Archive for the Type-Moon Category


Fate/Zero Manga, Volume 1 (フェイト/ゼロ)

January 14th, 2014

Oh my goodness. The last few days have been filed with systems failures of all sorts, so I apologize for the lack of updates. Here we are, back with an unexpected addition to Okazu.

As I said, when I reviewed  the Fate/Zero anime, there are two Fate/Zeros – the one on the screen and the one in my head. ^_^ This remains true for the first volume of the Fate/Zero manga, as well.

We are first introduced to the Grail War through the talky-talkiness of Kotomine, eventually we listen while Kiritsugu talks at Irisviel and try to pretend that the  art for her is better than it is. Kiritsugu summons Saber and basically leaves her to take care of Irisviel while he talks some more.

We switch  to Velvet Waver as he invokes Alexander the Great and has no idea what to do with him. This is followed by some other nominally Grail War-ish plot stuff but we most follow Alexander making a man out of Velvet.

Kiritsugu heads off to talk at Maya and kisses her so we know he’s not “in love” with Irisviel, which is good, because by now we’re pretty much obsessing on Saber and Irisviel as a couple. Thankfully the manga is helpful in this regard.

We follow Irisviel and Saber, whom she has dressed up in that natty suit and they have a nice little together scene where Saber learns of Irisviel’s boring life. Saber swears to be the knight to Irisviel’s Queen and they head off to tour the town, until Saber runs into Lancer and the book comes to an end.

As one might expect, the manga is the Cliff notes version of the anime, without the same quality of visual input. But luckily for us, Irisviel and Saber are just as slashable as ever. Otherwise, this would be a really talky book.

Ratings:

Art – 7 at times, 5
Story – 5 Depending on if you care about the technical conversations behind the War
Characters – 7 Not bad, honestly. I don’t like them all, but they have some depth.
Yuri – Made up nearly out of whole cloth by us, but still a 4
Service – 1

Overall – 7 I’m reading the next one.

You may have noticed that the ads here on Okazu are gone. After I moved off Blogger last year, Google started a harassment campaign against Okazu. Pictures and content that had been perfectly fine for years on Blogger were suddenly unacceptable.

I’d love to run Okazu ad free, but I really can’t. It takes a lot of time and money to upkeep. We’re switching over to a new, more comics-friend network and I hope I can count on you all to click on ads that interest you from time to time and help support the comic artists and me. Thanks for your patience and support!





Fate Zero Anime, First Season

January 29th, 2012

There’s Fate Zero, then there’s the Fate Zero in my mind.

Fate Zero is a prequel to the Fate/Stay Night Visual Novel about which I know and care nothing. I only care insofar as the Fate Zero anime was mostly introduction and exposition at this point, and I’m hoping it holds together as a series on its own.

The story is, relatively speaking, simple – 7 great heroes/evildoers of the past are reincarnated with even greater powers than they actually had when they were merely men who achieved notable things, and they each have a master who wishes to find the Holy Grail to achieve some goal, selfish or otherwise. Who the heroes are, is the most interesting part of the series to me, and how their myths are rewritten to determine their powers.

I was asked some weeks ago about my interest in the reincarnated heroes, as I’ve mentioned here in the past that myths are typically a good hook for me. Since these heroes aren’t really connected to their past incarnations in any meaningful way, these are clever and some good fun, but I don’t actually feel a connection between one and the other. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the heck out of this series – even when large chunks of episodes were merely expository conversation.

Let’s start from the top – the heroes themselves.

Lancer was a hoot for me, it’s not often I get to see Fionn mac Cumhaill in an anime. Or, ever. When people think of Irish heroes, they always default to Cuchulain. I liked how he was noble, but his master is a prick. A story from his perspective would be much different than the one from Saber’s.

Rider‘s really the hero here. I’m pretty sure that Alexander the Great didn’t look anything like that great huge mountain of a man, but I loved the interpretation of “Great” as meaning looming large in every way. Rider’s what you think of when you think “Age of Heroes;” great huge muscular men, laughing as they fight, drink and die. (Except for Cuchulain, I think he’d be a mope no matter what he was doing.) Rider’s master is weak, but not bad, and having Rider as a servant will man him up pretty fast, so if he survives, it’ll be good for him. Poor bastard needs it, with the name Waver Velvet.

Oh Saber. Who can’t love the idea of a conflicted, tortured King Arthur? Everyone tortures Arthur differently. Whether you force him to deal with a wife who is having an affair, or make him have an affair himself, or turn him into a woman who had to hide his gender, or even turn him into Sailor Moon, Arthur is a splendid tabula rasa on which to draw. He’s timeless. Even though Saber’s master is the utterly dull Kiritsugu, we’re supplied with a Guinevere for him to adore in the person of Irisviel. I have no doubt that most of you were writing little stories in your head about Saber and Irisviel, as I was.

Caster is half of the best comedy team I’ve ever seen. He and his master, voiced absolutely deliciously by Ishida Akira, were perfect. Gilles de Rais is the name of a man so loathed, so envenomed by the ages that I’m kind of inclined to think he probably didn’t do any of the things he was accused of doing. You all know Bluebeard, right? Well, you should. I have to tell you, I *loved* his speech about “What do I have to do to be punished by god?!?” That was almost as good as Saber on her bike for me.

