The Search Continues On: Blake (Kind of) Makes Another List

So as many of you know, summer for me has consisted of sitting around and not doing a whole lot except watching shows, playing games, and reading. Earlier today I was reminded of this post that I made a bit over a year ago now (as a fun note, my prediction of Pluto being the second manga series I'd own came true). Probably because I had to initially make a list to write that post, since then I have actually been keeping an up-to-date list of everything Japanese I have read or watched. After finishing Soul Eater today, I kind of realized how large this list has grown in the past 13 or so months. What was originally 24 items has now

more than doubled its length to around 54 items, assuming I haven't forgotten anything. So ya, considering I did have things like classes and the occasional social life, way more hours of media consumed than I had consciously realized (considering this doesn't include books and non-Japanese shows...). 

My initial plan was to try and re-do a top ten list, but even just re-glancing at my original list, I realized how ridiculously hard it would be to balance the "classic" top-ten list with new contenders. So rather than attempt this challenge, I have decided to go for the easy-out and just go with a top 10 out of the new items on the list (which starts with Abenobashi on the picture, if you're curious). Here goes nothing.

Book Recommendation! The Long Earth

So essentially I suspect I will be recommending this book to several of you over the course of the next couple days, so rather than type essentially the same thing out multiple times, I figured I'd save time and write it all here.

A couple days ago I started a book I got as a gift (but had I known about it, I probably would have bought it anyway). The book is:

Things Get More Metallic: Mini Review Rampage, Music Edition #4

I think the amount of albums I'm reviewing is exceeding the amount I'm reviewing, if only barely. These will eventually come to a close; I can almost taste the end. But for now, the rampage on your ears continues via the route of your eyes. Revel in the fourth installment of my album reviews.

Artist: Rage Against the Machine

Album: Evil Empire

Genre: Rock (Alternative & Punk)

5-Starred Songs: 3 (out of 11)

As I think I said before in my reviews of Rage Against the Machine, although I don't necessarily identify with the ideas and the mentality behind the music, they can be quite enjoyable in the appropriate mood. With that said, in my personal opinion "Evil Empire" is the weakest album of the 3 released. Although it features some excellent pieces like Revolver and Vietnow the rest of the album is mostly composed of "good but not great" songs. If you like their music style in general I suspect it's on par with their others, but for me a lot of the songs just didn't quite cut it. It's definitely not bad, in any way, but I do think it's the weakest.

A Clash of Cards: A Review/Intro of the Game of Thrones LCG

So I recently was lucky enough to receive a generous gift of the Games of Thrones Living Card game from a friend for Christmas, with the footnote that he wanted to try it out and hear what my impressions were. This post will serve two purposes. The first is that I expect I will be playing the game with a lot of you in the next couple weeks, so I wish to give an overview of how the game functions. The second is to give that review, and my impressions of the game overall.

First then, some background. The game is designed to be played with 4 people, although it has some variants that include 3 or 2 player set-ups. My first full game was, however, played with four people. It consisted of myself, a complete novice to competitive card games, and two MtG veterans, and all of us had never played the GoT LCG before. We played using the four stock decks, no additions or variations, using the standard ruleset. Overall I think it took about 2 hours to play to completion, although a large part of the time was looking up rules, figuring out powers, etc, and I suspect a regular game with people who know what they're doing would take much closer to 1 hour, if not less.

Battle Royale Done Right: A Review of the "Hunger Games" Trilogy

For whatever reason, when Suzanne Collins was gaining national renown for her series "The Hunger Games," I somehow managed to remain completely oblivious and avoid hearing anything about it. Skill, I guess? In fact, I don't think I consciously remembering hearing anything at all till a couple months ago where I heard it was a really good series. I put it out of mind for a while, but then I got  B&N gift card that I decided to spend on two books I knew I wanted (new Discworld and Gaunt's Ghosts :-D) and found myself with $5 unspent. After browsing for quite some time trying to find a cheap book that sounded interesting, I ended up grabbing "The Hunger Games," as in the first book, and decided to wait on picking up the others in the event it was at least half way decent.

The most impressive part of my ignorance, however, was that after reading both the online description and the back cover, it wasn't till months later when I actually started reading the book that it finally hit me what the novel was truly about: a group of teenagers killing each other in an arena. Sound familiar?

I Shan't Forget: A Review of Remember the Name by Pay money To my Pain

For perhaps the first time ever, I ended up listening to a Japanese band and it wasn't because one of their songs was used in an anime I watched (instead it was because of a South Korean SC2 broadcast, but that's another story). Because I feel like I have more to say about this album than others I have listened to, I have decided to pull it out of the mini-review rampages and feature it in an independent review.

