Even though the title says otaku, the guide doesn’t really focus on anime/manga related things which I found a little disappointing. There are a few mentions throughout the locations section and a very nice Top Ten Anime Sites list at the end. I’d like to see the anime/manga part of the guide bulked up to really give it that special hook.

The Ongoing Investigations are little peeks into what we are watching and reading outside of our main posts on the blog. We each pick three things that we were interested in a week and talk a bit about them. There is often not much rhyme or reason to what we pick. They are just the most interesting things we saw since the last Ongoing Investigation.

Death Billiards is Yuzuru Tachikawa’s contribution to the Young Animator Training Project from Madhouse. This is much darker in tone than the cute little magical girl story told in Little Witch Academia. If anything it is more of a what you traditionally think of when taking about a Madhouse production.

Two men, one young and one old, enter a mysterious but fancy pool hall with little memory of how they got there. Their mysterious hosts seem to dodge most questions but assure them that they are about to play game as if their lives are on the line but refuse to clarify what that means beyond that point. The young man begins to freak out as he is sure he will die if he loses this game. But as the game goes on it is clear there is more to this than mere life and death.

I felt like Little Witch Academia was a good pilot for a longer series but Death Billiards felt more like a stand alone Twilight Zone episode. Your thrown into a mysterious situation, as the story goes on the stakes are raised, and the end is slightly ambiguous with the hopes that you mull over the meaning of the story.

If nothing else this is a very pretty piece of work. The bar and pool hall has a simultaneously grand and yet subdued feeling to it. Also the one fight sequence has a nice pop to it and takes advantage of the scenery. Makes you wish the Marvel anime projects looked this nice.

I’m not sure I full was satisfied with how ambiguous the ending was. But it does make it something you can discuss with other people who watched it which was nice. Also it is short so you can’t feel too frustrated even if you wish it had a more concrete ending. I feel like Little Witch Academia was an easy crowd-pleaser whereas Death Billiards is more of a series you will find passed around to a more select group of people.

 I picked up Alice in the Country of Hearts omnibus vol. 2.

After the first I really liked The Mad Hatter but in this volume he just stops short of killing our heroine. The creepy violence/creepy obsession with Alice of this series is increasing exponentially; no one really is very healthy in this world.

Ace remains the most interesting character but I was disappointed that this volume didn’t further our understanding of the world or the system very much which is what I have been most interested to learn. But maybe no one cares but me?

Evangelion 3.33 – You Can (Not) Redo has really proved to engender the widest spectrum of responses from people I have seen in the Rebuild series. I see a lot of negative feelings, an almost equal amount of confused or conflicted opinion, and a few really enthusiastic embraces of the newest entry. The first movie got a good deal of praise but a lot of people felt it was pretty much nothing more than a quick retelling of the original series. The second movie got more praise and it mostly came down to how well executed you thought the changes were. And there were several. But this movie is pretty much all new material and so tables have been flipped.

And without going into spoiler country it is obvious that after the ending of You Can (Not) Advance there were going to be very few ways that the movies could return the status quo of the TV series without some major fugazi hand waving or just saying that nothing that was different really mattered. In that respect they don’t play that game. Everything is different. Everything you knew about the original is thrown out the window. Opinions vary wildly on how wise any and all of these changes are. I have seen everything from the changes are brilliant to this ruins everything.

You know. Your standard Internet reactions.

I don’t want to get too much into spoilers but if you pull back there are still a good deal of parallels between the original TV series and what is going on 3.33. The outside trappings have changed radically but many of the key emotional beats are still there. But even then there are one or two key shifts in decisions that make some very important changes. In many ways I see Shinji entering the classic Hero’s Journey cycle. This movie spends the bulk of its time in the Dark Night of the Soul and only starts to change with the final sacrifice at the end of the movie. Which means that if this continues Shinji has become a standard Campbellian hero as opposed to a sad sack antihero. But only if he overcomes what happened in this movie.

If that is a good thing or not is going to be the crux of a lot of people’s opinion of the this reboot as a whole. Even if they realize it or not.

So overall I still don’t have a fully solidified opinion of this movie. It is a connecting bridge. The final movie really shoulders a good deal of pressure to either pull this all together or throw everything away. But the final movie always had that burden. I just don’t think this movie helped remove any of that load. And I think it earned the series a black mark with a lot of the fandom.

I’m still curious to see the last movie. I’m just going in with no expectations. I’m not going in knowing that the series has been ruined. I not going in knowing the ending can’t be anything other than brilliant. And that is probably for the best.

 I watched the Uncharted 3 “movie” which was a fantastic cap to the series, a very satisfying end.

I loved learning Nathan and Sully’s backstory and the entire movie really built on that father/son relationship with an ending that almost made me teary. I was also happy to see a wonderful resolution to Nathan and Elena’s relationship, it felt really mature which surprised me.

Of course the entire thing looked amazing, I am now dying to get an art book/concept art book something for this game.

Seriously, Nathan, Sully, and Elena are my peeps and I love them forever.

So after creating a hole which began to unleash Oblivion on the Elven capital, we ended up making our way back to The Dead Lands with the Elven Queen no less! And we went even deeper into the lands of the deceased than we thought possible.

Kudos to Hisui’s description of this city in The Dead Lands that resides where the Elven capital is in the natural world. It was in the shape of a 9-point star with huge walls and gates. The important city guards wore these amazing and unique masks. I hope to spend some time here in the next session and I’ll report back all of its awesomeness.

Anyway, back to the task at hand: fixing this stupid hole and the Dread Lord’s minions.

This was the first big battle of the campaign, even though we didn’t fight the Dread Lord proper (he was not yet strong enough to travel where we were), it was definitely a mid-boss task. We were often on the brink of actually being snuffed out, I hadn’t really feared we would lose before this point. There was a lot more strategy on our end to figure out how to survive until the next round. Also we had an NPC that was popping up when desperate times called for him to block a blow or two.

Our opponents were two wyverns (not invisible), two shelled brutes with six arms (!), and a small imp which burst out of my cloak (don’t ask).

Everyone had some pretty stellar moments over the course of the fight. My favorite was a move by our Paladin who wrapped his chain around a wyverns neck and then jumped on its back!

I actually hit 0 life pretty early on. ACK! Did I mention if you die here it could be tricky pickings with your soul and all? Luckily, before that I was able to kill the imp but I’m not sturdy against those bigger guys. But it wasn’t just me, nearly the whole party took a beating  which is of course the moment you thank the stars for your cleric. It was a race to the finish as we decided to forgo healing at one point in an effort to finish the battle before another round of attacks.

