Archive for the Series Category


Bloom Into You, Volume 7

May 11th, 2020

If Bloom Into You were a movie, this would be the part of the movie where, instead of hastening towards the climax, as American movies do, the characters would spend the next half hour moping, then run halfway across town to finally see each other, but Bloom Into You isn’t a movie, so while Touko and Yuu do exactly as described above, there is a different person for us to follow while they mope.

In Bloom Into You, Volume 7, Sayaka confronts her final boss, the fear inside herself. Happily, she doesn’t do it alone, because Sayaka has an adult role model to speak to, happy day! Miyako takes Sayaka on a reconnaissance mission and for the first time, Sayaka gets to talk to someone like her, and see what life can become. Fortified by the knowledge that she is choosing to do what she wants to for herself, so she can grow from it, Sayaka finally confesses her feelings to Touko.

…And the movie resumes, with Yuu and Touko running across town to see each other and finally have their own moment.

I’ve never been terribly invested in Yuu and Touko as a couple, not because I don’t like them, or because they shouldn’t be together, but just because this story was always presented to us as a Yuri romance. Yuu and Touko were fait accompli from the beginning. But Sayaka was a delightful – and meaningful – addition to the story.

Ratings:

Art – 9
Story – 8 The Sayaka parts are a 9
Characters – 9 They’ve developed into people now
Service – 1 Really not this volume, but we’ll talk again in V8.
Yuri – 7
Lesbian – 9

Overall – 9

As always, the technical for this are fabulous, Jenny McKeon’s translation does something specific I don’t want to spoil, but that I really liked in the climactic moment between Touko and Sayaka. Adaption, editing and lettering are all top notch, which means you’ll never notice them, but kudos to Jenn Grunigen, Julie Davis and CK Russell and I’m thrilled to see a proofreader, Danielle King. Do take a look at the credits for this volume, because IMHO, this is best of breed. You as a reader get to how many people it takes to get this book to you. I think it’s important that you understand that every book is a village.

I would love a side story about Touko and Yuu learning that Riko-sensei was gay all along. In the meantime Volume 8 is up for pre-order, with an August release date and Volume 3 of Bloom Into You Regarding Saeki Sayaka will be headed our way in the autumn. I can’t wait for you to read it!





Sailor Moon Stars Limited Edition, Part 2, Disk 2

May 5th, 2020

Sailor Moon Stars Limited Edition, Part 2, Disk 2 has some good and some bad…and some annoying, upsetting, frustrating, bittersweet, sweet and a host of other feelings. It’s like an M&M bag full of feels.

Sailor Lead Crow realizes that the absence of her “rival” is a hole she may never fill. The Three Lights learn that being hard-asses doesn’t really pay off. The Outers don’t learn a damn thing and the Inners learn that Usagi has been lying by omission. Both Seiya and Usagi learn that Seiya’s feelings are very sincere and everyone learns that Kakyuuu-Hime was hanging out in an incense burner watching them. That’s not weird at all.

We all learn the high stakes of Galaxia’s attacks. Are we worried? Not really because even aside from this being 23 years old, we know Sailor Moon will win the day. Which is why her emotional is torment especially upsetting, because why?!? What benefit is there to do this to the audience?

On the positive side, we spend some time with each Inner Senshi for the first time in a while. Minako, particularly, has a moment to shine bright, as we might expect from Venus.

I have to eat my words and say that while Seiya had stopped jokingly hitting on Usagi, he (for I will continue to refer to Kou Seiya as a “he,” as Seiya’s actions and behavior still read masculine identifying to me, while Taiki I think would just have been better off not having to pretend to be a hard ass guy, and Yaten remains Yaten) has terrible timing. I sympathize with Seiya, but no, you cannot be enough when she doesn’t even know whether or not she should be sad or angry. So, yes, I acknowledge that Seiya might have, in an entirely alternative timeline, been a decent choice, but he loses all the points for poor timing and inappropriateness.

The art has pulled itself up a tad, too, as if everyone knew they were coming down to the wire.

Ratings:

Art – 6
Story – 6
Characters – 8
LGBTQ – 4 Michiru wants you to know that she and Haruka are very gay. They have one scene, and its gay.
Service – 1 Seiya shirtless, I guess, works for some people

…and here we are. It’s down to 6 more episodes, 4 of which will be everyone dying. Whee! Grab the hankies, we’re going in…

Route Venus is one of my favorite of the Senshi image songs. Here’s Fukami Rika not murdering it for plot purposes.





Sailor Moon Stars Limited Edition, Part 2, Disk 1

April 30th, 2020

Sailor Moon Stars Limited Edition, Part 2, Disk 1 enters what only can be considered the grind portion of any Sailor Moon anime season. The plot is established, we know what the deal is and the most sensible thing in the world would be to just team up and do it together.  But, that isn’t going to happen. Instead we grind through Monsters, while never just sitting down with everyone and saying, “Okay, time to huddle, let’s figure out what is going on here and how to deal with it.” This is my least favorite bit, where everyone ignores their Princess and just wastes their own time and energy.

This is why magical girls have to be 14, not 44.  Otherwise the story would be very short. ^_^; 

This disk contains several remarkable scenes, among them the day when all of the main cast shows up at Usagi’s house for reasons. Artemis is not wrong when saying that them all playing cards was pretty wholesome. This disk is also home to the moment when Aluminum Siren sees the rose petals that accompany Sailors Uranus and Neptune appearance. I wish that had been given some deeper thought beyond a momentary gag – but I’ll take the gag. ^_^

On the positive side, I will admit that Seiya stops hitting on Usagi, confining himself to role of bodyguard. I’ll never love the Lights, myself, but I can kind of see the appeal.

