On What Stands Out (2011)

Or, A Year of Media, Regurgitated.

So, what the f*ck did I even consume in 2011?  For fun, that is.  I'm not including class work from the Spring or work work from the Fall.  Except Pluto, because I read volume 1 and then found the rest on my own for curiosity's sake, and it was great.  Also not counting anything that I re-read or re-watched, because that's too much trouble to track.  No more questions!

Also, instead of reviewing, I am doing haiku.  Do not expect me to properly employ the kireji, because lolEnglish. Nature allusions will be strictly hit or miss.


Television:


Completed 2010 Carry-Overs:

Broken Blade

Giant robots fight,
Fate is cruel and random
Naked Sigyn time.


I've written a bit about Broken Blade here before, and I will probably do so again, because it's a really interesting series and it is SOO CLOOOSE to being my perfect show.  So much so that I actually preordered the DVDs when I saw they were coming out.  It really has it all, for me:  Giant robots, check. Medieval setting, check.  Strong character dynamics, check.  Pacing... not so much, especially towards the end.

On a tangent, one fascinating theory I've heard: "Delphine" is in fact a double-localization of "Tyrfing." Does this make the series' complex mythological allusions more or less muddled?  I'm not sure, but I'm still enjoying the ongoing manga, even if it's SLOOOOOW.

Completed New Stuff:

Wakfu (Season 1)

Come for the heroes,
They were in your last campaign,
Stay for the villains.

Wakfu was a real surprise for me, flying out of left field in the middle of a busy finals week and hitting my unsuspecting productivity square in the head. I had the whole series spoiled for me before watching it, but it still managed to surprise me on numerous occasions.  Its slick animation style (barring a few episodes in the mid single-digits) and self-awareness drew me in, but it was the dramatic arc (and amazing battles) of the first season's secondary characters that really convinced me.

Blood-C

Noodle people fight
The most Freudian vampires
Surprise! The Truman Show!

Blood-C was bad, and it made me feel bad.  Odd and creepy confluence of sex and violence aside (well, MOSTLY aside), it had the single worst "twist" in the history of sh*tty twEEEEEEEEEEEEsts and it took itself seriously the whole time.  Unless it's all just CLAMP trolling us...

Legend of the Millennium Dragon

Time travel hijinks,
I don't remember much but
It looked very nice.


Ongoing into 2012:

Guilty Crown (aka Guilty Geass)

Starts as Code Geass,
But bad, things happen and then
Lannisters ensue.

Fate/Zero

IT CAME FROM... THE INTERNET... IF THIS IS YOURS, FEEL FREE TO CLAIM IT

Mythical heroes,
Tale of despair and (a) man,
Shirou was a drag.

Gundam AGE

Gundam for children?
Cutesy character designs
All of the murder.

Here's one I did not expect to be good.  AU Gundam is, in my mind, pretty much crap; the only thing I like about it is that Sunrise has the decency to create alternate universes for all of it, so that I don't have to live with things like Gundam Seed crapping up the Universal Century timeline.  This series, however, has been solidly enjoyable so far, and the second arc has been even better than the first.  Of course, it's Sunrise, so now that I've written something positive, a third-act ball-drop might be in the works, but still.

Gundam Unicorn

Okay, yes, it's true,
Get it out of your system,
The title is lulz.

I think I accidentally caused a My Little Pony: FIM fan to watch this show by a casual mention of the title alone.  Not sure what just happened there...

Gunparade March (failure to finish)

Schoolkids pilot 'bots,
Fight angry metaphor bugs,
Sans plot armor, though.

I'm not done yet, blah blah.  Sue me, it's pretty good, but it's just kind of slow. Too much school, not enough killing metaphor bugs.

Metal Armor Dragonar (Failure to Finish)

Great animation
From the year 1988,
Totally "meh" now.

It's a fairly blatant Gundam clone, but in theory, I should like that.  And if the animation was just a bit more up to date, or if the fansubs were less comically awful, I could probably swing it more easily.

