Fate/Extra is an RPG much in the vein of the later entries in the Persona series. You assume control of a blank-slate protagonist who finds himself involved in a single-elimination tournament for the Holy Grail for reasons he cannot remember. Gameplay breaks down between information-gathering in the school-themed central hub and commanding a Servant, a supernatural being, to fight for you in the tournament. F/E follows passage of time mechanics similar to Persona, assigning you time-sensitive tasks to do before progressing to the next elimination round. Now, I happen to love the Persona games, so I’m painfully aware of every moment F/E doesn’t meet the standards set by the game it emulates.

To start with, the environments (the school and the arena) aren’t all that interesting, and you’ll stare at them for hours as you run through the game. The arena is simply a collection of sparse corridors that don’t serve much purpose other than to hold an enemy encounter, treasure, or scripted event. The school is equally lifeless, especially once the number of NPC combatants is reduced by the end of the tournament. While the level design is lazy, it has nothing on the Extreme Rock-Paper-Scissors battle system. It’s a major letdown to learn that the Servant fights that awed me in the original visual novel have been reduced to a guessing game wherein you input six commands each turn (attack, break, guard, or a selection from a list of skills) and hope for the best. You can easily throw away an hours worth of playtime by not playing like a coward. After a while, Servants will familiarize themselves with enemies and telepathically figure out the enemy’s command order, at which point you can turn off all thinking processes and grind until the enemies stop dropping worthwhile XP.

So the gameplay isn’t all that great, but at least the story and writing should be good, right? Nasu’s name is prominently featured on the back of the box underneath a screen shot, which is more credit than what most writers involved in games can hope for. Unfortunately, Nasu takes it easy with this one. The only characters that are remotely interesting are the three playable Servants and characters with existing ties to the Nasuverse. The F/E originals are surprisingly clichéd and difficult to sympathize with in their dying moments after having remorselessly delivered a beating on them.The principle antagonist for most of the game is a snotty kid who happens to be the king of the world and spends most of his appearances giving condescending advice to your character, who takes it like a punk. Really, that’s the extent of the relationship with what you’re led to believe is your greatest foe for over 25 hours of gameplay. Everything is scripted so that you’re never at a loss of where to go, who to talk to, or what item you need to overcome any obstacle that comes up, and everyone is more than glad to help your amnesiac protagonist against his incompetent and stagey opponents. It’s so straightforward that it prevents interesting developments in the story. I never really felt like my choices had any impact on my character’s development, and forging a bond with your Servant essentially comes down to “Did you talk to your Servant today?” This is essentially the opposite of my experiences with the visual novel, so I wonder how much involvement Nasu actually had in writing the scenario for the game.

There are choice moments where the Fate spirit shines in the game, though. Saber Extra’s dialogue and vocal performance is excellent throughout, pretty much single-handedly justifying F/E’s inclusion in the Fate canon. Caster is worth a playthrough for seiyuu fanatics interested in having voice actress Chiwa Saito refer to them as “master,” even if she’s the weakest servant and requires hours of tender, loving grinding to compete in boss fights. I haven’t yet steeled myself for a third run of F/E, but I imagine Archer is just as wonderfully a jerk as he was in F/SN. Though I wish the game would make a proper name for itself, all of the call-backs to other Type-Moon properties are amusing. The Noble Phantasms are as flashy as the PSP can hope to muster, and the remixed F/SN music tracks let you know that its about to go down right now.

Aksys Games did see fit to give this game a proper showing here in America with its own limited edition release in a big cardboard box that seems to be the fashion with PSP RPGs lately. The extras are typical fare for a release like this: a small art book and an incomplete soundtrack CD. It’s a really nice art book, though; the hardcover binding and paper stock are above what’s usually done for bonuses like this. I’m only a little (very) upset that the Saber Extra figma from the Japanese release isn’t included, but I suppose licensing deals and price and all those other bothersome factors came up.

I’ll keep my berating of Aksys Games' F/E localization to a minimum if I ever hope to see them publish the sequel, which sounds infinitely more interesting. I’ll just say that the localization is kind of weird from time to time. There are a few embarrassing typos in the script, and even more embarrassing are the occasional fansub-isms that pop up in dialogue, a thing people complain about in, you know, actual fansubs and not a product released by professionals. I’m sure no one at mirror moon got paid to translate the F/SN visual novel, but I’m also sure they would have had the integrity to never have Caster say “OMG.”

So Fate/Extra didn’t manage to become my favorite game despite being a Persona clone with Servants in it. The game is a "fans only" experience that often feels like a chore. Even so, I will probably buy the sequel from Aksys or whoever publishes it in America, regardless of all the bad things I’ve said about the first game. I feel responsible to let publishers know there is a market for Fate in America, so I am compelled to vote with my dollars (though Aniplex won’t see a dime of that, let alone $700 to own the complete Fate/Zero collection). I optimistically await to have nothing but good things to say about the sequel.

While the plot is certainly centered around the struggle between Shizuku and Issei, the real struggle of the story is the exploration of self through which Shizuku has to go in order to be able to relate to his late father. Shizuku has had an in-depth education on the ways of wine but has never drank any, putting him at a severe disadvantage at a blind tasting. Issei has had a lifetime and celebrated career as a wine taster, but only one week as Yutaka’s son. As the plot progresses, Issei doesn’t try to be any more a son to the departed, but Shizuku (with help from apprentice sommelier Shinohara Miyabi) goes through various trials that bring him further and further down into the cellar of the subject that was his father’s passion.

The aforementioned trials are the bulk of this manga, and the wines they center around (all 100% authentic) are the respective heft of the chapters. This is made most obvious via the attention paid to the visual rendering of any panel featuring bottles or wine. Character designs and settings are distinguished but rather average in most instances, while any scene involving wine, wine bottles, or the various visual metaphors employed for the euphoric experience of tasting wine (a Queen concert, a maiden in a field, a merry-go-round, a scene from Strauss’s Salome) come across not as photorealistic but as lovingly crafted portraiture. Any serious wine drinker will love this manga for this aspect alone. To all readers, the alternation betwixt what I’ll call character and bottle style imbues this 424-page volume with a diversity of visuals that whets appetites for the next feast.

There is also a LOT of textual description within these pages: vinter lineages, wine taste, wine smell, how to drink wine, how to pour wine, when to pour wine, wine origin and similarity ... you get the gist.  Casual readers would probably find the material a bit too dry for their tastes were it not for the almost beguiling charm derived from the pacing of Shizuku and Miyabi's adventures as well as humor written a little too perfectly via extended metaphors exploiting similarities in terminology between manga and wine (such as the conversation pictured on the right). So that, combined with the almost laughably yet convincingly applied left-field taste analogies (did I mention the Queen concert?) and their culmination, actually makes the manga a proverbial page-turner. The same characteristics contribute to readability for those in the know. Being shoveled information on decanting, vintages, vineyards, etc. can be downright tedious, but it is the mix of storytelling techniques and art that will elicit interest and propel wine connoisseurs through the book. While outright descriptions attempt to fill readers in on the wines as well as the experience of drinking them, the authors and illustrator do a fantastic job defining Shizuku and Issei via glimpses into their preparations for the upcoming battles.

Shizuku, whose first musical wine metaphor involves Queen, describes the wine admiringly as “somehow like classical” but not quite, with “a melting sweetness and a sharp rush of sourness.” Altogether not the most poignant of descriptions, but it is a Romantic one. Later on, readers get a taste of Issei’s musical leanings: Richard Strauss’s opera, Salome, which Issei associates with a “blood scented sensuality born of decadence.” If one sets aside the obvious sweet vs. evil leanings of those descriptions, the context in which they are delivered is as subtle delivery mechanism as any for showing a major difference between the main characters.

The perpetual learner, Shizuku mostly listens to others. When he does speak, usually to elaborate upon the characteristics of a wine at hand or demonstrate a wine-related technique, his flowery meditations are written such that they are more Zen moments of sensory exploration that seem identifiable to those surrounding Shizuku. Even the way he gives advice to people shows him to be a genuine helping hand — a person who keeps in mind exactly who he is reaching out to as opposed to showing off transcendent talent of taste/technique. The latter is more applicable to Issei’s preachy tone. A lecturer at heart, Issei often talks as though no one else is in the room ... even when it’s part of a dialogue. I wager readers can take everyone else out of a scene involving Issei describing wine and that scene would have the same effect. By the end of the volume, the main characters’ choices of musical allusions reflect not only how personable they are but their sense of modernity as well. So far, Shizuku involves the recent present (as much as 70s Queen is recent) and Issei invokes a century-old opera. As wine is consistently referred to as a living thing (temperamental), how closely each critic can pull similarities from their own near history is an indication of who keeps wine closer and who put it upon a pedestal of distance.

Not everything in The Drops of God is great. The pacing can seem laborious depending on personal experience with and interest in wine, and there are a few minor instances where clichés border on offensive and overly convenient: why must the wine wisdom and saving grace in one arc come from a homeless person ... who then ends up knowing the main characters and acting as a judge?! But even if I found myself getting angry at situations like that, keep in mind that I was getting angry because it wasn't perfect. Why? Because this manga is just that good, and I wanted it to be perfect. This graphic novel has actually influenced countries' wine sales and purchases fer chris’ sake. If nothing else, to quote Evan Minto, “it’s almost frustrating how compelling it is!”