Things worked out of course! The Queen and Princess were able to close the hole to Oblivion as we took out our foes. Bigger problems lie ahead but we’ve gotten ourselves a little respite for the next session I hope.

For information about my character and other party members, check out Part 3 of my Letters from Atman posts. For more information about our adventures and the world of Atman, follow Hisui’s posts recounting the sessions.

Zettai Karen Children (絶対可憐チルドレン) by Takashi Shiina

We can blame this all on Ed Chavez as we can with so many other things. As a fan of Shonen Sunday I distinctly remember Ed recommending this title to me. That led me down the road I walk today. But in the end I have no regrets. This was the only path. My whole post is recommending Zettai Karen Children.

In an alternate history set in the not too distant future, next Sunday AD, psychic powers are a rare but not unheard of phenomenon. And while some people use their power for selfish gain, crime, and destruction the forces at B.A.B.E.L. use their gifts to defend their fellow-man and help promote the idea that psychics can be a force for good. Three of the most power psychics in the world are the extremely bratty and rebellious girls known as The Children. Can their new guardian Koichi Minamoto train them to their full potential while preventing them from taking over the world?

As I have stated before when I went on my crazy twenty-two volume readings spree there are some more problematic parts of the series in the beginning. Zettai Karen Children does have a bit of a lolicon angle in the first phase and the plot is mostly goofy with occasional hints of having a more serious backbone. But as the series goes on it really changes into a different series. The core mechanics are always the same but as The Children mature so does the plot.

In many ways what started off as a cooky series about misbehaving little girls has turned into the Shonen Sunday’s version of the X-Men. The manga slowly introduces a clairvoyant prognostication of a terrible future where Kaoru is the leader of a bloody war between normal humans and espers in which Minamoto has to kill her to prevent even more devastation. This leads to several groups slowly fomenting this conflict on both sides of the issue. At the first major villains, P.A.N.D.R.A.,  go from generic bad guys of the week to nuanced anti-heroes with their own flawed but understandably agenda. Kyosuke Hyobu and Magneto alone have a considerable amount of parallels. Kyosuke even got spun off into his own anime as the anti-hero. The series even has some slightly serious looks at Japanese Imperialism during WWII and the standard examination of prejudice and discrimination that comes up whenever people with mutant powers are involved.

That is not to say that Zettai Karen Children totally drops in goofy sense of humor. Its large cast usually is built around everyone have a comedic core. But it takes those colorful and uses them to grow the plot into something more complex. This is hardly a seinen masterpiece of breaking genius but it does become a more nuanced work that it first might appear to be.

If your interested in starting the series but are worried the excesses of the manga’s first books you can cut your teeth on the much tamer anime which is also legally available to purchase. It is a nice way to know if you are going to like the series as a whole of not.

One last random note. One of the strangest parts of the whole series is almost all the core cast of characters is named after characters from the book, The Tale of Genji. While the character they are named after is often a distinct clue to their personality (and sometimes romantic relationships) the The Tale of Genji itself does not play a big influence of the plot. Just an interesting bit of trivia.

• Learn more!
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In this new digital world, if your are not licensing things almost immediately, you’re licensing them too late. That is the currently reality. I am wondering how quickly this will happen with manga that still has breathing room.

The Line-Up is a monthly rundown of newly licensed in the U.S., newly streaming in the U.S., and newly announced anime and manga projects.

Newly Licensed in the U.S.

• Alice in the Country of Hearts: The Mad Hatter’s Late Night Tea Party – Seven Seas
  Yeah, I’m probably gonna check this out.
• Alice Love Fables: Toy Box – Seven Seas
• Bloody Cross – Yen Press
• Crater, The – Kansai Club Publishing
• Devil Survivor 2: The Animation – Sentai Filmworks
• The Flowers of Evil -Sentai Filmworks
• The Garden of Words – Sentai Filmworks
  That was quick. I have rarely seen things licensed BEFORE they are released in theaters.
• Gold Pollen and Other Stories – PictureBox
• HENNEKO – The Hentai Prince and the Stony Cat – Sentai Filmworks
• Hyakka Ryoran Samurai Girls S2 – Sentai Filmworks
• Majestic Prince – Sentai Filmworks
• My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU – Sentai Filmworks
• New Dominion Tank Police – Sentai Filmworks
• Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams – Media Blasters
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica the Movie Part 1: Beginnings – Aniplex
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica the Movie Part 2: Eternal – Aniplex
• Photo Kano – Sentai Filmworks
• Senran Kagura: Skirting Shadows – Seven Seas
• The Severing Crime Edge – Sentai Filmworks
• Shining Hearts: Shiawase no Pan – Sentai Filmworks
  
• Uta no Prince-sama Maji Love 1000% – Sentai Filmworks
   Gimmegimmegimme!!!
• Uta no Prince-sama Maji Love 2000% – Sentai Filmworks
• World Map Room – PictureBox
• Yuyushiki – Sentai Filmworks

Newly Streaming in the U.S.

• Crunchyroll added Hayate the Combat Butler Cuties, Nyarko-san: Another Crawling Chaos W, Devil Survivor 2, Uta no Prince-sama – Maji Love 2000%, Majestic Prince, The Flowers of Evil, The Severing Crime Edge, Hyakka Ryoran Samurai Bride, Namiuchigiwa no Muromi-san, Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet, Zettai Boei Leviathan, Yuyushiki, Arata: The Legend, My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU, Photo Kano, Attack on Titan, HENNEKO – The Hentai Prince and the Stony Cat
  
• Funimation added Karneval, The Devil Is a Part Timer, Date A Live, RDG Red Data Girl, A Certain Scientific Railgun S, Attack on Titan
  
• YEN Press added Highschool of the Dead (simul-release with Japan)
• Weekly Shonen Jump USA added Mario

