Julia's Reviews on Various Media

[Juliko]

Alrighty! I've sat on this one for a long time, and I think it's high time I gave this movie its due! The first review for this was written on May 30th, 2011, but this new review was just finished today.

I give this seriously dark kid's movie...a 94/100!

I had never heard of this movie before 2009, and the only way I heard about it was through Anime News Network, via this article here. I really liked reading the Buried Treasure columns on there, as it introduced me to anime that I adore to this day, Ringing Bell being one of them. Unfortunately it has since been abandoned. But my curiosity was piqued, I tracked it down on YouTube, and watched the English dub, as it was the only version available back then. Wow, Ringing Bell is seriously one of the darkest, most mature kids movies I've ever seen. It's full of mature life lessons most kids movies today refuse to even touch upon, and I'm sure something like this would be reviled at today. But I actually love it for its maturity and refusal to dumb itself down for its audience.

The story is very simple. A young lamb named Chirin loves playing in the farm and being with his mother, even though he doesn't always listen to her. But one day, a wolf breaks into the farm and kills some of the sheep, his mother included. Chirin doesn't understand why his mother had to die, or what they did to deserve this. Consumed by a lust for revenge, he leaves the farm and goes after the wolf. But he's too weak to take on the wolf on his own, so he takes another option: become the wolf's apprentice so he can learn how to be a wolf just like him so he can kill him in the future. Needless to say, the path to become a wolf is a merciless, cruel one.

If someone had watched this without any knowledge of anime, I wouldn't blame them at all for not knowing that this movie was animated in Japan, because this movie has a very Western cartoony look about it. Chirin's face when he's a lamb almost looks humanoid, kind of like something you'd find in an old Hanna-Barbera cartoon, and none of the animals have the kinds of overly round designs you'd find in most anime nowadays. But even by seventies standards, this movie is surprisingly well animated. There are still frames here and there, but movement is smooth when needed, and the movie has very good in-between animation, especially when the wolf appears on screen. Lip flaps are fully animated, the backgrounds are seamlessly integrated with the character animation, and the only real shortcuts on display are used to allude to but not completely show graphic violence. This could have easily been one of those Hanna-Barbera esque movies that had no budget, but it's clear the animators put a lot of effort into this...and want to know the most jarring thing? The company that animated this was Sanrio. Yes, Sanrio, the people who made the cutesy-wootsy Hello Kitty and Aggretsuko, a show that's part slice of life funny animal comedy and part existential horror based on working life. My mind was blown when I first found out that Sanrio worked on movies like this back in the day. It helps that the movie has a great sense of tone and atmosphere. It manages to keep a balanced tone throughout the movie, with the cutesy parts staying in the first 15 minutes, while the rest of the movie is fairly dark and grounded, but still having some subtle comedic moments peppered throughout. The movie still manages to keep said comedic moments subdued enough to not completely feel jarring. (Take note, Demon Slayer!)

The music isn't much to write home about. On one hand, I absolutely love the theme songs and insert songs, all of which are sung by the same singer, who unfortunately weren't credited (I know the English version is sung by The Brothers' Four, but there is literally no info on the internet about the person who sang the Japanese version and all the other songs). That said, the movie is heavy on the orchestrated pieces and trumpets typical of Western animation during that time period, along with a few electronic numbers mixed in. It's very easy to tell that this movie was made in the seventies, and the soundtrack is full on seventies here. Now, the English dub of this movie is more well known to people who have seen it, and while some voices are genuinely well cast, the acting can get rather hammy at times, detrimenting scenes that benefitted from being more subtle in the Japanese version. There's also added dialogue and sound effects, probably done in an effort to make sure kids don't get bored and get rid of completely silent moments. Granted, they at least don't try to shoehorn in dumb jokes like Saban does, and the soundtrack is kept the same, though the songs are dubbed and are rather...off-key. Though I do have to question why the Japanese version calls him Woe when the English dub's name for him, Wolf, sounds much better. I do wish someone would release the soundtrack for this movie, because I love all the songs on it!

But let me tell you exactly what makes this movie so great: To quote another one of my favorite anime bloggers, this is a movie dedicated entirely to character development. It's a character study first and foremost, showing Chirin changing significantly over the course of the movie because of his circumstances, both those that are beyond his control to the ones born from his own choices. Every action advances not only the plot, but Chirin's own development, and sometimes, character development isn't always positive. Some may question the fact that after a few years with Wolf, Chirin refers to him as his father, but one, I always assumed it was a sort of self-induced Stockholm Syndrome considering Chirin sought him out willingly, and two, in taking Chirin under his paw, Wolf kind of does become the only sort of parental figure Chirin has, considering he not only took him in but also taught him how to hunt for food and stuff. It's a gray area, and it helps that Wolf, while depicted as genuinely menacing and threatening, isn't shown as inherently evil. He just hunts for food like any other wolf does, and after injuring a bear, he lets the bear escape. This kind of subtle characterization is paramount in making sure he isn't shown as completely evil, and I think the movie does a great job on that one.

For anyone wondering, this movie doesn't end happily ever after, and I think it's all the better for it, because without spoiling anything, ending it any other way might have been a cop-out. But I think what makes this movie even better is its history. Ringing Bell is based on a children's book by one Takashi Yanase, who many may know created the Anpanman franchise. The book that the movie is based on was actually based on Yanase's experiences surviving World War II, as the only reason he became a children's book writer and illustrator is so he could cope with his PTSD. On its own, Ringing Bell is a cautionary tale about revenge and how pursuing it can leave you feeling empty and giving you nothing, but based on the history of its author and the book, it can also be interpreted as an allegory on the effects of war, such as Wolf representing war, Chirin's mother representing innocent civilians killed during it, and Chirin representing children or war orphans who lost friends and family members. With that information in mind, both the book and the movie can be seen as an anti-war work, even though the movie itself is about a sheep and a wolf, thus making it Yanase's most personal work to date. As you can no doubt tell, I absolutely love media with a rich, varied history like this, and I respect it and the people who work on it for not only daring to push the boundaries that are put on kids' movies, but for refusing to dumb themselves down for their audience and strive to tell the stories they want to tell no matter what. I only wish more of those could be made nowadays, though thankfully, the idea that animation is just for children is starting to die out bit by bit, so who knows?

Should you decide you want to watch this movie in a legal fashion, you're in luck! In 2013, the wonderful people at Discotek Media announced they licensed it, and a year later, they released it on DVD, with both the English and Japanese tracks intact. But if you don't want to fill your shelves with a physical copy, it's also available to stream on Amazon Prime for a fee, and for free on the new website RetroCrush. After being out of print for decades, it's back in circulation, and deservedly so, in my humble opinion, as it's one of my absolute favorite movies of all time, just behind Dog of Flanders. Ringing Bell isn't for the faint of heart, but it's still an absolutely wonderful, haunting movie that will stay with you forever, and I highly recommend it!

Old review under spoilers.

Spoiler: 2011 Review

Everyone knows Sanrio. They're the company responsible for creating characters such as Hello Kitty, Chococat, Batz Maru, and any other character so cute they make your head explode. But little did most people know that back in the 70's-80's, Sanrio used to make anime movies. GOOD movies at that! One of their known works is Ringing Bell, aka Chirin no Suzu. They stopped making movies after they made Fairy Florence in 1985.

This movie is about a little lamb named Chirin, who is happy-go-lucky and innocent but is quite adventurous and gets lost and wears a bell on his neck to let his mom know where he is, which becomes the symbol of the series. On a dark autumn night, a wolf breaks into the farm and nearly kills Chirin...but his mother's life is taken instead. Chirin is openly distraught and angry, as a result, he leaves the meadow to get revenge, even if it means learning at the knee of the one who killed his mother. This movie is obviously a dark movie which talks about the consequences of going against who you are or paying for your choices in life.

Even though this movie was made in 1978, the animation is very well-done and well-drawn, making the series really come to life. There isn't really a hero or villain in this show. The wolf doesn't even count as a villain. He's the most realistically portrayed character in the whole movie. He just does what he does to survive and doesn't eat animals to simply "be evil". Plus, this movie doesn't end well, but I shall NOT spoil it.

I first saw this in January of 2009 on YouTube when someone on Anime News Network wrote a detailed review about it. This movie may seem like a children's movie and start off lightly in the beginning, but it takes a VERY dark turn after the first 10-15 minutes. The Japanese version is very hard to find (though I have a bootleg DVD containing the Japanese version with no subtitles, but I don't care), and the English dub can be found on YouTube. I personally love this movie because it really sticks to you for who knows how long. It really makes a strong impact and shows everyone that not all the paths people take in life are happy and colorful (like how nearly 96% of Disney movies don't see it that way).

 

[Juliko]

Well, I think it's time for me to talk about one of the most famous magical girl anime of all time!...The first season of it, at least. This review was originally written on March 14th, 2013. Meaning before Viz Media's new re-dub for the show came out, let alone was even announced.

I give the first ever "archetypal" magical girl anime...a 70/100.

Before the nineties, the term "magical girl" anime mostly consisted of plots involving young girls who are given a magical item by some cute fairies that allows them to grow up and become whatever they wish to be and have fun with their new powers. This was pretty much the standard for typical magical girl anime, as girls didn't use their powers to fight evil or save the world until a woman named Naoko Takeuchi gave this a go one day, and wound up sparking the biggest anime revolution that ever exploded in the anime world. Usually in anime, boys would be the ones fighting monsters or saving the world, and girls were still just supporting characters considering the attitudes toward women didn't change much back then, even after World War II. But Sailor Moon rocked the anime world for many fans, and even wound up being a gateway anime for many incoming otaku who watched the show on Toonami or other channels that aired it. Lots of people I know watched Sailor Moon and love it to this day, as it became the anime that revitalized the magical girl genre in its day. Sad to say, I was not one of those people. I was waaaay too young when this came out (Born in 1993). However, I do remember watching a bit of Venus's debut episode and most of the SuperS movie on Toonami once, but that's about it. This year, I decided to watch the entire series and see if it's really as good as everyone believes it to be. Now that I finished it, it's time that I put down my honest review of it.

Our main character, Usagi (known as Serena in the English dub, which I only saw one episode of and don't plan on seeing any more), is...not the best person in the world. She's ditzy, woefully clumsy, dumb as a brick, a glutton, greedy, and a hopeless crybaby who freaks out over little things. She is regularly late for school every single day (seriously, doesn't she ever have an alarm clock? Being late every single day? That's just not healthy!), she's always being scolded by the teacher for said tardiness, she always fails her tests, never studies, is always under her family's fire, and wants nothing more to do than eat junk food, go to the arcade, gossip with her friends, and talk about cute guys. Basically, she's the girl nobody really wants to be but is anyway. But one day, on her way to school, she saves a cat from being abused by some rowdy kids. When she gets back, the cat, Luna, turns out to be anything but normal. Luna is a familiar from the moon, and an organization called the Dark Kingdom, currently run by an old hag named Queen Beryl, wants to revive their ruler, Metalia, and take over the world, and Luna thinks Usagi might be one of the sailor soldiers, a group of people who defend the peace of the Earth. Usagi then becomes Sailor Moon, and she's not too keen on the idea of fighting monsters and saving the world when she can't even get up in the morning. But she's not the only sailor soldier. She is soon joined by sweet and smart Ami (Sailor Mercury), beautiful and brave Minako (Sailor Venus), fiery and easily irritated Rei (Sailor Mars), and strong and supportive Makoto (Sailor Jupiter). Together, they must defeat the Dark Kingdom and thwart their evil schemes.

For a magical girl anime that supposedly caused an epic Blitzkrieg in it's homeland and overseas, it's animation is really nothing to write home about. It hasn't really aged well. It's colors are a bit messy at times, the eyes get out of place at times, there's so many still frames it's not even funny, and at times things just look a bit too sketchy and kooky. Even when the characters move, they seem to be a little stiff at times (except for the opening, but all openings are like that so who am I to judge?). Plus, I have to admit, I don't like how the characters' legs look. They're a bit too long for my tastes. No person I know has legs that long, even for super model standards. Seriously, what is it with anime and designing all characters with ridiculously long legs? But then again, considering how short their skirts are when they battle, the anatomy here is a bit more considerate than other anime. The music isn't really much to talk about either. It's generic, pretty much no different from other anime music you'd hear in any 90s anime, and I've heard my fair share of soundtracks from anime in the 90s. Sorry, but Homeless Girl Remy has a much better soundtrack than this. But the music in their assigned scenes DO fit their assigned scenes (happy music in happy moments, scary music in scary moments, sad music in sad moments, etc.) and not once do they feel out of place, unlike some shows that play the wrong music in the wrong places (Nurse Angel Ririka SOS, anyone?). It also does a decent job of forming the correct atmosphere for their assigned scenes so I won't fault it for doing that. The opening is nice and serene as well (and yes the English version is pretty catchy too).

The characters...well, I can see how they'd be revolutionary for their time, but nowadays, they're still a bunch of character archetypes that have been used over and over again. We have the ditzy and dumb idiot who doesn't grow into her role as the leader, the brainiac, the person who always berates the leader for everything they do well-intentioned or not, the brawny strong one, and the beautiful one who's just kind of there. Ugh, I seriously couldn't stand Usagi. I know she has her moments, and she can be awesome when she has her shining moments, but her shining moments are very few and far in between. The rest of the time all she does is whine with that screechy voice of hers and act like a brat and have everyone do everything for her. She's definitely NOT leader material and doesn't improve when the situation calls for it, nor does she display any awareness or responsibility for any of the roles she's placed in. Seriously, I wanted to bash her head in whenever she opened her mouth and said or did something stupid! Her first English dub voice and her Spanish dub voice sound more convincing than her Japanese voice! Heck, if you ask me, I think Rei or Makoto should have been given the leader role and not Usagi, and they're the ones who do most of the attacking while Usagi just runs away whining and crying 90% of the times she's in a battle! However, my complaints aside, Usagi IS a realistic character, and definitely has more than enough flaws to justify what she does, and while she may have a bunch of flaws, she definitely has a good heart and will do anything for her friends and family, even if she approaches situations in a stupid and impulsive manner a lot of the time. You have to admit she's a HECK of a lot better than certain other characters from other shows (Tagiru from Digimon Xros Wars: Hunters, anyone?) Plus, I wish Tuxedo Mask did more than just throw roses, say inspirational (mostly expository) speeches, fling his cape, save Usagi, and run away a lot of the time. He's just a silly exposition fairy who doesn't really do much other than what I just listed, and even in the end, his role is rather silly and cliche. He doesn't grow as a character nor does he gain any new powers. The other characters don't get much development either, but that'll get rectified in later seasons. Out of all the characters, my favorites are Ami, Rei, and Makoto. They actually do way more in the show than Usagi did, and are much more interesting and likable in my honest opinion. Yeah Rei gets mad at Usagi a lot of the time, but wouldn't you do the same if you were paired up with a dim-witted idiot who constantly does stupid things, even in the face of grave danger? I know I would! Finally, the villains are cliche and uninteresting, with not much personality traits other than "I wantz too take over da world for the evulz!! MWAHAHAHAHA!!!" save for anyone after Jadeite, and of course the Monsters of the Week aren't very interesting either.

