Julia's Reviews on Various Media

[Juliko]

This review was just finished today.

Rating: 44/100

Bloody Stumps Samurai is...a weird manga if I've ever seen one. Published in 1962 by Hiroshi Hirata, it centers on a samurai named Gennosuke Itoko, who was constantly discriminated against due to his family being burakumin. After watching his family be brutally murdered, he tries to work his way into a dojo and plead for the law of the land to be changed in order for the buraku to be a protected class. Two things make this complicated: Gennosuke's tendency to be extremely ferocious and murderous, even during practice fights, and the fact that the second his dojo mates find out he's a buraku, they'll turn on him without hesitation. But his plan gets discovered, and...well, without going into spoilers, everything goes to shit and Gennosuke winds up dedicating his life to getting revenge against all who wronged him.

If you're wondering what a burakumin, or buraku is, it's the name given to a minority group of people that were shunned and discriminated against due to having jobs involving death, like undertakers, executioners, butchers, slaughterhouse workers, and so on, professions which were considered tainted, ritually impure, or defiled during the feudal era. Basically, burakumin were seen as less than human, and while the burakumin status was technically abolished in 1868 after the Meiji Restoration, descendants still wind up dealing with stigmatization and discrimination to this day. The history behind Bloody Stumps Samurai's publication is actually fairly interesting, because at the time of its publication, it wound up causing a hotbed of controversy. Hirata had originally created the manga with the intention of writing a story about a buraku main character in an attempt to give the burakumin positive representation for once, as a way to combat and critique the stigmatization they were still experiencing. But apparently, according to burakumin movements in that era and the notes in the first English publication, he didn't do a very good job of it. In fact, the controversy the manga started up was so bad that it was not only pulled from shelves, but people were actually burning copies of it in public, the burakumin were that offended by it, and justifyably so. Hirata did try to explain himself and elaborate more on his intentions behind the manga, but it wasn't enough. And...honestly, after reading the manga myself, I'm inclined to agree that Hirata really messed up in his depiction of a minority class.

Mainly because the manga has a crap ton of other problems besides depicting a minority class in an unfavorable way. Bloody Stumps Samurai is just a really, really edgy, schlocky, super dark manga that's caked in gore and violence, with very little in the way of levity or anything to break up the non-stop misery. The manga itself is pretty short, clocking in at one single volume, so thankfully it doesn't overstay its welcome, so you can read it in a day. But man, similarly to Vampire In The Garden, Bloody Stumps Samurai is a tragedy through and through, so intent on being as morose, miserable, and unnecessarily angsty as humanly possible. Characters are always either screaming, crying, angry, or trying to kill each other, and Gennosuke both goes through back-to-back tragedies and horrible traumas with no hope or help whatsoever, but hits rock bottom and commits murders on the regular, so it's hard to sympathize with Gennosuke or root for him because he literally has nothing to his character other than "suffered trauma, wants revenge, kills all who wronged him." Yeah, I can absolutely see where the burakumin movement people are coming from with this: If you're trying to write a main character who's part of a minority group and trying to go for a positive portrayal, DON'T make them into crazed psychos who only want to kill people and literally nothing else, because that just reduces them to a prop for tragedy porn or paints them as crazy people in general.

It doesn't help that all the characters are pretty bland too. I already mentioned the problems with Gennosuke, but all the other characters don't have much to them either. They're all one-note stereotypes that either hate Gennosuke for being a buraku, or try to sympathize with him but wind up having to betray or kill him for some reason. Since the manga is so short, it doesn't have the time to flesh them out beyond their main singular traits. I don't know if the short length was intentional on Hirata's part or not, but it really didn't help the manga's case. Plus, the latter half of the manga has Gennosuke be capable of feats that really, really should not be possible for a human being to do, especially in the time period in which Bloody Stumps Samurai takes place. Without spoiling anything, there is an in-story reason for why the title is Bloody Stumps Samurai, but honestly, it just really broke my suspension of disbelief. Apparently Hirata-sensei came to realize just how stupid the last half of the story was, because he would go on to remake the manga years later, cutting out the latter half of the story entirely. But having read said remake, other than improved artwork, some extra scenes showing Gennosuke being kind, and cutting out the latter half of the story, the remake still suffers from the same problems as its parent story does. And in both versions, Gennosuke...let's just say he doesn't get a happily ever after and leave it at that.

Speaking of the artwork, for its time, it was fine, though nowadays it can be considered a little cartoony and rough, with very thick linework and equally thick brush strokes that are put to almost extranous use during the fight scenes. There aren't always a lot of details and it lacks texture on occasion. Granted, this manga was made in the 1960s, so anime/manga in general was still fairly in its infancy, and at the time, I bet this manga's art probably looked more realistic than anything else that had come out before then. I do appreciate that the more important characters like Gennosuke and his teacher actually look like big, bulky men with toned muscles and large physiques, with more realistic looking faces and angular facial contouring, which you don't see in a lot of modern anime anymore unless you know where to look. Plus, a lot of the art's initial problems were fixed in the remake, so I'll give Hirata-sensei credit for refining his craft over the years. I also feel like the story relied way too much on narration than actually letting the story and characters speak for themselves.

In the end, Bloody Stumps Samurai is a morose angst-fest of a manga that had good intentions but ultimately botched its message in its attempt to tell a story about a person in a minority class. This article here elaborates a little more on why it failed in its initial mission to highlight the struggles the burakumin people had to endure. I myself did something similar in some fan fics I wrote years ago, though that's a touchy subject I'm not comfortable elaborating on. Basically, Bloody Stumps Samurai isn't for me, but I'm sure there's plenty of people that like it, and good on them. It did inspire later works that would refine its themes and tackle them more sensitively down the line, so while the manga really messed up in its mission, it's not entirely without merit, especially from a learning perspective. But if you can't stand super violent, edgy manga with no levity, steer clear of Bloody Stumps Samurai. Honestly, I find the manga's publication history more interesting than the actual manga itself...and I'm sure that says a lot.

 

[Juliko]

This review was written on October 7th, 2022.

Rating: 71/100

Considering the Love Live series' pattern of having two 12-13 episode seasons for each iteration, it was inevitable that Love Live Superstar would do the same thing. And wouldn't you know it, not long after the first season ended, the second season was announced. It even aired right after season 2 of Love Live Nijigasaki ended. I need to finish my review for that particular season. I admittedly liked Superstar, though a little less than Nijigasaki, but I definitely enjoyed what Superstar tried to do, even if parts of it didn't always make the landing. But when it was announced that several new characters would join Liella, many LL fans were both excited and nervous, excited to see what these new characters would bring but worried that their inclusion might mess up the dynamic that the original members of Liella established. Plus, adding these new characters seemed to lean back into an established formula even though Superstar originally intended on just having five main characters. This was especially worrisome because most Love Live series often have the issue of trying to juggle too many characters at once, having some characters receive focus episodes while others wind up getting shunted to the background. Even as someone who's only seen this and Nijigasaki, I tried to temper my expectations and keep all this in mind as I watched the show.

Needless to say...the previous LL fans and I wound up being right, to an extent. So season 2 takes place immediately after season 1. While Liella admittedly didn't make it into Love Live, a new semester has started and they're looking forward to what the new year will bring. They even manage to recruit some new members: Kinako Sakurakoji, a spacy country girl; Shiki Wakana, a quiet, soft-spoken science fanatic; her best friend Mei Yoneme, a passionate idol fan who tends to hide under a tough, menacing facade, and aspiring YouTube star Natsumi Onitsuka, a greedy, money-grubbing gremlin who really, really wants to make bank. Things start to get a little heated when a mysterious singer named Wien Margarete comes into the picture and seemingly wipes the floor with all the other idols, including Liella and Sunny Passion. It doesn't help that she seems to have some kind of grudge against Kanon for reasons nobody, not even Kanon, seems to know. But Liella isn't one for giving up, and with new members under their belt, they're determined to get farther in Love Live than they did before.

I have a lot I want to say about Superstar season 2, and some of it...you're probably not going to be happy about. As far as the new characters go, I think Kinako, Shiki, and Mei are fine. Not necessarily as fleshed out or developed as the main five, but I found them to be okay characters. I do appreciate that Ren got fleshed out a bit more in the focus episode she got in this season, and I was pleasantly surprised by the direction they decided to take her in. Speaking of the main five, I do like that season 2 does put in some effort to develop them a bit more and have them try things here that they didn't do before. Remember in season 1, when people nominated Kanon to be the student council president? In season 2, Kanon decides to willingly join the student council as vice president as a way to take the burden off Ren, which is really significant because she takes on more responsibility, and is shown to be pretty good at it. That being said, I really didn't like Natsumi. I found her extremely annoying and her motivation to become an idol just felt really shallow and forced. But more than that, I also didn't like the new rival character, Wien Margarete. She just felt like nothing but a plot device whose only purpose was to boot Sunny Passion to the side and be a source of conflict that Superstar really didn't need. Poor Sunny Passion doesn't even get to do anything in this season! Her whole motivation just felt really stupid and melodramatic, and the show's attempts to make me care about this emo brat really didn't work for me because they didn't give her enough of a presence beyond her concert appearances to make me care about her. That being said, she does have the best songs in the show, so I'll give her that.

Speaking of melodrama, I know Love Live has a bit of a reputation for not always being good at tackling big dramatic storylines. I haven't seen the first Love Live series, but I know that had a particular subplot involving Kotori near the end of the first part that really didn't go over well with the fans. And unfortunately, Love Live Superstar also has this problem with a subplot involving Keke. I won't spoil anything, but this subplot was briefly mentioned in season 1, and it gets followed up on in season 2, but the way the anime resolves it just felt really stupid and hollow. It doesn't help that the anime has the characters scream their feelings out in a really forced, artificial way and go into cry fests that just scream "We're trying really hard to make you feel for these characters! Now feel sad, dammit!" and it really didn't work. It's similar to a subplot that Ren had back in season 1, with it somehow getting resolved with a handwave near the very end, even though the series previously made a huge deal out of it before. But whereas that subplot suffered from just having a convenient solution just handed to the characters without feeling earned, the subplot here with Keke tried too hard to force drama that could have been resolved in a less...theatrical and melodramatic manner.

And as much as I hate to say it, the songs got a bit of a downgrade this season. They're not bad or anything, and like I said before, I loved all of Wien's songs. But several of them just weren't as good as the ones in season 1. I admittedly really didn't like the song that played when Natsumi joined the group, but I did like the one Liella sang to welcome Kinako into the group. The songs range from good to uninspired. The actual soundtrack is fine, and the opening and ending songs are nice to listen to as well. But season 1's songs were just better by way of having more versatility and a willingness to explore new genres. I mean, why do you think people consider Nonfiction to be the best song in the entire Love Live Superstar canon? Because it kicks ass, has a fun beat, and is a pretty good take on rap and hip-hop, two genres I admit to hating with a passion.

But I don't want you to think that I consider Love Live Superstar season two to be outright bad. Like I said before, the series does make the effort to flesh out both its old and new characters, even if it didn't do so for others, I liked several of the new Liella members, Wien's songs are all great even though I hate her as a character, and the animation work is about the same as the previous season, so it's still nice to look at on a technical level. Plus, and this is a rather petty, personal thing for me: Superstar has no boob grabbing. Thank God. And funnily enough, a lot of what I just described could very well be addressed later on because Superstar was just announced to have a third season in the works, making it the very first LL series to ever get a third season! I still enjoyed the season as a whole, flaws and all, and you can bet your ass I'm watching the third season for sure!