Transformers Prime
Giant robots fight,
Mostly to save reckless kids,
God dammit Leeroy.

To the reckless kids' credit, they're pretty compelling characters as human sidekicks in Transformers go.  But this show is about Optimus Prime, Megatron, and, of course, Steve Blum.  I mean Starscream.  Steve Blumscream.

Hellsing Ultimate
So, you know that he
is called the Count. Because he
really loves to @#$#.


Towa no Quon

Sad backstory contest
Quon "won" with endless life
but everyone lost.

This is one I didn't expect, but ended up loving. The best of shows like S-Cry-Ed but with a much more compelling narrative and interesting characters.  I am waiting to get a new computer before watching the last episode (because watching it without the projector seems wrong).  Here's to hoping it isn't a total BONES ending.

Tiger and Bunny (dropped)

Buddy cop series
With superhero trappings
Boring villains abound.

Young Justice

Gargoyles' writer?
Justice League's animator?
Just take my money!

Young Jusice was in interesting show to start alongside Tiger and Bunny, because they both took a slightly more "realistic" take on the concept of the superhero - T&B tackles the capitalization of the super in a world dominated by corporate politics, while Young Justice deals with the militarization of the super in a world where superheroes are political actors as much as vigilantes.  Young Justice, however, is vastly more successful in several regards: its meta-plot is interesting and its villains are complex and clever (they are, after all, from the guy who brought us David Xanatos), but more importantly, the heroes really have heart.  Also, the show addresses my primary pet peeve with its teen hero series predecessor, Teen Titans - it answers the all-important question: "WHERE THE F*CK IS THE GODDAM BATMAN IN ALL OF THIS?" The teen superheroes exist - and struggle to exist - in an adult superhero world, which works very well for the series.

Wakfu Season 2

New journey, same lulz,
Great action, and makes you think,
Season three, perhaps?


Nurarihyon Season 2 (failure to finish at its finest)

Expected more of
the same, got more of the same
I'll watch it later...



Games:


Completed in 2011:

Mass Effect

Shepherd. Wrex. Shepherd.
Wrex is a boss and if you
let him die, redo.


Mass Effect 2

Martin Sheen, king troll,
Decides to play God with YOU!
Also, dialogue.


Bulletstorm

HA HA, F*CK YOU, I'M
STEVE BLUM AND I AM HERE TO
BLOW SH*T UP AND CURSE!


This was the greatest game ever.

Space Marine

In the grim darkness
of the far future, there is
only war and stuff

This game may not have been the financial success the ailing THQ needed it to be, but it was the artistic success that I wanted it to be. Captain Titus was a surprisingly interesting protagonist, but, in all regards, he felt like the Emperor's Angels of Death are supposed to feel, both in conversations and on the battlefield.  Especially on the battlefield.  While plowing through hordes of charmingly British Orks.  I really need to replay this game.  And we need to play Exterminatus Mode FFS, Bearmetal.

Gears of War 3

Raised questions, answered
none. Would be disappointed,
busy chainsawing.

Gears of War ended as it started, with no answers except a chainsaw in the face and no narrative closure except murder.

I can deal with that.

Ongoing into 2012:

Divinity 2: Ego Draconis (or, as all my friends know it, "F*CKING FRUSTRATINGLY HARD RPG RPG")

Be a dragon they
said, and it's pretty sweet, but
you can't burn it all.

The above haiku covers this game.  Although it's sans-DLC ending is WAY more aggravating than Mass Effect 3's ending.  The DLC clears it up, though (and was fairly obviously just content cut from the original release due to time).  It'll be interesting to see if the ME3 DLC does the same thing for that game.

Literature/"Literature":


Pluto

German Robo-cop
(not Robocop) is the best
hero in ages.

This comic blew my mind. Do want anime adaptation.

(YEAH YEAH, I'LL GET AROUND TO WATCHING MONSTER SOONER OR LATER.)