Artist: Pay money To my Pain (abbreviated PTP)

Album: Remember the Name

Genre: Japanese Alternative / Metal

5-Starred Songs: 9  (out of 14)

Roaring Riffs and Lilting Lyrics Mini-Review Rampage, Music Edition #3

To clarify a point that was brought my attention, a bit of background before the reviews. As readers of the blog have noted, I tend to refrain from giving any kind of numeric score or anything of the sort with my reviews; I feel they're generally not useful if you're looking for a true review rather than seeking to validate your opinion. Thus, it is kind of odd that for my music reviews I've kind of been assigning a score in terms of the number of 5-starred songs.

There's a couple reasons for it. First off, it's an easy metric; it's not some number I'm pulling from nowhere, I don't have to think about it, I just have to look at my iTunes library. Secondly, although I'm reviewing the album as such, the way I listen to music tends to mean that if I don't 5-star a song, it's unlikely I'll ever listen to it; thus, you can view 5-starred songs as the number of songs in an album that I personally would re-listen to (and do).

Perhaps this means I should be doing individual song reviews rather than album, but there's a key reason why I don't, even though it kind of sucks: my backlog of albums means if a song wasn't memorable, as logically follows I don't remember it and probably don't have anything to say about it. Considering my short-story reviews tend to be broken down into individual stories as well as the collection as a whole, it probably follows that albums deserve similar treatment, but the backlog means this would be more work than I'm willing to do.

In the future, once I'm caught up, I may change my methods, but no promises. Keep in mind that while the metric is useful, since if I 5-starred every song on an album (such as the case for At Mount Zoomer) it probably means I think the album as a whole as fantastic, the reverse is not necessarily true. Although I suspect you already know, the written words are more important than a vague number, and although I will continue to provide the number it  is by no means the main point of the review.

Making the Noise Marines Proud: Mini-Review Rampage, Music Edition #2

I'm getting bad at coming up with clever introductions to these, so I'll just continue on and start the first music review. Feedback is as always welcome!

Artist: Wolf Parade

Album: Expo 86

Genre: Alternative (Indie Rock)

5-Starred Songs: 6 (out of 11)

Wolf Parade has for quite some time now been one of my all-time favorite bands. Their debut album, Apologies to the Queen Mary, while not perfect, was quite impressive and got my hooked. Their second album, At Mount Zoomer, is as close to a perfect album as I can imagine existing: every song was great, and I had no complaints, and it still sits as one of my personal "best albums of all time." Therefore when they released their third (and probably final) album, I had some trepidation. Could it possibly match At Mount Zoomer, or was I bound for disappointment?

The answer to both queries, weirdly, is no. It wasn't quite as good as At Mount Zoomer, but it was still a great album nonetheless. It opens with the rollicking, catchy, and upbeat Cloud Shadow On The Mountain, and cycles through a number of other upbeat, powerfully strumming-along songs such as Cave-o-sapien and Yulia. Overall the album is probably the upbeat of the trio of albums, and probably comes closer to pop in some ways, but it's still very thoroughly a Wolf Parade album even with the shift of emphasis. Although not a perfect album, overall it still did not disappoint, and is a great listen.

The Beast Hungers: Mini-review Rampage #5

We can't stop here, I'm on a roll... or something. No introduction needed, just more reviews!

The Road (Book + Movie)

I somehow managed to avoid the big craze when The Road became super popular and talked about, and all I managed to hear was that it was "incredibly depressing" and really good at the same time. Thus I decided to finally pick up the book, and after finishing it watch the movie (because yay Viggo Mortensen). It tells the story of a man and his son in a post-apocalyptic world, walking along the titular world while trying not to die. My impression of the book: overall, kind of meh. As a disclaimer, I've never found horror stories actually scary, and while it was kind of an interesting premise, I never felt an emotional tug at any point during the father and son's journey. Perhaps it's because I had just come off reading some much more depressing novels (Song of Ice and Fire anyone?) but I honestly did not find the book compelling at all. Part of it was that it was a little too vague, which I know was intentional, another part is that I really didn't like McCarthy's style in this book. It felt needlessly "artsy," and that he was trying to be different just to be different. Overall it was pretty unmemorable and pretty forgettable.

The same goes for the movie as well. Despite a strong presence from Mortensen, the movie follows the book incredibly closely, and suffers for the same reasons. Overall I think both were overhyped way beyond their actual value; I honestly wouldn't bother.

