Summer 2018 Anime First Impressions

This summer’s anime offerings are more hit or miss than usual. There’s only one series I’m truly certain I’ll watch no matter what, and it’s possible I’ll dip back into continuing series from last spring, specifically Persona 5: The Animation and Tokyo Ghoul:re which looks like it will eventually finish out the series.

Angolmois: Record of Mongol Invasion

angolmois

Why I Watched It: The art style is a lot cruder than I normally like, with characters having square jaws and tiny pupils. This makes it clear that these characters aren’t refined people by any means, and it’s not often that we get a historical drama around a 13th century Mongolian invasion of Japan.

What I Thought: The setup is excellent. A group of criminals are spared the death penalty and are instead exiled to a remote island whose people want them to serve as soldiers against the incoming Mongolian invasion. This is a sore deal for our criminal protagonists who evaded one death only to be faced with another, but most of them seem used to fighting and our lead is a skilled swordsman and former retainer for the shogunate, so their odds against the incoming 900 warships is probably not as bad as it looks, though history does not favor the island they’re now trapped on.

Verdict: I might come back to it. As expected for a period war drama, this is a predominantly male cast (though the island’s Princess Teruhi has potential), and I didn’t find any of them particularly likable. The plot would have to get rolling for this one to hook me.

Where to find stream: Crunchyroll (subtitled)

Attack on Titan Season 3

attackontitan3

Why I Watched It: I’m a big Attack on Titan fan and Season 3 animates my favorite arc out of all of them. Though it’s not quite as popular as it was in its peak, it’s still the thousand pound juggernaut of the anime world.

What I Thought: I’d heard they were making changes for this arc, and boy howdy did they rearrange things. Nothing outright happens differently but events happen in different locations or happen at the same time, or even in a different order. This might be intended to give the viewer a sense of confusion as the Survey Corps doesn’t know exactly what’s going on either, but as a manga reader it’s a little baffling because some characters are no longer in a position to perform actions they take later on. It’ll likely turn out pretty good anyway, but this is by far the greatest deviation the anime has taken yet. Season 3 is not newbie friendly either. A little of Season 2 is recapped, but truly new viewers should start at the beginning.

Verdict: I’ll be watching. Though to be honest that was a given. I’m really curious how they will handle the rest of this arc due to one prominent character being placed out of action so early.

Where to find stream: Crunchyroll (subtitled), Funimation (subbed and dubbed, subscription required for dub), Hulu (subbed), and Toonami (dubbed). Dubs will be following roughly a month after the subtitled version airs.

Banana Fish

bananafish

Why I Watched It: Banana Fish was one of the first manga to come to the US that featured a gay relationship, and for a long time that’s all I knew it as. I didn’t know it also involved an international drug ring and that the protagonist is roped into the seedy underworld after being handed a mysterious necklace and the keywords “banana fish.” Though dated now, it was a landmark at the time of its release and this animated version has updated events to present day.

What I Thought: Though Banana Fish has been modernized by about thirty years, parts of it still feel a bit dated, with character attitudes and the kind of gang warfare we end up seeing. However, for being a Japanese production, there is a surprising awareness of race; as in not every American is white. Ash himself might be, but this is a New York with a healthy population of black and brown people, in both incidental and named roles. This is also one of the few anime I’ve seen that is blunt enough to use the word “gay” to describe someone’s sexual orientation, rather than dance around it.

Verdict: I’ll probably watch it. It’s certainly a strong contender, and being based on an older, completed property there’s a very good chance for a satisfying ending. Since I missed this while the manga was in print (though it’s being reprinted) I’d like to see what all the fuss was about.

Where to find stream: Amazon Video (subtitled, subscription required)

Cells at Work!

cellsatwork

Why I Watched It: Cells at Work! anthropomorphizes all of the body’s cells into people who do various cells’ jobs in the metropolitan world that is a person’s body. It’s completely ludicrous, but the primary white blood cell of the series cuts a striking image, being rendered entirely white, like a sheet of paper.