This review is entirely based on the Japanese version, NOT the English dub. From what I've heard, the English dub sucked really hard and cut out a lot of important things, so I decided to spare myself the agony and not go anywhere near it other than the 1st episode (Seriously, people hate the dub and NOBODY talked about the shameless Star Wars parody at the beginning of the first episode?! For shame!!). Now, personally, I think Sailor Moon is rather generic, cliche, and silly. It has stereotypical characters, stereotypical villains (albeit with SOME personality), the monster of the week format, and vice versa. Normally, this would be a recipe for disaster, right? With my honest review, you'd think that I'd give this anime an F for being an epic cliche storm. But...I won't? Why? Because I like Sailor Moon. I like Sailor Moon. Yes it's silly, yes it's cliche, yes the characters aren't entirely three dimensional, yes the villains aren't that interesting, yes the monster of the week storytelling is repetitive and silly, yada yada yada. But despite all of this, I found it to be sweetly charming and endearing, and it really made me remember what it was like to wake up on a Saturday morning and watch exciting cartoons that branded themselves into our memories. Yes, Sailor Moon has made me embrace my inner 10-year-old girl, and I'm proud of it. It's not the best anime in the world, but it definitely has a lot to like about it if you aren't too cynical. It's definitely the kind of anime you'd want to watch after a hard day of school or work and when you just want to sit back, relax, grab a bag of cheese curls and a bottle of water, and watch a bunch of pretty girls kick monster butt. Yeah, I can see why this was the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic of the nineties.

While it did cause a revolution, it's not as good now as it was back then, but it's still a nice little anime to watch when you want to. Also, would anyone like to join me in giving Usagi the job of taking care of twin baby ponies like Pinkie Pie had to go through? Maybe that'll teach her some responsibility and awareness of her situation!

 

[Juliko]

This review was just finished today.

(For anyone wondering, the cover image I'm using isn't a manga version of Pollyanna. This is the original, unabridged book by Eleanor H. Porter. I'm just using a version that Seven Seas put out that happens to have manga-esque illustrations. I like this cover the best out of all the ones I saw online)

I give this sweet book about finding the good in everything...an 81/100!

Novels aimed at children have come a long way back when people first began writing them. Some have gone on to become revered literature, like Anne of Green Gables (ironically Pollyanna was published four years after Anne was), while others were left by the wayside and forgotten forever. Originally, children's books were written with the sole purpose of teaching morals to its audience, and only after that, did people begin writing children's books that could be entertaining rather than overly moralistic and preachy. But some haven't exactly aged as gracefully as others. During the Victorian and Edwardian eras, the character archetype of a girl who was always positive, idealistic, sweet to the point of being saccharine was fairly common. Nowadays, that archetype is considered overly perfect and Mary Sue-ish. The subject of today's review, Pollyanna, is one of those novels that has a good message, but it got twisted over the years into something the authoress didn't intend. Having read the novel myself, I like it well enough, but I can see why others don't and have some idea of why people may find something like Pollyanna too saccharine.

Pollyanna Whittier is a happy-go-lucky, energetic girl who lived a poor but happy life with her father at his church. Her mother died years ago, but she still had her father to rely on. Unfortunately, just recently, her father got sick and died. Luckily, Pollyanna is being sent to live with her Aunt Polly, and Pollyanna couldn't be happier. Unfortunately for her, Aunt Polly is strict, stern, and only took her in out of obligation, having no interest in actually being a parent to her whatsoever. But Pollyanna's arrival might change things up for not only Aunt Polly, but the entire town of Beldingsville, as she's always trying to find something to be glad about, no matter how small. Whether it be helping a sick old lady, hanging out with the local orphan boy, or being friends with the hired help, Pollyanna's boundless positive energy is contagious.

In terms of its writing and prose, I think Porter's writing style is fine. It's not overly sentimental or nauseating like other kids books back in the day (Hint hint, Lucy Maud Montgomery), and her sentences are succinct and to the point, never going on for longer than they need to. Every scene and passage is told bluntly and matter-of-factly, without any extraneous embellishments or overwrought sentimentality. Because of this, I found Pollyanna as a book to be a breeze to read through, and not once does the writing ever feel like it lingers on any one subject for too long. Kids aged 8-12 would be able to read this and understand it pretty easily, though some things like the vernacular spoken by Aunt Polly's helpers like Nancy and Old Tom might be a little harder to understand if you're not entirely familiar with it.

The book doesn't have much in the way of a plot, as it's mainly just Pollyanna living her every day live at the Harrington house and her adventures with various people. But it does make up for it by having a nice, eclectic cast of characters that all have their charms and strong personalities that manage to carry the book superbly. I found the side characters to be fairly fun and charming, with Nancy in particular being my favorite, and even Aunt Polly, with all her stern stuffiness, is thankfully much more human than she seems at first. However, your enjoyment of the book will depend on whether you like or hate Pollyanna. I personally didn't mind her, but I did find her endless optimism at times to be a little too much, but even then, she's not as bad as other characters in other media I've seen. She's the kind of character that people will either really love or really hate depending on the reader, and while I like her just fine, I can totally understand being put off by certain aspects of her character, like the fact that she never shuts up, doesn't know how to keep a secret, tends to violate people's personal boundaries, and being rather annoying at times. Ironically, I liked how the Disney movie approached her character, toning down her more saccharine traits to make her a bit more timid and even a little meaner on occasion, while reigning in her optimistic nature to the point where it doesn't come across as obnoxious or overbearing. To me, at least. The 1986 anime retelling of Pollyanna also goes out of its way to make her feel more human and nuanced and more than just an eternal optimist sent straight from heaven (Which reminds me, I REALLY need to finish watching that). That said, I did think Nancy constantly referring to Pollyanna as a blessed child and her catchphrase "My stars and stockings!" got a little nauseating after the first five times. Plus, after having read the frothy piece of religious, child abuse-endorsing propaganda that is Elsie Dinsmore, I'm not fazed by Pollyanna's personality one bit.

Without spoiling much, one thing I can also see readers taking issue with is the ending, which can come across as not only too sudden, but too cheesy and neatly wrapped up. Again, I didn't mind it, and it's rather moot because the book has a sequel that takes place immediately after that, but again, I can understand people being put off by the book's overly sweet presentation. Personally, I liked Pollyanna as a book well enough, and I only discovered it because I saw the anime version first and was interested in the source material. Now, there is something to be said about the novel series' overall message. In today's society, due to a drastic misinterpretation of the character itself, the word "Pollyanna" has taken a rather negative connotation that is warped and not to the spirit of the novel. When people describe someone as a Pollyanna, they claim someone is always mindlessly happy no matter what. That's not what the Pollyanna novel is about, something even Eleanor H. Porter fought back against. Pollyanna is meant to send the message of sharing happiness with others and being kind even when times are tough. Especially when times are rough. A bit cheesy and saccharine? Probably, but considering that nowadays, when we're living through not only a literal plague, but national and worldwide unrest and violence, I think a message like that is important as long as it's not too heavy handed.

Not one of the best children's books out there, and it can get overly sweet at times, but I liked Pollyanna and am glad I read it. Also, if you think Pollyanna is saccharine, I dare you to read the awfulness that is the Elsie Dinsmore books. I think they're much more overly moralistic, didactic, and saccharine than Pollyanna could ever be. Oh, and the My Little Pony: Newborn Cuties cartoons.

 

[Juliko]

I started this review on October 29th 2020, but only finished it just now.

I give this sequel to A Tale of Magic...a 71/100.

Last year, I dipped my toes into Chris Colfer's most recent book series, A Tale of Magic, and I liked it well enough, but I did feel some areas needed some improvement. But I did enjoy it enough that I bought the sequel, A Tale of Witchcraft. This book takes place not long after the first one. Brystal and her friends have managed to get the world to accept fairies all over and are doing all they can to help the citizens and encourage more acceptance for the magical communtiy, with some exceptions. Unfortunately, Lucy's attempt to make things flashy winds up nearly killing everyone, and she and Brystal wind up getting into heated arguments. Things get even more complicated when Lucy finds out a secret that Brystal was made to keep and doesn't take it well at all. But Lucy throwing tantrums winds up becoming the least of Brystal's worries. A mysterious cult called the Righteous Brotherhood has arisen after centuries of inactivity, intent on keeping the status quo in regards to discrimination against those who use magic, and a witch who established her own school for witches entices Lucy to enroll, embroiling her in an ominous plot against mankind. Brystal is overwhelmed and confused, more so when she begins hearing voices in her head that convince her she can't do anything ro save anyone. Without anyone she feels she can rely on, Brystal doesn't know what to do.

The prose hasn't changed much from the first book, other than one thing: When it comes to its overall messages and themes, A Tale of Witchcraft is a LOT less preachy and overly moralistic as A Tale of Magic was. Don't get me wrong, I did genuinely like A Tale of Magic and its messages, but it felt like Colfer couldn't get his messages across without having the characters and his writing beat the audience over their heads with them. Again, show, don't tell, and writers could really benefit from trusting their audience. Thankfully, it seems like Colfer realized this problem and toned the preachiness down a lot in A Tale of Witchcraft, making it feel much less didactic and having its messages feel much more organic and tactful. Here's hoping he can keep this up for the next book, along with other books he plans to write.

However, sequels aren't necessarily well known for being better than the first installments, and while A Tale of Magic wasn't anything special on its own, it knew what it wanted to do and stuck with it. Unfortunately, A Tale of Witchcraft comes with quite a slew of problems of its own. For one, the previous characters such as Xanthous, Emeralda, Tangerina, and Skylene are kind of relegated to background characters because the story introduces a new rival school of magic that leans heavily towards witchcraft and the evils of magic usage, complete with a slew of new characters. Now, these new characters aren't necessarily bad, but they're all rather bland and one-note, having little more than one character trait and ultimately contributing nothing to the story. The only characters who really receive much in the way of development are Brystal, Lucy, and Pip, who was just a minor character in the previous book but does get her fair share of page time and development here. There are also the various members of the Righteous Brotherhood who are mostly just a bunch of generic Saturday morning cartoon villains whose only purpose is to oppose the heroes.

Which leads me to what I feel is the book's biggest flaw, which I feel contributed to the unbalanced characterization in this book: A Tale of Witchcraft is trying to juggle a bunch of different plotlines and succumbs under the weight of them. You have Brystal and friends trying to convince the world to accept the magical community, a rival school focusing more on witchcraft, a mysterious cult trying to undo everything Brystal has done and reestablish the status quo, Brystal hearing voices in her head, and other, minor subplots that don't really go anywhere. Basically, the book wound up biting off more than it could chew, failing at trying to make these different storylines fit into the narrative in an organic fashion, making the book as a whole feel bloated. Say what you will about A Tale of Magic, but one thing it has going for it is that it didn't try to shoehorn in too many different plotlines and subplots at once, gradually moving from one to the other in a way that made sense and felt seamless. There's a reason the saying "too many cooks spoil the soup" exists. An anime blogger I follow put it this way: The thing with drama is that you take a few ingredients, juggle them together, and let them naturally culminate into a powerful climax, with a few mid-climaxes in-between. In the case of A Tale of Witchcraft, it winds up having too many of these ingredients, overcomplicating the dish. Most of the time it felt like A Tale of Witchcraft was just throwing stuff in for the sake of throwing stuff in, and you really shouldn't do that.

There is one other thing about the book that really made me roll my eyes. Brystal keeps hearing voices in her head telling her that she's a failure, making her question everything she says and does, and so on. I heard this is supposed to be an allegory for depression, and there's nothing inherently wrong with that...but without spoiling anything, there's actually an in-story reason/revelation for why she hears demeaning voices in her head, which I feel completely shoots and negates the message because of the implications it has. I'm not an expert on depression, nor am I depressed myself, but based on stories I've heard from friends and family members who do deal with depression, there's no real root cause for depression, but there are a lot of things that contribute to it or can jump start it, like certain life-changing events, or certain life experiences like abuse or the death of a loved one, other medical issues, more personal issues, and so on. A Tale of Witchcraft just hand waves it away by giving a frankly awful, poorly thought out reason for why Brystal hears voices in her head, and said reason is a complete slap in the face towards people who actually have depression and deal with it every day, because there is no singular cause or cure for depression.

Alright, I should probably stop with the tangent. A Tale of Witchcraft is just another sequel book that isn't as good as its predecessor, even though the first book had a few problems of its own. Seeing that Colfer has decided to make this into another series as well, regardless of my feelings for how Witchcraft came out, I am looking forward to the next book in the hopes that it remedies these issues and answers some unanswered questions.

 

[Juliko]

Now this is an old one, a spin-off of the anime Lucky Star. This review was written on July 3rd, 2013.

I give this spin-off of one of the most popular recent anime ever...a 50/100.

Now before you guys come at me with your flaming torches and pitchforks accusing me of taking this too personally and saying that I don't know anything or accusing me of not knowing the difference between fantasy and reality, let me clarify something: I don't HATE this anime. I like The Miyakawa Family's Hunger. In fact, it's become a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine considering the short length of both the number of the episodes and the episode duration. I liked it for what it is, and I get it's just a comedy not meant to be taken seriously. I get that, and for that, I can say that I like it to an extent. The animation, while nothing stellar or special, does its job fine. The soundtrack...I'm not even sure if there was one, because I don't remember it. It must have been really bland and forgettable. The characters interactions are pretty funny, even though the corny jokes do get used over and over again. I get that this is a comedy, and it knows what it is and doesn't try to be anything more, and I respect the show for that. Yes, it's a cute little show that's easy to digest considering how short and sweet it is, and if you want a nice little low-key comedy to watch for about an hour, feel free to watch this, as all the episodes are five minutes long, so you can't really call it a time waster.

However...I need to confess and throw all of these things out there NOW. Many of the anime's flaws boil down to its overall premise. For one thing: How and why the ever loving FREAK does NOBODY call child protective services for Hikage, especially considering their circumstances?! She's basically told a whole bunch of people about her situation, yet everyone treats it like a big fat joke! Even the teacher doesn't take her situation seriously enough to call CPS so they can put Hikage in a home where competent people would actually take care of her! Speaking of competent, I really really hate Hinata. Her moe voice is annoying, she constantly adds "nay-ee" to the end of her sentences (does anyone else think it sounds like neigh? The sound a horse makes? Maybe she's secretly a horse!), and by freaking God, she spends way more on useless stuff than actual necessities for herself and her sister! Does she seriously have no sense of responsibility at all?! I may spend a bit too much money on anime and manga myself, but even I know better than to place anime above all else, especially when I'm potentially in a dire situation! My big sister always took care of me when my parents were trying to find a house and she never spent money on useless stuff! She always took me food shopping whenever we needed it and even helped cook dinner and paid bills because my mom asked her to! She didn't want to, but she did it anyway for my sake, and I'm grateful to her for it, even though we fight like cats and dogs! If my sister were anything like Hinata, she would have been arrested and charged with child neglect and I'd be taken to a foster home if that were to happen, even though technically I'm too old to be put in foster care. The thing with Hinata is that the show tries to present her as being sweet and nice, if a bit klutzy and irresponsible, but the way her actions are shown in the anime make her come across as far more irresponsible and incompetent than I think the show intended. I have no idea how child neglect laws are in Japan, but we Americans would be throwing a hissy fit at Hinata for being incompetent and not putting her sister above her own stupid and selfish desires, she's so freaking incompetent! Also, how do they even manage to keep a house if they're so poor? Why is Hinata taking care of her sister when she herself has school?! Did she drop out like others have? if she did, that would have been realistic because you can't balance both a job, school, and taking care of a family all at the same time. That'd be too much for her to handle, especially if she doesn't know the process behind paying mortgage? AND WHERE THE HELL ARE THEIR PARENTS?! Did they die? Did they abandon them? Are they divorced? Why is this not explained?! If they're alive, they should be living with them, not living on their own! If they did abandon them, than that in itself is child abuse and neglect!