 

[Juliko]

This review was just finished today.

Rating: 84/100

Kamichu is an anime that I vaguely knew about, mainly through looking through Anime News Network, but it didn't really catch my interest when I was younger. If I had watched this when I was a kid, I probably wouldn't have liked it. But I was bored one day and decided to sit down and watch Kamichu, since I wanted something different to watch...and I'm really glad I did, because Kamichu is absolutely adorable and criminally underrated. It hasn't even gotten a blu-ray release over here, and the last time it got released in America was in 2008, when FUNimation rescued it along with other Geneon titles to put out since Geneon kicked the bucket. I even like this series enough that I actually bought the old FUNi DVD boxset recently.

Yurie Hitotsubashi is your regular average, awkward, unassuming girl living in 1980s Onomichi, Japan. She deals with all the typical things girls her age worry about: studying for tests, hanging with her friends, and crushing on the cute boy in her class. But one day, out of nowhere, Yurie finds that she...became a God. How or why, the show never explains. She tells her friend Mitsue about this, but naturally, Mitsue doesn't quite believe it. Another classmate, local shrine priestess Matsuri, believes her right away and worms her way into Yurie's life, mainly so she can use her new divinity to make money and keep her family's shrine from being shut down. Together they set out to uncover Yurie's supposed powers and place in the world of Japanese Shinto, where cities, places, objects and even concepts can all have their own minor deities, and the girls encounter a little more than they had bargained for.

If you're looking for an anime that perfectly encapsulates the term slice-of-life and is just all around warm and charming without being overly so, then Kamichu is the anime for you, because the anime is mainly pure, distilled slice-of-life. Even though Yurie suddenly became a God, complete with using magic and making stuff happen because she wills it, the series doesn't treat it as an earth shattering miracle, but rather an after school job that comes with its own sets of problems, so her new Godhood isn't just there to be used to magically solve problems with a flick of a finger like most modern anime tend to do these days with OP protags. The thing that makes Kamichu stand out from other slice-of-life anime with a hint of magic and otherworldly creatures is how committed it is to being as down-to-earth as humanly possible. From the characters all the way down to the situations they find themselves in, none of it is overly dramatized or made into a huge deal. The various Gods and deities that Yurie and her friends encounter are treated as just a regular part of every day life, even with their cartoony, fantastical designs that contrast with the more realistic designs of the human characters.

On the animation front, the show just oozes small town charm in every day. The human characters all have believable, realistic designs that make them feel like people you'd run into on the street, and the animation further empathizes their humanity with kinetic, fluid movement that's used for pretty much everything, like running, walking, squirming, and crawling. Every movement the characters make is treated as a full body experience, like the animators really understood the physics of human movement. Even the characters' facial expressions are full of life, empathizing expressiveness over super sparkly eyes and doll-like aesthetics. The backgrounds have just as much love put into them, with the town the characters live in actually feeling lived in. Crumbling stone stairs, shabby buildings, cracked sidewalks, lots of trees and sunshine, and Matsuri's world weary shrine are all given a lot of attention and care. A lot of the set pieces used in the series are actually based on real locales and landmarks in Onomichi, even though parts of it are inaccurate in regards to their places in the real world (Apparently Yurie's house is based on one in the mainland, so IRL she wouldn't have needed to use a ferry to get to school every day). All of these things in and of themselves would be interesting enough, but apparently, the creators of the anime weren't satisfied with the fact that they had to air 12 episodes, so not only did they make four extra episodes as OVAs but treated them as part of the main series, but for the DVD releases, they even went as far as to add new footage and material to the already existing episodes to refine them and make them better than the broadcast version. Other than a few exceptions, that almost never happens anymore, and I applaud director Koji Masunari and his team for going the extra mile for their creations. Now if only American content creators were allowed that same freedom.

The music also remains true to the show's overall down-to-earth tone. Pastoral piano tunes, strings, woodwinds, soft guitars, and harmonicas all give Kamichu that gentle, small town charm. The characters are the same way as well. The main characters all have their own unique quirks, personalities, strengths, weaknesses, and idiosyncrasies that make them feel interesting and relatable, and the show is careful to portray them as naturally and organically as possible, coaxing emotions out of the audience and making them feel earned rather than trying to wring them out of you through artificial means like over-the-top backstories or having the characters only have one single personality trait. Looking at you, Prima Doll. Most of the characters are pretty likeable...with one major exception: Kenji, Yurie's crush. I'm gonna be blunt, this guy is bland as all hell, and not only that, he's such a brainless idiot it's not even funny. Why does Yurie like this guy again? I know crushes can be weird, but...I don't know. Yurie doesn't have as much chemistry with him compared to her two friends. Even two minor characters, Miko and Shokichi, have a more believable romantic chemistry than Yurie does with Kenji.

But Kenji isn't the only problem the show has, unfortunately. As much as I love Kamichu's more laid-back take on its premise, the show's intentionally slow, leisurely pace and more lightweight stories may not appeal to those who prefer their shows to have more action, conflict, or more meat to them. Hell, one episode is entirely about just Yurie lazing around the house under a kotatsu, that's it. Furthermore, episode 4 is a particular point of contention because its whole tone completely clashes with the rest of the show and disrupts it entirely. In that one, Yurie heads to Japan's parliament to deal with a cute pink alien visitor, which is not only too far-fetched, but takes her out of the appealing small-town setting. I personally didn't hate it, as parts of it were cute, and Yurie manages to do something surprisingly clever in order to help solve the main problem, but I can absolutely see why people wouldn't like this episode. Like I mentioned before, Kamichu never explains how Yurie became a god or why, and the show just expects you to go with it without question.

That being said, none of these things really killed my enjoyment of Kamichu. Now, the only reason I like other similar shows more than this, such as Natsume's Book of Friends and Haibane Renmei are that Natsume and Haibane have more of a conflict going on and do more with their characters, with Natsume having more episodes and therefore more time to do what it needs to do. Kamichu is simply a sweet, wholesome, charming show that's content to be as down-to-earth and pleasant as humanly possible without coming across as artificial or obnoxious. Having come off the absolute saccharine mess that was Prima Doll, that show relied so much on being as cutesy moe as possible that it did so at the expense of literally everything else and refused to make its characters interesting or likeable in any way. Kamichu's more subdued, restrained outlook works because the show knows that simplicity works better than trying to be over-the-top. Kamichu as an anime knows what it is and doesn't try to be anything it isn't, actually caring about its characters and stories. If you're looking to own the show legally, it's actually a lot easier than you think. The series isn't legally streaming anywhere right now, and the original Geneon DVDs are out of print, but you can find copies of them on places like Amazon and Ebay for pretty cheap. I managed to nab the boxset that includes the soundtrack CD for a little over $50, which is pretty standard for most modern series boxsets nowadays.

So yeah, Kamichu exemplifies all the good parts of slice-of-life anime, and is just overall relaxing and charming. Definitely give it a shot if you're into stuff like Kamichu.

 

[Juliko]

This review was written on September 19th, 2017.

Rating: 62/100.

Let me ask you: have you ever heard of Rankin/Bass? Of course you have, and even if you haven't, you're guaranteed to have seen at least some of their movies, namely their animated or stop-motion Christmas specials. Frosty The Snowman, Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer, Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town, etc. But did you know they made non-holiday movies as well? You didn't? No surprise there. Funnily enough, they made some pretty good animated movies. They even made several animated movies for Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, BEFORE Peter Jackson got his hands on the franchise! Bet you didn't know that, now did you? I sure didn't! But we're not here to talk about LOTR. Instead, we're going to focus on another Rankin/Bass animated book adaptation: The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle. A lot of my animation-loving friends had seen it and loved it. I even heard that many of the Japanese staff who worked on the movie went on to work for Ghibli, which is saying something! I had intended to watch the movie, as I thought it looked great, but could never find it. Then I randomly found it on Netflix and sat down to watch it. At first, I thought it started out great!...but the second half went downhill. Hard.

Sorry, but I don't think this movie is the masterpiece people make it out to be. Believe me, I want to like this movie more than I do!

Based on the novel by Peter S. Beagle, the story centers around a unicorn who lives in an enchanted forest, but has never seen others of her own kind. When she overhears some soldiers saying all other unicorns are gone, the unicorn can't believe it, so she leaves her safe forest and goes on a journey to find the rest of her kind. On the way, she meets a rookie magician named Schmendrick and an old lady named Molly Grue, who accompany her on her quest to find other unicorns and see what the deal is with this so-called Red Bull. Yeah, that's literally it. The story isn't much to write home about, as it's been done many times before in many other mediums. But that's not to say it can't be done well. At first, the story is rather interesting. However...we'll get to why it went downhill later on.

Anyway, onto the positives: first off, the animation. I don't think I need to say much about the animation other than it's just beautiful. Every scene is painted and drawn in painstaking detail, from the bright, lush colors of sunlit forests to dark, brooding caves and castles near the stormy seas, perfectly capturing the atmosphere and feel of a scene. The artwork really sucks you in, which really helps the immersion. I did notice a couple goofs here and there, such as the occasional body part being oddly proportioned, but it's a cartoon. What do you expect? Also, considering this was animated by people who would eventually go on to make Studio Ghibli, is it really any surprise that the animation looks as good as it does? Honestly, I didn't find the music to be very memorable even though I liked the soundtrack, but the songs were very good as far as I know. Most of them were sung by an old band called America, who I honestly never heard of. Then again, I was born in 1993 so I know nothing about them anyhow. I really did like their Last Unicorn song, which plays at the beginning and end of the movie. I did, however, find out that the soundtrack was done by an actual orchestra, and I'm a sucker for orchestras, so...forgive me for being kinda superficial here, but I'm willing to give it points just for that alone. Yeah, I'm soooo objective, right?

In the first half of the movie, the characters are...okay, I guess. Not bad, but not particularly reaching any highs in terms of character development either. Schmendrick was pretty fun, and Molly, while her characterization was inconsistent at first, eventually came into her own later on. Note how I only talk about the first half of the movie and not the second half. That's because the movie REALLY derails after the second half, and it's overall quality takes a nose dive harder than a fat man jumping into a pool. No, I'm not even kidding. Few movies and shows I've seen have transgressed from so good to so utterly bad in such a short amount of time. As much as I really want to like this movie more than I do, other than the animation, I honestly can't say anything positive about the utter mess this movie becomes. When the characters find their way to a mysterious dark castle, the movie loses all of its subtlety and does away with everything that made it good. The stay at the castle is unnecessarily padded out, the characters lose all their charms, new ones are introduced that serve utterly no purpose, and so on. The unicorn in particular really suffers when she's made to turn human, because when she becomes a human girl, she suddenly turns into this whiny, indecisive, bland, lovesick shoujo anime girl with no agency or self-awareness. Oh, and the movie introduces a love interest to her, and the romantic development between them is just BAAAD. When they first meet, the unicorn understandably doesn't want to be near him, but not two scenes later, the two kiss and make out even though they not only just met, but have no reason to even get together in the first place! The reveal at the end is not only really stupid, it also raises a lot of questions that the movie makes no attempt to answer.

I hate to be so hard on this movie, as it really could have been something great and did something with its premise. But as it is, I can't recommend it unless you want a study on how not to write a story. The Last Unicorn tries to be good, but the awful second half just isn't worth the watch.

 

[Juliko]

More book reviews. And not very good ones.