New Anime/Manga Projects in Japan

• Senyu Getting a Second Season
• Unaired Anime Bundled with Blood Lad Manga
• Date A Live Getting Spin-off Manga
• CAPCOM Title Gaist Crusher Becoming Anime
• Anime Green-lit for Comedy Manga Tonari no Seki-kun
• Kyoto Animation Working on Anime Adaption of Kyokai no Kanata
• More TV Anime Announced for Yozakura Quartet
• New Gatchaman Anime Revealed
  This looks like a really STRANGE Gatchaman spin-off.
• Cutey Honey VS. Devilman Lady Manga Starting in Summer
• Kingdom 1-shot Running in Weekly Shonen Jump
• Anime of Tonari no Seki-kun Bundled with Manga
• More Infinite Stratos Anime in the Works
• Aki Sora Creator Working on New Manga
• Noitamina Block to Running Original Work this Fall
• Attack on Titan OVA Bundled with Manga
  It will be all about potatoes.
• Spin-off Manga Launching for Sword Art Online
• Minami-ke Manga to Bundle Anime
• Manga-ka of Bloody Monday Starting New Series
• More Anime Announced for White Album
• Lucky Star Spin-off Anime to be Bundled with Manga
• Bonus Anime Included on Disks of Nyarko-san: Another Crawling Chaos W
• High School Debut Gets 1-shot Sequel
• Yoko Kanno CD Includes Anime
• 1-shot from Kimi ni Todoke and High School Debut Creators Announced
• Cross-over Fairy Tail and Rave Master Manga Getting Anime
• Love*Com Creator Starts Josei Series
  Why must we English-speakers be deprived of her series?
• New Rose of Versailles 1-shot Revealed
  WHAT!? SERIOUSLY!?
• Infinite Stratos Novels Getting More Manga
• Gen Urobuchi Working on Project for Children
  I’m hoping it is super fluffy and happy just to throw everyone off their game.
• Anime of Gingitsune Green-lit
• Short of Tezuka’s Majin Garon Made for Museum
• Baki the Grappler Getting New Spin-off Manga
• Spin-off Manga of Blue Exorcist Starting
• Lupin the Third VS. Detective Conan Movie Premiering in Winter
  I hope Lupin steals a famous landmark like he is Carmen Sandiego.
• New Series Started from Nosatsu Junkie Manga-ka
  This one is about musicians, I’m sure there will be cross-dressing, need.
• Ghost Story Collection from Novelist Fuyumi Ono Getting Manga
• Double Hard Series Getting CG Anime
• Anime Green-lit for Samurai Manga Gifu Dodo!! Naoe Kanetsugu -Maeda Keiji Sake Gatari-
• Outbreak Company Light Novels Announce Anime
  That premise fills me with a small amount of dread.
  
• Anime Revealed for Transformers Go! Toy Line
  Considering that Transformers Go! looks so Gundam-like this is hardly a surprise.
• Kitakubu Katsudo Kiroku Anime Announced
• New Bamboo Blade Manga Starting
• New Manga Series Mobile Suit Gundam: Far East Japan Revealed
  The One Year War will never end.
• KyoAni Swimming Anime Promo Becoming Full Series
  Much like the One Year War this conflict will probably never end as well.
• Venus in Love Creator Launching New Manga
• Manga-ka of A-Channel Starting New Series
• Girls & Panzer Getting Another Spin-off Manga, Anime Movie, OVA, and Fan-Disk
• Comedy Manga Love Karma Launching
• Koe de Oshigoto! Manga-ka Starting New Series
• Manga-ka of Godchild Working on Manga “Mini-series”
• Original Anime About Sabae City High School Boys in Production
• Sequel Manga to Kamen Teacher Launched
• New Manga Series about Jazz Starting
• Patlabor Creator Launched New Manga
• Manga-ka of Princess Jellyfish Starting New Title

Let’s not get into a whole discussion about the rest of Sword Art Online, alright? I liked a lot of the episodes in the first part of the story. This murder in a safe zone case of course stuck out. And thanks to a comment on the last installment of this article series, I realized I had neglected this mystery for No Case Too Small.

Since Sword Art Online takes place inside an MMO there are certain structures and rules set-up by the game that can’t be broken by just simply wanting to do so. One of those is safe zones which prevent “player-killing.” So when Asuna and Kirito stumble upon what appears to be a murder in progress, everyone is understandable alarmed.

Asuna and Kirito are on the case after talking with a witness and former guildmate of the victim. The guild had broken up after the death of one of their members, Griselda, and suspicions about the rare tem she was going to sell before her death. Perhaps the victim’s husband is taking revenge? A ghost perhaps?

Then a second murder happens right before their eyes.

It actually ends up being an elaborate plot to draw out the thief of the ring and Griselda’s killer in which they faked their deaths using teleport stones and diminishing durability of their equipment. I actually really liked that Kirito figures this out with the classic epiphany moment when he drops a sandwich bringing the food’s durability to zero thus causing it to disappear.

The greater mystery is then who stole the ring and killed Griselda. The ghostly antics of the guild members worked their magic getting one of the guild to admit their part in the theft but it ends up bringing them face-to-face with a group of murders known as Laughing Coffin.

It is Kirito who provides the answers on who killed Griselda or rather who hired the Laughing Coffin to. Kirito realized that married couples share game storage so the ring couldn’t have been stolen, it had to be a ruse. But only Grimrock, Griselda’s husband, could answer the why.

It wasn’t the rare ring or the money. But rather that Griselda also happened to be Grimrock’s real life wife, not just in SAO. According to him she changed for the worse because she was no longer submissive and was more of a leader in SAO than she ever had been in the real world. At least Asuna puts him in his place in true melodramatic fashion: “You never loved her, you only wanted to possess her.”

A pretty good mystery with a couple of nice twists. A murders guild was a really cool concept that was added to SAO, too.

The end still left a question of what exactly the guild decided to do with Grimrock…

Drink #040: Ladies Night
Women of UC Gundam

There is a lot for fans of the Universal Century to celebrate this month: the 34th anniversary of the original Gundam series, the re-release of the first book of Gundam: The Origin in English, and the release of the 6th episode of Gundam Unicorn. In that spirit, we has decided to look at the women in the original Gundam universe. That means the good, the bad, and the awesome when it comes to the female characters of Gundam. Everyone from Emma Sheen to Nina Purpleton to Shakti Kareen. We left the various women of the AU Gundam lines for another day.

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And now your helpful bartenders at The Speakeasy present your drink:

Ladies Night

Narutaki’s picks:

• Free Comic Book Day is May 4th
  And this video shows you all the free offerings. I’m certainly interested in the Mouse Guard book!
• Keep Track of Game of Thrones Characters with This
  :O
• If You’re Planning on Coming to NYCC, Get Your Ticket Now
  Wow, 4-day passes are already sold out! I have a feeling this year is gonna by super crazy. I’m glad I got my ticket right at the beginning.
• Kairos: An Animated Trailer
  These are the kinds of projects that make you say, “this is why I love 2D animation!” Now I wish I could read the French comic this is for.