*sigh* Okay. Finally got all that out of the way. Sorry guys. I just had to get all this out. Despite all of these humpback whale sized flaws, I like The Miyakawa Family's Hunger for what it is. Feel free to watch it since it's only ten five-minute-long episodes. If you don't like corny comedy, give it a miss.

 

[Juliko]

This review was written on May 15th, 2015.

265th completed anime! Yes!

I give this prequel to one of the most well loved manga/anime series ever...a 90/100!

(Caveat, 2/11/2021: For anyone wondering, yes, I did watch and like the Rurouni Kenshin: Trust and Betrayal OVA. I had even considered reading the manga at some point. However, as you can tell by the date in which the review was first written, this was two years before it was revealed that Nobuhiro Watsuki, the creator of Kenshin, was arrested on charges of possession of child pornography. And faced absolutely zero jail time for it. Because of this, while my feelings on the OVA remain unchanged, I have absolutely no desire to have anything more to do with the Kenshin franchise as a whole. Why the hell would I want to read or financially support anything made by a pedophile???)

I have a confession to make: I've never seen Rurouni Kenshin. I've known of its existence for a long time, but I haven't seen the 90 episode anime. I did see one episode of it dubbed, but that was because my college anime club showed it for historical fiction week, along with three other shows. It never interested me, and in a way it still doesn't interest me now. I don't think I can commit myself to a 90 episode anime, especially if its full of pointless filler. But one of my favorite bloggers was praising this up the wazoo and said that I didn't need to know about the show or manga in order to enjoy it, and I kinda wanted to watch something dark and mature since I hadn't seen any dark and mature shows for a while. I can't believe I'm saying this...but I absolutely adore Trust and Betrayal despite not knowing anything about Rurouni Kenshin at all, neither anime nor manga.

On a cold night, a band of warriors kill slave traders, leaving a young boy as the only survivor. A swordsman named Seijuro Hiko takes the boy in, renaming him Kenshin, and teaching him the ways of the sword. Kenshin grows into a killer who kills people in order to defend the innocent in a world infected by corruption, disease, poverty, malice, and greed. One would think that his humanity is as good as gone, but when circumstances force him to pair up with a woman named Yukishiro Tomoe, Kenshin gradually realizes that life without the sword can actually be good for him, and that the world isn't all evil. But the awful truths still remain, and not everyone can be trusted.

I have to admit, the animation, for its time, was absolutely sumptuous, especially in the fight scenes. They are all well choreographed, there are so scenes where characters just fly faster than the speed of light to hit their enemies, the blood and gore (yes, it is very bloody and not for the faint of heart) actually serves a purpose instead of just being there for the sake of being dark and edgy, the gore itself is realistic, and the characters move believably. The anime also takes a lot of care in showing both the good and the bad of feudal Japan, especially in regards to dress, customs, food, etc. I love an anime that does its research. But if there's one thing that bothers me, its the fact that sometimes for no real reason, the scenes switch from 2D animation to live action scenery, such as candle flames flickering, snow falling, sunbeams through the trees, etc. It really doesn't fit well here. I don't get why they didn't just draw those scenes out, as putting in live action scenery just really takes you out of the atmosphere. Also, I have a very hard time believing that someone is actually capable of slicing a person's entire head in half, right through the skull and all, let alone slicing an entire person in half with just a katana. For the most part, the fight scenes are realistic and well animated, but I do think some of the feats Kenshin pulls off, such as the ones I mentioned above, kinda push my suspension of disbelief VERY much.

The music really does its job well. There's no opening theme song, and the ending theme song is mostly an instrumental piece, but I don't really have much to say about the music except that it's plain awesome and the assigned pieces fit their assigned atmosphere well. When it wants to be creepy, the music is creepy. When there's battles and sword fights going on, the music is epic and bombastic. Quiet moments have quiet music. Every single piece of background music is used very well, and they all fit their assigned scenes. It knows when to be subtle and when to really go all out.

The main characters are the ones who steal the show, and since the story is centered completely around them in a span of just four episodes, they develop wonderfully. Even the romance between them is beautifully and subtly executed, and nothing is forced or artificial between them. The side characters, on the other hand, don't have much to go on. Some of them I even hate because of their actions. Kenshin and Tomoe are the stars of this OVA, and the OVA knows it, and it fleshes them all out in great detail. They pretty much make the OVA what it is, a tale of two lovers learning from each other and learning about new sides of life and each other, even in the face of tragedy. I don't think this OVA would be good if they weren't in it.

I have to admit though, I saw the English dub first, and while normally I don't like to be negative about English dubs, as I prefer to be someone who gives things a fair chance as I've seen many good dubs that people hate for no real reason, but...Trust and Betrayal's English dub isn't very good. Granted, the scripting is faithful to the sub, the dialogue fits with the setting and the time period, and the lip flaps match the lines just fine. It's just...the voice acting. Either the characters' voices don't fit or the actors clearly CANNOT emote for the life of them, the worst offenders being Kenshin and Enishi. I may not have seen the TV series in its entirety, but I know that in the show, Kenshin was voiced by Richard Cansino, but in the OVAs, he's voiced by someone named J. Shannon Weaver, who...makes Kenshin sound like an emotionless emo kid who smoked too much crack. And that's not his only problem! During emotional and epic scenes, Weaver absolutely cannot emote or raise his voice enough to make his performance convincing in any way whatsoever, which really kill the moments for me. Everyone else is the exact same way. The actors don't seem to care about their work here, and don't seem to want to give their all in their performances. Say what you want about the Attack on Titan dub and its scripting problems, but at least the actors could emote and put their heart and soul into their performances. Also, Enishi. GOOD GOD, Enishi's voice is the worst in the entire dub! He's supposed to be a preteen kid or something, but he sounds like a 40 year old man who's trying way too hard to sound like Carl from the Jimmy Neutron cartoons, it's THAT bad! I've heard bad voices, but Enishi's...is pretty much the worst voice I've ever heard. You want to know what the sad thing is? Even though ADV licensed this in their early days, they picked Monster Island studios to do the voice casting, and Monster Island is usually known for producing very good dubs for anime such as Nadia and Petite Princess Yucie, among other titles. Clearly, Trust and Betrayal was not one of their better dubbing efforts. And who was the casting director responsible for giving Kenshin and Enishi terrible voices?!

But yeah, if you want a genuinely good story with great build up, intense scenes, and a well executed romance, definitely put this on your list, especially if you're into period-anime. Just don't watch it in English.

 

[Juliko]

Whoa. Didn't expect to write another new review so soon, but why not?

I give this short OVA about a girl visiting a Hiroshima memorial site...a 72/100.

The thing about anime is that it covers a whole variety of genres, and you never know what you'll find. I literally just discovered this movie, On A Paper Crane: Tomoko's Adventure, today, and surprisingly, it was a lot easier to find than I thought, though that was because I knew where to look. It's a short OVA about a little girl, Tomoko, who visits Hiroshima and goes to a museum about the atomic bombing of the city. Although appalled by what she sees, namely the bombing reconstructions, she has a great time. When she sees a statue depicting a girl holding up a paper crane, Tomoko makes a crane out of a candy wrapper, and to her surprise, the girl from the statue, Sadako, magically comes to life and tells Tomoko about the war. The two of them become fast friends, though their friendship doesn't last very long because...well, anyone who knows about Japanese post-war history know that Sadako, who is basically Sadako Sasaki, technically died at 12 years old because of radiation exposure from the bomb.

War movies tend to be hit-or-miss for some. Many of them, with the right writing and execution, can turn out great, while others wind up being cheesy, bad, disingenuous, or outright insulting, again, depending on the staff behind them. Most of them aren't the most faithful to the facts (*coughMichaelBay'sPearlHarborcough*), or some try to use the war as a backdrop for something else. On a Paper Crane keeps its scope fairly small, focusing on a child going to a museum and having a magical adventure with the ghost of a dead girl. The animation is mostly fine, as the character designs are fairly realistic and not very cartoony, namely with the characters' eyes being small and not overly big and sparkly, and the way they animate debris flying through the air when the bomb is dropped is very lusciously done. It helps that the background art is well drawn and the movie doesn't skimp on the details of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park's monuments, particularly on one particular building Tomoko and Sadako visit. Though since this movie was made in 1993, the park was very different back then compared to how it looks now. The music isn't much to write home about other than consisting of mostly cheesy piano tunes making their corresponding scenes come across as more syrupy than they should. The song at the end is nice, though.

On a Paper Crane centers on just two main characters, who while not receiving much in the way of development, do have good chemistry and bounce off of each other pretty well. Tomoko is a realistic, well-meaning kid who is naive to the harsh realities of war, and Sadako is...mostly just there to exposit about the war and her own experiences with it. The movie is only 27 minutes long, so they don't really change much throughout the course of that run time except for Tomoko becoming more aware of not only what happened during the bomb dropping, but of Sadako's situation. But while I understand that this movie has good intentions, I really don't think portraying Sadako Sasaki, a real person, as a magical ghost girl who takes her modern day friend on a magical crane and flying around the world was the best idea. Doing that just felt ingenuous, mainly because Sadako is just there to be an exposition dump. I think maybe this movie would work better if Tomoko not only visited the museum and saw Sadako's statue, but read the book that Sadako's brother put out about her life, and maybe make the movie about Sadako's life as Tomoko reads it in the novel. I mean, Japan has made anime movies about WWII survivors before, like Ushiro no Shoumen Daare and The Glass Rabbit (Though I still think the former is better). Now, the only reason I even know about Sadako Sasaki's story is because I bought and read the short book about her put out by Eleanor Coerr back in 1977, which is a more fictionalized take on her life. While I can somewhat understand what On a Paper Crane was trying to do, but the way it told its story just came across as really cheesy, treacly, and overly sentimental for my liking.

To my knowledge, On a Paper Crane did get a very limited VHS release (I couldn't find information on whether this was a US release or elsewhere), even having an English dub, surprisingly enough, which is the version I just saw. But I'm not gonna lie, the English dub...isn't bad, per se, but a lot of the acting could get really hammy and cheesy. Sadako's voice actress in particular just sounded really stiff and stilted, like she was just reading off a script, particularly when she's expositing about the war. But I've heard worse dubs, so On a Paper Crane's dub isn't the worst dub I've ever heard. As far as I know, it never got an official subtitled release. If you're interested in watching this though, you can watch it here, both the dubbed version and the Japanese version without subtitles. So, in conclusion, while I wouldn't call this one of the better World War II-themed movies, it's serviceable enough and has its heart in the right place, but be prepared for a lot of cheese.

 

[Juliko]

I was originally going to post this review yesterday, as I managed to finish writing it then, but discovering Tsuru Ni Notte put a wrench in that, so why not post it today? This review was written on January 17th, 2021.

I give this anime about pretty boys forming a band...a 70/100.

Huh, I didn't expect to review this any time soon. So...Actors: Songs Connection is an anime that came out in October 2019, as part of a large multimedia project based on a series of CDs where popular male voice actors do covers of Vocaloid songs. Yeah, unfortunately, information on this CD collaboration thing is very scarce because that sort of thing isn't well known in places outside of Japan. The only reason I even know about this anime is because a podcast I follow did an episode on it reviewing the show's English dub. Having watched the entirety of said episode, I decided to give this show a try, at least to see what it's about. Let me just say that it's...an interesting beast, but not for the reasons you may think.

So on the surface level, the premise is pretty rote: A young boy, Saku Otonomiya, has just returned to his old hometown after several years, and he's not in a good place. His parents are dead, and his older sister Nozomi is in the hospital due to having an unnamed soap opera disease that's obviously there just to wring sympathy from the viewers. He transfers to Tensho High School and reunites with a childhood friend of his, Hinata, who is a member of the school's singing club. Hinata wants Saku to join the singing club, but due to his sister's illness, his job, and needing to pay living expenses, he declines. The singing club does want to sing a particular Vocaloid song he found online for the upcoming singing competition, but the song's creator, Sosuke Kagura, won't let them sing it because he doesn't feel as though the members of the singing club have enough range to be able to cover the song. Sosuke does, however, come across Saku singing the song he made and is so in awe of his talent that he approaches Saku to form a band with him alongside his other friend, Uta. The three of them spend their days together singing their hearts out and having fun.

...Or so it actually seems. The truth is, there's actually a huge twist that occurs in episode 5 that completely changes the entire genre of the show, but I won't spoil it. However, I will allude to it in my review and keep details under spoilers, because I actually do have a lot to say on said twist and how it affects the story and narrative. First off, the animation is decent. Nothing special, and the character designs are woefully overly colorful and generic, not different from other male idol anime with similar aesthetics, with one character looking like he walked out of a Yu-Gi-Oh rip-off (Hi, Mike! He's the red haired dude). On the other hand, the actual animation work is smooth and the backgrounds are nice. Near the end of the anime, there's a bit of action that isn't very well choreographed, with a lot of shortcuts and speed lines to make it look like the characters are moving when they actually aren't.

Being a music based anime, it obviously can't afford to have its music be bad. Well, the soundtrack itself is fine, but nothing to really write home about. Plus, many of the songs in the anime are covers of existing Vocaloid songs sung by the characters' seiyuus. Some of them are genuinely good, with many of them being well sung, but other songs are just generic boy band fare and technically unremarkable. I will say though, the opening song is a banger, as are Saku, Mike, and Mitsuki's image songs (Even though the context in which Mike's song is used is friggin confusing as hell!!). Those ones are the best, while the rest of them range from okay to plain generic. But that's not the end of it, and I mean this in a good way: FUNimation got the license to this show, and get this, they were actually given the go-ahead to dub ALL OF THE SONGS INTO ENGLISH! And they all sound really, really good! You can thank Sound Cadence Studios, the dubbing company, for that one. Seriously, watch Actors in English, because not only are all of the voices impeccably well cast, the dubbed songs actually sound amazing and not at all like the badly dubbed songs from the 90s and early 2000s! It also helps that Amanda Lee aka Amalee and her posse were involved with a lot of the music production on the dub. Seriously, I cannot shill this English dub enough. Please watch it!!