A Dance with Dragons

A long time coming
but great, Martin, your book six
MORE YEARS? FUUUUuUUUUuUUUU!

Gaunt's Ghosts: Traitor General


How do you deal with
complex moral issues in
war? BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

Empire

Useful images on Wikipedia?
DRDRDRDRDRDBULLSH*T!

What if Lex Luthor
won? Well for starters it would
not make him happy.

Empire is a comic book series, published by DC, that posits: what if a very Lex Luthor-like villain (who cribs heavily from Iron Man's wardrobe) took over the world using the power of drugs and raw, unrelenting F*CK YOU?  What would a society that he ran be like? Would people be happy? Would he be happy? (spoilers: no).

Empire's crowning success is that Gogotha is a terrible person, and yet it makes him relatable, in certain, small ways, without ever revealing the full backstory that made him the way he is. It's a work with a lot of subtlety, a lot of nuance, and a lot of people getting blown up / eviscerated / atomized.

Halcyon

How do you stop those
Superheroes for all time?
World peace and trolling.

Halcyon was another interesting comic book series I picked up for free from the break room. The premise is that, one day, humanity's urge to commit violent acts instantly disappears.

So, yeah, it's pretty much Bearmetal's personal circle of Hell. Also, superheroes have to deal with being... useless.  It's interesting, but ultimately a much weaker work than Empire, because it requires more suspension of disbelief and has a much less well-developed villain.


Well, I'm sure I forgot some stuff, but that's my media year-in-review.

ONLY FIVE MONTHS LATE.

-Stormshrug

On Miscellaneous Consumption

Or:  I muse about the anime I have watched in the last six or so months, and try (read: fail) to keep it brief.

I finished Mars Daybreak today, and this inspired me to put my (metaphorical) pen to (metaphorical) paper regarding shows completed.



Nurarihyon no Mago


Rome's Rapid Rubric* (Action/Fanservice/Plot):  5/4/4

I wrote a bit about this show, and the experience of enjoying mediocrity.

Honestly, what I wrote earlier pretty much holds.  I did, in fact, finish this show, even though I dropped a number of other mediocre shows (Legend of the Legendary Heroes and Iron Man, I'm looking at you two, and especially you, Hakuouki 2) at roughly the same time, and then went so far as to watch nothing  from last season's offerings, which were not short on mediocrity.  I guess I can't watch every mediocre show.

But this one was fun, and actually had a pretty satisfying arc to it.  Characters often used their rather stock powers creatively, which I always like (part of the reason I've been enjoying the game Bulletstorm so much recently).  There were some predictable power upsets, because it wouldn't be a shounen manga adaptation without them, but there were some clever ones, too.  "Even when the sun rises, the moon is still in the sky," after all.

Apparently there is more in the works, though I don't know whether I'll watch it or not.  Probably not, but you never know.

Final Words:  Still not recommending it.  Though I'm still not not-recommending it, either.


Full Metal Panic! The Second Raid


Rome's Rapid Rubric (Action/Fanservice/Plot):  6/7/6


Full Metal Panic! The Second Raid is Full Metal Panic! Season 1 all over again.  Great start, entertaining (if far from revolutionary) character dynamics between Sousuke (professional soldier since childhood and thus devoid of social graces) and Kaname (brilliant but wrathful highschool tsundere), and a really big lead-up to an anticlimax at the end.  The first episode of The Second Raid, just like the first episode of the first season, promises GREAT mecha action as a series hook.  And, pretty much just like the first season, it's a bait-and-switch.  It delivers enjoyable but steadily decreasing mecha action (just like the first season), and then disappoints at the end by having a conflict that is much more emotional and introspective than military and full of explosions.

The animation of The Second Raid is gorgeous - that's definitely an improvement over the first season's rapid degeneration of quality - but the plot still lags badly in second half, this time due to angst (instead of poor animation AND angst).

