Zero Angel Richardson's Blog, page 7

Dragon Half — A 20 Year Late Review

Dragon Half! An anime made when I was 8.

I remember child-me scouring the Internet for anime related things in the wake of being exposed to Sailor Moon and coming across the 80s style drawn Dragon Half and being attracted to it both for being ostensibly fantasy and because, well, dragons. (The fact that the girl was cute was mitigated both by my youth and her nearly constant portrayal in super-deformed chibi style).

Then that ridiculously awesome ending song set to Beethoven's 7th Symphony, 4th Movement. At the time, my Japanese was even worse than it is now, so all I heard was glorious high-paced awesomeness (in midi form no less—it was a different era back then kids). Now knowing that the entire thing is about her omelet? Well, I'm in love with it even more.

The anime parody video "Kenny: Death and More Death" is another instance in my youth (albeit substantially later) where I was exposed to Dragon Half.

Still, I never saw Dragon Half, and I didn't ever really think I would.

Then it shows up on Crunchyroll like it's no biggie.

What? 20 year old anime showing up in the updated anime queue? WHAT IS THIS???

I had to watch it.

The art style is . . . there. It's strange. In one frame, it will look gorgeous (although unmistakably 80s style), and in the next it will be super-deformed and not even cute super-deformed, and then in the next it will be cute super-deformed. Seriously, what's up with that? Searching Google for images returns a ton of seriously beautiful images from the manga.


 
 

Are you seeing these? Seriously 80s, but seriously gorgeous art also. If the anime had kept style half this beautiful for 50% of the show, it would have gone down in history as one of the greatest anime based on the art alone.

I read an article suggesting that the super-deformed characters was part of the humor, in that they were making fun of anime genres over-reliance on chibis. It seemed more absurd than amusing in practice, but is part of the style of the show.


At first, I tried the dub so I could multitask—the shrieking characterized by a lot of American animation back then was wayyyy terrible. Checked out the sub for the second episode and it was representative of the sort of quality you expect from Japanese voice actors and actresses no matter the decade.

And this show was funny. Like, still funny 20 years later funny. Like, wow-I'm-all-of-a-sudden-really-looking-forward-to-seeing-more-of-the-episodes-WHAT-DO-YOU-MEAN-THEY-ONLY-MADE-TWO?!?!?!? funny.

Yes, two OVA that are more the start of a series than anything else with no real conclusion to them either. And the manga's never been given an official translation for us in the states so you're stuck with illegal fan translations if you want to explore more of this classic work.

The show follows the half-dragon/half-human Mink as she searches for a potion that will turn her 100% human since she's in love with an idol dragon-slayer. It's initial conflict is primarily motivated by the actions that brought about her existence in the first place; namely, her dragon slayer father was sent to kill her dragon mother, but fell in love with her instead (which the king is not too happy about).


Even though it's only two episodes and the manga is all but nonexistent on this continent, I'd say that if you're a fan of the fantasy genre (especially video games and anime), or if you like anime like Excel Saga or Gintama, then Dragon Half is well worth the hour or so of your time it takes to watch. Alternatively, if you want to be well-versed in anime, I'd say it is definitely considered a classic, so you might want to take a Citizen Kane style approach to watching it even if it's not your particular cup of tea. 

So, have you seen Dragon Half? Was it 20 years ago or sometime this decade? What did you think? Comment below.

"I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" Christmas Carol Rant (Redux)

Disclaimer: This is a new version of an old rant; this one is written without as much inflammatory language so that the argument isn't attacked on the basis of language used.

If this song brings you joy, then maybe don't read this as it may make it so that you can never listen to the song without thinking of the arguments I'm about to bring up.







. . . you've been warned. 

This is a song about a truly perverse family.

As far as I can tell, there are two ways people usually take this song, both terrible:
The child's father is dressed up as Santa.It's Santa. I suppose you could go a step further and suggest that it is a third party to make the whole thing even worse than it is, but I'm not going to go that far; we'll see that both of these two choices are pretty bad.

Let's examine both (1) and (2) in turn to see what we can find out. Note that the following lyrics from the song will be used as evidence:

I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus
Underneath the mistletoe last night
She didn't see me creep
Down the stairs to have a peek
She thought I was tucked
up in my bedroom fast asleep

Then I saw Mommy tickle Santa Claus
Underneath his beard so snowy white
Oh what a laugh it would have been
If Daddy had only seen
Mommy kissing Santa Claus last night

Let's start with (1).

In this case, we're assuming that the child's father is dressed up as Santa Claus. But wait, if he's dressed up as Santa Claus, there are two subcases:
It's for the benefit of the child to have a Christmas memory.It's to satisfy some sort of fetish he or his wife have.  If it's (1) again, then why is he kissing his wife dressed as Santa knowing the child is watching? Is it some sort of test of loyalty? "Which do you love more kid: your father or presents?"

How could someone put their child through such mental anguish and years of therapy that such an event would surely cause?

