Araknamedia

Changes are Afoot (personal)

This weekend was really pretty good.  I’d found out that I’d won a Tokyopop manga contest, and received the package for it, which had six volumes of free manga.  Can’t beat that!  However, I’ll be reading all except one of them AFTER I read the giant stack I bought last weekend.  While I’m on last weekend: DAMN.  So far, I’ve been drawn in by every first volume that I’ve read, which is sad news for my wallet.  Fortunately for me, the next volumes are not out, so I’ll just have to be patient.  I can do that, and besides I have plenty to read still.

My roommate is going to be teaching in China for two years.  The way that this affects me personally is that I technically live in HER house.  So we need to find someone else to come live here and help me pay bills, because I unfortunately can’t afford to pay them all on my own, otherwise I would.  We’re hoping to find someone soon though, and have that figured out at least.

How will this affect Araknamedia?  It probably won’t, honestly.  I don’t keep a regular schedule anyway, and one to two posts a week for me seem pretty comfortable.  However, in case I don’t post for a while, that’s probably why.

I’ve been amused to watch the votes trickle in on my review poll.  I’m counting Soul Eater as a shounen action review, so looks like I should review something of CLAMP soon.  I don’t really have anything “new” there, so I’ll probably just pull out something old and write up my opinions on it.  I’m thinking I’ll probably re-read the Legend of Chun Hyang.  Have a suggestion? Let me know in the comments.  If it’s fairly easy to access, that’s what I’ll review.  It has to be CLAMP though.

“I’m not special.”

I recently went on a manga buying binge, so there might be a lot of review posts coming from that.  I counted, and it looked like two-thirds of what I bought were first volumes.  So much for my self discipline and only keeping up with series I already had a lot of.  Darn those pesky manga publishers and their temptations.  For that matter, darn bookstores and their sometimes spotty selection as well.  Hm, that sounds like material for another post.

Today’s post won’t be about a first volume, rather I’m going to review the second and final volume of Beast Master.  For a refresher of what I thought of volume one, go here.

Yuiko really loves animals.  Unfortunately she gets too enthusiastic with her attentions, so animals don’t love her back.  Her animal loving ways do lead to her becoming friends with Leo Aoi, a scary looking transfer student who grew up in various wild places, like Africa.  Leo goes berserk when he sees blood and turns into a ruthless killer who scares himself, but Yuiko is able to get through to him and calm him down.

This volume was not quite as good as the first volume.  There’s a new arc introduced for a couple chapters wherein Leo is set to inherit a fortune once his birthday hits, and is consequently nearly killed by his jealous relatives.  Of course, Yuiko is thrown into the mix, but the interesting bit there is that Yuiko releases some of her own inner beast, shouting down Leo’s relatives as they tell him that he’s a freak and doesn’t deserve to live.  The whole “hey guess what? he’s rich!” thing just seems too cliche to me still.  Then Leo’s dad makes an appearance, just in time to whisk him away elsewhere so he’ll be safe from his relatives.  Yuiko attempts to convince Leo to go, and what happens after that is easily the best part of this volume.

The art remains great.  It’s clear, and there’s a lot of energy in it, which will keep me re-reading it over and over.  I will definitely be keeping a hopeful eye out, looking for more translated work from Kyousuke Motomi.

I was glad that another of his works was included in this volume, a short 4 chapter manga titled “Cactus Summer Surprise.”  I think I actually enjoyed the short manga more than the rest of the volume.

I still think it’s worth a buy, especially since the series is only two volumes.  That makes Beast Master a short and sweet addition to any manga collection.

A Sound Soul…

I’ve been taking advantage of Funimation’s streaming site to watch Soul Eater.  They’d been releasing episodes on a pretty regular schedule, so I’ve been able to watch the entire show subtitled, and hopefully help the American industry by doing just that.

Soul Eater is based on manga by Atsushi Okubo, which is being serialized in America by Yen Press.  The animation was done by Bones, and it premiered in Japan in April of 2008.  Currently as you might have guessed or known, the North American license is held by Funimation, who will be releasing the first box set of the anime next month.

From this point on, my review may contain some spoilers.  I promise it’s nothing major.

The basic premise of Soul Eater rests on the DWMA, a school for meisters and weapons.  They study and train to keep the big bad from returning to the world and wreaking havoc.  The secondary goal for some meisters is to make their weapons into a “Death Scythe,” or a weapon that Lord Death himself would use, by taking the souls of 99 Afreets (think evil demons) and 1 witch.