Donut Go Breaking My Heart by Suzanne Nelson
Rating: 6.5/10
Cute, but rehashes way too many romance tropes for my tastes and doesn't really try anything new with it. Shy girl somehow gets to work with a famous heart throb actor in a movie and has to come out of her shell, complete with love triangle drama involving a very annoying best friend. The whole thing just screamed kids book version of a typical romance novel. It's basically like junk food; sweet, but having very little in the way of substance and doesn't fill you up. Eh, it's nothing special.

Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
Rating: 6/10
Ah yes, the Newberry Medal Award winning book that spawned the famous "Death by Newberry Medal" joke that continues to this day. I read this a while ago, and...I think this is just average at best. Jess and Leslie as main characters are fine, though the supporting cast isn't all that well fleshed out. I also felt like a lot of the prose came off as disjointed, and the book also has some...rather questionable seventies values that nowadays are considered outdated, like a lot of sexism, body-shaming, questionable methods of dealing with child abuse, and assuming Jess is gay because he has a female friend. Honestly, I can't really see why this book became as popular as it did. And no, unlike most people, I have no issue with the fact that death is a prominent theme in the book by the end, and since that was based on a real event that one of Paterson's children experienced, I'm not gonna knock her for wanting to draw on her own experiences and that of her family's for the book.

Write This Down by Claudia Mills
Rating: 4/10
Ugh, this was such a slog to go through it's not even funny. All of the characters are bland and shallow, the story takes FOREVER to get anywhere, and the story wants you to be invested in Autumn's crush on this boy Cameron, but it doesn't work because, 1. Autumn never even so much as TALKS to Cameron beyond the occasional one-word conversation and makes no effort to really converse with him in any capacity, and 2. Their subplot just gets dropped with no resolution at all at the end, so wound up being completely and utterly pointless, along with another one that was established in the very beginning of the story! Don't bother with this one.

 

[Juliko]

This review was started on April 16th, 2022, but I didn't finish it until later.

Rating: 94/100

Last year in July, Seven Seas Entertainment announced that they had licensed a bunch of new novels and manga, but only one of them really stood out to me. That manga was an anthology called My Brain is Different: Stories of ADHD and Other Developmental Disorders, and it promised to explore stories of people dealing with neurological conditions such as autism, ADHD, and so on. Being autistic myself and having struggled with things my neurotypical peers and even family had no problems with, I was all in. Of all the manga Seven Seas licensed, this was the one I was looking forward to the most, to the point that I bought the book the second it came out. Anyone who's talked to me at all knows that my favorite manga ever is With The Light: Raising an Autistic Child, and media representation of autism varies wildly, from genuinely good (This and as of recently, the Netflix cartoon Dead End Paranormal Park) to flat-out bad (Sia's film Music and the TV show Atypical). Sadly, companies like Autism Speaks still contribute to the stigmas and discrimination that autistic people face on a regular basis, what with their emphasis on trying to find a cure and making autistic people out to be nothing more than brain dead manchildren who cause their family endless misery. Blech. Thankfully, My Brain is Different, while it's a pretty heavy book, is far smarter and more respectful towards its subject matter. I mean, it has to be, since the creator, Monsuzu, actually has ADHD herself and two sons who have it. I myself was diagnosed autistic as a toddler, long before Autism Speaks ever became a thing, and thankfully, my parents have always loved and accepted me for who I am.

My Brain is Different is also an autobiographical manga, telling not just Monsuzu's story, but the stories of others going through the same struggles. Basically, the manga was first conceived when Monsuzu found out that her firstborn son wasn't meeting his developmental milestones, so she took him to a pediatrician, who suggested he may have a neurological condition like autism or ADHD. Curious to know more, Monsuzu did some research on her own and was shocked to find that the symptoms of ADHD describe not just her child, but herself to a T. She also found that the popular narratives trying to highlight these neurological conditions were overwhelmingly negative. Rather than just accept things as they are, Monsuzu decided to reach out to other people dealing with similar struggles and learn their stories, whether they cope with it themselves or have loved ones who do. Monsuzu herself would eventually receive an ADHD diagnosis, but only in late adulthood, so she struggled a lot throughout her younger years, which is the focus of the first story in this collection of nine stories.

If you do plan on reading this anthology manga, do be warned that it has a lot of triggering content in it such as bullying, abuse, suicide, drug use, and so on, all of which are recurring themes in the book, though not everyone Monsuzu highlights deals with each one. Being neurodivergent in a neurotypical world is difficult—I should know, I myself am autistic—and in a country like Japan, which is a culture that demands conformity and adhering to societal norms (Though far from the only one), I can only imagine it being more so. Many people who are neurodivergent, such as the people Monsuzu consulted for her book, often have trouble with things Japanese society values highly, such as hygiene, punctuality, tidiness, and reading the atmosphere. While some such as myself were diagnosed as infants or children, there are just as many people who didn't receive official diagnoses until adulthood, and by then had faced dire social, academic, and professional consequences for parts of themselves they couldn't change or understand. But these struggles are very real no matter what country you come from. My Brain Is Different is not interested in depicting a rosy picture of dealing with neurological disabilities, but it also has no interest in simply dramatizing them and making them, and the people who deal with them, into flat-out tragedies. Interestingly, Monsuzu, by her own admission, said that she mainly selected the stories of people who struggled very hard and hit rock bottom before things improved for them, and that while she received letters from people who received their diagnoses young and didn't face much in the way of difficulties, those stories can be hard to translate into something people would want to read.

Following up on this, one thing that My Brain Is Different absolutely nails is empathizing that the stories of neurodivergent people do not conform to a singular narrative. Not every story in the book follows the same arc. Iku struggled with life until her Strattera medication helped her find peace. Matsubokkuri dealt with years of abuse, ableism, poverty, self-neglect, and spending a good portion of her life taking care of her sick mother, all of which ruined her self-confidence, before her younger brother suggested she might be neurodivergent and began finding her own path. Tommy hasn't always been very sympathetic to her daughter Risa's struggles, often trying to force her to be more neurotypical, and even though their relationship has improved over time, they don't always see eye to eye. My favorite of the chapters is the one starring Hanako and her autistic son Taro, because it frankly dispels and goes against every single negative stereotype about autism and how to deal with autistic people. Hanako does all she can to accommodate her son's needs, even though her extended family gives her a lot of pushback for it, and Taro himself, through trial and error, grows up into a well-adjusted adult who happily embraces his authentic self. Hanako even tells Taro about his being autistic at one point when he was a child and explains in detail what it entails for him, something that is explicitly shown as being good for the both of them in the long run, something I wish more parents would do with their autistic kids. Another favorite of mine is the last chapter, about Yoshiko, who dealt with years of bullying and abuse despite her best efforts to conform to people's expectations, only finding happiness after she became a teacher for special needs kids, being diagnosed as autistic, and finally finding people who understood the pain she went through. A common thread throughout all of these stories is that these people struggled to get people to understand them, and after receiving their diagnoses, they learn to understand themselves and their own needs, even if the world around them doesn't share that understanding, and that proper accommodations, support, and people who really take the time to be patient, listen, and truly help them can do wonders for their overall happiness.

As for Monsuzu's art, it's very simple and clean, but still manages to be expressive and poignant in its simplicity. Monsuzu, by her own admission, claims she's not a very good artist and only got into drawing later in life, having previously hated it before. Personally, I abide by the philosophy that it doesn't really matter how bad or good one's art is as long as they love what they do and are having fun with it. Besides, Monsuzu's art is more of a scaffolding to the stories told by the people who live with their neurological conditions every day, and I think, in this case, the minimalism and simplicity works very well. My Brain Is Different's biggest strength is the fact that neurodivergent people are telling their own stories in their own words. To quote another reviewer, it's all too common for organizations to claim to speak for people with developmental disorders, especially autism, and instead speak over them. The conversation around developmental disorders tends to be controlled by neurotypical people, privileging the perspectives of people who feel inconvenienced by us or treat us with smiling patronism or as inspiration porn. The stories Monzusu highlights are simple and quiet, with no grand triumphs or overcoming the odds, and nobody stands up and claps at the end. But seriously, as flawed as Japan's own treatment of neurodivergent people is, it still says a lot that stuff like this manages to provide far more nuanced and thoughtful depictions of neurodivergents than the professionally made movies, shows, and books that we filthy Americans put out. Don't even get me started on those so-called "autism warrior parent" memoirs that are constantly churned out and praised for being "honest and funny" showings of what it's like to raise an autistic child. Looking at you, To Siri With Love.

I don't have much in the way of complaints about the anthology, except for one: Matsubokkuri is said to have schizophrenia, but that never really comes through in the manga, and by that I mean she doesn't show a lot of the symptoms of schizophrenia, such as hallucinations, delusions, psychosis, or the like. At least, the manga doesn't show it. Maybe Monsuzu wanted to focus more on their ADHD, or maybe Matsubokkuri requested that her schizophrenia not be the focus. Who knows? Since these are real people telling their stories through Monsuzu's art, I'm not in a position to judge how much a person wants to disclose, and I can understand not wanting to disclose certain aspects of their condition for a variety of reasons. Plus, the manga uses some outdated terminology, such as referring to Autism as Asperger Syndrome, though you have to take into consideration that Japan hasn't made the same strides in understanding mental illness and certain neurological conditions like the US and Canada have. The DSM absorbed Aspergers into "Autism Spectrum Disorder" in 2013, while the ICD, which is used outside the US, still lists it as a separate diagnosis. Even referring to ADHD and Autism as disorders is considered controversial in some circles. Some notes in the manga do acknowledge this, and only kept the outdated terminology in tact out of respect for the people who use them themselves, even if it may be considered problematic to us. Plus, since Japan is a very different culture than, say, America and Canada, the people featured in My Brain Is Different are real people who experience their neurodivergence differently from people reading the book under a different translation. Hell, Highroad flat-out says that Japan still isn't flexible enough to accept other people's values like the West does, which is harsh but apt. Plus, several of the stories in My Brain is Different end very abruptly, and I'm sure there are quite a few readers who won't appreciate this, especially if they like something with neat, tidy resolutions. I personally didn't mind this, as the stories are clearly based on real people, and real life doesn't always come with neat resolutions with bows on top.

So yeah, My Brain Is Different is pretty awesome, and I feel it absolutely deserves to be seen by more people, and its messages are pretty important and relevant no matter which country you hail from. The world has come a long way in understanding and accommodating the needs of the disabled and neurodivergent, but there's also a long way we still need to go. The book could be a very useful tool for helping people understand themselves and others. Seriously, if this had come out when I was a kid, I would have devoured it. Stuff like My Brain Is Different is the best way to depict the neurodivergent experience, not the crap perpetuated by companies like Autism Speak or those autism warrior parent books that constantly shill abuse as the best way to raise a neurodivergent child. If the rating is any indication, did My Brain Is Different become one of my favorite manga ever? Well, it's certainly amazing, and what little flaws I mentioned don't detract from my enjoyment of it, but those flaws do prevent it from placing higher in my favorites. Still, a spot on my top ten favorite manga of all time has most definitely been conquered, and I adore stories that manage to get a huge emotional response out of me, this being one of them. If you're looking for genuinely authentic, relatable depictions of neurodivergent people that don't lean into non-stop tragedy or inspiration porn, please, do yourself a favor and read My Brain is Different.

 

[Juliko]

I started reviewing this on October 18th, 2022, but only finished it last night.

