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Jun. 20th, 2014 05:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jtniehofI've been keeping up with the writing of these, but not the editing/posting, so catchup time!
Top Gear Season 20: I found this series a bit disappointing; no real standout episodes, no specials (so no gorgeous scenery).
History of Beer in America (Bill Yenne): A light and quick look at American beer, focusing on the major brewers and their eventual decay, with only one quick chapter on the craft brew renaissance. I think there could have been a lot more material from the seventies and eighties leading into the craft movement; it didn't spring out of nowhere. I don't regret reading it but it isn't something I'd suggest going too far out of your way to read.
Girl Friends (omnibus) 1-2: Kinda cute but a touch bland and by-the-numbers. And oh my, the hair and makeup focus. Some characterization got pulled out of that, but it put me off for awhile.
Tenjou Tenge 8 (second half), 9-11: In the end, not much better than a muddled mess. Too many simliar-looking characters, too many plot threads going at once with little indication of whether we're in the past, present, flashback, flashside, inside someone's head....maybe it needs to be read in one sitting (all 11 volumes!) with some note-taking? There's something interesting in there, but it's too buried and with a too much guro to make me want a second go-round.
Orange chapters 1-10: Appears to be having some publication problems (hard to find info in English, but was on hiatus for nearly a year, and looks like it's in a monthly magazine), but so far fantastic. Yes, this means I'm reading two message-from-the-future manga, but Orange is very different from My Bride is Wagatsuma-san. The connection between present and future is different, and Orange's approach fits the story really well. Warning: this is a shoujo tear-jerker all over the place.
Pluto 1-8: Took awhile to get going, and I suspect there are layers that will require a second read, but a quietly good story. Maybe I'd have gotten more if I'd read the Greatest Robot in the World. There's something understated about the handling of all the usual "robotic emotion" questions that other works often turn into hand-wringing. The biggest weakess was the almost ham-handed presentation of the US stand-in: it's obvious this was written in the run-up to the Iraq war.
Highschool of the Dead color omnibus 1-2: The first volume matches the anime very closely: same story, and with the color, the visuals are almost identical. The second volume continues nicely from the end of the anime and is padded out by an artbook. Fantastic presentation: great paper, just gorgeous, the artbook inclusion is well worth paging through, binding seems solid. Content-wise, well, it's like the anime. I'm not a zombie fan but I am a post-apoc fan and this is post-apoc done right, surprisingly smart given the almost puerile character designs. It's a touch more political than the anime, in the negative sense of specifically praising the right. Given the rather dangerous nationalist streak to the right in Japan these days, that's a bit unsettling.
Suzuka: Started out so good, with a wonderful slow-developing relationship between the two leads. Then, halfway through, Yamato took a dive into cruelly stupid and, although he eventually recovered, the show never really did. The abrupt resolution relied on a too-simplistic explanation of Suzuka's actions.
OniAi: Didn't last two episodes. The incest pretty much is the plot, and the premise, and the characterization, and it's pretty much the worst of harem: all the girls throwing themselves at the completely bland main character over his protestations. Next!
Boku H: I expected far less from this. It's a lot like Highschool DxD: fanservice show with a bit of an over-the-top supernatural warfare plot. Two things really made it shine: one, going several episodes beyond the Climatic Final Battle (something that seems far more common in anime than elsewhere); two, a surprising maturity in relationships, particularly with some choices the main character makes. Worth a watch, although once was probably enough.
Golden Time: Such love-hate feelings about this one. At best, it's a wrenching drama of broken characters trying to pull themselves together. At worst, it's a farce of unsympathetic jerks who don't think about anything and of course don't communicate. The ridiculously muddled ending pulls the whole thing below the recommended line.
Space Brothers: At 99 episodes, too short. I suppose the genre's "slice of life" but so often that means high school and this is a drama of adults. Every character is fully realized and even most of the "antagonists" become sympathetic; most have relationship parallels with the main characters (the title describes man pairings.) Although already a bit dated (it assumes Constellation went ahead as planned, so despite being set in 2025 it's rather 2008), this is a love letter to the space program as it could have been. Despite slowing a bit in the last season as they ran out of manga (which I am now voraciously reading), this is well worth a watch and I hope there's more to come.
The Creators (Daniel Boorstin): Only took me a decade to read, which says a lot right there. Because of the scale it's very superficial; I felt there were maybe some interesting points in there, if 1) I were familiar with all of the works and all of the artists/authors discussed and 2) there had been enough space for real analysis.
