Julia's Reviews on Various Media

[Juliko]

This review was written on August 22nd, 2022.

Rating: 78/100

I vaguely remember hearing about this movie, Misaki no Mayoiga, on Anime News Network when it was first announced. Misaki no Mayoiga, with its English title being The House of the Lost on the Cape (Yeah, for the sake of brevity I'm gonna keep using its Japanese title), is based on a 2015 novel by Sachiko Kashiwaba, and got adapted into the anime movie, which came out in 2021. The movie was mainly made as part of a project to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the terrible 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. Fittingly enough, the anime seems to use said earthquake as a plot point. The promo art for the movie alone enticed me, and the premise seemed nice, so I decided to watch it once it came out. It's a good thing too, because as of this writing, Eleven Arts licensed it and put it out on home video at the end of September. But I got to watch it online because I wanted to decide whether I liked it or not before buying or not buying it. Now that I've seen it, I can wholeheartedly say...it's pretty cute. Nothing groundbreaking, but definitely not a bad movie by any means.

The story focuses on two young girls, 17-year-old Yui and 8-year-old Hiyori. Yui ran away from home to escape an abusive family situation, and Hiyori lost her family in the earthquake, with the resulting trauma leaving her mute. The two of them become acquainted at a homeless shelter before getting picked up by a strange woman named Kiwa, who takes a liking to them to the point of pretending they're her grandchildren. She basically adopts them and takes them to her house in Kitsunezaki. Yui and Hiyori find out that the house is sentient, pretty much giving them whatever they need. With this, the three of them become a little family, and slowly but surely, Yui and Hiyori's damaged hearts begin to heal. But things start getting complicated when supernatural creatures such as kappa and komainu begin dropping in, and a malevolent force threatens the peace and safety Kiwa provided for Yui and Hiyori.

Now, you're probably thinking to yourself "Wait, a sentient house that gives its residents everything they need? Did this movie rip off Encanto?" My answer to that is no, because while Encanto also uses the idea of a sentient house, it's not really based on any folklore. The word "mayoiga" translates to lavish or well-kept, and there's quite a bit of old Japanese folklore using that term to reference an abandoned but well-kept house found in remote parts of mountains or the general wilderness, so it's not like Misaki no Mayoiga just plagiarized that part of Encanto and dressed it up for its own use. It's like how Toei constantly reuses various concepts, cliches, and formulas for their magical girl anime, such as Sailor Moon and Pretty Cure. I know this is a weird thing to talk about, especially since other than the themes of family and the idea of a sentient house, the two movies are nothing alike, but I've seen too many people be harassed and bullied over supposedly "stealing" ideas from other works that came long before it, even when said ideas are extremely vague, narrow, and arbitrary to the point where literally anyone can do their own take on them as long as it's not flat-out plagiarism. I mean, how many times has Mamoru Hosoda done movies involving virtual worlds in the internet?

Alright, now onto the movie itself. The film is nicely and lavishly animated by David Production, who you'll know as the company that animated shows such as Cells At Work, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, Fire Force, and the upcoming Undead Unluck anime. The backgrounds and set pieces are all nicely detailed without being overbearing, with bright colors that are easy on the eyes, the character designs are down-to-earth and a fairly nice mix of being both cartoony and realistic, and the actual animation is fairly smooth. Well, about as smooth as a mainly slice-of-life movie can afford to be. There are segments where Kiwa tells Yui and Hiyori various folk tales, and they're animated in an erratic, sketchy, brushwork art style akin to The Tale of Princess Kaguya, which works really well. If I had one complaint about the animation, it's that the scenes that take place during the night time are way too dark. They're so dark that you can barely make out who's there or what's going on. I don't have as much to say on the soundtrack, other than that it's pretty nice and does its job, and I didn't find the ending song to be very memorable.

I'm kind of mixed on the characters. On one hand, the stand outs are Yui and Hiyori, who get the most development throughout the movie and are the most three-dimensional. Yui is at first a guarded teenager who is wary of her new living arrangement and unable to accept kindness at face value after having dealt with an abusive father. Hiyori is a little kid who is trying to cope with the loss of her family, and the movie takes great care to have her personality come through via her facial expressions and body language without leaning into the exaggerated kind. They're fun to follow and are the best characters in the movie. On the other hand, Kiwa, the youkai, and the other townsfolk are kind of given the short end of the stick. The middle of the movie shows Yui and Hiyori interacting with the townsfolk, and they're a colorful bunch, but the movie doesn't really do anything with them, and their role in the final act of the film seems maudlin when the film doesn't try to flesh them out beyond their more positive traits. Plus, I felt like Kiwa leaned too much into the nice magical old lady stereotype, and we never do get to learn just what her deal is in terms of the final conflict.

Personally, it felt to me like Misaki no Mayoiga was trying to be two different movies at once. The first half is mainly slice-of-life, and the second half introduces supernatural creatures and a pretty conventional final conflict which felt really out of place to me. I almost feel like the youkai were just shoved into the movie because the creators were afraid that a pure slice-of-life movie would bore their audience. Because of this, a lot of the ideas it presents in the last third don't get fleshed out as much as they need to, and as a result, Misaki no Mayoiga seems like it'd be better suited as a TV series than a movie. But that's not to say the movie is bad in any way. Misaki no Mayoiga is a pleasant watch all around, even if it doesn't leave a strong impression, and I like it enough that I'm absolutely going to buy it on home video when it comes out this month. This would probably be a cute movie to show to your kids if you want to get them into anime for the first time, beyond stuff like Pokemon and Ghibli. I have to admit though, it's really weird hearing Mana Ashida using a lower pitched voice, as I'm so used to her usual cutesy kid voice, considering she started out as a child actress. But hey, I have no problem with it. It's great to see her expand her range both in terms of her voice and character types.

So yeah, Misaki no Mayoiga isn't a movie that's going to bring the house down in any way. But it's a nice, wholesome, kick back and relax kind of movie that you can watch with your kids.

 

[Juliko]

This review was written on December 16th, 2022.

Rating: 40/100

I want to make something very clear: I NEVER go into watching, reading, or playing something wanting to hate it. Whenever I see something that seems like it appeals to my tastes, I actually try to keep an open mind about it. Similarly, there are certain shows and genres that I avoid like the plague. Don't expect me to talk about any ecchi anime ever and don't expect me to watch shows such as Haruhi Suzumiya, Redo of Healer, or Ranma 1/2 or anything of the like. If you like those shows, cool, good for you. So when I first heard about Bibliophile Princess and its upcoming anime adaptation, I thought it seemed cute, so I decided to try it out. Since the light novels are only available digitally, I can't really rent them, and I don't want to buy something and then find that I don't like it and be unable to return it, y'know? I thought, "Hey! Maybe Bibliophile Princess might be good! I'll give it a watch and see for myself!" Boy howdy do I regret that decision so, so, sooooo much. Dear lord, I wanted to like this show so badly. I really did. But seriously, watching Bibliophile Princess was like being made to go through a muddy river with the promise of a prize at the end, only to find out too late that there was never a prize to begin with. By God, not only is Bibliophile Princess one of the most utterly generic, mediocre, frustrating anime I've ever seen, based on what little I've read of the light novels, it completely fails as an overall adaptation.

In the kingdom of Sauslind, Lady Elianna Bernstein and her family of self-professed bookworms live in relative peace, with no desire for power and content with spending their days doing nothing but reading and acquiring knowledge. During Elianna's debutante season at court, she is proposed to by the dashing Prince Christopher, the heir to the kingdom. At first, Elianna balks at the idea of being married to him, as she feels there are better candidates out there, but Christopher makes an offer she can't bring herself to refuse: If she marries him, she'll have special access to the fabled royal archives, a repository of rare tomes, and her social duties will be intentionally limited. Unable to resist the allure of reading new books, Elianna accepts and becomes Christopher's fiance, but she does wonder why he of all people would rather marry her and make her his bride when there are other, far better suitable people that want it more?

Man, I honestly thought Prima Doll was going to be the worst anime I saw this year, but Bibliophile Princess took the throne by virtue of the fact that everything about it just screams "I don't give a shit." Seriously, there's barely anything redeemable about Bibliophile Princess as an anime. Everything it does has been done way better in other shows, some of which I'll mention further down. Bibliophile Princess at best is a boring cliche-fest that has zero ambition. Now, cliches in and of themselves aren't inherently bad, and I abide by the philosophy that as long as you flesh out the characters well and care about the story you want to tell, you can make anything good whether it's cliche or not, as there's no such thing as a truly original story anymore. But everything about Bibliophile Princess just feels extremely passionless, listless, and workman-like, like the staff on the show only produced this because they were mandated to do so to fill out a light novel adaptation quota. From the obnoxiously bright, washed out, and shadowless animation to the similarly mediocre and generic soundtrack, the whole production feels like a poor man's Ascendance of a Bookworm. Speaking of Bookworm, does anybody else think that the only reason Yuka Iguchi was brought on to sing the opening was because the producers for this wanted to cash in on Bookworm's fame and popularity? Ironically, the opening song is actually the best thing about this show.

Beyond that, the writing is just outright stupid. This is the kind of show that was written by people who think that its target audience has the mental capacity of a lobotomized squirrel. Characters act solely on what’s convenient to the plot and make the most bizarre leaps in logic at times. Any attempts this show makes to try and be genuine is overshadowed by their complete stupidity. Add that to a story that is just chockful of plot devices and inconsequential politicial babble that we never even see portrayed on screen, and you basically have a bland mess. Even the character designs have no passion put into them, as the men are all just generic bishounen that are carbon copies of each other save for Alan (Who, ironically, is the only character in this show I liked even though his whole running gag is that nobody remembers him at all), and all the women have similar faces that you wouldn't be able to tell apart even if you swapped their hair styles and costumes. The show's attempts at political intrigue fall flat because a lot of it just consists of catty girls trying to sabotage Elianna with absolutely no sense of subtlety whatsoever. Characters telegraph their evil intentions like blaring neon lights. The show thinks its smart when it actually isn't.

Speaking of Elianna, I hate to say it, but she's the absolute worst aspect of this show. Bibliophile Princess is constantly beating into our heads that Elianna is this super awesome lady who does great things for her kingdom and others, even showing other characters praising her for her feats...but the thing is, the anime doesn't actually show her doing anything of note on screen, so any praise she winds up getting feels not only unearned, but completely undeserved. For example, episode 2, which I feel encapsulates every single flaw this show has, has Elianna be caught up in some girl's bad attempt at trying to usurp her as Christopher's fiance, and the nobles all wax poetic about all the wonderful things Elianna has done for them. What does Elianna actually do throughout the entire episode? Nothing! She literally just stands at the top of the stairs like a deer in the headlights, making absolutely no attempt to refute any of the mean girl's accusations when she has all the power to do so, and everyone else just does everything for her. Tl;dr, she spends THE ENTIRE FUCKING EPISODE JUST STANDING AROUND!!! The fact that everyone worships the ground Elianna walks on even when the anime makes no effort to show her actually doing anything of note on screen just makes Elianna come off as a blatant Mary Sue straight out of someone's bad fan fiction, and I've both read and written my fair share of bad fan fiction (My fics were a lot worse as a kid, and I can say I've vastly improved my writing since then)! Furthermore, Elianna's personality doesn't change all that much and her views are never challenged. There's one arc where a military guy points out a lot of the flaws in Elianna's proposal about storing food and putting less money into war weapons, and the guy actually makes some fairly reasonable points considering Elianna has literally no experience with military affairs and is a bit too idealistic about preventing war, but after she makes some overly cheesy speech, the guy just laughs it off and accepts Elianna without a second thought! Plus, Elianna never makes the effort to actually talk to people about any issues she has, especially when it matters (Again, episode 2 is the worst example of this), and any time she tries, somebody else steps in and does everything for her, or claim that she did nothing wrong when a lot of conflict could have been avoided if she had just talked to SOMEBODY AT ALL. All throughout the series, Elianna just comes across as a whiny, listless, passionless waif who only cares about books and nothing else, yet is constantly shilled by the entire narrative as this amazing person when she's done literally nothing to deserve any praise at all and is given little to no agency or autonomy. The one time she does try to do something (During the Star of Sissel arc) also falls flat because she recklessly throws herself into a situation where a nobleman could easily kill her right then and there, and she didn't bother to bring her guard with her. Gee, it's almost like trying to confront a powerful nobleman without any weapons or self-defense training is a bad idea!