A Tune for the Worst: Mini-Review Rampage, Music Edition

So in addition to all the books, movies and television shows I've been watching, I've recently got a mad rampage to apparently catch up on all the music I haven't been listening to for most of college. This literally means I've apparently listened to over 40 albums and counting in the past 4 months, and rather than intermixing this huge number with the regular reviews, they're getting their own section until I catch up and stop being so ridiculously behind on my reviews. I don't think I've ever really written music reviews before, so I think this will be interesting; feel free to give feedback.

Spurred Into Motion: Mini-review Rampage #4

Because a certain other Blogger has gone back to blogging daily, plus the fact that I am currently incredibly bored, I decided I should start working through my (scarily large) backlog of things I've been meaning to review.

So once again, we find ourselves facing the jaws of the beast: the start of another Mini-review Rampage. In order to try and post more frequently (but no promises!) I'll probably be restricting myself to 5-10 items per post, otherwise I'd have a 20 item post, not counting the 40+ albums I have listened to this semester and which will probably be receiving separate, music-only review posts. And so, without further ado:

The Human Condition: My Experience with Humans Vs. Zombies

Anyone following my status updates on Facebook are probably aware that I finally partook in the Claremont Humans vs Zombies game. This post is somewhat a combination of my review of my experience of the game, and some commentary of things I observed whilst playing the game. 

Sovereign Soliloquies : A Review of The King's Speech

I know it's a bit late, but I finally got around to watching last year's Academy Awards Best Picture winner (as well as some other awards). I went in knowing almost nothing about it, since the first time I really heard a lot about it was when it got so many nominations for awards. It turns out it's a sort of historical drama of King George IV of England's effort to overcome his speech impediment, and won a lot of praise for the excellent acting and recreation of the period.

Beyond that, I honestly don't feel like I have that much to say about the movie, which points to the strong points and the weaknesses. The acting, as stated, is terrific, and although I'm not very familiar with the actual historical figures and time period I assume that all are up to high standards. Similarly, while I don't know personally know anyone with a stammer like that, the work Colin Firth does seems very authentic and emotional. With that said, the story told is rather... boring, at least to me. It's literally just the Prince attempting to overcome his speech impediment, alongside all the pressures and frustrations of being part of the royal family. Yes, there's also the growing friendship between George and his unorthodox speech therapist, but while it was interesting to watch evolve I didn't find it terribly compelling.

I know this is kind of an odd complaint to levy against a movie, considering that one of my favorite shows is Azumanga Daioh (a show where not much happens) but I guess my problem is that the slow plot isn't really replaced by much else, and there were moments (not a lot, but they were there) where I got bored. I don't think this is an issue with pacing or writing or anything like that, I just feel that the story itself isn't super compelling. It is told well and acted with great passion, but the source material just isn't quite what I was expecting.

Besides this one complaint, though, it was a very solid and very enjoyable film. I definitely understand why it won such critical acclaim, although I'm not quite sure if it would have been my personal choice for Best Picture (I think Black Swan would have taken this). However, in terms of excellent acting, good writing, and overall great production values, The King's Speech is definitely worth watching if you get the chance and think you'd appreciate a good period drama.

-HTMC

Back to the Basics: A Review of Choices of One

I'll come out right out and say it: Timothy Zahn is easily the best Star Wars writer. It's not just because he writes the movie characters in a very authentic way, it's not just because he creates excellent new characters, and it's not even just because he writes excellent stories. Other writers in the SW EU also do these things, and mean, for instance, that the X-Wing series is probably my favorite set of books in the SW universe. However, I say Zahn is the best "Star Wars" writer in that he is by far the best at capturing the spirit and feeling of the movies, making his novels feel quintessentially Star Wars-y, beyond just having droids and the Force and all that.

Therefore I was very pleased to hear he was releasing a new SW book, and not only that, but one set during the original trilogy era, specifically between New Hope and Empire. A while back he released Allegiance, another book set in the same time period, and I thought at the time it was a one-off. This it technically still true, but I discovered Choices of One takes place immediately after Allegiance and features much of the same cast of characters; the lack of an overarching plot between the two prevents me from calling it a true sequel.

A big problem that arises when you work in a time period in between already established events (in this case, destruction of the first Death Star and the attack on Hoth) you're obviously limited in some ways: any pre-established character isn't only unkillable but also immune to anything permanent, lots of events just cannot happen, and you have to move towards a certain goal. Another big tendency in SW is to make every event involving Han, Luke, and Leia into the biggest crisis since yesterday. Fortunately, Zahn manages to avoid both problems in Choices; they're definitely doing stuff, and it's important for the Alliance, but it's not critical to the survival of the everything ever or anything like that.