Rating: 74/100

Show of hands, who here has ever heard of this old movie from 1969 called The Flying Phantom Ship before this year? No? Me neither. Like with Mrs. Pepperpot, I've never even knew Flying Phantom Ship existed until Discotek Media announced on their Twitter page that they licensed it this past May. Not only that, they even made an English dub for it because the original music and effects tracks, which are required to make dubs in different audio, were actually preserved, something which wasn't considered a common practice back in the sixties. This effectively makes Flying Phantom Ship the oldest anime to ever receive an English dub in the modern era. I was already intrigued and decided to buy the movie just based on its history and significance in terms of dubbing, but hearing that Mona Marshall, one of many voice actresses who defined my childhood, was cast as the lead character pretty much cemented that decision. But what about the movie itself?

If you can believe it, Flying Phantom Ship is only an hour long, but it has a LOT packed into it. Based on a short manga by Shotaro Ishinomori, the story centers on a boy named Hayato Arashiyama, whose parents are killed by a giant metal golem that tore through his hometown. But a few days before that, he and his parents helped a corporate bigshot named Kuroshio after he and his wife got into a car accident, and had to hide away in a seemingly haunted mansion that was once home to a ship captain. Said ship captain possesses an old ship that was said to have been set ablaze. In his quest to avenge his parents, Hayato uncovers secrets that are not only tied to the mysterious phantom ship, but the corporation whose products sell like hotcakes, and even his own origins. Basically, Flying Phantom Ship has a whole kitchen sink full of stuff packed into it, like robotic marine animals, critiques on capitalism and the avarice of corporations, haunted houses, people literally dissolving into foam, and a flying ghost ship.

Well, I won't deny that Flying Phantom Ship has ambition, and its absolutely bonkers. It goes through a lot in the span of an hour, but I feel like the movie could have benefited from having an extra hour and a half to flesh out its concepts, themes, and characters more. Hell, one character only appears in the final 15 minutes and that's it! The movie just sort of speed runs through its content. One good thing about this is that the movie never feels boring because its pacing is very fast, and there's always something going on. But it doesn't really give you time to breathe and get to know the characters or process what's happening. I feel like the genre shift added to this problem too, because the movie initially starts off as a horror movie, but after the 15-minute mark, it swerves HARD into sci-fi territory out of nowhere. The movie does do a great job at using its initial horror atmosphere to good effect in the beginning, though.

Since the movie was made in 1969, animation was still fairly in its infancy, and I'm sure the movie's animation was considered absolutely amazing during its time. When viewed from a modern standpoint, it borders on being pretty inconsistent at times. At some points, there are some amazingly fluid and well-animated shots, like a dog escaping from a destroyed city and military machines shooting missiles at the titular phantom ship, which for their time look fantastic. The robot golem segments were actually animated by Hayao Miyazaki, back when he was a relative newcomer to the animation industry, so of course those segments look amazing, especially for the time period. But other times, the animation is pretty limited, to the point where some cels will just literally slide into the frame that are supposed to indicate a character is walking, but the model remains still and static. The character designs wouldn't be out of place in a Hanna-Barbera cartoon, but the backgrounds and machine designs are very well made.

Because of the movie's short length, it also doesn't have a lot of time to flesh out its characters much beyond their most basic archetypes. Hayato is the brash, hot-blooded shounen protagonist who wants to avenge his parents, Chairman Kuroshio is your typical evil corporate CEO who wants power and money, Ruriko is the love interest (Who, ironically, is a lot more proactive and interesting compared to a lot of other female characters that were present during the sixties), Jack is the perpetually cowardly Scooby Doo knockoff, and so on. Hell, the final villain doesn't even get much screentime, and by the time the movie ends, we still don't know much about it at all! They're not bad or anything, but other stuff that would come after Flying Phantom Ship would utilize their archetypes and flesh them out much more in the future.

That being said, Flying Phantom Ship as a movie is pretty fun if you want to kill an hour and have some off the wall action, and its a pretty nice piece of animation history. Plus, it's actually available on home video now, with an English dub, surprisingly enough, so you can actually watch it! Definitely watch the English dub if you can. It's great! How can you go wrong with Mona Marshall as the lead character and the dub itself being made by the studio that made the much beloved Akudama Drive dub? I don't know if Flying Phantom Ship will be available for streaming in the future, as it currently isn't, but I still recommend buying the movie on blu-ray. Oh, and the dub has a blooper reel. It's hilarious. That was pretty much my main reason for buying the movie in the first place. But yeah, Flying Phantom Ship is bonkers and fun, even if other movies did its premise and themes better after it came out.

 

[Juliko]

This review was just finished today.

Rating: 75/100

I don't remember exactly how I came across the name Elle McNicoll before, but as soon as I read the summary for her debut novel A Kind of Spark, I knew I had to read it. I read it and it was a cute book with a nice message, and a relatively good depiction of someone on the autistic spectrum. It helps that Elle herself is autistic, which absolutely helps the portrayal, but there were things A Kind of Spark could have improved upon, such as making its antagonists behave less like Saturday morning cartoon villains and expanding more on certain characters. I have yet to finish my review for A Kind of Spark, and I need to get around to finishing that. So when I found out she wrote another novel featuring an autistic main character, Show Us Who You Are, I immediately requested it from my local library and read it. I admit, I'm not normally into sci-fi stuff because I often have a lot of trouble processing the terminology and technobabble that most sci-fi stuff uses. Plus, a lot of sci-fi media I know of seem to care more about action and special effects than telling stories and making you care about the characters. Thankfully, Show Us Who You Are definitely does, though it still has some of the same issues as A Kind of Spark had.

In an unknown future, 12-year-old Cora Byers is still dealing with the unexpected death of her mother, so she's not happy about her older brother dragging her to his boss's house for his son's birthday party. Her brother works at the esteemed Pomegrante Institute, which specializes in using AI to recreate people in hologram form, down to the tiniest details. In Cora's attempt to get away from the noise, she runs into a boy, Adrien, in his private garden, and after an awkward start, the two of them become friends due to their shared experience of being neurodivergent (Cora is autistic, Adrien has ADHD). It turns out Adrien is the son of Pomegrante's CEO. As Cora gets more involved in Adrien's life, she becomes more and more interested in Promegrante's technological advances. But when she finds herself digging deeper, she winds up uncovering dark secrets, and she knows she has to unravel their plans. But being an autistic kid in a primarily neurotypical world isn't easy, and she needs to fight in order for her voice to be heard.

One good thing about Show Us Who You Are is that while it is very much a sci-fi novel, it still very much cares about character development first and foremost, even if it doesn't always stick the landing. I genuinely enjoyed Cora and Adrien as characters, and I could very much relate to Cora's struggles, being an autistic person who had to deal with a lot of the things Cora did to an extent. Plus, I myself also grew up with a male best friend who has ADHD (and was later diagnosed as autistic as well), so I was very much invested in Cora and Adrien's friendship from the get-go. I do wish we got to see more of Cora trying to pursue her dream of being an investigative journalist, as other than unsuccessfully attempting to join the newspaper club earlier and some plot stuff later on, the story doesn't do much with this fact. I would have liked to see some chapters about Cora partaking in her hobbies or exploring why she wanted to become a journalist. Cora's family and Adrien's mother are also fun characters in their own right. That being said, the antagonists are pretty black-and-white in terms of their villainy and could have benefited from being a little more subtle or nuanced. The mean girl clique Cora has to deal with is the worst about this, as they don't contribute anything to the story other than being a bunch of one-note bitches that appear for a couple scenes and that's it. A Kind of Spark also had this issue with its villains as well.

I also feel like Elle McNicoll could have explored the world Cora and Adrien live in a little more, as there are several unanswered questions. Does Show Us Who You Are take place in the far future, or in the present day? There's a throwaway line that says that flying airplanes is banned, but there's no elaboration on why this is so. Why is flying airplanes banned? Why put something like that in your story if you're not going to do anything with it? Furthermore, as much as I love the plot twists in the book and appreciate the messages it has to offer, Show Us Who You Are could have presented them in a less overly preachy manner. I mean, after a certain point, it felt like the book was shouting its message at the audience and bashing it over their heads than just letting things play out organically. Then again, considering how thick-headed some people are in regards to the treatment of neurodivergent people, I don't blame Elle McNicoll for wanting to get her message out there. Just look at all those awful "autism warrior parent" memoirs that get churned out all the time that try to claim that abusing autistic people is the best way to raise/cure them.

That being said, I still genuinely enjoyed Show Us Who You Are as a book. The prose was pretty good and easy to follow, and any technobabble that was used was also fairly understandable without leaning into pretentious territory. I wouldn't call it the best book ever, but I don't think it's something you should miss out on, especially if you're looking for a good portrayal of autistics and people with ADHD that don't lean into tired stereotypes. I certainly hope Elle McNicoll continues writing, and I'm excited to see what other stories she'll write in the future.

 

[Juliko]

Rating: 87/100

It's funny. Laid-Back Camp is a series that I didn't really see myself gravitating towards. I know for a fact that if this had come out when I was a kid, I probably wouldn't have given it a chance because I was pretty judgmental about certain things until I learned more and grew out of certain toxic mindsets. But having seen two seasons and this new movie, it's honestly kind of amazing to see that every new iteration of Laid-Back Camp has not only managed to be better than their predecessor, but even expanded on the series further while still staying true to its whole ethos and what makes the series work. The first season is an admittedly cute show that didn't really hit any highs and was sort of held back by its formula. The second season remedied this by expanding not only on some characters and fleshing them out more, but also throwing in some conflict while making sure it made sense in the context of the series, never trying to overly dramatize it. The Laid-Back Camp Movie, which just came out this year (And is due to be streamed on Crunchyroll in a few short days!), in my humble opinion, actually managed to surpass both in terms of pretty much everything, and I'm honestly amazed at just how wonderful a movie like this turned out to be!

The movie takes place three years after the second season, but interestingly enough, the staff who made the movie expressed that the movie isn't really meant to be viewed as a continuation of the series, more like a "what-if" scenario if anything. Plus, they, with original mangaka Afro's approval and supervision, wanted to make the movie feel like a standalone film that doesn't require viewers to have seen the first two seasons of the series. Basically, our favorite Laid-Back Camp girls have grown up, graduated from high school, landed some jobs, and are moving on with their lives, but still remain good friends even if they don't have as much time to see each other as they used to. One day, Rin and Chiaki go drinking at a bar, and Chiaki, who now works at the Yamanashi Prefecture's tourism promotion organization, tells Rin about her company's plans to redevelop an abandoned facility in the prefecture. Rin offhandedly suggests making it into a campsite as a joke, but the suggestion gets Chiaki fired up, resulting in her dragging Rin all the way there so they can scope it out. After some...persuasion on Chiaki's part, Rin decides to go through with it, recruiting the rest of the girls to help out. With this, the five happy campers put on their coveralls, mow the grass, hold planning meetings, and build a campsite from scratch, in scenes reminiscent of their club days in high school.