12-year-old Asuna is living alone with her workaholic mother following her father's untimely death, but despite a healthy school life she spends most of her time up on the nearby mountain, listening to whatever radio signals she can pick out on her crude ham radio. However, a dangerous run-in with a giant monster in the woods results in a friendship with a mysterious boy named Shun. Thus begins Asuna's adventure into the ruined underground world of Agartha.

You might already be sensing a bit of an influence here, and no, you're not mistaken. Makoto Shinkai has openly expressed his admiration for the works of Studio Ghilbi, particularly Laputa (Castle in the Sky), which made a big impression on him when he saw it as a boy. And while imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Shinkai — almost certainly accidentally — leaves the realm of homage and heads straight into the no-man's land of full-on copying. Oh look, there's the Forest King from Princess Mononoke, the cave shelter from Grave of the Fireflies, the fox-squirrel from Nausicaa, the architectural style of Castle in the Sky!

Shinkai's touch is definitely there, and one need only pay attention to the director's masterful use of watercolor-esque lighting and color to understand that this is not straight-up imitation, but I still feel like there's a little bit too much Miyazaki and not enough Shinkai in the film. His trademark brooding, silent moments are still there, but they are interspersed with action scenes and fast-paced plot developments.

And boy oh boy, those action scenes! I was sure surprised to find that a director whose last outing was characterized by long stretches of waiting silently on a train can create such lightning-fast, exciting action sequences. The film's moments of gunfire and hand-to-hand combat have a sort of whipping speed and kineticism that I've seen only in some of the best action anime directors (and of course, Mr. Miyazaki). Shinkai claims his team studied both Ghilbi movies and the Rurouni Kenshin anime in order to figure out how to animate the scenes.

Children hits all the emotional points that you might expect from the director of Voices of a Distant Star, The Place Promised in Our Early Days, and 5 Centimeters Per Second, but one too many deus ex machinas and a few too many different set pieces bog down the pacing to what feels like a crawl. Shinkai has got to learn to edit if he's going to attempt another movie in this vein.

But let's make this clear: I would love for Shinkai to try another movie like this. It's a distinct break from his previous work, and while it's more of a so-so Ghilbi film than a great Shinkai film, it is enough of a proof of concept to hook me for the rest of his work. As long as he learns from his mistakes and doesn't get stuck in the rut of re-making this exact movie over and over, this director could really go places. He's got emotional expression down better than basically anybody else in the business, and now has proven his mettle in the realm of action scenes. A little bit more editorial oversight will probably do wonders for honing his style.

Is he still the Green Day of anime? Yeah, probably. Is he "the next Miyazaki?" That still remains to be seen, but Children is certainly a fine down payment towards the title.

[Recommended]

This review is based on the Otakon 2011 premiere screening. The reviewer was given a complimentary press pass for the convention.

Click here for more of our Otakon 2011 coverage

Kenji Koiso, a high school student and mathematics enthusiast, is recruited by a girl at his school to help her out with some job. Despite his current part-time work with the infrastructure of virtual-reality super-network OZ, he decides to help her out without asking details. He helps carry her things as they travel to the traditional Japanese family mansion to celebrate her grandmother's 90th birthday. The girl, Natsuki Shinohara, asks Kenji to play along as she announces him as her fiance to her grandma. He now finds himself in the awkward position of being a pseudo-newcomer to this tight-nit and very large family descended from a warrior clan. During his first night there, he receives an email with a large string of characters that he is asked to decrypt by an unknown entity. Being almost Japan's representative for the Math Olympics, he wastes no time in pulling out some paper to work out the problem, which takes him all night. What he did not realize is that he was being asked to break the security that would breach the main OZ server, and in the morning he finds that his account is being used by the hacker to cause chaos in OZ. With most major government and official institutions being dependent on OZ, the hacker is able to cause damage not only online, but in physical space by taking over the person's privileges. For example, by obtaining the account of the president it would be possible to launch a nuclear missile.

Kenji discovers that one of the family members, Kazuma Ikezawa, is the infamous OZ gaming champion King Kazma. The pair find themselves in a battle against a dangerous artificial intelligence being tested by the US Army within OZ. Meanwhile family drama arises as the problems online are connected to the family in ways they did not expect.

Beyond the themes of online action, what lies at the heart of Summer Wars is a thoughtful portrayal of family life. The members of Natsuki's massive family all believe Kenji to be her fiancé, and welcome him to the family in different ways. Hosoda relates his own experiences from when he suddenly became a member of a family due to marriage through Kenji's awkwardness at being accepted into their close group. Indeed, the closest thing to a human villain in the story is the one family member who drifted away from the rest and went to America. The two major aspects to the story — family life and Internet action — seamlessly intertwine, and neither is pushed into the background or feel tacked on to the other. Summer Wars is ambitious in the broadness of its scope, but this natural connection is what really makes the story stand out. If anything, it is much more realistic. In Summer Wars, world-changing events are caused from computers sitting in the middle of a traditional Japanese mansion, not an underground hacker cave with fifty monitors and a nonsensical cooling unit. The heroes are awkward mathematicians, well-connected grandmas, and working class dads with years of video game experience, as opposed to trenchcoat-wearing dudes with BitTorent and bad attitudes. (See: every movie about hackers ever to compare)

One of the most common complaints made toward Summer Wars is criticism of its technical inaccuracy. The story revolves around an incredibly advanced Internet structure, called OZ, that can be connected to through all types of devices and thus has became an extremely integral part of business, culture, and communication. Users create avatars and are able to interact over OZ in various ways: chatting, shopping, business, learning, etc. Additionally, languages are instantly translated to allow communication with anyone. Even the least technically minded viewer can see that it is an unrealistic view of the Internet. This leads to many lumping it together with WarGames and Hackers with their over the top, glamorized distortion of real technological advancements. However, this is completely missing the point of the story. Summer Wars may not be realistic in its details, but that is not the point. It is an exaggerated stylization of computer communications and should be treated as such. Like much good science fiction, it is able to make very relevant points that concern real world technology in a highly fictionalized setting.

A major theme of Summer Wars is communication. OZ's primary function, like the internet, it to connect people and services from all over. The film demonstrated both the dangers of over-reliance on digital networking, as well as celebrating the positive aspects of everyone being able to work together towards a goal. The theme goes beyond modern technology; the grandma was able to use contacts from a lifetime to make phone calls and encourage family members and important decision makers to take action during the crisis. Throughout the movie, communication is key in solving problems — online and off.

One aspect that many viewers should be able to relate to is the contrast between the characters taking initiative and using their computers to fight the AI, and the other relatives who can't understand why they are wasting their time with “video games” during this time. For Kazuma, Kenji, and the dads who pooled their resources together, nothing is as important as stopping that threat inside OZ. They realize, especially after what just took place in their own lives, that what goes on in the wires does affect what goes on the “real world”. It isn't until tragedy is -literally- looming over their heads that the non-techie relatives finally realize the gravity of the situation.

Hosoda touches on plenty of scenarios throughout the movie that could have been pulled straight from Slashdot. Compromised users were being assured that the security was impenetrable even after the hacking took place. Online accounts held enough power that stealing their account granted the hacker the user's government privileges. A dangerous artificial intelligence program was developed which questioned the responsibility of the developer who didn't actually implement it himself. A hacker was causing problems through an account that had been taken over, leading to the arrest of the innocent true owner of the avatar. While the movie itself may be an implausible action movie with pseudo-technological workings, the points it makes are often grounded in reality. The actual computer use is done in a way that can be approachable to the average person, but the technically inclined viewer should be able to appreciate its themes with a deeper understanding. Instead of seeing it as dumbed down or inaccurate, I adored the stylization of the Internet and artistic interpretation of technical concepts through Superflat imagery. The last thing I would have wanted is if it became an Nmap documentary.

Summer Wars has very impressive production values with smooth, detailed animation and a high degree of artistic merit. Two distinct art styles are used to easily distinguish the real world and OZ: The real life characters are designed by Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, whose work contains the same appeal and quality that he is known for, and I've noticed since The Girl Who Leapt Through Time that his style has become even more distinct and refined. The background artwork is composed of beautiful countryside scenery and convincing realistic settings. The visuals are extremely detailed, which provides a noticeable contrast to the Superflat style used in OZ. This style, mostly associated with the work of Haruki Murakami, is frequently used in Hosoda's work and has been become a trademark of his style. Even his work with Digimon incorporated a very similar (if less ambitious) Superflat world for the Digimon to fight in. Summer Wars takes it to a new level, with a fantastic stylized world with bright, flat colours against a largely pure white canvas. I've always been a big fan of the Superflat style, and Summer Wars delivered a truly spectacular example of the craft.