Alongside the main trio, we also get the triumphant return of Mara Jade, longtime fan favorite, as well as Thrawn, my personal favorite Imperial of all time (sadly he did not get as much screentime as I would have liked). Additionally, the Hand a Judgement, a rogue stormtrooper squad introduced in Allegiance, makes another appearance. Many other characters make brief appearances, such as Palpatine, Darth Vader, Generals Cracken and Rieekan, and so on.

Overall the book goes very smoothly and drew me in quite quickly, which resulted in me finishing the book surprisingly fast. There was only one glaring issue that bugged me, namely that in past books it was firmly established that Mara Jade had never seen Skywalker prior to Jabba's Palace, and they end up very briefly meeting towards the end of Choices. It's a relatively minor detail, and it's definitely debatable, but all signs point to that Mara would not randomly forget a guy with a lightsaber.

Beyond that, Zahn does a good job of telling his story and filling in small details that factor in to the later books chronologically. I don't think it's the best book he's written for the universe, but it's still a very enjoyable read, especially if you're looking for a book that very closely emulates the feel of the original trilogy. I don't think it's necessarily the best Zahn book to start with, since the important of a lot of characters and events will be lost otherwise. With that said, it's an excellent addition to the Star Wars library, especially compared to some of the other recent works.

-HTMC

A Personal Apocalypse: A Review of Cloverfield

I'll admit I initially avoided Cloverfield due to a big element of the film being the "shaky-cam" style of footage, as the film is supposed to be a home-recording of "the event" by someone with a handheld camcorder. I'm not usually prone to motion sickness, but the latest Bourne movie at the time had the distinction of the only movie I've ever seen in theater that made me feel physically ill. Understandably I passed up Cloverfield with barely a second thought. A few years later though and it came up, for whatever reason, in casual conversation, and Matt told me he really enjoyed the film. For this reason I decided to finally watch it, and was happily surprised.

To address the large concern, the film definitely is shot as if by an amateur cameraman with an unfamiliar camcorder (and in fact some of the shots are apparently from footage taken by the actors with such devices). However, instead of action shaky-cam prominent in movies such as the Bourne series, I'd classify the majority of the film as "unsteady;" exactly what you get on home movies. Of course there are some scenes which definitely fall under the classic shaky-cam style, the majority is just 'unsteady.' This combined with watching it on a television rather than a movie theater screen meant I suffered no problems, although I can't say this would be the case had I watched it in theaters.

To move onto the actual content, I'll admit I was expecting a monster film horror/thriller type film, in the vein of Jaws. I quickly had to revise this opinion, and by the end of the film I was actually unsure of where to place the film genre-wise. It featured a giant monster, naturally, but most of the film it was more of a backdrop rather than a centerpoint. It definitely has thriller-esque moments, but again they're surprisingly seldom and for me were not particularly tense. The military provides a few action scenes, but once again they're almost always in the background.

In fact, having taking a cinema class and being at least elementary familiar with film techniques, I was shocked when they right out showed the monster fairly early on the film, and extremely clearly at that. I thought it was a huge mistake, since this was a the key reason, for instance, the initial showing of Jaws bombed so badly with test audiences. However, as the movie progressed, I had to quickly shred the aforementioned genre expectations. I'd classify the movie as exactly what it seems like: a personal account and recording of what, for the people in Manhattan, is essentially the apocalypse. If that was the film's goal, it does an exemplary job of showing what would happen to an ordinary group of people in a catastrophic situation. They don't find the weak-point of the monster, they don't heroically band together a group of survivors and escape, and in fact they have no impact on the larger situation period. Instead we see exactly how the situation affects this small group of people, how they react, and what ramifications their choices end up having. The point-of-view framing makes this sensation very strong, and adds a strong degree of realism to the scenes that I think would have been lacking with traditional filming methods.

Beyond this, the acting is good enough and the special effects as well done as you'd expect (the monster itself seemed a little weaker, but it wasn't a huge deal). Although all these other aspects weren't spectacular, they weren't lacking, and in my opinion were all secondary to the story the film was attempting to display.