In the beginning of Soul Eater, you’re introduced to 3 teams.  Maka Albarn is a scythe meister, and Soul Eater Evans is her weapon.  They begin the series with their 99 Afreet souls, and are after a witch named Blair.  However, when they take Blair’s soul, they find that she wasn’t a witch and that all the work they’d done up to that point is now nullified.  The next team consists of Black*Star, a meister who’s training to be an assassin, and his weapon, Tsubaki, who has multiple forms.  They had a chance to get their Afreet and witch souls all in one go, but Black*Star passes his chance to instantly make Tsubaki into a Death Scythe.  The last team consists of Lord Death’s son, Death the Kid, and his weapons, Liz and Patty Thompson, who transform into guns.  Death the Kid’s purpose is to create his own weapons rather than let them be created for him, as Lord Death’s successor.

As Soul Eater will be a new release next month, I won’t be going much more into plot.  After some accidental research on wikipedia, I am aware that the anime takes a pretty drastic right-turn from the manga.  I’ve only read the first volume of the manga as it’s been available here, so I don’t have much of a frame of reference beyond that right now.

I personally found Soul Eater to be entertaining with a good cast of characters, and some eye-catching character and world designs.  It’s rather simple, but that also makes it easy to follow which is a plus for me, because I’m usually just looking for something entertaining when I watch anything.  It can be thought of as shonen anime with it’s themes of friendship and fighting.  I’ve been working to spread it around to some friends also, which means that I’ve watched some of the earliest episodes as many as five times, which means that I find it easily rewatchable.  That’s always good in my book.

My favorite part of Soul Eater is definitely the characters.  I think that Maka is one of the best female characters that I’ve come upon on anime recently.  She’s capable, smart, and fights beyond her own fear.  The boys in her class treat her as an equal rather than someone who constantly needs to be rescued.  Unfortunately she also falls into that tired anime trope – where are her parents?  Her father, Spirit is currently Death Scythe and stays by Lord Death’s side as his personal weapon, and her mother is completely absent.  There’s nothing said about the whereabouts of Maka’s mother until nearly the end of the series when Maka receives a post card from her.  I did think that the fact that Maka’s mother and father are going through a rather messy divorce while Maka lives on her own with Soul was weird.  Maka’s father is a deadbeat dad who’s going through a divorce because he can’t stop going to men’s clubs and flirting with pretty much any woman he sees, but he shouts his devotion for Maka every chance he gets.  Having a father that consistently threatened to embarass me in public does give me some sympathy for Maka and her plight, at least as far as her father goes.  Maka’s weapon, Soul Eater is obsessed with being “cool.”  There really isn’t much more to him than that.  Later on you’ll see Soul’s inner struggles in the form of a demon with a giant head and tiny body.  This gets to be pretty integral to the plot.

My favorite character is Black*Star, who manages to be the complete opposite of what he should be.  He trains to be an assassin but his ego demands that he shout his presence to the world, especially when it’s detrimental to his mission.  Later in the series, he’s aware of this, but it does him no good, he usually thinks about it after he’s already shouted.  Black*Star is the “man who will transcend God,” and allows nothing to obstruct his path to greatness.  He has some great development over the course of the series.  One of the best things the writers did was to hand Black*Star a taste of defeat and the opportunity to overcome that.  His weapon is Tsubaki, who takes the form of multiple ninja tools, but mostly she’s a chain scythe.  She’s quiet and exceedingly polite, and the only person who can put up with Black*Star for any amount of time.  She offers him absolute support, constantly.  I don’t remember any point in the series where she doubts him verbally, although it doesn’t keep her from flat telling him when she thinks he’s done something wrong and needs to fix it.

Death the Kid is very nearly topples Black*Star from being my favorite character.  His obsession with symmetry is his major trait.  This obsession is so strong that it gets in the way of his battles, causing Kid to abandon his weapons, Liz and Patty in the middle of fights to go check that his toilet paper looks nice, or to make sure that painting in the foyer is lined up just right.  Good thing Liz and Patty are capable of fighting on their own, and some of the scenes where they switch between being the gun and being the wielder of the gun are some of the best action scenes.

