ANIME REVIEW - Angel Beats

 

My husband is absolutely in love with the opening for this show, and I gotta admit, I love it too.  So after months of belting out "My Soul, Your Beats," in the car, I finally sat down and watched all of Angel Beats!

First, I want to clarify that Angel Beats is written by a man named Jun Maeda.  He is known for writing a variety of popular anime such as Kanon, Air, and Clannad. all of which are personal favourites of mine.  So I was pretty excited going into Angel Beats.

Angel Beats begins with our main character, a high-school aged fellow named Otonashi, suddenly waking up in a high school meant to house dead students with a heavy case of amnesia.  He meets a girl in a headband named Yurippe who is hiding behind a bush attempting to snipe a silver-haired girl.  Yurippe explains to Otonashi the nature of the school, and that she is a part of a battlefront group that wishes to fight against God due to the unfair nature of their lives on earth.  She explains that the silver-haired girl is an, "Angel,"sent by God to fight against them at the school and asks that Otonashi join them.

The rest of Angel Beats is spent exploring the rules and nature of the school and the battlefront, exploring the backstory of the unfair lives of the battlefront members, recovering Otonashi's memories, finding Angel's true purpose, and disrupting school activities with amazing concerts (Seriously, this anime has an awesome soundtrack!).  Which gets into my first and main complaint of Angel Beats:  at only 13 episodes, this is a lot of material to cover in a short period of time.  A lot of things regarding the nature of the world, the time it takes to build relationships between the characters, and the tragic backstories of these characters feel at times very rushed through or like some things were left out.  I feel like Angel Beats would have been better served having a few more episodes.

However, the few times the episode could go through a character's backstory at a decent pace were times that were very emotionally poignant.  Overall, I ended up liking a majority of the characters.  Also compared to the previous anime created by Maeda that I listed earlier, Angel Beats has a lot more humour, which I really enjoyed.  I also really liked the set up of the high school world for dead students between their life and the afterlife, I just wish that there could have been more explanation of the world's purpose, creation, and exploration of its rules than time allowed.

Ultimately, Angel Beats is an emotionally poignant anime with likeable, tragic characters, an interesting setting, plenty of action, and a lot of humour.  If you don't mind a few loose ends and unexplained parts, and if you keep your expectations in check, then I believe that Angel Beats! at 13 episodes is a short enough investment to be worth it to practically anyone who is a fan of anime.  At least, give it a go for the sake of that amazing soundtrack!

At the time of this review, Angel Beats is available on hulu.  There is also a complete Blu-Ray disc set, and you can support me by purchasing that set off of amazon: 

ANIME REVIEW - Yo-Kai Watch

In April of 2015, I went to Japan with my husband.  A lot of awesome stuff happened on that trip, but one thing I noticed was this new anime franchise that was super popular and positively everywhere:  in the gachapon, in the arcades, in the kids' clothing section, in train station advertisements, and even in the Nintendo 3DS Streetpasses.  Yo-Kai Watch was, and is, Japan's latest fad, and it looks like it might grow to be just as big as Pokemon.

Needless to say, when Yo-Kai Watch was made available to American audiences via Netflix, I was super stoked!  I couldn't wait to see what all the fuss was about, and I was really excited to hear that adorable theme song ("Gera gera po!  Gera gera po!")!

Unfortunately, the Netflix USA edition only has English voice acting as an option, but rest assured, it is a very nicely done adaption, and the "Gera gera po!" theme song is unscathed (though let's not talk about that second opening...).  Yo-Kai Watch turns out to be one of those really nicely written kids' shows with plenty of humour that even an older audience can get a lot of enjoyment from.

Yo-Kai Watch starts Nate, a perfectly average elementary student, who is looking for an above-average bug in the woods to show off to his friends.  Instead, he stumbles across an ancient and mysterious gachapon machine, and out of Nate's gachapon comes the ghost Yo-Kai, Whisper.  Whisper declares himself Nate's faithful Yo-Kai butler and gives Nate a Yo-Kai Watch, so that he can see and interact with other Yo-Kai.

