A while back I gave some thoughts on my concerns about the upcoming X-Men series House of X and Powers of X by Jonathan Hickman, and where the X-Line was going to go from there. Well, Hickman’s first two series – House of X and Powers of X – are now out and I’ve read them, and now it’s time to re-assess some of my analysis, as we’ve gotten into the series coming out of those series.
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Sports Anime is something of a blind spot in my viewing habits. A lot of the top shows of the past few years (Kuroko’s Basketball, Haikyu, Yowamushi Petal) are on my to-watch list, and a few other shows (Giant Killing, Free, Princess Nine) I’ve never gotten around to finishing. So on a recommendation I decided to sit down and watch Scorching Ping-Pong Girls, on the one hand I found it an enjoyable and brisk watch – but on the other, it left me hanging.
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We arrive in New York City and try to find our apartment.
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We’re introduced to our protagonist, and his first assignment in New York.
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It has all come down to this, as we have the final book in the Legend of the Galactic Heroes series.
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We fend off some swarms before our final battle against the Kraken.
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What’s left of Delta falls back to the wall to try to hold off the Swarm.
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I’ve been getting back into reading Blade of the Immortal with the new Amazon anime series adapting the manga – which will still be airing as this goes up. Thus far I’ve read the first 8 volumes of the manga (using the US order), and have some thoughts on the work.
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When it comes to anime films that tie-in to ongoing shonen series, generally they tend to not be canonical – and basically exist to show a whole bunch of additional cool fights. My Hero Academia: Two Heroes is basically that, except with the nice addition of showing a little bit more of All Might’s backstory, through the introduction of an old friend from his earlier career.
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We plant the last beacon, and end up having to make what is supposed to be a hard decision.
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We return to New Ephira, only for the city to end up under siege.
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This week I’m wrapping up the year with my thoughts on the last of the Shadowrun video games to date, and the best of the series – Shadowrun: Hong Kong.
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The rocket is assembled, and we now have to fight a giant monster.
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We have a rough fight with two Snatchers and some Scions.
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After this past year’s horrific fire at Kyoto Animation, I found myself looking at all the animated series that Kyoto Animation had done in the past, and found that I had seen so very few of them, and that they were also all on my to-watch list well before the fire. The body of work of the studio was at a level that I’d compare to GAINAX at their prime. So, having read the first volume of Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid a couple jobs ago, while I was working in Downtown Portland, I decided to bump that show up on the list. Also, as a part of the weekly anime viewing nights I’d started with my parents after I got my Dad into anime, I decided to add that show to the rotation, sight unseen. The results were favorable, with an asterisk.
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In the Rivers of London series, there’s always been something of a gap between what Thomas Nightengale, The Folly’s “Gov”, was up to between the end of the Second World War and the start of the series. There’s an implication that he’s been involved in varying degrees with the Met, but not heavily – if he had, then the Met wouldn’t have had to come up with the procedures they did when Peter Grant started working out of The Met. The most recent (as of this writing) collected graphic novel in the series, Action at a Distance, helps to answer some of those questions, though not without a few problems of his own.
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Before putting the rocket together, we finish the Scavenger Support side quests.
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We race the rocket train back to the bridge controls.
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I give my thoughts on Kumoricon 2019, and the movie I saw during the convention.
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We reach the Turntable and take the control room.
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We leave the base and head back to the skiff.
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At Kumoricon 2019, I had the good fortune of getting into a screening of the anime film Penguin Highway. It is an anime film of a variety that doesn’t come out in the US very much – an anime film that is a straight-up family adventure film, and a film that also plays into some of the Kids on Bikes concepts that came up in a few works I’ve reviewed recently (The Gate and Tales from the Loop).
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Battle Angel Alita ended – sort of – on an interesting note. Due to health issues, the mangaka, Yukito Kishiro, somewhat rushed the manga’s conclusion, quickly moving the story into the floating city of Zalem, before blitzing through the city coping with the revelation that everyone in the city has computer brains – and Alita ultimately ending up in control of the city. The sequel, Last Order, starts there, before going into an oddly different direction.
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We get the Satellites into the rocket capsule and send it to the Assembly Room.
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