Hisui’s picks:

• Phase 1: Marvel Revengeance
  Chaos Theater look at all the Phase One Marvel movies that lead up to the Avengers movie. They also examine some plans for Phase Two and Three. I am curious to see what this Guardians of the Galaxy movie is going to be like. But they start the episode dissecting the sacred cow of the Death of LucasArts.
• I Always Thought Suzie Q was a Fairly Well Known Song
  Time for Fast Karate to look at some more of the fantastic adventures of Joseph Joestar. Look. Sometimes people miss a giant tentacled brain with mind control powers on their back. It is like not noticing you have toilet paper on your shoe.
• When Music is Criminal Than Only Criminals Can Listen to Pop
  Carl of Ogiue Maniax teams up with Andrew to discuss the surprisingly charming AKB0048. Shoji Kawamori robot action and the idol group AKB48 is certainly and odd combination but it leads to a unique mix of bubblegum pop and rebellion.
• Guile Has Some Competition
  It is not that surprising that the Internet likes Attack on Titan. But what is surprising in all the video that have been using the opening song for almost everything and anything.
• Still Wish it Was Macross
  Since I mentioned it before it started I figured I would like to the Robotech RPG Tactics Kickstarter. It made its goal in a matter of hours so you only have to contribute if you want some exclusive figures.
• Sailor Moon Joined the Hell’s Angels
  According to Ed Chavez they are clearly not Bosozoku enough for his tastes.

 The seven deadly sins Game of Thrones.

This Saturday post is the weekly Type-Moon news in addition to the regular APB post on Sunday. If you have any suggestions for what to highlight on the Type-Moon Weekly News Roundup drop me a line via email or Twitter.

• Blood Must be Shed to Earn Gilgamesh
  As we all know how blonde guys are a very good incentive to get people to do things. Even give blood. Japan was successful enough by offering Saber posters they decided to try again this time with Gilgamesh. Also just in case you have not see the love he gets in Fate/Extra CCC here are his alternative costumes.
• Land of the Golden Hero
  So is seems Fate/Extra CCC has already shipped twice as many units as the original. I guess it is almost certain we will get some new Fate/Extra game or at least some other Type-Moon RPGs from Marvelous AQL.
• All the Swag!
  A nice little collection of Fate/Extra CCC merchandise. Now Gilgamesh can charge you iPhone.
• For the Ladies
  Enter the secret garden of the Archer.
• Just in Time For my Birthday
  I would much rather have the Tsukihime Remake for my birthday but I guess this will have to do. But there is more production staff information for Fate/Kaleid Liner Prisma Illya.
• Is this a Slice of Life School Drama or a Magical Girl Show?
  The latest Fate/Kaleid Liner Prisma Illya promo video really plays up the school aspect more than anything else.

I finished the second volume of Vertical’s beautiful release of Message to Adolf. I didn’t expect it to span well past the years of World War II.

Most of this volume involves characters caught up in a tense back and forth of who will end up with the information on Hitler’s birth and more importantly how will it become public knowledge.

Adolf Kaufman’s descent into full Aryan-superiority is, as one might imagine, unsettling and surprisingly heartbreaking at times. I guess for a good portion of the story I was expecting him to maintain his heart despite the horrible things he did. But he only further breaks down as he makes his way to Japan as an adult reuniting with his remarried mother and childhood friend Adolf. It really feels like true madness as Adolf tries to reclaim the documents because Adolf is not full-Aryan, neither is Hitler, and neither is the girl Adolf is in love with!

I really enjoy stories where minor characters pop-up again and again in important capacities that you weren’t expecting. It makes it feel cohesive and Message to Adolf has that.

And the ending? Fatefully tragic.

The A Certain Magical Index series is one of those strange series were people make a big deal about how much they can’t stand the series but continually watch it season after season. To a lesser degree this also happens with the spin off A Certain Scientific Railgun series (it might be the yuri undercurrent that cause it to be slightly better received) . But as a legitimate fan of the series who genuinely enjoys it I was looking forward to the first two episodes of A Certain Scientific Railgun S.

I did go into this arc with a certain expectation. I had heard that this was being called A Certain Scientific Railgun S with the S being a reference to the Sister Noise arc. Apparently it is an arc that tells the original Sisters Arc from A Certain Magical Index from Misaka Mikoto’s perspective. While that seemed like an interesting idea I was a little worried it might feel a bit recycled. But so far it mostly seems like all new material. We are getting a much better idea of how Misaka got involved with the whole Level 6 Shift experiment and we have new characters like Nunotaba Shinobu who never appeared in the original story.  So far it does not just seem to be the Accelerator fight from a different point of view.

The new series begins with a one off story that proves that Edasaki Banri and Haruue Erii have not disappeared off the face of the earth once their arc has ended (to the point where like Saten Ruiko they have started to make cameo appearances in the main Index series). It is mostly an episode to bridge the last arc of Railgun with the new series and show that life goes on for everyone. The big highlight of the first episode is action scene at the end with a teleporting Kuroko and a hotblooded Railgun vs. a helicopter. It is a nice little set piece that reminds you that Railgun is mostly about psychic powers even though it has cute girls doing cute things moments.

The second story starts setting up the sisters arc in quite a unexpected way. It seems that people have been finding cash cards all over Academy City. After a bit of treasure hunting Misaka find the source of the cards and witnesses a rather theatrical fight. But this seemingly unrelated story turn to be about the Level 6 Shift experiment in the last few seconds.

I am interested to see how this all blends together. The problem with stories like this is that gaiden tales have to walk a find line between being interesting and making us wonder why we never knew about any of this in the first place. It is clear from the opening that the rest of the Railgun gang, some characters from ITEM, and Shokuhou Misaki are clearly involved in the story. While there was always a little more hinted at going on with Misaka during the Sister Arc this seems like more than some minor scenes. Thankfully they are not just showing us the same story with some minor additions but it could lead to some odd  plot holes if they are not careful.

Then again “everyone” hates trash like A Certain Magical Index so who really cares outside of the Japanese audience? I mean other than me who looks forward to the next episode.

The Ongoing Investigations are little peeks into what we are watching and reading outside of our main posts on the blog. We each pick three things that we were interested in a week and talk a bit about them. There is often not much rhyme or reason to what we pick. They are just the most interesting things we saw since the last Ongoing Investigation.