What I Thought: It was fun and surprisingly educational. The creator put a lot of thought into how this fictional world works, from capillaries which are narrow doors so red blood cells can only pass through one at a time, to a white blood cell pulling a Die Hard through the vents to bypass a blocked doorway, since they’re able to permeate blood vessel walls. Despite being mildly educational though, it’s not really for children. The protagonist white blood cell is a bit of a killing maniac (all the white blood cells have an instantaneous and ruthless reaction to invaders) and ends up spattered with “blood” after confrontations.

Verdict: I’ll pass. It’s funny, but not quite funny enough to beat out its competition. Also, I’m not sure how well the story will develop as a series since there’s nothing to suggest there will be an overarching storyline.

Where to find stream: Crunchyroll (subtitled)

Holmes of Kyoto

holmesofkyoto

Why I Watched It: Cozy mystery involving the local “Holmes,” who happens to work at an antique shop, and his new assistant. I like the character designs and I’m always looking for good mysteries.

What I Thought: The first episode doesn’t have Kiyotaka (whose surname can also be rendered as “Holmes” through a multi-lingual pun) and Aoi solving any mysteries, but serves as an introduction to the two characters. Kiyotaka is in college, and about to be starting graduate school, making him older than most anime protagonists. He works in his grandfather’s antique shop as an appraiser. Aoi is in high school and Kiyotaka decides to bring her on as part-time help. Like Sherlock Holmes, Kiyotaka is extremely perceptive and able to draw conclusions about people from the small details regarding how they behave and how they present themselves. It’s a slow burn, but no means a boring one.

Verdict: I’ll probably be watching. The end of the episode seems to indicate that there will be darker goings-on later in the series, which seems odd for a story revolving around work at an antique shop, but I’m willing to give it the benefit of a doubt.

Where to find stream: Crunchyroll (subtitled)

Phantom in the Twilight

phantomintwilight

Why I Watched It: I didn’t have high hopes for this one, but the fact one of the characters is named Vlad and is a vampire tickled my fancy just right for the story about a Chinese girl who travels to London as an exchange student and gets to meet various monster boys.

What I Thought: The dialogue gets pretty clunky in places, and there are some London neighborhood shots that don’t look they’re part of London, but there’s just enough here that it might be worth a second look. Ton’s great-grandmother was a jet-setting Chinese woman who used to live in London and ran a business. It turns out that one of her ventures was setting up a cafe for Twilights, people such as werewolves, vampires, and other supernatural creatures, and Ton is led there by a spell she learned from her great-grandmother. The Twilights are set up to be the fighters and the eye candy for the series, but Ton might not turn out to be a slouch herself as her great-grandmother also left behind a crazy chain-rope weapon that she is now able to use.

Verdict: I might come back to this one. There’s enough to watch right now that I don’t think this is going to make the cut.

Where to find stream: Crunchyroll (subtitled)

Seven Senses of the Re’Union

sevensenses

Why I Watched It: I don’t have much patience for MMORPG anime anymore, unless there’s an unusual spin on it, like last year’s Recovery of an MMO Junkie. This one involves a band of friends who used to game together until one of them passed away and then the group broke up. Years later, one of them reenters the game and finds the avatar of their dead friend is active and he gets the gang back together again to find out why.

What I Thought: The game world is nothing remarkable, being generic medieval fantasy, though it’s unusual in that it’s a permadeath game. Dying results in the player’s account being wiped. What I found unbelievable though is that the main cast was the best group on their server while they were in elementary school (so they can make their comeback as teenagers). Grade school kids and permadeath don’t work well together since failure means starting over from scratch. We don’t get much of what life was like for the band of friends after Asahi died, but Haruto is the main POV and has clearly given up on MMORPGs after she died. Presumably the perspective of the other characters will come later.

Verdict: I might come back to this one. Haruto is not sympathetic enough of a personality for me to really like him, so it’ll largely depend on whether the group dynamic is enough to sustain the series, or if other members of the cast turn out to be more interesting once they get a chance in the spotlight.