Hosoda has obviously been holding onto this premise for a while — after all, his work with Digimon uses almost the same plot. In Digimon: Our War Game, a virus-type Digimon is infecting all of technology through the Internet and causing chaos by manipulating everything it can. Some of the first season's cast meet up to stop the threat by sitting at their computers and working with their Digimon partners who are battling inside a Superflat-style online world. The conclusion practically mirrors that of Summer Wars with the virus launching a nuclear missile (the possibility of this was even alluded to in Summer Wars, I'm assuming as a reference). In the end, people around the world send emails in support of the Digimon. There are so many emails that Izzy/Izumi forwards them to the virus who is then slowed down (DDoS?) enough for them to finish it off. It is good to see that Hosoda was eventually able to fully flesh out the concept with the experience he has gained since then.

I absolutely love this film. It follows a fairly typical action blockbuster formula, but with a level of craftsmanship, intelligence, and social satire that elevates it above the expectations of the genre. I have no doubt that there will be criticism of its typical action film influences, but it really does Summer Wars a disservice to lump it with the mindless action film crowd. If anything, it takes the elements that makes such films so entertaining, but loses the pedestrian brainlessness associated with them. Instead, it presents a thoughtful, realistic, and charming portrayal of family life in addition to the cyber-warfare action plot. Summer Wars is a film that embraces a video gaming, highly connected culture and equally the importance of everyday family life. It is a near-perfect representation of the joys of living in the information age, presented in a wildly unique and enjoyable package.

[Highly Recommended]

This review is based on a retail Blu-ray disc purchased by the reviewer.

The background to the game is crucial, and players may find themselves consulting the Datalog option in the main menu quite often for information. The Datalog contains updated information on the thirteen days that lead up to the events of the main characters’ l’Cie transformation, along with information on historical references, enemies, locations, fal’Cie, and more. The fact that the game forces players to read what should be spoken may frustrate some gamers, and with so many twists in the game, the goal may become confusing or even muddled underneath it all. Still, the main storyline packs a punch, and while it drags on throughout much of the beginning, once it picks up it doesn’t let go. At its core, it is an emotional tale of survival, and players will enjoy watching the characters transform over the course of the game.

The first thing nearly every gamer will recognize about the game is its phenomenal graphics. The characters and scenery are simply stunning, and the mixture of places visited, from thriving cities to mechanical waste dumps, are beautiful to behold. The soundtrack of the game is equally astounding, having a very dramatic musical theme. Voice acting is also quite good, though Vanille’s voice has received criticism from many gamers. Whenever she is attacked or upset, she groans and moans, and the T-rated game suddenly takes on a more mature edge. Teenagers should not feel embarrassed for playing the game, yet many boys will chuckle or snicker at Vanille’s rather obnoxious battle attacks and moans (it being so obvious that reviewers feel the need to comment on it).

With such beautiful landscapes, many gamers hoped to explore the world of Cocoon. However, Square Enix has severely limited the players’ ability to travel. Maps are about as linear as one can find; often players are literally going in a straight line from point A to point B with only a couple fights and items laid out before them. Out of a total of thirteen chapters, players will only be able to go back to Chapters 11 and 12 once they reach Chapter 13, meaning that most of the places players visit will be a one-time event. This is deeply disappointing, particularly because it creates a limit on side-quests, which are rarities within the game. For a series that usually makes side-quests fun and challenging undertakings, Final Fantasy XIII falls far short of this expectation. Most side-quests are only available in Chapters 11 and 12, and many are recommended only after beating the game.

The battle system is nothing like previous installments to the series. Up until much later in the game, the computer chooses who you will control and who will be in the party, forcing you to try out all characters at one point or another. Only one character in the party can be controlled as well. Furthermore, for the first several chapters, there is no leveling up. Once the main characters become l’Cie, they gain what is known as the Crystarium, a level-up system that is just as linear as the map system. There are three main roles each character is given depending on their unique abilities in battle, and each character levels up these roles in different orders. It is a basic system; characters gain experience from battles and use it to gain one crystal sphere at a time. Spheres range from abilities to accessory slots to generic stat improvements. Rather than liberating characters, the Crystarium feels very restrictive to players’ abilities, for it only expands, allowing for higher levels, at key points within the story. Therefore, players can only max out their characters to specific points before having to wait until an important boss later down the road before they continue training.

Given this restrictive setting, strategy is a much more important feature of the battle system. Battles are very fast-paced and require what are called Paradigm changes. Paradigms are different sets of roles that characters are assigned, and these roles can be shifted in the course of battle in order to use different strategies. These range from having all-out frontal assaults to defensive and medic sets, allowing for swift changes in strategy should something drastic happen (and it often does). Even Eidolons, which are brought back in a new way, follow this emphasis on strategy rather than brute force. Each character receives a specific Eidolon at crucial points throughout the game. In order to receive it, however, players must fight the Eidolon and fill a bar by using various techniques, some of which include not attacking at all. Eidolons also cast Doom, turning battles into a race against the clock. Once obtained, they do very little damage overall, and while they can change into various forms throughout battles, it feels as though Eidolons are around to show off more than to do damage. This emphasis on strategy rather than statistics falls in line with the simplistic level-up system, but it can make for some very frustrating experiences, particularly with bosses.

Final Fantasy XIII is a beautifully complex game, yet it has its share of flaws that will irritate old-time Final Fantasy fans. The battle system is completely different from anything seen before, and the linear gameplay, along with a lack of side quests and exploration, is a disappointment. The game looks and sounds striking, and once they have completed it, players will gain a huge amount of appreciation for the story’s complex nature, but some may not be willing to get through the flaws of the game to complete it.

[Recommended]

This review is based on a retail version purchased by the reviewer.

Released to Japanese readers in 1986 as a companion to Zeminaru Nihon Keizai Nyuumon, an economics textbook released by Nihon Keizai Shimbun (the Japanese equivalent of the Wall Street Journal), Japan, Inc. makes no bones about its status as an educational tool. Nevertheless, writer/artist and Osamu Tezuka follower Shotaro Ishinomori (Cyborg 009, Kamen Rider) makes valiant and often successful attempts at infusing a sense of humanity into the dry facts and figures that populate the comic.

Our story centers around two workers at the Mitsutomo Trading Corporation: Kudo, a young businessman who works tirelessly to ensure that the "little people" are not left out in large business decisions, and Tsugawa, a ruthless schemer who's always got his eyes on ways to make the company as much money as possible. Surrounding them is a small cast of other businesspeople, including the curious and idealistic young worker Ueda, the cute and feisty secretary Amamiya, and a number of older executives who give advice to the younger workers.

The bosses often serve as our teachers, explaining the long-term ramifications of events like the 1970's oil crisis on world trade and business, while Ueda's cluelessness about business gives us a character to connect to in the frequently confusing web of connections that Ishinomori walks us through. Most of the time, these explanations work out fairly naturally, thanks to a cast of characters with all different levels of knowledge and experience. Unfortunately, though, the need to explain far-reaching consequences of events can lead to confusing flashbacks, and at one point Japan, Inc. even employs the most dangerous tool of all: the DOUBLE FLASHBACK.

Despite Ishinomori's valiant attempts at narrative, including some examination of the differing relationships that Kudo and Tsugawa have with their families, Japan, Inc. is absolutely an educational text. The chapters are separated based on their respective topics, and given invigorating titles like "Trade Friction," "Countering the Rise of the Yen," and "Deficit Finance."

Every other page features a small footnote describing the topic at hand, and there are a few pages that simply stop the action to provide a short essay on the topic or show some graphs. (I dubbed them "economic Masamune Shirow moments.") While all this information is great to have, it's clear that the book is written for businessmen and women looking to bolster their existing knowledge of the business world, because at times the jargon can get pretty confusing for laypeople.

Unfortunately, Japan, Inc. suffers from its age, as University of California Press chose to flip most panels, but leave the ones with drawn text unflipped, resulting in page layouts that lose their natural artistic flow. Additionally, all of the information comes from 1986, so while it's fun to read predictions about how the Internet just might change the landscape of business by 2010, some of the facts are laughably out of date now. (Everybody in Japan is really excited when the yen-dollar exchange rate finally reaches ... 150 yen/1 dollar!)

Japan, Inc. is certainly not what most people expect from their manga: it's considerably drier than even the more subdued seinen manga series, and Ishinomori's art is an acquired taste, lying somewhere between Tezuka (Astro Boy), Mitsuteru Yokoyama (Tetsujin-28/Gigantor), and Akira Toriyama (Dragon Ball). The American version's sporadic flipping shakes up Ishinomori's panel layouts a bit too much for comfort, while the footnotes and full-page info sheets break the flow of the manga from page to page. As a result, Japan, Inc., which clocks in at just over 300 pages, is a considerably slower read than the average manga.

Without any really powerful modern relevance, Japan, Inc. stands as little more than a fun little curiosity for amateur manga historians. Still, if you're interested in economics, international business, or modern Japanese history, and/or if you enjoy seeing manga-fied versions of Ronald Reagan and the Pope, Japan, Inc. might be just the right little curiosity to pique your interest.

[Passable]

This review is based on a copy borrowed from the Folsom Library at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

The show presents itself with an equal dose of black comedy and social commentary, similarly to Kon's own Tokyo Godfathers and Paprika. This tendency to mix the seriousness of the situation — a runaway machine originally intended to act as a caretaker for the elderly — with its inherent silliness manifests itself in what is easily the most spectacular turning point of the entire film.