That being said, the characters are a mixed bag. Most of them just follow one archetype and border on being cliche as hell, but several of them do get some decent amounts of development, like the main trio of Saku, Sosuke, and Uta, along with one other character, Ryo. Everybody else just stays the same, and like Lapis Re:Lights, it does suffer from trying to throw in too many characters on occasion, many of which either serve no purpose other than to advance the development of other characters' or take away time the anime could have given to flesh out the more important characters, like Mike and Kai. The last episode in particular even throws in cameos of characters from the main franchise that we'll never see do anything in the show, but they're shoved on the screen anyway! Though unlike Lapis Re:Lights, which came out after it, Actors: Songs Connection does make a solid effort to build chemistry between the more important cast members rather than have them putz around doing nothing and have them move the plot forward without sacrificing their development. But even with that, the characters still fulfill generic bishounen archetypes, so they're still not the most three-dimensional characters out there. Also, I want to see more of Ushio!

For the first four episodes, the anime does seem like it's just going to be a cute, pleasant anime that shows off a bunch of pretty boys, but in episode 5, a huge twist is revealed. I won't spoil it, but it does change the entire genre of the show and force you to see it and the characters and world from an entirely different perspective. But in all honesty, I think the twist hurt the show more than helped it, because said twist only brings up a lot of questions that remain unanswered, and since the anime only has 12 episodes, it doesn't devote enough time to really exploring the ramifications of said twist. I try to keep my reviews spoiler free, but there's so much that needs context in order to understand not only my own issues with the show, but the show's flaws in general. So I've put the spoilers under a spoiler tag so you can check it out if you want more context for why I feel the twist hurts the show and its overall quality.

Spoiler: Spoilers For Episode 5 and Beyond

It turns out, the world of Actors: Songs Connection is a deep-dive VR gacha video game called Catwalk, where people purchase cat avatars and observe the actors, which are the characters of the game save for one, Keishi Harumoto—the white haired kid, who is the admin of the Catwalk server. Early in the show, there's a subplot where Saku tries to find a white shadow to ask it to grant his wish, that wish being to cure his sister. But the white shadows are actually free avatars for Catwalk players playing the demo. But the main conflict of the show is that Catwalk has been hemorrhaging money, and a man who is Keishi's boss is threatening to shut the server down unless the game can do something to get the world's attention. So it's basically a meta commentary on how mobile game franchises are replaceable and that your favorite characters will die if they're not popular enough. But there's so many plotholes and unanswered questions that come from this. For one, the characters save for a select few never realize they're in a video game, and the one time they're almost clued in on it, the main conflict is resolved and everything is peachy keen again, without anyone questioning it at all. What happens if they find out they're characters in a video game? Will they ever find out what the white shadows really are? Furthermore, one of the characters, Washiho Usuki, a teacher, realizes something's up with the world and tries to investigate, but one of his attempts in doing so causes another character, Mike, to fall into a coma...and said coma has him wake up in the Meiji era with everyone mistaking him for a female geisha, while we the audience see him crossdressing in a kimono. It's implied that Usuki's actions made Mike glitch into the server of another game, but other than trying to force artificial drama that never goes anywhere, the whole thing is treated like a Big Lipped Alligator Moment after Mike wakes up and the incident is never brought up again. This would have made for a great opportunity for Mike to get some character development upon realizing he's a character in a game, but the show has zero interest in exploring this aspect further. But my biggest gripes about the show involve Keishi and Mitsuki. Mitsuki, the head of the singing club who's always on his phone, is seen interacting with Keishi on screen multiple times, but Keishi is the admin server and shouldn't be able to interact with the characters he himself created. There's a scene where Keishi's dorm door disappears when Mitsuki tries to check on him, which is Keishi's boss cutting him off from the server. If Keishi is the admin of the Catwalk server, how is he even able to interact with Mitsuki, who is a character in his own game, at all? Isn't he supposed to be a human from the real world? Did he magically isekai himself into Catwalk? At one point the show establishes that the actors shouldn't play the game that they're an integral part of, and Mitsuki, being a character in Catwalk, should not be able to talk to Keishi in any way. Again, the show has so many plotholes that it never bothers to explain that my brain hurts just from trying to figure the whole thing out! If you try to critically analyze the twist and the ramifications of it in any way and try to put the puzzle together, the entire show falls apart. There's absolutely zero logic to this entire thing, and other shows like .Hack//Sign and, dare I say it, Sword Art Online, actually bother to try to make their settings work logically to varying degrees of success. So yeah, the show's biggest flaw is its setting and the fact that it absolutely refuses to do anything with it that would not only develop the characters, but make any kind of logical sense in any way.

But at its core, Actors: Songs Connection isn't necessarily a bad show. It just bit off way more than it could chew, and I certainly like it a lot better than crap like Lapis Re:Lights! That's for sure! If you want to watch a bunch of pretty boys sing and interact, along with listening to some really good songs, feel free to give this a shot. But if you want three-dimensional characters, a well developed setting, and a compelling story, give it a miss. It gets credit for trying, but it falls flat on its face where it matters most.

 

[Juliko]

Yaaaay!! I've been wanting to talk about this all year, and now I have an excuse to do so!! This review was written on February 14th, 2021.

I give this sweet magical girl series about animals and environmentalism...a 90/100!

(Now, as of this writing, I am aware that it has 45 episodes and that only 44 are out so far. But based on a new trend I noticed for certain Pretty Cure series since 2017, HG's final episode is likely just going to be used as an excuse for the Tropical Rouge Precure heroine to cameo before her debut in her own series. Every Precure series since Mahou Tsukai has done this in order to promote the upcoming seasons, which I think is really lazy and stupid, since they should just keep crossovers exclusive to just the All-Stars movies. Plus, episode 44 in and of itself plays out more like a final episode, making it a perfect stopping point.)

In the years after magical girl anime came to be, magical girls were pretty popular. Tons of them popped up over the past several decades, abundant with all kinds of creative, crazy ideas that the writers managed to make work. But since the mid-2000s, less and less magical girl anime started coming out because of the genre stagnating, even in Japan. Many magical girl shows that got released after that lacked creativity, were just poorly executed, relied too much on trying to copy Madoka Magica's success without taking into account what made that show work, tried to be too dark for their own good, or never took advantage of their formulas to show great characters. Most are just flat-out dismissed as Sailor Moon rip-offs without even being given a second glance. Even the Pretty Cure franchise, with its massive popularity, could suffer from this at times depending on the season. I myself have only seen a few seasons of it, with Heartcatch still being my favorite because it tried to break those trends, but the franchise is infamous for being rather clingy to its formula, rehashing it over and over again. If you really think about it, Pretty Cure is the only classic-style magical girl series left. I dropped out of Pretty Cure in 2016 due to other obligations and because of certain events that drove me away from the fandom as a whole, and none of the other seasons after Go Princess really appealed to me.

Then Healin Good Pretty Cure showed up and proceeded to steal my heart in the absolute best ways possible. I have to say: Man! I haven't been this blown away by a Pretty Cure season since Heartcatch! Granted, I still like the latter better, but seriously, Healin Good is great!

But before I devolve into my gush fest, I'll just get the story out of the way: A young girl named Nodoka Hanadera just moved to a new town with her family. After spending years stuck in the hospital due to a crippling illness, she's finally cured and is ready for a fresh new start in life. But on her first day there, a mysterious monster attacks, and she encounters several cute, tiny talking animals, who say they're from a magical place called the Healing Garden. They're in trouble because the Byogens, a mysterious syndicate, decimated their world and have plans to infect the Earth as well, but need the help of superheroes called Pretty Cure to stop them, as they're powerless on their own. Nodoka, alongside three other girls, Chiyu, Hinata, and Asumi, wind up becoming the magical girls known as Pretty Cure. Their mission is to fight the Byogens and make sure they don't revive their king, who could very easily destroy everything the people of Earth and the citizens of the Healing Garden hold dear.

Now, the timing for this series is rather...creepily coincidental. A magical girl anime with a heavy emphasis on health, nature, and environmentalism, with the bad guys literally being sentient diseases/viruses just so happened to come out during a literal plague that's still running amok across the world. Yeah, no thanks, COVID-19. Although, to be fair, the people at Toei obviously had no way of knowing that a pandemic was going to happen, and they already had their plans for the series laid out, so it wouldn't have been possible for them to change everything completely. Hell, Healin Good even got delayed for a couple months because of the pandemic, which resulted in a lot of Toei's plans for the series getting cut, even down to the number of episodes it has. But even with that, Healin Good Pretty Cure is still a great show for what it is. Now, not everyone will agree, as every Pretty Cure fan has their own favorite and least favorite series, and that's okay!

Let's talk about the technical stuff, starting with the animation as I normally do. Now, I've only seen several Pretty Cure seasons, with each one having a different approach to their animation. Some seasons bring out all the colors and all the dynamic character animation, both in the slice-of-life scenes and in the action scenes, while others tone them down to focus on the backgrounds, the CGI, and the flashy beam attacks. While Healin Good might not have as much expression and dynamicism as something like Heartcatch, its animation still does a perfectly fine job at what it needs to do. The background art is slightly muted, typical for Pretty Cure, the action, the hand-to-hand combat, and attack animations are always stellar to watch, and it's not as heavy on the CGI this time around. It also helps that the character designs are more simplistic for the girls this time around, what with the girls in their normal forms having regular hair colors, having less embellishments on their Cure forms, and I love how they incorporate doctor coats into the transformation sequences, along with other heavy usages of medical imagery, like Hinata's family owning a vet clinic. That said, I do think the monster designs are rather stupid looking. Not as stupid as the Akanbes in Smile Pretty Cure, but I wish the creators had done more with their monster designs.

The soundtrack is where things normally get sketchy. I mean, I liked the opening and ending songs for Healin Good, as they're all well sung and the CGI dancing sequences for them are top notch. But Toei has had this tendency to reuse music from previous series in other ones when it makes no sense for them to do so, especially battle BGMs, which feels lazy to me. Having not seen much of the Precure shows that came out immediately before Healin Good, I can't exactly comment on that one, as I don't know if HG actually reused previous series' music, but I will say that Healin Good's soundtrack is definitely one of the better ones. Light piano tunes, heavy metal during the fights, jazzy saxophone numbers, triumphant trumpets, every piece of music fits the show and its atmosphere when needed. Shiho Terada definitely deserves more love as a composer, and I hope she gets more work. She got recruited to do the music for Tropical Rouge coming next, so I can't wait to hear what she does for that!...though knowing Toei, they'll probably make her reuse music from this series.

The characters are a mixed bag, but when I say that, I don't mean that the main characters are poorly written. In fact, the main Precure girls are actually the best part of this entire show. One other thing Pretty Cure as a franchise tends to have problems with is its characterization, particularly giving everyone unequal amounts of focus and development even when it's not needed. For example, Doki Doki Pretty Cure was infamous for shilling its main character while refusing to give others meaningful screentime and development. This trend has unfortunately continued for other seasons, like Hugtto and Star Twinkle. Thankfully, from what I've seen, the Healin Good girls and the animal mascots all have their fair share of focus, development, and growth as characters, and even when some don't necessarily have whole arcs, they're all immediately likeable from the start and the entire series focuses on portraying them as sweet, down to earth girls with their own colorful personalities, strengths, weaknesses, and character flaws when they're not fighting monsters, making them feel much more like people you'd see on the street rather than cutesy over-the-top caricatures. It also helps that Healin Good eschewed simply introducing new characters willy-nilly and kept the focus solely on the girls, the mascots, and their immediate families and friends, and even here the series delivers, portraying them all impeccably and never going for cheap, easy ways to resolve their problems. Granted, some may take issue with the way one character is randomly introduced in a rather Deus Ex Machina-esque way, but the show does make up for that by having said character actually overcome issues that arise from said introduction (And getting some fairly cute comedy out of it, too!). Basically, all the characters are wonderfully fleshed out.

...Except for most of the villains. I say most because one of them gets more development than the others, and is actually one of the better villains in the show because he has a direct connection with one of the protags and is the reason she's in this fight in the first place, making her reasons for fighting feel much more personal and giving it more stakes rather than fighting him because he's evil. You'll know who I'm talking about. That being said, other than him, the other villains...aren't that great. They're not as one-note as the villains of Mahou Tsukai Precure, but the big bad is mainly hidden throughout the show and the other two don't really change much throughout the entire show, with the only female among them being little more than a haughty sycophant who can't even hold her own against the Pretty Cure, even with multiple power-ups. This is one reason Healin Good hasn't quite beaten Heartcatch as my favorite Pretty Cure series, because Heartcatch actually put in the effort to give its villains much more depth, personality, and chances to shine. Basically, Healin Good has great protagonists but gave its villains the shaft save for one.

But even with that, Healin Good's writing, while not perfect, is top notch. I feel it's the most consistent series in the Pretty Cure franchise with how it knows what it wants to be, what its themes are, and never trying to do more or less than it wants to do, or biting off more than it can chew, something other Precure shows have done to their detriment (*coughcoughHappinessChargeandMahouTsukaicoughcough*). I never found myself outright disappointed with any episode nor its execution or writing except for just two, and even they weren't necessarily bad episodes. One of those episodes did have the problem of trying to combine two storylines rather than just focusing on one and getting the proper mileage out of it (It's the one called "Gloomy Natasha!" Speaking of that, the show never did explain why Hinata and her friend Eriko referred to each other by English names/nicknames. Seriously, what is up with that?!), but other than that, I found Healin Good to be fairly consistent, which is especially notable because various other seasons' quality tends to fluctuate wildly, or wind up making some weird writing decisions that detriment parts of, or the rest of the show. Healin Good has remained fairly consistent and down-to-earth all throughout its run, though not without a few bumps in the road. Still, it deserves praise for sticking to its guns and just being an overall fun, heartwarming, touching children's show that deserves way more love than it gets! If you're new to Pretty Cure and wanted to start on one of the seasons, definitely give this one a try!

At this point, I've managed to finish eight Pretty Cure series, and I'm halfway through with Mahou Tsukai at the moment, so once I finish that, it'll come to nine that I've seen. And yes, I do plan on watching Tropical Rouge Pretty Cure when it airs. So here I present my personal ranking of Pretty Cure seasons, in the order of the ones I liked the least at the bottom to my favorite ones at the top. IMHO, Healin Good is now my second favorite season, knocking Go Princess down to number three. Even with the criticisms I mentioned above, it's a wonderful series with mostly amazing characters, and I really recommend it if you like the kind of children series that really try to tell an excellent story that takes both itself and its target audience seriously.

1. Heartcatch Pretty Cure
2. Healin Good Pretty Cure
3. Go! Princess Pretty Cure
4. Suite Pretty Cure
5. Futari wa Pretty Cure Splash Star
6. Smile Pretty Cure
7. Doki Doki Pretty Cure
8. Mahou Tsukai Pretty Cure
9. Happiness Charge Pretty Cure

 

[Juliko]

I could have sworn I posted a review of this here, but I guess I didn't. Oh well! This review was written on June 30th, 2011, and considering I mentioned this in several other reviews before this (On this site, that is), I'm surprised I never posted my review of it here before now.