From then on, Yo-Kai Watch follows the formula of something strange happening in his everyday life (such as everyone in his class falling asleep, a friend suddenly becoming a huge blabbermouth, all the boys in class having to go pee at the same time, etc.), and Nate having to use the watch to find out which Yo-Kai is causing the bizarre behaviour.  Whisper helps him out by providing him additional information about the Yo-Kai, which he knows off the top of his head (Just kidding!  It's a running gag that Whisper always forgets information about the various Yo-Kai and tries to hide this by secretly looking it up on the Yo-Kai Wiki on a tablet he hides behind his back.).  Then Nate summons a Yo-Kai that he has made friends with (represented by a Yo-Kai medal) using his Yo-Kai watch, and then the Yo-Kai hilariously negotiate the benefits of giving up their mischief and leaving the poor humans alone.  Usually this results in Nate gaining another Yo-Kai friend (and medal) to add to his collection, and so on and so forth.

Yo-Kai Watch clearly has an easy-to-follow formula, but I find the scenarios, the designs, and the powers of the Yo-Kai to be very humourous and creative!  Many of the Yo-Kai are based off of actual Japanese legends, like the baku.  Also the formula is broken up by having multiple-part segments from the perspective of the Yo-Kai; for example, country-born Yo-Kai Komasan tries to journey around the city without getting lost.

Ultimately, Yo-Kai Watch is like a funnier cousin to the Pokemon franchise.  If you are in the mood for a clever, funny, monster-collecting show, then I can't recommend it enough.  As of the date of this review, there are no DVD releases for Yo-Kai Watch in the USA, but the first 26 episodes are available on Netflix streaming. 

MANGA REVIEW - Dawn of the Arcana

Well, I've finally gotten around to finishing this one.  I actually started this one back in 2013, but not all of the volumes had been released at that time, so I had somewhat forgot about it for a few years, and only this past month got around to finishing the final few volumes.  I gotta say, it was worth it!

Dawn of the Arcana (also known as Reimei no Arcana) is a romantic fantasy manga about an arranged marriage between the prince of the kingdom of Belquat, Caesar, and the princess of Senan, Nakaba.  The two countries are constantly at the brink of war, and even within the two societies, there is unrest between fully-human people and half-animal people.  The half-animal people, called "ajin," are considered inferior to fully-human people and are treated with disdain and like slaves.  Our heroine, Princess Nakaba, is not treated well among her royal peers due to having a commoner in her lineage, and also because she employs an ajin as her retainer, a half-dog man named Loki.

The main romantic conflict of this manga is the relationship between Caesar and Nakaba.  They are forcefully engaged, but will they ever like each other?  Also Loki has a bit of a forbidden love towards Nakaba, which would never work in either Senan's or Belquat's racist societies.

Rather than only focusing on the romantic triangle, Dawn of the Arcana also has quite a bit of political drama.  Caesar's family doesn't approve of Nakaba due to her less-than-noble lineage and due to her national origin.  Also, the two countries are secretly bulking their military power in event of Caesar's and Nakaba's marriage not working out, or if one country violates their peace treaty in any way.

There is also an element of the supernatural: Nakaba has the ability to see glimpses of the future due to a secret ability called the Arcana of Time.  Nakaba is able to foresee natural disasters, potential riots, and even assassination attempts, though whether or not she's able to prevent it is another matter.

This combination of political unrest, supernatural prognostication, ingrained societal racism, and romantic interests trying to sort out their feelings despite everything made a compelling and unique combination that held my attention more intensely than the average romantic shojo manga.  I found also that the characters were well-crafted.  Nakaba is a strong female character whose lack of options or actions was normally due to reasonable, extenuating circumstances as well as being something she is always fighting against, and when her Arcana of Time presents her with options, she isn't too afraid to take action.  Caesar starts off a bit irritating, but becomes a practically textbook example of a jerk with a heart of gold.  Loki maintains an air of mystery and whose actions come to have backing from nicely defined motives.

