Reviews - Animefangirl!

Hanayamata dropped for being too whiny

It’s bad of me, I know, but I didn’t even finish episode 1 of Hanayamata. I was feeling quite favorably inclined towards a series about Japanese dance because I enjoyed Aki no Kanade so much, but this isn’t quite what I was looking for. For one thing it takes Hanayamata forever to get round to the actual dancing part. It hasn’t even happened yet in episode 1 and who knows when it will take place. Instead all the time is taken up by the heroine Naru whining on about how not-special she is and how much she wants to be a fairy princess and on and on. I know she’s 14 and that’s pretty much par for the course at that age, but it doesn’t make it any less annoying to watch.

There aren’t any other likeable characters to root for either. Based on the preview of episode 2 her friend Yaya-chan is probably going to turn jealous and clingy before being rehabilitated. The American Hana is just your stereotypical blonde, hyper Western otaku that you come across from time to time in anime these days. It would have been pretty interesting if she had indeed turned out to be something otherworldly like in Naru’s imagination, but no she’s just another weeaboo.

And what’s with all that blushing? It should be possible to set an anime in a girls’ school without having them always blushing at each other and idolizing the other girls and on and on with the yuri overtones. Long story short, halfway through episode 1 of Hanayamata I realized there was no dancing, there was a lot of whining and blushing and there were no likeable characters, so I’m going to bail while the getting is good. Scratch another item off my backlog!

Saekano after 6 episodes (dropped)

You can refer to my first post on Saenai Kanojo no Sodatekata here. Basically I thought the show had a bit of promise but didn’t want to wait every week for new episodes so I shelved it until it was complete and then some. 9 months later I finally settled down to watch the show, but…

As I said back then, I wanted to see what would happen when you added a third, ordinary character to a generic anime love triangle. The answer seems to be absolutely nothing. After episode 3 it seemed like best girl Megumi had won (or rather lost, since the hero Tomoya is so annoying), which was all good and nice, but then episode 6 rolls around and it’s all about Tomoya’s past, angsty non-relationship with Utaha-sempai? Where’d that come from? And who cares? It doesn’t matter any more. I thought best girl had won!

I hate those series where the author spends a little time building a relationship between A and B, then no, no, C has a chance too, no wait, D too, and round and round and round it goes. When I sign up for a harem I know it’s a harem, so I’m ready for that whole rigamarole (that’s why I avoid harems these days actually) but I was hoping for something a little less stale and hackneyed with Saekano. More fool me, I guess. Basically I dropped Saekano because it turned out to be a harem when I wasn’t looking for a harem.

There’s a second reason, though, which is the visual novel Tomoya and his group are going to be making. The story was revealed around episode 5 and TBH it’s bad. Really bad. It starts well but then turns into a yandere incestuous reincarnation romance with giant monsters? If it’s supposed to be a parody of something famous (Eva? Titan?) then sorry, it flew clean over my head. And hopefully landed in the garbage dump, there to stay forever. And the characters are just falling over themselves gushing with praise about how moving it is. Are you kidding me? I wouldn’t even let my dog poop on a story like that. No thanks.

To recap, I can’t support the romance because it’s not going the way I wanted it to. And just btw, Tomoya is a lot more annoying than I remember. That ‘noisy passionate otaku’ gimmick was funny the first few times I saw it, but now it’s played out. His brief moments of seriousness only making the yelling more obnoxious, because then his whole otaku persona just seems put-on and fake. Just be a normal guy, okay? There’s only one good character in the whole show and I think Megumi would be better off walking away from this whole stupid circle.

Right, so to recap the romance sucks and the game they’re making sucks, so there’s nothing for me root for in Saekano. If I had nothing else to watch I might finish it out of sheer inertia, but my backlog is HUGE and growing larger all the time. If an anime isn’t really knocking my socks off after 6 episodes I think I’m better off just reading summaries online and moving on to something else. Saekano is best left to people who like otaku romances that probably won’t ever go anywhere, the end.

Dragon Sister volume 1 manga review

I didn’t even finish Dragon Sister volume 1, but I’m going to “review” it anyway. It’s the only way to get relief from my suffering. I know near the end Tokyopop was licensing anything that looked even slightly like a manga, but I didn’t know the problem was this bad. When I think of all the delightful little series, maybe a little average but certainly not as bad as Dragon Sister, that could have been licensed instead, well it brings a little tear to my eye.

As usual, the blurb:

The classic Chinese tale of The Three Kingdoms–with all your favorite historical figures cast as cute girls! As the Han Dynasty collapses, two mighty warriors–Zhang Fei and Guan Yu–stand strong against the tide of rebellion. But because these fighters are female, their dreams of fighting in the Imperial army are nothing but dreams… until they find a patron and like-minded brother in Liu Bei, an idealistic descendant of royalty with dreams of his own. Forging a pact, the three form a volunteer army dedicated to restoring peace, which means first defeating three deceptively adorable sisters who oppose them, and who have their own, definitely cuter, plan for China’s future… One thing’s for sure–history’s about to get a makeover!

