romance Archives - Page 9 of 12

Outlanders volume 2 manga review

All right! Volume 2 of our not-all-that-romantic space opera! If you need a quick summary of Outlanders story, I provided one a few days ago when I talked about volume 1 a few days ago. It’s the story of the unlikely rivalry->friendship->romance between an Earthling photographer and a scantily-clad alien invader princess. I’d like to add “hilarity ensues” but the body count is a little too high for that.

And it only gets higher as the alien forces launch an all-out assault on Earth. Europe in particular suffers catastrophic damage. But the day is saved thanks to Tetsuya’s boss Aki, who has uncovered the mystery behind the secrets of the world. Said mystery turns out to be magic. Witch magic, to precise. And Aki herself is the reincarnation of the witch Jilehr and she’s now helping Great Leader Neo repel the invaders and get revenge on the aliens for persecuting witches all those years ago.

I must say, that kind of shadow government isn’t really what I was expecting. I’m not quite sure what exactly what I was hoping for, but Witches! Magic! Reincarnation! wasn’t quite it. I guess I wanted the human race to fight back using its wits and resilience and maybe a super-weapon born from said wits and resilience. Magic is just a little too easy, you know? I dunno, I’ve kind of lost interest in that side of things now.

Meanwhile Tetsuya and Kahm continue their uneasy relationship, beginning with Tetsuya held captive on Kahm’s ship and ending with the two of them on the run in Germany after their ship is shot down. Along the way they meet a German girl named Raisa who is eager to turn Kahm into swiss cheese for killing her family, but is eventually persuaded by Tetsuya’s charming good looks to help them instead. It never fails – when it come to manga, no matter what kind of far flung location a Japanese man finds himself, the locals are quick to overcome any initial reluctance and then fall all over themselves to help. Manga is pure wish fulfillment. But you knew that already.

Anyway, by the end of volume 2 we’ve found out what exactly the problem is – the aliens lived on earth for a while, they left, the humans (who may or may not have been there all along) took over, and now the aliens want their property back. But the humans have squatters’ rights, basically, so they’re not letting go without a fight. Princess Kahm has proposed that Tetsuya marry her so the two races can live in peace. Tetsuya isn’t entirely adverse to the idea, but just then a few of Kahm’s lackey run into trouble and need to be saved. And that’s it for volume 2!

Outlanders is 8 volumes long in Japan and about the same in English, so we’re long way away from the ending. I have a feeling the number of casualties are going to be huge by the time the series is finally over. Tetsuya will probably end up saving the day somehow or the other (I told you, wish fulfillment, the day must be saved by the Japanese) and then we’ll see whether he gets the girl or not. I’m not in a rush to finish Outlanders, but maybe I should clear it off my plate quickly so I can watch Dungeon de Deai wo Motomeru. We’ll see.

Appleseed (2004) anime movie review

Well, well, what do we have here? A love story disguised as an action movie, eh? We’ll just see about tha– hmm… It’s not so bad… I guess. My Google-fu tells me there are at least 5 Appleseed movies or anime series out there, all loosely based on Masamune Shirow’s Appleseed manga wot I haven’t read and don’t plan to. This particular one I watched came out in 2004. I quite like the art style, which blends regular anime art with CG. It’s not a flawless mix, but it’s a very interesting effect that works well for a faux-gritty movie like Appleseed.

Story blurb: Plucked from the last battlefields of the final war, mercenary Deunan Knute finds herself pressed into duty with the ESWAT, defenders of the Utopian city of Olympus. But serpents beneath the peaceful surface of this apparent Garden of Eden, and new seeds of destruction have already been planted! Now it s up to Deunan and her former lover, the now-cyborg Briareos, to unravel a deadly web of plots that threaten to bring down Olympus from within!

Pros

– I was worried when they started off with all the technobabble and stuff, but the story is very easy to follow. It could honestly have been set in any kind of world, not necessarily this one.

– Everyone gets a happy ending and the bad guys get what they deserve.