I give this wonderful manga...a 95/100!

Can you believe it? Not only is there an old 1979 anime of Lucy Maud Montgomery's famous book, Anne of Green Gables, but a MANGA too! Anne of Green Gables is one of my favorite stories and World Masterpiece Theater anime (though it still doesn't beat Ie Naki Ko, Little Princess, Les Miserables, and especially Dog of Flanders) mostly for it's pleasant atmosphere, charming characters, sweet setting and nice messages. I only have the first three books (ironically, all of them are adapted into mangas!) and the prequel, Before Green Gables by Budge Wilson, but I love the book franchise and their anime adaptations. Strangely enough our favorite red-haired, freckled, incessantly talky and verbose girl Anne Shirley is quite famous in both Canada and Japan. Anyway, onto the review!

The story's about two middle-aged siblings, Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, who live on Prince Edward Island, near Nova Scotia (a province of Canada off the eastern coast). They're getting up in years so they decide to adopt a boy from an orphanage. But someone mis-interprets their message, thinking they wanted a girl, so they end up being adopted parents to a red haired, freckled girl named Anne Shirley who's well known for talking for hours and hours upon end and endlessly about anything she can think of. The poor girl's had a hard life, but she's full of imagination, and this mistake might be good for both the Cuthberts and the little girl they're stuck with.

This manga was first published in 1997, so it's rather old in terms of today's standards, and this being sort of a shoujo (in terms of anime/manga standards) shows with detailed eyes and pretty looking girls and such. But what great artwork it is! It's beautiful, and really sets itself apart from other mangas because of how it makes the characters look and the things around them. Even small things like the food on a table or the windows on a building are extremely detailed. I love how it makes everything look.

In terms of the presentation and the adaptation...I'm pleasantly surprised! Mostly at how the mangaka managed to cram 30 something chapters of an entire book into three manga volumes while keeping the most important parts of it (like Anne's saving Diana's sister, Anne with the amethyst pin, Anne dying her hair green, Anne giving Mrs. Allan cake with some kind of powder in it whose name escapes me, etc.). It's surprisingly faithful to the original book! It did take some liberties by cutting down Anne's excessive dialogue, but that didn't hurt it at all. Plus I love how she made the characters looks. Each character has their own distinct appearance, so nowhere in this book will you find characters that are drawn the same but with different eye and hair colors, unlike most shows nowadays. The anime does this as well, but I've only seen 6 episodes (but plan to watch it in the future) so I can't say whether that's true or not. Also, this mangaka has CLEARLY done her research as she managed to capture the entire 19th century countryside feel extremely well! It really feels like you're in a different time with the way the characters dress, talk, present things in school, play games, etc. I love stories like this so you can believe I was impressed! Plus even though this is a slice-of-life manga, I love how the artwork managed to make the intense moments look dramatic and add a little WHAM! to it all, especially with the scene where Anne PWNS Gilbert over the head with a slate. AWESOME! In terms of the scanlation...yeah, the scanlators CLEARLY used lines from the book and put them on the manga, but I didn't find that much of a problem.

And the characters! They're soooo awesome! I can't help but LOVE little Anne and her whimsical ramblings and her random thoughts on anything and everything around her. The way she overreacts to everything is LOL funny. Plus I've got to admit I think she looks cute with short hair (reference to her dying her hair green). The other characters are awesome too, and I thought they were fine with the small bits of development they got. Nobody's impoverished or caught in some kind of big conspiracy or anything. They're perfectly normal little kids living normal lives in Victorian era Canada (Yes, I know, Victoria ruled England, but you get the idea). I also can't help but love the way Gilbert looked. Awesome!

Of course, I didn't find many flaws so I love it either way, but I do want to confess something: I am NOT a fan of Yumiko Igarashi, the mangaka who drew this manga. Not because of her artwork. No! I'm glad she made a manga adaptation of Anne of Green Gables and I'm grateful, and so are a lot of people. Plus she did the artwork for Kyoko Mizuki's popular shoujo manga, Candy Candy, which was inspired by Anne of Green Gables! But I say I'm not a fan of Igarashi mostly because of the fact that she tried to wrongfully claim ownership of various manga she illustrated from their original owners, including Candy Candy, for her own personal gain, even going as far as to make a statement claiming so. I don't know why she would want to do this. It also surprises me that she's related to Satsuki Igarashi, who's part of CLAMP! I wonder how she thinks of all of her relative's legal feuds with various manga writers? While I do think Igarashi's behavior is very inappropriate and uncalled for, I am grateful that she made a manga for Anne of Green Gables, and wouldn't ask for anything better (though I wouldn't mind making my own little doujinshi if I were ever to improve my art skills).

So yeah, even though I sort of dislike the mangaka, this manga adaptation of Anne of Green Gables is wonderful and beautiful. I wish someone would publish it in English!

 

[Juliko]

Well, I sure didn't expect to do this so soon! This review was written and finished today.

I give this new manga adaptation of L. M. Montgomery's famous novel...a 74/100.

What?! There's a new Anne of Green Gables manga?! You read that right. Udon Entertainment commissioned someone to make their own manga version of Anne of Green Gables as part of their Manga Classics line, and it was just released back in November of last year. Anne of Green Gables is one of the most popular children's novels in Canada (Though I have a friend in Vancouver and he says he never even heard of it until I told him about it), published way back in 1908, and since it's technically in the public domain, it's rife for adaptation in any format. However, what many don't know is that while this is technically the first English language manga version of Anne's story, fully endorsed by Montgomery's descendants, it's actually the second manga version to ever be made. There's another manga adaptation that was published in 1997 by one Yumiko Igarashi, a mangaka who did the artwork for stuff like Candy Candy and Lady Georgie. Granted, that version was never brought to the States, so it's easy to understand why hardly anyone would know about it. I did manage to read that version and I absolutely love it. Of course, being a fan of Anne of Green Gables in general, as soon as I saw this, I bought it straight away...though, in the back of my mind, I had a feeling it wouldn't reach the levels that Yumiko Igarashi's take on it achieved. Now that I own it and have read it, while this manga is a perfectly serviceable adaptation of Anne's story and is true to the spirit of the novel, there's really no denying it: the Yumiko Igarashi manga is just better in every way.

Anyone who even has a passing knowledge of the Anne novels already knows the main premise, so I won't repeat myself here. As of this review, I've seen the following adaptations of Anne: The 1979 anime series (Which I consider to be the best one), the 1985 miniseries/movie, the 1997 Yumiko Igarashi manga, and Anne With an E, though I have yet to finish the final season of that. As far as faithfulness to the novel goes, this manga version is fairly faithful to it for the most part. It keeps the more important story beats while glossing over the unimportant parts such as Anne's trek through the Haunted Wood and the Sunday School picnic. But for some reason, the artist decided to reduce some of the chapters to just one whole page, completely glazing over chapters such as the liniment cake incident, Ms. Stacy's introduction, Mr. and Mrs. Allan, Anne falling off of the roof of Diana's house, and so on, with the events just being told through narration. Ms. Stacy in particular gets little to no pagetime in this adaptation at all, with the narration basically spelling out her whole character for us without even giving her any kind of agency or impact on the story at all, so we as the audience can't help but question why we have to care about this woman at all. This is one area where the 1997 manga succeeds: Even though it was three volumes long and covered the book in a probably shorter chapter duration, Igarashi was still able to not only give the characters the right amount of pagetime and development, but also made sure to adapt every important event in the novel, including the liniment cake incident and Ms. Stacy's role in Anne's life, never condensing anything to just one page. Igarashi knew what to leave out and what to focus on, and it seems like this manga can't quite seem to find the right balance in regards to deciding what to leave out and what to focus on.

There's also the art to consider. Now, the backgrounds are very well drawn, and from the notes at the end of the manga, it's made clear that the artist who worked on this tried very hard to get the details of the setting just right, from Green Gables itself to the meadows and flowery trees in Avonlea, so on that note, they succeeded. That said, the backgrounds aren't as detailed as Igarashi's, but they still get the job done. On the other hand, I find the character designs to be rather...questionable. I mean, they're not...bad or anything, but again, compared to Igarashi's detailed designs, they look woefully generic and uninspired. I mean, just look at the pictures below the spoiler tag.

Spoiler: Top: 1997 Manga, Bottom: 2020 Version

(Sorry for the bad photo quality for the second pic. Took this one with my phone)

First of all, the empty eyes on both Marilla and Matthew make them look like they're dead, and Matthew is, for some reason, given a really long beard that just makes him look like a discount Santa Claus. Out of all of them, Diana, Jane, and Ruby look fine, and I do like that the artist for the 2020 manga actually bothered to give Mr. Phillips a first name (He was never given one in the book or any other adaptation). Also, whose bright idea was it to make poor Gilbert look like another stock, spiky-haired shounen manga protagonist?! I mean, look at him! He looks like a younger version of Taichi from Blue Flag or Kanata from Astra Lost In Space! Josie, who gets little to no pagetime or dialogue in the 2020 manga whatsoever, just looks like a generic shoujo protagonist, while Igarashi at the very least gave her a design that fits her bitchy personality. While Igarashi's art style is guilty of heavily leaning into the 70s shoujo art style, complete with curly hair and large sparkly doe eyes, she at least made everyone look distinct and somewhat realistic, with her designs fitting not only the story, but the time period in which Anne of Green Gables takes place. The 2020 manga also has some continuity issues as well. In the chapter were Anne accidentally dyes her hair green, it gets cut off, but in the very next chapter, which is said to take place a while after that, her hair is immediately back to being long and in braids, which isn't possible. Again, this is something Igarashi realized as well, and had Anne's hair be shoulder length in her take on the chapter.

I feel kind of bad for criticizing the 2020 manga, though. I always try to be as objective as I can when reviewing anything, and I never go into something wanting to hate it. On its own, the 2020 manga is fairly serviceable for anyone who wants to read a comic-based take on the story without having to read through Montgomery's overly sentimental prose. It's not even a bad adaptation of Anne's story. The characterization is on point, the artist does make use of funny, cartoony facial expressions whenever the situation calls for it, the background art captures the feel of the novel just fine, and you can tell it wanted to do more even with the restrictions it had. But having read the 1997 manga, I just can't help but compare it to that, since that version did everything this version did much better, and in a more streamlined, organic fashion in a way that felt natural. Still, I don't hate it in any way. This is pretty much the only English manga version of Anne that we're going to get, and unless someone decides to bring over Igarashi's Anne manga and translate it into English, we might as well appreciate what this adaptation has to offer, even if it does stumble a lot in the process.

Not one of the better manga adaptations of Montgomery's famous novel, but it tries. It really tries. But for me, Yumiko Igarashi's take on it is better in every way.

 

[Juliko]

Welp, this just ended yesterday, and I finished my review today.

I give this cross-dressing LGBT themed manga...a 77/100.

Just like how LGBT-themed books are becoming more and more common, manga centered on the subject have started popping up in the anime/manga industry, with varying degrees of success in regards to how they portray LGBT themes and issues. Some, such as Yuhki Kamatani's Shimanami Tasogare: Our Dreams At Dusk, drawn by an actual non-binary mangaka, explore every possible facet of what it means to be a part of the LGBT spectrum, from finding accepting communities to dealing with the various types of homophobia with nuance and sensitivity. Others, like Kaito's Blue Flag, while well-meaning in its own way, tend to miss the mark on certain things with their superficial treatment of the issues they try to address. I first heard about Love Me For Who I Am, aka Fukakai na Boku no Subete o, through someone mentioning it in passing on TVTropes (For clarification, I don't have an account there. I just lurk whenever I feel like it). Curious, I decided to check it out, and as of this writing, all five volumes have been scanlated, and I've read the entire thing, with intent to buy the rest of the volumes that Seven Seas hasn't put out yet. So what do I think of the manga? Well, I do like it, but there are some things that prevent it from being truly great. And for any trolls wondering, no, it is absolutely NOT the fact that it actually tries to seriously tackle LGBT issues and take its premise seriously. I don't know why people consider that to be a problem, as I'm going to clear the air right now: This isn't a fetishy trap manga meant to titillate people. It's an actual manga that makes it very clear that it's going to explore LGBT issues, and anyone who tries to claim that the manga is somehow "pushing an SJW agenda" or is claiming stuff like this should never be in a manga or are pissy about not having their fetishy trap hentai can go piss off.

If that's the case, what is Love Me For Who I Am about? The story begins when a young boy, Tetsu Iwaoka, accidentally sees a classmate of his, Ryuunosuke Mogumo, tying a wishing tag to a tree. He happens to see the tag's contents and finds that Mogumo, who dresses effeminately for reasons Tetsu doesn't know, wishes for friends who accept them for who they are. Tetsu thinks he has just the thing, and invites Mogumo to work at a cafe that his sister runs. But when Mogumo gets to the cafe, a problem arises. The cafe in question is a crossdressing maid cafe, where boys wear maid outfits, and Mogumo doesn't identify as either male or female. Through trial and error, Mogumo gets to know and befriend everyone at the cafe, eventually carving out a place for themselves there, maybe finally finding the acceptance they've always wanted. But the world isn't very understanding towards people like Mogumo, and when certain people from Mogumo's past threaten to uproot everything they worked so hard for, the people at the cafe intend to do all they can to support their friend.

Now, a little background: Kata Konayama started off as a hentai doujin artist, which isn't particularly uncommon among up and coming mangaka, and one of the doujinshi he penned, Kimi Dake no Ponytail, was conceived as a prequel to this. So technically, this is Konayama's official debut as a mainstream mangaka and a sequel to one of his early doujinshi. On a technical level, Konayama's art is fine. Backgrounds are reasonably detailed but not overly so, the linework is clean, the panel layout is good, and I gotta say, Konayama has a real knack for facial expressions. But one thing I can see people having a problem with is that the character designs lean very heavily towards the moe aesthetic, with the employees at the cafe looking like cute little ten-year-old girls even though many of them are boys (With two exceptions, Mei and Mogumo) and are teenagers at the oldest. Most anime/manga fans I know aren't too big on cutesy moe character designs because of their somewhat fetishistic nature, which is fine, but in case anyone is wondering, there's no fanservice or characters being sexualized or put in compromising positions here (Thank God!), so you can rest assured on that one.