Dedicated nurse-in-training Haruko has been trying to rescue her patient, the elderly Mr. Takazawa, from inside the Z-001 machine throughout the movie, but has run up against stiff opposition from the two bureaucrats in charge of the project, Terada and Hasegawa. As the two men board a helicopter to track the movements of the Z-001, Haruko hops in next to them, despite Terada's fierce protests. Meanwhile, we realize that Terada legitimately cares about the elderly as he berates Hasegawa for not letting him know that the Z-001 was actually a military prototype.

Suddenly Haruko spots the Z-001 speeding along a monorail track, and Terada orders the helicopter to go in for a closer look (never a good idea if Bubblegum Crisis is to be believed). As they approach, Terada throws open the door to yell out at the machine over a megaphone, but Haruko quickly attempts to jump out of the helicopter, screaming desperately to get the old man's attention.

What happens next is a brilliant expression of the essential messages of the entire film: Terada, who has been working to arrest Haruko throughout the story, grabs her before she can fall out of the helicopter, and holds her to keep her from jumping out again. She calls him a pervert, in typical anime style, yet Terada's immediate response to latching onto her is not to blush or get embarrassed, but to yell "You idiot! You'll get yourself killed!" In this brief moment of crisis, Otomo deftly shows the passion with which Haruko will protect her patient as well as the strength of Terada's conviction that all human life is sacred.

To cap it all off, the helicopter hits some trees while Haruko and Terada struggle, throwing the man out of the vehicle and toward the Z-001. Haruko immediately screams for Mr. Terada, only to see the machine reach out and grab him. (Indeed, even after he is safe aboard the Z-001, she tries to keep the helicopter flying low so they can safely extract him.) There is a cascading series of split-second acts of kindness in just these 45 seconds of film, all of which express a more optimistic twist to this ostensibly dark portrayal of the human condition.

Bayonetta (Platinum Games/Nex Entertainment): It’s hard to come up with a fitting opening line to fully encompass the wonder that is Bayonetta, but here goes: Bayonetta is a game where you play a nine-foot-tall woman who wears clothes made out of her own magical hair, has control over time, can summon massive demons, and spends her time destroying hundreds of freakish angels in order to do something or other. I don’t remember the plot very well — while hilarious and a great way to string the action together, it is so insane that your mind rejects it the second you stop playing. Bayonetta is what is known in the trade as a “Character Action Game” — somewhat like Devil May Cry, God of War, that sort of thing. That means a third-person camera, a combo system using different weapons including ground and aerial moves, quick time events, and button-mashing special attacks. Except, Bayonetta is the only game of this genre I have enjoyed, let alone completed twice over. The controls feel so tight and accessible, saving you from being constantly being reminded that there is a plastic knob in between you and the game. The game also has a great sense of fun all over, in its level design, enemies, and weapons. (Even the in-game shop will make you crack a smile when you visit.) The sheer amount of love put into the game shines through especially well in the final levels, during which I could not stop grinning for the entire two-hour session.

A side note: make sure to play the Xbox 360 version of this game, as the PS3 version has some horrible loading issues that rapidly suck the fun out of it.

Extra Bonus Item! (Likely to annoy Evan! This is done in the name of beefing out the amount of anime in the year-end picks.)

Baccano! (Brain’s Base): Seriously, go and read my Anime Secret Santa post on this series. After reading it, it should come as no surprise to learn that as soon as I had moved into my new house I unpacked Baccano! to re-watch it. To be precise, it was the fifth thing I unpacked, coming after the sofa, the DVD player, the TV and the kettle (for tea, of course). My love for this series only grows as I watch it this second time, and I heartily recommend it. (Ed. Note: Baccano! was released in the UK during 2010.)

Baccano! is also recommended by Ani-Gamers editor Evan "Vampt Vo" Minto.

See Also:

• Baccano! Anime Secret Santa Review (2010)
• Baccano! review (2008)

	: "Hmm, I want to watch both Eden of the East and Baccano! - what to do?"
	: "Hey, Hey Elliot!"
	: "What's that?"
	: "Hey there!"
	: "What the?"
	: "Hey there, Elliot, we think you should watch Baccano!. That would be for the best."
	: "Why?"
	: "Well, look how happy we are! Don't you want to find out why we are happy, and be happy yourself?"
	: "I guess..."
	: "Do it!"
	: "Agh! Okay, okay."
	: "Excellent....."

It went something like that. What I present here is more something of a trip report than a full review.

Now onto the show itself. Having watched the main 13 episode series, I have come to regard Baccano! as a series of victories and small wonders, furnishing the viewer with a massively entertaining show that manages to satisfy without outstaying its welcome or stretching too far.

I will admit that until sitting down and watching it I have avoided all discussion or reviews of Baccano! (Including the Ani-Gamers review) as whenever someone has mentioned the show they have taken pains to point out that almost anything is a spoiler when it comes to the shows twisting plotline. I even avoided reading the synopsis on the back of the DVD set before watching. (I'm glad I didn't—whoever wrote the one on the Manga UK DVD set appears to have been drunk.)

To outline the show: set primarily in the early 1930s, Baccano! follows the exploits of a wide range of characters in both Manhattan and the transcontinental express train "The Flying Pussyfoot" as they all go about their personal business. The narrative jumps between different time periods and different characters with such frequency that the show's creators saw fit to make much of the first episode a primer for what is to follow. For most of this episode, Norio Wakamoto (with full R-rolling in effect) and his assistant prepare the viewer by discussing in a broad sense the different time periods, settings and characters that you are going to spend the following 12 episodes with, as well as showing the viewer some juicy snippets of what is to come.

This initially flummoxing first episode nearly turned me off of the show. It felt like a warning, telling me "Hey, if you aren't down with whatâs going on now maybe you should just give up and put this back on your shelf. Oh, here is a quick cut of a young boy getting shot in the head. Bet you're interested now, eh?" Then, at the end of the episode something awesome happens (that I won't spoil) and I was hooked.

To cut to the chase, the plotting works marvelously. The highest praise I can lavish on Baccano! is that even with all the switching of character, time period and setting, the entire plotline comes together into a coherent whole that is massively satisfying, like watching a good detective story. The timing and placement of character and time zone transitions feels meticulously thought out and perfectly judged to maintain viewer interest without causing confusion or irritation. When transitioning between different time periods the show will throw up a black static image with the year that the following events take place in - the genius of these cuts are that they act as welcome breathing spaces in the action, heightening tension. The presentation reminds me an awful lot of the Guy Ritchie film Snatch (2000), which also uses multiple viewpoints to weave together a coherent and thrilling tale. I was worried towards the end that Baccano! would contract a fatal case of "Dumb Anime Ending" syndrome, but I was proven completely and wonderfully wrong. The ending was not bombastic or laden with sudden twists, but was immensely satisfying and ties the disparate plotlines up wonderfully.

The characters themselves also do a lot of the lifting when it comes to drawing you into the story, in part because there are so damn many of them but also because they are genuinely interesting. One particular character is called Jacuzzi Splot, and when I first saw him, i hated his guts. He had a dumb tattoo, a whiny voice, and a melancholy outlook on life. His one redeeming feature was that listening to Japanese voice actors try and pronounce "Jacuzzi" was endlessly amusing. But after a few appearances I began to root for the guy as his development on screen was so engaging and interesting to watch. This happens a lot with the characters â you might not like them, but you come to understand them through their actions. I can honestly say that Baccano! is one of the few shows that have had me rooting for a mass murderer. Multiple mass murderers, in fact.

Not only are the characters interesting because of their actions, but they also look great. Everyone is stylishly drawn and with a great deal of care, something that really helps out not only in learning names but also in deciphering expressions and intentions of the cast and helping you connect with them. This ability to empathize with the characters really pulls you in, and I feel is best outlined by two of its best characters, Isaac and Miria. I love these two, so very much. Isaac and Miria are a pair of loud, boisterous, idiotic and immensely lucky thieves and the fact that they feel like believable characters while acting in such an absurd manner for their entire time on screen is a credit to the series. They are used just the right amount â too little and they would become a throwaway gimmick, too much and they would take over the show and ruin the magic.

I mentioned that the characters were stylish before. In fact the whole series is damn stylish. Every character, backdrop and action has style in spades. What makes this work is that the style is completely cohesive and well thought out to work as a single whole experience: no sudden SHAFT-style insanity, no winks at the camera, no snickering to itself behind the stage curtains. Every element presented on screen has a purpose and it was put there to contribute directly towards viewer enjoyment, drawing you into a coherent world that has a tangible feeling of authenticity to it.

To sum up my thoughts on Baccano!, after the end of the 13th episode in my third non-stop viewing session, I stood up to retrieve the DVD from the disc tray and thought to myself: "Wow. That was really enjoyable. I wish more things were made this well." I only regret I waited until I had to be pushed by Santa to actually sit down and watch it!

[Highly Recommended]

This review is based on the Manga UK DVD box set, purchased by the reviewer.

While the overall presentation of said story is awash with harem elements, the main conflict of the story, pacifism in the midst of battle, is aptly personified via the assignment of Saber to Shirō. Furthermore, implications are deepened via the introduction of Shirō's inability, caused by his lack of study in magic, to make Saber properly materialize. Thus Emiya and Saber, respectively as magus and servant, portray two incomplete parts that leverage each other to form a whole in the hopes of competently fighting against multiple pairs of complementary wholes. This setup is rife for conflicts, and the execution does right by exploring the main theme of action vs. inaction. However, the weaving of romantic tension turns too many scenes into boring and (for the most part) inconsequential harem tropes.