Where to find stream: Amazon Video (subtitled, subscription required)

laurietom
Laurie Tom is a fantasy and science fiction writer based in southern California. Since she was a kid she has considered books, video games, and anime in roughly equal portions to be her primary source of entertainment. Laurie’s short fiction has been published in Galaxy’s Edge, Strange Horizons, and the Intergalactic Medicine Show.

BOOK REVIEW: It Devours by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor

written by David Steffen

It Devours is a standalone tie-in novel based in the universe of the Welcome to Night Vale podcast and the Welcome to Night Vale novel, released in October 2017 by Harper Collins.

Nilanjana Sikdar is a scientist and a member of Carlos’s team in Night Vale, which Carlos calls the most scientifically interesting town in the world. The team performs very important experiments, such as making machines that go flash and then bang, or measuring the effects of being disappointed in potatoes. Nilanjana does experiments that involve growing bacteria.

Disaster strikes in Night Vale. Not that it’s… all that unusual for some kind of disaster to strike, mind you, but this is a very mysterious disaster which no one understands. Giant holes have been opening up and swallowing random bits of town, and the local chapter of the Church of the Smiling God is rumored to be responsible. Carlos tasks Nilanjana with investigating the phenomenon to find out what is causing it and how to stop it. On her first visit to the church, she meets Darryl, one of the church’s most committed members and strikes up a… friendship? Or is it a romantic relationship? Or, wait, maybe it’s all just a pretense, there’s something weird about Darryl and the way he smiles…

It Devours continues the oddball comedy horror that the Welcome to Night Vale podcast and prior novel are known for, and it does a great job, as ever. Like the prior novel (and unlike the podcast) it does take the form of a more traditional narrative arc instead of being the shapeless semi-plotted form that the podcast takes. You don’t need to have listened to any episode of the podcast, nor read the prior book, to enjoy and understand this one, though you might miss a small amount of in-jokes. This one takes on one of my favorite topics, where science meets religion, with our two main characters being a scientist and a religious devotee, and has some interesting thoughts on the subject.

Also, I don’t often think much about book design besides just cover art, but this has a really eye-catching book design with the bright yellow cover, the purple-edged pages, and the toothy inlay.

It is eligible for the Hugo and Nebula awards this year (and is on my personal ballot for each).

GAME REVIEW: Super Mario Odyssey

written by David Steffen

Super Mario Odyssey is a new 3-D platform action game in the beloved and long-running Super Mario series of games, released by Nintendo for the Switch platform in October 2017.

The villain Bowser has kidnapped Princess Peach, for the bajillionth time, and he is going to try to force her to marry him. It’s up to Mario to rescue her with his new sidekick companion Cappy, a shapeshifting and possessing ghost hat. Mario throws the hat and it latches onto an enemy and transfers Mario’s control over the enemy’s body, so Mario can become a Goomba or a Bullet Bill or a variety of new enemies introduced for this game, giving him their abilities for enhanced attack or mobility.

Mario travels using a hat-shaped airship that is fueled by power moons (apparently a slight variant of the power stars collected in Super Mario 64?), so most of the game is spent trying to find power moons to build up enough power to reach new lands as Mario gives chase to Bowser, to try to catch them to stop the wedding. Bowser has also hired a band of mercenary rabbits to help with wedding planning, who mostly spend their time picking fights with Mario while Bowser escapes.

Not to overexamine a children’s game, but if this were not a beloved children’s franchise, and/or if the graphics weren’t so cartoony, I would think that people would be more bothered by the ethical issues here. We have a hero who uses a ghostly familiar to possess the bodies of enemies and bystanders to put that other creature in the way of bodily harm for his own objectives. I mean, obviously Bowser is a villain here, kidnapping Peach and trying to force her to marry him, but I think Mario might be more in the wrong than Bowser here, kidnapping stripping the autonomy from random apparently sentient (at least some of them) creatures and endangering them along the way. If it weren’t such cartoony graphics, that would be straight up grimdark fantasy territory there. It’s pretty messed up, if you think about it.

Visuals
The cartoonish look you’d expect for a modern Mario game.

Audio
I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the audio, so I guess it’s pretty much what you’d expect?