The characters, I admit, I'm conflicted on. On one hand, the author does try to give Tetsu, Mogumo, Kotone, and others decent development throughout the manga, which is good. But a lot of their development is tied to their sexual orientations, and while we do get to see some tidbits of their personalities on occasion, a good chunk of the manga is spent with them dealing with their own issues related to their identities, which can make them feel like they came out of an after school special at times. What I mean is, after reading the manga, ask yourself these questions: Who are they? What drives them? What are their interests outside of wearing their favorite outfits and learning about their sexual orientations/identities? Much of the manga focuses on the characters trying to come to terms with themselves, which is fine, but other than a few small things, it feels like the characters are solely defined by their orientation. Plus, other characters, such as Suzu and Ten-chan, don't get much in the way of development at all, and mostly have one or two personality traits at most. They're not bad or anything, but this cast of characters feels rather bland like wheat toast. It doesn't help that they don't exactly leave a good first impression at the start. I've seen a lot of people take issue over Mogumo getting upset over being misgendered by people who didn't know them and their circumstances right away, decrying them and their struggles as just being a whiny, entitled brat throwing a tantrum. I personally didn't mind Mogumo reacting the way they did in the first chapter, as I assumed it was the culmination of them just getting sick and tired of being misgendered but not knowing how to really explain it in a calmer manner. I mean, they're teenagers. Would you really expect teenagers to talk to each other calmly about these kinds of issues? Plus, Tetsu doesn't have much character other than being nice and an ally to others on the LGBT spectrum, and I really didn't like Kotone. I hate it when characters fall into the "I'm jealous of this random person and bully them because they have the nerve to talk to my friend/crush/whatever" trope, as it's old, boring, and really needs to die, though the manga does give her reasons for being that way.

Plus, there's something else I find myself confused about as well. Seven Seas constantly mentions Mogumo being non-binary in their blurbs for the manga, and Mogumo doesn't identify as either male or female. I have to ask: Does Mogumo even know that the term non-binary even exists? There's no indication that Mogumo knows that there's even a word for what they are. I think the manga really could have benefitted from Mogumo learning more about what it means to be non-binary and finding others like them. Furthermore, the manga doesn't always nail the occasional mood shifts between its various chapters. Some chapters can go from happy-go-lucky to piling on angst and drama at the flip of a coin, and it can feel rather jarring. Mogumo is also given a needlessly heavy-handed, angsty backstory—though it may be true to life for some who actually experienced something similar IRL—but Konayama really could have tried to put in more effort to make the drama more subtle. Also, the manga is weirdly short too, only clocking in at five volumes and ending rather abruptly. I don't know if this is because Konayama wasn't allowed to do more with it or if they chose to end it on their own terms or what have you. I would have liked to have read more. But for the most part, other than some needless angst, the manga does make an earnest effort to tackle LGBT issues in a sensitive, tasteful light and promote understanding and acceptance, even if the ending is cheesy as all hell.

While not the absolute best LGBT manga out there, Love Me For Who I Am is still one of the better ones out there, even if it stumbles along the way.

 

[Juliko]

This review was started on February 27th, 2021 but just finished today.

I give this sequel to the first Harvest Moon GameBoy Color game...a 73/100!

The first Harvest Moon game I ever played was the first one for the GameBoy Color via the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console. That was basically a pint-sized port of the SNES game, but without marriage, character events, and it basically locked you to your farm and turned the town into a menu. Probably not the best game to get into the franchise with. It didn't help that a lot of requirements to get a good score at the end of the game were not only glitchy, but extremely hard to understand. That was my entry to the series back in 2016, and I did find it repetitive and at times frustrating, but I still liked it enough that I wanted to play other entries in the franchise. There are three GameBoy Color games for Harvest Moon in total, and I own all three, but haven't played the third one yet, only the first two, though from what I hear, the third game has a lot of issues. But I will say that out of the GBC games I've played so far, Harvest Moon 2 is the best one I've played.

Like the first game, you're tasked with running a farm, raising crops, taking care of livestock, getting to know the townspeople, and so on. But there's an actual storyline here this time around: The mayor of the town you move to says that in three years, a company will set up an amusement park, and apparently that's bad, so you need to run a successful farm within those three years if you want to prevent the amusement park from being built. This plotline would get reused in the games Save The Homeland and Hero of Leaf Valley, the latter of which is a remake of the former, and similarly to Homeland, you don't get to marry a potential bachelor/ette. But this game does give you the option of choosing your gender, even though it's completely inconsequential to the story.

The first Harvest Moon game was very, VERY barebones in terms of features, and there wasn't a lot that you could really do. Harvest Moon 2 improves on it by a country mile by adding a ton of new features, such as NPCs you can talk to (Even though they repeat their dialogue over and over again), foraging for items in the forest and mountains, bug catching, and a goal you can work towards. Plus, the game introduces sheep as livestock, but you can't raise them until you get a sheep barn, which unfortunately costs a lot of money to build. The game also introduces hothouses, where you can plant flowers and herbs in clay pots, and yes, they count as crops, so you're able to sell them, though you need the scissors tool to get them out of the pot when they've bloomed. Speaking of crops, the game even lets you plant crops during the winter, so you won't have to spend your winter days doing nothing! It also helps that the setting of the game is much bigger and more expansive than the first game, with your farm being much bigger, being able to explore the town and the mountain area.

That being said, don't go into this game expecting expansive character development or any semblance of action, because simulation games aren't necessarily for everyone. This is a game that's solely about owning a farm and being part of the community. As I mentioned before, you're unable to marry anyone in this game, something which has become a staple in many of the more popular games, both before and after this one. Anyone looking for hotblooded action will find this game terribly boring, and compared to games that would come later in the HM franchise, this one would also feel rather barebones and primitive due to the refinements made by later games. Furthermore, the game does require you to make a lot of money if you want to get certain facilities like the hothouse and the sheep farm, which can result in the game feeling rather grindy after a while, and this is on top of the fact that the game doesn't allow you to purchase cows or chickens until you have a lot of grass planted behind their barns/coops. The graphics are the same as the first game's, what with reusing character sprites for your farmer, the animals, and the crops, and since the game doesn't let you carry anything other than tools, foraging can be rather tedious.

In all honesty though, I still found Harvest Moon 2 to be very enjoyable. I can certainly say that I liked it way better than the first game for the GameBoy Color! While not necessarily groundbreaking in any way, Harvest Moon 2 is still a fun little romp that can serve as a pleasant time killer.

 

[Juliko]

This review was written on January 6th, 2016, and I guarantee you haven't heard of this magical girl show at all.

(This review is based on the 2015 Wish Upon the Pleiades TV series, not the 2010 OVA inspired it)

I give this star-based magical girl anime...a 61/100.

When a four episode ONA called Houkago no Pleiades came out in 2010, I thought it was cute and had potential to be a great TV series. The ONA itself wasn't bad, but it could have been better. My wish for a TV series was granted. Unfortunately...my expectations were too high, and Wish Upon The Pleiades is a mess, not just in its storytelling, but in the execution as well. Which is a darn shame, because there is potential for a genuinely good show in there. In a way, the show IS good. But there's just so many problems it has that hold it back from being truly great. I don't want to hate this, and I still don't. As much as there are things that I liked, I can't deny that it has major problems that seriously need to be addressed.

Five girls are recruited by a mysterious, jelly shaped alien to become magical girls and retrieve candy-shaped engine fragments so he can fix his crashed ship and return home. But the girls have to deal with their own problems as well, such as family problems, friendship issues, and their own conflicting desires. It doesn't help that there's a mysterious magical boy with red hair who wants the engine fragments for himself, for reasons he doesn't want the girls to know. But Subaru, the obligatory pink haired main character, becomes friends with a boy who happens to look and sound a lot like him, but she can only see him in some magic garden that only she has access to. Their fates are all intertwined, and the search for engine fragments turns out to be just one of their missions.

I wish I was lying, but I'm not. Usually in magical girl anime, the fairy mascot recruits girls from the same area or even the same school so they can become magical girls. Here? They don't explain it in layman's terms, as the president, the jelly-like alien, speaks entirely in squeaks and star-related technobabble that non-science and non-astronomy buffs absolutely cannot understand. I had to go to TVTropes just to get clarification on how he recruited them: as it turns out, the girls were all yanked from different timelines into the present day, all from different universes. One: how does that even BEGIN to make sense? How does the president have that kind of power? They never explain it! Two: Why not just do it the easy way by recruiting all the girls in the current timeline? Yanking them out from different timelines just makes everything far more complicated than it should, and it makes for utterly pointless drama (evident in episode seven when Aoi and Subaru have to deal with their pointless angst).

While the anime does make a valiant effort to give the characters personalities and backstories, in the end they're all still rather one-dimensional. They're not bad, but they don't change throughout the series, even though change is a very important theme in the anime. Any backstories they do have are still really forced and melodramatic, they still don't develop, and Subaru and Aoi in particular got into some kind of fight before the events of the series and the way the show tries to explain it makes it come off as extremely cryptic. Not only that, neither of them even did anything to even warrant still being at odds at each other despite the show telling us that they have, and what problems they do have aren't even remotely substantial. It just comes off as being a non-problem at worst, and the show really could have been so much better had they either cut this out or improved upon it. Heck, I could try doing it better! The only characters worth caring about are Nanako and the main villain, with both of their backstories being good and believable, even if it's a bit contrived in the latter's case. The main villain of the series is great and isn't out to take over the world, nor does he want to steal fragments just to be evil. Just watch the show and you'll see. Also...apparently in Hikaru's focus episode, the girls end up going to the moon, yet for SOME unexplained reason, they suddenly go on and on about nothing but food! Not only did that feel completely forced in and out of place, but it completely detracted from the show's intentions and the fact that it was Hikaru's focus episode, so to have the girls suddenly gush about food while they're in the middle of an important mission just makes me think the creators were trying too hard to make them into ditzy food loving girls for no reason.

To the show's credit, there are things it does right. The animation is very good, especially in regards to space and the stars, and although there were some CGI renditions of the girls in early episodes, Gainax realized how stupid they looked and chucked them near the end. The soundtrack is very good as well, with a decent combination of piano pieces and orchestral melodies that really fit the atmosphere of the show. The voice acting is relatively decent, even if Subaru, Hikaru, and the president can come off as shrill sometimes. Also...apparently this anime was made in order to promote Subaru cars. But you wouldn't know that by watching the show, because unlike other marketing properties such as Pokemon, Pretty Cure, etc. there aren't any Subaru cars in the show, nor does it let any form of marketing interfere with the story. In fact, the creators focus solely on the story and the characters rather than just making a show to sell cars, which is the best way to go when making a form of media to sell products. That way, the show doesn't come off as a cheap, 30-minute commercial to sell cars. An anime called One Off tried to do the same, but it was just terrible in its execution and everything else, so Pleiades fares better here. It also helps that unlike most magical girl shows, the transforming items are pretty unique, their weapons are great, the girls actually have to work together in order to collect the fragments, the villain isn't a cliche take-over-the-world kinda guy, there's no cheesy catchphrases, no ridiculous hair or anything like that, and it isn't so sugary sweet that it makes you want to vomit. It knows what it wants and even though it slacks off a bit at times, it doesn't lose sight of its goal.

So yeah, while Wish Upon the Pleiades tries to be a good magical girl show, it ultimately falls short of expectations and wound up being completely shallow and uninspired.

 

[Juliko]

This review was written on July 6th, 2013.

I give this engaging piece...an 86/100.

Now I've finished arguably one of the most accessible and most popular (just behind Daddy Long Legs) World Masterpiece Theater anime yet! I remember seeing the first episode of Romeo's Blue Skies (aka Romeo and the Black Brothers) long ago, but that was when the fansub group working on the remasters was working on Nobody's Boy Remi and Treasure Island. Once they got to working on it, I jumped at the opportunity to watch it. I liked it immensely, and I still do, but things often tried preventing me from watching it, like school, bad downloads, etc. But after a long while, I finally got to finish it, and I am proud of it! This is one of the WMT anime that really got affected by the conflict between WMT and Fuji TV. Apparently it was so bad, that Romeo was intended to go for a year, yet wound up getting 33 episodes, resulting in hiatuses that went on for a whole month at most. That's pretty weird!

Anyway, the story's about a village kid named Romeo who couldn't be happier with his life in Italy. He has a nice family, great friends, and a good community that's sorta fallen on hard times. However, just as he's about to win a contest, a fire destroys most of the village crops, resulting in famine. What's worse? His father falls ill and they don't have the money to pay for a doctor. Romeo does, however, find one solution: to sell himself as a slave to the dreaded God of Death, a moniker given to a man who traffics children and makes them work as chimney sweeps in Milan. Romeo doesn't want to be away from his family, but he knows if that he doesn't get the money to pay the doctor, his family might get ruined, so he sells himself and goes to Milan. But things aren't as bad as people say, as in the process, he makes many new friends, his closest friends being the sweet but frail girl Angeletta, the daughter of his master, and Alfredo, a handsome fellow chimney sweep who seems to have secrets he wants to keep hidden. Romeo trudges away at his jobs while enduring all sorts of abuse, knowing that his friends are by his side.

Does anyone else think that the characters in this anime look eerily like others from other WMT series? Alfredo looks like he could be Nello and Alois's child, and Angeletta looks like Sara Crewe's identical twin. Well, that's just nitpicking. Anyway, while the animation isn't nearly as good as other WMT anime from the eighties before the conflict started breaking out between WMT and Fuji TV, it still holds up really well, and is still really nice to look at. It doesn't cut any corners and just does what it needs to do, and it does it well. Plus the colors are soft and neutral, so it's easy on the eyes like Popolocrois's animation is (or pretty much any nineties anime if you think about it). The soundtrack is also really nice as well. The tunes, while soft, pleasant, and normally fitted for a shoujo anime, fit the scenes really well despite its subject matter, and none of it comes off as melodramatic or forced (unlike some anime music like, oh, I dunno, ANY soundtrack made by Saban Entertainment's composers!). Seriously, I really need to come up with more to say for these kinds of things.

Admittedly, the characters in this series are a lot simpler than other WMT anime, though everyone still gets a healthy dose of development here and there. It's a mixed bag. I'll admit, some of them are completely bland and one-sided, and they're not as polished, but when the others shine, they really do shine. For example: I REALLY like Romeo as a lead character. He's not an idiot hero, nor is he perfect. He's just a regular village kid living in the nineteenth century who has to endure hardship and find joy in little things as much as possible, and he handles himself really well. He also stands on his own two feet when he needs to, and relies on his friends when he knows he can't. And yes, he is impulsive, but not in a bad way, and his intentions are always good. More male characters need to follow his example! I also liked Angeletta and Alfredo, even if Angeletta MAY come off as a perfect little angelic Mary Sue to haters (I didn't think of her as that, even though her character just screamed Mary Sue). On the other side, however...the only really bad characters in this show are 90% of the adults in the series. Plain and simple: they're either weak, short-sighted, indecisive, or evil through and through, without any decent development whatsoever. I can't say much more without spoilers. Sorry.

There's a lot to like about Romeo's Blue Skies, especially considering it's a show for kids. It has heavy themes like child abuse and friendship, and while it is NOT subtle in its message that the power of friendship is awesome, it works because it shows how the power of friendship can help through tough times, not just talking about it a lot and preaching it down our throats like most kids shows do. Not only that, I personally love the way it shows that boys can be friends in similar ways that girls can, because in this day and age, if little boys are ever shown being friends in the way the characters in this show do, they're automatically accused of being gay and how they shouldn't be sensitive and kind when being friends. That's a sexist way of thinking about it, and there's nothing wrong with boys being friends in a nice and sensitive way. It also takes great pains to be as down to earth as possible despite its fast pacing and action, and that works too, even though it did have to take some liberties here and there. But even this show isn't perfect. It's characters are a mixed bag, some nicely developed and others cliche and boring, it needed a bit more development, and there are just two major twists that really irked me. One is a minor one that, although it made for great drama, just sort of came out of nowhere. The other one, the ending, has me absolutely fuming. I can't explain which one and why because of spoilers, but I'll just say that they threw two characters, who only interacted with each other for only a few episodes and in a completely platonic way, together in the end while putting the one who was most likely to end up with said character on a bus completely, retconning her from existence and not giving an explanation why she never appeared again after that while two other characters got together for NO reason. It came out of absolutely nowhere, with no build up, no foreshadowing, no explanation, no nothing. I am still fuming about it.