That's not to say that romantic tension doesn't serve some purpose. Rather, the execution of its repeated influence only weakens the story. I'd maintain there are two instances of romantic tension aptly serving the story: that of Emiya's falling for Saber and Rin's unexplainable interest in Emiya. While the latter only serves as a reason why a fellow magus would not kill, and instead might even protect, a competitor, Emiya's falling for Saber further lends credence to why he constantly puts his life on the line for what he views as his responsibility. Really, there's an essay waiting to be written on Emiya and Saber, and that fact alone makes the anime a worthwhile watch, but other aspects deserved to be touched upon as well. Art in Fate/Stay Night is standard fare but of above average quality (budget). Really, its only fault would be the showcasing of CG alchemic circles, the animation of which seems a little too out of place. Fight scenes are well orchestrated and, for the most part, fully animated, and the overall ambience is set rather perfectly. Deep hues of night, the only time during which combat is permitted, are foreboding and bloodthirsty, while days offer a palate more complimentary to the harem walls and the associated tension break. Character designs are also quite Romantic, especially concerning the servants' attire/armor.

Writing is a tad overly dramatic, except, surprisingly, for the harem aspects. Instead, I found myself actually liking how statements by the majority of the female characters never (or rarely) said anything directly. In retrospect, I also greatly enjoyed the underlying and understated theme of regret that manifests not only within the warriors throughout the series but which also resonates as the drive behind the warriors – each a mythical figure of ancient origin.

If you have time to kill, there are far worse anime to help you pull the trigger. It's pretty, the pacing of the main plot is quick, and general subtext is nothing that requires much thought. There is even decent potential as fodder for analysis, which is surprising given the series' origin as an “eroge” (erotic game). What I can only guess to be a successful anime translation (best to ask Elliot Page) manages to eliminate all hentai aspects, save the annoyingly omnipresent harem elements (beware the first half of the date episode!!!), and deliver an enjoyable watch akin to a more grown-up Zatch Bell (2003).

[Recommended]

This review is based on rental copies obtained via the reviewer's personal Netflix account.

Boy Meets Manga

My introduction to One Piece hardly has any of the nostalgic glory of old-time anime fans' origin stories, as it starts sometime in 2003 or so (right in the heart of the mid-2000s manga boom). One of my middle school teachers passed out a Scholastic book catalog, and in it, glaring at me with all his silly intensity, was Yugi Moto from Yu-Gi-Oh! It was an issue of Viz's Shonen Jump, on sale in my school's catalog!

Naturally, after my experience with these cool Japanese cartoons on Cartoon Network's Toonami block (a frequent stepping stone for mid-'90s anime fans), I was excited to get my hands on the mysterious black-and-white comic book versions of the stories. Though I was hardly a fan of Yu-Gi-Oh! as a series, I was instantly hooked by two manga running in the magazine: Naruto and One Piece. They particularly grabbed me because I had never seen anime versions of them, unlike most of the titles in Shonen Jump.

Shortly after my first time reading One Piece (somewhere in the middle of Volume 2's Buggy Arc), I scrambled to pick up as much manga as I could get my hands on. I picked up the first two volumes of the terrible .Hack//Legend of the Twilight and received One Piece Volume 2 for my birthday. And with that, I was officially a fan of rubber-man Monkey D. Luffy and his crew of oddball pirates.

As a child of the Dragon Ball Z generation, I really felt a connection to Oda's Toriyama-inspired characters, stories, artwork, and sense of humor. Everything in One Piece, from the fights to the characters' dreams, is exaggerated, filled with a passion unparalleled by the actions of real people. For a wide-eyed middle school kid, new to the vast world of anime and manga lurking under the Toonami-glazed surface, Oda's powerfully kinetic yet inherently accessible work was just the kind of thing to propel me into full-fledged fandom.

And propel me it did! 2004, the year that marked my post-One Piece anime/manga obsession, also marked the creation of an overly ambitious little anime fan site called Anime Paradise, which would later become the Ani-Gamers you see today.

Boy Leaves Manga

It's pretty clear at this point that One Piece is one of the defining works of my personal manga fandom, but why did I stop reading it after all the passion I had invested into it? It's very simple, actually.

At AnimeNEXT 2008, I pushed my way to the nearest manga vendor and started rifling through the books on the table. As I had done for the past few years, I picked up the latest volume of One Piece (14 in this case) and got ready to buy it. But then it hit me. Looking at the volumes on the table, I took note of the books that I would then have to buy after Volume 14. I thought it over in my head — "One Piece isn't even finished yet in Japan, let alone in the US. Heck, I don't even know when this Baroque Works Arc is going to end. It could be ten more volumes for all I know!"

So, on that day, I made the fateful decision, on behalf of my wallet, to stop buying One Piece. Of course, since I am strongly opposed to manga piracy (har har), reading it online is out of the question, so that means I effectively decided to stop reading the series, period. Since then, Viz Media's American run of One Piece has reached 55 volumes, and it still hasn't ended in Japan. After re-reading the volumes I bought years ago, I really miss the Straw Hat Pirates and all their crazy adventures, but the prospect of restarting my collection is a daunting one.

Indeed, that's the ultimate tragedy of the paying fan of any long-running, ongoing manga series; continued dedication to your favorite story requires an inordinate amount of money and shelf space. Nevertheless, the boundless motivation of Luffy and his comrades serves as a reminder of the importance of doing what you love, regardless of the obstacles in front of you. Who knows? Maybe one day I'll finally follow Oda's wisdom, pick up One Piece Volume 14, and start this old journey up once again.

• Check out the rest of this month's One Piece-themed Manga Moveable Feast posts!
• Read Matt Blind's explanation of the Manga Moveable Feast

First of all, we are told very few solid details about about Yotsuba’s origin, and even her father is rather sketchy on the particulars. We know she is an orphan (as outlined in Chapter 6), but when pressed for details her dad tells us that he “met her while overseas, and just kinda started looking after her”. Fuuka fills in for the reader here by admitting that she doesn't really understand, but then something much more interesting happens (a thunderstorm) and the topic is dropped as Yotsuba runs outside to play in the rain. The main theory paraded around about this can be seen in a well distributed piece of fan-art that shows Yotsuba as a ragged orphan in a war-torn country. Whether this is anywhere near the truth, or even if there is a canon answer, is unknown.

We don't even know for sure what Yotsuba’s age is, and she and her adoptive father even have a confused conversation about it when buying a bike. Any mention of a mother goes right over Yotsuba’s head without comment, and the manga then typically shifts to a different and much more fun topic. It is refreshing to have a character without any parental issues present in their personality, and this makes it a lot easier to relate to the nostalgia present in Yotsuba&!. After all, no one wants to be reminded of the bad stuff in a whimsical tale.

Linking in with her origin is Yotsuba’s appearance. Many characters, especially incidental ones, question whether she is a foreigner upon first meeting her, a not unexpected reaction given what little we know of her origins, and also how she acts. There is an additional reason as well — her trademark green four-pigtailed hair. While crazily colored hair is nothing new in anime or manga, the world of Yotsuba&! is grounded in real life, and no one else has their hair in such an outlandish hue or style. Characters even marvel at the bizarre style, further re-enforcing how much the energetic little girl differs from the norm.

Then there are the more mundane, common sense reasons that make Yotsuba stand out. She never tires of looking for adventure each and every day, is enthusiastic about absolutely everything, and is for the most part impeccably behaved apart from the odd, endearing, and quickly forgiven mischief . Yotsuba is the perfect little friend to explore the world with, a fountain of endless curiosity and enthusiasm that makes the world a better place. Even her tantrums are (mostly) well founded, in stark contrast to normal children. (I remember being a selfish little brat myself when I was five-ish.)

Yotsuba is an outsider in her own manga, and it is because of this that the reader never gets sick of her antics. We don't know much about her, and don’t care to find out beyond the basics presented as it may disrupt the warm fuzzy feeling that the manga provides. Hell, what if Kiyohiko Azuma went crazy one day and decided that Yotsuba’s origin is that she is a 1,000-year-old vampire stuck in a tiny body? All the fun would leave the title faster than air out of a popped balloon.

Knowing nothing about Yotsuba lets us get on with the very important business of enjoying her company in her magical, whimsical adventures full of cardboard robots powered by money and flower cupids. It’s much better this way.

Instead of being some randomly instituted loli ratings booster, Kikuri turns out to be a poignant addition to the Hell Correspondents. More or less the embodiment of the will of their master, Kikuri's antics grow from passive-aggressive playfulness into full-blown antagonism. While there seems to be no reason to her actions in the first collection, her actions in HGTM C2 serve to spur on the vengeful to supply Ai with more work and hell with more souls. This makes Kikuri the foil to Ai’s wavering commitment to consigning souls to hell.