– Apart from Hitomi, all the other voices in the English dub were very well done, so much so that I forgot I was watching a dub after a while, only to be smacked back into reality every time Hitomi opened her little mouth.

– As I said, I liked the art style. The music was good too.

Cons

– At almost 2 hours long, it’s a little on the lengthy side. It’s still very interesting, but some parts could have been shortened – like the ultimately pointless war scenes at the very beginning.

– Part of the story seems kinda stupid, like why would humans have a giant tank full of a killer virus just floating above the city? You’d think it would at least occur to someone that hey, maybe we should develop an antidote to this thing just in case, you know?

– Appleseed is a story of love lost and regained and the hope that humanity carries within them, etc etc that sort of thing, so honestly the action felt out of place much of the time. It almost felt like the writers/director had one story they wanted to tell, but then every 15 minutes it would be like “Quick! The audience is falling asleep!” and they would throw in some lengthy action sequence out of desperation.

– Speaking of action scenes, the last one was entirely too long. Once the bad guys had been rumbled and it was obvious that Appleseed is an idealistic kind of movie, the fortresses obviously had no chance of taking down humanity while Deunan was around, so why spend 15 minutes pretending they do? IMO they should have had Deunan face off against the giant robots first, THEN had the showdown with the bad guys, but that’s just me.

Final thoughts

Appleseed will probably disappoint anyone looking for a gritty, futuristic, hardcore kind of action movie. It only pretends to be one, but inside it’s a mushy-wushy I Love You, You Love Me, We’re a Happy Family kind of movie. I liked it, myself, even though the story is rather below-average and contains a number of unexplained points (like if Deunan was there when Dr. Gilliam was killed, why didn’t the killers take her into custody and confiscate everything she possessed, etc). Did I like it enough to watch the sequel (Ex Machina)? Not really, no. But still, it’s a decent enough movie and worth at least a watch if you like romantic action movies.

Windaria anime movie review (spoilers)

Windaria is an old, old anime from 1986 that I’ve been meaning to watch for at least 10 years, ever since fansub group Live-Evil released their “set right what went wrong” version (apparently Windaria got a rather horrible official English dub/hackjob known as “Once Upon a Time”, courtesy of Harmony Gold). So I downloaded the fansub upon release, burned it to a CD (a CD!! that’s how long ago it was) and promptly forgot about it. Every couple of years I would stumble across it and mean to watch it then forget again, but today, at last, I finally got off my rump and watched the whole thing in one quick sitting.

Thoughts? Those Japanese don’t muck around with their unhappy endings! …and that’s all I’m going to say about the ending. TBH I saw the final denouement coming a few hundred miles away, but it was still a miserable thing to watch. Since I put spoilers in the title I’m going to spoil, but it’s a nice little movie, short, action-packed, good music, so maybe you stop now and go watch it yourself.

Windaria’s story has a war breaking out between two nations, Paro and Itha. [btw, official summaries say the war is over a supply of fresh water, but as far as I can recall this wasn’t mentioned in the anime itself. Maybe it’s from the book the anime was based on.]

A young villager named Izu who lives between the two countries decides, against his wife Marin’s advice, to throw his lot in with Paro in the upcoming war. Marin promises to wait for him to come back, but Izu – after betraying Itha and killing pretty much all the civilians in one act of subterfuge – forgets all about her and parties in Paro until circumstances drive him home with only the clothes on his back. Luckily for him Marin is still waiting for him… or rather her ghost is, only to depart after fulfilling her end of the promise. The movie ends with Izu bitterly regretting the greed and ambition that led him to betray everything he ever held dear, the end.

Most people will be familiar with the main themes of the show: war sucks for everyone, especially women + nothing good comes of allowing greed/a misguided sense of duty to force you to do what you know is wrong.

The two main male characters, Prince Jill and Izu, basically ruin things for everyone around them. Izu is a louse through and through, and it’s very annoying that he’s the only one to survive at the end (I kept hoping someone would pop up and shoot him), but Prince Jill squandered a very good chance to end the war and unite the two nations, and for that he definitely deserved to die.