Well, finally got that elephant out of the room. Anyway, other than that HUGE dark spot I described, Romeo's Blue Skies is a very engaging and delightful little anime with great characters and great morals and messages delivered with heart instead of cheese and cliches.

 

[Juliko]

This review was just finished today. I've been meaning to talk about this one for a while!

I give this manga adaptation of one of the more divisive Tales games in the franchise...a 91/100!

When adapting something into a new medium, one has to take into account how certain aspects will or won't be able to fit into or make the transition to whatever medium it's being adapted into. Depending on the amount of creative freedom or restrictions involved, an adaptation can either succeed or fail, as there's always going to be some degree of changes involved, and execution is everything. I'm pretty sure you all know by now, but I LOVE Tales of Zestiria. I think it's a fun video game and while I won't deny that it has its flaws, I still found it entertaining. The anime version, on the other hand, suffered too much in not only diverging way too far from the game, to the point of outright contradicting and ignoring many of the game's rules, but shoehorning in scenarios and characters from the prequel game when it isn't needed. Zestiria is definitely one of the more divisive games in the franchise, and every iteration seems to have its own flaws that prevent it from truly being good...except for, oddly enough, one that many agree is the superior adaptation of the Zestiria game as a whole: the manga, which will be the subject of today's review.

I won't belabor the plot summary, as anyone who's read my reviews probably already knows it at this point. But this manga adaptation, called A Time of Guidance, changes and rectifies a lot of issues that players had issues with in regards to the game. For one, many parts of the game are either compressed, rearranged so that they happen earlier or later, have events happening differently, or are just left out altogether. For example, many players of the game hated the four trial shrines, as not only were several of them really long and had really difficult mechanics (Looking at you, Water Temple!), they were extremely tedious, and were mostly just time-consuming fetch quests that slowed down the game's pacing. The manga doesn't even bother adapting them, as the mangaka was only allowed four volumes to tell the story, so the trials were left out, freeing it from a lot of the chaf that bogged down both the game and the anime. This also makes the manga feel rather fast paced as a result, which many, myself included, is a huge boon to the manga's way of telling the game's story.

It also rectifies other issues in regards to certain characters or events feeling like they were just yanked out of the creator's ass. For example, in the game, when Sorey allows Alisha to become his Squire, one of the side effects is that because Alisha's spiritual ability is low, his power is drained, and it results in his right eye turning a bit blind. The foreshadowing for this in the game is very subtle to the point of being missable, and many found it to just be a source of unneeded drama. Here, while the side effect is kept in, Lailah flat out mentions right in the beginning that making Alisha his Squire will come with negative side effects because her spiritual abilities are too low for him, and is even given a much better, more poignant resolution than the game did. The manga even expands on some minor characters roles and have them interact with the main party more than they did in the game, such being the case for one seraph, Uno, who they purify at the bridge leading to Marlind. He was just an exposition dump in the game, but the manga gives him a few scenes where he and Mikleo interact, and Uno serves as his confidant for a short while. These new additions and ways of getting around the game's limitations make the manga's approach to storytelling feel much more organic and less padded out. This does come with the side effect of having the characters not feel as fleshed out as they were in the games, but many of the other characters didn't have their backstories explored much in the game anyway (*coughSymmoneandLunarrecough*).

As far as artwork goes, it does its job pretty well. Shiramine captured the look of the characters perfectly, and the backgrounds, while not as detailed as the game's designs, still look stunning. The character designs are also slightly more angular, and Shiramine really seems to like using stark, completely dark shadows. I admit I'm not the best at critiquing art, so forgive me if I don't have much to say about it. As far as adaptations go, the Tales of Zestiria manga is pretty damn good!...but it does have one HUGE flaw that I feel prevents it from being a masterpiece in my eyes. While the manga makes a valiant effort to rectify a lot of the game's flaws, it does introduce one idea near the end involving both Sorey and the main villain that, if you really think about it, not only makes very little sense, but if you learn about the villain's backstory, it opens a huge can of plot holes that don't get resolved in any way. I can only assume this was Shiramine's attempt at trying to tie Sorey and the main villain together and make the conflict between them feel more personal, which isn't a bad thing, but the way Shiramine did it here just opens up a pretty massive plot hole, and I think they would have been better off had they tried to tie their arcs together in a way that didn't contradict the game's backstory for the villain in question.

Plus, the manga is pretty short too, only clocking in at four volumes long, so while it does cover the main story of the game, it leaves out a LOT of sidequests, characters, arcs, and many other things. This is mainly because it's just there to promote the game, not really trying to one-up it in any way. Is it one of the best manga ever? Not really, and it doesn't give you the whole package in terms of what Zestiria has to offer. But is it one of my favorite manga? Oh, hell yeah! So if you want to experience the story of Tales of Zestiria but don't want to invest in the game or the anime, the manga's a pretty good alternative. It's a fairly enjoyable, fast paced, fun little manga that cuts out a lot of the chaf from the game and is overall plain great! To me, at least.

 

[Juliko]

This review was written on March 3rd, 2021. Time for another Pretty Cure season, this time it's Mahou Tsukai Pretty Cure.

I give this Harry Potter-inspired Pretty Cure season...a 65/100.

While Pretty Cure as a franchise is pretty notorious for being very clingy to its formula, you can't deny that the shows always try to do something new with each new show, so no two seasons of Pretty Cure are exactly alike. This also means that every Pretty Cure season has their own parts that they excel at and parts that they don't. I fell out of Pretty Cure after Go Princess due to other obligations and...other things, but that's neither here nor there. But recently I've gone on a bit of a kick involving stories about young witches using their magic to solve problems and help people, what with watching shows like The Worst Witch (The Netflix series), Flying Witch (A very good anime, BTW!), and reading books such as Little Witch by Anna Elizabeth Bennett, the original Kiki's Delivery Service novel and, a particular favorite that just came out, Eva Evergreen: Semi Magical Witch (Definitely give that one a read!). Since I've been trying to get back into Pretty Cure thanks to Healin Good turning out really great, I thought I'd give Mahou Tsukai Pretty Cure a gander...and man, I really wish I could rate this series higher than I did. It has a lot of potential, but I really didn't enjoy this one. In all honesty, Mahou Tsukai is one of the most frustrating Precure shows I've ever seen.

The story is pretty much a magical girl version of Harry Potter. One night, Mirai Asahina sees a witch girl, Riko, flying around on a broom. She manages to find her and the two become friends, but Riko is on the hunt for something called a Linkle Stone Emerald. She's not the only one, as a slew of evil villains try to get their hands on the gem as well, intent on making sure Riko and Mirai don't get in their way. But a pair of magic necklaces they have allow them to transform into the mythical superhero witches called Pretty Cure, whose job it is to defeat these enemies. Their appearance doesn't go unnoticed, as the headmaster of the witch school Riko goes to takes a particular interest in them, supporting them all he can while doing his own research on just what these enemies want with the Emerald. Along the way, Mirai enrolls into remedial classes at the magic academy, Riko learns to get better at magic...since she's actually rather lousy at it, and on top of that, the two girls find themselves raising a magical fairy baby they name Haa-chan. Mirai's life is sure to get more exciting!

...And I only wish the series were that way as well. I don't want to be a killjoy, so as I mentioned before, every Pretty Cure season has things they're good at and things that they're not. For Mahou Tsukai, it's the worldbuilding and setting, mainly in regards to the magical world that Mirai and Riko are tasked to protect. You know how most Pretty Cure shows establish that the fairy companions come from a magical land, but the shows themselves rarely, if ever, show said magical land or give the audience reasons why we should care about it? Well, Mahou Tsukai rectifies that issue tenfold, as the first few episodes of the series takes place in the world where Riko hails from, and even after that, the story never forgets that it's there, often showing the heroines going back there on occasion or interacting with the other denizens, making it feel much more alive than most. This series, from the few Pretty Cure shows I've seen so far, actually makes an effort to flesh out its setting and explain why things are the way they are...most of the time. It also helps that Mahou Tsukai has no shortage of fun ideas that would definitely make the magical world fun from a kid's point of view. Parts of the world only having one season only, snail trains, flowers that make fireworks, ice dragons sighing on clementines to freeze them for consumption, a magical tree that produces magic wands when a child is born, and so on. The real world setting is nothing to write home about, but Toei really put their all into actually fleshing out the setting this time around, giving the audience reasons to actually care about it!

I only wish Toei put that same amount of effort into...well, everything else. I mean, the animation is fine, but it's typical of magical girl shows at this point: Bright and sparkly, with some off model scenes every now and again, with transformation scenes that go on for too long (Cure Felice's especially!), and 3D CGI for the plastic toys they're trying to promote. They also decided to ditch the CGI attacks that were prominent in Go Princess, so it gets points there. Since this season started off with a new composer and decided not to use the person who made the music for Doki Doki, Happiness Charge, and Go Princess, any music that's made is completely new this time around, thankfully. But it has been several years since I've seen Go Princess, and I don't know if this season actually reused music or not. One thing about this season's OST does stand out though: In Mahou Tsukai, the girls use magical gemstones to transform, and depending on one of four stones they use, they gain new outfits and Cure powers (IMHO the Ruby form is the best version. I honestly wish that was their default outfit as it has the best animation and designs out of all of them), and each transformation is given their own variation of the theme that's used for it. I'll give Yuuki Hayashi props for actually making the four transformation scenes distinct from one another, so kudos to him for trying. Not gonna lie though, the opening and ending songs are a massive downgrade from Go Princess.

Not gonna lie though, the characters are one of the weakest aspects of the show, and for several reasons: Mirai is your typical bland, peppy, go-getter girl who doesn't have much personality and depth other than "gets excited over everything" and even though she's a normal kid with no experience with magic whatsoever, she manages to master learning magic after just a few lessons at magic school. Riko fares slightly better, as she actually has to struggle and overcome her flaws to achieve what she wants to do and learn more about herself. Out of all of them, she's the best...but the episodes where she's allowed to show her stuff and become a more three-dimensional character are few and far between, and after her initial first arc, she doesn't get to do much after that. In all honesty, many of the side characters, such as Emily, Kay, and Jun, were more interesting than the main trio. I wanted to see more of those three and see episodes wholly dedicated to them. The villains are the absolute worst, being little more than Saturday morning cartoon villains with nothing in the way of personality or depth, and the thing is, rather than actually develop them, the show just kills them off in the first half of the series, completely replacing them with brand new villains right afterward while also giving them little to no purpose or depth whatsoever! Seriously, Healin Good, while it has similar issues for its villains, at the very least managed to stay consistent with them and gave them their required amount of screentime! And I'm not the only one who thinks this either. Isao Murayama, one of the producers for Mahou Tsukai, has stated in an interview that he came to regret how he wrote the villains, so when he went on to work on Star Twinkle Pretty Cure three years later, he made an effort to give the villains in that better, deeper character writing. Good on him for making an effort to learn from his mistakes.

But the character I have the biggest issue with is Haa-chan, particularly after she becomes a Cure. When she's a fairy baby, she's perfectly fine! But after she became a Cure, the creators made her not only overpowered as hell, but absolutely annoying too! Haa-chan is able to achieve feats that no witch in the magic world can do, when she's told to do or not do something she absolutely refuses to listen (Like using magic even though the others tell her not to do so, and even when she seemingly learns her lesson, she immediately goes back on it two scenes later), she's constantly shilled by all the other characters, it tries to present some of her more flawed traits at the expense of them actually being flaws, and worst of all, the creators feel the need to have her take away focus from other characters, even in said characters' focus episodes! One example being the episode where Riko reunites with her father but is frustrated by the fact that he focuses more on his work than her. For an episode that was touted as a Riko-centric episode, she doesn't get so much as ten whole lines out of it, and she doesn't get to do anything throughout the episode other than stew in her frustration and let everybody else do the talking. When Riko's father is feeling bad about himself and realizing what he did, is Riko the one to actually communicate with him? Nope, let's just shoehorn in Haa-chan and have her give the cheesy, moralistic rousing speech to him while completely ignoring Riko whatsoever! See what I mean about Haa-chan actively taking time away from characters who could actually benefit from it? I think the series would have been so much better had Haa-chan stayed as a fairy baby. At least in that form she was quiet and didn't shoehorn herself into every character's business and cause needless trouble for it! I wanted to throw my computer at the wall every time Haa-chan hogged the spotlight.

Lastly, it feels like the show doesn't really know what to do with itself. There are times when the show puts in some effort to flesh out its story and put on a grander narrative, but a good chunk of the episodes are pointless filler that amount to nothing, one of them being the one where the girls get their power-up item...and the way they acquire it is one of the absolute dumbest things the show has ever done. Do they earn it through training, through getting stronger, through overcoming an adversary, coming to terms with their flaws, or growing as people? Nope, they get it by way of a bizarre magical dream that has absolutely no bearing on the storyline whatsoever! At heart, the anime is a lighthearted magical adventure, which is fine, but the two halves of the show feel like two different series, what with how they shaft old villains in favor of new ones. I feel like this show would have been more enjoyable had it just focused on the fantasy world and made more of an effort to flesh out its characters and make them feel like three-dimensional individuals. In all honesty, the anime's biggest strength is that it doesn't ask anything from the viewer. You can just watch it, turn your brain off, and not have to think about anything difficult...but you can achieve that same effect by watching paint dry.

(Oh, by the way, don't watch episode 50. Episode 49 provides a MUCH more concrete finale and is a perfect stopping point. Episode 50 just shoehorns in the KiraKira Precure A La Mode main character for the sake of a pre-series cameo that accomplishes nothing)

Not one of the better Pretty Cure seasons, but it's a nice, lighthearted romp you can use to babysit your daughter/little sister/nice or whatever.

 

[Juliko]

This review was originally started on March 19th, 2019, but only finished last night.

I give this manga about two girls living in a barren world...an 84/100!

Not gonna lie, I had never even HEARD of Girls' Last Tour before 2018, but a blog I follow was praising the first episode of the anime up the wazoo. Curious, I decided to check the anime out, and while it didn't necessarily blow me away, I found myself really liking it. I watched the rest of it, loved it, bought all of the original manga, and now I've officially finished it! Seriously, what anime can you think of that has cute moeblob girls exploring a barren, post-apocalyptic world where humanity is pretty much extinct and resources are extremely scarce? Then again, this is Japan, and they've made crazier stuff than this. The premise is pretty simple: Two young women are traveling the world searching for food and shelter, learning a little about everything they come across, from abandoned buildings that were part of a bygone era, to sentient robots taking care of the only living fish in their world. Every day, they keep going, trying to find a little bit of happiness in their ruined land.