Beserker is Lancelot? Well, that’s just dumb. Lancelot was no beserker, I can tell you. They should have picked someone Norse. It doesn’t make any sense to have a Berserker Lancelot. Gawd. Now I’m just depressed. ( I retract this. Berserk Lancelot does make sense. And it caused a fraught conversation in the second season between Saber and Berserker.)  But Berserker isn’t the interesting half of this story anyway. Kariya, his master, is the most pathetic of all the masters. (Pathetic in the sense of inviting pathos.) You really have to root for him, because if you don’t you are consigning at least one, possibly two little girls to a eternity of foulness, which means you’re a heartless wretch. Fooey on you.

Gilgamesh is Archer and a delightfully wtf interpretation of the myth. I have no idea how they got that trash-talking asshole from the legend of Gilgamesh, but I look forward to his destruction. Kotomine is a snooze – I was so happy Gilgamesh thought so too. What a BORE.

If you don’t grok Assassin the moment they mention them, you fail in your study of legends, myths and secret societies.

The animation is stunning – we expect no less from Type Moon. The characters are well drawn, well-acted and so far, at least, really well written. The only complaint I have is that the first season ends where the plot begins and if they don’t actually give me a story to hold on to, I’ll be peeved, since I have no intention of ever playing any game/reading any Visual Novel.

Since I don’t care about the Visual Novel, or the series as a whole, I’ve cheerfully rewritten the story in my head. Of course Irisviel and Saber get to be together, duh.

Ratings:

Art – 10
Story – 6 It’s been all character all the time, which has had moments, and also been a lot of blah blah blah.
Characters – 9
Yuri – 0, but in my head, it’s more like 7
Service – 1 on principle

Overall – 7

I await Season Two with the faint hope that Kiritsugu dies, Saber survives the war with Irisviel, and they live happily ever after, just like on this clock I got from Young Ace magazine.

Also, I wonder what the fallout of the absurdly priced Blu-Ray release will be. I can’t imagine too many American fans coughing up that usurious a price for what amounts to light entertainment.





CANAAN Light Novel, Volume 2 (下)

May 13th, 2011

Volume 2 of the Light Novels based on the anime CANAAN is, like the first volume, an exact rendition of the anime to text form. Where that worked well for the first volume, the emphasis on action scenes – specifically one-on-one confrontations – made for some really slow reading in this volume.

It’s not that the author is bad, it’s just that the action scenes are literally descriptions of the action portrayed in the anime. So literal that, after a while, it begins to feel like one is reading an RPG which, if you think about it, you kinda are. ^_^

So, after 350+ pages of “Person A does a thing. Then Person B does a thing. ‘Blah, blah,” Person A said,” I found myself replaying the scenes from the anime in my head to remember the energy and passion contained within them. Painful or awkward scenes were especially slow. Hakko’s final hours and Liang Qi’s fate were rather more excruciating than they were in the anime. To be fair, this is probably because it took *me* so long to make my way through them, and not any particular fault of the scenes themselves.

The few good Yuri scenes we had in the anime remained good in the novel. The night before they enter the destroyed village on the Silk Road, in which Canaan and Maria realize just how much they mean to each other, was quite wonderful. And, in the same way, the moment when Canaan sort of belies that by naming their relationship “friends” is just as disappointing to us. However, I’m more convinced than ever that it was not the death knell for Yuri, but the beginning of Maria and Canaan being able to see each other as equals and from that…who knows. It still seems to me that what they had was far more intimate (in an emotional sense) than a friendship.

At the beginning of the series, Canaan is more like Superdog than anything else. Super-powered, cute, a little alien, a little exotic, a lot “what do you do with this?” Maria is naive and helpless. They have to move past those things to be people who can look each other in the eyes squarely. Now, as the story comes to a close, I can see the two of them learning to love one another in a not-childish way.

But, the pages of the story do come to a close and so must this review.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 8
Characters – 8
Yuri – In my hopeful delusion, I’m going to say 6
Series – 4

Overall – 8

As with the first volume, if you very much enjoyed the anime and wish to level up your reading skills (there is a lot of scientific and military terminology, as well as just adults having adult conversations) you will probably enjoy CANAAN.





CANAAN Anime, Disk 2 Blu-Ray (English)

December 9th, 2010

Liang Qi says it all along. She says it repeatedly. But since she’s crazy, we don’t really listen.

It’s all about Love.

Cummings loves Liang Qi who loves Alphard. Alphard loved Siam, to her detriment. Yun Yun loves life. Santana loves Hakko and Hakko loves him. Maria loves Canaan and Canaan loves Maria, both the to the extent that they each are a bit blind about the other.

On Disc 2 of CANAAN, we approach a series of climactic moments that fail to actually build to a single climax. Hakko’s tragic story ends in more tragedy, Liang Qi’s story drags on painfully until it ends in pain. Maria, Yun Yun and Canaan escape one horror to walk right into the middle of another.

