I’ve finally gotten caught up on the My Hero Academia Manga in the Shonen Jump app, and want to give my thoughts on where the manga is now. As a warning – this post will contain spoilers for content after the conclusion of season 5, up to where the manga is now and will include speculation on what will be covered in Season 6. Spoilers will begin below the cut.
Read moreI’m taking a bit of a break this week from the Let’s Play because this week is Desert Bus For Hope – the annual stream-a-thon by LoadingReadyRun and company to support Child’s Play, which helps kids who are in extended hospital care and in domestic violence shelters. Go watch the stream, because they’re funny, and donate at DesertBus.org to help kids!
Fena: Pirate Princess is the first co-production in a while between Adult Swim/Cartoon Network and an anime studio (in this case, Production IG), possibly the first major series since the second season of The Big O. With an animation style and plot that feels like it’s meant to evoke Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water and The Mysterious Cities of Gold, while leaning into the “anime-ness” in a way that feels similar to Avatar: The Last Airbender, except in the sense of an anime studio looking at Avatar and going, “We can do this.” The question then is – can they do this?
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After being an online convention for 2020, Kumoricon 2021 returned to being an in-person convention. Certainly, part of this is undoubtedly related to not having an order from the City of Portland or the Governor that would prevent the convention from being held in person, and in the process setting off the Force Majure clause of their contract. That said, Otakon 2021 was also held in person and managed to be held without a significant COVID-19 outbreak, which was a positive sign. Further, the Oregon Convention Center had its air filtration system upgraded part due to the outbreak (both because of being a vaccination site and possible field hospital last year) and also because of being an evacuation site due to the wildfires last year, I felt safe enough to attend the convention in person, so it’s time for some thoughts.
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Our fight is interrupted when it turns out the non-aggression pact… wasn’t.
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Today I’m reviewing the actual first installment in The Culture Series, by chronological order of publication, which I read in this past year for the Sword & Laser Book Club.
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We make a semi-desperate gamble to take down Xapan.
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We’re in a pretty tight spot, as several characters go down.
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The Final Fantasy VII Remake has been something that people had been craving for an incredibly long time, arguably starting on the PS3. Last year (2020) the game came out on the PS4, and this past year I’ve finally beaten the game and would like to give my thoughts on it.
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We continue to try to join everyone up, while contending with some golems who I should have planned for.
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We’re ambushed by Xapan, the bounty hunter who was creeping on Catiua, and try to link up with the rest of the party.
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Today I’m reviewing the first installment in The Culture Series that I’ve read – not the first one in the series (that’s next week), but my introduction to the series.
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We continue on our way to link up with Lanselot, get some new party members, and get ambushed.
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After the fight, we upgrade our gear and train up our skills.
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I’ve read few Stephen King books – Bag of Bones, the Dark Tower, Skeleton Crew, It – before, but never anything from Joe Hill, King’s son. I was aware of Locke & Key as it was coming out, but I had never really gotten around to reading any of it. So, when the Sword & Laser Podcast chose NOS4A2 as its October pick, I figured this was as good a time as any to get started with Hill’s work.
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I guess I’m doing an unintentional theme week, when it comes to hard-boiled urban fantasy, as this time I’m taking a look at the anime film Wicked City, based on a novel by Hideyuki Kukichi, and directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri.
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We finally finish off Dagon and his goons.
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We continue to fight our way to the boss, including figuring out that those Brute units are only vulnerable to magic.
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We have a Mortal Kombat and a Street Fighter game at the same time!
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We continue the fight, as a ninja goes down on each side.
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We go to rendezvous with our new allies and run into some more bounty hunters along the way.
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Cast a Deadly Spell is interesting as a historical artifact. While the film wears the trappings of the Cthulhu mythos, with the Necronomicon being the focus of the plot, and the protagonist bearing the name of H. P. Lovecraft (though with a different first name than the spectacularly racist author), it has almost more in common with the Hardboiled Detective variety of Urban Fantasy that we now associate with books like the Harry Dresden series. It’s not by any stretch the first urban fantasy work – Mike Resnick’s John Justin Mallory novels and War for the Oaks pre-dates it, with Resnick’s series also being hard-boiled detective fiction. But by being a movie made for HBO, it provided the genre a level of visibility that it had never before seen. But is it good?
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What happens when you give the director of Ghost of Yotsuya $1.95 and a ham sandwich (or, in this case, 195 yen and an onigiri), say the studio is on the brink of bankruptcy and tell him to make a horror film – you get Jigoku. This is a dark, grim, surreal, and truly nightmarish film.
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