The first line is the beginning of my troubles – I have never been able to keep all the characters and plot twists of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms straight. Dragon Sister is probably the closest I’ve come to understanding all the different factions and which character belongs where, which they manage by keeping the main cast down to 6, 9 if you count a few extras. That’s a good start.

What’s not so good is that the mangaka (nini?) assumes that everyone is completely familiar with the plot, so s/he just jumps straight from important event to important event without any explanation. First the heroes/heroines meet up and decide to fight together. Next chapter they’re already in the middle of a battle, then suddenly the battle is over. Suddenly they meet Cao Cao, then just as suddenly he disappears. Next battle they’re already in the loyalist camp kicking up a fuss over something inconsequential. Is that how the original story went? I don’t know, but it’s hard enough to follow all the different factions without any smooth transitions from Point A to B to help keep things straight.

That wasn’t the worst of it, though. The worst was the waste of the premise. The idea is that due to a curse, all the heroes of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms have been reborn as women. It’s not the first time a writer has recast historical characters as different genders and it won’t be the last. In Dragon Sister though, the problems are threefold.

If all heroes are women, why are Liu Bei and Cao Cao still male? Aren’t they heroes? Or will there be a reveal later that they were women all along?
Zhang Fei and Guan Yu spend time kvetching because being women keeps them from fighting for the loyalist army. Then it turns out Dong Zhuo, leader of said army, is a woman as well. So being a woman isn’t the barrier it was set up to be, Why bother having that gimmick in the first place?
Turns out the gimmick exists for the sake of cheap titillation, nothing more. I should have known as much when I saw that cover. Dong Zhuo almost always comes across poorly in RotK adaptations, and this time she’s a sneaky lesbian who lusts after the heroines and dresses them in revealing clothing (that’s actually less revealing than Guan Yu’s standard outfit) so they can trip and show off body parts. What happened to telling a story?

It’s a shame the series is so sub-part because I quite liked the clean art style. It just screams “modern shounen,” like Naruto meets Full Metal Alchemist kind of art. Still good art will only take you so far without good writing. No wonder even Tokyopop dropped it after two volumes. If you’re that hung up on seeing your favorite RotK heroes redrawn as women, or if you’re such a big fan that you’ll buy anything set in that era, then I guess you might get something out of Dragon Sister. Otherwise it’s not something to go out of your way to read.

Kouya no Tenshidomo (Miriam) manga review

If you read enough shoujo, you might have come across a manga named “Miriam” by Kyoko Hikawa. If you do a little digging around, though, you will realize there is no such manga named Miriam in Japanese. The fan-translators took three series: Kouya no Tenshidomo, Jikan wo Tomete Matteite and Sorenari ni Romantic, wiped out their titles and renamed them all Miriam after the main character.

That’s why you’ll see some places list it as a 7-volume manga, even though it’s actually 3 for Kouya (or two if you buy the bigger Hakusensha edition), 3 for Jikan and 1 for Sorenari. MangaSync did a good job with the translation and editing otherwise, but this was a really unnecessary, unwise and uncalled for change on their part, so I hope other fan groups never followed suit.

Now that we’ve got that all cleared up, what is ~~Miriam~~ Kouya no Tenshidomo all about? It’s a shoujo manga set in the Wild West that follows the adventures of a plucky, precocious 8-year old named Miriam as she tries to protect her beautiful adoptive mother Grace from the attentions of the slimy, cowardly Mr. Harnbag.

At least that’s the manga Kyoko Hikawa set out to write, but then her mistake was introducing three young men first, Card, Joel and Douglas, and having them do the bulk of the work in getting things done. Hikawa set out to make a manga with a strong female character who was also a child, and I still think it could have been done, but she wrote the story in such a way that the guys had no choice but to take center stage with Miriam playing a mainly supporting role – or even getting in the way through her stubborn recklessness – and Grace being all but completely useless.

But that’s okay, as long as the manga is good. Is it? Well it has a lot of things going for it. The unusual setting for a shoujo is one. I haven’t read much manga set in the Wild West, much less shoujo, so that’s a start. The child heroine in the midst of adults is also quite rare. They usually tend to be paired with other children.

Kouya no Tenshidomo also has a fair amount of action without actually being violent. This is a bit of a spoiler, but deaths are extremely rare, even in situations where you would expect there to be a few deaths. Obviously the good guys want to avoid becoming murderers, but the bad guys seem to have inexplicably bad aim while also managing to avoid hitting any innocent passersby. Thanks to that the manga manages to have a very feel-good atmosphere to it, which I like.

The art is neat but nice-looking. Nothing too special, and I did think Hikawa could have done more with the backgrounds and signs and stuff to make the series seem more “Wild Westy” but it turns out she was sick for a while when she wrote it so I guess she did her best. Either way the action is easy to follow, the story is short and well-told – this is the bad guy, these are the good guys, here’s what we’re gonna do. It’s a short satisfying experience and well worth the read for people who like unusual shoujos.