And, in the middle of that horror and sacrifice, Maria, Yun Yun and Canaan finally come face to face with themselves and don’t shrink away from what they see.

The final battle between Alphard and Canaan is everything a final battle between implacable enemies should be. I.e., on top of a speeding train, crossing a mountain bridge, while a helicopter shoots at them.

Because this is Okazu, and because the first two episodes of Disk 2 establish that Canaan and Maria love (“aishteru”) each other, let’s talk a little about the scene in which Canaan says that Maria is not her “light,” but her “friend.” When I watched this series originally, it seemed awfully like a denial of their feelings. But upon reflection, I have found an interpretation I can live with – Maria had given up the idea of walking by Canaan’s side, but at that moment, Canaan embraces it. Up to that point, her desire was to “protect” Maria. By naming her friend, Canaan has in fact awarded equal status to Maria in her heart.

Mino-san says that, although they can never truly walk side by side, they can be close. It’s true that they can not live side by side in Canaan’s world, nor in Maria’s, but I think it becomes obvious that they are close enough to hold hands across that gap. While not the ending I’d write, it’s good enough for me.

Extras are clean OP/ED and a clip episode, narrated by Mino-san.  Nothing to write home about.

I’ve already touched upon the visuals in my review of Disk 1, but let me reaffirm that this was a really good choice for a BD purchase. The battle scenes make it very worth your while to watch this large.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 8
Characters – 8
Yuri – 5
Service – 4

Overall – 8





CANAAN Anime, Disk 1 Blu-Ray (English)

December 3rd, 2010

Type-Moon’s CANAAN does what every good action story does – it starts off with a premise, stabs the premise in the back, drags the premise to a dumpster, pretends nothing ever happened and acts surprised when it comes back to bite it in the ass.

We are introduced to the situation first through the eyes of Osawa Maria, a fledgling photojournalist and her competent, irritable mentor, Minorikawa Minoru. Arrived in Shanghai on the night of a festival, they expect to be covering a conference of world leaders on combating terrorism. They don’t expect to be running through streets of Shanghai being chased by people with guns. They also don’t expect the terrorists to be the hosts of the conference.

Maria is saved by an assassin-for-hire by the name of Canaan who, we learn, is a friend of hers. Canaan has synesthesia which manifests in her perception of people and their emotions as distinct, traceable colors. Maria and Canaan are chased and chase others along the surface and through the tunnels of Shanghai as the conference looms. But when the conference opens and the terrorists take over by poisoning the world leaders with the deadly UA virus, everything shifts.

Leader of the terrorists, Alphard, has a specific grudge against Canaan and, it turns out, that they have a shared origin and a shared mentor. A mentor that Alphard killed. The story revolves around the three foci of Canaan, Alphard and Maria and the people that move around them.

The first disk takes us from Shanghai to the high desert where the UA virus was visited upon a small, unimportant village by an uncaring CIA as an experiment. The lives of everyone in the series is tied to that horrible experiment and many of them are still living with the effects.

Government conspiracy, assassins, knife fights, gun fights, chases through streets, helicopters and in cars, CANAAN provides action fans with just about one of everything – and does it well.

For Yuri fans, there is just about no way in this volume to avoid the obvious attraction between Canaan and Maria. I would say it’s mostly on Canaan’s side. Even Canaan’s handler, Natsume comments that she seems to have finally hit puberty. Which is about right. Canaan may not yet – or ever – feel desire for Maria, but she clearly loves her deeply.

This is my first-ever Blu-Ray purchase. Because I knew that the backgrounds would hold up to it, and I thought the visuals associated with Canaan’s synesthesia would look cool. I started watching this on a projector onto a large projection screen, so it was about 45″ of viewable screen – the visuals did, indeed hold up. They look fantastic. What didn’t hold up were the subtitles. I hadn’t considered that…obviously, neither had Sentai Filmworks. At 45″, the subtitles looked broken and pixelated. It got better by episode 5, but the first two episodes, it was downright distracting.

I shifted to a 15″ screen where the subtitles once again looked tight, but the visuals were constrained by the small screen. I’d split the difference on my TV, but it’s a old TV and I can’t connect my computer to it and I’m not running out to get a BD player or a new TV just for you. ^_^

This led to a question by someone on Twitter about which company had the best subtitles. I took examples from every current company I could find in the house and played them one after another on the 45″ screen. Here are final scores:

Media Blasters – 6 out of 10
Funimation – 8
RightStuf – 7
Sentai  – 6
Bandai – 6

I liked Funi’s subtitles best because at that size, they stayed crisp, and because they were not yellow. I know it’s so personal, but I cannot stand yellow.

Back to CANAAN,  Disk 1, Episodes 1-9 are a shockingly huge shift, from what appears to be a silly, slightly predictable action story to a vast government conspiracy, tragic personal revelations, angst and love, in many and various forms – even the kinds that are toxic.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 8
Characters – 8
Yuri – 2
Series – 4

Overall – 8

Overall, I consider this a totally worthy purchase. I like the action, the characters and the plot keeps shifting and swerving, like Canaan in the middle of battle.  Alphard vs Canaan makes for a great anime. Now I’m motivated to get back to that second light novel in the series and give it a go.