All together I don't think Cloverfield achieves a personal top spot for me, but I was highly impressed with the story it managed to convey and the way it went about it. The fact that it manages to tell such a compelling tale in only 80 minutes (the length of a standard residential cassette) is all the more impressive, and makes it a quick, enjoyable film to enjoy. I definitely think it's worth checking out if you get the opportunity, if only because it's quite different than the standard Hollywood blockbuster (not so much as many indie films, admittedly, but still moreso than comparable films). Now I'd just like to see a zombie movie in a similar style and I would quite pleased, or at least I think I would be.

-HTMC

Substance without Spirit: A Review of GTO (Live Action)

Readers of my reviews may recall that Great Teacher Onizuka, oftentimes known simply as GTO, is one of my favorite manga series (technically my #1 favorite manga series based off that list I made). I had always known that an anime series existed, and was also dimly aware that a live-action adaptation existed, as weird as that sounded. I was finally able to get ahold of both, but having recently re-read the manga series, figured I would go for the version that didn't follow the manga quite as closely: the live-action. It also helped it was technically the shorter of the two, being 12 hour long episodes instead of 43 twenty-minute ones.

I naturally had some misgivings from the start, if only because the thought of transmuting a comic into something live-action sounded weird. However, the show was apparently amazingly well-recieved in Japan, the manga is actually mostly realistic, and the recent string of super-hero movies proves that comics can sometimes transition well to physical actors.

Trials and Tribulations: A Non-Spoiler Review of A Dance with Dragons

-HTMC

Magical Giant Robots: A Review of Broken Blade

Broken Blade is a 6-part OVA set in the (theoretically) far-future/alternate universe where everyone has "magic" and control "quartz," which is all an excuse for giant mechs fighting one another as our hero country attempts to fend off an invasion. We follow one young man, who is an incredibly rare Squib, and his adventures in a special, old golem that doesn't require magic to operate.

I probably sound flippant with the preceding statements, but that's due to one of my chief complaints about the show: it sets up a very interesting, very different background, but doesn't really explore it all that much, or at least not to the extent I wished it did. This problem is certainly not unique to this series; for instance, I would love to see a complete history of A Song of Ice and Fire, and it's almost frustrating how the past is only alluded to bits and pieces at a time. However, for whatever reason, this problem felt a lot stronger with Broken Blade, and wasn't even limited to the world that was developed.

With that said, Broken Blade has a lot to offer. To begin with, it's super pretty; very detailed world, well animated, and mechs that actually show the damage they suffer. The actions scenes are fluid and exciting, and intermixed well with non-combat scenes (with the occasional obligatory blatant fan-service á la Sigyn). The dialogue is well-written, the characters decently well-developed, and the plot isn't too straightforward.

All of the episodes worked well as episodes, with the exception of 5. For whatever reason that one felt pretty empty and meaningless to me, and I really didn't enjoy it; with that said, it's been explained to me that some questionable choices were made regarding that episode. And in addition, the final episode made up for the failures of 5, bringing the series back to better standing.

If anything, this show did remind me of why I usually prefer to watch shows after they are complete; it was sometimes easy to forget who was who or what was currently going on, especially during the long break between 4 and 5. Adding to this confusion is that the mechs aren't clearly colored to be one side or the other; they are definitely differentiated, but between the different models and squads, it's not always easy to tell at a quick glance which side is which and this is only exacerbated by forgetfulness between episodes. I'm sure if I re-watched the series as a whole this would disappear to a large extent, but I do wish the mechs' allegiance was a bit more clearly defined.

Again, my chief complaint with the show is it not carrying through with some of its 'promises' earlier on. The show sets up a number of interesting questions at the beginning: a love triangle, and old friend turned traitor, other issues regarding the past, the current political landscape of the world. They're all quite interesting and serve to draw the viewer into the universe quite well. The problem is that by the end of last episode, most of these issues have not even been begun to be addressed. Presumably this is leaving the ending open for future content, but the only thing really resolved at the end of last episode is that the kingdom has repelled the first invasion attempt... and that's it. All the other plot threads and questions about the future are left completely open and ambiguous. It's not bad, per se, but it's kind of frustrating to have a series "done" when it feels merely like a prelude to a greater work. If they do end up making more, I suspect this complaint will seem pointless, but at the current moment it's somewhat irking, especially because of how great a job they writers did setting this up to the point where I actually care.

If you're looking for a good action series, especially one with a Arthurian vibe or giant robots, Broken Blade is an excellent short series to pick up, as long as you're ok with many things being left unclear. It has a lot to offer and I have no serious complaints with the series as a whole (except for episode 5) and any faults it does have are eclipsed by its excellent execution of its other facets.