Challenge
I wish that the bulk of the game were somewhat more challenging. I breezed through quite easily, collecting enough power moons without any particular effort by just interacting with anything that seemed to be a little bit unusual. I think only one or two boss fights took more than one try, and the number of power moons you have to collect to get through the main quest of the game was not a major obstacle. There are some things that you can unlock after the main quest that involve extra levels that are significantly more challenging than the main quest. Those are difficult enough to be challenging, but even then much of the “challenge” is more frustration over very long levels without save points so that you can play perfectly for twenty minutes but then misstep into lava and then you have to start over again.

Story
Super weak. Recycling the same old Mario story. Could we be done with the “Bowser kidnaps Peach and then Mario goes to rescue her”.

I mean, is it too much to ask to let Peach have some agency? Why does she always have to be the object of the game? We had Peach as a playable character in Super Mario Bros 2, and she’s been a playable character in Super Smash Bros games, can we give her a chance to be a playable character again?

I mean, you could even use the existing structure to try something new, like have Bowser kidnap her but then she as the playable character fights her way away from Bowser to save herself, maybe at some point meeting Mario on her way out and they becoming a fighting team or something, or Mario is player 2 of a multiplayer game or something. I don’t know, I feel like the Mario story team could find something new after decades of Mario games.

Session Time
As with any Switch game, easy to sleep and wake at will.

Playability
Simple enough controls, with some of the complexity that is there seeming unnecessary (i.e., you have several different kinds of ways to jump slightly higher, what’s the point?). There are some additional controls you get if you are using the dual handheld scheme, which means that if you prefer the snapped-onto-the-mini-screen handheld system you don’t get some of the functionality.

Replayability
The “main” quest of the game only requires you to find less than half the power moons that it takes to unlock harder areas, and when you beat the main quest it unlocks a bunch more of them. So, there’s probably more of the game AFTER the main game then there is before. If you want to find all the power moons and buy all of Mario’s outfits and unlock all of the areas and buy all of the collectibles, this will probably keep you busy for a while.

Originality
The plot is the same plot Mario’s pretty much always had. The gameplay for most of the motion mechanics is pretty similar to all the others since Super Mario 64. The main difference here is the hat sidekick and it’s posession mechanic. Since you can borrow the bodies of enemies and friends along the way it does keep the gameplay a little fresher because new levels will make available new bodies for Mario to take over. Some of my favorite games of all-time involve being able to change into different forms in some way or another to keep the gameplay fresh, so this is a sound design strategy.

Playtime
I finished the main quest in about 20 hours, and unlocked the harder areas in maybe another 10 without really major effort.

Overall
Same old Mario plot with familiar play mechanics when you’re in Mario form, but this game offers the new mechanic in the form of being able to “borrow” the form of many enemies (and friends) in order to mix up the gameplay and allow new abilities to experiment with. The game is not very challenging, so experienced gamers may be disappointed by lack of difficulty. And in my opinion it doesn’t have the novelty and awesome level design that Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2 have because of the weird gravity mechanics.

Not a bad game unless you’re an experienced player looking for a real challenge. $60 for digital download from Nintendo or physical cartridge from various retailers.

GAME REVIEW: Minit

written by David Steffen

Minit is a puzzle adventure game with a very short time limit published by Devolver Digital in April 2018.

The story begins as the duckbilled protagonist finds a sword lying on a beach. But it turns out to be a cursed sword that will kill the holder one minute after finding it, only to be spawned back at his house only to repeat again and again and again! Apparently these cursed swords are being produced at a local factory, so you need to go find the factory and complain. Which wouldn’t be so hard, if you didn’t respawn every minute. Minit is an incremental problem solver, where for each incarnation you have a minute to try to make some kind of progress, find a new item, find a new friend who might give you a clue, open a new shortcut to save you time next time. Where the trend is always bigger bigger bigger, bigger world to explore, larger and larger map, it’s an interesting take to head in the other direction. The game is fun, has a good sense of humor and the minute limit keeps everything pretty fast-paced.