I’m not going to go into the rest of the characters, because that would make this a ridiculously long post, and it’s pretty long already.  I did have some problems with this anime.  There’s obviously a structure for a large overarching plot, but the episodes themselves felt choppy to me, and didn’t really have much connection from one episode to the next.  You can pick up the series at nearly any point without missing out on much, which is both a strength and a weakness.  It’s a strength because that does make it more accessible to more viewers.  It’s a weakness because that takes away any kind of reason to watch all the episodes.  The first dozen or so episodes felt very disjointed to me, and that bothered me some while I was watching.  I did like the three seperate introduction episodes for the three main teams.  That was a good way to introduce the world, and the main players, and it didn’t take away from their particular character development by trying to mash the introduction in with the ongoing plot.

Once the plot got really rolling, it was good.  The pacing was nice, not speedy, but quick enough to keep me intrigued.  In the second half, though, there’s a lot of new characters introduced and lost in the shuffle of the greater plot.  There’s a big lack of character development that is understandable if you think of the episode limit, but it’s still a shame.  I would loved to have seen more of the other DWMA students, or the members of the opposing factions.

Personally, I would have liked to seen more character development overall.  I thought the characters were the best part of Soul Eater and some of my biggest problems with the anime stem from how characters were handled.  In particular, I didn’t much like most of Dr. Stein’s story – who I realize I have not mentioned up until this point.  I think this review is long enough already, so maybe I’ll go more into that in a seperate post.

I also would have loved more of the world.  There were tons of questions I had that I would love to have seen answered, like how does someone determine if they’re a meister or a weapon?  Is it hereditary?  Does it happen randomly, or can it be obtained with training?  What makes someone a witch?  Etc etc.  I imagine these questions may be answered in the manga, so I might keep up with it to see if that’s the case.

Overall, I enjoyed Soul Eater.  I’d recommend it to pretty much anybody.  I know that I showed it to some friends that haven’t watched much anime at all and they got a kick out of it, and the husband later thanked me for showing his wife an anime that had a good female character in it.

Attention Manga Lovers

I just went through my manga collection and have quite a few that I don’t want. Here’s the deal: if you see something here that you’d like to have, comment here or e-mail me  (sailorsamus@araknamedia.com) and I’ll send it to you. I’m not really interested in making money from these, I really just want them out of my room and I’m willing to send them to people I (sorta) know first.  No charge.  I will send you free manga.

In the (unlikely) event that more than one person wants a volume of whatever, whoever messages me first gets it. I’ll be keeping this list updated also.  Also, I’ve put this list up on my personal facebook page, so there may be some competition, but I doubt it’ll be all that serious.  I just hope this works.

Manga up for grabs!

-Beauty Pop vol 8 (Shojo Beat/Viz) Kiyoko Arai
-Absolute Boyfriend vols. 1,2,3 (Shojo Beat/Viz) Yuu Watase
-Ral Grad vols. 1,2,3 (Shonen Jump Advanced/Viz) Tsuneo Takano & Takeshi Obata
-Wild Ones vols. 1,2,3,4,5 (Shojo Beat/Viz) Kiyo Fujiwara
-Tokyo Boys & Girls vols. 1,2,3,4,5 (Shojo Beat/Viz) Miki Aihara
-Heaven’s Will (Shojo Beat/Viz) Satoru Takamiya
-The World Exists for Me (Tokyopop) Chiho Saito & Be-Papas
-Descendants of Darkness: Yami no Matsuei, vol.1 (Viz) Yoko Matsushita
-Densha Otoko vol.1 (CMX) Hitori Nakano & Wataru Watanabe
-Her Majesty’s Dog vol.1 (go!Comi) Mick Takeuchi
-Go Go Heaven!! vol.1 (CMX) Keiko Yamada
-The Magic Touch (Oyayubikara Romance) vols. 1,2 (Shojo Beat/Viz) Izumi Tsubaki
-Sensual Phrase vol.1 (Viz) Mayu Shinjo
-Captive Hearts vols. 1,2,3 (Shojo Beat/Viz) Matsuri Hino

Claymore – Final Thoughts

I finished watching Claymore a few weeks ago.  I haven’t read the manga at all, but I did already know that there was some raging over the ending.  The impression I got is that the anime closed a door that the manga left open, and I can see how that would be irritating.

I found the ending irritating without even having read the manga.  I’m not going to spoil much of anything, because I think Claymore is still fairly new, and if you wanted to spoil it, you could go look it up elsewhere.  I will completely admit to being lazy.

As you may know from earlier posts, I initially did not like Claymore much, but I kept watching it anyway.  As the series went on, I found myself gradually drawn into the story.  By episode 8, I was fully invested in the series.  I’ll readily admit that I still find the supporting cast more interesting than Claire, the main character.

