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Mar. 6th, 2014 11:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jtniehofSpace Dandy, Sakura Trick, The Competitive Runner's Handbook, Spice and Wolf 4-7, My Wife is Wagatsuma-san chapter 1-80, From the New World v. 1-4, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Septerra Core.
Space Dandy: Although the first episode was hilarious, it didn't keep up for the next two. Another victim of not enough time for everything that's just "okay".
Sakura Trick: First episode, again, hilarious, although perhaps at moments that were supposed to be touching. This is probably the canonical example of "yuri for straight guys," played for laughs and a little for titillation. Second episode, just boring. Gone.
The Competitive Runner's Handbook (Bob Glover): Very good, very comprehensive book. Although it's getting a little dated it's not badly so, and it's pretty easy to read around those bits.
Spice and Wolf 4: Another good bit of plotting, economics, and politico-religious intrigue. Plenty of series have the "we're going to make it big oh no we're broke" schtick, it's believable here: fantastic returns are promised if everything goes right, but in the end it's mostly modest profit and a cushion from disaster.
Spice and Wolf 5, 6: I group these together because the end of 5 runs straight into the beginning of 6 (even moreso than usual), but then 6 just goes off in a completely different direction. 5 had a lot of great moving pieces and all the conspiracy I've come to expect; 6 was...disappointing and a bit bland. I'm sick of Holo and Lawrence not just talking it out!
Spice and Wolf 7 (Side Colors I): Two of the three stories give a little more background on Holo and I think I can emphathize a little more with her.
My Wife is Wagatsuma-san chapters 1-80: Quite a bit better than I had expected. There's the usual fanservice and ribald humour one expects from the target audience, as well as the usual attempts at quick-fixes for the future from Hitoshi's flash-forwards. But he also starts to develop solid long-term thinking, trying to set his future self up for success and be "worthy" of the good things he sees in his future. That growing maturity is a good reason to keep coming back. (Plus, it is funny.)
From the New World v. 1-4: Strange. 1-3 is almost a prologue to the main story kicking off in volume 4. Nice bit of post-apocalyptic world-building with a side of moral ambiguity. The main characters are trapped: forced to be complicit in things that horrify them because it's their only chance to try and improve the world. Interested in more but final verdict will depend a lot on what they do with it.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey: I was pleasantly surprised by a lot of the movie. Setting aside the usual problem that Peter Jackson doesn't do subtlety, the fold-in of other material was mostly seamless and well-chosen. It still dragged (would have been fine at 2:15 or so). Two things were absolutely teeth-gnashing: one, bringing in Azog as The Big Bad was completely unnecessary, as we already had a quest. Two, there was too much Radagast (the worst example of wasting time on other material.) Bringing in appendices and Book of Unfinished Tales (ssshhhh, they didn't license it) meant the end of trying to give Hobbit a different tone from LotR, as in the books, but I think that ship sailed as soon as Jackson took over direction.
Septerra Core: Finally, finally finished. I started playing with the demo; it's been FIFTEEN YEARS. Clearly I can neither abandon this nor stay tied to it. There's a lot to like. The plot's pretty good, full of changing allegiences and ambiguous choices. It's very good-looking for being stuck at 640x480: the world's gorgeous and the characters distinctive. The battle system's great: the three-step time bar adds a lot (do I use everybody's weak attack to take down one enemy quickly, or wait for everybody to be full to maximize total damage across all enemies?) BUT...this game is absolutely destroyed by boredom. Every attack has a "jump to enemy, attack, jump back" animation, which sadly isn't nearly fluid enough to match the art. Even worse, everything pauses for a few seconds before and after the animation. On a modern machine, this can't be loading delay. Out of battle, the player spends a lot of time wandering through huge mazes "all alike", getting constantly drawn into battle (enemies are sometimes visible, but not always, and they're hard to avoid). The game seems to punish exploration. Worse, the plot is linear but lacking cues; a walkthrough is necessary to avoid a lot of time running around looking for the plot. In the end the tedium tears apart what would be an otherwise fine game; of 75 hours playtime, I probably spent 35 or so playing, and the rest waiting for the game or searching for the plot.