Visuals
Very minimalist, down to being strictly black and white (not even gray). Cute graphics, but not complex at all.

Audio
Likewise, extremely simple.

Challenge
Low to medium level of challenge. Persistent players should be able to make their way through just by relentless exploring. There are a couple parts where you have to fight against multiple enemies–you can make it easier if you can find some heart containers first, but it shouldn’t be too hard for most gamers.

Story
Quite light on story, just enough to justify the scenario (with the cursed sword) and the quest (to resolve the issue at the sword factory).

Session Time
Very short! A maximum of a minute, in fact, as you will die at a minute anyway and restart from a house. This does make it a very easy game to pick up even if your time is scattered.

Playability
Very simple controls, generally just arrow keys and attack, so very easy to pick up, and to understand the scenario.

Replayability
There are various collectibles, like coins and hearts and other items. I finished the game only finding about half of them, so you could keep playing if you wanted to find them all.

Originality
The overall story and style is similar to other games, but the interesting tweak here of the 1 minute time limit is an interesting twist on the concept, and was the main thing that made me pick it up.

Playtime
I finished the main quest of the game in about three hours. I haven’t tried to find all the collectibles, so I don’t know how long that would take.

Overall
It’s a fun and simple idea for a game that doesn’t take a lot of skill or attention, and has wonderfully short play sessions to make it easy for people who game in scattered spare time. Worth the time to play through it, but don’t expect it to last you a long time. $10 on Steam.

MOVIE REVIEW: Zombies

written by David Steffen

Zombies is a Disney Channel original musical movie that debuted in February 2018. The story takes place in the “perfect” planned community of Seabrook where everyone fits the 1950s stereotype of a perfect family (and everyone wears pastel pink or pastel blue). Or they all did fit, until a tragic power plant accident turns half the town into brain-eating zombies. But they got better, once the government invented and issued Z-Bands, watches that deliver soothing electrical shocks to the wrists to make them like other people. Zombies returned to a semblance of normal life years ago, though they look different (with green hair and pale white skin) and are forced to wear government issue clothing, and live in the neglected slums. But a recent change to the law has forced Seabrook High to accept zombie students.

Addison (Meg Donnelly is a student at Seabrook High, who wants nothing more than to become a cheerleader, so she can completely fit in, and she makes the team led by her cousin Bucky (Trevor Tordjman). Her parents force her to wear a wig to cover up her unusually colored hair, so she feels she needs to go the extra mile to fit in with other people. Zed (Milo Manheim) is one of the new zombie students, along with his friends Eliza(Kylee Russell) (an activist for zombie rights) and Bonzo (James Godfrey) (who speaks almost entirely in zombie language and has to be translated by his friends). Addison and Zed meet and develop an unlikely friendship, and romance. Zed makes the football team on the promise that his potential zombie strength will be the boon that their terrible football team needs to actually win some games, but to do this he has to hack his Z-Band to let his zombie nature become more dominant. At first Addison and Zed hide their romance, because no matter how integrated Seabrook High claims to be, it would be social suicide to associate with a zombie. But as their relationship grows, they have to decide where to go with social expectations and where to push back.

The musical dance numbers of the movie dominate the presence of the film, many of them being characteristic of huge cast choreographed dance numbers in what I guess I might call hip-hop? (I don’t know much about dance so I could be wrong about how that would be labeled) Some of the songs are also sweeter romantic songs between Addison and Zed.

I watched the movie with my family in part because we recognized Meg Donnelly from her role as Taylor Otto, the daughter in the ABC sitcom American Housewife. I’ve enjoyed other Disney originals with them, like Descendants, so I thought it was worth a shot. But I did find this one harder to turn my inner critical voice off enough to watch the movie. For a movie simply titled Zombies, I felt that it should be about zombies, but generally what they called zombies in the movie had really no characteristics of being zombies other than the intro where they were shown attacking the town. Their condition is so well managed by the time of the movie, that, in my opinion, it’s not really a zombie movie. I was interested to see how they would play the zombies in the romance, but it follows a pretty standard star-crossed lovers layout, with Zed being the kid from the wrong side of the tracks. So, to me, Warm Bodies is still the one and only zombie romance movie worth watching.

