Anime Review: True Tears

Another anime review? So soon? What is this, 2010? I ended up going through this show really quickly and it left me very, err, let’s say “talkative”. Longtime fans of the blog may remember that I sometimes get a bit flustered and annoyed with how much science fiction/fantasy based anime I watch and somewhat yearned for something based in reality for a change. Well True Tears is my reward.

True Tears is a 2008 anime that is based on a Visual Novel of the same name. I can’t recall if I’ve talked about visual novels before but basically they’re video game-like digital literature. They’re not actually video games (mostly) but they tend to be “Choose Your Own Adventure” type of narratives with vastly different branching scenarios. Many, many of them are labeled as dating sims. A lot of those are also pornography. Yep. The closet example I can think of off-hand is the BlazBlue fighting game series as its story mode is in the visual novel style (but itself wouldn’t be considered one). The most infamous visual novel may be School Days which featured a bunch of endings that involved crazy-ass murders and soul crushing despair before getting an anime adaption that ran with that theme with horrific results. Visual novels are very popular in Japan, and a lot of anime are based on them, but they don’t really appear too much in America.

Weirdly True Tears apparently doesn’t have anything to do with the original visual novel except for the name; not the setting, not the plot, not the characters, not even the artwork. I’m not sure why this is but if I were to guess I’d say it might be because the anime studio didn’t want to make an show where fans essentially already know all the possible endings or perhaps the studio came up with its own original show but decided it would sell better if it had the same name of a popular visual novel. Regardless the show was produced by P.A. Works, Lantis, and Bandai Visual in 2008. Bandai Entertainment licensed and released it in North America later that year. A mundane, romance anime set in the real world with no fantastical elements? What could possibly go wrong?

 Full review after the jump.

[WARNING: The review contains MASSIVE spoilers as I apparently didn't give a crap if I spoiled every detail of the show's ending. Read at your own risk.] 

Review: Avengers vs. X-Men #11

Avengers vs. X-men #11 is written Brian Michael Bendis. The art team consists of Oliver Coipel on pencils, Mark Morales on inks, and Laura Martin on colors. Previous reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.

There’s not much to say in today’s intro. Instead of talking about the comic I want to briefly talk about Cyclops. When I was a kid, in the single digits, I was a big fan of the pilot X-Men cartoon “Pryde of the X-Men” which is my earliest recollection of comic book superheroes and Stan Lee (who narrated the thing). I’d watch that thing over and over. Of all the characters I found myself relating to Cyclops the most. Stiff, uptight Cyclops who no one else seemed to like. So responsible, so smart and yet he was always depressed because of his powers, the very thing that made him special. That was me; I was lonely, I always tried to do the responsible thing, no one seemed to like me for it and I was always depressed from childhood pretty much until today. I didn’t relate to badass Wolverine or even Storm, the first black superhero I ever saw; it was always Scott Summers. As I got older my love of the character only grew and I began seeing as representing everything I thought superheroes should be, even though his comic wasn’t really conducive to proper super heroic actions. I love Cyclops.

Why is Cyclops always trying to blast the sky in these pictures?

But being a Cyclops fan is tough. It seems like the whole world dislikes him. His appearances in the live action films were pathetic. He’s constantly playing second banana to Wolverine in ALL the cartoons. And worst of all it feels like the writers have been purposely writing him terribly for the last twelve years or so, ever since he merged with Apocalypse in The Twelve storyline. Since then he’s been a cold, distant outsider, a cheater, a militant, a dictator, and now in this series, a mad god. The only time he has been written well these past twelve years seemingly was during Joss Whedon’s run on Astonishing X-Men, because Whedon got what the character was all about. But even in the years since that run ended things have been awful. I’m mentioning all this because this is the issue where Scott Summers both doesn’t die like I was afraid he might but also dies in the worst possible way.

Full review after the jump.

[WARNING: Full spoilers ahead.]

Review: Avengers vs. X-Men #10

[So apparently my scanner picked this week to stop working and pretty much delayed me in doing AvX reviews. It’s working now so hopefully I can get back to it.]

I keep falling behind when doing these Avengers vs. X-Men reviews and I think I’m starting to understand why: I’m not super into it. It’s probably because of how many there is too it; twelve issues is a lot. However I like to finish what I start (that’s probably mostly true) and there’s three issues left so I can see the finish line. In theory I could get these all done this week [Nope. My wonky scanner saw to that not being the case]. And in theory were heading into the climax, and Marvel has a great history of ending their crossovers strongly, right? Right? Anybody…? Anyway I need to review Looper and a new anime and this crap is in the damn way!

Avengers vs. X-Men #10 is primary written by Ed Burbaker. The art team continues to consist of the same people: Adam Kubert on pencils, John Dell on inks and Laura Martin with Larry Molinar on colors. Previous AvX reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.