Before I get into the nitty-gritty, I'm just going to address what I feel might wind up being a point of contention for some viewers: If you're someone who prefers your movies to have fast pacing, lots going on all at once, and a lot of action, you're in the wrong place. Laid-Back Camp, at its core, has always been a slice-of-life series first and foremost, with slow, leisurely pacing and a fairly episodic structure most of the time, leaning pretty heavily into the realistic side in terms of storytelling and fleshing out its characters. Since this is a two-hour movie, and not a series of half hour episodes, some might say the movie runs too long or the story may seem too simple, bordering on tedious because of the long run time. I can understand where some people are coming from in regards to finding a slow-paced, down-to-earth movie like this to be dull in terms of its pacing and lack of huge conflicts. Earlier, I finished watching the movie Princess Arete, which, while its fairly beloved by people who like it, is also pretty infamous for having agonizingly slow pacing, even if said slow pacing was a deliberate storytelling choice—even slower than Laid-Back Camp's pacing, ironically enough—and while most movies tend to favor trying to take on too much, rush things, and think that not having constant noise or explosions will make people get bored, going too far in the opposite direction does come with its own issues. That being said, in the case of LBC, I personally disagree, firstly because the movie's slow pacing isn't indicative of its quality, but more because of the show's laid-back approach, and because there's a lot of care put into not just the animation but the depth of its storytelling, even down to how it approaches its themes of adult responsibilities. Plus, Laid-Back Camp Movie isn't interested in trying to do too much and be too dramatic, preferring a more subtle, nuanced, understated approach to its story, which is good because this is a franchise that never called for any unnecessary melodrama. Nobody bursts into overly dramatic crying fits when they face an obstacle, there's no villain to defeat, and any issues the characters face are all tackled in a down-to-earth, realistic manner, with the characters reacting to them in ways that people in real life can relate to. All of these things add a whole new layer of realism to the series, allowing it to really shine like no other.

All of this is reflected in the show's strong character writing, which to me helps mitigate the movie's slow pacing. Our favorite happy campers become adults and have jobs now, giving them a lot more freedom to do what they need to as opposed to them being stuck in high school, but the writers were careful to keep their overall personalities and characterization in tact while still allowing them to grow and mature as people. To quote another review, adult responsibilities are a big theme of the movie, but it's not equated to a loss of passion, nor is the transition from childhood to adulthood played up as this huge, dramatic, super life-changing thing that makes everything different the second it happens, like other media tend to portray it to be. I also like a lot of the more unexpected directions the writers took with the characters in terms of their jobs and what they managed to accomplish, yet they still manage to be not only refreshing compared to other moe series, but actually give more depth to the characters than previously shown. I mean, did anybody expect Nadeshiko of all people to get a license to use a friggin' excavator machine and be able to use power tools, and actually be really good at them? It's so out of nowhere, yet not only do these details make sense for the core story, but also help to make Nadeshiko feel more than just a cutesy pink-haired moeblob, with more depth to her than...say, Yui from K-On. The other characters are given this treatment as well, and it just works wonderfully. Also, the idea of Ena working at a pet salon is just adorable, and makes sense considering she has a dog that she dotes on. The animation and music are also pretty top-tier as well, and I don't think I need to repeat myself on that front.

There is one detail that really confuses me: Akari is said to be going to an art school, but whenever I think of art school, I think of college or a high school that specializes in art. If you take into account the fact that Akari is in elementary school when we first meet her in the series, and this movie taking place three years after the second season, it also seemed like they were trying to imply that she somehow got into high school within three years. Granted, Japanese middle schools go for three years as opposed to America's four, so maybe the movie was trying to say that Akari just started high school or is in middle school during the movie. For a second I thought the movie was implying that Akari got into college within three years, but I know that's impossible. I do wish the movie was just a bit more clear on what grade level Akari is in during the movie, rather than just saying she's in an art school. That's really the only issue I had with the Laid-Back Camp Movie as a whole.

The past few years have been pretty great for anime movies, not just ones based on popular IPs, but even original ones as well. Most of the time, anime movies are just lazy recaps of their main series or take too little risks out of fear of angering their fanbase. Thankfully, there are plenty of movies, both original and based on IPs, that really try to explore their own ideas and visions while still staying true to the ethos of the source material, with the Laid-Back Camp Movie being one of them. There are plenty of big ones like Demon Slayer or Jujutsu Kaisen 0, sure, but even the small, low-key movies like this one prove that you don't necessarily have to be epic, incredibly complex, or rely entirely on special effects to work, no matter what certain bigwigs in the movie or animation industry may claim. Laid-Back Camp, both as a series and as a movie, may not appeal to everyone (Especially those who want their rollercoaster movies full of high octane action), but whether you're a fan of the series or just getting into it, the Laid-Back Camp Movie is a nice, wholesome, heartwarming time killer that actually manages to enhance its source material, so I say don't miss out on it. Do keep in mind, the movie hasn't been billed as the grand finale of the series. There's a third season for the TV series due to come out next year, and you can bet your ass I'll be watching that as soon as it drops.

Edit, 1/12/2022: I just found out that I was wrong about the movie taking place three years after the second season. Apparently, there's a Japanese article cited on Wikipedia stating that the movie actually takes place about ten or so years, with Nadeshiko's seiyuu, Yumiri Hanamori, confirming such in said article, with the movie's director stating that the girls are in their mid-20's during the movie. This explains why the movie states that Akari is going to art school, presumably high school or college, even though she is in elementary school during the series. Sorry for the confusion!

 

[InfiniteBakuphoon]

It’s rather staggering to me how a series like this is able to get so apparently popular — getting two seasons and and a movie, with a third season already on the way! — but I’m also kind of happy that it is. (Relative) quiet and simplicity have their place! I suspect that’s at least partially my American perspective talking here, though; are slice-of-life series in general just something that the Japanese respond well to, culturally speaking? I can’t imagine a Western equivalent of this becoming so wildly successful here, or at least not in its current form (even if it obviously has its many fans over here too).

In any case, I’ve been seriously tempted to watch this series, in no small part due to your recommendations, haha! I probably already would’ve if it weren’t for my currently barely-manageable anime queue (not necessarily a large one; I’m still kind of new to this “anime” thing, after all). Slice-of-life series seem to be something that I really like for some reason, especially in anime. Probably because of their more character-driven focus along with — at least some of the time, anyway — a tendency for them to avert some of the clichés that I’ve already become familiar with in mainstream anime. Maybe one day I’ll sit down and give it a shot…?

 

[Juliko]

If you want to watch LBC, feel free to do so! It helps that an English dub for season one just wrapped up on Crunchyroll, and it's implied there'll be more on the way, though the Japanese versions are already up. I personally like the show, though I know it won't be everyone's cup of tea. Since you say you're new to anime in general, I can recommend some titles for you to watch if you'd like!

are slice-of-life series in general just something that the Japanese respond well to, culturally speaking? I can’t imagine a Western equivalent of this becoming so wildly successful here, or at least not in its current form (even if it obviously has its many fans over here too).

I'm not sure, actually. But considering how corporate bigwigs in America tend to treat animation in general, especially in light of recent news, nobody here would even dare to try and make something like LBC without botching it in some capacity. Or filling it with unnecessary things that wouldn't work.

Anyway, new review I finally got around to finishing!

Rating: 77/100.

I didn't get into the Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons series until 2016, and at the time, I knew nothing of another series that spun off from it, Rune Factory. Not until later, that is. But Rune Factory as a series was originally created in order to celebrate the Harvest Moon series' 10th anniversary, which was when the Nintendo DS was around. Rune Factory wound up becoming pretty popular in its own right and since then, it's spawned plenty of games even now, with Rune Factory 5 being the most recent entry. But Rune Factory 5 had a very difficult journey just to come into existence, because after Rune Factory 4 was finished, the company that makes the games, Neverland, filed for bankruptcy in November 2013, and another game wouldn't come out for another nine years. Thankfully, despite the hard journey, Rune Factory 5 was released on the Switch in April 2022, with a PC release on Steam to follow a few months later. Admittedly, this is the very first RF game I've ever played, so my review is entirely from the perspective of someone who has never played any other RF game before this, and...I also got the game for a pretty petty reason: I thought Priscilla was cute and wanted to marry her in-game. I even bought the special limited edition that comes with the soundtrack CD and extra DLC outfits coded into the game. Rune Factory 5 took over a good portion of my life for a while, and honestly, for a first-timer, I think the game is pretty fine. But others haven't been so kind to it, but more on that later on.

One day, the protagonist wakes up in the middle of a forest with no memories beyond their name. After saving a young girl from monsters, they're taken to the town of Rigbarth for medical care. The grateful townsfolk invite them to work for the peacekeeping organization called SEED until their memories return. With this, Rigbarth's newest ranger starts their life in this idyllic town. As they strive to protect Rigbarth from threats great and small, the protagonist becomes embroiled in a conflict that could change the fate of the world itself. Rune Factory 5 functions about the same as the Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons games, where you grow crops, raise animals (In this case, monsters), pursue a romantic interest, get married, and have kids. RF5 stands out from the other RF titles in that unlike the previous games before it, it actually lets you pursue and marry love interests of the same gender as you. Yes, Rune Factory says gay rights, finally.

The core gameplay is similar to that of Harvest Moon, where you spend your time growing crops, caring for animals, upgrading your tools when you acquire the right materials and raise their levels, cooking, and so on. Since Rune Factory 5 takes place in a fantasy world, there's also combat involved, where you fight monsters and farm materials from them in order to make stuff like weapons, armor, accessories, and so on. There's also plenty of side quests that can net you rewards, so there's no shortage of things to do if you'd rather do whatever you want than play through the main story. That being said, some areas are blocked off until the story mandates that you can access them. I have to admit, I really don't like the way you're made to acquire recipes. You acquire recipes by eating bread, which by itself isn't a bad thing. But you can't access certain recipes unless you increase your skill levels, like farming or using tools, and once you meet certain criteria, you can acquire better recipes. But the problem is, the game doesn't tell you whether you've already met those criteria or not, and after a certain point, you can't learn new recipes from bread anymore, so you could wind up buying tons of recipe bread and wind up not even being able to consume it because you've gone beyond the threshold in which you can acquire those recipes.

In terms of the game's graphics...as someone who hasn't played other Rune Factory games before this, I think they're alright. I think the town and the various landscapes and dungeons are well designed, and I think the monster designs are cool, too. But from what I can tell, the Switch apparently isn't able to handle the game, resulting in a lot of slowdown, lagging, stuttering, and performance issues when playing it on the console. I personally wasn't put off by any of this, but I know others who really didn't care for the fact that sometimes the game slowed down at certain points, mainly whenever you entered or left a building. I hear these have been fixed in the Steam version, but I haven't played that version, mainly because my computer can't handle its graphics. The soundtrack is pretty nice too, but not particularly memorable. I'm admittedly not a fan of the opening song, as it's a bit too hard rock for me. The actual animated video for the song is very well made though, so that mitigates it somewhat. I definitely appreciate XSEED actually putting subtitles on the opening theme, along with the various battle quotes the characters say! That needs to be done in way more games and way more often than it is!

As for the characters, again, I'm judging them as someone who hasn't played other Rune Factory games previously. I've heard people say that the characters here don't have as much depth or personality to them compared to the previous game, RF4, even with going through their heart events. But I personally found them to be pretty fine and likeable save for two. You don't really get to learn more about them unless you go through a good portion of their heart events or are dating one of them, so it's inevitable that you won't learn all about them in a single playthrough, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. But I found them to be pretty fun and engaging, even if they're not the most three-dimensional on the surface. That said, one thing I admittedly don't like is that if you wind up activating a character's heart event or a minor side quest, the game locks you into it and you literally cannot activate any other events until you finish the one you activated. This can be especially tedious if you're looking to unlock an event with the character you want to pursue but wind up activating one you don't want to pursue without meaning to. Plus, some characters wind up making some very VERY questionable decisions that can really make or break your view of them, but you don't see these moments until after you start dating them. Two characters in particular, Martin and Cecil, are the biggest offenders, and I know many who flat-out stopped liking them as characters just because of certain things that happen in some of their later heart events. Granted, it's not to the extent of, say, Michelle from Harvest Moon: A New Beginning, where they seemingly act nice only to find out much later that they're actually cruel and manipulative, but their actions can either endear them to you or be a huge dealbreaker. I haven't pursued either of them as love interests so I'm only going off of what other people who did so have mentioned. This is more a personal nitpick than anything but...whose bright idea was it to make Misasagi's and Radea's outfits look so skimpy? I don't mind the occasional revealing outfit as long as its tasteful, but...man, their shorts look more like super tight underwear.