And the thing is, Elianna does have established reasons for being the way she is in the light novels! The LNs establish that she mostly stayed away from social gatherings because she was picked on by aristocratic girls for her love of books and her plain looks, which the anime never bothers to establish in the beginning. Even during the Irene incident, Elianna, while she still stood around and didn't do anything, she saw through Irene's ploy and even snarked about it in her head, and the LN establishes that the only reason she didn't speak up was because she didn't know if she was supposed to act or just stay put and follow the mental script everyone was acting out. So basically, the anime deliberately left out what little personality Elianna had in the LNs in favor of making her into a swooning, spineless waif who jumps to conclusions at the slightest thing and barely does anything of her own initiative, even when she has all the power and freedom to do so. Any reasons she has for being the way she is are left out, so it's really hard to feel any sympathy for anime Elianna because she basically brought a lot of her own issues on herself and doesn't even make the effort to solve her own problems! Do you want to know an anime that features a character that actually does shit and has legitimate reasons for being the way she is? Raven of the Inner Palace, which is airing right now! In that anime, Shouxue is shown to be lonely and isolated because not only does her position as the Raven Consort dictate such, if certain people find out what she really is, they will literally kill her, yet Raven of the Inner Palace actually shows Shouxue going out of her way to help people and solve their problems, whether by their own request or because she wants to, so any loyalty she receives from her new friends and acquaintances actually feels earned. Plus, it is possible to write a heroine who starts off listless and dispassionate as long as the reasons for her being such are plausible. For example, I'm reading the light novel My Happy Marriage right now (Which is getting an anime fairly soon), and in that series, the heroine, Miyo, is quiet and has zero self-esteem because she was abused and mistreated by her family for her entire life, with the series making it clear right off the bat. Her life improves when she's made to marry a rich man named Kiyoka, but marriage alone doesn't magically resolve all of her trauma and issues, with the series empathizing that Miyo's path to healing will be a long one. In that series, Miyo's arc is about her regaining her self-worth, agency, and autonomy and allowing herself to become a more self-assured individual now that she interacts with people who genuinely love and care about her. Elianna doesn't have that excuse, so her problems, again, come off more like a girl's insufferable whining than anything truly genuine.

That's not even getting into all the other little problems the anime has as well. In one episode, the series just randomly introduces a character named Lilia and expects us to already know that she and Elianna are acquainted without even showing us how they know each other. Like, the hell? I know Arte had this problem with its anime, but Bibliophile Princess is actually worse about it because even though this girl is in the opening, she just disappears after that arc and never shows up again. The LNs establish that Lilia is Elianna's cousin on her mother's side, and yet again, the anime just chucks her in there without rhyme or reason. Like, why even put this girl in the opening if you're only gonna have her be in the series for two or three episodes and then never again?! God, just thinking more about this series makes my head hurt. Overall, if you're into shows like Bibliophile Princess, that's totally cool, more power to you. If you like it, great! I personally feel the Bibliophile Princess anime is frustrating and terrible, mainly because it commits a cardinal sin that no adaptation should ever do: It made me question if the source material is even that good to begin with. Seriously, there are so many other things out there that manage to tackle their premise and characters better than Bibliophile Princess could ever hope to do, some of which I've named. All in all, Bibliophile Princess is not only a hopelessly blank, generic anime, but also a terrible adaptation. But don't just take my word for it. ANN writer Rebecca Silverman did weekly reviews for the series, and since she's read the light novels, she also recognizes the adaptation's failures in capturing the spirit and essence of the source material, and even other ANN writers don't feel the anime is worth much. But ultimately, you should make your own judgment and see for yourself whether you like or dislike Bibliophile Princess, or anything else, really. At the end of the day, my reviews are just my personal opinions on the stuff I read, watch, and play, nothing more and nothing less.

 

[c la fet]

Don't expect me to talk about any ecchi anime ever and don't expect me to watch shows such as Haruhi Suzumiya, Redo of Healer, or Ranma 1/2 or anything of the like

Why do you dislike those shows ? I've never watched Haruhi Suzumiya but I've heard it's good.

 

[Juliko]

Why do you dislike those shows ? I've never watched Haruhi Suzumiya but I've heard it's good.

I'm just not a fan of ecchi, or stories that consist of nothing but juvenile sexcapades and overly sexualized characters and situations. Plus, I absolutely HATE the whole boob groping trope played for comedy, especially if it's nonconsensual. UUUUUGH. Having been taught from a young age that sexual harassment is bad, stuff like that is an INSTANT turn-off for me, even if certain media has more to offer than that. But that's more of a me thing, though.

Anyway, now for a review of a shoujo light novel series anime adaptation that's actually good!

Rating: 81/100

Man, the fall 2022 season has put out a lot of female-led anime, hasn't it? And a lot of said female lead characters are actually treated with respect and important to the plot rather than just simply being eye candy. I mean, we got stuff like Bocchi The Rock, Gundam: The Witch From Mercury, Do It Yourself!!, and the subject of today's review, Raven of the Inner Palace. I don't really remember how I first discovered this, but thought the premise seemed interesting. Parts of it reminded me of Saiunkoku Monogatari, which is also a Japanese-animated Chinese period drama, though Raven of the Inner Palace is more of an episodic mystery series. We don't get a lot of Japanese-animated shows about Chinese characters much anymore, though I think part of that is because China has started putting out their own donghua in recent years, so Raven of the Inner Palace is a breath of fresh air in an era saturated with nothing but isekai stuff. But I woefully underestimated just how invested in this show I'd wind up being, because Raven of the Inner Palace is a damn fine anime.

In a fantasy version of imperial China, deep in the inner palace, rumors tell of a mysterious consort known as the Raven Consort. Despite her title, she doesn't serve the emperor, and legends say that she can wield mysterious arts to fulfill any request, be it finding lost items or putting curses on people, all for a fair price. Xia Gaojun, the newest emperor, visits the Raven Consort, a young woman by the name of Liu Shouxue, with intent to find information on someone who died. Neither Gaojun nor Shouxue know that their fated meeting will become a taboo that will not only overturn history, but expose the truth behind just what the Raven Consort really is.

As far as animation goes, Raven of the Inner Palace has a very subdued yet pleasing art style. It's not exactly the flashiest or most dynamically animated show out there, and compared to other shows coming out around the same time as this, one could easily call it subpar. But what Raven lacks in dynamicism and vibrancy, it manages to make up for with good, down-to-earth character designs and creative storyboarding. While the series is very dialogue heavy and relies quite a bit on telling rather than showing, probably to save on animation costs, Raven manages to get creative with it by making use of cut-out shadow puppet imagery whenever a character repeats stories told them by others. To quote another reviewer, they bring the tales to life, cleanly splitting reality from legend and showing how rumors oversimplify and contort, turning people into archetypes. The series also spends a lot of time exploring the nature of rumor and how it clashes with reality, so it’s wise of the adaptation to highlight those divides in its visuals. The character designs are also pretty distinct as well, with the outfits fitting the time period without going overboard with ornamentation. Shouxue in particular is drawn with a particular delicacy that really highlights her ethereal nature in lieu of the fact that she's just a teenage girl thrust into a destiny she didn't quite want.

Speaking of the characters, the main cast is delightful to watch. All of them have their own distinct personalities and goals, and subtly change and develop over the course of the series. Shouxue in particular is the main backbone of the series, and the producers were careful to empathize that even though she's both revered and feared as this mysterious sorceress, she's still just a teenage girl trapped in a patriarchal society full of power imbalances, court politics, and generational oppression. Though she's been trained since childhood to act a certain way, whether to keep herself safe or hide her inner turmoil, Shouxue is still shown as being a compassionate person who willingly goes out of her way to help others, even at personal cost, so any loyalty and praise she does receive actually feels earned here. This is in stark contrast to another series that came out in the same season, Bibliophile Princess, which seemed way more interested in shilling the main character Elianna as this awesome Mary Sue who can do no wrong while never letting her do anything herself, outright removing important aspects of her personality that made her feel more well-rounded, and claiming she supposedly did a lot of awesome things while never bothering to actually show her actually doing them on screen.

Raven's story, themes, and their execution are much better handled here than Bibliophile Princess. In the latter, any attempts the show made at political intrigue fell completely flat because all of it mainly consisted of women being ridiculously petty and catty towards Elianna, often for really stupid reasons, and their stories made no effort to even be somewhat subtle or compelling in any way. Elianna's views were never challenged, its themes were surface-level at best, and none of the other characters had much personality or depth beyond their main archetype. Raven goes out of its way to show how strict monarchies, their ridiculous policies, and systemic failures hurt people, both rich and poor, even for generations, which can lead to a culture of constant deceit and backstabbing, among many other things. Sure, I bet there are other series that have tackled similar premises, and executed them better in some cases, but really, what was the last anime that's about Chinese court drama and politics that came out in the last thirty years? The only one I can think of off the top of my head is Saiunkoku Monogatari, which aired from 2006-2008 over the course of 78 episodes. If there are others that came out after that, do feel free to correct me, but in this era of non-stop isekai saturating the anime market, it's honestly refreshing to see an anime like Raven of the Inner Palace in this day and age.

That being said, as much as I want to praise this anime as being the best thing ever, several things hold it back. For one: the opening theme song. The song itself isn't bad...but the guy they brought in to sing it has this really obnoxious voice that not only clashes with the show's tone and atmosphere, but is just really annoying to listen to. I almost feel like the opening theme would have been better off if they had gotten someone with a nicer voice to sing it. The ending theme is much better in this regard and fits the feel of the show much better, as does the rest of the soundtrack. Also, show, was it really necessary to repeat the same narration at the beginning of literally EVERY SINGLE EPISODE?! We get it! We know what the Raven Consort is! We don't need to have that opening narration bashed into our heads in every episode, for God's sake! Your viewers are smarter than you make them out to be! Plus, there's one character who initially starts off as a villain, but after a certain point, the show hastily tries to write him as a tragic victim out of nowhere, seemingly forgetting about his previous malicious actions, making it really hard to sympathize with him. Furthermore, the anime ends on a fairly open-ended note, and it only covers a few volumes of the light novels. Luckily, Seven Seas announced that they're going to release the light novel series in North America in 2023, and since it's complete at seven volumes, you'll be able to read the entire series when it all comes out.

Raven of the Inner Palace isn't necessarily the flashiest anime, and we all know it'll likely never reach the level of popularity other series like Chainsaw Man, Jujutsu Kaisen, Spy x Family, and Demon Slayer achieved, but if you're into court dramas and artsy mysteries, or just want a Saiunkoku Lite, definitely give Raven of the Inner Palace a shot. I did, and I don't regret it one bit.

 

[c la fet]

I'm just not a fan of ecchi, or stories that consist of nothing but juvenile sexcapades and overly sexualized characters and situations. Plus, I absolutely HATE the whole boob groping trope played for comedy, especially if it's nonconsensual. UUUUUGH. Having been taught from a young age that sexual harassment is bad, stuff like that is an INSTANT turn-off for me, even if certain media has more to offer th

Oh I see.
But I don't think Haruhi Suzumiya is a ecchi... (it's not listed as such)
I've watched and read Ranma and I'd say there is less sexualization in the manga (and it's better than the anime)

 

[Juliko]

Oh I see.
But I don't think Haruhi Suzumiya is a ecchi... (it's not listed as such)

I know, but it does have the boob grabbing trope, and again, huge turn off for me. Again, that's just a me thing.

Anyway, new review, which was written on January 3rd, 2023.

Rating: 82/100

Tasogare-Boshi no Sui to Neri, or Sui, Neri, and the Twilight Planet, is a short, two-volume manga that came out in 2020 and ended in 2021. I only just discovered it yesterday and finished reading it today, and I gotta say, this is a pretty cute, wholesome, underrated sci-fi manga. It centers on a young girl, Sui, and her best friend, a talking sloth named Neri, and the two of them live in a future where people are leaving Earth to go to colonized planets in space. Nowadays, Earth has become inhabited by talking animals and is mainly just a quick pit stop for humans going to other planets. But Sui and Neri's lives change a little bit when a woman named Shida books a room at their inn when trying to get to school, and as they become friends, the days they spend together become a little livelier. Don't expect much in the way of a riveting plot here, as this manga is content to be just a series of episodic adventures revolving around Sui and her talking sloth friend.

In a way, Tasogare-Boshi no Sui to Neri is a bit like a lighter, less bleak Girls' Last Tour. The art style and storytelling methods it utilizes relfect this, as similarly to Girls' Last Tour, Sui to Neri is content with not giving you all the answers up front, other than some very vague, subtle clues that let you fill in the gaps for yourself. I think it works here, because the story is told from the perspective of a bunch of kids, who are likely just as in the dark about what happened to their world as we, the audience, are, and they don't see what remains of Earth as a bleak, apocalyptic hellscape. To them, it's just their world and how it's always been. The story doesn't feel the need to try and justify its existence with overwrought backstories or over-the-top technobabble, merely showing how the new Earth functions and how the people and animals still living there live in it. There are things I wish Sui to Neri would explain in more detail, such as how the talking animals came to be, what half the characters' names are, what happened with Sui's biological parents, and how she wound up getting adopted by a family of sloths, but I certainly enjoyed what the manga already provided.