Speaking of which, damnation starts to get its Dante back in episode 15 but abandons it until regaining those progressive tracks of surrealistic comeuppances in episodes 19 and 21. When ironic tortures are not applied, the very ferry to hell is used to illustrate the nature of the damned. It is the return of these sequences as well as the return of stories that concern people who actually have serious problems that give more meat to these episodes than those of the first collection, but the morality and circumstantial twists lend to something greater.

Just as the strength of season one lies in the threaded plot that develops from reporter Hajime Shibata’s investigation into Hell Girl’s consignments, HGTM C2 uses Detective Meshiai’s investigation into the rash of disappearances attributed to “devil’s child” Takuma (episodes 14 and 22–26) to define its purpose. These episodes, so well done that they bring to mind The Twilight Zone’s “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street,” make HGTM C2 about Ai Enma bucking the proverbial system by standing up for one person undeservingly sentenced to hell, just as she had been sentenced to death. This parallels the first season, where Ai breaks the rules to release her pent-up fury and avenge herself through the direct descendants of the same traitorous bloodline responsible for her unwilling sacrifice and accursed death.

HGTM C2 succeeds in tying the previous collection’s seemingly flippant content into a story both poignant and well orchestrated. While its skill at enhancing supporting characters is questionable, the collection further rounds out Ai Enma and more importantly restores faith in the series’ signature bite while using it to accomplish something new. Instead of being pushed to the breaking point by hate as in the first season, the Hell Correspondents are broken by the conflict between mercy and their cursed duty. Taken by itself, HGTM C2 is a change of course for the series that seems to be tackled with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. However, this collection shows its strength by knowing how to effectively leverage similar and contrasting content from pasts both distant and recent.

[Highly Recommended]

This review is based on a Sentai Filmworks DVD set purchased by the reviewer.

Now, onto the anthology itself. The file size is rather dinky (9 MB, to be exact). While this is great for quick downloading on the move, the image quality suffers from this small size as zooming in even a little on the pages makes image compression readily visible. The size of the images that make up the anthology are rather small, resulting in massive margins around the pages on the iPad and noticeable amounts of unused space even on the smaller iPhone. This fact, combined with the previously mentioned issue of being unable to turn pages while zoomed in, makes reading the magazine a chore.

Another much more irritating issue is that both the translation and the editing feel lazy. The former is at least functional despite its poor use of punctuation, but the typesetting of the dialogue and sound effects feels very poorly handled and is detrimental to enjoyment of the magazine. All the text is presented plainly, sound effects outside of speech bubbles are untranslated and there is nothing to differentiate between sound effects and dialogue that are placed inside bubbles. The actual presentation of the content feels like an afterthought.

But what about this content then?

Quadrifoglio 2 (By Takeshi Okamoto)

The longest of the individual contributions, Quadriofoglio follows the genius mechanic Yotsuba (no relation to the adorable character from the manga of the same name) as she joins a university car racing club and helps out at her family garage. I must admit I had severe flashbacks to Initial D while reading this due to the very impressive, photo-realistic drawings of the cars, and thankfully the people didn't look half bad either and were an engaging bunch to read about. The main problem I have with the series is a lack of any feeling of motion either within or between the separate panels, making it feel more like a series of stills than an ongoing, unfolding drama. In a manga about things that go “Vrooom!” around a track very fast this saps some of the fun out of it. Still, it’s a fun read and I would be I happy to see how it develops in further chapters. Searching for information of its predecessor (Quadrifoglio) has left me empty-handed, sadly.

Kurogane (By Nanami Shizika)

So, let me outline the premise here: loser guy meets hot dense girl out of nowhere and has to live with her, and she inexplicably likes him. If you just passed out as a result of how generic that sounds, then you know how I felt reading it. The series even ticks the additional otaku bait box of having a trap turn up in the first 10 pages. Sadly the clunky translation hurts this series, making the main expository pages of this chapter read like a garbled mess and so I’m not sure if the premise has anything going for it. The art looks serviceable enough (especially the breasts of the main female character), but in general the whole package is woefully forgettable. It does however have the best sound effect in the anthology: "Hug!!" Two exclamation marks! Wowzah.

Nobunagirl (By Taro Matsumoto)

Time for brutal honesty: Nobunagirl has terrible, awful art and is hard to take seriously. Both lineart and shading are all over the place and panels that should be badass inspire more laughter than awe. The plot jumps from a demon infested Warring States era featuring Oda Nobunaga into an even weirder sci-fi setting which has very little thought or care put into it. The last panel is so bizarre it has to be seen to be believed: a young girl riding on the back of a terribly drawn ripoff of the alien from ... Alien (1979). I think I uttered "Are you serious?" while reading it. Skip this.

Kago Mania (By Shintaro Kago)

For me, the promise of content from the surreal mind of Shintaro Kago (who is called a "fantastic idea cartoonist" in his own bio) was the "killer app" that pushed me over the edge when buying this anthology. Imagine my surprise when the content supplied had much higher quality drawings than his usual fare, but then also imagine my disappointment when I discovered that he had only four pages in the magazine! Each page is a single, full-page image of a surreal idea given flight, and while I enjoyed them, it was all over too soon. What a shame.

Overall, I feel conflicted about Comicloud. While I love the idea and dearly wish for it to find an audience, the content just isn't there yet. Over half of the 80 pages delivered are skippable and the rest feel cheapened by the small image size and poor typesetting.

Personally I am looking forward to the next few issues to see how the magazine develops, and hope that the hard work and enthusiasm that the editors clearly have for their product pays off.

[Bad]

This review is based on the Kindle release, purchased by the reviewer.

There is little that can be done now but wait for an official report out of Japan, but if this news turns out to be true, it represents a powerful blow to the anime industry. Rest assured, Ani-Gamers will keep on top of this emerging story and update this post as more information surfaces.

Ignoring the ambiguity of said child’s presence, HGTM rolls along with the same premise instituted in the first season: people want revenge, go to a rumored website, and summon the hell correspondents to get rid of the antagonist. Unfortunately, the latter happens all too hastily and almost entirely without the surrealist imagination of the first series. Then the protagonists get a nifty tattoo to show that they are damned to hell for their decisive actions over which they’ve anguished. My main issue with season one was that the formula used in episode after episode — people pushed to the brink of sanity, upon which ledge they damn their tormentors and selves to hell — only began to be played with in terms of sequence and morality towards the very end of the series. HGTM definitely continues to play with sequencing and morality, but most of the time the attempts are gratuitous or superfluous.

This time-trickery also does something far more detrimental to the series — it takes away the building of truly tormented characters that made the first season so much fun to watch and justified viewer sympathy. Of course the reason behind not getting to know many of the episodic characters in the first 13 stories of HGTM is to showcase their unjust or frivolous use of the hell correspondents. Such are the protagonists' motivations that, in the end, most feel totally unidentifiable or unsympathetic (sometimes more sympathy is felt for the hell correspondents for having to put up with such summoners, which is more the point). Maybe this is karmic retribution for their taking more active roles in season two (CSI: Hell on Earth) versus their behind-the-scenes role as divine sword of justice from season one, but either way the hell correspondents remain flat despite their foray into the spotlight, which only serves to make their attempted breakthrough naught but arduous viewing that detracts from the vignettes which make the series.

FUNimation picked up the original Hell Girl, and its failure to pick up the second season might be saying something. It definitely says there’s no dub support — a shame given the great dub of the first season. The Japanese voice cast is fantastic though, so there are no real audio drawbacks, and the background music is as divinely chosen as ever. Also, the original season one DVD releases came with a bunch of cool extras, including some live-action Hell Girl re-imaginings, but Sentai Filmworks’ Two Mirrors discs offer only the standard trailers and opening/closing credit options, an unfortunate choice given the new direction this season is obviously taking. Would director interviews or commentary really be too much to ask?

Overall, I’d have to say this is worth checking out from Netflix or streaming. If nothing else, it highlights the merits of the original series by comparison and just might have something good going for itself somewhere further down the line.

[Recommended]

This review is based on the Sentai Filmworks DVD release of the series, purchased by the reviewer.

On the topic of omitting grit, Gankutsuou skips Dumas's entire set of introductory chapters, which serve to construct the tragic back-story of the mysterious, fantastically wealthy Count of Monte Cristo. Instead, scriptwriters Natsuko Takahashi (Fullmetal Alchemist, Romeo X Juliet) and Tomohiro Yamashita (Afro Samurai, Red Garden) drop us into the Carnivale on Luna, a strikingly science-fictiony replacement for the original setting of Rome. As if the book purist in me wasn't already crying out at the omission of Edmond Dantes’s/Monte Cristo's unjust 15-year imprisonment, giant CGI blimps and reveling space colonists seem to state immediately that this is not Dumas's original (and, very importantly, that it is not trying to be).

The switch in the starting point, however, actually serves to set up the first of many important narrative shifts; the focus of the story is transferred from the Count of Monte Cristo to the anime's new protagonist, Viscount Albert de Morcerf (who plays an important role as a side character in the novel). While partying on Luna with his best buddy Franz d'Epinay, Albert finds himself in trouble with bandits, only to be saved by the Count. Before long he becomes close friends with the rich aristocrat, who ends up living in Paris, forging bonds with many of the most influential families in the city (including Albert's).