The metaphor they were apparently going for was with zombies as a marginalized race, being a stand-in for Black people or Jewish people or some other group. And maybe that’ll help teens get some perspective about what it’s like to be from the wrong side of the tracks. But. Well. Zombies don’t seem like a great example to use as a stand-in here. Before they got the Z-Bands, the zombies literally attacked people and ate their brains . Students of Seabrook have relatives who were killed by zombies. Their fear of zombies is not irrational. I think the degree of it is overblown since the Z-Bands seem to be pretty effective, but Zed gets the idea to hack his Z-Band when he bumps it against something and it malfunctions, so they’re not exactly a robust and durable technology. And the fact that they’re vulnerable to hacking is pretty messed up. I’d like to think that Eliza, zombie activist, would be all over locking down her security on her Z-Band so no one can mess with her.

More than the romantic leads, I found myself more interested in Bonzo, in part because he delivered his zombie-language lines with convincing fluency that it was fun to see. But most of all I was interested in the coach of the terrible football team (Jonathan Langdon), because he would always start out pep talks like you’d expect of a coach, but would quickly admit how bad they were and that he really just wanted to keep his job and have some of the things other people take for granted in life–I was rooting for him more than anyone.

I felt like the writing and acting made it hard to sell the story as having the high stakes it wanted to have. The casual hacking of Zed to give him superhuman strength to cheat at footballwas super underexamined, among other things, because it didn’t seem to realize how this justified the fears of the Seabrook students.

Personally, I didn’t care for it, but I imagine a lot of teenagers will like it largely for the cute boy and girl leads and the dance numbers. If you’re just looking for a romance, I think there are a lot of other better movies out there. IF you’re looking for a zombie romance with actual zombies, I’d try Warm Bodies. But if you want a teen romance with love songs and big scale dance numbers and you don’t mind that the zombies aren’t very zombie-like, give this one a try.

MOVIE REVIEW: A Wrinkle in Time

written by David Steffen

A Wrinkle in Time is a 2018 science fiction action/adventure YA movie, directed by Ava DuVernay and produced by Walt Disney, based on the 1962 book of the same name by Madeleine L’Engle (which I reviewed here).

The main protagonist of the movie is Meg Murray (Storm Reid), a teenage girl whose scientist father (Chris Pine) disappeared mysteriously five years ago. She lives with her scientist mother (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) and very intelligent but peculiar five-year-old brother Charles Wallace (Deric McCabe). Charles Wallace befriends a strange woman in the neighborhood who calls herself Mrs. Whatsit (Reese Witherspoon), who tells Charles Wallace and Meg that their father discovered the secret of using “tesseracts” to travel long distances but is now trapped on a dark planet called Camazotz by a powerful adversary known only as the IT (David Oyelowo) and that only they can save him. Meg’s friend Calvin (Levi Miller) joins them and they meet Mrs. Whatsit’s friends, Mrs. Which (Mindy Kaling) and Mrs. Who (Oprah Winfrey), and together they “tesser” away from Earth to find Meg’s father.

For the most part the story of the movie follows the story of the book, though it did take liberties with certain parts. I felt like it kept to most of the same beats thematically, with major plot points about love and about Meg’s low self-esteem. There were some major changes, some of which I was less impressed with–instead of turning into flying centaurs Mrs. Whatsit turns into what appears to be an anthropomorphic lettuce leaf (but why though?), and Camazotz felt a lot different in the movie than the book, instead of being a rigorously defined world that runs like clockwork it was an ever-changing simulation.