While the fantastical, political conflict is not as in depth as more mature media or as in depth as actual real world, historical examples, I feel that it does a good job of placing an appropriate amount of pressure on the characters, guiding their action, and giving them goals.  The art of the characters is also very nicely executed.  The costumes and faces I found to be very beautiful, although sometimes the backgrounds were a little sparse or were rarely represented, while I found the paneling to be delightfully dynamic.

Ultimately, if you don't mind a slight fantasy setting, and are looking for a solid shojo, romantic manga that has beautiful artwork, solid characters, and an overarching political plot that seeks to enhance the romance, then I would call Dawn of the Arcana a solid recommendation.  It has nice pacing throughout its 13 volumes; it is not an overly expensive investment; and it has a solid, emotionally compelling ending that wraps up the plot nicely.

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MANGA REVIEW - Rurouni Kenshin

Just the other day I finished reading the manga Rurouni Kenshin.  Well, to be honest, this was actually a reread.  I had read Rurouni Kenshin in bits and pieces in the early 2000s as it was being released in English in the USA, but this was the first time that I had read the series in one go.  It took a few days to get through all of it, but it was a fabulously addictive experience.

Rurouni Kenshin is a historical fiction manga set in the Meiji Era of Japanese history (around the 1870s), and interesting time in Japanese history; years of a feudal, military dictatorship were being demolished, and quickly being replaced with a more modernized military and government.  The starkest change of these tumultuous times was the end of the samurai class.  Rurouni Kenshin stars a wandering ex-samurai named Kenshin who goes to Tokyo in hopes of protecting weaker people who are being taken advantage of during this time of political and social upheaval, with one small catch:  Kenshin has taken up a vow to leave killing in the previous era, and refuses to kill his enemies.  During his time in Tokyo, he meets like-minded comrades, and potential romantic partners, as well as some deeply corrupt, over-the-top enemies.

Rurouni Kenshin is a sort of jack-of-all-trades sort of manga.  It has a little bit of romance; it borrows from the historical setting, but not too closely; it has a ton of action, some of which would be right at home in a Marvel comic; and yet it also has a few soul-searching and coming-of-age elements commonly found in traditional samurai stories.  Because of this, I feel that Rurouni Kenshin can easily appeal to a large audience.  It has a sort of feeling that there's something for everyone, and although it's a blend of different elements, I find it to be fundamentally very balanced.


It also has a solid pace.  There are always enemies appearing and a decent level of suspense for the more powerful foes.  The art is also consistently high quality throughout the series.  The scenes are detailed without being over powering, and the action scenes are easy to follow.  The art style evolution over the course of the series can also be described as becoming more crisp and fluid and even clearer to understand.

Rurouni Kenshin is complete at 28 single volumes and 9 omnibi editions.  Frankly, the omnibi are easier and a little cheaper to obtain and have a few more omake (bonus) comics than the single volumes have.  I, personally, have a mixture of both omnibi and single volumes, and I would recommend the omnibi over the single volumes for the sake of the few small bonus chapters.

In the action manga sub-genre, Rurouni Kenshin is what I would describe as a shorter series, and its very satisfying ending defines it as a worthwhile investment for anyone interested in a well-crafted story with plenty of action; a sprinkle of romance; memorable characters; a historical, Japanese setting; and high-quality artwork.  Sounds like a recipe for success if ever there was one!

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BOOK REVIEW - Fahrenheit 451

I actually secretly have what I consider a monstrous TBR pile; of the physical books I own, I haven't read about 20 of them.  Many of them are classics that I've never gotten around to reading, or monstrous tomes that are over 500 pages (some fall into both categories).  So here we are reading Fahrenheit 451, a classic I was never assigned in school and, therefore, passed over; and just because it's a classic, doesn't mean that you have to like it.  So, long story short, I found it a little lacking.