I've heard people say the main storyline for Rune Factory 5 is just a rehash of the one from RF4, but since I haven't played the latter game, I can't exactly comment on their similarities. That being said, I have seen plenty of other things that tackle similar premises and themes that RF5 has, complete with the same character types and story beats, and some have executed them better than RF5 has. But that's not to say RF5's story overall is bad in any way, IMHO. I found it to be pretty okay for what it is, even if it's nothing groundbreaking. It's not anything really deep or thought provoking, but it's a fun little fantasy romp all around. I did find several of the villains to be pretty cliche, though. Plus, there are some minor details that, while they don't break the game, can be really annoying: Apparently you're not able to stack furniture right next to each other when you acquire it, and while there is a method of doing so, it's extremely tedious and a huge material sink. Getting the final renovations for the shops is the biggest nightmare, as it requires you to net a crap ton of material that's impossible to gather manually, and the only other method to do so is completely random and dependent on you having a ton of money. So yeah, I can absolutely see why people would be frustrated with RF5, especially coming off the heels of the much better received RF4.

Yet, even taking all these things into account, even the rating I gave it...I still really like Rune Factory 5 as a game. A contradictory statement given my rating? Sure. But honestly, once I started playing this game, I was absolutely hooked. As of this writing, I've put 150 hours into this game, which is the second highest amount of hours I put into any Switch game so far, with Pokemon Shield beating it out at 180 hours. After the disappointment that was Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town, Rune Factory 5 was a pretty massive improvement to me. I loved being able to customize my farm however I wished without having to make tons of maker machines that took up space. I loved taking my time to explore the world, fight monsters, figure out which monster drops could be made into which items, and the heart events actually had some depth to them rather than the ones in Pioneers, the latter of which had events that only went on for a few seconds and you never even got to do anything for a lot of them half the time! Granted, I don't think RF5 isn't as good as, say, Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns or anything, but I found it to be very comforting to play through. I guess you can say RF5 is my comfort game now.

So yes, Rune Factory 5 as a game has a lot of problems, and they can either make or break the experience for you. But the fact that the game finally got released at all is a miracle in and of itself. Plus from what I've heard, the game still sold pretty well, proving that people still love Rune Factory as a franchise. Hell, as of September 2022, Rune Factory 3 is getting a remaster for the Switch due to come out next year, with a supposed new RF game reported to be in development, along with the Nintendo Direct announcing a ton of farming sim games, from a remake of Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life to an RF-inspired fantasy farm sim from Square Enix called Harvestella. Games like this would never have been able to make their mark in the decades prior, so I think it's safe to say that Rune Factory 5, while not a perfect game by any means, helped remind fans that Rune Factory as a franchise is still alive and has no intention of dying any time soon.

 

[InfiniteBakuphoon]

Glad to see some Rune Factory love, both from you and from everyone else who bought this game, haha! Even if it seems as though it didn’t completely live up to the hype for a lot of those latter people, who I know waited a looooooong time for a fifth game…

Now, as someone who has played but not completed Rune Factory 4, I can hopefully offer at least some insights on things. Based on what I’ve heard here about RF5’s story, its setup is at least superficially similar to RF4, yes: the get-amnesia-then-start-life-anew angle has been done before (albeit a bit more excitedly in the latter, where you literally fall from the sky into the town, after getting to spend a few moments with your pre-amnesia avatar). Although, again, having not completed RF4, I can’t say how or if the plot differs from there. As for the graphics, well… looking at a few screenshots from RF5, it actually looks like a pretty drastic upgrade over RF4, visually speaking at least. Having played both the original 3DS version and Switch port of RF4, it’s a pretty plain-looking game (especially on Switch which has zero graphical upgrades despite being on vastly more powerful hardware). And for all of the anime stylings of the official artwork and opening movie and all of that, it kind of lacks RF5’s more obviously anime charm, I think. That said, RF4 does have one redeeming quality graphically in that it does run at a pleasantly smooth 60 frames per second on both 3DS and Switch (which I’d sure hope it would with the latter, especially). Even so, the game’s not offensively ugly to look at or anything; it’s just a tad uninspired in my opinion, especially compared to the much prettier-looking RF5 (even if, unfortunately, that game doesn’t appear to run at 60fps on Switch, or even that all that well at the target 30fps, actually).

Going back to RF5, I’m glad to hear that the developers have finally caught up with the times and provided canon gay options to the game, given that many other developers — Japanese ones especially — have often lacked the courage (or frankly, just the character) to do that with their games for a very long time (Fire Emblem, anyone?). One less thing to have to hack in there, I suppose. Let’s hope that the train pushes on with more representation in video games of other parts of the LGBTQ+ spectrum, in the most respectful, nuanced, and un-token ways possible.

Since you say you're new to anime in general, I can recommend some titles for you to watch if you'd like!

I’d actually really like that from you! Especially because it seems that we like a lot of the same kinds of things in anime, haha. Fire away whenever you’d like! I can’t wait to see what you come up with.

 

[Juliko]

Rating: 72/100

When you hear the name Coraline, you probably think of the famous stop-motion movie that the studio Laika produced back in 2009. I remember seeing a lot of commercials for that, but I was never interested in seeing the movie. But what many don't know is that the movie is an adaptation of a short novel by Neil Gaiman, who's pretty well known in modern literature circles. I've never read any of his books before this, and I only decided to check out Coraline because it happened to be one of his shorter works. The story centers on Coraline Jones, a girl with loving but distracted and inattentive parents. Having recently moved into a new home without any friends around, she finds life utterly boring and longs for something exciting to do. Then, one afternoon, she opens a mysterious door in her house. Behind that door lies a different world where Coraline finds other versions of her parents who dote on her, spoiling her with wonderful toys and home-cooked meals. But something oddly sinister lurks just beneath the surface...

Basically, this is a horror version of Alice In Wonderland, and if you're into stuff like that, then Coraline is absolutely the book for you or kids who want to venture into horror. As unfamiliar as I am with Neil Gaiman and his work, I can definitely say that he has a knack for conjuring an eerie atmosphere. Every scene had a heaviness and sense of unease to it, like if you so much as looked in the other direction, something or someone might jump out at you, like how Coraline has to outwit the Other Mother, knowing that the monstrous being could easily just pop out from anywhere without warning. Plus, I definitely appreciated Coraline as a character: She's clever and quick-witted, but not impossibly so and does have her moments of weakness and vulnerability, with Gaiman being careful to keep her as realistically kid-like as possible without having her come across as condescending or overly kiddy. I hear she was made pretty whiny and annoying in the movie, but I haven't seen it so I can't judge how the adaptation handled her character.

That being said, I did feel like the prose felt rather disjointed at times, especially when Coraline first finds out about the truth behind the parallel world she's in. I don't know if this was a deliberate storytelling choice on Gaiman's part, and if it is, more power to him, as you could argue that the disjointedness of the writing could add to the atmosphere. But parts of the story were pretty hard to follow, and there are even some descriptions that just get repeated quite a few times without rhyme or reason. I also found a lot of the adult characters to be kind of bland and underutilized, and while I understand the point behind having other people be trapped in the other world, I felt like all they did was take up space and pad out the book unnecessarily, especially since the book doesn't really flesh them out beyond the situation they're in. I feel like it would have been more effective had the Other Mother imprisoned just Coraline's parents and nobody else. I did like the nameless cat, though.

So yeah, while there are some things I like about Coraline as a novella, horror has never really been my favorite genre, and the book itself, while a decent horror tale for kids, didn't really wow me. But it did lead to the creation of the 2009 movie, and considering that's the movie that put Laika on the map, I definitely respect Coraline's impact on pop culture as a whole. Had the Coraline movie not been successful, Laika wouldn't have continued to make movies afterward. I still maintain that Kubo and the Two Strings is my favorite of their offerings, but I digress. While I wouldn't consider Coraline to be my favorite book ever, it does have a lot to offer for those who are looking to read horror aimed at children, so if you're into that stuff, feel free to give Coraline a read.

 

[InfiniteBakuphoon]

Hey, Juliko! I just wanted to let you know something. Thanks to you, I was just able to snag Haibane Renmei on Blu-ray for an awesome price. Primarily because you helped put it on my radar! Aside from the premise, pretty much anything from anyone associated with Serial Experiments Lain (one of my all-time favorite anime) is pretty much an instant watch for me, haha. I normally don’t buy anime because I use Crunchyroll for most of my anime consumption nowadays and Blu-ray sets can be prohibitively expensive, but some series I make an exception for (especially ones like this that are hard to find legit streaming). It’ll be a blind watch, but I’m confident because of the Lain connection (these guys rarely do wrong), and again because of your recommendation. So thank you! I look forward to seeing what my experience with this promising series will be like.

 

[Juliko]

I hope you like it! Anyway, new review I just finished last night.

Rating: 77/100

In the early 1980s, shortly before Studio Ghibli was formed, Hayao Miyazaki wanted to make a story based on a Tibetan folktale he heard about called The Prince Who Became a Dog, but not a direct adaptation of it. The story he conceived was Shuna's Journey, a simple tale about a prince from an impoverished kingdom who hears the story of golden grain seeds that, if grown, could save his starving people. Shuna sets out on a journey to find this grain and save his people, but encounters many hardships along the way. Miyazaki wanted to make Shuna's Journey into an animated movie, but at the time, every studio he approached rejected it on the basis that it was too simple, so he decided to just make it into a fully colored comic book instead. Shuna's Journey wouldn't come to America until November of this year, probably because Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli are now considered household names. In light of its release in the US, I decided to check it out, and what do I think? Well...I like it, but a lot of this book does have the feel of first ever publication.

The story of a prince going on a journey isn't necessarily a new concept, which is fine, as it's the execution of said concept that's important. Shuna's Journey isn't necessarily a typical manga, as it's a full color book telling its story mainly through art and narration, and there is very little dialogue. On one hand, this gives Shuna's Journey the look and feel of a children's Western fairy tale, and of course, I don't need to tell you that Miyazaki's art is top notch. The entire book is drawn in lush, painted watercolors, all brimming with detail and exuberance, with little reliance on paneling. Most of the book is just long splash pages that let the visuals tell the story by themselves. A lot of the backgrounds and character designs would inspire Miyazaki's later work, such as Nausicaa and Castle In The Sky. Yeah, you can't tell me that Thea doesn't look somewhat like Nausicaa. On the other hand, the usage of third-person narration to tell the story over showing the characters interacting and talking doesn't leave a lot of room for fleshing out the characters.

Now, don't get me wrong, the characters by themselves are fine, if nothing particularly special, as their archetypes have been done many times before and after this. Shuna and Thea serve their purposes well and their actions move the story forward. But I would have liked to see them be fleshed out a little more, and by that I mean that Shuna's Journey have some short moments where the two of them had time to breathe, get to know one another, and learn more about their personalities, hopes, dreams, and so on outside the main conflict. Granted, narratively this isn't possible based on what happens in the story, so I can't be too critical. Also, I wish Thea's younger sister had been given a name at the very least. She's the third most prominent character in the manga, yet it irks me that she never even so much as got a name, but that's small potatoes. Furthermore, Miyazaki would refine the archetypes he used for Shuna and Thea in his later movies, so it's nice to see his beginnings in terms of both storytelling and character writing here and contrast it with his later work.