Top Gear Season 20: I found this series a bit disappointing; no real standout episodes, no specials (so no gorgeous scenery).
History of Beer in America (Bill Yenne): A light and quick look at American beer, focusing on the major brewers and their eventual decay, with only one quick chapter on the craft brew renaissance. I think there could have been a lot more material from the seventies and eighties leading into the craft movement; it didn't spring out of nowhere. I don't regret reading it but it isn't something I'd suggest going too far out of your way to read.
Girl Friends (omnibus) 1-2: Kinda cute but a touch bland and by-the-numbers. And oh my, the hair and makeup focus. Some characterization got pulled out of that, but it put me off for awhile.
Tenjou Tenge 8 (second half), 9-11: In the end, not much better than a muddled mess. Too many simliar-looking characters, too many plot threads going at once with little indication of whether we're in the past, present, flashback, flashside, inside someone's head....maybe it needs to be read in one sitting (all 11 volumes!) with some note-taking? There's something interesting in there, but it's too buried and with a too much guro to make me want a second go-round.
Orange chapters 1-10: Appears to be having some publication problems (hard to find info in English, but was on hiatus for nearly a year, and looks like it's in a monthly magazine), but so far fantastic. Yes, this means I'm reading two message-from-the-future manga, but Orange is very different from My Bride is Wagatsuma-san. The connection between present and future is different, and Orange's approach fits the story really well. Warning: this is a shoujo tear-jerker all over the place.
Pluto 1-8: Took awhile to get going, and I suspect there are layers that will require a second read, but a quietly good story. Maybe I'd have gotten more if I'd read the Greatest Robot in the World. There's something understated about the handling of all the usual "robotic emotion" questions that other works often turn into hand-wringing. The biggest weakess was the almost ham-handed presentation of the US stand-in: it's obvious this was written in the run-up to the Iraq war.
Highschool of the Dead color omnibus 1-2: The first volume matches the anime very closely: same story, and with the color, the visuals are almost identical. The second volume continues nicely from the end of the anime and is padded out by an artbook. Fantastic presentation: great paper, just gorgeous, the artbook inclusion is well worth paging through, binding seems solid. Content-wise, well, it's like the anime. I'm not a zombie fan but I am a post-apoc fan and this is post-apoc done right, surprisingly smart given the almost puerile character designs. It's a touch more political than the anime, in the negative sense of specifically praising the right. Given the rather dangerous nationalist streak to the right in Japan these days, that's a bit unsettling.
Suzuka: Started out so good, with a wonderful slow-developing relationship between the two leads. Then, halfway through, Yamato took a dive into cruelly stupid and, although he eventually recovered, the show never really did. The abrupt resolution relied on a too-simplistic explanation of Suzuka's actions.
OniAi: Didn't last two episodes. The incest pretty much is the plot, and the premise, and the characterization, and it's pretty much the worst of harem: all the girls throwing themselves at the completely bland main character over his protestations. Next!
Boku H: I expected far less from this. It's a lot like Highschool DxD: fanservice show with a bit of an over-the-top supernatural warfare plot. Two things really made it shine: one, going several episodes beyond the Climatic Final Battle (something that seems far more common in anime than elsewhere); two, a surprising maturity in relationships, particularly with some choices the main character makes. Worth a watch, although once was probably enough.
Golden Time: Such love-hate feelings about this one. At best, it's a wrenching drama of broken characters trying to pull themselves together. At worst, it's a farce of unsympathetic jerks who don't think about anything and of course don't communicate. The ridiculously muddled ending pulls the whole thing below the recommended line.
Space Brothers: At 99 episodes, too short. I suppose the genre's "slice of life" but so often that means high school and this is a drama of adults. Every character is fully realized and even most of the "antagonists" become sympathetic; most have relationship parallels with the main characters (the title describes man pairings.) Although already a bit dated (it assumes Constellation went ahead as planned, so despite being set in 2025 it's rather 2008), this is a love letter to the space program as it could have been. Despite slowing a bit in the last season as they ran out of manga (which I am now voraciously reading), this is well worth a watch and I hope there's more to come.
The Creators (Daniel Boorstin): Only took me a decade to read, which says a lot right there. Because of the scale it's very superficial; I felt there were maybe some interesting points in there, if 1) I were familiar with all of the works and all of the artists/authors discussed and 2) there had been enough space for real analysis.