MOVIE REVIEW: The Lego Ninjago Movie

written by David Steffen

The Lego Ninjago movie is a computer animated children’s movie from Warner Bros, released in September 2017. It is in the loosely connected series of Lego movies that include The Lego Movie and The Lego Batman Movie. Similar to those movies, pretty much everything in the movie is made as though it were built out of Lego blocks, and though the movies generally don’t often acknowledge that they are actually toys, it occasionally does (usually for comic effect).

Ninjago Island has, for decades, been terrorized by the monstrous villain Garmadon (Justin Thoreau), who builds fanciful mechs and leads armies of fighters to take over the island. The island’s only defense is a group of ninja heroes who pilot elemental-themed mechs to thwart Garmadon at every turn: Water Ninja (Abbi Jacobson), Ice Ninja (Zach Woods), Earth Ninja (Fred Armisen), Lightning Ninja (Kumail Nanjiani), Fire Ninja (Michael Peña), and their leader: Green Ninja (Dave Franco). The ninja team is secretly a group of high school students trained by Master Wu (Jackie Chan), and the Green Ninja is the second-most despised person in all of Ninjago–Lloyd Garmadon, son of the villain himself. Garmadon wins one of their battles and takes over Ninjago, and the ninja team heads off with Master Wu to begin their training to come back and finish the job.

This is a fun, action-packed movie, but I didn’t think it was as funny as the previous two, which was my main appeal to the series. Garmadon was the highlight of most of the movie for me, had a lot of good lines. With one exception. There is a scene. Where the use of Master Wu’s super secret Ultimate Weapon is revealed. And that alone is worth seeing the movie for. I laughed until I cried. Great moment, perfectly executed, and I am super happy I saw the movie for that scene alone. But, you can’t go wrong with it if you’re looking for an action movie with some comedy.

Anime Review: Caligula

written by Laurie Tom

caligula

What if your reality isn’t real? It should be, but you start to notice things that don’t make sense and you can’t ignore it.

That’s the situation that Ritsu Shikishima finds himself in when he hears an odd voice through his phone, and discovers the class representative for the graduating third year students is the exact same person as the class representative for the incoming first years. And he’s not the only one to find something amiss. His classmate Mifue comes home and discovers her mom has become a literally different person overnight, with a different appearance and personality.

As reality breaks down for a number of students, they quickly discover that the world they live in isn’t real. It was supposed to be a virtual utopia for people who were in pain in the real world, but now they’re trapped with no idea how they got there or who they were before.

Caligula is based on the JRPG The Caligula Effect, so there’s an expectation that lot of story would be condensed to fit a 20-30 hour game into 6 hours of TV runtime. I haven’t played the game myself so I can’t speak to how well the condensation was executed, but it’s clear that the script writers made significant changes, which is unusual for an RPG adaptation. They’re extensive enough that if you didn’t know it was based off a game, you probably wouldn’t realize it due to how much of the focus is taken off of Ritsu and how late he and most of the cast come into their powers.

When you compare this to something like the currently running Persona 5 adaptation, it’s quite a difference. In games, the main protagonist needs to awaken to their power early, usually within the first few minutes, maybe the first hour if the game is particularly exposition heavy. This is so the player can start playing.

Caligula the anime up-ends that with Ritsu being one of the last to come into his own and removing virtually anything that might be construed as running a dungeon. The process of gradually recruiting each party member one by one is gone in favor of characters coming together in smaller, separate groups first, before everyone finally bands together halfway through the series.

Perhaps because Caligula is not one of the more visible JRPG properties, the anime staff was allowed the freedom to attempt an adaptation that is better for the medium of a TV show rather than a blow by blow recreation of the game. Unfortunately, while that does a lot to transport the concept of the game into a weekly TV series, it doesn’t quite make the series itself a good one.

Caligula does a fair enough job laying out the majority of the ensemble cast in the early episodes, but there isn’t the time to delve into everybody’s backstories let alone those of the series’ antagonists. While our heroes are people who want to know who they were even if it means reopening old wounds, there are a number of people who have no desire to return to their own painful histories. With nine protagonists, six antagonists, and twelve half hour episodes there just isn’t time to give more than the slightest brush to anyone aside from Ritsu, and only because as the lead protagonist he is the key to everything.

There is one episode unfortunately late in the series that is literally a “sit down and let’s introduce ourselves” episode because the characters realize they barely know each other.

There are things Caligula does really well though, like the initial mystery of what’s going on, and I like that the characters’ virtual selves aren’t always a one-to-one match with who they are in the real world. The virtual world of Mobius was designed to make people happy, so things that they found unsatisfying about themselves or the world around them could be changed. Someone who was the butt end of jokes could be the most popular guy around. Someone who hated being short could be tall. Someone who wasn’t talented would find themselves incredibly skilled.

These changes also extend to appearances, with at least one character choosing a different gender, though it’s unfortunate that the revelation is compounded with disgust due to everything else going on in that scene, and it’s not clear whether the character’s choice was out of gender dysphoria or a less complicated desire to look different.

But for a series where people unlock special powers within themselves when they determine they are willing to escape their fake reality, the powers themselves are given short shrift. Presumably there is a reason why the Catharsis Effect manifests differently in each character (probably tied to their individual hang-ups), but we don’t know for sure, and there aren’t many opportunities for the team to show off how they work in combat. Those that do exist aren’t exciting to look at either.

The ending almost pulls the whole mess back together again with a pretty nifty revelation about Ritsu, but given how much the series had tanked in the second half leading up to the finale, it’s not enough to save it and the epilogue moments didn’t feel entirely earned, though they were otherwise effective.

If anything comes out of this mess, it’s that the anime was released in time to promote the Japanese release of The Caligula Effect remake, The Caligula Effect: Overdose, which is supposed to fix a lot of the gameplay issues as well as provide the ability to play as a female protagonist. Overdose has been picked up for a Western release in 2019, and thanks to the anime, I’m interested in picking it up now. And in that sense, the anime did its job.