The only one I felt sorry for was Marin, because her fate was pretty much sealed the moment Izu joined the dark side. She was killed when a bomb hit her house, but if she had joined the other villagers in evacuating into Itha, she would have been drowned when Izu flooded the place. Either way her life sucked. If Izu had stayed he probably would have been killed along with most of the other volunteer soldiers, but at least maybe the evacuees would have survived. Maybe. We’ll never know. Their best bet would have been to get as far away from either country as possible, but they were just simple village folk with few resources. *sigh*

If you like Infernal Affairs-type “Bad guy wins Pyrrhic victory” kind of anime, if you like movies about war or if you just want a rage-worthy tragedy, Windaria is right up your alley. Some people have called it a ‘tear-jerker’ but I was far too mad to even think about crying by the time it was over. I’m going to rage a little longer and get some shut-eye. G’night!

Why I dropped Kotoura-san after 3 episodes

Another item knocked off my anime backlog, at least. First Barakamon, now Kotoura-san. If I keep dropping them this quickly, I’ll be done with the list in no time. But I don’t just drop series for the sake of dropping them. I am actively looking for new things to watch and enjoy, and it pains me, not least because of wasted time and bandwidth, when I have to drop things. However as with Barakamon I had my reasons, which I will now proceed to explain.

Reason 1 – One episode was enough. The premise is cute: Girl with power to read minds finds herself alienated from friends and family until she meets one boy who swears to stick by her no matter what. A budding romance begins. It was sweet, it was interesting, but it didn’t need to go beyond episode one because it’s a foregone conclusion how things are going to work out – assuming the opening theme didn’t spoil the romantic developments for you.

Reason 2 – It can’t decide what kind of show it wants to be. Does it want to be a high school romance? A tragic drama? A slapstick high school comedy? No, it wants to be all of the above, but it’s not particularly good at any of them. The romance would have been okay if Manabe didn’t blurt out his love for Kotoura right in episode 2. It was like, you what now? Because it’s easy to understand what Kotoura might see in him, but since when did he start liking her in a special way? What does he see in her? Isn’t he just falling in love with her because the plot demands it?!

The tragic drama part might have been okay as well if it wasn’t sandwiched between the romance slice-of-life and the stupid comedy. As it is, those scenes always seems to come out of nowhere and completely disrupt whatever mood you’ve got going on. You can’t relax and enjoy the show when there’s always some CRAAAAWLLLING IIIIN MY SKIIIIN waiting around the next corner. Especially since with the exception of Kotoura everyone else’s problems seem self-manufactured. Heck, even Kotoura should be old enough and wise enough to keep her mouth shut and hide her powers. Dummy.

Reason 3 – Too much too soon. I already mentioned above how quickly Manabe fell in love with Kotoura and how weird that was. I wonder if things were rushed because it’s a 13-episode series. No idea how long the original manga is. But apart from the confession there’s also this drama with some guys beating up Manabe and Kotoura deciding “It’s all my fault, I have to disappear forever!” and stuff. And it’s only episode 3! Like, already? The characters have barely been established, the ESP club has barely started to know each other and you’re already dropping all this shoujo manga drama on my head? I couldn’t even bring myself to watch episode 4, I was just like ENOUGH.

Reason 4 – It’s rather vulgar. A large part of the so-called comedy in Kotoura-san consists of the male lead fantasizing about her in compromising positions, knowing that she can read his mind. So he’s always thinking stuff like this just to tease her:

First off, I don’t see anything comical about sexual harassment. It’s not like Kotoura welcomes those thoughts, since he specifically does it to discomfit her. I don’t see anything loving or romantic about it either. It’s just crude, vulgar and unwelcome. It made me dread every scene where Manabe showed up, because in addition to his thoughts, he just wouldn’t shut up about perverted stuff. 3 episodes of that was more than enough.

Roundup – Watch over your heart with all diligence, For from it flow the springs of life (Proverbs 4:23).