If I were to describe Sui to Neri's art style, it'd be a slightly more refined version of Girls' Last Tour. The human characters don't look as squishy as the ones in GLT do, and they have more details in things like their eyes and bodies. The backgrounds intentionally have cleaner lines than GLT had, with less reliance on cross-hatching for shading and less sketchy, even though GLT used those shading styles deliberately to show how decrepit its world is. The world of Sui to Neri isn't so much dead as it is nearing its twilight years but still functioning. Buildings are old and creaky but still shown as being usable, and again, like GLT, the backgrounds and scenery alone tell you all you need to know about the current state of Earth, even down to things like cracks in stone stairways. The paneling makes every scene naturally flow into the other, and the backgrounds are pretty detailed without being overstuffed, with the few splash pages it has being breathtaking, making them hit at just the right moment. The talking animals are all depicted as cute and chibi, with all of them being friendly and kind to our protagonists.

Speaking of the characters, the trio of Sui, Neri, and Shida, while not the most three-dimensional or layered, are a fun bunch to watch, and the manga is mostly about them interacting with each other and the world around them. Any conflicts they have are pretty down-to-earth and never delve into melodrama. A lot of the solutions to whatever conflicts they face are pretty simple, with the manga not making a huge deal out of them. Plus, with the manga not having anything resembling a big, engrossing plot, the characters don't change much over the course of the series, and any changes they do go through are subtle and understated, which I think works here, since Sui to Neri is more about appreciating what you have, finding the beauty in what's left, and making the most of your situation. I do appreciate that the characters designs are pretty down-to-earth too. Sui and Shida actually look like people you'd meet on the street, or a kid you'd see in a store with their parents.

On its own, Tasogare-Boshi no Sui to Neri is a cute, laid-back, wholesome sci-fi manga that's content to be what it is, answers be damned. Don't go into this looking for high octane action or having answers to everything be spoon-fed to you up front. And don't worry, Sui to Neri has a pretty happy ending, all things considered. It's a nice little manga that isn't going to make any waves, but I still recommend it if you want a low-key sci-fi story that doesn't make you want to short-circuit your brain.

 

[Juliko]

This review was started on October 24th, 2022, but just finished today.

Rating: 84/100

I'll be honest, before this year, I never played any strategy games all the way through. At one point, I tried playing Final Fantasy Tactics on a PSP I ordered, since many consider that to be not only the best SRPG of all time, but one of the greatest video games of all time. A friend of mine really likes it, too. But I had a very hard time with it, to the point where I just flat-out quit cold turkey because the rules behind leveling up and the complicated job system were just too much for me to handle. That being said, when the game Triangle Strategy was first announced, I had decided I wanted to play it mainly because it was made by the same team that made Octopath Traveler. Playing the demos only cemented my desire to play Triangle Strategy, mainly because the rules were a lot easier to follow, there were adjustable difficulty settings and lack of permadeath, and the game didn't punish you for grinding most of the time. So consider Triangle Strategy my introduction to SRPGs. Now that I've finally finished it, I have to say I'm pretty glad I got to play this, because barring a few flaws, Triangle Strategy is a pretty damn good game.

Thirty years before the game's events began, a war broke out between three countries—Hyzante, Glenbrook, and Aesfrost—over the scarcity of salt and iron. After much fighting, the Saltiron War ended, and the continent of Norzelia became peaceful. But that peace is shattered when Gustadolph, the current Archduke of Aesfrost, sends assassins to murder his young cousin Dragan, using it as a pretext to invade the Kingdom of Glenbrook and seize control of the Grand Norzelian Mines for his own uses. Another war breaks out, and everything is thrown into chaos. It's up to Serenoa Wolffort, current heir to the noble House of Wolffort, and his stalwart allies to navigate their way through the conflict and put an end to this new war once and for all, though the path to getting there won't be an easy one. If you're thinking the summary is an oversimplification of the actual plot, you're not wrong. The game very much has an epic Game of Thrones feel to it, with various empires at war with one another, heaping helpings of economic and political intrigue, and an evolving story filled with all sorts of twists and revelations that always keeps you on your toes. So if you're somebody who was burned by Game of Thrones' infamous finale and want to see that kind of story executed better, with different endings for every route, Triangle Strategy has you covered.

As a game, Triangle Strategy is a tactical strategy RPG, where you fight armies of enemies whenever the story calls for it, with its main mechanic being centered around choices and story branching centered around three factors: morality, utility, and liberty. The choices you make can determine how the game and various events play out, and a lot of these choices aren't necessarily going to be safe and happy ones. There's also a mechanic where you have to sway others into agreeing with any decisions you make, and the game has brief exploration segments where you can do things like find items and gather information from NPCs. Unlocking certain bits of information and doing some sleuthing will make it easier to persuade certain characters into agreeing with your stance, but not all of them will be accessible on your first playthrough. Depending on how many characters agree with your stance and the choices you make, you can get four different endings with different outcomes, and some of them aren't always going to be the most ideal. The in-game battles are also pretty good, similar to Final Fantasy Tactics, but putting a new spin on it by making more use of things like terrain, height, the environment, and so on. For example, there are characters that ride eagles, and if you place them on things like the roof of a house or a tall bridge, their attack range expands a lot, and at one point, there's a battle that takes place in a mine, and you can utilize the mine carts to get around. Another example is that certain environments can conduct electricity, and if you have a character use a lightning attack in an environment that does that, your attack can hit not just one enemy, but multiple enemies as long as they're in the area that conducts electricity. As far as gameplay goes, TriStrat really goes all out here.

Being made by the same team that made Octopath Traveler, the graphics are no slouch either. The 3D backgrounds and set pieces are pretty well designed, and a little more vibrant than Octopath's were, which speaks to how far Team Asano has come in terms of perfecting their HD-2D style. The sprites are also detailed and surprisingly expressive, like they came right out of something like Pokemon Black and White, which also had very expressive, dynamic sprites. Though based on the trailers for Octopath Traveler II, which is due to come out next year, Team Asano seems like they're stepping up their game in the graphics department. Oh, and I don't think I need to tell you about the utterly awesome soundtrack courtesy of Akira Senju, but I am anyway because it's amazing. Every piece of music in this game fits like a glove, and I especially loved the epic, orchestral main theme that plays when the title screen appears. Seriously, IMHO, Akira Senju can do no wrong, and TriStrat's OST is no exception.

I will admit, I'm kind of mixed on the characters. The main group that we follow, Serenoa and the members of the House of Wolffort, are a pretty fun group with their own reasons for doing what they do and the stakes they have in the war. Gradually, we learn their stories, motivations, and personal goals over the course of the game, even if you may not like them, though I will agree with one reviewer who felt that the characters really ought to have more moments when they're not fighting for their lives. The game's pacing gets pretty fast once the main conflict starts, and while the characters do develop over the course of the game, they don't really get fleshed out beyond the war situation, barring a few optional scenes you unlock if you use them enough. That being said, the game's main problem is with the optional characters you can recruit if you meet certain requirements, mainly that the game doesn't seem to want to integrate them into the story enough, or even with other characters who they're said to have a lot of history with. For example, there's one character, Archibald, who played a big part in the Saltiron War and knew Frederica's mother, which offers a lot of potential in terms of both story and character development for both him and Frederica, since they're connected through Frederica's mother...but they're never shown interacting in any way whatsoever. The game seems to ignore huge opportunities for the optional party members, several of whom are explicitly stated to have a lot of history with certain characters, to receive any kind of development beyond their side quests. They're just treated as an afterthought, which stinks, because Team Asano really could have had them be more involved with the plot, especially since there are several who are really interesting and fun. For example, Hossabara, the tavernkeep, is a cool old lady who has great chemistry with Erador, a strong yet down-to-earth personality, and a genuinely compelling backstory, even if she's not all that useful in battle. She, Narve, and Archibald are my favorite of the optional recruits, and again, I wish the game had capitalized on their potential and integrated them into the story more.

But mismanaged characters aren't TriStrat's only issues. There's one character who, once you reach a certain point in the game that locks you certain routes, makes an outright evil decision that has such a callous disregard for a group of marginalized people that it completely stomps all over his earlier characterization, and his decision comes so out of nowhere that it almost feels out of character for him, other than some very subtle hints that you don't even access unless you spend some time with him in one scene before that. A lot of people stopped liking that character after that, with me being one of them, which is the reason I will never play his route. There are other points where TriStrat's writing gets rather extreme and even a little inconsistent depending on the route you ultimately decide to take. While I do like stories that lean more on the morally gray side, I'm not down with trying to present certain genuinely evil things as being for the greater good or as a means to an end. But again, that's a choice and not even the best ending. Speaking of the best ending, the requirements to get that aren't necessarily easy to find out. I had to look it up on the internet just to find out what they were, and the game doesn't tell you that certain little things can be really important in getting the best ending.

That being said, for what it is, Triangle Strategy is a fairly fun, compelling game that does have a lot of replay value, and I'm glad it was the first SRPG I got to play. If you're into that sort of stuff, definitely check it out.

 

[Juliko]

This review was written on January 13th, 2023.

Rating: 55/100

In an industry as saturated as anime has gotten, it's a given that not every show can stand out from the heavy hitters, or even stuff that's similar to it. There are shows that stand out for the right reasons, shows that don't quite stand out, and then you have those that stand out for all the wrong reasons. Sadly, the latter is the case for PuraOre: Pride of Orange, an anime that basically tries to combine three things: ice hockey, the everyday slice-of-life adventures of cute girls, and idols, all while failing at not only balancing them out, but executing any of them in a compelling manner. The story follows Manaka Mizusawa, a chipper young girl who one day finds out her town Nikko is holding ice hockey classes held by the Nikko Dream Monkeys. She convinces her younger sister and other members of her embroidery club to try it out. The girls immediately fall in love with the sport, and through it, they make some new friends and face competition from rival teams, with their manager wanting to shake things up and have them perform victory dances whenever they win.

Yeah, there's no denying it: Pride of Orange is basically a glorified advertisement for a mobile game. A mobile game that shut down not long after the anime finished, by the way, which should tell you how well this show did at trying to advertise it. Hell, the character designs look like they were ripped right out of Love Live (And from what I hear, the person who designs the Bang Dream characters did the designs!!). Seriously, the whole show just looks...bland. Like it was only made to be churned out by a production committee to convince people to buy stuff, that's it. The backgrounds are fine and the animation is smooth, but everything else about it makes it near indistinguishable from other slice-of-life anime other than the hockey bits. I'm speaking as a person who couldn't care less about sports in any way, nor do I know much about sports, especially ice hockey, but even the show's attempts at trying to make ice hockey seem interesting ring hollow because all it really amounts to is "Ice hockey is great!!" without going into detail about why people would even like the sport. The fact that they have Manaka, the single least interesting character in the show, only gets interested in it on a whim rather than something more substantial, tells you just how little the anime cares about the sport its trying to shill.

Speaking of Manaka, the characters. There's very little to them. They're all flat, carbon copies of characters from other shows that were done way better elsewhere. They have no depth, no nuance, nothing to them other than their single defining trait, yet the show expects you to care about them. One character, who is advertised as being one of the mains, leaves the show within three episodes and barely appears after that, yet the show makes her departure and everyone's reactions to it sooooo cheesy and melodramatic in an attempt to wring tears out of you, but it doesn't work because we never got the time to even learn more about this character or find reasons to care about her. Manaka doesn't even get so much as a character arc, as she's literally just a discount Honoka from Love Live. Honestly, the only character I really liked was Naomi, that's it. The absolute worst of them is Yoko, their manager, mainly because of the way she tries to recruit Yu, a girl who quit hockey, onto the team, namely she repeatedly calls the girl on her phone and then stalks her by coming to her house unannounced and browbeats her into joining the Dream Monkeys. Because that's a surefire way to make somebody love you, riiiiiight? Beyond her creepy stalking of Yu, I just found Yoko to be obnoxious and annoying.

Even the soundtrack isn't much to write home about. I liked the ending song, that's it. The thing is, PuraOre tries to mix three things into one package, and is even marketed as an idol series, but there's literally naught but five minutes dedicated to idol stuff, all of which never ties into the narrative whatsoever. You could literally cut it out and nothing would be lost, so for all of PuraOre's posturing over it being an idol series rings completely hollow because it doesn't even do anything with its idol stuff. So yeah, PuraOre's biggest problem is that in its attempts to mix three different genres into one, it completely fails at doing anything substantial with any of them, being little more than just fodder churned out in a bad attempt to copy Uma Musume's success. Is it any wonder the mobile game it tried to advertise wound up being shut down? And don't even get me started on the utterly cheesy dialogue. "The bonds of our hearts connect the puck!" Really? Bleeeegh.