Full review after the jump.

[WARNING: There are some spoilers in this book, but it's a pretty old issue at this point so it shouldn't be a huge deal]

Anime Review: Rideback

Do you remember way back in my reviews for Demonic Devil Emperor Satan King Daimao and Ga-Rei Zero when I said I watched three anime series back to back in one sitting and it basically drove me insane? Well the third anime I viewed that day was Rideback. I didn’t review it back then because I actually didn’t finish the last two episodes. By the time I got around to doing so I had pretty much forgotten the plot so I decided to re-watch the whole thing. It turns out that going through it a second time was something of a horrible mistake and it took me FOREVER to finally watch it. It’s done now so let’s review it and move on to some other anime series.

Rideback is a 2009 anime based on a manga of the same name. The show was produced by Madhouse, one of the most well-known anime production companies, who also responsible for Princess Resurrection and Highschool of the Dead (among many, many others). FUNimation licensed and released it in 2011. At twelve episodes it’s another fairly short series but believe me, it felt a lot longer.

Full review after the jump.

[WARNING: There's at least one outstanding spoiler in this review, so proceed at your own risk.]

Review: Dredd

Today is my birthday, from your point of view. I’m actually speaking to you from the past because I don’t want to work on my special day. I was thinking about throwing up a self-indulgent fluff piece but unfortunately I went to go see Dredd this past Sunday and now I need to talk about it.

Dredd is Hollywood’s second attempt at making a movie based on Judge Dredd, a British comic book character first seen in 1977. In 1995 a film version of the comic was made starring Sylvester Stallone as the title character. It’s widely regarded as complete and utter garbage and fans of the comic note that it horrendously messes up the spirit of the original charter. So no sequels for that flick. However in 2012 a new Judge Dredd film hit theaters. When I saw the trailers for this movie I was hooked. I was incredibly stoked to catch this movie; I would have put it on my Summer Movie list…except that it came out in September. It’s directed by Peter Travis who’s done nothing I’ve seen before. There’s about seventeen years’ worth of bad blood for this film due to its predecessor. Does Dredd live up to its comic or is it a repeat offender of extremely shitty cinema?

Full review after the jump.

Review: Avengers vs. X-Men #9

My catch up of Avengers vs. X-Men continues. Before I get into it I want to point out that the length of this series is a bit ridiculous. I mean really; twelve issues? That’s twice as long as the average modern crossover event.\ This is in line with the old school twelve issue maxiseries of the 1980s (The Secret Wars, Crisis on Infinite Earths) but those books came out over the course of a year. AvX came out in half that time. It feels kind of like I’m drowning in issues of this book. That said DC has released fifty-two issues or so of book over a year (52, Countdown) and in comparison Marvel is almost being restrained. Of course 52 is considered one of the best superhero comics of the 2000s but I’m not convinced people will be calling AvX one of the best comics of the 2010s eight or nine years from now.

Anyway Avengers vs. X-Men #9 was written by Jason Aaron, whom I’m not overly fond of, and the art team remains the same as last time: Adam Kubert on pencils, John Dell on inks and Laura Martin with Larry Molinar on colors. Previous AvX reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.

By the way; I've finally read up to issue 11 so  there's no need to protect myself from spoilers in the comment section; it's unlocked now.

More agony AvX after the jump.

[WARNING: Some minor (in my opinion) spoilers ahead]

Review: Avengers vs. X-Men #8

Another issue of Avengers vs. X-Men, another dollar. Nothing new to report, just remember that I’ve disabled the comment section temporally so no one accidentally spoilers future issues for me. For the previous reviews click the following: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.

This time Brian Michael Bendis is on writing duty while a new art team of Adam Kubert on pencils, John Dell on inks and Laura Martin with Larry Molinar on colors. So let’s get on with Avengers vs. X-Men #8.

Full review after the jump.

Review: Avengers vs. X-Men #7

I’ve greatly slacked on reviewing Avengers vs. X-Men and by now the series is pretty much wrapped up. So I need to work my ass off to catch up. As of this writing I own AvX through #10 (but I haven’t read #9 and #10 yet) and I will do my best to write them up. They will likely be quick and dirty, but I don’t want to do mini-reviews if I can help it.

By the way according to every nerd source on the internet Issue #11 involves [Spoiler] an important death. Now I don’t know who because I’ve tried to avoid finding out until I actually get to read the book. My first thought is of course Cyclops (for reasons I discussed last last time) I may be temporally locking the comment section for these reviews so no overzealous reader tells me. 

The art team remains Olivier Coipel on pencils, Mark Morales on inks, and Laura Martin on colors and Matt Fraction returns as writer. Previous reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

Full review after the jump.