In the end, The Second Raid's greatest failing, though, is that it's essentially the first season all over again.  Much of the relationship development from the first season is undone in the name of comedy and drama, and then redone in much the same way.  It's an easy way to repeat the success of the past than innovate, but it sometimes cheapens the experience.

Surprise Breakout Character:  Chidori Kaname.  I know, how can one of the two MAIN characters from the very start be a breakout character?  Yeah, I was surprised, too, but she pulled it off and really impressed me with her fortitude and resourcefulness.  Perhaps the only really new thing in The Second Raid is her individual character development, outside of her relationship with Sousuke.  If there is a third season, I will be very irked if this doesn't last.

Final Words:  A satisfactory continuation of the plot from the first season, and worth watching if you enjoyed that.  If you're just looking for lulz and don't care about the romance or plot, Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu delivers the lulz in a more condensed form.  The action at large isn't bad, but I was left wanting more robots.

Seirei no Moribito


Rome's Rapid Rubric (Action/Fanservice/Plot):  5/0/5

Seirei no Moribito (officially rendered "Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit") is a series about a warrior, Balsa, and a kid, Prince Chagum, who she sets out to protect from various court intrigues like murder and more murder.  There are some other recurring characters (various people from the court, Balsa's not-boyfriend Tanda, and his extremely cantankerous teacher, Torogai the shaman), but fundamentally, it's about Balsa and Chagum hiding from the assassins on their trail, occasionally punctuated by the utterly brutal asskickings that Balsa delivers to the people hunting them.  Do not f*ck with Balsa.

Though it is set in a fantasy world, it isn't written like a fantasy world - it is far more akin to George RR Martin's gritty, historically-influenced fantasy than works of high fantasy.  Thankfully, it isn't anywhere near as dark as Martin's works.

The martial arts in this series, although they don't appear as often as they might, are beautiful.  Production IG lovingly renders the fight scenes when they do show up, though they hardly skimp on the visuals at other times.  Seirei no Moribito looks good - really good - all the way through.

I would recommend this series quite broadly.  The only thing it's short on is humor - it isn't a comedy, and it doesn't try to be.  Though it has funny moments it does not contrive to create them.


Final Words:  Huh, I don't hate slice of life after all.  I just hate slices of boring people's lives.  Also, what's with all the bodyguard series I've been watching?


Ghost in the Shell Stand: Alone Complex: Second Gig


Rome's Rapid Rubric (Action/Fanservice/Plot):  6/6/8

The second season of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex was a show I had seen most of before, back when I watched anime week-to-week on [Adult Swim].  I remember liking the action, but being rather confused by the byzantine plot, because I would occasionally miss episodes, and then be totally lost, and I was watching it over such a long period of time that I could hardly remember the important details (of which there are many).

It's definitely a show to watch over a short period of time, like Lost (or so I'm told, as I haven't seen Lost).  The action is beautiful, the characters are interesting, if a bit secondary to the complex machine that is the plot.  As with the first season, it doesn't give you answers, though it doesn't leave them to nebulous interpretation usually, either - it expects you to pay attention and then figure them out yourself.

The Tachikomas are still fun, and get to play perhaps an even more integral role in the plot this time.  The Tachikoma Theatre shorts at the end of each episode are something I won't claim to fully understand, though.

Final Words:  The Major's outfit is slightly less unreasonable in the second season, since she wears what actually amount to real, full-length pants most of the time.


Senkou no Night Raid (Lightning-Fast Night Raid)

Rome's Rapid Rubric (Action/Fanservice/Plot):  4/1/6

Senkou no Night Raid is an extremely problematic work, and one that isn't easy to write on, especially because I am so poorly versed in the history that it covers.  It situates itself in China in 1930, beginning in Shanghai, and follows a special para-military unit of psychics working for the Japanese Army.  Shanghai at the time was an extremely international city, and a huge number of nations had significant stakes in it.  This is a fascinating setting, but obviously, a troubling one.  The show has definitely prompted me to do a little bit of research on my own into less openly fictional accounts of the events it portrays, but I'm no expert on these matters.