Guy Montag is a fireman that lives in a dystopian, futuristic, American society where everyone is constantly obsessed with massive, wall-sized televisions and earbud style headphones when they aren't watching television.  The TV obsession is so bad that it is commonplace to refer to television actors as, "family members."  The country is always having brief 1-2 day wars with other countries, but no one seems concerned as they believe they are living in a utopia.  As many books challenge the readers to question their personal philosophy and the meaning of life, and the inhabitants of this society prefer to feel happy watching feel-good television than confront their emotions head-on, the society has declared books to be dangerous and its up to firemen to burn them.  Guy Montag starts the book being a good fireman and burning books as he should, but ends up keeping them and wishing to read them.  Ultimately, he has to worry about being branded a fugitive for keeping his books.

I felt that the frame of the story was very adequate, but the way that Bradbury described Montag, the other characters, and a description of the society was rambling, under-detailed, and hard-to-follow at best.  I also found the events of the final chapter to be very quick, sudden, and implausible.  It was difficult to determine what was even happening.  I found it also difficult to follow Montag's thought process.  I don't even feel that we have a clear motive or a true change in the character that allows him to change from wanting to burn books to wanting to save and read them.  All-in-all I found the actual plot and characters to be a mess.

However, I feel that reading between the lines to get a gist of Bradbury's overall world building can be beneficial to the reader to communicate a cautionary tale of a world so plugged into technology in all of its facets that it loses the desire and attention span for meaningful interaction with other people and even for thinking analytically about life.

The greatest loss of the people in Fahrenheit 451's society was their loss of empathy toward their fellow man; and a lack of any desire to recover that empathy.  I believe this is a warning that even people in the 21st century can appreciate as the phenomenon of people who are too addicted to their phone or other mobile technological device to interact with the people physically around them grows more prevalent.  I also have noticed anecdotally with my own friends that as their access to technology grows their attention span decreases.  They begin to lose patience with sitting and reading an entire book and just want to read a series of tweets, or a two-page article, or a 30 minute podcast containing the same information.  You can call it the TL;DR effect.

Fahrenheit 451 has bland characters, sloppy pacing, and an implausible resolution.  As a novel, I can't recommend it with confidence.  On the other hand, the novel's overarching moral serves as a good reminder that we only have so much time on our hands, so we should probably put away the phone/tablet/computer and stop reading boring clickbait articles and actually get around to reading Shakespeare.  Your relations and our society will thank you for it.    


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VIDEO GAME REVIEW - Tales of Xillia

I have been a fan of the Tales of series of video games since Tales of Symphonia game out on the Gamecube in 2004.  It a more anime-themed, character driven story than other JRPGs such as the Final Fantasy series, but that is precisely why I'm such a huge fan of it.  My husband is also a big fan of JRPGs, and had yet to play a Tales of game, so I thought what better introduction to the series than the then-most-current entry in the series on PS3:  Tales of Xillia?  Another plus that the Tales of franchise has over other JRPG series is that almost all home console versions of the games can easily plug in up to 4 controllers and have all battles become a multiplayer experience while the person who is the first player explores the map.  It's an ideal series to play with a family member or significant other.

Tales of Xillia follows the story of either Jude, a young medical student who practices martial arts, or Milla, a female avatar of the ruler of the spirit realm.  We personally followed Jude's path, but both paths are largely the same barring a brief divergence about 3/4s of the way through the game.  Their journeys begin when a lab near Jude's medical school is broken into by Jude, Milla, and Jude's professor one evening which culminates in the discovery of the conduction of cruel experiments on humans and spirits.  Jude and Milla fight to stop the experiments as Jude's professor perishes.  They fail, flee, and start a journey to gain strength and try again to halt the inhumane experiments and the people behind them.