You can see that this series was not making money, the animation is frequently poor, sometimes frighteningly so. But as always Viz’s remaster is as good as something this badly drawn can be.I think I’ll watch the next disk as a dub; I have no doubt that that is well done, as well.

Ratings:

Art – 4, sometimes 3
Story – 4
Characters – 8
LGBTQ – 1 Pretty much nothing but crumbs
Service – 2 The art tanks hard and not even the Phages are fake-sexy.

Now the grind continues until we run out of Sailor Animamates and we have to befriend Galaxia to death. ^_^;





MURCIÉLAGO, Volume 15 (ムルシエラゴ)

April 21st, 2020

In MURCIÉLAGO, Volume 15 (ムルシエラゴ), we wrap up the Gold Marie redux arc with a somewhat unexpected reward for Kuroko. Narumi asks for physical contact. Kuroko is glad to oblige.

Kuroko and the gang are then launched into a creepy Elder God-inspired circus, (like circuses need to be any creepier than they already are.) A criminal from the past known as the Comedy Writer is back, and with the cover of the Bugg Shash circus, is manipulating people’s consciousness. It seems like more of the same – almost-supernatural hijinks and murder, except…

…what it actually becomes is kind of a cold case police procedural, in which questioning suspects is more than just a motivation for expository commentary.  What are the nature of the drug Francis and its relationship to Ceasare? Are they how the Comedy Writer manipulates people into deeply creepy or is it something else? Tsuru and Chacha are on the case! And, compared, with some of the previous arcs, this case might actually take their specific skills to crack.

Ratings:

Art – 8 Horrific and freakish more than violent this time
Story – 8 Inexplicably weird
Characters – 8
Service – 4 Other than straight up nakedness, surprisingly not
Yuri – 4 In a different timeline Narumi and Kuroko would make a decent pair

Overall – 8

 





Otherside Picnic, Volume 3

April 17th, 2020

In Volume 1 we met mystery hunter Sorawo, who nearly died while visiting an “other” world that had access points in our own and Toriko, the beautiful blonde who saved her life. In Volume 2 Toriko and Sorawo and their broker for artifacts, Kozakura, learn of the research into this other world, known as the Ultrablue. Sorawo meets an admiring kouhai, Seto, and proceeds to do everything she can to distance herself, all the time haunted by the mysterious Satsuki Uruma, who clearly connected with the hearts of Toriko and Seto, but whom Sorawo sees as a threatening and manipulative presence.

Now in Volume 3 of Otherside Picnic, after a terrifying brush with death and madness at the end of Volume 2, Sorawo and Toriko decide to take a more aggressive view of the UB, and face it head on. They customize an agricultural vehicle and head into the world to try and map it. With Sorawo’s one UB eye and Toriko’s transparent hand, they have the ability to see the reality of creatures in the UB. But Sorawo can see something that she’s not telling Toriko, who is becoming more and more dear to her. Sorawo can see that Satsuki Uruma…is watching them.

We get a few random glimpses into both Sorawo’s past, which helps explain a lot about her, and Toriko’s, which doesn’t, but offers tantalizing hints. They encounter a foe whose UB ability is deadly and, for the first time, we run into something that actually frightened me as a phenomenon. As a result I kind of want to talk about the horror author Iori Miyazawa bakes into this series. The author’s notes fascinate me, because they are themselves a kind of second-hand urban legend that the work purports to draw upon. “I read this on a board that’s gone now…” is pretty much the Internet version of  “a friend of a friend told me….” The horrors themselves are random and inexplicable, often being “explained” away by something even more inexplicable, which is charming, but doesn’t make the scare any scarier…unless it coincides with something you, personally, carry. Then it’s fucking terrifying.  ^_^

You may remember we tend to stay in Ikebukuro and we know the corner where the Junkudo is across from the ramen shop well. Yes, that ramen shop with a long line is real. The line starts about 10:30 in the morning and goes all day until the shop closes. It’s mostly Japanese folks, but sometimes has foreigners in it…and it’s on my list of things to do, to get on that line and eat there. ^_^ Well, a few years ago, my wife and I had a scary and strange experience nearby. I won’t get into details, but suffice to say the whole scene outside that Junkudo make me deeply uncomfortable to the point of being genuinely terrifying. Which is when I realized how Miyazawa’s horror works.  All the stories need to do is to evoke a place or a feeling that already scared you, and you’ll fill in the rest. Stories of weird beach houses and toilets in the middle of the hotel room, or strange looking constructions in the middle of the woods might not get you, but if you had stayed in a creepy beach house, or a really weird hotel room or saw some kind of bizzarro structure in the woods, you’d be looking for that light switch as you walked down the hall. ^_^;

Volume 3 ends with an important moment, but one that can’t really be considered a climax until we see if anything will come out of it. Toriko and Sorawo need a heart-to-heart ….but it’s not Satsuki Uruma that they need to talk about.

shirakaba’s art is less-irrelevant than usual, which was nice. Hats off to translator Sean McCann and editor Krys Loh, because translating made up fake horrors and making them make sense is way harder than translating things that exist and making them make sense.  

Ratings:

Story – 9
Character – 9
Service – 3
Yuri – 6

Overall – 9

Volume 3 is available on Kindle, Bookwalker Global  and directly from J-Novel Club.  Volume 4 just came out in Japanese in March, so I imagine it will be a while before we’re getting the next installment! If you can’t wait, you can grab it digitally on Bookwalker Global, as well!