Number of Episodes: 12

Pluses: Interesting premise, wide variation between who a person was in real life versus the virtual world (not everyone is actually a teenager), not afraid to deviate from the game

Minuses: Pacing is terrible, no one gets enough character development, for an anime involving special combat abilities they’re rarely exercised

Caligula is currently streaming at Crunchyroll (subtitled).

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 Intergalactic Medicine Show.

DP FICTION #44B: “Still Life With Grave Juice” by Jim Moss

“This is the real thing? None of that synth-sludge?”

“Yes, sir. Direct from Earth.”

“And it’s the best you’ve got?” Quincy eyed the glass on the robowaiter’s tray. He should have ordered a bottle. He would need more to help unravel the stress of his turbulent negotiations with the Wattlars, who had rejected yet another contract. At least this outpost had an overpriced restaurant where he could run up his company’s expense account.

“Highest quality and price, I assure you. You may access my Integriport–”

“Yeah, yeah…” Quincy waved his hand, the gesture cue enough for the robowaiter to spit out a coaster which landed on the table with a soft plop. In a ballet of hydraulics, the robowaiter plucked the glass off the tray and set it before Quincy with the exaggerated grace of a suitor presenting a rose.

“Will that be all, sir?”

“You know, on Earth, they pop the cork in front of the patron, so it can be inspected for dryness, and they show the bottle so that–”

“You requested a glass, not an entire bottle,” the robowaiter spun its upper torso away from Quincy and sped off. Quincy held up the glass by the stem, examining its deep burgundy contents by the overhead light. He brought it down below his nose and inhaled.

“Cannibal.”

That word, that accent, the derisive tone — Quincy knew it referred to him. It made the scent of fresh blackberries he just inhaled turn rancid. He turned his head and expelled his breath away from the glass. There, seated the next table over were a pair of Arthruds. Common in this sector, especially at spaceports, they enjoyed a reputation as damn good mechanics despite being an insufferable race of know-it-alls. To Quincy they looked like a cross between an armadillo and a giant bipedal lobster, with outer bodies covered in segmented plates and a second set of arms beneath the first. The adult and child were eating what appeared to be shards of cardboard soaked in neon anti-freeze. The child could not be more than seven molts old. Both bobbed, jostling their plates, which made squeaky noises like balloons being rubbed together. They did this when laughing, or passing judgment, or both. Quincy rolled his eyes, turned away, swirled the glass and inhaled again. He tipped a sip and rolled it around his mouth with his tongue. Yes, yes, blackberries, currant, a touch of clover, anise, oak…

“What is he drinking?” asked the child.

“I believe it is called ‘wine.’ It is a death drink.”

“Will we get to see the Earther die?”

“No.” Squeaky balloon sounds sputtered out of the adult’s body plates. “I meant death as in dead. Wine is made from the dead. As I said, they are cannibals.”

“Should we leave?”

“No, don’t worry. They only eat their own.”

“If another Earther comes along, will they try to eat each other?” The child looked around the restaurant. Quincy moved his wine aside and turned to face the Arthruds. It was one thing for two adults to spout their ignorance, but quite another for an adult to imbue such bigotry on a child.

“Excuse me, I’m sorry, I couldn’t help overhearing…” Quincy stared into the adult’s face trying to lock onto the creature’s three eyes with his own two. “Perhaps you received some faulty information. Earth people are not cannibals.”

“It is well known throughout the galaxy that yours is a cannibalistic race.” The adult met Quincy’s stare, crossing his midarms across his midsection.

“You’re wrong. I don’t know where you heard this propaganda, but it’s false and insulting.”

“On your planet, do you not bury your dead?”

“We bury them, but we don’t eat them.”

The adult raised a plated brow above its top eye and turned to face the child.

“Earthers bury their dead in the ground in graveyards where the bodies decompose. They sow their strange plant life into these yards. The plants send their roots into the soil and suck in the fragments of the dead. Then the plant blooms and bears fruit. Fruit containing bits of the dead. Fruit they then eat.”

“Where are you getting this nonsense? We don’t plant fruit trees in graveyards.” Quincy could feel a vein in his forehead throb. The adult pointed at the glass of wine with the spindly third digit of his upper right claw.

“Is not your ‘wine’ made of grave juice?”

“Ahh! Here’s your confusion. Wine is made from grapes not graves. Grapes are fruit grown in vineyards, not graveyards.” Quincy reached for his glass. The adult raised two plated brows and leaned towards the child.

“The problem, Dewlis, is that Earthers have many words in their languages that mean the same thing. They use these to confuse others about what things really are. When you point out their error, they complain that it was a mis-understanding or a mis-interpretation. Beware when an Earther says ‘mis’.” The adult turned back, his eyes drawn to the vein now bulging on Quincy’s forehead.

“You are not the authority on Earth languages, Mis-ter. What is your name?”

“Spureb. And yours?”

“Quincy. And I’m going to prove you wrong.” Quincy threw his arm out blocking the robowaiter as it attempted to zip between tables. The waiter’s upper torso spun around twice before it stopped to face him.

“Yes, sir?”

“Tell us, waiter,” Quincy held up the wineglass. “What is wine made from?”

“Grapes.”

“And where does this wine come from?”

“Earth, France, the Bordeaux region.”

“St. Emillion? Pomerol?” Quincy took a sip.

“No sir, Graves.” The robowaiter spun back and zipped away.

“Bah Za!” Spureb pointed two digits and a folded claw at Quincy.

“No! Listen, that’s just the name of the region. The waiter mispronounced it. It’s pronounced ‘grahv’ with a short ‘a’. A different vowel sound. It’s French for gravel. It’s the name of a French wine growing region. It has nothing to do with graves. Don’t mistake a vineyard for graveyard.”

“The Earther said ‘mis’ twice!” Dewlis smiled at his father. They bopped in amusement, squeaky laughter reverberating like an orgy of balloon animals.

“Just stop and listen!” Quincy pounded the table. “A vineyard is a yard where grapes grow, a graveyard is a–”

“They are both ‘yards’ then, a measured plot of land, yes?” Spureb created a square using his four arms.

“Yes, but—”

“Yet you pronounce the ‘yard’ in vineyard as ‘yerd’. A different vowel sound. Is this a mispronunciation?”