Jude and Milla are later joined by the cute mage-prodigy Elize; clumsy staff-wielder Leia; mysterious, older mercenary Alvin, and out-of-military-retirement, old man Rowen.  There weren't too many characters that I felt we very greatly disliked.  I most just developed a strong liking for my few favourite characters, and very rather neutral about the rest.  The team dynamics were very cute; an example would be close to the final fight, a 3rd-party observer remarks to Jude that the members of the party all have similar goals, yet they all word them differently, and Jude just sighs and remarks that that's the sort of team they are.  I found the team dynamics to be cute, yet not too heavy-handed, and all-in-all very realistic.

My only quip in the story and character department was that the last fourth of the game was remarkably, quickly paced and I wish the final resolution was a bit more complete, but since a sequel release, Tales of Xillia 2, has been announced, this quip may soon be rectified once I purchase the sequel.  Standing on its own, completing Tales of Xillia just made me want more.

The Tales of series is known for having a lot of New Game+ content, and Xillia is no exception.  Many options opened up upon our completion of the game; however we have yet to explore them.  Also unlockable full-body costumes are few, but this is made-up for in the number of costume altering accessory such as large noses, funny glasses, angel wings, and bushy eyebrows which were a joy to both collect and use.  The battle system was also fun, and played out as a very smooth version of a real-time action system with a large range of movement, and a new spider web leveling system as well as a new linking system to broaden the number of skills utilized in battle.  It's the most fun Tales of battle system I've played so far.

If you are a fan of Japanese video games, don't mind needing about fifty hours to complete a game, are interested in a largely character driven story, are looking for a long-term multiplayer experience, enjoy an anime-style art aesthetic, and happen to own a PS3, then Tales of Xillia is a great game for you that I'd highly recommend.  I am also personally looking forward to its sequel Tales of Xillia 2, also for the PS3.

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APP REVIEW - Kingdom Hearts Unchained X

Hello everyone!  I've been lagging in the reading department lately, because ever since the English version came out in April, I've been in love with Kingdom Hearts Unchained X!  Just to clarify, I am playing the Android OS version of this game, although there is a (Japanese-only) browser version and an (international) iOS version.

I don't really take app games very seriously.  I usually leave serious, high quality portable gaming to my Nintendo 3DS and think of app games as a sort of pleasant, brief diversion, but I have been surprised by the quality of the app.

KH Unchained X stars you as a random keyblade wielder set back in a time before the events of Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep as you and your peers are fighting a force of darkness encroaching on the world of light.  The battle systems involves collecting and leveling up medals with different stats and one of three types of weapon classes (blue for magic, red for strength, and green for speed) that are each based off of an existing Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy, or Disney character.  The medals are used to attack Heartless during the main missions (called "quests"), and the battle system ends up operating like a simplified version of KH Chain of Memories.  Medals, or medal exchange currency, are rewarded for logging in or completing quests, but, naturally, there's an option to purchases medal packs with actual money, but I have yet to find this a necessity in the 2 1/2 months I've been playing the game.

The story is very, very light.  Most of the stories are just brief rehashes of Disney movies and the main story progression cutscenes are about 100 quests apart.  The slow to non-existent story progression reminds me a lot of KH Re:Coded.  However, I have personally gone through about 300 quests and still like the style of the game.  I think the pacing of obtaining and upgrading medals, obtaining and upgrading keyblades, and acquiring in-game currency to perform those actions to be nicely paired with the rising cost of each action coinciding very well with the growth of the AP bar.   There are also certain events that cause the cost of actions to temporarily be less than normal.  At the higher level quests (I'm at quest 300), I find I can complete about 5 quests before I need to leave my AP to recharge, which takes about an hour.

It is simply a surprisingly well made, high-quality, nicely balanced mobile game with very cute animations and graphics.  If you're a Kingdom Hearts fan, than it will soon become you new favourite idle mobile diversion.  Just make sure that you don't enter into it expecting an epic adventure on the scale of Birth by Sleep.  For those that aren't Kingdom Hearts fans, thankfully, no storyline knowledge is required to enjoy this cute, little game.