The second subcase is, I suppose, the most benign option (I can't help thinking of the girl from "Bad Santa"), but seriously folks, figure out something to do with your kids when you're having possibly mentally scarring sex in the living room, yeah?

So in (1.1), we have a sociopathic father and in (1.2) we have bad parents.

Let's look at case (2):

Pretty clear cut again: the mom is cheating on the kid's dad with the real Santa.

Is this what determines who gets the best presents? Is the entirety of the Santa mythos centered around some pervert that trades toys for sex with moms? IS THAT HOW IT WORKS?!

Both parties are married with responsibilities and other obligations! Is Santa going to not give presents to thousands or even millions of kids because he's too busy dallying with this particular child's mother? How is that fair? I thought if anyone would be fair, it would be Santa!

But WAIT!
No matter which of the above cases is the real truth, the kid is a bleeding sociopath! He thinks it would have been absolutely hilarious if his father had seen the event! This child has been raised by such terrible parents that not only does he not have a problem with his mom cheating on his father, but he wants the father there to witness being made a cuckold so that he can laugh at him!

That's messed up no matter how you look at it.

If it wasn't for the kid's utter delight in his father being cuckolded and wanting to rub it in his father's face, I might be able to listen to this song without the above arguments running through my head, but it is there, making the song effectively irredeemable.

So what do you think? 

Batman v Superman - Official Trailer 2 Review

In one word: demoralizing.

The new Batman v Superman trailer dropped tonight and I've got to say I was pretty underwhelmed. Stop watching this trailer at 2:06 because the creators of this trailer went to the same school of spoilers as the people that made the trailer for the last Terminator movie.



For the record, I was totally locked into this trailer until 2:06. I thought it looked tense as all else, and seeing Clark Kent meet Bruce Wayne was simply awesome. I was getting more and more excited and then 2:06 happened. Before I start the spoiler section, I will say that this trailer has saved me $20 because based entirely on this trailer, I will not be planning to see the film in theaters.
The rest of this review will contain spoilers from the trailer, which I can only assume are ACT 3 SPOILERS from the film . . .
I mean, the spoilers shown in 2:06 on might be Amazing Spider-Man 2 LAST SCENE OF THE MOVIE LEVELS OF SPOILER. I.E. I CANNOT BELIEVE THEY DID THAT. 
So yeah, spoilers from here on.
SPOILER  SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER
"Man won't kill God. The Devil will do it." It's been a rumor for a while now, (since we saw the actor playing Zod on the cast again and saw his corpse in the body bag of the last trailer) that Luthor was going to use Zod to create Doomsday. I'm really not upset about the fact that Doomsday is the bad guy, so much as I am upset about the fact that the movie is not Batman v Superman; it's Batman and Superman fight for 20 minutes and then work it out. Even if that's what the movie was originally designed to be, don't reveal that in the trailer. You don't need to reveal that in the trailer. Why do we need to see that? 
Also, what the hell kind of shield can protect against an explosion of that magnitude? I understand that they're going to be using magic with Wonder Woman, but it's still a shield. Does it create a force field? How is Batman alive? The way the scene is cut, it looks completely absurd. 
And that "joke", can we call it that? That, "I thought she was with you" nonsense in Bat-voice? Ugh. Simply, ugh. There was a big deal earlier in the year when it was revealed that DC had a memo saying they wouldn't be making jokes or doing light-hearted stuff in their movies. Apparently, that is because they are completely incompetent at it. 
I don't even want to interact with the DC fanatics over the course of the next few days because I can't understand how anyone can watch that trailer and be happy about having the movie totally spoiled. Now it's just going to be a matter of watching the cool things in the movie, and the first two acts will have no impetus or drama. 
Dammit, I wanted that Dark Knight Returns moment on screen, and it looks like we're just going to get Superman winning, and then Luthor unleashing Doomsday. What on earth?
And you know, maybe we will get that scene in this movie. They have that, "It's time for you to learn what it means to be a man" line in the movie, but why couldn't this movie be about Batman versus Superman? Not, Batman & Superman & Wonder Woman versus Doomsday.
I just don't get it. And Doomsday looks like a putz. The CG Doomsday looks really out-of-place. In Warcraft, the CG was noticeable and not as good as the CG in BvS, but there it looked like a stylistic choice; here it looks like a limitation of technology.
I'm not going to rewatch the trailer to try to analyze it. It makes me unhappy. I was hopeful that this movie wouldn't suck, but that seems farther and farther away now. I'm still hopeful, but I'm probably not going to be watching it in theaters now. Thanks for saving me the $20.
Have you seen it? What did you think? Do you think that the reveal was a major spoiler? What did you think of that joke line? Tell me what you think below. Thanks for reading.