“Uh… no, because, uh…”

“So yard is a word pronounced two ways, but means the same thing.” Dewlis said. “Like ‘grahv’ and ‘grave’.”

“No! They are two different things” Quincy threw his hands up, then grabbed his wineglass and poured a gulp into his mouth. “You know, even if a vineyard was planted on top of a dead body, we don’t eat dead flesh directly, so we’re not cannibals.”

“Suppose they are two different plots of land, as you say.” Spureb sat back in his chair and clacked the digits of his upper claws together. “You still contaminate your soil with your dead. If an insect eats a leaf from a plant in your ‘graveyard’ then flies into a ‘vineyard’ and dies in the soil and the vin plants eat the soil with the dead insect, then you eat the fruit of vin plants – you have eaten pieces of your dead.”

“No. Because what I’ve really eaten is molecular compounds. Someone dies, they’re buried, they decay. Maybe a bug eats some of it. When the bug dies it decays into simpler molecules, water, proteins, amino acids. So a plant uses these nutrients and produces fruit that someone may eat. So what? Everything gets recycled. Broken down and recycled. It’s the nature of the universe.”

“That may be the nature of your planet, but not the universe.”

“Oh yeah? What do you do with your dead?”

“Our dead become art. That is the proper way to honor them.”

“Art?”

“My great ahdmah won the Op Culbet for her work on great pahdah,” said Dewlis.

“He’s hanging in the Brachalach, our finest museum.” Spureb tapped his claw on his chest plate. “And what a stunning piece he is. Great ahdmah bent his spine into a semi-circle and beneath this, draped the flesh of his pale underbelly. Over this setting moon motif, she sprinkled the glittering shards of his shattered neck plate. His top abdomen is broken open and from the center, triangular strips of muscle are strung outwards in all directions like a blazer blossom. Here, his left claw, stained in ochre bile, is curled in a fetal ball. The fourth digit, bent impossibly backwards, protrudes like a stamen. And no matter where you move to look, that digit seems to follow you. His head top hangs upside down strung from a series of tendons like a rain basket that… Bah! I’m talking to a flabedah!” Spureb threw three of his arms up in the air.

“A flabedah?”

“That’s Arthruder for uh… you have no word in your language. It means someone who does not understand or appreciate what art does for a soul.”

“Uh huh.”

“Ah! I forget. You Earthers believe the soul leaves the body after the body is no longer self-animating.” Spureb flailed his four arms and swayed back and forth.

“That’s silly!” Dewlis squeaked a series of chuckles. “Soul is made of body. How can soul leave body? Silly!”

“Dewlis, this is what Earthers believe.” Spureb cooed in sing-song. “We should not ridicule their beliefs.”

“Ha!” Quincy plunked his glass on the coaster. “You cut up bodies to make rain buckets. So you chop up souls.”

“The soul may be divided, but it is not separated. It is recombined with the body into a more appealing form of art. Most souls find it agreeable.”

“And how do you know they find it agreeable?”

“In the silent hours if we stand before our ancestors and relax our minds we can hear their voices whisper to us.”

“Zul Ahdmah whispers to me,” said Dewlis.

“Yes, she tells you to stop slumping so much.”

“No, she tells me I am entitled to extra Kerzyhisses, for I will molt large.”

“She does not. You are only imagining that.”

“Yeah, you creatures molt,” said Quincy. “You drop off chunks of body parts. What happens to the soul of those parts? You couldn’t possibly save every single— “

“We re-ingest them. That’s what we’re eating right now.” Spureb speared a boiled body plate with his fork. “We eat only our own souls, not others’, thank you.”

“I don’t like the taste of my lower abdomen,” said Dewlis.

“Well, you better eat it, or you’ll be incomplete and never get displayed in a good museum.”

“What do you do when your art decays?” Quincy tossed a gulp of wine into his mouth.

“It does not decay. It is all how-you-say — varnished. We are not primitives that allow our dead to decay into pieces that end up in the food supply and get mixed in with other souls and eaten and—”

“Is that why his abdomen is so large?” Dewlis pointed his claw at Quincy’s belly. Quincy silently cursed the station’s greater-than-earth gravity, which made him heavier, compressed his breath and pulled his belly downwards, causing him look flabbier than he really was.

“Yes,” said Spureb. “That is where they collect. No soul, even a piece of soul, wants to be expelled as waste.”

“Alright, look, my… stoutness has nothing to do with souls in my body. Extra weight is caused by fat cells that accumulate because… Look, it’s not souls, OK?” Quincy’s grip tightened on the glass.

“You bury your dead in the ground, your plant life eats from this ground, breaking up souls and—”

“Your information is ancient. Burial is hardly done on our planet anymore. Real estate is too expensive. It’s more common that we cremate our dead.” Quincy twirled the wineglass by its stem. He felt tingly; the alcohol must be kicking in. He sat back and sighed, expecting another round of squeaks.

“Cremate?” Dewlis turned to his father.

“Cream is a white goo.” Spureb’s face plates shifted out of symmetry. “Earthers whip it up and serve it on their desserts.”

“No! That’s not what it is!” Quincy bolted upright.

“Cream-ate… ’Ate’ means that they’ve eaten it!”

“No, no, no! In cremation the body is burned into ashes.”

“What do you do with the ashes?” Spureb’s voice was low, his neck sunk into his upper torso.

“Scatter them in the wind.” Quincy turned away, took a gulp of wine, and clenched his fists expecting another round of squeaks. But the Arthruds were silent, the only sound, the grinding of Quincy’s teeth. Quincy turned back to find Spureb staring at him, eye plates askew, breathing hole frozen open. Dewlis turned to his father.

“Pahdah?”

“Millions of Earthers die every year on your planet.” Spureb’s eye plates pinched together and his ears recoiled into their sockets. He held his upper claws close to his chest. “Your atmosphere is full of corpse dust. Your populace breathes in burned up pieces of souls!”

“That’s enough!” Quincy pounded his arm on the table and rose from his seat. “There are no…” He paused to catch his breath. “Souls in… dust!”

“Pahdah, the Earther is breathing funny.”