The ending seemed rushed though.  There was no real resolution, and the big bad just shrugged and walked away.

Also, a petition for a second season of Claymore has been started by enterprising fans.  I went ahead and signed, figuring, hey it could be alright.  I’m not exactly sure where Claymore could go from it’s end, but it was an open ending.  The big bad could easily be the main villain again, and chaos can ensue.  I haven’t read the manga, and honestly I doubt I’ll get to it any time soon as I have plenty of manga I’m keeping up with already, and I tend to read shoujo slice of life drama/romance over action manga.

In conclusion, if you’d like to see a good action anime with women that kick ass, watch Claymore.  There’s plenty of action there, and pretty decent story to go along with it.  The ending is pretty meh though.

Pac-Man the Eater of Souls

Funimation has been streaming a show on its website that I have really taken to. It’s a long overdue reimagined adaptation of the classic 80’s video game Pac-man, when translated into English is “Eater of Souls”, or more commonly known as, “Soul Eater”.

It follows the adventure of our favorite yellow circle as his girlfriend, Ms Pac-Man (no relation as far as I can tell) is kidnapped and taken into the “Society of Souls”, or “Soul Society” for short. There he evades capture from the spirits, or “ghosts” as they are sometimes called, all while trying to collect all the “Pac-dots” he can eat, and perhaps any fruit or pretzels that might come his way.

At one point he collects one of the four coveted “Power Pellet” and is then able to take on the main four Ghost/Souls, Shadow the Blinky, Bashful the Inky, Pokey the Clyde, and finally the leader, and toughest of the four ghosts, Speedy the Pinky. The problem is this power is limited and he goes back to being the one chased. Fortunately he has three more that he can get that will once again restore him back to being able to take them down.

Now mind you I may have dozed off during a good chunk of the series so I might have a few details wrong. In fact, I might be confusing this whole thing and might not have remembered any of it correctly. Hmm, maybe I should go back and rewatch it while awake.

Personal Fandom Musings

I tend to think of myself as something of a “middle of the road” otaku.  The strange thing is, I recently started thinking of how and when I started down this road known as “anime fandom.”  After listening to some podcasts, and reading some blogs, I realized that I was fairly self aware as a newbie fan.  Lots of fans declare they got into the fandom by watching Dragonball Z, and they didn’t even know of anime then, just that it was a cool cartoon.  I started with Pokemon early in the morning, as a high school student, and I knew that Pokemon was anime from the beginning.

How did I know that?  I thought about it for a while, then I remembered.  Before I was an anime fan, I was heavily into comic books.  I had a subscription to Wizard magazine, and I think I must have read some articles on the subject, as well as in the newspaper, strangely enough.

If you’re asking “why Pokemon?” the answer is simple and twofold.  I grew up on basic television, no cable, which means I didn’t have access to Cartoon Network until college.  There was nothing else to watch that early in the morning.  The other choices were the news, aerobics shows, and infomercials.  Also, given the choice between something entertaining and anything else, I will pick the entertaining show 4 out of 5 times.

So it’s a typical/non-typical start.  Quite a few of the fans I come into contact with are quite a bit younger than I am, so I feel out of place quite a bit.  It doesn’t help much that the con scene here in Kansas City is still quite small, so it seems like the grand majority of attendees are usually high schoolers.  Plus, I’m quite shy and I tend to avoid people.  Lately I’ve come to the somewhat uncomfortable realization that I’m somewhat of a hikkikomori, or shut-in, except I do leave the house regularly to go to work.  Since I started up with twitter, however, I’ve been able to follow a much bigger variety of anime and manga fans, and it’s been great.  There’s a lot of fascinating discussions and I’ve been learning quite a bit lately.  Enough to realize there’s a lot more to learn still, but also to realize that I’ve been steadily learning all this time anyway.

Granted, I hardly ever participate in the discussions.  I’m still more of a casual fan who watches anime mostly for enjoyment.  It’s always interesting to sit and write a review, though, and figure out exactly what it is that might have bugged me about a particular series, scene or character.  That’s mostly why I decided to blog.  Plus, I wished to work on my writing, see about keeping a schedule eventually, and dabble in a little website design if possible.  I like to do a little of everything.  That old saying is very true however: jack of all trades, master of none.  I believe this can work for me though, so I’ll be doing my best to prove that it will.