I should really learn to pace myself with Blade of the Immortal since there is so much time between installments. But no, the moment volume 26 showed up at my door I tore through it.

This book is primarily the (presumed) final confrontation between Manji and Shira and no one could say they haven’t been looking forward to this. I say presumed since it is Shira but the end of the battle is brutal and final if you ask me.

Also Rin lives through the ordeal of being in a lake during a blizzard and being underwater for goodness knows how many minutes because this is fiction.

Reading the Astro Boy volume 16, that I received from Ed Sizemore, makes me realize Osamu Tezuka existed in a very interesting place as an artist. He existed in a place in history where he simultaneously stood on the shoulders of giants yet had a fairly unexplored medium to play with.  There was a plethora of artistic mediums for him to borrow from including the earliest forms of manga but nothing so defined that he could not try almost anything to see what worked and what did not.

In that respect Astro Boy really does seem like Tezuka taking from a wide variety of influences, mixing those ideas all together in a bowl, and then throwing them at the page to see what sticks. So you start with a comedic 4th wall breaking story that somehow is the prolog to a Scooby-Doo style story with an eco-terrorist. The rest of the stories are distinctly more on theme for the whole story. You have a fight with super intelligent lizards, Romeo and Juliet with robots, and a story with killer balloons. You can say many things about Astro Boy but you can’t claim it just uses one plot ad infinitum.

I noticed one thing in this book. Astroboy gets his bottom handed to him constantly in this book. In 3 of the 4 stories Astro spends a good deal of time totally out of the action when he is majorly damaged. Sometimes it makes perfect sense like when he gets shot with his chest panel open but other times when he gets stuck in a building it mostly seems to be that way to artificially make things tense. I’m not saying that Astroboy has to be invincible but it seems like he seems like a paper tiger in this book. There has to be a good middle ground between Superman and Mr. Glass.

I don’t think I would ever see Astro Boy as my favorite manga like Ed does. It feels very uneven to me. But it feels uneven in the way that an anthology collection does. The book does not expect most people to love every story. Instead it expects to throw several different stories at you and hopes that your overall takeaway from the book is a positive one. In that respect I feel it is a good series to sort of sample as a early smorgasbord of what Tezuka was trying to achieve.  There is a distinct value in the stories beyond their curiosity in experimentation but admiring rough nature of the manga distinctly helps in an enjoyment of the series.

I watched the Uncharted 2 “movie” and it was another wild romp. They really work as movies!

As far as action and treasure goes I liked this one better than the first.

As far as characters go? Not so much. First, Sully is not in it enough. Second, Chloe is such a transparent grab at more sex because for whatever reason they think they needed it. Third, Nathan thinking with his pants instead of his head for half the game is not so much fun. At least Elena appears later and is mostly awesome but would have liked to see her go all the way to the end with Nathan instead of getting injured.

So I’d like to have the team aspect of the first combined with the story of the second. Looking forward to the third as I know it has a lot to do with Nathan and Sully’s past and partnership.

Little Witch Academia was one of the 4 series released as part of this years Young Animator Training Project. The Young Animator Training Project is an attempt to get new blood into the anime directing pool by helping promote young directors and letting them work on OVAs with government sponsorship. For some reason more than most of the earlier contributions  Little Witch Academia has been getting a lot of attention. In fact it got enough attention that it started streaming on YouTube and Crunchyroll.

Little Witch Academia (which is not about a short female wizard trying to get tenure at Hogwarts) starts with Akko Kagari seeing the stage show of a witch named Shiny Chariot. We then jump forward to Akko being a put upon student witch who is teased for liking Shiny Chariot because she was not a “real” witch. But when her rival at the school unleashes a terrible monster during a dungeon crawling lesson it seems that no spell can stop it. Can Akko and her classmates put down this terrible threat?

This was a very fun little story that takes the well worn story of misfits at a magic school and but adds a nice little bounce to the story to make it feel fun. Akko distinctly has feeling of a shonen hero that just happens to be a girl and her two friends play off her well. The world itself is very colorful while having a nice mixture of western fantasy and anime fantasy art.

I did think the idea that people look down on Shiny Chariot because she was more of a stage magician than a proper spell caster is an interesting wrinkle in the formula. It reminds me of people who hate physicists like Michio Kaku and Stephen Hawking. They are seen more as media whores and tools then real practitioners of the art. But like people looking down on Neil deGrasse Tyson we learn that you just have ignore the haters.

I’m glad to see this short is getting a good deal of buzz not only for this project but the Young Animator Training Project in general. I hope to see the further works of everyone involved in this.

Did you see Drúcht on your way here?

Don’t worry. That battleax is currently cleaning up some big mess in the Deathbed Princess’ old room.

For Dunmharu sake don’t call the poor princess that after she was murdered. It was bad enough people called her that when she was alive but now it just seems like your dancing on her grave.

Fine Fine. Whatever. She is in Princess-Nerida-Whose-Blessed-Breasts-Left-This-Cruel-Atman-Too-Soon’s room.

Imagine if the good King heard you say that. You would make him more heartbroken than he already is. You know, before he had you executed. And rightfully so. Or worse yet if Drúcht heard you. You would pray devils whisked you off to the cold moon. It would be a kinder fate.

Wow. When did you become the royal herald for the late Princess? 

She was always a very kind woman. When Aishling’s family were being harassed by those brigands she stepped into and but a stop to that. I also remember her teaching Daibheid the basics of sorcery when he showed some aptitude. I even remember her being kind to the Elementals and the Mongrels. How many nobles can you say that about?

A farmer might care for his animals, and he might even love them, but he does not consider them people when push comes to shove. Also I think she was just nice to you because you have a cute face.

That’s very rude especially considering how many times she covered up little indiscretions for your brother. And no one is covering up things for your brother because of his stunning good looks.

I’m not arguing with you about being a suck up to the royals past this point. I came here to discuss more interesting things. Like why Drúcht is so busy in the first place. Now I heard of of your fellow maids that the Queen went on a rampage after getting drunk when she was forced back here to Delnadamph Castle after Gabha Geal sent her away and refused to speak to anyone but the King. Everyone knows she is using the King’s depression to usurp the throne. She was in a rage that someone finally put her in her place.

I think you just dislike the Queen because you just dislike powerful women. Anyway what I heard was that the Queen fond some old memento of her daughter and that is why she smashed up the room. That sounds more like a romantic thing for her to do.