“He appears to be experiencing withdrawal. Not enough soul dust in this atmosphere for his cannibal addiction. Perhaps the grave juice isn’t enough.”

“You… No… Uh…” Quincy sputtered, struggling for balance, the tingling in his arm growing painful.

“He just spit dead Earther juice at my head!”

“Move back, Dewlis. I don’t understand what is happening. He may have angered the souls he has consumed by denying their existence.”

“You puchh… you achh…” Quincy grabbed at the table with his right arm.

“Look how red he glows.” Dewlis stared at Quincy’s face.

“He is blushing. Earthers do this when they have embarrassed themselves.” Spureb leaned in to whisper to Dewlis. “It may not be proper for us to view his shame, let us look away.”

Spureb and Dewlis turned their backs on Quincy. They heard a thud and waited a couple of minutes to allow Quincy’s fit of shame to pass before turning back.

***

“And he died, right there.”

“How awful,” said Kerlew, a lovely female Arthrud that had stopped by Spureb’s garage to pick up a replacement part for a centrifuge. Spureb led her on a tour, casually watching her shuffle along the corridor and smiling as she eyed his collection of shiny metal plates and polished tubes.

“The staff tried to reset-animate him by pulling his merry-cardio muscle, but they were so incompetent, they pushed instead of pulled. Apparently, his heart was attacked by his massive coronary gland. ”

“Such strange physiology.”

“Terribly awkward situation. Nearest relative some twenty light-years away, employer in debt due to careless expense management, neither willing to pay for transport. And you know Earthers – they would have just expelled him into space.”

“Barbaric.”

“And despite his hubris and ignorance, he was amusing and we did feel sorry for him. We told the authorities we’d take him, and so, there he is.” Spureb waved his two left arms towards a corner in his garage gallery.

“Aja! Fantastic. Do their legs really twist like that?”

“No, that’s Spiasoc’s explication. He was able to make the tissue flexible through plastination. A preservation used on Earth during a brief enlightened period when–”

“You got Spiasoc?” Kerlew’s eyes widened with interest.

“Yes.” Spureb crossed his four arms over his torso and arched his back to raise his top segment just a little. “Spiasoc is quite eager to break convention with work on other xenophylum.” Spureb turned to look at Quincy and smiled.

Quincy’s body sat on a pedestal made of his leg bones. The flesh of his boneless legs, peeled in long ribbons and twined with muscle and tendon, spiraled in a double helix down to the floor. Thin slices of his brain, stained green, were attached along these vines; the flat sides of each angled upward, seeking light. The skin of his mid-section was shorn away. His intestines, flattened, dyed brown and cut into three by eight slats were arranged to form his torso into a barrel. Deflated lungs protruded from his back in a V spread, mottled fairy wings insufficient for his bulk. His arms burst out between slats, left switched for right with elbows bent backwards. One hand reached towards barrel bottom for a dangling spigot, while the other held up the aorta stem of a goblet carved from his heart. Quincy’s neck stretched out from barrel top, his crimson colored Adam’s apple rupturing through the middle. Above his furrowed brow, the top of his head was sliced off and thrown back like a jar lid. In the open skull, a helter-skelter tower built of brain matter cubes rose toward the ceiling, looking as if it might collapse at the faintest wayward breath. Quincy’s dead eyes stared at the goblet tipped towards his mouth. The pureed burgundy of his liver spilled over the goblet’s rim forming a long droplet that hung frozen in mid air. His tongue, stretched through parted blue lips, strained to reach the glistening drop, but only succeeded in tightening the knot at its center.

“Such an honor for the Earther,” said Kerlew.

“He finds it agreeable.”

Jim Moss is a videographer and a playwright. His plays have been produced Off-Broadway in New York, and in theatres in Miami, Tampa, Orlando, Pittsburgh, Chicago, and London. His play, Tagged, was a winner of the 2018 British Theatre Challenge. Still Life With Grave Juice is his first published short story.

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MOVIE REVIEW: The Boss Baby

written by David Steffen

The Boss Baby is a 2017 computer animated comedy/action film produced by Dreamworks Animation, released in March 2017.

Where do babies come from? Nope, not where you think. They come from a factory, (shown in the opening credits of the movie), an assembly line producing seemingly endless babies. Most of them fit all of the standard characteristics expected of babies, and those babies are all shipped off to live with familes. But occasionally one comes down the line that just doesn’t fit the mold, doesn’t do what’s expected of babies such as laughing when tickled, and those babies… are management material.

Seven-year-old Tim Templeton (Miles Bakshi, with adult version narrator as Toby Maguire) is the only kid of two busy but loving parents, and he doesn’t want anything to change. But one day he sees a baby wearing a business suit exiting a taxi outside the house, and when he runs downstairs to see what’s going on, his parents announce he has a new baby brother. Something weird is going on here, at first it seems like a normal baby, as disrupting as that can be on its own, but when other babies visit for a playdate Tim catches the baby leading a business meeting and the jig is up. The baby is known only as Boss Baby (Alec Baldwin) and he works for a company called Baby Corp who give their employees a special formula that keeps that in the shape of a baby but with the mind of a human as long as they keep drinking it regularly. Boss Baby has been assigned to the Templeton family because Mr. (Jimmy Kimmel) and Mrs. Templeton (Lisa Kudrow) work for Puppy Co, Boss Corp’s biggest competitor (with “love” being the currency the two companies run on, apparently?). If Tim wants to get his house back to normal, he’s got to help Boss Baby complete his mission so that he can be called back to the corporation.

I can see why this would be a hit with kids. I realize I’m not the demographic this was aimed at, but, well, if you don’t enjoy overexamining children’s entertainment, you may as well stop reading now. For what it’s worth, I love a lot of kid’s movies, and when it comes to movies in general I am not generally a very harsh judge; there are many kids movies I love to itty-bitty pieces. This was an interesting idea, if rather convoluted and based on patchy worldbuilding (where does Baby Corp’s money come from?). I found Boss Baby more than a little bit annoying, in large part because he is exactly the model of an irritating stereotypical middle management type that doesn’t care about people and just wants to elevate his status in the company. This made him very hard to relate to. Not that the viewer was supposedly to relate to Boss Baby, but while it is a bit funny to have a baby spouting middle management aphorisms, I didn’t think it was enough to build a feature length film from.