Overall I thought the movie was good, the casting was spectacular, especially Storm Reid as Meg who was very likeable and believable at least for me, a lot of her personal hangups mapped pretty easily to mine. Charles Wallace seemed like his character would be particularly hard to cast because the actor has to at least appear to be close to five years old, but has to be able to pull off complicated lines with big vocabulary, and McCabe did a great job with it. Oprah Winfrey is such a super-celebrity at this point, that for a lot of roles she might’ve overshadowed the other characters, but she was a perfect choice for Mrs. Who who is far enough distanced from humanity as a whole that she has to be reminded that being three stories tall makes her stand out. There are a lot of wonderful visual scenes and sets and characters that were fun for all ages, and might be especially awesome for children–there are some parts that are borderline scary if your young ones are sensitive to that you might want to watch the movie without them first to know what they’ll be up against.

BOOK REVIEW: Dead Ever After

written by David Steffen

Dead Ever After is a romance/mystery/horror novel from 2013, the thirteenth and final book in the Sookie Stackhouse series of novels by Charlaine Harris (which is the basis of the HBO show True Blood). The previous books are all reviewed here earlier on the Diabolical Plots feed.

At the end of the previous book, Sookie Stackhouse used the cluviel dor, her one-use magical fairy item (which grants one and only one wish) to revive her dying boss and friend Sam Merlotte. Meanwhile, Sookie’s relationship with Eric has grown rocky. Among other reasons, Eric’s maker had arranged for him to be married to another vampire, despite Sookie’s marriage to him, and vampire custom strongly demands that he go along for the marriage. He had hoped that she would use the cluviel dor to help him dodge the responsibility without consequences.

Meanwhile, Sookie’s longtime-friend-become-enemy Arlene has been freed from prison by a mysterious group with a vendetta against Sookie, urging her to visit Sookie at Merlotte’s and open their relationship again. The meeting (unsurprisingly) does not go well, and Sookie is still trying to figure out why the visit when Arlene’s corpse is found in the dumpster behind the bar.

This was easily one of my favorite books in the series, which was a relief after the last couple of books in the series became rather a slog to read through. The mystery behind who is plotting against Sookie was certainly interesting, and for the first time in the series you get to see the story from points of view besides Sookie’s as we get some dramatic irony by seeing them plotting their moves and then we see the consequences of those actions in Sookie’s sections. And early on in the book you get a glimpse of someone who has apparently sold their soul to a devil, which lends a new element to the series that we haven’t seen before.

The one thing that did get on my nerves a bit was that since it was the last book it seemed like they had to get every character back in the book again to wrap things up–some of them felt like more than a bit of a stretch. But, really, that was a pretty minor thing.

I have enjoyed reading enough of the series that I was quite relieved to see that the final book of the series went out with a bang!

Hugo Review: My Favorite Thing is Monsters (Graphic Story)

written by David Steffen

I’m afraid I’ve gotten behind on my reading and so I’ve only read one complete entry and one partial entry in the Graphic Story category for the Hugo Awards. I haven’t even finished a single one of the graphic stories this year all the way through, but I’ve gotten about halfway through My Favorite Thing is Monsters, written and illustrated by Emil Ferris (Fantagraphics)

Written as the illustrated journal of 10-year old Karen Reyes in 1960s Chicago, My Favorite Thing is Monsters is a beautifully illustrated mystery story with horror flair as Karen imagines herself as a werewolf and sees everything around her as a sort of a horror flick as she investigate the death of her mysterious upstairs neighbor Anka.

The drawings are in a gorgeous line-shading style which I’m sure has a more specific artsy name, but reminded me of the drawings in Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, but with a story with a much darker tone. While Karen’s perspective on monsters lends her own fun flair to parts of the story, the story itself is very dark, and despite the young protagonist, is what I’d give to a child or even a teen. I haven’t finished reading it yet, but I love the illustrations and Karen makes a great protagonist–I’ve just been reading it as a PDF, but I might buy it in print because it would look so much better in that layout, drawn as it is to look like it was drawn in a lined notebook where pages pair together sometimes for bigger pictures.

I can’t comment yet on whether the end follows through with the rest of it, but I’ve read enough that I feel comfortable recommending it.

BOOK REVIEW: Deadlocked by Charlaine Harris

written by David Steffen

Deadlocked is a romance/mystery/horror novel from 2012, the twelfth in the Sookie Stackhouse series of novels by Charlaine Harris (which is the basis of the HBO show True Blood). The previous books are all reviewed here earlier on the Diabolical Plots feed.