But as tragedy befalls Albert's friends, acquaintances, and enemies, it becomes clear that something sinister is afoot. Some see the Count as a prime suspect, but Albert cannot believe that the man who once saved his life would be out to cause harm to him or any of his friends.

The true strength of director Mahiro Maeda's (Blue Sub Six, "Second Rennaisance" portion of Animatrix) retelling lies not in simple translation. He might miss essential pieces of what Dumas was trying to say, but through these changes he creates an entirely new story, rooted in the basics of the original but not necessarily tied down to its themes or messages. Indeed, this contemporary version of The Count of Monte Cristo has its own moments of storytelling and aesthetic brilliance. Textile designer/digital director Yasufumi Soejima (Last Exile, Ristorante Paradiso) captures the opulence of Parisian aristocratic life using a fascinating and unique visual technique involving brightly colored textures that seem to remain stationary as the characters and objects they are attached to move around the frame. The effect is disorienting at first, but it lends the series a distinctive air of gaudiness that suits the setting. Meanwhile, the Count himself is the most striking image of the entire anime, with his almost vampiric blue face, pointed ears, and protruding canines. In the novel he is described as being so intriguing that he is the center of attention whenever he enters a room, so it is impressive that character designer Hidenori Matsubara (Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040, Sakura Wars) was able to maintain this feature while not adhering strictly to Dumas's other descriptors.

Unfortunately, Gankutsuou's anime trappings don't always work to its advantage, especially when it comes to an overuse of exposition. The original Count of Monte Cristo revels in its mystique, never making an explicit connection between the Count and Edmond Dantes (nor with his own revenge plot) until the novel's final act. In Gonzo's version, the connection is made within the first episode, and though Albert is given an incredibly wide swath of incriminating information regarding the Count, it takes him around 20 episodes to finally discover the (then quite obvious) truth. Admittedly this kind of exposition is necessary due to the omission of Dantes's back-story, but it doesn't make the dramatic irony any less frustrating.

Geneon's dub doesn't exactly help matters either, with Johnny Yong Bosch's predictably overwrought performance adding a bit more intensity than necessary to Albert's character. The Count, however, finds a quietly sinister portrayal in Jamieson Price, one that I would even say fits Dumas's original version of the character. Backing up Bosch's occasionally effective performance is Ezra Weisz, mucking up nearly all of Franz's lines with mood-crushing wooden acting. Luckily, he's one of the few stinkers in the cast, but that doesn't diminish the damage Franz does to the dub version every time he's on screen.

Gankutsuou's most effective moments come when Dumas and Maeda's sensibilities play off of each other. A scene of a girl suffering from poison, lit only by lightning bolts, expresses Dumas's supreme melodrama with a profound visual language not available to the author. Even scenes with sweeping changes, such as the aftermath of the duel near the end of the series, carry emotional weight thanks to Maeda's choice to continually compound his own calamitous plot threads and Dumas's own acute sense of tragedy.

At its best, Gankutsuou can produce just such moments of silent collaboration between Maeda and Dumas, but in between the high points are scenes of bland anime exposition and maddening, poorly executed dramatic irony. Through it all, the series maintains a quick pace, fueled in part by Takahashi and Yamashita's propensity for cliffhanger endings in each episode, which pulled me along in much the same way that Sunrise's Code Geass did. This might not be hailed as the kind of timeless classic that its source material is, but Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo is certainly a compelling, firmly above average anime melodrama, not to be missed by any genre aficionados.

[Recommended]

This review is based on a Netflix streaming video version of the series provided by FUNimation and viewed through the reviewer's personal Netflix subscription.

Once the children reach their 14th birthday they are taken unawares for a "Maturity Check", administered by a central computer. The Maturity Check functions as testing and preparation for the child's adult life, with some of the intricacies left unexplained to preserve the mystery of it. Sounds an awful lot like puberty, doesn't it? The main difference is that the Maturity Check doesn't cause hair to suddenly appear in new places, and if anything it makes the characters immaculately drawn hair even more lush. During this enforced coming-of-age the child is told that their childhood was a fabrication produced for the sole purpose of providing them with a healthy emotional background and that their early memories are to be wiped.

This forces an identify crisis onto the children, one which is intended to clear the way for training that will form them into pure subjects willing to work for and perpetuate the Superior Domination Order, with the aim of restoring the now-ravaged planet Earth under the guidance of the Mother Computer.

It is worth noting here that the phrase "Mother Computer" would, at the time that To Terra was written, have sounded utterly outlandish and more than a little disturbing. While computers these days are benign things you have on your desk, in 1977 the microprocessor had only recently been produced, ARPANET was new, and the CRAY-1 supercomputer was the machine to beat. This new technology would surely have had a vague air of magic and threat, and to hand over the most basic of human interactions — the creation and care of children — to such constructs would feel abhorrent.

Firstly, I want to focus on those characters in the story who I believe most closely mirror how "normal" people such as you or I would react in the SD system: Seki and Sam. Both undergo the typical SD upbringing and we meet them early on in the story as classmates of Keith Anyan on a educational station having recently undergone the Maturity Check.

Seki is an intelligent child, though he is earmarked for greatness and is prideful and arrogant as a result. He is emotionally sensitive and coupled with his outspoken distaste of the SD order he is considered a troublemaker and, even worse, a potential telepath. The source of his discontent is very basic and understandable; Seki resents the SD system for stripping him of his childhood, clinging onto the angelic memory of his mother despite knowing it was a fabrication. This grief accelerates Seki's frustration with his situation playing second fiddle to Keith and causes him to act in an increasingly impulsive manner to try and assert himself as an individual and to validate his upbringing. These actions spiral out of control, eventually leading to his death. For being intelligent and sensitive, the SD order drove Seki to self-destruction, wasting a potentially world-altering person due to its deception.

On the other end of the spectrum, Sam is dead average. He squeaks passes in his exams, neither dissents or swears by the regime that produced him, and doesn't sweat the small stuff. His main responsibility is to his friends, and sticks by Keith through thick and thin. An upstanding citizen, he graduates with average grades and takes a job as a space trucker, something that sounds even more boring than normal truck driving. Through this job he comes to meet the Mu and in particular the main protagonist Jomy, who he was childhood friends with. Faced with a filthy telepath, Sam acts upon the information that the computer education has drilled into him and freaks the hell out, attacking Jomy in a fit of primal fear. Jomy is horrified how his old friend has been warped and over-reacts, causing a massive explosion and injuring Sam.

We are later re-introduced to Sam and find out that this encounter has left him crippled at a mental age of 14. All the ingrained fear is gone, replaced by a much more carefree outlook. While this may be a bit of a stretch, I believe that this shows that the overbearing influence of the Maturity Check, illustrating that the computer education had left Sam without the mental tools to cope with adult life. The shock encounter caused him to revert to a simpler time without the choking influence that had warped him into a form so horrifying to Jomy.

Jomy, the main protagonist of the story, also goes through the normal SD upbringing experienced by Sam and Seki, and like them he is abducted at 14 to undergo the Maturity Check. For him, however, things change when he is rescued by the leader of the Mu and made their new leader. Faced with so much responsibility and hostility from both the SD order and from his own people, it would make sense for Jomy to seek a return to the halcyon days of his youth, even while knowing that it was a fabrication. For the majority of the story he tries to bring happiness to the Mu by creating a stable home for them, free from the overbearing computerized system that hunts them.

Following a major tragedy Jomy finally heeds his predecessors’ imperative to bring the Mu to their homeland of Terra and to destroy the computer system that is warping humanity.

The first step on this journey is for Jomy to put his own past to rest by attacking his old childhood world and destroying the computer that oversees the Maturity Checks there. It it only with the destruction of that machine that Jomy matures both as a person and a leader, shouldering his burdens and doing what must be done to save. Not just his own people from the oppressive Mother Computer, but humanity as a whole as well.

One of those burdens is Tony, who is the product of the first natural birth among the Mu, and an exceptionally powerful telepath. Brought up with utmost love and care by his mother Carina, he is overcome with grief when she dies. The resulting shock causes him to overreact and accelerate his physical growth in order to be of greater use to Jomy, the young leader who encouraged his birth and whom he now regards as his family. This change makes him as an abrasive, irritable person who is still very much a child emotionally, traits exaggerated by being the cornerstone of the Mu military due to his immense psychic power. This combination of personality and ability causes Tony and the few others like him in the Mu population to be treated as outcasts. They eventually leave the Mu to begin a dreamlike existence among the stars, having grown up too fast without the grounding to cope with the harsh reality they live in.

Finally, there is Keith Anyan, who is perhaps the most interesting of all of the characters in To Terra. Keith is the result of a more advanced version of the SD program — he is engineered to have a theoretically perfect genome and grown in a tank until 16 under the direct care and attention of the educational computer. He cannot recall his childhood, something which sets him apart from his school friends, and when he discovers the truth there is an initial shock at the confirmation but no great change or revelation takes place. This is, in my mind, because there is no subterfuge involved. Instead of having an illusionary childhood life stripped from him, Keith is left to ponder his existence as someone created for the express purpose of leading the SD order. While he does follow orders of the computer, Keith develops throughout adulthood, free of any anxiety or doubts lingering in his mind about his origins. In the end, it could be argued that Keith has the fewest issues with his childhood, primarily because he did not have one in the strict sense, and he had no other alternative but to adjust to his circumstances. He spends a large amount of time reflecting on the people he has met throughout his life, allowing these events to affect him rather than being a prisoner to his childhood and the computer overlords that he starts to question as time carries on.