Where Senkou no Night Raid succeeds is in its portrayals of its main characters, and in the fascinating ways each member of the team uses his or her rather limited psychic powers (especially in conjunction with one another).  The first arc of the show, which takes place in Shanghai, while tensions are mounting, is very compelling.

Where it falls short is in its attempt to launch itself headlong into the semi-fictional, semi-historical territory of political intrigue between China, Japan, and the League of Nations in 1930 while still claiming the auspices of being "a work of fiction," as it frequently reminded the viewer.  Every time the show portrayed a "historical" event, I questioned the accuracy of it, and then the spin that might have been put on it even if it was technically correct, and then the spin inherent in history books themselves.  The fact that the fictional main characters fell out of focus, to some degree, in the second half did little to improve the situation.

The resolution of the plot was somewhat rushed, because of the focus on "historical" events in the second half of the show, and the clever uses of psychic powers mostly fell by the wayside, only briefly returning for the finale.

It does have a really good OP, though.


Final Words:  Senkou no Night Raid was definitely thought-provoking, though perhaps not in the ways it intended (or perhaps so - it was hard to tell what, if any, messages it carried).  The first few episodes are significantly stronger than the rest of the series.




Mars Daybreak

Rome's Rapid Rubric (Action/Fanservice/Plot):  5/5/4

When I picked up Mars Daybreak, I knew only a few things about it - it was by Studio Bones (who I like), it was about pirates (cool), and it featured giant robots underwater ('nuff said).  The first episode begins with a look at the impoverished dystopia Mars has become in the far future, languishing under colonial rule by the Earth, in a situation not entirely unlike the Space Colonies of Universal Century Gundam.  However, despite the frequent implications of a GRIMDARK backdrop behind the action, Mars Daybreak is anything but.  

Mars Daybreak is basically Star Trek on a pirate submarine on Mars.  Bones drops you right into the universe with nary an explanation as to how things work, because they're much too busy getting down to the HIGH ADVENTURE!  The cool-as-a-cucumber main protagonist isn't surprised by anything, so the viewer is left in the awkward but not entirely unenjoyable position of being alone in shouting "LOLWUT!?!" every few minutes for the first couple episodes.  The crew contains such characters as a talking cat, some kind of Vulcan, an empath of some kind, and a dolphin in power armor (or possibly some other small toothed whale), and besides a few short glimpses, their backstories are largely closed books.  But Mars Daybreak isn't about backstory.  Even the main character barely gets his backstory fleshed out, beyond necessary details.  It's about sailing towards the horizon of tomorrow, and being totally awesome doing it.

Although it doesn't delve into the past, the secondary characters are all satisfactorily, if not deeply, developed (as are the primary characters, fortunately).  This lack of depth comes in part from the large cast, but also seems to be a part of the aesthetic of the show.  Mars Daybreak doesn't aspire to great depth.

On an note few people but me care about, the mecha action falls into that all-too-common category of "decent, but not great" occupied by so many shows that would be absolutely amazing if they'd just put a bit more effort into this aspect of the show (Full Metal Panic (1&2), Eureka 7 (until the last quarter or so), Xam'd).  Combat tends to be low on both stakes and fatalities, and both mechanical power and pilot skill tend to be determined somewhat arbitrarily.  There are some mechanics of the universe that ameliorate this slightly by offering a form of explanation (enemy mechs are controlled remotely, and so they have slower reaction times, relying on attrition over skill to win battles), but the protagonists' victories often seem hollow because of this, too.  The mechanical designs are really cool, though.

Surprise Breakout Character:  Poipoider, the power-armored dolphin pirate voiced by the Lich King.  This is the dolphin Jesse would play if he were ever to play a dolphin or other small toothed whale in an RPG campaign.