In the last book, Eric, Pam, and Sookie succeeded in killing the vampire Victor, the representative of the king of this vampire district. As the book starts, Felipe de Castro, the aforementioned king, visits the area to investigate the disappearance. Eric hosts a party in his honor, and during the party, a dead woman is found on the lawn of Eric’s house. Meanwhile, Sookie is struggling with the quesiton of what to do with the magical fairy artifact left to her by her grandmother which will grant her one wish.

This one was definitely a pickup from the last book (which was in my opinion probably the weakest in the series), and there was lots of tension built in from the beginning which definitely kept my interest throughout. The mystery involving the dead woman was… a little hard to follow, seemed like it was built backwards from the resolution, if that made sense? Like one of those locked-room mysteries that is interesting to unravel but is also kind of absurd in retrospect.

One book left in the series!

MOVIE REVIEW: The Incredibles 2

written by David Steffen

The Incredibles 2 is a superhero family action/comedy animated feature from Pixar, released in June 2018. It’s the sequel to The Incredibles, the first in the series, released way back in 2004. The Incredibles 2 picks up where the first one left off, after the superhero family has had their first big win together thwarting Syndrome’s plan to set up superheroes for failure, and with the emergence of the Underminer’s big drilling machine from under the city.

The family joins together again to save the city from the Underminer (John Ratzenberger), and soon after Elastigirl aka Helen Parr (Holly Hunter), Mr. Incredible aka Bob Parr (Craig T. Nelson), and Frozone aka Lucius Best (Samuel L. Jackson) are approached by rich superhero-sympathist brother-and-sister business partners Winston Deavor (Bob Odenkirk) and Evelyn Deavor (Catherine Keener), who want to start a new campaign to make superheroes legal again, starting with financing Elastigirl to fight crime and improve the public image of supers. Bob and Helen talk it through and decide that she should do it, in part to make a more accepting future for their children Dash (Huck Milner) and Violet (Sarah Vowell). Bob stays home to watch the kids while Helen goes out on this mission, and their baby Jack-Jack begins manifesting superpowers. Soon a new supervillain rises, Screenslaver (Bill Wise), who uses hypnosis to turn others into his minions.

People who are susceptible to strobelight-triggered seizures should be aware that there are some scenes which have intense strobe effects without warning, so I would suggest you should avoid this movie for your health.

Overall this movie fits Pixar’s high-caliber storytelling, lots of fun action, funny lines, memorable images, and high adventure. As with almost all of Pixar’s other movies I would highly recommend it, and I would see it again myself given the opportunity. In particular, with a young child myself, I completely related to Bob Parr at home trying to take care of a superpowered baby who has teleported into another dimension or has turned into a monster at the mention of cookies.

But there was something that bugged me about one of the storytelling choices here that is not up to Pixar’s usual storytelling standards–Pixar pulled a major and obvious retcon of the events from the first movie… and it’s not clear why. At the end of The Incredibles, they discover Jack-Jack has powers. It is, in fact, a major plot point that contributes to the resolution. The super-villain Syndrome is very good at risk-assessment and he has plans for how to deal with every anticipated threat. The only way that they succeed in defeating him is that he tries to kidnap Jack-Jack and Jack-Jack suddenly starts manifesting powers in an highly unpredictable way. This distracts Syndrome long enough and he ends up getting sucked into a jet engine and the jet crashed on the Parrs’ house. But… Pixar has apparently decided that somehow, Syndrome was defeated, and the Parrs’ house was destroyed by a jet crash, but that somehow this happened without Jack-Jack manifesting his powers. And now Jack-Jack unexpectedly manifesting powers is a major plot point in this movie. I suspect that they did this because they felt it would be implausible for Helen to leave Bob alone with the family right after Jack-Jack starts showing powers, but they could’ve figured out a way to write around that. So that bugged me, not enough to hate the movie, but enough that it was distracting, especially when each character declared “Jack-Jack has powers?!” as though we hadn’t already known about all that already.