Space Dandy: Although the first episode was hilarious, it didn't keep up for the next two. Another victim of not enough time for everything that's just "okay".
Sakura Trick: First episode, again, hilarious, although perhaps at moments that were supposed to be touching. This is probably the canonical example of "yuri for straight guys," played for laughs and a little for titillation. Second episode, just boring. Gone.
The Competitive Runner's Handbook (Bob Glover): Very good, very comprehensive book. Although it's getting a little dated it's not badly so, and it's pretty easy to read around those bits.
Spice and Wolf 4: Another good bit of plotting, economics, and politico-religious intrigue. Plenty of series have the "we're going to make it big oh no we're broke" schtick, it's believable here: fantastic returns are promised if everything goes right, but in the end it's mostly modest profit and a cushion from disaster.
Spice and Wolf 5, 6: I group these together because the end of 5 runs straight into the beginning of 6 (even moreso than usual), but then 6 just goes off in a completely different direction. 5 had a lot of great moving pieces and all the conspiracy I've come to expect; 6 was...disappointing and a bit bland. I'm sick of Holo and Lawrence not just talking it out!
Spice and Wolf 7 (Side Colors I): Two of the three stories give a little more background on Holo and I think I can emphathize a little more with her.
My Wife is Wagatsuma-san chapters 1-80: Quite a bit better than I had expected. There's the usual fanservice and ribald humour one expects from the target audience, as well as the usual attempts at quick-fixes for the future from Hitoshi's flash-forwards. But he also starts to develop solid long-term thinking, trying to set his future self up for success and be "worthy" of the good things he sees in his future. That growing maturity is a good reason to keep coming back. (Plus, it is funny.)
From the New World v. 1-4: Strange. 1-3 is almost a prologue to the main story kicking off in volume 4. Nice bit of post-apocalyptic world-building with a side of moral ambiguity. The main characters are trapped: forced to be complicit in things that horrify them because it's their only chance to try and improve the world. Interested in more but final verdict will depend a lot on what they do with it.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey: I was pleasantly surprised by a lot of the movie. Setting aside the usual problem that Peter Jackson doesn't do subtlety, the fold-in of other material was mostly seamless and well-chosen. It still dragged (would have been fine at 2:15 or so). Two things were absolutely teeth-gnashing: one, bringing in Azog as The Big Bad was completely unnecessary, as we already had a quest. Two, there was too much Radagast (the worst example of wasting time on other material.) Bringing in appendices and Book of Unfinished Tales (ssshhhh, they didn't license it) meant the end of trying to give Hobbit a different tone from LotR, as in the books, but I think that ship sailed as soon as Jackson took over direction.
Septerra Core: Finally, finally finished. I started playing with the demo; it's been FIFTEEN YEARS. Clearly I can neither abandon this nor stay tied to it. There's a lot to like. The plot's pretty good, full of changing allegiences and ambiguous choices. It's very good-looking for being stuck at 640x480: the world's gorgeous and the characters distinctive. The battle system's great: the three-step time bar adds a lot (do I use everybody's weak attack to take down one enemy quickly, or wait for everybody to be full to maximize total damage across all enemies?) BUT...this game is absolutely destroyed by boredom. Every attack has a "jump to enemy, attack, jump back" animation, which sadly isn't nearly fluid enough to match the art. Even worse, everything pauses for a few seconds before and after the animation. On a modern machine, this can't be loading delay. Out of battle, the player spends a lot of time wandering through huge mazes "all alike", getting constantly drawn into battle (enemies are sometimes visible, but not always, and they're hard to avoid). The game seems to punish exploration. Worse, the plot is linear but lacking cues; a walkthrough is necessary to avoid a lot of time running around looking for the plot. In the end the tedium tears apart what would be an otherwise fine game; of 75 hours playtime, I probably spent 35 or so playing, and the rest waiting for the game or searching for the plot.