The first book of Vertical’s Limit is intense and I only expect it to get more so as the series continues. If you are one of those people who think shojo is all high school romance, pick up LIMIT to change your mind.
Limit is about the have and the have-nots in high school, the cliques and the outcasts. Envy, bullying, peer pressure, violence, humiliation, and revenge swirl around the girls of this school. The social hierarchy of high school is on full display as our lead character is an underling of the most popular mean girl. She is a follower because it gives her a sense of security.
That sense of security is one I never had as a reader, the series has an ominous atmosphere from the very beginning. And just as you suspect, things change in an instant during a school trip. Characters’ true nature come out in a crisis. It was also great to learn about some of the past that got people to this point, humanizing those who need it most.
The struggles to survive in high school become survival on a more base level in Limit.
Random, I really liked the design of this book. The size and typography make it feels very Japanese.
I know that Natutaki and I were both interested in Cloud Atlas but not enough to randomly spend money on seeing it in theaters. But when I won free tickets to see an early screening all reservations went out the window. I have to say that was a fortuitous little blessing. The movie itself was quite spectacular.
It is a fairly epic interweaving of six interconnected stories that take place over a span of more than a millennium. We see the redemption, corruption, and transmigration of several souls over the ages in a complex tapestry of life and love. It starts in the 1850 and ends in a distant post apocalyptic world. The same actors play different parts in each era as we see how these souls fare through the ages. Sometimes heroes will fight the good fight through the years, other times villains will commit unspeakable atrocities, and some people will wrestle with demons to various levels of success in every age. But both little and great decisions will always echoes through the ages.
I will warn people. The movie does not have the most inviting start. It rapidly switches between the six stories fairly rapidly to introduce each time period and show you that the stories will consistently be going back and forth. The story then calms down a bit as if it was just reminded it was three hours long so it could take its time it saying what it needs to. The movie then slows down and takes its time establishing what is going on in each era and becomes infinitely more comprehensible. Most of the stories are serious life and death struggles with serious bits of drama and suspense. The one story about the book publisher in the present is mostly comedy but it is a nice relaxing tale that helps the story from being too brooding.
I have to say the movie does a good job of adapting a fairly complex book in probably the most effective manner it can. While I am sure the original book has more complexity and depth of themes I think the movie does a good job giving you a good sense of what was in the original while treating you to a visual feast in the meantime. You just have to appreciate the vast amount of time and effort went into basically filming 6 short movies with vastly different feels and settings and to then to tie them all together with the same principle cast. Simply amazing.
I feel much like with my review of Forest I think the word pretensions is going to be thrown around a lot. But unlike the extremely indirect Forest I don’t think you have to put in that much effort to put most of the pieces together. There is a good deal of metaphor and intricacy beneath the surface of the narrative but the basic themes and plot is simple if you pay attention. But if you are actively watching I think there is a good deal to be gained from the story. I don’t want to give away too many spoilers but overall I think the story is optimistic. Some stories end in triumph, others in heartbreaking tragedy, yet some are Pyrrhic victories. None of the main characters make it to the end of their tales without losing something important along the way. But the overall message is one of the triumph of the human spirit. And that alone made the movie very fulfilling.
Oh and the movie teaches us one other thing. If you are a racist bastard then you will get your just deserts.
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.
Reverse Thieves 