News

Elric of Melnibone: Book Review

Well, I need to get caught back up with where I was with the Sword & Laser Book Club, in terms of reviews – and that means it’s time to get back into the Elric Saga, with the pick that I ended up recommending (and which a lot of participants bounced off of) – with Elric of Melnibone, the chronologically first novel by Michael Moorcock in Elric’s saga.

There will be spoilers.

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Manga

Manga Review: Master Keaton

Naoki Urasawa’s Master Keaton is fascinating to read alongside his later series Monster. If Monster is an HBO prestige television series, Master Keaton feels much more like a syndicated TV series. Both are mysteries, but Monster pushes forward on a tightly plotted course toward its conclusion. At the same time, Master Keaton is willing to tell a collection of more episodic stories, often moving back to a particular status quo at the end of each episode. That’s not bad, it’s just a different approach.

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Manga

Manga Review: Naoki Urasawa’s Monster

Naoki Urasawa’s Monster was the series that got him on my radar when I learned (10 years ago) that Guillermo Del Toro was trying to get a live-action adaptation of the series made for HBO (which ultimately fell through). That was enough to get me to hunt down the manga and slowly, over time, read it through my local library system (impacted by books falling out of and then back into print). Well, at long last, I’ve finished reading it.

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Anime

Anime Review: Lupin Zero

On the one hand, Lupin Zero is a show that doesn’t “need” to exist. We’ve had several TV specials and the series A Woman Called Fujiko Mine has covered some of this in the past. Lupin Zero tries to put their own spin on it by making Jigen & Lupin either late-Middle Schoolers or early High Schoolers, in a series set contemporaneously with when the manga started running.

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Anime

Anime Review: Mobile Suit Gundam: Witch from Mercury (S1)

Mobile Suit Gundam: Witch from Mercury is an excellent example of how to handle shifting the tone of a series incredibly well. The show opens with a prologue episode set several years before the main body of the series, establishing what the Gundams are, and what the Gundam (or GUND-ARM) technology that powers them is based on – before setting up why the Gundams are rare and restricted, and how the main character’s Gundam, in particular, is going to be special in the series to come.

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