Oh, and naked girls in bed. Lots of that, as well :-P

-HTMC

Finite: A Review of Deathly Hallows Part 2

Readers of the blog might recall my review of Part 1 of the movie adaptation of the final Harry Potter book, and how overall I was quite pleased with the result and interested in seeing how the second half turned out.

Overall, unfortunately, I actually felt like the second half was a bit weaker than its predecessor. I had actually had high hopes that by splitting the final volume into two feature-length films, the movies could finally take the time needed to fully develop the stories told in the books, but despite having 4+ hours of material to work with, this movie still felt rushed to me. Many scenes that were quite powerful in the books lost a lot of emotion and depth, in my opinion. For instance, the scene in the maybe-afterlife-King's-Cross with Dumbledore felt incredibly short, and without the exposition from the book felt like it didn't accomplish nearly as much. Likewise, Snape's memory sequence left out a ton of memories for the book, and to me at least it felt like his love for Lily felt a lot more forced without the evidence of their deep prior friendship.

Of course, something that's easy to forget and that I had to remind myself of is that the audience for these movies is not all like me. At this point, there are probably equal (if not more, I don't know the numbers) of people who have never read a single word of the novels who come to these movies. I'm sure when making creative decisions the directors and producers have to balance pleasing the diehard fans against the possibly greater number of people who won't be actively comparing every scene to its novel counterpart. The problem is after coming off the brilliant adaptation that was HBO's Game of Thrones, it's hard to go back to anything less.

With that said, there was some things that the movie did well. For instance, I was happy to see the way the battle was rendered. To actually see the castle exploding, spells flying everywhere, and absolute chaos was nice, considering such scenes are a bit harder to imagine from just reading. I do think it was overdone a little, since there was one point where Harry kept going through stairwells with students running everywhere (seriously, where were they going?), but overall it worked. The triumphant escape from Gringotts aboard the blind dragon also worked quite well; in general the actions scenes were good is I guess what it comes down to.

I think the biggest problem I had, honestly, is the host of minor, small changes they decided to make. I think I understand the reasoning behind all of them, but in general I didn't like the tone shift they introduced. For instance, making Griphook blatantly betray the trio and have the Imperio'd goblin fried felt wrong to me. Neville's speech against Voldemort also felt a little out of character. Having the Ravenclaw ghost know exactly where the diadem was (and what happened to it) but not do anything about seems odd. Having Voldemort feel the Horcruxes destroyed also sets a weird precedent.  I think the biggest change I objected to though was the final fight: it felt like a over-hollywood-ization of a final scene, and Harry and Voldemort battle it out all around, which makes no sense given how much a superior wizard Voldemort is, and Harry only survived in the past due to dodging and/or Priori Incantatum. I also really enjoyed the final speech in front of an entire audience in the final book, and instead Voldemort just melts away after Nagini dies, which in and of itself seems odd. Again, I feel like it robs a lot of the importance of the scene when the main villain of 8 movies just kind of drifts apart with no major conclusion.

Again, though, not everything was bad. I liked how they added in the scene explicitly showing the destruction of the locket, and I actually like that they destroyed the diadem together instead of exposition-ing the fiendfyre. So while most of it I didn't necessarily care for, there were definitely bright spots.

Overall the movie fit into my general expectations for the series thus far: reasonably entertaining, but very forgettable and inferior to the books in almost every way. It was kind of interesting to see a photo posted on Reddit a week ago showing the main trio's actors when they first started, and the realization that they've been growing up at the same pace I have; it was very weird seeing young versions of them again. The main point though is that while I can see myself coming back to the novels years from now, and likely multiple times, I doubt I'll ever consciously choose to watch the films again of my own volition. Could they have been better? Undoubtably. Could they have been worse? Most easily. They're on the better side of average, and something that had to happen given the books' popularity and immense money-making capacity, and while I'm reasonably happy that we got a half-decent production, but I probably won't ever stop wishing a little that we had gotten something a bit better.

-HTMC

Penance for Your Sins: A Review of Pet Shop of Horrors

I'm not quite sure how well-known or popular the manga series Pet Shop of Horrors is. Early in high-school I borrowed the first few volumes from one of my friend manga-sources, and quite enjoyed it, although I never finished the entire series (I think I read about 4 books). Therefore, when I recently completely randomly came across the fact that there was a 4-episode OVA of the series, I was definitely intrigued since I had all but forgotten about the fun little series. After getting ahold of it, I sat down for the hour and twenty minutes the show took to watch.