What makes Girls' Last Tour stand out from most works set after an apocalypse is its use of minimalism. The manga doesn't rely on long paragraphs of text that spoon-feed you details about the world Chito and Yuuri live in in every page. Instead, the background art and the setting speak for themselves. Giant, decrepit structures dominate the landscape, unstable and probably ready to crumble at the slightest touch. Industrial cities with multiple layers going all the way to the stars lay abandoned for possibly centuries. The manga doesn't tell us anything about the world Chito and Yuuri live in, and by making the girls know nothing about it themselves, it adds to the immersion in that they're just as confused about the state of their world as we are. They don't know how society works, nor anything about the technology save for what Chito has read in books. We get small details peppered across the manga in regards to what might have happened to their world, but nothing too concrete, and I think this approach works here. At this point, humanity is close to extinction, and knowing the answers doesn't change the current reality. The worldbuilding is really neat here, leaving a lot to the imagination, but offering just enough details so that we as an audience can fill in the blanks ourselves.

Another thing that makes GLT different from other, similar works is its contrasting tones. The bleak, morose setting and dark premise is rife for sorrow and drama, but the overall mood of the story is surprisingly lighthearted, with the main moral being about finding all the little joys and happiness that life has to offer, even after the world has supposedly ended, and to keep moving forward. What apocalyptic story can you think of where characters, while worrying about food and shelter, marvel at the night sky or throw snowballs at each other for fun? Or try their hand at cooking or have fun in rainy weather by using cans and helmets to make music? The character designs serve as a neat contrast as well, with the girls looking cutesy and moe, setting them apart from the realistic, industrialized, dilapidated metal buildings that tower over them and the empty landscapes they ride on in their kettenkrad. Continuing on in regards to the art, I like how the mangaka draws everything in a rough, sketchy style, with rough pencil lines, stark shadows, sharp angles, and unpolished drawings that actually add to the atmosphere of the setting. Considering that the world they live in is on the brink of extinction, the lack of polish in the artwork really sells just how hopeless and bleak the world these girls live in really is.

Of course, a story like this can't work without a good cast of characters to carry it, and Chito and Yuuri, thankfully, manage to do so. Since this manga only has two main characters, with very few minor ones appearing every now and again, the manga has plenty of time to devote to developing them and fleshing them out. In the context of the manga's setting, I think they carry the story very well, and their starkly differing personalities help them bounce off of each other with aplomb. It helps that their chemistry actually feels organic and genuine, and every conversation they have gives the feeling that these girls do genuinely care about each other, even if they have moments where they get annoyed at one another. This is the thing in regards to anime and manga like this, particularly moe anime: They think they can sell their work just on cute girls alone, but that can't carry an entire piece of media. Those cute girls need to have depth, personality, character, and nuance to them, not to solely consist of one overexaggerated character trait and then that's it.

Manga like Girls' Last Tour remind me of why I love anime and manga so much. They're able to tell a wider variety of stories than most mainstream media are typically allowed to do, and you never know what you'll find. It cleverly stays away from a lot of the cliches that plague both sci-fi and moe manga and, while it does have a bleak atmosphere, it never tries to be too dark or too saccharine, maintaining a good balance of realism and hope. Now, I personally liked this, but some people may not like the manga's slow pacing and lack of action. You won't find explosions and high octane battles here, and the story is fairly episodic, without much in the way of a linear narrative. But if you're looking for a solemn, heartwarming, laid-back manga about cute girls finding joy in the little things while surviving in a dying world, this is definitely the manga for you.

 

[Juliko]

This review was written on June 26th, 2011.

I give this wonderful, heartwarming fantasy...a well deserved 91/100!

In 2007, I had just started getting serious about watching anime, particularly those that have just aired during that year, while following some others as well. One title happened to slip my grasp: Seirei no Moribito. I knew of it's existence, but I thought it was one of those political fantasies that seemed really hard to understand, like Guin Saga, which I haven't watched. After feeling rather bored one day, I decided to try out Moribito...and boy, am I glad I did! I can't believe I overlooked this show back in 2007! But now I've finished it and I'm glad to say that this anime is in my top 30 favorite anime ever!

The story's about a young woman named Balsa who's traveling from her native town working as a bodyguard. She saves the life of the royal family's youngest son, the second prince Chagum, from falling into a river. The second queen, Chagum's mother, asks her to take care of her son and protect him because he has some kind of water demon in him. Because the water demon is said to bring torrid droughts every few hundred years, his father, the Mikado, wants him assassinated because he feels that Chagum's death will stop the drought. Balsa takes Chagum under her wing and protects him while finding a way to bring the water demon out of him. Assisting them on their journey are Tanda, Balsa's childhood friend and a herbatologist, the eccentric magic weaver Torogai, and two friendly street urchins named Toya and Saya. But despite their efforts, the Mikado's assassins want Chagum dead at all costs, and they'll stop at nothing to bring them down.

If there's one thing I LOVE about the show the most, it's the animation! BY GOD, the animation and art on this show is just absolutely impeccable and amazing, and I mean that in the highest respect possible! From the epic fights to the smallest details in the most irrelevant things (like scratches on Balsa's spear, grass leaves swaying in the wind, footprints, etc.), the animators surely brought everything to life! But what impressed me the most about the animation is how the characters are animated. Nowhere in the show do you see super deformed faces or chibiness or anything like that. The characters move, act, and display both emotions and actions in a very normal and human way, which is VERY refreshing in most anime nowadays. And speaking of human, I'm surprised with how actually HUMAN these characters are! Nobody has special powers, nobody can move faster than the naked eye can follow, no super fast healing powers, NOTHING!! When I see characters that move too fast for the naked eye to follow, I just feel it's lazy animating and too shounen anime-esque. Thank God, Moribito avoided this flaw awesomely and with aplomb (you'll notice if you watch the fight scenes, which there are only about four or five in the entire show)! Well, I guess part of this is due to the fact that it's adapted from a popular novel series, and I don't think novels can describe super speed that good, and the animators surely made use of this! And guess which company produced this? Production I.G! The people behind Ghost In The Shell, Blood-C, Bunny Drop, and currently, Guilty Crown. Some people say Guilty Crown's animation is awesome, but for me, pretty animation is nothing unless you've made good use of it and have some meaning in the plot. GC doesn't have that, and I'm gonna be bold and say that in my personal opinion, Moribito has WAY better animation than GC by a long shot!

The music...isn't really all that memorable or groundbreaking. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I hate it or anything. On the contrary, I like it. It's nice and subtle, and knows when it wants to be calm and nice and go all out, and does so at the right times. But it's not one of my favorites. I did, however, love the opening theme! I'm not really a fan of L'Arc en Ciel (again, not saying I hate them), but I personally think this is their best song so far, and the animation certainly did it justice! The characters...let me tell you this: in this show, there are absolutely NO flat or bland characters here. None. Zilch. Zippo. Nada. Nothing! Every single character, even the relatively minor ones, are complex and well rounded and far away from any stereotype we know. Balsa's the best and strongest female anime character I've seen, Chagum is the best damsel in distress I've seen, the supporting characters know that they're supporting characters, and best of all, they're all perfectly realistic and human characters without anything special to them. They all think like normal human beings and are quite intelligent. Don't expect any random stupidity or silliness or goofiness or anything like that. Nobody's mind-numbingly stupid in this series! Yay! I won't go into too much detail about why. You'll have to watch and see for yourself.

If I had to point out a flaw, it's that I think there should've been more conflict in the middle parts of the show and that I wish some of the supporting characters had more screen time. But in all honesty, that's about it. What I love is how misleading the show is. It looks like your political thriller, but it's actually a heartwarming tale about a mother's love for a child. I'd love to go into detail about this, but the love a mother has for a child is just too indescribable, so I'll leave it at that. I also love how the show develops its setting, by giving it traditions and rituals and some very well done back story. Heck, one of the episodes that had me on the edge of my seat, and got me excited the most, is one about gambling of all things! Gambling! But I think it was because I love the way they presented it. Also, I watched this whole thing in English on Hulu, and from what I hear, it aired on Adult Swim at some point. Man! If I had known about it, I would've DVRed it and watched it as it aired! Oh well, I watched it and I'm glad to say I love it! Also, the final two episodes are great as well.

Seirei no Moribito is awesome in the best of ways. If you're tired of all the anime tropes in this industry, then watch this. It's clean and wonderful! A great anime to watch if you want to get away from all cliches.

 

[Juliko]

This review was written on April 19th, 2021.

I give this anthology cartoon about a magical train...an 81/100!

So...I didn't hear about this show until just this year, when I started reading a fan fic that happened to cross over with it. I did remember reading about it several years ago, but it had slipped my mind. But since it was uploaded to HBO Max, I had an account there, and wanted something new to watch because of the plague keeping everyone inside, I thought why not? Then I did...and thoroughly enjoyed it immensely! I ate the show up, and it helped that every season consisted of ten eleven-minute episodes. I wanted more! Sadly, the show ended at four seasons, and it was planned to have more, but the execs at Cartoon Network, in their infinite stupidity, cancelled it because they didn't think the shows future seasons would really appeal to children...which is stupid, if you ask me. It didn't help that said cancellation resulted in a lot of creator Owen Dennis' ideas for the series never coming to fruition, because he had a lot more that he wanted to do with the show, such as exploring important characters and the overall lore of the series further. That's...really sad if you think about it.

But what did we get from Infinity Train? Every "season," referred to as books, centers on different protagonists going on different adventures on a magical train. Whenever someone is going through problems in their real life, they get on the train and find glowing numbers on their hands. The goal is to sort through their problems and get their numbers down to zero so they can go home, and doing so requires going on journeys of self-discovery through the train. Book one centers on a twelve-year-old girl, Tulip, trying to cope with her parents' divorce, Book two on her sentient reflection, MT, and her desire to get off the train, book three on the adult leaders of a cult of children called the Apex and a mysterious girl they find, Hazel, and book four on two boys, Ryan and Min-Gi, who have a strained friendship as a result of both their problems. All four seasons are connected solely by the train and the actions of several major characters, though they all have different tellings of the overall history of the train and who took control of it.

Now, it's been a while since I've seen cartoons in Infinity Train's general style, so I don't know if this was Flash-based computer animation or just hand-drawn, digitally colored animation that's prevalent in stuff like Regular Show or Bojack Horseman. But I have to say, it's pretty good! Every character design is unique, the backgrounds for every train car are gorgeous and always manage to fit the feel and mood of whatever atmosphere it's going for, and character movement is pretty smooth, the occasional still frame notwithstanding. It helps that the animators really go out of their way to sneak in little details that foreshadow or reference things to come. For example, one of the characters from Books 2 and 3, the blonde guy Simon? He was actually very briefly shown in a blink-and-you-miss it shot in Book one, and is a main character in book three. One episode of book three shows a character holding a cannister of tea with a picture of a mantis wearing a cowboy hat, and in book four, the two main characters go into a car themed after the wild west, only the denizens are all bug cowboys.

I admit I don't have much to say on the soundtrack, as I'm not familiar with the instruments used for it. I know it's pretty heavy on synthesizer music, and the show doesn't even have much of an intro theme, just a single riff that lasts for about five seconds and that's it. But like the animation, the OST is also pretty good for what it is. The characters are definitely the most interesting part of the series, as Infinity Train shifts protags between each book. Since the series is all about having characters grow as people and face their issues, it's practically a requirement that they develop and be fleshed out over the course of each book. I found all of them pretty interesting and well fleshed out, even the ones who don't change for the better, and they never overstay their welcome, so that's always refreshing to see. All of them have their own engaging personalities, problems, weaknesses, and strengths that help them along their individual journeys, and are, for the most part, pretty relatable. I found Tulip to be the best of them, and MT to be the weakest one, mainly because, while MT's issues are understandable, she's often unnecessarily mean and abrasive towards people who haven't done anything to her personally, and she gets very destructive and endangers the lives of multiple people and denizens when she generally has no reason to do so. Everyone else falls somewhere in between, but other than my gripes with MT, the rest of the cast are perfectly fine.

Like the characters, each book also tells different stories of the people who get on the train, all facing their own issues and going on their own adventures. This is a children's show, and a damn good one at that, and it's not afraid to be dark or even scary at times, but knows when to hold back when need be and handles tough topics with the right amount of subtlety and nuance. I've always been a fan of kids shows that treat their audience seriously and don't try to sugarcoat things or dumb things down for the sake of it. Hell, many children's shows before this, and even outside of America, like half the anime I watch, never hesitated to show serious issues like death, divorce, mental illness, and others. Unfortunately, the execs at Cartoon Network still can't take the hint and canned Owen Dennis's plans for future seasons because they felt the topics he and the other writers wanted to tackle were too inappropriate for a show aimed at kids. But when has that stopped animators before?! They also thought having a show with an adult main character would turn kids away from watching it, even though that's a loaded statement because there are plenty of kids shows featuring adult protagonists that many people like, such as Gargoyles, Samurai Jack, Avatar: Legend of Korra, the Batman/Superman shows, and even this obscure one called The Legend of Calamity Jane. So yeah, the idea that people are still convinced kids can't handle tough topics in children's shows and that kids shows should only be either overly sugary or full of gross-out humor is utter bullshit.

Speaking of which, the Pig Baby episode can go die in a fire. Who the hell thought that was a good idea?!

Unfortunately, the cancellation of future seasons wound up being the biggest flaw of the series. Infinity Train hasn't explained all of its lore, and it ended with a lot of questions left unanswered. Dennis has mentioned that Book 4 is meant to be a breather season to transition from the emotionally charged Book 3 to a Book 5 movie that explained in detail how one character usurped the train from the original conductor. So having Book 4 be the final season can definitely leave a bad taste in fans' mouths, more so when you learn just why it's the final season in the first place. It's clear Owen Dennis really wanted to do more with the series, and the fact that it's only real problem has nothing to do with the show's actual quality really says a lot. Seriously, why are all these American cartoon execs so intent on screwing over good shows?! Are they really that convinced overzealous Karen moms will attack them if a kids show is a little bit dark? It doesn't help that they consistently churn out crappy shows and make them overstay their welcome, like Johnny Test (Which thankfully ended a while ago) and Teen Titans Go (An absolute mockery of the show and comics it's based on), convinced that kids will watch anything no matter how bad it is. But we all know that's bullshit. Hell, when countries like Japan and France have more respect for their animation, even going as far back as the 60s, you know you're doing something wrong. Hell, American animation being only for kids wasn't even a thing until the late 70s and 80s. Trying to make kids shows as either little more than gross-out fodder or overly sugary, squeaky clean fare really doesn't do anyone any favors. Just ask one of the people who worked on Little Clowns of Happytown, a show that was intended to be the perfect kids show with absolutely no conflict, violence, or anything even remotely dramatic or thought-provoking whatsoever. That should tell you all you need to know!

So yeah, Infinity Train is a great show that unfortunately got canned before it's time. What a shock. But I'm glad we have what we do have, because at it's heart, it's a genuinely nice show that deserves all the love that it gets.