The further I get in my Christian walk, the stricter I am about the things I will and will not allow into my life. This especially applies to media and entertainment, which is mainly made by unbelievers for unbelievers. “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” (Romans 12:2), so even if the world says it’s perfectly okay to have a vulgar, foul-mouth, perverted protagonist or says that mentally undressing someone you claim to love is fine, I know better. That’s why Jesus said “You have heard that it was said, ‘YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT ADULTERY’; but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Matthew 5:27-28)

Even if everything else about Kotoura-san was above reproach I would probably have dropped it anyway because of Reason 4. The other reasons just made it easier to do so. Dropped without regrets, unless you count wishing I had just stopped after episode one.

Remember manhua review

Remember how ‘Red Colored Elegy‘ was supposed to be a highly-influential work? When I reviewed it, I noted that I could see how people would be inspired by it, but the keyword was ‘inspired’ – I never expected someone to flat out copy the whole thing. Until I read Remember by Chinese artist Benjamin, that is…

The blurb goes:

What is the fine line that separates love from hate? How can a broken heart heal from a loss so deep? When is letting go of your inhibitions worth risking your life?

International artist Benjamin depicts profoundl moving portrayals of love and loss that get at the core of what it means to throw your heart into life. The artist doesn’t offer any comfort from the despair we all feel in our lives – while we know there is no answer, we are all better off for asking the question… and remembering the struggle.

Actually the real question they should be asking is “What is the fine line that separates inspiration from plagiarism?” I will give Benjamin props for being a pretty good artist (that cover just screams “Buy Me!” doesn’t it?), but when it comes to storytelling he is utterly bereft of ideas. And he is completely aware of it too, if his self-loathing author’s comments are anything to go by.

Remember is made up of two short stories. The title story ‘Remember’ deals with a Struggling artist with a bad attitude, girl who loves him for no reason, he pushes her away until she does go away and then he hates himself even more than ever, the end. I really didn’t need to summarize that, I should have just pointed to the original story, which for all its flaws does a better job at conveying the doomed relationship and almost, not quite, making the characters relateable.

Anyway, this struggling artist submits story after story to a comic publisher only to have them turned down because they’re not enough like Japanese manga. “Chinese readers don’t want originality! They want plagiarized Japanese manga!” the editor straight-up tells him. So it’s ironic – or maybe meaningful – that the story itself is a straight-up copy of Red Colored Elegy, with better art and with the sex cut out or made ambiguous to avoid censorship.

Is this how low Benjamin had to sink to get his work published in China? Maybe. But what is more likely is that he put that scene in just to cover his inability to write a Chinese manhua that would be accepted by editors. “See it’s not me, it’s the editors, they forced me to plagiarize! Left to my own devices I could totally write a great story!” If that’s the case, why is the copy even worse than the original?

Besides, the Remember collection includes a second short story as well, about students in art school being bullied, but it’s crap. I read about a third of it and then just skimmed through it because it was just more self-loathing navel-gazing twaddle. He probably copied that from a Japanese manga as well, I just don’t know enough manga to spot which one.

In any case, by that time the nice art had lost its effect on me and all of Benjamin’s shortcomings as a writer were on display for all to see. Rambling, incoherent ‘I’m so deep and nobody understands me’ characters dot the pages like so many teenagers at an emo concert. They’re all flat one-note characters – ‘quirky girl’, ‘misunderstood artist’, ‘unreasonable editor’ – one defining characteristic carries them through the whole story. Even in a short story you should be able to flesh characters out a little more than that, especially in slice-of-life kind of stories where enjoyment depends on getting under the character’s skins.

Benjamin can draw, there’s no question about that, but unless he can learn to write as well it really doesn’t profit him very much. The fact that the manga goes for less than $2.00 on Amazon despite being out of print should tell you everything you need to know about that. Still I’m not a mean person, and I can see some budding talent there. I’d advise him to work on his writing skills if he really want to make it as a mangaka (manhuajia?). Failing that, there’s nothing wrong with being a dedicated artist and illustrator, since he does have the skills to back that up. Good luck, Mr. Plagiarizer!