Final Words:  Mars Daybreak is a fun, lighthearted, and mostly character-driven adventure series without much depth or the desire for such things.  This format lets Bones take advantage of their biggest strengths (great characterization and versatile animation), while avoiding their most glaring weaknesses (stupid, incomprehensible endings and big, unanswered questions).  Also, Poipoider is a badass.


-Stormshrug




*As always, I must mention that Rome's Rapid Rubric only accounts for "objective subjective" factors.  As such, it is not an indication of quality, merely of content.  "Good" and "bad" action (or fanservice, or plot) are weighted the same on this scale.  Fanservice only denotes sexually-oriented fanservice, since other forms of fanservice are too difficult to measure on this (intentionally) simplified scale.

On Ultramarines (A Spoiler-Free Review)

So, I don't do as many reviews as some of the other blaggers in our circle, (I personally find them a bit dry to write), but I promised to put up some thoughts about the Ultramarines movie when I watched it, so here we go.

Here is a 'Rome's Rapid Rubric*' breakdown of the movie:

Action/Fanservice/Plot:
7/0**/4

*[Note that Rome's Rapid Rubric only accounts for these factors by volume, not by quality. This is particularly important for 'plot,' which is 'how complicated is the plot,' and not 'how good is the plot.'  Inception is a 6 in plot, while Primer is a 9, but this doesn't mean Primer is "better" - it just packs more "goings-on" into the time it has.]

**[In the RRR, Fanservice ONLY denotes sexually-oriented fanservice.  Other kinds of fanservice certainly exist, but are too nebulous to deal with in this intentionally over-simplified metric.]

I went in with a very specific set of expectations, and I was satisfied.  I expected to see the Ultramarines kick some ass, and the film did not disappoint in that regard.  The plot was pretty solid and though it was in no way revolutionary it was a more than serviceable as a vehicle for the main event (the action).  It wasn't excessively predictable - the 'plot summary' that TG built from the trailers alone proved to be wrong (warning: Spoilers, Nerdrage, Misinformation, and Heresy regarding the possible divinity of John Hurt) so that's something, at least.

("The Action," courtesy Bell of Lost Souls)

The CG was the part of the film that your average person will probably have the most trouble with.  It was far from photorealistic, but they tried hard enough that it slipped into the uncanny valley at times.  Personally, I would have gone with more stylized CG instead of attempting photorealism with an insufficient budget.  The long and short of it is that machines (power armor, vehicles, etc) all look pretty good, and faces look kind of... off.  If you can get over that, though, you can probably enjoy the visuals - they are quite detailed, and at times they can be pretty impressive.  Just don't go in expecting Tron: Legacy or a modern-day Blizzard cinematic and you won't be disappointed.  The characters also wear helmets for much of the film, which helps a bit.

For Warhammer 40k fanatics, however, the slightly outdated (if pretty well-implemented) visuals are not going to be the major point of contention.  No, as forums have shown already, the greatest source of RAAAAEG is "Why Isn't This Movie About My Army of Choice?" syndrome.  However, before you post yet another thread about how "overpowered" the Ultramarines were in this movie and how it's really the Blood Angels/Space Wolves/White Scars/Rainbow Warriors/Imperial Guard/Adeptus Janitorius who are the real heroes of the Imperium and deserve this kind of attention, remember this little fact about Warhammer 40k: every faction gets to be the 'big heroes' in their own novels, comics, stories, etc.  If they make more movies, of course, I'd like to see them branch out from the Ultramarines, but it's not a bad starting place, either.

So I think that's how I'll sum it up.  It was a good start.  I wasn't floored by it, but I enjoyed watching it - I'll almost certainly watch it again sooner or later.  I don't know if it was commercially successful (I somehow doubt it, but who knows), but if Codex Pictures makes another Warhammer 40k film, I'll want to pick it up.  Unless it's about the Blood Angels.  F*ck those Mary Sues and their sparkly bishounen vampire crap.

-Stormshrug