I don’t forsee an end to my anime fandom at present.  What I see possibly happening is that I simply change my focus.  At present, for instance, I don’t really bother to keep up with current releases, although I will admit it’s easier than ever with around half of each season being streamed.  In the future, I may keep up more with current releases, or I may still stick to my focus on older anime that I believe I should watch.  Perhaps I will abandon the chronological approach and focus on specific genres (like romance/slice of life) or properties (like Gundam).

This is more of a “I wanted to post something” than a post with a specific emphasis.  I was computerless for two weeks, so I feel that I will be catching up for a while, but I’m still here, I’ll be doing maintenance for a while, and I’ll still be posting.

This is why Ericvonroyer is Evil

Taken from messenger conversation last night

sailorsamus: You should do that. You could use a new game to play. On the other hand, I have games I haven’t even opened o_O

Ericvonroyer: I bet you haven’t even started quest mode in Super Smash Bros.

sailorsamus: uh…. I’ll tell you what I DID start. WiiFit. I’m probably going to regret it tomorrow though.

Ericvonroyer: Nice distraction.

sailorsamus: Besides, you forgot the guide for Twilight Princess again.

Ericvonroyer: I did remember Fight Club though.

sailorsamus: yes you did.

Ericvonroyer: I’d rather you watch that.

sailorsamus: what. But Link is a bastion of manliness.

Ericvonroyer: he wears tights.

sailorsamus: well real manly men wear tights.

Ericvonroyer: And after Twilight New Moon, turning into a wolf and having “twilight” in the title doesn’t help.

sailorsamus:  : o  how dare you! ;^;

The Regeneration of Doctor Who

It’s been a while.

Recently one of my favorite shows ended one era, and is about to begin another one. That show is Doctor Who. Much like how the Doctor regenerates into someone almost completely different with elements of his former self still there, so is the show about to do the same. Not only is the extremely popular David Tennat leaving the show, so is head writer and show runner Russell T Davies.

The void they are leaving is going to be filled with relatively unknown (both sides of the pond from my understanding) Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor and popular writer Steven Moffat as head writer and show runner. From Matt Smith’s spiffy bowtie to the brighter blue of the Tardis, and even the retro look of the new logo, they are going to try and reclaim a lot of elements of the classic series.

So far a lot of fans seem to be upset over Matt Smith taking over. Many of the more rabid fans are tearing apart the trailer that aired after “The End of Time”, complaining about how Matt Smith is shown punching a fellow with a smile and shooting a gun. The thing that many fans seem to be missing is that even the Tenth Doctor was known to show some violence, and yes, hold a gun. Off the top of my head I know two episodes where the Tenth Doctor holds a gun, and taken out of context could make him look like a regular member of the NRA.

One of the things I’m hoping that not too many fans do is immediately dismiss Matt Smith’s portrayal of the Doctor because he’s not Tennat. Yes, he has an emo haircut that is rather ugly, but I’d hope we can get past that. The great thing about the Doctor is that he doesn’t stay the same. He changes. By constantly changing it keeps things fresh, and gives us a new perspective on the universe they inhabit. While Tennat gave a tremendous performance and made him one of my favorite Doctors (I actually really got into Doctor Who after seeing Tennat play Casanova in a movie of the same name), it’s time to see where else we can go, and how far the envelop can pushed in a new direction.

The main thing to remember while watching the series when they start airing it is this. If Matt Smith does a horrible portrayal of the Doctor, he can be regenerated into another actor.

WTF Wardrobe: Sha Goyjo – Gensoumaden Saiyuki

Let’s face it, sometimes clothing and hairstyle design in anime is bad to the point of being ridiculous.  You sit, and stare at the screen and wonder who exactly would wander out of their house looking like that.

My example today is Sha Gojyo from Gensoumaden Saiyuki and his ridiculous pants.

They’re like hammer pants, capri style.  What exactly is the point of them being all poofy only to be extremely fitted at the calves?  It certainly doesn’t make them look any better.

Not to mention the actual front of the pants.  What the heck is that sticking up above the waistline?  Do I even want to know?

This ridiculous piece of clothing made it nearly impossible for me to take Gojyo seriously.  Any reaction I would have to a real person wearing something so silly looking got attached to the character, so even when he did something badass, I would still think, ‘yeah but those PANTS….’  They negated any hint of machismo he possibly had or could have, and simply relegated him to being bad.

If you’re wondering, yeah I’ve been posting about Saiyuki pretty heavily.  It’s one of my favorites, so you can look forward to more posts about it, good and bad.