If you're into this type of show, more power to you. But PuraOre: Pride of Orange is just another generic gacha game advertisement that doesn't even do a good job at trying to advertise the mobile game its based on, let alone being a standalone anime. It's not offensively bad or anything, but it's just bland and flavorless.

 

[Juliko]

This review was just finished today.

Rating: 77/100

The third generation of Pokemon was a pretty significant turning point for not just me as a Pokemon fan, but for the franchise as a whole. For me personally, while I'll always have a soft spot for both the Johto and Unova games, Pokemon Ruby & Sapphire, and later Emerald, are very important to me in that Sapphire was the first video game I ever truly completed (As in, reached the Elite Four and defeated them), as back then, I was only just learning the concept that video games did, in fact, need to be completed. It was also the generation where I truly learned about stuff like strategies, applying type match-ups, deciphering puzzles, and so on. This was also, unfortunately, the period where Pokemon's popularity was waning for a variety of reasons. I never stopped liking Pokemon even during its slumps, and as you can tell, I still do to this day. Having replayed the original Ruby and Sapphire games on a whim, some parts of them have aged pretty well, while others are a bit more primitive compared to the innovations that its later remakes would apply.

I won't belabor the game's story, as it's still pretty much the same as the other ones: You get to go on a journey with Pokemon, battle the gyms, and defeat a group of bad guys, though in the case of RSE, the version you play as a different set of villains. In Ruby, you have Team Magma, who wants to expand the land mass, and in Sapphire you fight Team Aqua, who wants to fill the world with more water. Yeah, they're not exactly the most well thought-out villain groups, and their reasons for doing what they do raise a lot of questions, though the remakes would fix this. That being said, the gameplay has a LOT going for it, especially when it came out during the GameBoy Advance's heyday. When I say that RSE was a turning point for the Pokemon franchise, I meant it. RSE would introduce a lot of new gameplay elements that are now considered indispensible, such as abilities, individual natures, relearning forgotten moves, berries that restore health and heal status effects, items that could increase happiness, and new battling styles such as double battles, where both parties could send two Pokemon out to battle one another. The most important feature, which has stuck around even to this day, is the menu sprite-based storage system. In previous games, the box system was very clunky: when your box was full, you couldn't catch any new Pokémon until you physically changed the box yourself. Ruby and Sapphire completely overhauled the way boxed Pokémon were represented, allowing you to see all the Pokémon in a given box, arrange them however you want to, and even change the wallpaper to however you want it to look.

The graphics also got a complete overhaul as well. They're a lot sleeker and sharper, the sprites have much smoother movement, and for the first time ever, your character is allowed to run, speeding up the pacing quite a bit. Granted, the battle sprites for the Pokemon are still static, with Emerald's sprites only having two frames of movement and either rotating or scaling, eschewing the detailed sprite animations of Crystal, those are fairly minor nitpicks in my eyes. A lot of the new Pokemon introduced in these games have some really great designs and concepts, like Absol, Salamence, Tropius, Gardevoir, Rayquaza, and so on. The soundtrack also made the transition from 8-bit chiptunes to utilizing more actual instruments and the occasional synth sound. I mean, do I even need to mention the French horns and how awesome they sound? There's a reason people who grew up with these games constantly make memes out of that music.

But not everything introduced in the third generations games turned out for the better. For one, the characters and their characterization are a lot weaker here than in previous games, save for a very select few. Honestly, Teams Aqua and Magma are pretty weak as villains. All they want to do is either turn in the world into an ocean or expand the land mass, that's it, and never stop to consider the consequences of their actions until they stare them in the face. Plus, your rival character is kind of bland in terms of personality, and after a certain point, the game doesn't let you battle them anymore, so you don't even get to battle them when their starter Pokemon reaches its final stage. You battle them a total of four times, and the last time you battle them, their starter is still at their second stage of evolution. Granted, all of these things would get addressed in the remakes, so my complaints are pretty much rendered obsolete. On the Pokemon side, while a lot of the new Pokemon are really cool and can be utter beasts if you train them right, several of them are not only pointlessly rare, but also pretty useless once you get them. Not only that, there's no way for you to catch every single Pokemon once you finish the Hoenn quest. A lot of Pokemon from the Johto region in particular are flat-out inaccessible in-game, and the only way to even get them is to trade them not only from Fire Red/Leaf Green, but from spin-off games like Pokemon Colosseum or XD: Gale of Darkness, and good luck trying to get those spin-off games these days since GameCube games are super expensive now! Plus, since RSE was made on an entirely new engine, it was impossible to transfer Pokemon from the GBC games to the GBA games, long before Diamond/Pearl/Platinum introduced the GTS.

And for every good new mechanic RSE introduced, there are some that are just flat-out bad. For one, fishing is made needlessly more complicated than it was previously. In previous games, you ever got a bite or you didn't. Here, it's possible for the bite to get away from you, which is unfortunately more common because the game expects you to push the button literally as soon as you see the "Oh! A bite!" message and not take your eyes off the screen for even a second. And I don't think I need to go into all the weird logistics behind getting a dang Feebas. Hell, upgrading your fishing rod even reduces your chance of getting certain Pokemon compared to catching them with a Good Rod. Again, these would be addressed in the remakes, and even in Fire Red/Leaf Green, so complaining about them is basically a moot point. That being said, a lot of fans complained that the latter half of the game's main campaign consisted of surfing across nothing but water routes. I actually didn't mind this too much when I was a kid, and I still don't. I loved exploring across the water, diving into new areas, and looking for stuff in every nook and cranny I could find. This was also addressed in the remakes, and I know it was such a big issue that people made memes out of it. Oh, and I wasn't a big fan of the Battle Tower or Battle Frontier. I found them too hard to deal with, even as a kid. I know a lot of people like those, and that's totally fine, and I actually don't consider their inclusion to be a problem. I did, however, find the Pokemon Contests to be a bit too restrictive, especially since you're only allowed to give your Pokemon a finite amount of PokeBlocks, and couldn't really max out their stats unless you knew exactly what to do. Again, these would be addressed in the remake.

All that being said, I still have a fondness for Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald as games, though as of now, I do prefer the remakes because of the new additions, refinements, and for addressing a lot of RSE's flaws. I do still play RSE on occasion whenever I feel like it, and there's a lot to be said for the new mechanics that newer Pokemon games still utilize to this very day, so the modern Pokemon franchise as we know it still does owe a lot to RSE. So while they're not perfect, they still did a lot for the franchise, and I think that's still something to respect in the grand scheme of things.

 

[Juliko]

This review was written on December 21st, 2022.

Rating: 78/100

So...I initially passed over Do It Yourself!! because I had already been watching a bunch of other anime, so it wasn't on my radar. But by the end of this month, I was getting sick and tired of one anime I was watching, Bibliophile Princess, so on a whim, I decided to watch Do It Yourself!! just so I could have something else to focus on. This wound up being a good decision on my part, as while it's definitely another Cute Girls Doing Cute Things sort of anime, it actually does manage to stand out from the others by virtue of the fact that it's all about making things by hand and being staffed by people who actually put some passion into the show and care about it.

The story goes as follows: Serufu Yua and Miku "Purin" Suride are childhood friends who had planned to apply to a tech-savvy school together, but the accident prone Serufu flunked the entrance exams and wound up getting shunted to another, more traditional school. Miku isn't too happy about this, and their friendship is strained as a result. Serufu accidentally ruins her bike while on her way to school, but a passerby fixes it up for her. The passerby, a classmate named Rei Yasaku, is the president of Gatagata Girls' High School's DIY Club, which centers on making old fashioned crafts by hand, but it's in danger of shutting down due to not having enough members. Thinking this might be the best way to repair her friendship with Purin, Serufu joins the DIY Club in the hopes of creating projects that could bring them together once more, with new members joining shortly afterward...assuming she doesn't hurt herself yet again.

From a technical standpoint, the animation is quite good. A lot better than I thought it'd be, actually. While it doesn't have much in the way of shading, sharp linework, or extremely bright colors, the actual animation is surprisingly kinetic. Characters move smoothly and fluidly, with a lot of careful attention given to body language and how the characters present themselves, like Serufu's meandering gait and how Jobko always has her hands in her pockets. The backgrounds have a unique, watercolor look to them, and for some reason the girls all have two-toned hair, though it's not as obnoxiously clashing as Healer Girl's characters have. While DIY's anime isn't the flashiest, the animators knew what they were doing and put their all into what matters most, like the nails, drills, hammers, and capturing the tactile sensation of drilling a nail into place. To quote another reviewer, DIY's investment in these details helps instill a sense of authenticity that buoys the show's ambitions to inspirational and educational heights. The soundtrack is equally pleasant, tranquil, and laid-back, though the opening theme is a bit too squeaky for my ears.

I am kind of mixed on the characters, though. They're not exactly the most groundbreaking or three-dimensional, which is fine, but they do have some subtle traits that do manage to make them feel just a little more than just one-note moeblobs. Serufu, in spite of her accident prone klutziness, actually does pretty well in school and is a competent artist. I could actually relate to Takumi, her love for a certain book series, and her insecurities, and Rei is pretty likeable too. But the other half of the cast fares a little less well. Shii doesn't really do much except act like a squeaky-voiced five-year-old who screeches "Meow!" all the time, Jobko bordered on being insufferable in the beginning, though thankfully she calmed down a bit later on, and Purin's whole reason for being a tsundere towards Serufu just came off as really petty and stupid. Purin, I get it, you're mad that Serufu didn't get into the same school as you, and it's understandable that you'd be mad at her about it for, like, a day or two, but it's not like the two of you can't see each other anymore! Her school is literally on the same area as the tech school you go to, and you two literally live right next to each other, for God's sake! And continuing to be unnecessarily bitchy towards her after the fact makes her come across as petty and shallow. I know she gets better at the end, but having to deal with her being a whiny brat over something that didn't need to be made into a huge conflict was just annoying to me.

But Purin's tsundere schtick isn't the only problem the show has. There's one particularly huge flaw that stops the show from achieving true greatness, I feel, and it's a big one. Does NOBODY have any concept of basic safety equipment or safety regulations?! These high school aged girls never wear goggles, cut resistant gloves, dust masks, and so on, yet they engage in a lot of woodworking, which in real life requires all of those things! One scene shows Takumi cutting into glass, and somebody posted on a discussion forum about DIY that it's important to wear breathing protection when cutting into glass, because not doing so is extremely dangerous. Every science class I took in school mandated that every student wear goggles, masks, or gloves before handling any kind of chemical whatsoever. Safety regulations exist for a reason, producers! As much as I like this show and its whole ethos, I'm concerned that somebody might watch this show and think they can use power tools without basic protection and wind up cutting their own arm off as a result. Stuff like that happens if you're not careful and don't follow safety guidelines! Which also makes me wonder why a school would even allow teenage girls to use woodworking tools without safety equipment. If something like that happened in America, the school would get sued to high heaven. Also, this is more of a personal nitpick but BY GOD Jobko's voice is annoying as fuck! Who's bright idea was it to make a 12-year-old sound like a dying chipmunk?! Just listening to her voice hurts my ears, and it borders dangerously close to Misaki Kuno levels of straining, unsustainable squeakiness.

I also wish there was a bit more detail on the worldbuilding, such as how technology managed to advance to quickly, but I do like that the anime just treats it as normal and not too big a deal, as this is just the world the girls live in. Plus, DIY as an anime is more about stressing that no matter how far technology advances, building things from the ground up with your own hands is still important and still has its place. It doesn't try to claim that technology and technological advances in and of themselves are bad, something I very much appreciate. After all, every new bit of technological advances started off as a DIY project at some point, didn't it? Do It Yourself!! as an anime isn't going to set the world on fire, but I don't think you should miss out on it, especially if you like iyashikei anime with a bit more meat on their bones. Hell, the only reason I got into it was because of this article I found, which argues why anime centering around people who are passionate about their hobbies can be good in their own right, even if they're not like your typical mainstream anime. Do It Yourself!! has its issues, sure, but it's a cute, wholesome, laid-back anime about making stuff with your own hands and having a good time.

 

[Juliko]

This review was written on November 15th, 2022, with an anecdote near the end about its availability.

Rating: 85/100

Princess Arete is an anime movie whose existence I knew about to an extent, but never actively pursued until now. A blogger I once followed watched and liked it, and I had watched a decent amount of it some time before this, but didn't finish it until this year. Based on a 1983 short story called The Clever Princess written by Diana Coles, Princess Arete tells the story of...well, a princess named Arete whose father keeps her locked in her castle tower, away from the outside world. Many suitors try to win her hand, but Arete has no interested in being married to any of them and wants to experience life outside the castle. Unfortunately for her, an attempt to escape fails, and she finds herself not only married off to a sinister wizard named Boax, she is magically turned into a more submissive princess and taken to his abode in the desert. It turns out the wizard took her in order to prevent a prophecy involving her from coming true and taking away his immortality. Arete needs to find some way to break the enchantment and rediscover herself if she has any hope of escape.