Speaking of the story, there's a reason why the hero's journey is used as often as it is, as you can pretty much do just about anything with it. I actually liked how Shuna's quest progressed as the book went on, and I particularly liked the grim twist near the end in regards to how the grain Shuna seeks is made. That being said, I do wish the setting Shuna lives in was fleshed out a bit more, and there were some small subplots that seemed to come out of nowhere near the end that I felt didn't really fit the feel of the story. But none of those really took away from my enjoyment of Shuna's Journey as a whole. As far as first attempts at getting into the animation or manga business go, Shuna's Journey was an admirable effort on Miyazaki's part, and if not for this, he might not have started up Ghibli. We Ghibli fans at least owe Shuna's Journey that much.

So while Shuna's Journey as a manga may not necessarily be the most groundbreaking thing ever, it did play a part in the creation of Studio Ghibli and starting up Miyazaki's career, so its legacy is something that's deserving of great respect.

 

[Juliko]

This review was written on December 8th, 2022.

Rating: 72/100

In January of 2018, a little anime called A Place Further Than the Universe aired in Japan, winning the hearts of anime fans all over for its fresh, nuanced, down-to-earth take on the well-worn premise of young girls going on an adventure. I need to rewatch that series some time, and with the news that it's FINALLY getting an English dub and home video release, I'll actually have an excuse to do so! After the show's success, the team behind it decided to try their hand at another project, a movie called Goodbye Don Glees. The movie tries to go for the same initial premise and appeal as Yorimoi did: Dorky kids on a down-to-earth adventure to a real world location that has great personal significance to them, with even the marketing going into this. But what the marketing tried to sell the movie as and the movie itself are two very different beasts, and as much as I hate to say it, Goodbye Don Glees wasn't necessarily the home run that Place Further Than the Universe was.

The story centers on three young boys—Roma, Toto, and Drop—who are a tight knit group of friends, naming their little group Don Glees and spending time together in the countryside. But they don't exactly have the best reputation and are often picked on. One day, Roma spends all his money on a cheap drone with intent to use it to take a video of fireworks the next town over, or if not that, the fireworks Don Glees set off for the night. But that night turns out to be a fateful one as they're hit with one misfortune after another: Their fireworks don't go off, the drone goes missing, and later, a forest fire occurs. Worst of all, the townspeople believe that Don Glees are responsible for it. But the kids think the missing drone might have proof of their innocence, so they decide to go on an impulsive journey into the mountains to find it and clear their names.

From what I've heard, the original Japanese marketing made a big deal about the characters going to Iceland, which only happens in the last third of the movie. 85% of the movie is focused on the trio of boys and their quest to find their missing drone in the countryside. Now, these parts of the movie are legitimately great, with the animation really going all out in conveying the natural beauty of the woods and the countryside. Of course, the animation quality isn't limited to just the backgrounds. Similarly to Place Further Than the Universe, a lot of attention is paid to how the characters move and how they express themselves through body language, like the way Drop sits or the way Toto hunches over when he feels insecure. Speaking of the characters, the main trio are a delight to watch. They actually feel like real dorky kids from the way they move, talk, and get into scrapes, and their designs change believably near the end of the movie. It helps that a lot of their banter and interpersonal conflicts are pretty naturalistic without bordering on cheese. I honestly wouldn't have minded if the whole movie had just been about their adventure through the woods. Low-key, slice-of-life movies have their place! I mean, the Laid-Back Camp movie exists, y'know!

But as much as I want to love Don Glees as a movie, if the rating didn't clue you in, it has quite a bit of issues holding it back, with the main one being the really rushed, shoehorned in third act that feels like it's only there because the staff felt like they absolutely had to escalate the movie's plot by the end. The third act never felt like it was properly built up, and when the characters are made to go to Iceland, it just zooms through the process of exploration in favor of throwing in a very heavy-handed emotional climax at the end, with the shift into said third act being so intense and dramatic that it feels like you got hit with a case of whiplash, eschewing the rest of the movie's down-to-earth charm. It also results in a certain twist coming across as a lot more predictable, even though it was foreshadowed well in advance. Say what you will about Place Further Than the Universe doing the same thing, but there, the writers actually had the time and wiggle room to properly show the process, build up to its own emotional climax, and used every tool at its disposal to have it make an impact. Furthermore, the drone and forest fire subplot doesn't get much in the way of resolution at the end, because it just gets dropped in favor of the Iceland trip. Also, the character of Chibori is woefully underutilized. From what I've heard, the Japanese marketing also made a big deal out of this character, but she really only gets one scene in the whole movie and is just there to be a prop for Roma's development. Yeah, she's mostly just a waste of animation and has no character beyond supporting Roma.

So basically, bad marketing made the movie tank, and I'm not exaggerating. Apparently in Japan it did pretty badly at the box office, which sucks because other than the flaws I mentioned above, Goodbye Don Glees is a fairly cute movie that really showcases director Atsuko Ishizuka's talent, alongside that of the rest of her team. Plus, it's getting an English dub and a home release in the US this month, so you'll be able to watch it legally fairly soon. So while I do admittedly like Place Further Than the Universe better, if you're looking for a fun, wholesome movie to watch, I'd still recommend you watch Goodbye Don Glees, even if its third act feels very heavy-handed and out of place in what's supposed to be a fun slice-of-life adventure.

 

[Juliko]

This review was just finished today, and this'll be the last review I write for 2022.

Rating: 56/100

Hey kids! Remember an old anime called Tokyo Pig? I remember seeing a few episodes of it here and there on TV when I was a kid, but I'm pretty sure I only remember it because the character designs were permanently chibi. The thing is, Tokyo Pig, or its original title, Hare Tokidoki Buta, translated as Fair Then Partly Piggy, actually started off as a series of children's picture books. The 90s TV series is a little more well known, but the series actually had a feature-length movie produced in 1988 with a premise that was very different from how the series turned out. Discotek even put it out on DVD and blu-ray a number of years ago, though that release is now out of print. It's streaming on Crunchyroll, for those who want to watch it. I saw it recently myself and...not gonna lie, this movie is pretty juvenile.

Third grader Noriyasu Hatakeyama is your average kid who unfortunately isn't very good at anything. He doesn't pay attention in class, he messes up the most basic tasks, and he's gotten the nickname Two-Bit because of his screw-ups. But one thing he does take pride in is that he writes in his journal every day. One day, he catches his mother reading his journal and he's not too happy about it. But rather than, y'know, tell her she shouldn't invade his privacy like a normal person, he assumes she's gonna try and read it again, deciding to write about really crazy stuff that could never happen in real life, such as raining pigs and eating pencils for dinner. To his surprise though, the crazy things he writes in his journal magically come to life, and weirder than that, everybody treats it all as normal! Things get even crazier when he tries to take a crack at making his own newspaper and writing fake news for fun, resulting in an apocalyptic pig holiday!

Yeah, that premise is as stupid and childish as it sounds, and no, the movie never explains how or why Noriyasu's writings come to life. I didn't really jive with this, as the whole movie very much screams "JUST for kids" with how juvenile its premise and its take on it is. It just expects you to believe that everything Noriyasu writes just magically comes to life. This isn't necessarily a bad thing by itself, but the movie seemed content to just abuse it for the sake of dragging the movie out, and honestly, the movie is pretty slow paced. A lot of it just consists of stuff happening and Noriyasu reacting to it while everybody else treats it as another day. The characters are pretty bland and one-note, too, both the main and side-cast. The soundtrack isn't much to write home about either, other than the fact that the kids singing the opening theme just can't sing for the life of them. The ending song is much nicer and easier on the ears, though.

That being said, the animation, for its time, is pretty good. The backgrounds have a lot of creativity put into them, a fun mix of both children's crayon drawings and watercolor, and the actual motion for the characters is pretty smooth. Since the characters are all deliberately drawn in the chibi style, this makes them easier to animate, and the creators really go buck wild here. But that's honestly about all that Fair Then Partly Piggy can offer in terms of positives. I wouldn't call Fair Then Partly Piggy a bad movie, but it was clearly made for the sole purpose of keeping kids eyes glued to the TV for a little over an hour and not much else. But if you want to put this on for your kids or for yourself, feel free! It's just not for me personally.

 

[Juliko]

This review was written on November 5th, 2022.

Rating: 89/100

In all the years I've spent watching anime, or movies and TV in general, I've found plenty of genres that I don't particularly gravitate to, with one of them being sci-fi. It's not that I hate sci-fi series, but I often find them hard to understand. A lot of sci-fi stuff seems to rely too much on technobabble to tell their stories, almost like the creators of said stories only want to appeal to hardcore sci-fi fans who would actually understand the overly scientific terminology they use rather than people who just want to watch/read an interesting story and follow a set of characters. A lot of this is why I couldn't get into something like Orbital Children, as it relied way too much on just dumping science-y exposition and pretentious philosophical concepts at you without giving you time to, y'know, process any of it, among many other issues. Other sci-fi stories put too much focus on the action and special effects at the expense of everything else. Thankfully, there are exceptions to be found, with one of them being Kurau Phantom Memory, an older BONES anime from 2004 that got a lot of praise when it came out, but nobody seems to talk about anymore. Having just finished it today, I'm seriously glad I decided to sit down and watch it, because in my opinion, this is what sci-fi should be like.

The year is 2100, and on the colonized moon, a special project is underway to explore and study new energy that's been discovered. But that's far from 12-year-old Kurau Amami's mind when her father tells her he has to work on her birthday. To make up for this, he invites Kurau to his research lab, to which Kurau happily accompanies him. This winds up being a bad decision, as a lab accident causes two alien entities called Rynax to take over Kurau's body. There's no way to remove them from her for the time being, and for now, everyone has to adjust to Kurau's change. Ten years later, Kurau works as a freelance mercenary, having adjusted to her new circumstances and the powers she wields...but Rynax come in pairs, and she wonders when her pair will finally appear. One day, her pair appears from her body in the form of a preteen girl similar to how Kurau looked when she was a kid. Kurau names her new pair Christmas, and the two of them try to make a life together. But an organization that hunts Rynax called the GPO finds out about them and are determined to capture the two of them, and probably kill them. With help from Kurau's father and an ex-GPO member named Doug, Kurau and Christmas have to run from the GPO and wind up learning some harsh truths in the process.

Being an earlier BONES anime, it doesn't look as sleek as some of their later works, like My Hero Academia or The Case Study of Vanitas, but honestly, even for its time, I think Kurau Phantom Memory is very well animated. The show's overall art isn't always the most consistent, but what it lacks in consistency and budget, it manages to make up for it with dynamicism and fluidity, especially during the parts that matter. I also appreciate that the character designs are leaning more towards the realistic side rather than going full-on cartoony, with the characters having smaller eyes that are more proportionate to how a regular person's would look. The soundtrack is also just fantastic. It doesn't have a huge amount of tracks even for a 24-episode anime, but nearly every track that’s there is a feast for the ears and does a brilliant job at enhancing the atmosphere. I also love the different variations on the ending theme song.