Not sure how that is romantic but at least sounds plausible. Especially with an evil old bat like her. Now some people are going around telling crazy tales. I heard one of the footmen say she chased a demon into the room with a wand and a battleaxe. He said he hard an epic battle with incantations and terrible voices. 

I like the Queen but I can’t see her being a demon slayer. Now Loinnir told me she thinks it was the queen trying to perform a séance to learn who killed her daughter. Loinnir’s uncle is am inquisitor for the church in Caisain so she knows about those things. When she peeked into the room she said it looked like what happens when you call a shade into the world. 

Why that is a very interesting bit of speculation on your part. Your both little detectives in your own right.

Ack! Ms. Drúcht! I did not see you there.

That was the point. Now I am sure you too are not on break. Snasú I want you to go downstairs and round-up the free valets and go to the Princess’ room. But don’t touch anything. I mean anything. I will be up there shortly to supervise the cleanup. Also Ultana I want you to go to the alchemist and have him make two batches of this formula. When he is done I want you to bring those vials to me immediately. Now go quickly and I will forget I found you both slacking in the stairwell like this.

Yes ma’am.

Yes ma’am.

 As the name implies, Udon West, specializes in thick, slightly chewy Japanese wheat noodles. Much like ramen, you can get udon with various broths and add-ins, spicy to mild. One of the things I love best about Udon West is their penchant for adding fried things into the soup. You must get some of their delicious tempura goodness in your udon, you simply must.

At Udon West the prices are low and the service is quick. I really enjoy the atmosphere at the St. Mark’s restaurant; it feels intimate, local, special. You can see them cook up a storm mere feet in front of you from the long bar that hugs the kitchen. There are a couple of small tables in the back as well but the place is quite small. You can easily be out of luck for getting a seat during busy periods.

Also, you need to keep your eye out when looking for the entrance. St. Mark’s is busy and bright with a lot of nooks, Udon West is down a couple of steps and set back a little from the sidewalk. It is an easy place to miss among the bustle.

On April 7, 1979 a show debuted on the Nagoya Broadcasting Network that would that would change the mecha genre forever. 34 years later Mobile Suit Gundam would inspire a dozen TV shows, several movies and miniseries, dozens of novels and comics, and a plethora of toys and video games. So the question asked as often as there are stars in the sky is, “I am new to this whole Gundam thing so where should I start.”  Gundam fandom being hardly known for its congenial nature or unified voice argues about this question constantly.

As a person who has done several panels and posts about how to recommended series to other people I know there is no one right answer. There is no magic bullet that works on everyone. One person might be more interested in the characters or themes of one iteration while another might be turned away by the animation or robot design of another. There are distinctly some shows that have a much higher chance of success but no guarantees.  A martial arts fan that might have been bored out of his skull if his first exposure to Gundam was through Zeta might have a very different expedience if they watch G Gundam. I’m sure there is even someone who optimal first series would be Gundam oo83. I just never wish to meet this monster.

In the post we will examine the recently released Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin by whose first volume was  just released by Vertical. Who will enjoy this title and more importantly who can you show this as their first encounter with Gundam?

I’d be surprised if any anime or manga fan wasn’t at least mildly curious about the juggernaut franchise known as Gundam. But there are a ton of interactions, the fans are rabid, and no one seems to agree where the best place to start is. Plus, if you aren’t into robots you may be put off further.

But none of that matters, truly. Gundam the Origin is where it’s at!

In the year of 0079 of the Universal Century the colonies in space declare their independence from the Earth resulting in a war the kills half the population of both sides. The Earth Federation has developed a new weapon called the RX-78-2 Gundam that can change the course of the war. But when a recon team ends up attacking the base were the Gundam is stored a young man named Amuro Ray ends up as a pilot of this experimental suit. He also meets his live long rival Char Aznable who has his own agenda outside of the conflict.

In both the TV series and this manga, the story beats are pretty much the same. But in June of 2001 Yoshikazu Yasuhiko the original character designer for the TV series went back and retold the classic story with a twist. Much like Space Battleship Yamato 2199 the Origin uses the 20/20 hindsight of being made years after the original to smooth over certain plot holes and retcons while focusing on plot elements that were under explored in the original. In many ways both series are able to build on the classic story while adding new elements for new and established fans.

The character story is central to the original Gundam story. There is a robot on the cover but Mr. Yasuhiko knows where the heart of the story lies.

A young man who is thrust into the role of hero in a war he doesn’t fully understand. A man seeking slow revenge on those who twisted the ideals of his father. They nurse an intense rivalry fighting on different sides of the war despite having a common enemy.

An even larger story, a central theme in Gundam in the cost of war on those in and out of the military, whether you’re on the “right” or “wrong” side. In the first volume, you have both low-level personnel and civilians being dealt an intense hand making them responsible for the war’s greatest weapon. There is fear, there is uncertainty, there is posturing, there is courage, but characters can swing between these things which feels authentic.

And as a bonus, the women in the series already feel more solid and strong as characters in the first volume than in the TV series or movies. One hopes that will only continue as the series revs up.

Gundam: The Origin is not an overly technical story (actually most of Gundam anime isn’t either, just saying) but we are dealing with proto-type mobile suits and various other military machinery. There isn’t a lot of jargon to be had, which I am forever grateful, with the exception of the always mysterious “Minovsky Particles.” I honestly, never remember what the heck they are and the term just gets thrown around without explanation. In fact, it isn’t explained in the TV series or movies either if I recall. Hisui informed me that details are really only given in supplemental material so if you are curious go read the Wikipedia otherwise don’t worry, just roll with it!

The one group more than any other that would be perfect for Gundam: The Origin is people who mainly read manga. I have met several people whose main form of experiencing Japanese entertainment is only through manga. The problem is most of the Gundam manga is simply horrible. Try introducing someone to Gundam with say the Wing manga and see how quickly they run away. If you made bets against the average Gundam manga you more often than not would walk away a winner. But Gundam: The Origin finally introduces a Gundam manga you can give to another person with little reservation.

Firstly it retells the original Gundam story so there is no need to have any previous knowledge to jump into this story. I love Mobile Suit Gundam École du Ciel but it often assumes you are familiar with the original Gundam universe. It gives little bits on dialog to help explain certain events and terms but they work better as refreshers for someone who is already steeped in the universe as opposed to tools to new fans to understand the story.