Tim was much more relatable (purposefully so) but his entire fight just seemed futile to me, perhaps because I saw the inciting incident as largely metaphorical–it seems like he’s making up an elaborate fantasy world in order to justify the new disruption to his life, but, I hate to break it to you kid, if your parents have a baby brother you can’t just make him go away by completing a quest. The movie was about halfway over before I was reasonably convinced that any of this was actually happening and not metaphorical. This was confused more by some of the ways the movie showed briefly the parent’s point of view, especially in a dangerous high speed toy car chase scene in the back yard where when we see it from Tim’s point of view, but from the parents the baby is barely moving in his pedal car–if that was apparently incredibly exaggerated, then what else was too?

I love a lot

Anime Review: The Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Die Neue These

written by Laurie Tom

legendofthegalaticheroes

The Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Die Neue These is based on the epic 10-volume novel series by Yoshiki Tanaka (which, by the way, is being released in English at a pace of 2-3 books a year, so we’ll eventually have the whole thing in a couple years).

In the far future, humanity has colonized the stars and formed the Galactic Federation. But eventually a politician seized control of the government and declared himself emperor. Some of his subjects rebelled and escaped to form the Free Planets Alliance, a new republic that is not recognized by the Galactic Empire, and the two factions have waged war for over a hundred years.

This is where The Legend of the Galactic Heroes properly begins. It’s the story of two brilliant military leaders, but also the story of the two nations they belong to. We meet both Admiral Reinhard von Lohengramm of the Empire and Commodore Yang Wen-li of the Alliance in the opening Battle of Astarte, where Reinhard nearly secures victory against a numerically superior Alliance fleet by disregarding common wartime protocols and using sensible strategy that a layperson can follow once broken down. However, before he can finish the job, Yang Wen-li’s admiral is incapacitated, putting him in command of the remainder of the Alliance fleet, which allows him to implement a tactic that forces the battle into a stalemate.

Thanks to Yang, the Empire decides to withdraw, and Yang and Reinhart become well aware of the talented tactician on the other side.

The series feels as though it’s built to see the war through the eyes of these two men. We learn their histories, their motivations, and though they are both excellent strategists, they’re cut from entirely different cloth. Reinhard is a noble, and though originally an impoverished one, his nobility gives him level of acceptance more common citizens of the Empire will never have. His privilege allows him to be daring and manipulative, and he dreams of a world he would like to make safe for the sake of those he cares about, no matter who he has to step over in order to do it.

On the other hand, Yang comes from a blue collar life and entered military school to pay for his college tuition, which he otherwise could not afford. He never wanted to be a combat officer (in fact he’d rather be a historian), but his talent resulted in deployment rather than desk work. Yang is not interested in glory so much as minimizing loss of life, and his intentions are criticized even on his own side for being overly cautious or even cowardly. Given the opportunity, he’d love to resign and live a civilian life, but circumstances won’t let him.

Ideally it seems the series should spend equal time between the Empire and the Alliance, so the audience can get to know Reinhard, Yang, and their cohorts in similarly sympathetic lights (especially since Reinhard is our opening POV for an entire episode), but after the first few episodes the series focuses primarily on the Alliance side of affairs, which feels a little odd. While this makes it clear to the audience the Alliance is no sweet-smelling bed of roses (its politicians embody the worst of election season mania), this also robs us of getting to know more of the Empire’s side of the cast other than Reinhard and his childhood friend Kircheis.

The Empire as a whole is a little too easy to frame as the villain, but to the characters who belong to it, it’s not. Reinhart is well aware of the damage a person at the top of the system can inflict, but being a product of the system itself, his solution isn’t to make a democracy, but to replace the man in charge. We don’t know enough of the other imperial officers to know how many feel the same way or if they believe the imperial dynasty is absolute.

There is also a lot of political posturing going on. I was drawn to the series on the promise of seeing two genius tacticians clash, and the opening two episodes delivered wonderfully, but the middle episodes move on to problems on the homefront, one of Yang’s solo undertakings (which is an excellent two-parter), and to a lesser degree one of Kircheis’s (which had significantly less tension). Both Yang and Kircheis’s missions have heavy political ramifications the audience is made aware of. The source novels were originally written in the 1980s, but it’s almost chilly to see how much of the political turmoil in the Free Planet Alliance still rings true today.

This results in a lot of talking heads when the show is not on the battlefront, many times by politicians or nobles that the primary cast never interacts with. This works out fine in prose, giving context to the conflict and some of the more bone-headed moves, but not so much on TV where names and offices are subtitled for a few seconds and then are largely forgotten.

Probably the worst thing about it is that the series falls short of the Yang vs. Reinhard rematch that we’d expect. Though the finale builds towards that, the final battle of the series is a protracted one and does not fully resolve by the end of the last episode. What we get is a temporary end to combat while people regroup. The battle itself is clearly not over and there is no sort of epilogue to decompress.

Readers of the books might find this particularly odd since this means the TV series does not completely adapt the first book, which covers the remainder of the battle and the political fallout in the aftermath (and ends on a much better stopping point).

The Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Die Neue These is expected to continue as three feature length movies, so the Japanese audience will surely see them, but there’s no guarantee that those movies will readily be available in the US and even so, they might not run on a similarly accessible streaming service.

You won’t be able to get a satisfactory experience from the TV series alone, but the space battles are fun and it’s definitely a more thought-provoking series than most in its genre. If you’re willing to dive into the novels after, I think this is worth watching. Otherwise it might be better to wait and see if the movies make it over, especially if needing a resolution is a must.

Number of Episodes: 12

Pluses: Gorgeous fleet-level space battles, Reinhard and Yang both feel savvy in their own unique way, Yang’s pacifistic outlook is unique for the genre

Minuses: Some of the antagonistic officers on both sides of the war are complete idiots, the Empire does not get as much focus as the Alliance, lacks a good ending even from the perspective of a story arc

The Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Die Neue These is currently streaming at Crunchyroll (subtitled) and Funimation (dubbed). Funimation has licensed this for eventual retail distribution in the US.

