Posted on by Alexander Case

Scorching Ping-Pong Girls: Anime Review

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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Posted on by Alexander Case

My Hero Academia – Two Heroes: Anime Review

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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Posted on by Alexander Case

Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid: Anime Review

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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Posted on by Alexander Case

Rivers of London – Action at a Distance: Graphic Novel Review

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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Posted on by Alexander Case

Penguin Highway: Anime Review

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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Posted on by Alexander Case

Battle Angel Alita – Last Order (1st Half): Manga Review

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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