But on the other hand the Origin still gives a reader a sense of why people love Gundam. The first few pages loving depict the Zaku’s trying to infiltrate the colony in almost fetishistic detail. It is not the full on mecha porn of Char’s Counterattack but it is fairly detailed. But after the initial robot fan service we are introduced to the characters that are the meat of the story. Quickly Amuro and his friends lives go from normal to tragic in a matter of seconds. The refugees from the colony quickly have to become soldiers despite not having any formal training while butting heads with the officials they encounter who are just as often as troublesome as the enemy. At the same time Char is hunting the survivors while engaged in his own complex political battle on the side.

This is the root of all the tropes and themes of Gundam but with a loving layer of refinement that cleans up a lot of the rough edges of the original. Weird gaps of logic, underdeveloped characters, and rushed plot developments can all be corrected now that the story is being rewritten. But at the same time the drama, characters, and spirit that made the original series so enduring have been kept mostly intact or improved upon. It many ways this is the clearest vision of the original story and a great place to start as well as revisit.

Mr. Yasuhiko’s artwork blends a 70s aesthetic with a slight modern edge. These characters are iconic so I wouldn’t want to see a crazy update, but there is a slickness to the art that gives it new life.

Bibliophiles should rejoice at this release. Not only is Gundam the Origin being brought out in a beautiful paper over board hardcover, it includes all of the color artwork of which there is a lot. And on top of that the color and grayscale pages are printer on the same premium white stock. Seriously, this book is just a joy to hold and flip through. One final gush, the cover design is super fab!

Is this the magic bullet that will make everyone understand the Gundam universe? As I stated before there is no such thing. Some people will never grok Gundam and others will only like very select portions. That is just the way tastes work. But if you randomly had to guess this is not a bad choice to throw out. It is one of those titles that casts a broad net and can catch more fish theyn most. If you need an animated introduction the Gundam movie trilogy works well but when it comes to manga there is no better place to start. Plus this helps explain the most common Gundam references for anyone who just wanted to understand Gundam from a purely academic standpoint as well.

The only hesitation I have about recommending this series is that so far Ed Chavez from Vertical has stated that they have no plans currently to expand the print run of this manga. Right now the only release are the fancy but value packed limited edition version of the series. If it is successful enough they might go back and release a standard edition without all the bells and whistles of a solid hard cover, supplementary artwork, essays, and color pages.

Therefore if you are interested in the Gundam universe, the original Gundam series, or just want to revisit the start of it all this the one to get. You should just do so while you still can.

I don’t know how many times I need to reiterate that you don’t need to like robots to like Gundam. I could never love this story without the phenomenal characters. Mr. Yasuhiko’s updated version does a wonderful job of keeping the human story at the forefront.

Buy this you loser before it goes out of print and you have to buy random volumes from the UK.

Hisui’s picks:

• What do Eminem, Hulk Hogan, and Twiggy All Have in Common?
  A nice chart of some of the One Piece characters and the real life people their designs are based on.  
  
• Federally Mandated Nerd Blog Link
  For the thee people who missed the full Patton Oswalt Star Wars: Episode VII filibuster on Parks and Recreation.
• Not Nearly Enough Conversation About Sayla Mass
  Patz and Ed try to discuss Gundam: The Origin properly but sadly they miss the most important part. But their flawed discussion focuses on bringing the manga to an English-speaking audience a second time.
• The Road Map to Adventure!
  A nice collection of fantasy maps with everything from Oz to Azeroth on the list.
• Because I Like Cheesy Fantasy
  Everyone loves Game of Thrones because it is fantasy done smart but sometimes you need campy sword and sorcery adventures. Here are some decent prospects.

Narutaki’s picks:

• Darth Vader is Lost in Japan Still
  These Tokyo Disneyland shorts are a hoot. I think I linked to the first one when it came out, now there are two more.
  
• 80 Hour Work Weeks Are Killing Developer Talent
  A good article about the loop that occurs when one employee or company works crazy hours. That five year average statistic of how long people stay in the game industry was particularly sobering.
• A Week Where They Announce All The Games Ever
  This week was kind of crazy as far as game announcements go for me. I don’t play a ton of games so there is usually only one or two a year that catch me. Just this week four were revealed! It started with the remake of Castle of Illusion starring Mickey Mouse, then revved up with a new Yoshi’s Island game, really got good with Earthbound finally getting rerelease stateside, and topped off with a new Zelda game set in the world of A Link to the Past! And they even had a preview of the Zelda game which looks great!

What else could go here? I almost went with one of the more. . . interesting. . . For the Barrel pictures but I will save those for another day.

This Saturday post is the weekly Type-Moon news in addition to the regular APB post on Sunday. If you have any suggestions for what to highlight on the Type-Moon Weekly News Roundup drop me a line via email or Twitter.

• When do We Get Art of the the Most Powerful Ice Pop Vendor?
  There is some more character designs for the upcoming Fate/Kaleid Liner Prisma Illya anime.
• The Prism the Delays Time
  The anime is coming soon but the Fate/Kaleid Liner Prisma Illya figure is not going to arrive on time.
• Another Taste of Dubbing that Does Not Involve Stepping
  Another look at the upcoming Fate/Zero dub on Neon Alley.
• Signing Just Might Let you Participate in the Next Holy Grail War on the Moon
  Look. I know most Internet petitions are not worth the electrons they are written on but most of them don’t hurt anything as well. So if your interested in the Fate/Extra CCC you might as well sign.
• Just Wonderful
  There is nothing more that can be said.

I did not realize until recently that Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn episode 6 came out. The bloom has really fallen of that rose. When the first few volumes of Gundam Unicorn came out everyone was talking about it for a few days leading up to its release. It was an event. Now I see more talk about the latest episode of Oreimo. I guess the gap between episodes has really killed the enthusiasm. I think episode four did not help the matter.

Two Worlds, Two Tomorrows continues the feeling that this is the most accurate Tomino style fan fiction you will ever get without it actually be written by the Bald Wizard himself. It starts with a big battle as part of an unusual alliance, then moves into people switching sides and betraying each other, main characters go around making philosophical speeches sometimes to an audience and other times to people at gunpoint, and it ends with a race to the final location of Laplace’s Box with a familiar interrupting cow appearing at the end. At the same time all the old people in power plan to do whatever it takes to keep the status quo, all the radicals are going to do whatever it takes to realize their mad dreams, and everyone else is stuck in the middle trying to find something that does not get everyone killed. Classic Tomino.