I'm just going to get the main elephant out of the room right away: If you're looking for a fast-paced movie full of action, you're out of luck, as Princess Arete's pacing is VERY slow. Agonizingly so. Boredom and loss of agency/autonomy are huge themes in this movie, so don't you dare go into this movie expecting it to be full of explosions or fast paced action. I'll admit, even I got a little tired of the movie's slow pacing during the middle part, even if I understand that Princess Arete as a movie is trying not to rush one minute of its storyline and actually has proper build-up, something most movies nowdays seem to eschew. As much as I love Princess Arete's devotion to really trying to give its setting and storyline sufficient development, I honestly wouldn't blame anyone if they dropped the movie halfway through just because they're waiting for something to happen. Princess Arete pretty much exemplifies the term "Slow Burn" in every sense of the word. Some may like its slow pacing, others not so much.

However, don't think that Princess Arete doesn't have anything to offer as a movie. For one, the animation, for its time, is absolutely stellar. I can't tell if it was hand drawn or made in the very early stages of digipaint, but the motion and overall look of this movie are absolutely gorgeous. Everything from the characters' costumes to the backgrounds and medieval architecture feel subdued, yet alive and distinct. Even the character designs, while fairly simple compared to more modern stuff, are still relatively down to earth and fit the feel of the movie. Not only that, I love that the producers actually put a lot of thought and effort into bringing the setting to life, showing the various customs and habits of people living in a fantasy-inspired medieval setting, which most media only show one or two scenes of. The people in the background actually feel like they have their own lives and backgrounds outside of what Arete is dealing with, and I didn't notice any glaring stereotypes, so that's also a win right there. The soundtrack, made by the ever awesome Akira Senju, is also a joy to listen to, especially that one Russian song that plays after Arete is magically transformed and sealed away in Boax's castle.

Even the character writing is surprisingly strong. Everyone, from Arete herself to minor characters like Ample and the witch, have a surprising amount of depth and nuance to them, hardly ever reduced to just one-note stereotypes. Even Boax, the villain, actually has an interesting motivation for what he does, though it's mainly revealed at the end. From what I've heard, Arete in the original novel was a lot more rambunctious and happy-go-lucky, and her movie counterpart is much more subdued and reserved, but no less intelligent and proactive, especially after she breaks free from the wizard's spell. Some people may not like that she's basically forced to become a more submissive princess when Boax puts her under his spell, and she spends a good portion of the film in that state, but the movie makes it pretty clear that the point of Arete's character is for her to take back her agency and autonomy, even if it takes a while for her to do so. Hell, apparently Princess Arete is celebrated as a feminist work in Japan, and I can absolutely see why. The premise of a princess being kidnapped by a villain and imprisoned in a castle has been done many times before, to the point of being a cliche at this point, but the nuanced character writing, the deft way the producers handled the moral dilemmas the characters face, and the well-developed setting make Princess Arete stand apart from its contemporaries.

So if you're interested and looking to watch Princess Arete legally in some way, you're out of luck. Studio 4°C, the company that produced the anime, originally posted an English subtitled version of the movie on their YouTube page for a limited time, and as of now, the movie has since been taken off. Princess Arete only managed to get a Blu-Ray release in the UK, fairly recently at that, and it never got a US release at all. Here's hoping this new exposure it's gotten will change that, especially since companies like GKids and Eleven Arts have started popping up and changing this as of late. Maybe one of them can put Princess Arete out on BD in the US at some point? I hope so, because Princess Arete is criminally underrated and deserves the love and appreciation it deserves, slow pacing or no. Definitely give it a shot if you're tired of the usual movies that rely solely on nothing but action and special effects.

 

[Juliko]

This review was written on January 26th, 2023.

Rating: 72/100

After the colossal disappointment that was Tropical Rouge Pretty Cure, once Delicious Party Pretty Cure was announced, I was like "PLEASE let this be good! PLEASE let this be better than Tropical Rouge!!!" Thankfully, to my relief, Delicious Party did go out of its way to address a lot of issues that TroPri had, though even as it is now, DeliPre still has a lot of issues of its own. The CooKingdom is the origin place of all cuisines from all around the world. However, because of a theft incident involving the sinister Bundoru Gang, a group of elusive phantom thieves, the kingdom's prized treasure, the Recipe-Bon, is gone. Three fairies of the CooKingdom must venture to Earth and meet three girls in order to reclaim the Recipe-bon from those phantom thieves. When they cross paths with Yui Nagomi in the town of Oishina City, they grant the little easy-going, vegetable-loving girl the power to become a Pretty Cure to combat the bandits, with her friends Kokone Fuwa, Ran Hanamichi, and Amane Kasai joining her in their cause. Together, they must defeat the Bundoru Gang and make sure food in general doesn't get erased out of existence.

I'll get the positives out of the way first, because there's a lot that DeliPre manages to do right that Tropical Rouge just flat-out didn't. In Tropical Rouge, the main narrative was that the villains stole people's energy and motivation and gave it to their leader, and the way it was presented there gave the series no real sense of tension. All it really resulted in doing was making people lazy, and as a result, the battles were about as boring as eating lunch, and there was literally no real conflict save for the very end. DeliPre addressed this in that its villains basically want to either steal food, make it taste bad, or make it disappear completely, which is shown to have very serious implications and consequences, especially if you think about it on a grander scale. They basically want to make people starve to death by erasing food completely, which makes for a far more compelling, palpable, and serious threat than just making people lazy. Granted, this is a children's show, so we know that everything's inherently going to be all hunky-dory at the end of every episode, but that doesn't change the fact that the villains' schemes here, if left unchecked, are inherently more threatening and compelling than TroPri's could ever hope to be.

It also helps that DeliPre actively spent quite a bit of time fleshing out its main plot, even if it didn't do so all the time. Again, TroPri had such a thin plot that it resulted in a lot of useless filler episodes that could have easily been used for other, more important things, like fleshing out any character that's not Manatsu or Laura. DeliPre remedies this issue by having several episodes dedicated to trying to figure out just what's going on, who stole the Recipe-Bon, and other things related to its plot, particularly in regards to several side characters, even if not all of those episodes manage to hit the mark. Points for trying! Speaking of characters, another issue TroPri had was that it not only gave so much screentime to Manatsu and Laura, it did so at the expense of the other Cures, who didn't even get relevant character arcs until over halfway into the series' run, with several not even getting so much as whole arcs. Poor Sango/Cure Coral. She deserved so much better. Plus, it didn't even try to flesh out or develop Manatsu beyond having her be an overexcited five-year-old who had too much sugar. DeliPre, while not doing it as well as other series, manages to flesh out not only the other Cures, but other side characters as well, giving them all their time to shine and compelling character arcs that actually make them feel more interesting than at first glance. Kokone and Ran especially wound up being more well-developed than I initially thought, with Kokone in particular being the most fleshed out of the cast, IMHO. The villains manage to do their job and are genuinely more threatening than the TroPri villains ever were, but barring Gentlu, their backstories could have used more fleshing out, and the resolution to Narcisstoru's plotline seemed kind of...half-baked. But overall, the cast is much better this season.

...Though the producers might have gone overboard with trying to remedy TroPri's mistakes, because in their attempts to flesh out the other Cures and even some of the side characters, they completely dropped the ball on giving that same treatment to their main character: Yui. Not gonna lie, Yui literally has nothing to her beyond worshipping her grandma and her dumb catchphrase "Deliciousmile!" Any development she eventually gets is relegated to the finale, rather than having it naturally occur across the entire series or a lot earlier, and because she's basically spent the whole series relegated to the sidelines, any attempts to flesh her out come too little, too late for it to really have any real weight to her character. To be fair, I found Yui to be a lot less annoying than Manatsu from TroPri, but while TroPri had the problem of giving Manatsu a lot of screentime and not using it to flesh her out as a character beyond her one main personality trait, Yui has the opposite problem—she was constantly put on the back-burner in favor of the other Cures, and as a result, she comes off as bland and woefully underutilized. Even her friendship with Takumi doesn't get fleshed out enough. Speaking of Takumi, for all the show's posturing about him being a Tuxedo Mask-like figure for the Cures and helping them out, he was hardly ever relevant half the time, and was often excluded from the group except for when the girls could benefit from involving him in an activity outside of fighting. The series really should have made him more involved with the girls and the plot, and like Yui, a lot of his important character moments were shoehorned into the finale rather than having it happen across the entire series. On the flip side, you have Kome-Kome, one of the mascots, who the series tries to claim is more important than she actually is, and even gave her a lot of cool powers and focus episodes, but not only does her whole aging from a human baby to a teenage girl thing feel needlessly tacked on, but any development Kome-Kome gets doesn't really go anywhere, especially when all it results in is her being a MacGuffin for the Cures' power-up.

But mismanaged and underutilized characters aren't DeliPre's only problem. For God's sake, would it seriously kill anyone to NOT talk about JUST food for more than two seconds?! Seriously, I know food is the series' big theme and all, but it seems like every single thing in the characters' lives revolve around food and only food! They literally never talk about anything outside of food or show interest in anything besides food! It borders on being almost creepy in how obsessed these people are with food. People can have more than one interest, even if some aren't as strong as others! For example, Heartcatch Pretty Cure's big theme was fashion and flowers, but the characters in that show did have varied interests and lives outside of those two things, which gave them a lot of depth and additional layers to their personalities! Furthermore, later episodes in the show seemed to just either shoehorn in new elements that came out of nowhere or just flat-out pulled them out of their ass, with literally no foreshadowing or build-up whatsoever. For the sake of not wanting to spoil things in the review, I'm going to refer to this reviewer's posts on episodes 37 and 38 in particular, which detail the issues those had far better than I could hope to do, but illustrate my point. Warning that the links spoil pretty much everything that happens in those particular episodes. Plus, the final episodes' handling of the resolutions to the series' plot really falls apart at the end.

So while Delicious Party Pretty Cure tried its hardest to rectify the mistakes Tropical Rouge Pretty Cure made, it's still plagued with plenty of its own issues, preventing it from being one of the better Pretty Cure series. But that doesn't mean there isn't anything to like about it, and is still a fairly cute show regardless. I am looking forward to Hirogaru Sky Pretty Cure after this, so you can rest assured I'll be watching that for sure, especially since it seems to be trying to break a lot of Pretty Cure conventions right out of the gate.

 

[Juliko]

This review was written on November 26th, 2022.

Rating: 85/100

Growing up, I mainly limited my video game playing to Nintendo's handheld consoles because my family could never afford home consoles like the Playstation or the Wii. Plus, I liked being able to play and move around whenever I felt like it rather than simply staying in one place because the monotony makes me feel restless. So I generally never tried to get certain home consoles unless there was a game for them that I really REALLY wanted, giving me a reason to get said console. It's because of this that I never wanted a Playstation 4 until last year, when the new Tales game, Tales of Arise, was due to come out in September of 2021. As soon as I learned that news, I begged my parents to buy me a PS4 for my birthday just so I could play it. I wound up finally getting said PS4 and bought Tales of Arise as soon as it was out. I admit, the only Tales games I've ever played to completion were Symphonia and Zestiria. I tried playing a little bit of both Phantasia (the SNES version) and Abyss, but I fell out of them due to other obligations, along with there being some things I couldn't figure out, so I'm tackling this from the perspective of someone who has only played Symphonia and Zestiria. So now that I've finally completed the game, how do I like Arise? Well, I feel it's definitely better than Zestiria in a lot of ways, but I do like Symphonia better than Arise.

The inhabitants of the planet Dahna have always revered Rena, the planet in the sky, as a land of the righteous and divine. At least until the advanced Renans came down and conquered Dahna with sheer force. For three hundred years Rena has ruled over Dahna, pillaging the world beneath of its resources and its people of their dignity and freedom. The game focuses on Alphen, a Dahnan man who has no memories and has lost the ability to feel pain, and Shionne, a Renan noblewoman whose Curse of Thorns brings pain to whoever touches her. Along the way they are joined by: Rinwell, a Dahnan mage able to use spells despite it supposedly being something only Renans could do; Law, a Dahnan who is a member of the "Snake Eyes" police organization; Dohalim il Qaras, a Renan Lord who espouses equality; and Kisara, Dohalim's motherly Dahnan bodyguard. Together, the six of them aim to topple the Renan oppression and take back what was once theirs, but the situation may prove to be more complicated than they realize.