With all this out of the way, what was Keiko Takamiya trying to say? I submit that the message is that there should be no lies in childhood, as this only causes mal-adjustment and traps people in a cycle of trying to reconcile reality with what they experienced and viewed as fact, thus stunting their development. In this story the computers are one thing used to provide and enforce this lie, but they could be swapped out for any real-life examples that you care to produce, such as an overbearing Nationalistic agenda. Even now, many years after publication, this message feels very relevant and lacking in due consideration, making the series all the more important to read and reflect on.

It's actually rather surprising to see such simplicity in a manga serialized in a seinen (men's) magazine, Weekly Morning, but as with many cutesy seinen titles such as Yotsuba&!, the manga is actually much more attractive to American children than it is to American men. Pursuant to this, Vertical's translation keeps the dialogue brief and easily comprehensible, while the intentional lack of detail in the art breaks with seinen's American reputation as being (sometimes indecipherably) detail-heavy. What's more, the book has only full-color pages, painted in beautiful, subdued pastel colors, which are sure to entice young readers looking for something more flashy than the typical black-and-white manga aesthetic.

On that note, Chi's design is easily the most important piece of art in the entire book, and it certainly gets the job done — and then some. Her saucer plate eyes and giant triangular mouth express a childlike excitement over even the simplest of everyday delights, and it can be hard to not imagine her screaming at the top of her lungs and smiling every time she gets excited. (By the way, this is coming from someone who has never seen the anime and thus doesn't have a preconceived voice for Chi.) Believe me, I didn't think that I would enjoy it, but I really took to Chi and the rest of the family after a few chapters.

Still, I feel like the comedy — if you can even call it comedy per se — might wear a little thin if the later volumes don't introduce any major new developments. After all, I don't really think that a picture of a cute kitten getting excited can remain very interesting for very long.

The chapters range in length, though they are typically much shorter than the average manga chapter, and some even come in at around five or six pages. Given such brevity of storytelling, it would almost seem like the story is built for the 4-koma (four-panel) format, but Kanata manages to tell a short, charming story in every chapter while maintaining the flow of a full-page manga layout.

As I mentioned before, Chi's Sweet Home doesn't really feel like a men's title in an American context, but it's actually a genuinely fun little book for children or cat lovers of all ages. Of course, I wasn't satisfied with simply guessing at the right audience for the book, so I let my 12-year-old sister read it to get a feel for what she thought of it. Within an hour she had read the entire thing, and claimed that she would actually buy the second volume if she saw it in a store (even after I informed her of the slightly high $13.95 price point).

To be clear, Chi's Sweet Home is not for everyone, but when put in front of the right eyes, it's an absolute joy. Kanata has crafted a simple yet charming mix of visual comedy, cute animal shenanigans, and great art that can manage to evoke quite a few chuckles, even from this jaded manga reader.

[Recommended]

This review is based on a promotional copy of the graphic novel, kindly provided by the publisher, Vertical, Inc.

Activision Publishing, Inc.
• DJ Hero® 3D
AQ INTERACTIVE
• cubic ninja
ATLUS
• Etrian Odyssey
• Shin Megami Tensei
• Shin Megami Tensei: Persona
• Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor
Capcom
• RESIDENT EVIL® REVELATIONS
• SUPER STREET FIGHTER IV 3D Edition (name not final)
Electronic Arts
• FIFA Soccer
• Madden NFL
• The Sims™ 3
Gameloft
• Asphalt GT
Harmonix
• Music game
HUDSON SOFT
• Bomberman franchise
• DECA SPORTS franchise
• KORORINPA franchise
KONAMI
• Baseball franchise
• Contra franchise
• Frogger franchise
• HIDEO KOJIMA’S METAL GEAR SOLID SNAKE EATER 3D “The Naked Sample”
• PRO EVOLUTION SOCCER franchise
• WINNING ELEVEN franchise
LEVEL-5
• Professor Layton and the Mask of Miracle (name not final)
Majesco Entertainment
• BloodRayne: The Shroud
• A Boy and His Blob
• Face Racers: Photo Finish
• Lion’s Pride: Adventures on the Serengeti
• Martha Stewart
• WonderWorld Amusement Park
• Marvelous Entertainment BOKUJYOUMONOGATARI 3D (name not final)
NAMCO BANDAI Games
• Dragon Ball® franchise (name not final)
• Gundam® franchise (name not final)
• PAC-MAN™ & GALAGA™ (name not final)
• RIDGE RACER® (name not final)
• Super Robot franchise (name not final)
Nintendo
• Animal Crossing™
• Kid Icarus™: Uprising
• Mario Kart™
• nintendogs™ + cats
• Paper Mario™
• PilotWings Resort™
• Star Fox 64™ 3D
• Steel Diver™
• ROCKET Crash-City GP
• VS-robo
SEGA
• Sonic (name not final)
• Super Monkey Ball (name not final)
SQUARE ENIX
• CODENAME: Chocobo Racing® 3D
• DRAGON QUEST® franchise
• FINAL FANTASY® franchise
• KINGDOM HEARTS franchise
Take-Two Interactive
• Carnival Games® franchise
TECMO KOEI GAMES
• DEAD OR ALIVE® 3D (name not final)
• DYNASTY WARRIORS® (name not final)
• NINJA GAIDEN® (name not final)
• SAMURAI WARRIORS® 3D (name not final)
TOMY
• LOVELY LISA 3D
• NARUTO SHIPPUDEN ACTION
THQ
• de Blob 2
• Kung Fu Panda Kaboom of Doom
• Marvel Super Hero Squad Infinity Gauntlet
• The Penguins of Madagascar
• Puss N Boots
• Saints Row: Drive-By
Ubisoft
• Assassin’s Creed™ Lost Legacy
• Battle of Giants™: Dinosaur Strike
• Driver® Renegade
• Hollywood 61 (name not final)
• Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon™
• Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Chaos Theory™
Warner Bros
• Batman franchise
• LEGO franchise

CLICK HERE to read the original list. (PDF format)

For more news and commentary out of E3 2010, check back with our E3 2010 label page.

But all of that changes when Shiro meets a girl named Riquinni Nonderaiko on a street corner as she hands out pamphlets about her religion, begging people to believe in God during these turbulent times. After discussing space travel and what it might feel like to leave the sins of Earth behind, Shiro is inspired to volunteer as the world's first astronaut. Unfortunately, as the rocket nears completion, the government begins to twist the original intentions of the project, attempting to use it to start a war with a rival nation.

Wings of Honneamise consistently ranks among one of the most beloved classic films in anime history — to the point that Bandai Entertainment America's top-quality DVD label is called "Honneamise." It's not a surprising position to hold, since the film is definitely a very poignant rumination on humanity and our relationship with technology and each other. Unfortunately, Honneamise is also the first major project from a brand-new studio, and it shows.

Now Gainax has always been known for their acute sense of aesthetics, and Honneamise is no exception. Despite the fact that this was their first project, the cityscapes and visions of civil unrest are at times comparable to scenes from Akira (1988), a film that was released a year later by the larger, more established Tokyo Movie Shinsha. When nothing exciting is happening on screen, there can be a noticeable drop in the framerate, but whenever an exquisitely animated piece of technology shows up, it's hard not to pick up on the love that the animators put into this project.

Such an attitude carries over to nearly every facet of this film. It is, without a doubt, a sci-fi flick made by fans for fans, with its lingering shots of engines and planes, and meticulously thought-out alternate universe (spoons are triangular, books open upwards, etc.). An unfortunate symptom of this inordinate time spent on presentation is that Honneamise is just too slow. It plods along, throwing some genuinely funny little moments between Shiro and his friends, but rarely shows anything — besides a botched assassination attempt — that gets the blood pumping.

Nevertheless, once it all comes to its powerful climax during the launch sequence, the entire first part of the movie is forgotten. This is what everybody has been waiting for — the characters, the audience, and yes, even the animators. The launch has a feeling of release, as the dreams of not only Shiro and Riquinni, but also humanity itself, are fulfilled. It’s a soaring, achingly beautiful climax, reminiscent in certain ways of many of Hayao Miyazaki’s most brilliant flying scenes. (1992's Porco Rosso being the most immediate comparison.)

In that moment, Honneamise is a surprisingly powerful film. If you ever dreamed of going to space as a kid, dreamed of staring back at Earth from hundreds of miles above the surface, Honneamise is a movie that is built for you. It is made by people who feel a childlike excitement at the thought of space travel, and their love for the subject shines through in every line of dialogue and every cel of animation. While not always a confirmation of technical skill or directorial vision, Wings of Honneamise stands among the few animated films that truly deserve the cliché of being called “triumphs of the imagination.”

[Recommended]

This review is based on a DVD borrowed from the Rensselaer Sci-Fi Assn. anime library.

Related Links:

• Gerald Rathkolb's review of the film on the Anime World Order podcast
• Jeff Tatarek's Wings of Honneamise AMV, featuring Pink Floyd's "Learning To Fly"