Of course, the cast of characters are the ones carrying this show, and Kurau Phantom Memory puts character development first and foremost over action and special effects, which works really well here, especially with Kurau. This show absolutely nails its lead character. She's incredibly well-developed and three-dimensional, with her own set of strengths, flaws, and quirks, and even though the show can get pretty dark at times, she's always portrayed with the right amount of warmth. The rest of the cast is well-written as well. They all behave and act naturally. and even the side characters who don't appear for a long time get fleshed out quite a bit even as their airtime ends. The only characters that don't get this treatment are two of the main villains, and they're mainly relegated to the background after a while. It does help that Kurau Phantom Memory does a great job at balancing both its lighthearted, heartwarming moments with the darker parts, with neither one feeling like they clash with the tone the show is going for, nor is something randomly inserted into a scene and destroying its mood or atmosphere. Take note, Orbital Children and The Heike Story.

As much as I want to hail Kurau Phantom Memory as a masterpiece, it's unfortunately not without its flaws. They're pretty minimal, and didn't detract from my personal enjoyment of the anime, but they may make or break it for others. For one, the voice acting can border on pretty cheesy at times, which makes the natural dialogue come across as rather stilted and forced in both languages, oddly enough. Yes, even the Japanese version isn't safe from this. Secondly, some very early parts of the anime haven't aged well, like Doug's initial introduction, but that actually gets addressed early on, so I personally had no problem with it. Others might take issue with the fact that the series puts more focus on character development than on the action, and not a whole lot of technobabble, but I don't think that's a reason to give Kurau Phantom Memory the side-eye. Plus, a lot of scenes are taken up by characters just saying each other's names and not much beyond that.

So if you want to watch a sci-fi anime that has a strong story with real moral dilemmas and situations that aim to bring the best out of its characters but don't want to put up with intrusive technobabble or over-the-top action, definitely give Kurau Phantom Memory a shot.

 

[Juliko]

Hey, my first finished review of the new year!

Rating: 77/100

(This review covers parts one and two, mainly in light of the fact that another season and a movie are coming next year, and because I feel like talking about them individually would be tedious and redundant)

As of this writing, Spy x Family has become one of the most popular anime and manga to ever leap onto the scene in the late 2010s-early 2020s. I don't remember how I first heard about it, but I did read a couple chapters of the manga online, but didn't continue it due to other obligations...and because those chapters ran kinda long, though I do plan on rectifying that. I do remember thinking the premise sounded interesting, and when the anime was announced, I thought it'd be nice to watch it. It seemed like a fun little show, and sure enough, while not without some hiccups, Spy x Family is a nice little piece of popcorn entertainment that lovingly wears its James Bond inspirations on its sleeve.

But what's the story, you ask? The countries of Westalis and Ostania are locked in a cold war rife with espionage and assassination. After flawlessly completing yet another mission, Westalis's top agent, the master spy known only as Twilight, has been tasked with investigating the activities of Donovan Desmond, leader of Ostania's far-right National Unity Party. The problem? Desmond is a social hermit and only ever makes public appearances at his sons' school functions. Thus Twilight has been ordered to get close to Desmond...by getting married and having a child within a seven-day deadline. Assuming the identity of psychiatrist Loid Forger, Twilight adopts an orphan girl named Anya and marries Yor Briar, an Ostanian civil servant who needs a husband to avoid drawing attention in the heavily suspicious Ostanian society, to play the part of his daughter and wife. Making things more complicated, however, is that Anya and Yor are keeping secrets of their own: Anya escaped from a lab that gave her telepathic powers and Yor is an infamous assassin code named Thorn Princess. Thus begins Loid, Anya, and Yor's attempts to pretend to be the best family they can, all while hiding their secret identities from the others...and trying to ignore the growing signs that they're not just pretending.

Okay, before I get into the nitty-gritty, there's one little thing about Twilight that annoys the piss out of me: Why the hell is his pseudonym spelled as Loid? Wouldn't it look better if it was spelled as Lloyd instead? I know this is a weird thing to get bristly about, but every time I see the name Loid, my brain makes me think of a certain offensive, ableist slur used to refer to people with Down Syndrome. But that's the spelling the manga and the anime went with, with a screenshot in the latter even flat-out showing the spelling on screen, so I might as well just roll with it. Anyway, as far as animation goes, Spy x Family gets the job done. It's not as flashy and dynamic as something like Chainsaw Man or Attack on Titan, but it fits the aesthetic the show is going for, the character designs are faithful to those in the manga, the backgrounds are well made and nicely rendered, and while the animation isn't exactly the most consistent, impressive, or visually engaging all the time, the times it does are always put to good use, especially during the action scenes. Considering the anime was made in a joint venture between both CloverWorks and Wit Studio, I think this was a good choice on the part of whoever greenlit the anime. I do think the CGI passerbys in the background are pretty obvious and poorly rendered, clashing horribly with the 2D backgrounds.

The soundtrack is definitely Spy x Family's biggest highlight, as it lovingly and shamelessly embraces the show's James Bond and 80s spy movie influences, complete with loud saxophones, low basslines, brassy trumpets, heavy drum rolls, and everything in between. Though the soundtrack is actually much more versatile and has plenty of calmer, slower tunes—especially for classy, high end stuff like Headmaster Henderson's theme—to balance out the spy-influenced ones. I will admit, I like the first opening song better than the second one, mainly because the visuals do an amazing job at depicting several different animation styles at once and because the lyrics for said song fit the show better than the second one. I also prefer the second ending over the first one, not because the first one is bad or anything. Far from it. But I think the second ending song had better visuals, a catchier beat, and also fits the atmosphere of the show.

I'm rather mixed on the characters. The Forgers are a fun bunch, as are many of the side characters, several of whom are consistently over-the-top and pretty hilarious, even if they're not exactly the most three-dimensional. I especially appreciate the show's emphasis on the fact that Anya, while she can read minds, is still just a little kid who actually acts her age, barely understands half of what she hears, and can be a smug, mischievous little gremlin when she feels like it without going too overboard, which prevents her from falling into the stereotype of the super pwecious uwu kid who can do no wrong and whose only purpose is to be a saccharine moeblob. That or something like Frederica from 86 season 2. The rest of the cast...are just kind of there, serving their purpose and not doing much else. Buuuut there are two characters who, quite frankly, annoy the hell out of me and seriously bog down the series with their mere presence: Yuri Briar and Nightfall/Fiona Frost, mainly because these two are so freakishly, creepily obsessed with their targets of interest that it borders on unsettling, yet the show expects the audience to still find them funny, with Yuri being the biggest offender because he worships the ground his sister Yor walks on, to the point of hating everybody who doesn't do the same (Even Anya, a literal child, which is just petty to me) and his obsession with her borders dangerously close to incest territory. Like...was this even necessary? Granted, nothing comes of it in both the anime and the manga, but Yuri's whole schtick with Yor and hating everybody for not groveling before his sister is a dead horse of a trope that needs to die and just isn't funny at all. The same goes for Nightfall/Fiona, who is a competent spy like Twilight and is in love with him, but I just hate that the show decided to make her a petty bitch who hates Yor just because she's with Loid and absolutely refuses to take a fucking hint. Sorry, characters that are creepily and single-mindedly obsessed with a person and are needlessly cruel to others about it, often for unfounded reasons, don't really jive with me, especially if said behavior is either played for laughs or not called out for what it is. Granted, the series doesn't take Fiona's side, so kudos to it for that, but I can't stand even seeing Yuri and Fiona on screen for more than two seconds. I admit, I cheered when Yor slapped Yuri twice in the same episode. He honestly deserved it.

But annoying characters aren't the only problem Spy x Family has as a series. Now, Spy x Family makes no secret of the fact that it's meant to be one part action comedy with the occasional dark storyline, and one part wholesome family romp full of hijinks, which is fine. I certainly appreciate the show for doing that and not going for another "Spy retires and has a family but enemy kidnaps family and he has to go back to working as a spy to get them back" plotline, which has been done to death in many other movies. Since the main story is based on a long-term mission in-universe, it makes sense that progress is slow, but there are quite a few times when Spy x Family meanders and drags. Like, a lot. For people who came here looking for just spy action or commentary on the horrors of war, you're not gonna like the fact that a good chunk of this consists of wholesome family antics, spacing out the more action-y episodes. Granted, the fact that the show does have darker episodes to balance the lighter, happier ones keeps Spy x Family from bordering on being too bland or saccharine for its own good, but the series can be hit or miss with its episodes. I hated the segment about that George Glooman kid, because he was just annoying as shit, but I loved all the episodes involving Bond's introduction. Also, Damian's introduction when threatening Anya really broke my suspension of disbelief, because no kid I knew, know of, or grew up with has ever said things like "I'm going to bully you" out loud, and that's because most people don't see themselves as being bullies, nor do they just announce it like they're in a Saturday morning cartoon, and I say this as somebody who was bullied pretty often throughout my school years. Plus, the status quo doesn't change much over the course of 26 episodes, so if you're looking for progress that happens really fast, Spy x Family isn't the show for you. Though with the announcement of a second season and a movie with original content coming out, this might change.

Overall, Spy x Family is a nice little piece of popcorn entertainment that isn't necessarily breaking any new ground, but is still funny and a fun watch if you're looking to turn your brain off. And yes, I will be watching the second season and movie once they come out, along with reading the manga when I'm able.

 

[Juliko]

More book reviews, this time for much shorter books than usual.

The Birds' Christmas Carol by Kate Douglas Wiggin
Rating: 5/10
Too treacly, saccharine, and sentimental for its own good. It's basically about a sick child born on Christmas who decides to invite a poor family to her house so they can have a big feast right before she winds up dying. Carol is way too perfect and saccharine, which I know was the standard way to depict "proper Christian girls" during the time this book came out, but she still comes across as too saintly for my liking, the Ruggles' vernacular was hard to decipher, and I feel like this started up the trope of the littlest cancer patient whose only purpose is to tug at heartstrings and teach life lessons before dying beautifully. Gag me. The whole book feels overly moralistic, which...makes sense, considering writing books that were heavy on preaching morals was common during that time. But I wouldn't recommend this to anyone who wants something more substantial and is tired of stuff that romanticizes characters getting sick and dying.

Galatea by Madeline Miller
Rating: 8.5/10
Man, I really liked this one! The only other book I read that she wrote was Circe, and while I liked parts of Circe, I thought it was way too much of a slog and went on for way too long. So this being a short story makes Galatea a lot easier to digest. The prose was a lot easier for me to understand, even if some parts didn't quite make sense, I liked Galatea as a character, and I liked the book's overall message and themes, moreso upon reading Miller's afterword and why she wrote the story in the first place. I do wish Paphos had been given more screen time and the ending was a bit more clear as to what happened to Galatea, but I'm not opposed to ambiguous endings that make you think. Definitely give this one a shot if you're into stories like this.

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Rating: 7.5/10
I had to study this book in high school once, and I admit I wasn't a fan of it back then. Re-reading it now, as an adult and outside of school, my opinion on it is a bit more favorable. A story about a mysterious little boy from a tiny planet who encounters a French aviator and tells him about his planet-hopping adventures, the people he meets, and the lessons he learns along the way. It's pretty philosophical, but it doesn't feel pretentious, though all the characters are basically analogues for modern humanity's strengths and flaws, not much else. The little illustrations are pretty nice, and fit the theme of the book, too. The ending is pretty sad, but feels fitting for what the book is supposed to be about. I don't have as much attachment to this book as others do, but I certainly like it a lot more now than when I did when I had to read this in high school.