This is a solid penultimate episode. It begins to lay down all the elements that will be resolved in the final episode. They still have not revealed what exactly Laplace’s Box is or the actual identity of Full Frontal. Those are the two big mysteries everyone watching wants to know. My other question is how much Newtype Voodoo magic is going to win the day and how much will piloting be the deciding factor. If this is a true Tomino tribute then some mystical magical psychoframe sorcery is going to be on display.

I’m really just waiting for someone to kill Angelo already. He is clearly the Jerid Messa of Unicorn so he could at least have the common curtsey to die early on in the next episode so we can get to the real fights. Marida Cruz is the only member of Team Banagher that I am seriously concerned about. Will they kill the last of the Elpeo Ple clones or will they let this one-off the hook? (Unless you consider Gundam Evolve 10 canon.)

By the way here is an article of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere if you want a better understanding of what the writers were making allusions to in this episode.

Audrey Burne is still the best character. She does not pilot a mobile suit or beat people down with her fists. She just has an immense presence which is a striking as those of the other main characters. When she talks people listen. But she is not someone who just barks orders at people. She takes in what everyone is saying and often can be silent. But when she is needed to step into a conversation she has a royal presence that is undeniable. If anything makes her a non-Tomino character it is she is such a clearheaded woman even when everyone else is losing their minds. If you are going to break the Tomino mold that is the best way to do it. With one of the strongest women in the UC timeline.

Oh well. It is going to be awhile until we get the final volume of Unicorn even if it is released without a single delay. So it will be a year before we can get Somewhere Over the Rainbow and see the end of the series. I wonder if the release of the last episode will bring back some of that initial enthusiasm or if the lag between episodes has just proven to be too great in this era where you get episodes near instantly.

 I picked up the first volume of sci-fi mecha manga Knights of Sidonia. The aliens they are fighting have quite a horror, grotesque bent to them. The entire setting has a weird, off-kilter feeling; a pretty strange place where the food supply only allows for people to eat once a week. Everyone looks human but they all act very oddly.

The main character is purposely socially awkward for sure, and boy is he. The rest of the cast aren’t awkward per se but are written in an awkward manner. It felt so stilted that it was difficult to connect with any of the cast; they feel so artificial but that may be the point the more I mull it over.

The Ongoing Investigations are little peeks into what we are watching and reading outside of our main posts on the blog. We each pick three things that we were interested in a week and talk a bit about them. There is often not much rhyme or reason to what we pick. They are just the most interesting things we saw since the last Ongoing Investigation.

Hana no Miyako! is a really weird Type-Moon manga. It is not as strange as Fate/School Life but that is a nearly impossible feat. I suppose Miyako Arima does not lend herself to a stereotypical Tsukihime manga adaption but this is still pretty far away from vampires, mages, demons, and lines of death.  But we shall see how many of those elements show up in the end.

For anyone who is not neck-deep in Type-Moon lore Miyako Arima is a character who is BARELY mentioned as existing in Tsukihime and only got a real presence as a character in Metly Blood. So what to do with Shiki Tohno’s kung-fu cousin? You put her in a Tenjho Tenge style martial arts high school shonen manga. But with less rape and fan service because it is not by Oh! great.

The premise should be familiar to anyone who reads any amount of shonen manga. There is a school made up of mostly bad asses who have a school sponsored ranking system. Nanaya Shiki is one of the lowest ranked students at Asagami Private High Class Academy. She starts the series trying to get new members for the Aikido club and her main target is the near silent Miyako Arima. Miyako seems very insistent on not joining any clubs or really having anything to do with anyone. But when Miyako saves Shiki from an extremely forward high-ranking senior she quickly pretends like Shiki was the one who defeated him. Why does the powerhouse that is Miyako wish to sink into the background like she is a nobody?

So far I mostly have questions like: Is this the Miyako from Metly Blood or is a similar character in a new setting? If she is Miyako from Metly Blood what changed to make her such a withdrawn character? Also is Nanaya Shiki secretly a Mystic Eyes of Death Perception monster and not know it yet or is she just a silly girl who is just good at tea ceremony? Also who are all these crazy fighters at the school who are beginning to circle around Miyako and Shiki? What are their fighting styles? Will they ever stop making “Shiki is a lesbian” jokes?

It is odd. If you want a fighting girls (with some guys for good measure) manga but without the prodigious fan service you usually find in the genre than this is a good pick. But it is not much of a Type-Moon manga as much as a Type-Moon homage manga. Take that as you will.

Avatar: The Last Airbender – The Promise finally finished up this comic arc with part 3. It ended up being rather heavy-handed in its message about differing cultures coming together. But props for it tackling the generational divide and showing the path forward is not just about looking to the past.

The actual confrontation was decent as the inevitable happens and a skirmish occurs between the Earth and Fire armies with the rebels in the middle. But the setup for the next arc was probably the more satisfying part of this final volume so that was a little bit of let down. But then again that means I’m pretty excited for The Search to start!

Don’t worry everyone. I figured out how to talk more about Fate/Extra before Fate/Extra CCC is released in English. I can talk about the Fate/Extra manga! Brilliant!

Lets start with some straight talk. Manga adaptions of video games are somewhere around live action movies made video games in the pantheon of horror. So if this series devolves into unreadable mess that makes babies cry then no one should be surprised. That is the nature of the beast.

If you ever played the original game you will notice there have been several elements that have either been streamlined or cut to make things a bit more efficient in the manga. The game starts with a prolog in which the initial nameless protagonist dies and then the game switches over to the actual main character. That whole deal is passed over. They also introduce a few of the servants and masters early and have them take out some fellow participants of this Holy Grail War to make things a little more interesting.

Also in the game you could have the protagonist either be male or female and could pick one of three servants. Here they have gone the male protagonist and picked the Red Saber. That makes sense as Red Saber was without a doubt the breakout hit character of the series. If you were worried they are also giving Caster her own manga this summer.

Not sure yet how this is going to go. Ropi~na at least seems to understand that Fate/Extra has to be adjusted to make a readable manga. So far it is a decent adaptation but nothing says that will continue to be the case. But thankfully nothing says it has to be horrible yet either. Hopefully it will be able to beat the curse of the adaptation but I would not assume that just yet.

I have always wanted the Uncharted series to be made into movies. Well, someone did just that! This is different that a “Let’s Play”-type deal, the creator has cut the game together using the cinematic scenes as well as some (but a much abridged version) of the gameplay and of course there is not a running commentary track either.

I found movie 1 really enjoyable! And it almost felt like a movie. The character personalities really came through. I do think they could use some added music here or there but overall a nicely put together production.