Not gonna lie, for Bandai-Namco's supposed last Tales game for the PS4, they really went all out in the graphics department. Seriously, the creators made great use of the Unreal Engine 4 software, and Arise might as well be the most stunning Tales game ever. The backgrounds are full of rich, vibrant detail, and I never noticed any glitches or wonky assets as I played it over the course of a year. The dungeons are also very well designed, easy to navigate with the map feature, and both the CGI and anime cutscenes are gorgeously animated. But in a sense, I think the graphics being so rich might be too much of a good thing. I don't know if this is an issue with my TV or my PS4, or my own sensory issues, but the color gradience of Arise is really, REALLY, obnoxiously bright. Seriously, I tried adjusting the brightness settings on my game, and no matter what I did, the game always looked way too bright during the day time scenes, even when I had the brightness settings down really low. The color contrast is way too stark, and there seems to be no middle ground to make it easier on the eyes, so it's always either too bright or too dark to me. It's probably more of a me issue, and if nobody else experienced this, then feel free to ignore this bit of criticism. I do have to admit, the 3D CGI, manga-style paneling for the skits kind of threw me off, mainly because I'm so used to the visual novel style of 2D static character portraits being used for the skits. While I can understand wanting to try something new with them, I hope Bandai-Namco doesn't do away with the 2D static portraits for skits for future games completely.

Coming off of Zestiria, not only are the graphics much improved, but the battle system is also massively revamped. As much as I love Zestiria, its battle system was needlessly complicated. Thankfully, Arise went back to the basics in terms of its battle mechanics, and not only are they much easier to understand and control, they make the combat sequences much faster and more streamlined. Not only that, unlike Tales of Zestiria, which didn't allow you much freedom of movement when in battle, Arise goes full-on Kingdom Hearts and lets any character you control move in every direction however you please. You're even allowed to jump and do dodge rolls, something many Tales fans appreciated when the first trailers were revealed. I think Arise's battle mechanics harken back to Symphonia's a little bit, where you assign certain attacks to whatever buttons on your controller and occasionally have two party members come together and initiate their own special attacks. I especially love Alphen and Kisara's dual attack in particular, Phoenix Cyclone. It just looks amazing. Furthermore, the pacing is much more streamlined, and unlike Zestiria, you're not forced to go through unnecessarily tedious trials that lock you in those dungeons the second you start them up. I don't have much to say on the soundtrack other than that it sounds amazing. I especially loved the first battle music and the theme that plays in Elde Menancia. I do think the first opening song grates on the ears a bit, though.

As much as I adore most of the characters from Tales of Zestiria, the writing for them was often inconsistent, sometimes bordering on contradicting a lot of their early characterization when it was convenient. Plus, the game actively ignored a lot of golden opportunities to flesh out its two main characters once certain revelations came to light. Thankfully, Tales of Arise's cast of main characters fares much better. Not only do they have slightly more depth to them, with the skits absolutely helping in this regard, their personalities also remain pretty consistent throughout the game's run, and any development they get all makes sense within each character's narrative arcs. That being said, the villains—the Renan Lords in particular—got the short end of the stick on this one, as they're all pretty stock standard villains with little characterization beyond their boss fights with Alphen and the gang, and the thing is, a late side quest claims that the Renan Lords are more complex and sympathetic than they're shown as being, with more to their lives than just being evil overlords. However, Arise's attempt at doing this doesn't work because not only does this information only come up after said villains are disposed of, it violates Show Don't Tell in that the game never actually shows the Renan Lords doing anything else except being jerks to the Dahnans or displaying any real sympathetic qualities, with the exception of Dohalim, who's a party member. So basically, the heroes and various side characters are just fine, but the villains needed some work.

But the poorly written villains aren't Arise's only problem. I personally liked Tales of Arise's story, but while it tries to present itself as a morally gray tale about the nuances behind racial discrimination and how toppling evil empires isn't going to magically erase 300 years of oppression overnight, touching on issues of what will or might happen when certain areas are liberated, the game doesn't provide much in the way of resolution on those particular matters. Especially when certain twists are revealed and more pressing matters wind up making those earlier issues fade from the characters' minds. It doesn't really try to provide nuanced answers to its most complex questions or dig deeper into its themes and just turns into a more generic Good VS Evil story with the power of friendship solving everything. Not that this is a bad thing, as I always argue that even if a premise may be overused, how you execute it can make it good or bad. That being said, on that front, I do feel Tales of Symphonia manages to do this better, mainly because it actually does take the time to address what Arise didn't, even if it's on a much smaller scale and only accessed in sidequests, and has better written villains. Plus, considering that Tales of Phantasia further capitalizes on this, along with the knowledge that Phantasia takes place after the events of Symphonia, it gives Symphonia's depictions of those very issues even more weight since Phantasia actually shows the results and fallout of the Symphonia characters' actions and how they affected history.

So yeah, Tales of Arise has great graphics, a fun battle system, pretty well developed main characters at the expense of the villains, and its story often struggles to know what it wants to be. But I still genuinely enjoyed the game. I like it better than Zestiria, but I do like Symphonia better, so it's firmly at the #2 spot on my list of favorite Tales games, which is saying a lot since I haven't played much of the other ones. I also have a more...personal reason for liking Arise as a game. The week this game came out, my grandmother, who I was very close to, passed away. Arise helped me process my grief over losing her, and even though one of the game's significant plot points is an important character dying in front of his son, which would normally be a trigger for someone who went through an experience like that IRL and would want to avoid it so they don't relive their trauma, which is understandable, I personally find seeing stuff like that reflected in fiction cathartic. Seeing my experiences or stuff similar to them in fiction, good and bad, reminds me that what I lived through was real and valid, and tells me that the pain I lived through is equally real and valid. Because don't some artists channel their own experiences into their work? I've done quite a bit of it myself in the little stories I write. Tales of Arise, as a game, is plenty good on its own, its flaws not withstanding, but the fact that it helped me through the loss of my grandmother makes it just a little more special to me as a person. Call me sentimental if you want, but any media that manages to help someone through their dark times, no matter how small, is worth celebrating, even if it might be something that doesn't necessarily appeal to me personally.

 

[Juliko]

I'm gonna do something different this time around. I haven't done one of these in years. Remember how I made a top ten list of my favorite video games? Well this time, I'm gonna make a list of my top eleven favorite manga of all time, the ones that resonated with me and impacted me the most, and to an extent, refined my tastes in manga as a whole. I'm also gonna go from top to bottom instead of bottom to top like I did for my last list, so...here ya go!

1. With The Light: Raising an Autistic Child
My number one favorite manga EVER! Not only is it one of the best, most nuanced portrayals of Autism I've ever seen, it's also a really great manga that depicts other issues as well, like domestic abuse, bullying, discrimination, learning to accept others and not judge them for who they are, etc. It's not a manga ONLY about Autism, as it has lots and lots of characters who interact and do everyday things, but it's all portrayed in such a realistic and down-to-earth way, you'll definitely think you've seen stuff like this before in real life. I'm autistic myself, so this manga totally resonated with me on a deeply personal level, something no manga in my life has ever done before. I hunted down every single volume of this and quickly got used to Yen Press's weird way of publishing it (Two volumes in one?! Why?! Was it to make it stand out more so people could buy it?), and pretty much ate up everything this manga had to offer. Not only that, the characters are what really make this manga. They're all so wonderfully and realistically portrayed, from the kids to the adults. Seriously, why can't there be more manga like this?! It's truly a wonderful, sublime, heartfelt story that should be more well known. Sadly, it'll never be completed, as the mangaka, Keiko Tobe, passed away in 2010. But I'm glad I got exposed to this manga when I first discovered it, and for all I know, my feelings on it might change if I were ever to re-read it. But it's still very close to my heart and that'll never change.

2. +Anima
To me, this is THE prime example of a fantasy done absolutely right. You don't need epic sword fights, world destroying, evil emperors, technology-savvy settings, or brave warriors to make a great fantasy story, and +Anima shows that you can do great things with the fantasy genre with even simple stuff. There's lots of shounen elements in this, but they're all wonderfully subverted, inverted, and deconstructed in the best ways possible. But what I love the most about this manga are its themes and messages. The main characters are outcasts because they received something they didn't want, and if depicted right, it can really resonate with you, as today there's lots of stories about discrimination and prejudice against the innocent simply because they're different, and this manga resonated with me like no other! I'm so glad I pestered my mom into getting me EVERY SINGLE VOLUME OF THIS starting from volume four for Christmas one year.

3. Mimia Hime
Not even two volumes of this are scanlated, and yet...this little piece of fluff has yanked at my heartstrings like no other, and just like Dog of Flanders, its mere presence alone literally skyrocketed its way to the very top at full force! This has everything I want in a non-action manga: a nice but deep story, great (albeit underdeveloped at the moment) characters, a refreshing setting that's always developed every chance the author gets, a soothing atmosphere, heartwarming and heartbreaking moments, nice artwork, a surprisingly complete internal mythology, and warm fuzzies all over! My biggest complaint is that as of now, Mimia might come off as a BIT of a Mary Sue, but maybe that'll change in later volumes since only one and a half of them are translated. I really wish the rest of the series was translated, because I want to finish reading it, and it's technically complete at three volumes! And for all I know, my feelings on the series might change depending on how the rest of the story plays out. But until then, Mimia Hime is a nice, low key fantasy manga that deserves way more love than it gets.

4. Pokemon Adventures
Pokemon has been with me since I was very little. I've watched the anime my whole life, and wouldn't you know, in 2005, it happened to be the very first manga I ever read. But I bought a flipped, censored version of volume 6. But when I started college, I went back into the series once I heard that unflipped (but still censored in places) versions were coming out, and I wanted to see if it was as good as I remembered it to be. Happily enough, it was. It's not perfect, as I think it'd be nice to see what the characters do when there's no conflict, but for what it's worth, the manga is wonderful. The Pokemon battles are great, it's much more serious than the anime but still has an optimistic and cheerful tone to it, it explores serious issues, the different casts of characters are all wonderful and varied, and the storylines in each arc are always interesting. It also has a strong sense of continuity, and almost nothing is forgotten. I really recommend this to any hardcore Pokemaniac, and for anyone wanting a more serious take on the Pokemon franchise that isn't the TV anime.

5. Anne of Green Gables
Can you believe it? A manga based on one of my favorite literary works? How could I possibly pass this up? I never thought such a thing existed until years ago, and I'm glad I discovered it! The art is fantastically lush and distinct, everyone has their own distinct design, the artist really went out of her way to depict 19th century Canada just right, all the way down to the littlest details, like the clothes, the characters' mannerisms, and the customs of Canada at the time, and best of all, she stayed true to not only Anne's character, but everyone else as well. I especially liked that the artist drew important scenes and gave some extra oomph to them, something the 1979 anime version lacked. I'm surprised that the artist managed to compress a 30-chapter book into a three volume manga while keeping a lot of the important stuff, even though cutting down Anne's dialogue and rushing through everything may leave some Anne fans unhappy, but I loved the end result either way.

6. Witch Hat Atelier
One of the absolute best new manga to ever come out during the mid-2010s, Witch Hat Atelier speaks to me in ways that Harry Potter and Mahou Tsukai Pretty Cure couldn't. While the manga is still on-going, what I have read of the series absolutely blew me away in the best ways possible. Witch Hat Atelier has a rich, imaginative setting that's always getting explored, a strong story that gets better as it goes on, engaging characters that have a lot of depth and grit to them even if you may not always like them, and absolutely amazing artwork that's on the same level as Berserk and everything by Naoki Urasawa. My only real issue with it is that its cast of side characters is starting to balloon out of control, and the story can be slow moving at points. Since the manga is still on-going, for all I know, my feelings on WHA may change. But what we have now is absolutely fantastic, and I'm dying to read the rest of it! Also, super stoked that an anime is in the works!!

7. Natsume Yuujinchou
Do I even need to repeat myself here? The story is great, the characters are all wonderfully fleshed out and serve the story in a believable manner, the monsters are neat and well designed, the artwork is impeccable, and the concept is something I haven't seen much in supernatural manga, but its very effective here. Having been introduced to this through the anime, I couldn't help but buy the manga, and am still buying the volumes as they come out in the US. I can very much relate to Natsume as a character, even if our situations are very different, and the manga does an impeccable job of making you care about this kid and his issues without devolving into pointless angst or melodrama. While I do wish the story would wrap up, since the manga is going on for pretty long, this manga is very important to me on a personal level, and I can't imagine my life without this series, since it informed a lot of my current tastes.