Except! The fly in the ointment! Spoilers follow for romantic developments…

The relationship between Douglas and Miriam starts too soon! She’s only 8 years old, for goodness’ sake! I can buy an 8-year old having a crush on an older teen, but WHY ON EARTH is he falling in love with her at that tender age? She’s 8, and she’s drawn even younger!

But she’s 8 years old now!!

Stop that, you pedo! So there were a lot of really creepy scenes with Douglas thinking about how much he wanted to see Miriam and vice versa and on and on and on. It made the 2nd and 3rd volumes a little uncomfortable to read because I was just thinking “Help!! Police!!” all the time.

At least the two sequel series Jikan wo Tomete matteite and Sorenari ni Romantic deal with Miriam and Douglas’s relationship at a more sensible age. It’s not the age gap that’s the problem, after all. It’s that she’s only 8 years old!!! I think the author had been reading too much Thorn Birds when she wrote that subplot in. Please don’t write anything like this ever again, Kyoko Hikawa, kthxbye.

Long story short, Kouya no Tenshidomo is a short, light read as long as you don’t mind that the lead male is a pedophile. It’s still a nice change from the usual (the rest of the manga is a change from shoujo series I mean, not the pedo hero being a change from non-pedo heroes) so give it a try if you get the chance.

Metropolis (Osamu Tezuka) manga review

Another Osamu Tezuka manga! From 1949 too! After Dororo, Metropolis is probably the least bad Tezuka work I’ve read, but that doesn’t mean it’s all that good either.

The blurb:

From Osamu Tezuka, creator of Astro Boy, comes Metropolis, the legendary 1949 graphic novel that inspired the animated fame that floored audiences and critics alike. In a not-so-far-off future a beautiful, artifically created girl — unaware of her non-human background — wanders alone in a world populated by humans and by the slave-driven robots who serve them as she searches for the non-existent parents she believes must exist. Tezuka’s key theme of the nature of humanity in a technological society is framed in bold relief, as well as his wry allegorical observations of the Cold War that was escalating when he created Metropolis. A brilliant work of wit and wisdom — and guest-starring some friends you may recognize from Astro Boy! — Metropolis is one of graphic fiction’s most enduring tales.

As with Lost World, he also claims to be unfamiliar with the 1927 movie of the same name that the manga is suspiciously similar to. But since Tezuka is the “god of manga” or whatever they like to call him, no one bothers to dispute his claim. Personally I think he copies both originals, but that’s neither here nor there. Let’s just evaluate the manga as we have it.

TBH I don’t remember any observations on the Cold War, except for the part where a scientist speculates that humans become too advanced they might end up destroying themselves. I wouldn’t have realized it was linked to the Cold War if the back cover hadn’t pointed it out. The part about Michi “wandering alone” is not quite accurate either, since for most of the manga s/he is in the constant company of friends.

That’s the other thing – strictly speaking Michi is neither male or female. There’s a switch in her throat that changes her gender when pressed, but s/he spends most of the game in male form, so I’m going to call him ‘he’ from now on. Michi is an artificial created by an evil Red Party …. ohhh, Red Party. Communism! D’oh, now I get it. Is Michi supposed to represent nuclear power gone out of control? Interesting.

Anyway, this fact is hidden from Michi for most of the story. He seems to be a mild-mannered sort of kid, but when he finds out the truth he goes totally berserk and destroys much of the metropolis before meeting his end. This turn of events is rather sudden because Michi had been such a happy, friendly child before, but I suppose the signs were there early on. Besides he wasn’t really human and he’s immature to boot, so it’s not quite fair to expect him to react with human rationality. “When science is misapplied, innocents suffer,” is what Tezuka seems to want to say.

My overall opinion of Metropolis is “Unrealized potential.” There were a lot of things that didn’t get the attention they deserved. Duke Red and the motivations of the Red Party, for example. The reason for Duke Red’s obsession with the statue that Michi looks like (no, it’s not his kid like Wikipedia claims). The friendship between Ken and Michi needed a little more exploration. The character of Emmy kind of came out of nowhere and went nowhere. Just because Duke Red is dead doesn’t necessarily mean the Red Party is done for. The ending is cheesy and rather abrupt. Poor Michi killed a lot of people but it’s okay ‘cos he was just misunderstood, aww. NOT.

In the author’s notes at the end of Metropolis, he mentions that he had to cut out a lot of things at the end of the manga, which goes a lot way to explain how sudden the events of the last third of the book are. There’s a lot of time wasted fighting giant Micky Mouse lookalike rats and running from KKK-dressed henchmen that would have been better served focusing on Michi, IMO. So the explanation that Tezuka meant to devote more attention to more important matters but never got around to it is a plausible one. I just think he cut the wrong things out of the manga when he had to, but I’ll buy his excuse that he was pressed for time.

So yeah Metropolis an interesting little story that doesn’t really go anywhere. At least it doesn’t contain any offensive content like Ayako, plus it’s a complete story in one little volume. It’s worth a read if you like standalone graphic novels or just want a light introduction to older scifi manga. I’m still on the hunt for what makes Osamu Tezuka so special, though.