BOOK REVIEW: Sleeping Beauties by Stephen King and Owen King

written by David Steffen

34466922 Sleeping Beauties is a drama/fantasy/action novel written by Stephen King and Owen King published in September 2017 by Scribner.

A mysterious condition hits the whole planet in an instant–if a woman falls asleep, threads of what appear to be fungus quickly envelop her, forming a sort of cocoon. She continues to live inside the cocoon if left undisturbed. If the cocoon is broken, she will wake up and react violently like a rabid animal. Meanwhile, in the Appalachian town of Dooling, a mysterious stranger who calls herself Eve who is arrested after violently killing a man with apparently superhuman strength. There’s no end in sight for the condition that affects only women–the women who are still awake try desperately to stay that way, some of the men left behind are ready to take desperate measures of one kind or another, and all hell is going to break loose. People find out that Eve can sleep without going into a cocoon, and they become violently desperate to find out why. Clint Norcross, the prison psychologist, husband of the sheriff, has a violent past from his juvenile days that he keeps to himself, even from his wife, and he takes it upon himself to protect as many women as he can, including Evie.

I like the premise of the book. It was enough for me to decide to read the book, and I was interested enough in it to want to stick through it to the end. But it took effort to stick with it. The biggest reason was that the book had, in my opinion, major pacing issues. And also a too-large cast without, in my opinion, any particular reason to root for anyone. Ensemble casts are one of Stephen King’s major skills, many of his best books have ensemble casts: It, Needful Things, The Stand. But those books were very good at getting me emotionally invested in most or all of the characters, understanding their strengths and weaknesses so that by the end I’m rooting for the outcome. I did not get that from Sleeping Beauties. Since the inciting incident isn’t introduced in that first 100 pages, the main purpose of that space must be to invest me in the characters, but I felt like it focused almost entirely on the negative in each person’s personality–this person treats this other person badly in various respects but never makes them feel well-rounded.

The Eve plotline and the cocoons plotline, while they are connected, felt like they were really two separate stories, the stories of a supernatural killer and the story of this condition the women have. Part of the reason I kept reading is that I wanted to find out more about that connection but I felt like what I got was just vague handwaving.

The themes of the book, about the relationship between men and women and how they treat each other and how they behave, could’ve been great. But I felt that they relied more on caricatures than on reality, and never managed to be as profound as they seemed to be meant to be.

I feel like this book could’ve been really really good with the existing story, if it were 150-200 pages, just cut out that first 100-page segment and got that characterization in alongside the inciting action and things happening, and it could’ve been an incredible book. As it is, I was interested enough in the end to read the end, but afterward I didn’t think the payoff of reading was worth the time it took to read.

More on the pacing issues, that might be too spoilerish:
The “inciting” action of local women being overtaken by the cocoons didn’t happen until past page 100. Usually for the purpose of reviews I try to only discuss what happens within the first 100 pages or so but, there wouldn’t be much of a review if I couldn’t even mention the cocoons. The next 100 pages are spent seeing the same thing happen over and over again as women succumb to the cocoons one after another, which has to be told anew for each point of view since each person is not familiar with it. And then most of the book is a long slow climb to the final confrontation.

DP FICTION #44A: “Pumpkin and Glass” by Sean R. Robinson

I sit on the park bench and try to forget the cold. This was easier in springtime, when there was more day light and it wasn’t as cold. I forgot my jacket this morning and as the city lights turn on one by one, the temperature drops. I miss my coat, with its thick-padded elbows.

But I cannot go home.

I do not know where home is.

I am dancing a dance that begins each morning, and ends when the clock strikes midnight. By then, he will be asleep and whatever is broken will be broken and I will not watch my Prince Charming shatter anything else that I loved.

The park is quiet, at least. There are Christmas lights strung up, and there’s enough light to see by. I don’t have knitting to keep my hands busy. I do not have my paints or my canvas. I do not have my sweet Pumpkin to sit on the bench beside me and lay her drooly dog-head into my lap. She can’t keep me warm any more.

It’s all gone. Lost. Like a slipper at midnight and the years that follow after, chasing themselves until I’m an old woman with hands that hurt as the nights get longer, without a coat to keep me warm, afraid to go home until the clock strikes twelve.

The phone in my purse rings. It’s him, and there is nothing that I can say to him. I let it go, and pull myself up from the bench. My knees ache as much as my hands do, but there are still hours until I can sleep. There are floors to wash at home, but no furniture. Not for a long time. There are shelves to polish, but my pictures, my teacups, my little knickknacks are gone.

He’s sold them, or thrown them away, or sent them to wherever the precious things go when the clock strikes midnight and you’ve been too busy dancing out the starlight and don’t realize that your prince has been breaking all the glass slippers he can find.

I stopped answering the phone the night he called me to say that he had taken Pumpkin to the hospital. My sweet Pumpkin, who licked my face when she was a puppy and showed her tummy when she was being naughty. I could never be mad at her, not with her tongue lolling out. Not when she’d filled the emptiness that grew in the house.

“She’s dead,” he’d said.

“They’re gone,” he’d said of the pictures. Our wedding pictures. Old photographs of my mother, my father. Pictures of us at the beach and Polaroids from college.

“Sold,” he’d said. The rocking chair he bought me when we’d been married thirty years. The grandfather clock that his Opa had brought from Germany. The plates that had sat, unused, in my hope chest, bought with the money I’d saved babysitting for the neighbors as a little girl.

There are tears in my eyes.

I find a seat in the coffee shop. It’s open all night and the girl behind the counter doesn’t give me a second glance. She has thick red dreadlocks, a piercing through her nose, and her eyes on her cell phone. She does not look up as I settle in. It’s not quite ten o’clock and the little café is busy. There are couples, bundled with thick coats, smiling at each other.

There is not enough money in my purse for a biscotti. He cancelled the credit cards and I am not allowed to have more than what I am given, more than what he thinks I have earned.

I miss my Pumpkin.

“There are mice in the walls,” he’d said. I sat on my rocking chair and laughed.