8. Rose of Versailles
Well, what is there to say about Rose of Versailles that hasn't been said already? It's one of the most revered shoujo manga of all time, and for good reason. Now that it's finally come to the US in its entirety, I managed to buy up the whole series, and now I totally see why people revere it so much. It's an absolute classic of a manga that's constantly changing and evolving over the course of its run, showing the build-up to the French Revolution and breaking the boundaries of what shoujo manga could be back in the 1970s. Rock solid characters that grow throughout the series, impeccable artwork that was unrivaled during its time, and a multi-layered epic of a story that spans several decades, leaving you wondering what will happen next. Yeah, Rose of Versailles absolutely earned its place in the pop cultural pantheon, and its spot in my top 10 favorite manga of all time.

9. My Brain Is Different: Stories of ADHD and Other Developmental Disorders
Stories that highlight the struggles of neurodivergent and neuroatypical people are rare in manga. Stories about the disabled told by actual disabled people especially tend to get overlooked in favor of, say, memoirs published by parents that are little more than pity parties about how raising a disabled child is sooooo terrible and that neurological disabilities must be cured no matter what. Or all the disgusting propaganda put out by companies such as Autism Speaks. My Brain Is Different is an autobiographical anthology series telling the stories of real neurodivergent people in Japan, showing how they struggled, how they received their diagnoses, and received the help they needed to move forward and embrace their authentic selves. This is absolutely one of the best, most respectful, and most nuanced depictions of neurodivergent people I've seen, and considering Japan still hasn't exactly made the same strides in understanding neuroatypical people like America and Canada has, that's saying a lot!

10. Les Miserables
I love the anime version of Les Mis, and even though I rated the manga rather low, I love the manga just as much! And I didn't even know a manga version had even come out until I came across a copy of this at Otakon 2015. I bought it straight away, and found it to be a very faithful, if somewhat overly compressed, adaptation of the novel. Then again, I say this as someone who hasn't read the Victor Hugo novel. While it doesn't have the sheer depth and expansion of Les Miserables Shoujo Cosette, and has to leave out certain points and characters due to the manga's short format, the story stays true to the spirit of the novel and the characters that matter most. This is the perfect way to introduce someone to Les Mis without having them read the brick that is the novel, and is a pretty good adaptation of Les Mis in its own right. Plus, you don't find many stories like this in manga format, so I'm glad someone took a chance on making a Les Mis manga.

(As of this writing, Seven Seas has begun putting out another manga adaptation of Les Mis that came out before Udon's version, one by Takahiro Arai that was made in 2011. Depending on how that version turns out, it might either usurp the #10 spot or share it alongside the Udon version, so I might adjust this in the future when the entirety of Arai's version comes out)

11. From Far Away
I heard lots of great things about this one, especially by people comparing it to Fushigi Yuugi, which I tried to read but disliked it. I finally managed to collect the entire series, and I'm surprised to say, I really love From Far Away! All of the characters are endearing, charming, and three-dimensional, the artwork is very well made, from the backgrounds to the shoujo character designs that actually feel more varied than its contemporaties, the setting actually feels like a real world built from the ground up, complete with its own rules, lore, and history, rather than a generic fantasy land, and the romance between Noriko and Izark is very well developed and fleshed out. It's a crying shame this never got adapted into an anime back in the day. If it had, I'd eat it up like a wolf! Physical copies of the manga are no longer in print, but thankfully, the series is available digitally if anyone wants to check it out.

 

[Juliko]

This review was just finished today.

Rating: 78/100

Now this is a manga I didn't expect to turn out the way it did. Gift of the Magi, or Magi no Okurimono, is a short, one volume manga by Kumichi Yoshizuki, who drew the covers for a lot of the Someday's Dreamers light novels. The manga is about a young man named Daichi Shiki, whose girlfriend Akari Hokazono died in a terrible accident, and five years after that, he still can't seem to move on. But unbeknownst to him, Akari is watching over him in heaven, and isn't happy with the fact that he can't seem to forget about her, so she tries everything she can to force him to forget about her, like inciting hailstorms, a mudslide, harsh rain, and so on. Apparently in the world of Gift of the Magi, when someone dies and goes to heaven, they receive currency based on how much their name is mentioned or how famous they were in real life, and they have to spend their accrued money in order to do things like change the weather or make things appear or disappear. I have to say, as far as creativity with the concept of heaven goes, Gift of the Magi certainly runs with it and makes good use of its premise in its short run.

The story is simple yet effective, all about grief and moving on from the death of a loved one, which has been done since time immemorial. A lot of the story consists of Akari trying to force Daichi to get away from her old workplace and Daichi himself reflecting on his time with Akari before her death. Paired with the weird yet creative interpretation of heaven, it's actually a fun new take on coping with grief and letting go, so even if the premise has been done to death lots of times, the execution is what counts, and I think Gift of the Magi delivered in terms of creativity on that front. That being said, there is one thing that kind of detriments the manga: It's wild and often random changes in tone. A friend of mine recommended this manga to me, and reading the premise, I honestly thought Gift of the Magi would be more somber and solemn, yet a good chunk of it is pretty comedic and light-hearted, mainly on Akari's end, and certain scenes would fit more at home in a slapstick comedy manga than a story about death and grief. While I can understand wanting to have some levity, Gift of the Magi's changing moods are sudden and inconsistent, leading to quite a bit of whiplash. Seriously, there's one chapter where Akari reflects on her time with Daichi, and the very next scene shows a flashback where a bunch of creepy looking guys straight up asking Akari (Who hadn't died yet in said flashback) for sex, complete with comedic, gonky faces. Yeah, this is Heike Story level of tonal whiplash all over again.

I'm also a little mixed on the character of Daichi. All the other characters are fine, with the right amount of development and depth, but other than his relationship with Akari, he doesn't really have much to him as a person. Granted, this might be intentional on the story's part, but even before Akari's death, Daichi doesn't have much interiority to him other than an interest in geology. He has very little personality outside of worshipping the ground Akari walks on, though to be fair, it's implied that he'll get over this in the end and that others have pointed it out in-universe. He's not a bad character or anything, but I wish he had been given more depth than he got.

But those are the only real issues I had with Gift of the Magi as a whole. The art is pretty good too, with the backgrounds being the right amount of detailed without too much in the way of clutter, and the character designs having a slight roughness to them that makes them look like they came out of the 90s, even though this manga was made in 2014. The characters' chins are a mix of both rough and angular, and their faces are expressive and lively. There's one segment in the manga where there are several pages that consist of nothing but splash pages for six or seven pages straight, all of which take place when Akari is reminiscing about her time with Daichi. I don't think I've ever seen splash pages do that before. And in case you're wondering, yes, there is a reason for why the manga has the same name as the O. Henry short story. Hell, said short story is even explicitly referenced and used as a plot point near the finale.

So yeah, Gift of the Magi is a short, sweet, wholesome manga about moving on from the death of a love one that, while inconsistent in tone, has its heart in the right place, and I'm glad my friend recommended this to me. If you're reading this—thanks, Armitage!

 

[Juliko]

This review was just finished today.

Rating: 86/100

Hey kids! Remember an old anime from 2009 called Kemono no Souja Elin? I was in high school when that aired, and a blogger I followed back then blogged it and liked it, but didn't like how it ended. The anime was actually based on a book series by Nahoko Uehashi, which wouldn't get translated into English and brought to the US until a literal decade later. Said book, titled in English as The Beast Player, was the second book series she made upon finishing the Moribito series. I didn't watch the anime back when it first aired due to other obligations, but I did wind up blind-buying the book off Amazon in 2020. Having previously enjoyed the Seirei no Moribito anime, I decided to read this and see if its any good. Now that I've finally read it, I can wholeheartedly say that I'm glad I bought The Beast Player, as it's really good!

In the fantastical kingdom of Lyoza, 10-year-old Elin lives with her mother Sohyon in territory governed by the Aluhan, or the Grand Duke. Their village raises Toda, dragon-like creatures ridden by the Aluhan's army. Sohyon, who is from a secretive nomadic tribe called the Ahlyo, is the head Toda doctor. One night, the Toda under her care mysteriously die. Sohyon is blamed for their death and sentenced to be eaten alive by wild Toda. On the day of the execution, Elin attempts to save her mother, but Toda surround them before they can escape. Sohyon saves Elin by putting it on the back of a Toda, and it carries Elin away while the remaining Toda devour Sohyon. Elin finds herself in land governed by the Yojeh—the divine ruler of Lyoza, and gets adopted by a reclusive beekeeper. After a four year time skip, Elin decides to enroll in a school called the Kazalamu Royal Beast Sanctuary to become a beast doctor after some experiences seeing and learning about creatures called Royal Beasts. It's there that she encounters and befriends Leelan, a Royal Beast whose fate becomes intertwined with Elin's own. Later, the two of them are tossed head-first into a civil war as Elin challenges ancient beliefs and traditions in an attempt to live as she wishes and give Leelan the life she deserves.

One thing that The Beast Player really dives into, making it unique among other fantasy or YA novels, is its intense focus on taking care of wild animals. The story starts when Elin is ten years old, and ends when she turns 18. As she grows up, we're shown in detail how her fascination with the Royal Beasts grows and develops until she winds up taking care of them for real. Everything is given such attention to detail, and I love how Elin is really forced to think outside the box to find the best ways to take care of the RBs and communicate with them. Elin and the trouble she has raising these animals are one of a kind, and to me are the real appeal of The Beast Player as a book. The setting helps with this too, since this is a fantasy world, and one thing I found that Uehashi is particularly good at is how she's able to come up with actual worlds and towns that feel lived in. Each setting she comes up with has its own rules, customs, traditions, and so on, and all of them are portrayed somewhat realistically, even taking the fantasy setting into account, really making this world feel truly original and...well, alive.

The characters also have an amazing amount of depth and dimension to them, too. Elin in particular is the most memorable character in the series, and the book skips no details on her growth from childhood to adulthood, making her the most developed and three-dimensional character in the entire book. The side characters also all get their time to shine, and everyone in this series has their own story to tell. Granted, some of the more villainous characters later on become a little too cheesy at times, and the conflicts between the two countries is admittedly rather one sided. A lot of that has to do with the fact that near the end, the politics begin to take over the novel, and I didn't find those to be as interesting as the segments showing Elin taking care of the Royal Beasts, because the latter is just so good. Personally, I think you'd be better off reading the book just for Elin and her relationship with Leelan alone.

As for the prose, I found it to be pretty good. Granted, I can't exactly comment on the quality of Cathy Hirano's English translation, as my Japanese reading skills are amateurish at best, even with four years worth of Japanese language college classes under my belt. I don't know how faithful it is to the original source, or if it took any liberties, so that stuff is far outside my wheelhouse. But if I'm focusing on just the prose, I personally found it to be pretty elegant and evocative. It's descriptive but never leans into purple prose, I was able to understand what was going on just fine, and the overall writing was pretty engaging and conveyed some really good imagery for certain parts. It's pretty good at maintaining a balance between showing and telling when needed, though I do feel some parts could have benefited from being shown rather than told, like Shunan and Nugan's backgrounds. But that's probably more of a me issue than anything. Overall, The Beast Player, barring a few flaws, is a fantastic book that I'm surprised I didn't get into sooner, and considering I blind-bought this book, money well spent. After this, I'm definitely gonna try and watch the anime and see how it adapts the novel, especially considering Uehashi herself supervised the adaptation, but I have some other shows I need to finish first before going down that rabbit hole. But if you like your fantasy novels with a bit more bite to them, definitely check out The Beast Player. And yes, I'm buying the sequel novel as soon as I'm able.

 

[LightningTopaz]

I remember seeing bits and pieces of the anime a long time ago, but it is the OP that sticks with me to this day: The song, if you want to hear it.

 

[Juliko]

This review was finished yesterday.

Rating: 89/100

For those who have been following my reviews for a while, I once watched and reviewed a short OVA called Ijime, which was supposed to be an animated PSA about bullying. But its attempts at tackling the issue came off as forced, preachy, half-assed, and needlessly melodramatic, and was in general a very poorly made after school special. Bullying is an issue that's very hard to tackle in any form of media, as there's no one way to depict it and the solutions to the problem. You need a very deft hand in order to depict it with the gravity it deserves, and there's been a ton of them over the years, tackling the issue with varying degrees of sensitivity and success. As somebody who has been bullied, I can tell you that everyone's experiences with it are different, so the methods of dealing with them have to be different as well. The subject of today's review, Lonely Castle In The Mirror, or more specifically the manga version, also tackles the issue of bullying, and in my personal opinion, manages to succeed in depicting the subject with sensitivity and grace. Lonely Castle In The Mirror started out as a novel written by Mizuki Tsujimura, published in 2017, and adapted into a manga in 2019, with an anime movie coming out this past Christmas in Japan. Seven Seas just licensed the manga and will put it out before the year ends, and in case you couldn't tell by the rating I gave this manga, I'm absolutely buying the physical copies when they come out. I found an English scanlation online, and I wish this had come out when I was a child. I would have devoured it in a heartbeat.