“Don’t be silly,” I’d said, sipping my bedtime tea. “There’s nothing in the walls, Mike.”

“There are, Hazel,” he’d said.

“And I suppose they make me dresses while we’re sleeping.” I laughed again and reached forward to place my hand on top of his. We had done it a hundred, a thousand, times. But for the first time, since that awkward first moment when we were still he-and-I, he pulled away. He pulled away from me and stared at my face as though I were some nameless step-sister and not his wife.

It is warm inside. The seat is more comfortable than the park bench, and the music playing from the speakers is a gentle waltz. It reminds me of the first time I met my husband, when the radio played the waltz and Betty Ann Lamontagne’s party had been dancing for hours. The sound from the speakers lulls me, and my eyes close. When they open, the café is empty and the music is still soft.

A biscotti sits on a plastic plate, on the table in front of me. There is a napkin folded underneath it.

The girl with red dread-locks is sitting across from me, a leg tucked up under her. The phone is gone, but she is cradling a steaming mug in her hands.

“Try it,” she says, gesturing to the plate with her chin. “It’s pumpkin. And organic. Gluten free. You name it.”

“I can’t,” I say. There is just money in my pocket book for a train ride home. Not enough for cookies, unless I want to start scrubbing the café floors.

“On the house,” she says.

“I really can’t,” I say. No matter how much I want to. I would like something nice and sweet. I would like a cup of tea and my rocking chair and the man who was my husband. Who had been my home before my home went away.

The girl says nothing, but she takes a long sip from her cup.

She smiles when I pick the plate up off the table, lift the biscotti, and bite into it. I can’t let it go to waste.

When I’ve eaten every speck of the cookie and the taste of pumpkin—unlike any other taste in the world, and my favorite—is gone from my tongue, she is still smiling.

“Looks like you needed that.”

“Thank you,” I say. I’d made treats for my sweet Pumpkin, once. Baked them in the oven and fed them to her one at a time. Her muzzle had just started to gray.

And she is gone and the phone in my purse rings again. And again I do not answer it.

“I have one of those too,” she says.

“It was really kind of you.”

“I meant the crazy ex,” she says as she stands, clears away the plate, and sits back down across from me.

I touch my wedding ring, a thin band of gold, unthinking.

“Crazy husband then,” she says. “I don’t have one of those.”

I should tell her that he isn’t crazy. That work has been busy and he has lost a few important accounts. It’s not his fault that things have gotten bad. That he thinks my paints attract mice, and that my china hides rats. That it’s not his fault that there are tears in my eyes again.

I tell her the truth. The first truth I could say to anyone other than myself, or to Pumpkin.

“The last time I answered his phone call, he told me that he had taken Pumpkin to the hospital and that she was dead,” I say. “She was old, but she wasn’t sick. She would sit with me on the park bench when I couldn’t go home yet and would curl up beside me after he said we couldn’t keep the bed, and we couldn’t put the heat on, because it would encourage the mice.”

She sets her tea down and before I can say anything else, let any more secrets from my mouth, she is sitting beside me and has her arms wrapped around me. I can’t remember the last time someone has hugged me.

“She must have been so scared,” I sob, into the strange girl’s shoulder. But she holds me tighter and smells like cookies. “She must have been so scared without me there. If I’d been there he wouldn’t—he wouldn’t have…”

When I have finished crying and the girl has brought me a hand-full of rough paper napkins, I look at the time.

“Thank you,” I say. “I don’t usually do this sort of thing.”

“It’s alright,” she says.

“It wasn’t always like this. He wasn’t always like this. I left my dancing shoes at the party where we met. He found out where I lived and brought them back to me.”

But the girl with red dreadlocks isn’t paying attention. She is looking at the clock, as the arms move together at the top.

“It’s midnight,” she says to me. “Make a wish.”

“Thank you,” I say, not understanding the strange girl. I can’t tell her my wishes anyway. “I’ll pay you back as soon as I can.”

“No,” she says. “That’s not your wish, Hazel.”

I did not tell her my name.

“That pumpkin season lasted year round,” I say, pulling my purse close to me. There is enough strangeness at home without more at the coffee shop.

She’s still watching me. She smiles. “I’m kind of new at this. You’ve got until the clock is done striking twelve. Make your real wish.”

But my hands are on the door to the shop.

“I wish home was waiting for me,” I say, stopping long enough to brace myself for the cold. I do not have my jacket or my dog, and have only just enough money to get home. I wish so much that home is waiting for me, not the empty lack of it.

When the last train drops me off at the station, and I walk the last block to where my husband and I had made our home, I take a deep breath and prepare myself. He will be asleep, it is midnight. It will be enough that I do not have to speak to him until dawn, and then I can find a way to not come back.

The lights are on, which is strange.

Stranger still is that when I turn the knob, there is warm air on the other side. There is a frame on the wall, and inside the frame is a watercolor I did when I was sixteen. A watercolor that had not been there when I left this morning. A watercolor that had gone missing months ago, because it would hide the mice in the walls.

“Mike?” I say as I step forward and shut the door behind me. My china cabinet is full. But my husband’s grandfather clock is not beside it. The bookshelves are full again and when I step into the kitchen, I cannot speak above a whisper.

“Mike?” I rub my hands together, and for the first time since I was married, I can feel bare skin on my left hand. My wedding band is gone.

There is a plate of biscotti on the table, and as I touch the plate, I hear a noise I have not heard outside of my memory for months. I turn and my dog—my Pumpkin is sitting, smiling. Her stumpy tail wagging. Welcoming me home.

Author’s note: This story is part of a series I call “Laundramat Fairy Tales” mashing up real-life with Once Upon a Time. This was inspired by a quote from the site Humans of New York. That, coupled with the experience of growing up with my grandparents (though, thankfully, there were no mice in the walls).

Sean Robinson is an author of Science Fiction and Fantasy. He has been a professional spelunker, fire-breather, has taught horseback riding, and whip making. After almost a decade working with high-risk adolescents, he’s recently begun teaching high school English. It may be the scariest thing he’s ever done.

If you enjoyed the story you might also want to visit our Support Page, or read the other story offerings.

Anime Review: Real Girl

realgirl

Real Girl has what is likely a cringe-inducing premise for most women. High school boy Hikari Tsutsui is a introverted anime/gaming nerd who can barely stand being around “normal” people because they make fun of him for never outgrowing his hobbies. It doesn’t help that his all time favorite series features an elementary school aged girl. Then one day he gets stuck doing pool duty with a conventionally “hot” girl who eventually becomes his girlfriend.

When I heard about the series the first thing I thought of was that it was male nerd wish fulfillment, but then I looked closer and realized it was based on a manga that ran in Japan’s Dessert magazine, which is aimed at teenage girls and young women. I decided to give it a chance.

Tsutsui (who is almost always called by his family name) is initially unlikeable. He gets stuck with pool cleaning duty because he comes late to school for the first time he can remember, which is the same for Iroha Igarashi, who is the kind of girl who looks incredibly well put-together. Her hair is styled, she’s pretty, the other girls hate her, and she has a reputation for being easy. Tsutsui immediately doesn’t like her, figuring that she’ll flake out on pool cleaning and leave it all up to him, because she sees him as beneath her just like everybody else does.

But Igarashi does show up, and they bump into each other a few more times in and out of school. He comes to realize that despite being a frequent victim of preconceptions himself, he’s also guilty of his own preconceptions about her, and once he realizes this, he tries to be a better person towards her, which results in her asking him if they’d like to date, keeping in mind that they only have six months until she has to move away.

Though Real Girl follows the story of a nerd and his non-nerdie girlfriend, it’s largely a story about communication. Tsutsui and Iragashi have a lot relationship problems. It’s never that they stop liking each other, or that they come to decide they have little in common, but there is a lot of self-sabotage, especially on Tsutsui’s part, that comes with the territory of this being the first major relationship for both of them.

Tsutsui honestly can’t believe that someone would ever be interested in him, especially someone who looks like her, so there’s an extended period where he is continually doubting that she can honestly be in a relationship with him. While he’s grateful for her, it’s possible to see how this wears on Igarashi because his repeated need to pinch himself feels like a dismissal of the fact that she does like him.

Usually this gets hammered out by the two of them eventually realizing that they have to talk, but this is high school, and nerves strike a lot.

If there’s a fault to Real Girl it’s that the human obstacles to Tsutsui and Igarashi’s relationship are largely non-threatening. When Ayado is introduced as another girl who would like a relationship with Tsutsui it’s nice to see how he reacts to the possibility that there might be one girl who will ever be interested in him, but at the same time we know she’s not a real threat. The only way her presence can sabotage anything is by Tsutsui putting his own foot in his mouth.

The same goes for the male rivals, who are similarly toothless, and Igarashi is unwavering in the fate that she likes Tsutsui despite all his hang-ups.

Probably the most dangerous character to the relationship is only introduced in the last couple of episodes, which makes for a bumpy ending to the series, as the new character and their circumstances aren’t fully fleshed out. But even so, I would still recommend this series. It’s a lot more realistic about first time relationships than most shows are, and especially for the self-doubters among us, watching Tsutsui struggle is highly relatable.

Number of Episodes: 12

Pluses: The show is about working through a relationship rather than towards one, Tsutsui is highly relatable, depiction of relationship problems is realistic

Minuses: Rival characters aren’t much of a threat, we don’t see enough of Igarashi’s POV to understand why she likes Tsutsui so much, last minute new character not handled well

Real Girl is currently streaming at HIDIVE (subtitled, subscription required). Sentai Filmworks has licensed this for eventual retail distribution in the US.

MOVIE REVIEW: Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie

written by David Steffen

Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie is a computer animated film produced by DreamWorks Animation that was released in June 2017 in the US, based on the long-running book children’s book humor superhero series.

George (Kevin Hart) and Harold (Thomas Middleditch) are the 4th-grade comic book authors who created Captain Underpants, who is pretty much Superman except all of his powers are toilet-related and instead of wearing a cape and underwear on top of his clothes, he wears a cape and underwear on top of nothing. They’re known for being the class clowns, always pulling pranks on the teachers, and the principal Mr. Krupp (Ed Helms) is always looking for a way to bring them down a notch. Mr. Krupp decides to pull the ultimate power move and split them into separate fourth grade class with the intention of destroying their friendship. Desperate, the boys sneak into his office to try to prevent this, and when they’re caught in the act George uses a toy hypno-ring which (surprising them both), actually hypnotizes Mr. Krupp. They plant a suggestion that Mr. Krupp is actually Captain Underpants. They discover that whenever he is touched by water he becomes Mr. Krupp, and whenever he hears a finger snap he turns into Captain Underpants, and so to keep their friendship intact they keep him as Captain Underpants pretending to be Mr. Krupp.

But Captain Underpants keeps trying to cause problems, always tending to lose his pants, and trying to rush off into danger, and his happy demeanor is so different from the grumpy Mr. Krupp. Before the boys can stop him, he hires mad scientist Professor P (Nick Kroll) to the faculty, who soon makes his evil intentions clear.

Keeping in mind that I am in my mid-thirties and thus quite a ways away from the target demographic, I thought this movie was pretty fun, and I’m sure it’s a hit with the kids with all the poop and underwear. I’m not at all familiar with the source material, but we picked it up as a rental to watch with a four year old, and he loved it.

So keeping all that in mind, I found the protagonists honestly pretty terrible, terrorizing the teachers and then acting surprised when the principal wants to do something about it. When they realize that they’ve hypnotized the teacher I can understand them being excited at succeeding at stalling the principal’s plan, and at the immediate sense of control, but they apparently have no remorse over completely stealing this man’s life and replacing his mind with a comic book character, only getting upset at Captain Underpants’s behavior when they are afraid of being caught in the act. And the entire crisis was based on the premise that splitting them into two different fourth-grade classrooms would destroy their friendship. But their biggest point of bonding was making comics, which they did in their treehouse after school. I don’t think that every kid’s movie has to have an overexplained moralistic story, but I do think that the themes and ethics involved in the story should be considered, because kids pick that stuff up. So I guess I’ll file this one with Trolls under “problematic themes that no one else seems that worried about”.

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)