I actually do own the novel as well, but I didn't get around to finishing it. The story centers on a young girl named Kokoro Anzai, who was so traumatized by a violent bullying incident that she refuses to go to school anymore. She spends what seems to be months confining herself to her house, and she doesn't feel like she can talk to her parents about her trauma, both because she doesn't want to relive it, and because she's afraid no one will take her seriously or believe her. One day, the life-sized mirror in her room glows with light, and when she touches it, Kokoro is pulled through into a fantastical castle, where a young girl in a wolf mask, calling herself the Wolf Queen, tells her that she and six other middle schoolers have one year to find the key that will grant the wish of whomever uses it. As Kokoro begins to get to know her fellow castle-visitors, she starts to think about her own situation in comparison to theirs…and what the price of a wish might actually be.

The manga adaptation for Lonely Castle In The Mirror is five volumes long, which to me feels like the perfect length for this, as every character gets the right amount of development and depth, with ample time to flesh them and their roles in the narrative out, with the fantasy setting being more of a way for the kids to get to know one another and feel safe among people who understand their struggles and explore their feelings. The seven kids don't get along right away, but their relationship grows slowly yet organically, and they do feel like real kids with their own sets of strengths and issues, mainly Ureshino with his inability to respect people's personal boundaries and not understanding how his so-called school friends take advantage of him financially. Lonely Castle In The Mirror is mainly about finding solidarity and comfort in those who went through similar struggles and the empowerment that comes from having that support and having people actually listen to you and not try to invalidate your experiences. The story makes it clear that it's firmly on the side of the victims rather than trying to be preachy, encouraging the hurt children to see the bully's side, or flat-out blaming the victim. Yeah, I'm gonna get lynched for saying this, but I found Lonely Castle's take on bullying to be better than that of A Silent Voice, because as much as the latter tried to condemn it, it wanted the audience to sympathize with characters who were flat-out malicious and continually blamed the victim for the bullying they went through, along with the ending being way too mealymouthed and poorly thought out. No, A Silent Voice, you cannot make me like Ueno and Kawai no matter how hard you try to make me do so.

I also like that Lonely Castle uses fairy tales like The Little Red Riding Hood and The Wolf and the Seven Goats and their themes of predation as a framework to scaffold the manga's themes as well. Their subsequent retellings over the centuries and the fear that the predatory wolf in both tales inspires allow for all sorts of ideas to build upon, and Lonely Castle is no different, especially as the story gets closer to the end and the mystery of just who the wolf girl is and what the castle is for come to light. Just earlier, I watched the stop-motion short film My Little Goat, which is an adaptation of the Grimms's story The Wolf and the Seven Goats, but uses the themes of deception and predation to tell a story about child abuse and healing from trauma, something Lonely Castle also does, but it doesn't go in the extremely dark direction My Little Goat does. It helps that because the castle has a strict set of rules, and the kids are given only a year to find this so-called key and fulfill their wish, there's always a sense of urgency looming in the air, and the story never feels like it drags or plods along, but still keeps enough of a steady pace to let the kids grow and develop as people. Granted, as the mystery gets revealed, it does leave some unanswered questions, but I did genuinely love the payoff that came out of the ending twist.

For the most part, the artwork is pretty good, too. The backgrounds are well drawn, the character designs are down-to-earth save for the girl in the wolf mask, the paneling flows well, the linework is crisp, and Tomo Taketomi has a good knack for conveying a lot with very little. In one scene, she draws a sick girl covered in lines, which conveys both how frail she is and the despair both she and the person looking at her feel. There are times when the proportions can be off, especially with Ureshino's design, and there's one point where Ureshino is talking, but the way his mouth is drawn makes him look like he's wearing lipstick. These moments are few and far between, so it never comes off as being too jarring. Plus, some readers may not like that some characters aren't shown getting much in the way of closure, and I can understand that. I personally didn't mind how the story turned out in the end, but your mileage may vary. Overall, I think Lonely Castle In The Mirror is a sweet, wholesome, heartfelt story that cares about its subject matter and handles it with grace and sensitivity, and the manga adaptation is a pretty damn good take on the novel it was based on. Like I said before, I haven't finished reading the novel, but I am absolutely looking forward to both buying the manga when it comes out and watching the movie if it gets shown in theaters in my area.

 

[Juliko]

This review was written on March 25th, 2023.

Rating: 71/100

I initially skipped over Otherside Picnic as it aired because I'm not really into anything horror. Not because I hate it or anything, but I just never really found it interesting. But I was bored one day and had nothing to watch, so I decided to try checking this out. It turned out to be better than I expected, though I do feel more could have been done with this. The story centers on two girls—Sorawo and Toriko—who meet in the mysterious realm they refer to as the Otherside. It's a vast and dangerous realm that hardly anyone knows about, filled with all manner of horrors straight out of ghost stories. In order to get more information on this strange world, Sorawo and Toriko travel back and forth to it from the real world, though one incident alters their bodies in ways that actually manage to be somewhat helpful in both investigating the Otherside and dealing with the monsters and ghouls that inhabit it.

As far as animation goes, Otherside Picnic isn't really winning any awards. I mean, the animation itself is fine, and the character designs, while very simplified from the illustrations from both the light novel and the manga, do their job. Liden Films as a studio isn't always capable of doing justice to the things they adapt into animation. They've gotten better as they've gone on, especially compared to the disaster that was Goodbye My Dear Cramer, and they're set to adapt an anime of the first Atelier Ryza game coming up, and their work here is pretty good for what it is. That being said, the CGI is REALLY hit-or-miss. Seriously, the CGI monsters don't look like they blend well with the show. They're so clunky they look like they came right out of a bad PS3 game. Also, whose bright idea was it to make the far-off shots of Toriko and Sorawo CGI models? Because those were just flat-out bad. They move really awkwardly and clumsily, like disjointed Barbie dolls, and it's really noticeable when you're watching the show on a big TV. Why couldn't they just animate their far off models in 2D? And no, this isn't just a product of the broadcast version, they're in the home media release, too! Why?!

I don't have as much to say about the music, as a lot of it is pretty heavy synth that's meant to sound eerie and horror-like. The soundtrack, again like the animation, does its job, but isn't really anything memorable. I did really enjoy the song that played at the end of episode 12, though. For the characters, again I'm kind of mixed. I do like Sorawo and Toriko as a pair, and their chemistry really blossoms as the series goes on and we learn more and more about them as people. They pretty much carry the show, and while they're not exactly three-dimensional, I did find them interesting enough to care about. I did find Kozakura to be a bit too whiny for my liking, and I feel like more could have been done with Akari and Natsumi. That being said, I found out the anime only adapted the very first light novel and nothing else, which explains why Akari and Natsumi don't do much beyond their introduction.

As for the anime's attempts at horror, I do appreciate that Otherside Picnic doesn't try to rely so much on jump scares or gratuitous violence for the sake of it. A lot of it is atmosphere or character-driven, something I'm definitely a big fan of. Plus, rather than the typical monsters like zombies or ghosts, Otherside Picnic takes inspiration from Japanese urband legends and creepypasta stories, using them as the scaffolding for its story and lore. I've never even heard of stuff like Lady Hasshaku or the Kunekune until I looked them up on the series' TVTropes page. Believe me, I want to like this show more than I do, but a lot of its problems do come down to the fact that it's an adaptation of one light novel in a whole series of them. As a result of this decision, its build-up never goes anywhere and the characters don't evolve too much throughout its run. It's likely we'll ever get a second season of this, and that sucks because I do want to see more of Sorawo and Toriko. Then again, there's always the light novels and the manga. I know the anime itself is meant to be a commercial for the light novels, which is fine, but I'd gladly watch more of it.

Overall, Otherside Picnic is a fairly low-key, intriguing horror anime that's bogged down by the fact that it's a commercial for the light novels, and its narrative doesn't get resolved. But I still like it for what it is.

 

[Juliko]

Huh, now this is something I didn't expect to find. This review was written on March 24th, 2023.

Rating: 45/100

What exactly is the first medium to depict gender-bending in any form? That's a question that doesn't really have an easy answer. I've tried looking it up myself, but the results I found had no concrete answers. When I say gender bending, I don't mean stuff like Mrs. Doubtfire or Some Like It Hot where a man crossdresses in women's clothing, and I'm definitely not talking about transgender people who medically transition from one gender to another. I'm talking about gender bending in the sense of someone magically shapeshifting into the opposite sex, whether consensually or through some other means, like what happens in Ranma 1/2. Lots of media across the world have tackled gender bending in some capacity, and manga is no exception, but there's quite a bit of debate as to what was the first manga to depict gender bending as we know it. But one of those manga was just unearthed after several decades in obscurity, called To Joker..., made in 1973 by Yumiko Ooshima. It's said to be one of the earliest depictions of gender bending, and having read it...it really shows. But I'm not gonna lie, this manga might have been better off forgotten.

The story centers on a boy named Simon, who was taken in by his ecologist uncle Gilles after his parents died. He has a crush on his flightly cousin Joca, but his rival, a boy named Jean-Claude Zola, also likes Joca and gets into fights with him over her. Worried about how physically weak he is compared to Jean-Claude, Joca gives Simon what she thinks is a medicine that her father made so he can get stronger. Unbeknownst to her and everyone except Gilles and his wife, the medicine turns out to be a sex-changing drug. Gradually, Simon's body and behavior start to change into that a woman. Worried for Simon's safety and reputation, Gilles sends him to live in England with a friend, but he has to take on the name Solange so people don't find out what happened to him, with Simon being legally declared dead. Seven years later, the death of his mother-in-law compel Simon—having lived as Solange and having fully become a woman in body and soul—to return to his home, reuniting with Joca and Jean-Claude. A melodramatic love triangle ensues.

No, I'm dead serious. 60% of this manga literally consists of just Joca, Jean-Claude, and Simon whining about their so-called romance troubles with each other topped with ridiculous amounts of overblown angst and melodrama. To Joker as a manga has literally no sense of subtlety whatsoever. Characters scream their feelings and cry passionately about pretty much everything under the sun, making the whole thing feel like a bad soap opera. Actually, To Joker is literally just a soap opera in manga form, only it doesn't go on forever. Seriously, if a character so much as makes a snide remark, everyone behaves like a pearl-clutching Christian who found out the pope got pregnant. There's very little in the way of light moments that show the characters just chilling out and living their lives, as To Joker doesn't think it needs any and just piles on the angst and love triangle bullshit non-stop! None of the characters are endearing in any way, as they all adhere to rote stereotypes, like the childish shoujo lead, the dashing rival, the buck-toothed nerd, so on and so forth, and since the manga is only three chapters long, they don't get any time to develop into more interesting, three-dimensional characters. Oh, and do I need to mention all of the outdated sexism and gender roles that everyone forces on Simon when he's Solange? Women must only wear dresses, look pretty, continually obsess over men, and find husbands no matter what because that's their sole purpose in life! I know this manga was made in 1973, but come on, there were other manga coming out long before this that had long since grown past trying to enforce gender roles and write women as passive, delicate blossoms whose only defining traits were wanting a guy. Bleeegh.

Honestly, I don't think the artwork holds up that well, either. Ooshima's designs for the characters look literally indistinguishable from other shoujo works of the era, and nothing really makes them stand out from their contemporaries. The paneling is really odd, too. All of the panels are nothing but squares and rectangles that don't really flow from one scene to the next, and what makes it even harder to follow is that sometimes when characters are talking, their speech bubbles are connected, with nothing to help indicate who is saying what. Seriously, Rose of Versailles came out a year after than this and looked way better. There's also the fact that for some reason, Solange's long hair is drawn in such a way that makes it look less like hair and more like the veil that a nun wears. It just looks really jarring. As far as its depiction of gender bending goes, I can't really say its a positive depiction, as Simon's change is presented as a tragedy, and the manga has nothing resembling a happy ending, making it very much a product of its time in regards to the problematic views Japan had about gender, gender roles, and gender non-conforming people back in the seventies.

The only thing I can really say that makes To Joker... stand out from other gender bending media is that unlike most gender bending stuff we know in the modern day, where the transformation is instantaneous, Simon's change from a man to a woman is shown as being more subtle and gradual. He doesn't change into a girl in a puff of smoke, but it happens slowly, and any changes he experiences early on gradually become more and more obvious every day he lives. Plus, Simon's change happens as a result of a rather bullshit science experiment as opposed to magic or getting zapped by a machine. But that doesn't really enhance To Joker's overall quality as a manga. To Joker... is one of the earliest manga to depict gender bending, but on its own, it's a pretty terrible manga rife with overblown, stupid melodrama that makes no effort to tell anything remotely resembling a story people can actually care about. The only redeeming quality it has is that it's really short. I don't know if I could have handled reading more of this. Bottom line, I recommend skipping To Joker... as a whole, as it's really not worth wasting your time on.