App Review: Raid Brigade after 20 hours

I downloaded Raid Brigade as part of an offer for free kreds from Kongregate . . . $3 worth of free kreds (which was exactly how much I needed for a game I've been playing on the site). I didn't intend to continue playing, but after checking out what it was, it held my attention long enough to warrant a review.
The game itself is an amalgamation of Clash of Clans and Brave Frontier, with a little bit of action that feels more arbitrary and based on your levels than something that a skillful player can benefit from. I loved both of those games, but neither really hooked me. I still play Clash because all of my friends play it, and it is fun to compete and work together with them, but I stopped Brave a while ago and I won't be going back to it.

In order for all three of these games to remain free, you have to grind, hard. I don't mind a bit of grinding when I am invested in the characters (or buildings or whatever), but there's hardly any semblance of a story in Raid and you regularly sacrifice your characters to make other characters stronger, so you're not going to be getting attached to them anytime soon either. It's also hard not to feel a little ripped off when natural progression grinds to a halt (pun intended) and the only way to experience significant increase is to combine characters and items, of which you only have a finite amount, and which cost resources to combine.

You can very quickly outplay your multi-player tier to the point that every matchup is seemingly impossible, so you have to drop trophies in order to play in a tier suitable to your level, which is arbitrarily limited by resources, which are limited by time.

I liked that gold at least was easy to come by if you participate in the multiplayer raiding, but lumber became increasingly rare.

Raid is gorgeous looking on your phone though and you can really feel the lack when you go back to play Clash. It has PS2-era graphics, maybe a little less polygony, and an anime chibi appeal to the characters.

As I played, there was an arena style option where you made three teams of four to auto-fight increasingly difficult opponents; the multi-player raiding option; and a single-player series of levels (100 of them) with increasingly difficult bases to raid (and escalating tiers of difficulty for each base). You had 5 energy for each play type (taking one energy per battle with a slow restore that is typical of freemium games).

It's really not a bad little game, quite fun, and if I didn't care about money, I could understand a $10 subscription fee for the premium content, but that's TEN DOLLARS A MONTH. You could almost play World of Warcraft for that amount!

Building your own town is very reminiscent of Clash, with a little bit of old-fashioned Warcraft the-buildings-have-to-be-touching-the-road requirements. You can build different buildings, each with some defenders, some you can include hero characters as defenders, and eventually you unlock some defensive buildings. You only have one builder at a time, and the build times continue to increase, but not unreasonably so at first (you'll be quickly limited more by resources than build time).

Buggy is not an incorrect way to describe this game. I've encountered the following bugs (nearly all of these more than once, and many of them consistently):
Characters in the arena going off-screen and not being able to finish the battle (thus losing once time runs out). The game saying it is "out-of-sync" and restarting, usually around the time I'm trying to open a treasure chest. Characters showing experience gain after an arena battle that then don't have that experience (this is near-constant). If it's supposed to be a feature that when you replay an old battle you don't gain new experience, then it shouldn't show them leveling up.The auto-battle feature resetting to normal speed while it shows it's still at an accelerated speed.
One bug I've taken advantage of:When you click attack and then multi-player attack, it doesn't cost you anything, so you can "next" without spending any gold just by clicking an extra button in-between.I recall a few other bugs as I've played, but when I first started I didn't think I was going to do a review. How about you guys? Have you played this game and found any other bugs? There's not even an option to contact the developers in the game, so you can't tell them about it (other than by going on the Play store and giving them a review).

I think it's debatable to be annoyed by bugs in a "free" game, but they push the money side of this game HARD. If I were to pay $10 a month to play this game on the "noble" setting, I would be feeling very ripped off. Every time you log in there is an advertisement splash screen, and there is an entire section of quests that only people that pay the $10/month fee have access to.

So all-in-all, another game that is going to take advantage of people that have addictive personalities and can't stop themselves from paying for progress. Modern day slot machines without the gambling anonymous resources (and this game especially is gambling, because many of the things you can purchase are only a "chance" for a good item or hero (and the more you pay, the more those chances go up)).

It's fun and amusing, but it's almost entirely mechanics and no story, with the forced slow-downs built-in to encourage you to pay more and more to enjoy the rapid improvement and progress from the beginning of the game. I definitely recommend downloading it for the $3 in kreds (if that deal is still going on and you are a Kongregate member), but once you get your kreds, I don't think it's worth the space on your phone or tablet. I've already deleted it from mine.

Did you take part in the free kreds offer? Was Raid Brigade worth the download on its own? What did you think? Comment below. Thanks for reading!

Jessica Jones S1 Review

I voraciously consumed season 1 of Jessica Jones. 

It's just so well-written. The characters are so well developed. No character seems shallow or one-dimensional, and even the guy hopped up on Super Soldier Steroids had a fleshed out character arc, if a little demented.



There's a lot of sentimental choices for my all-time favorite list, and a lot of times cool wins out over art; but this show is simply incredible in both the entertainment front and the just-really-good and spoiling-us-for-anything-else front.

I've heard many people complain about some dragging out near the end, but I didn't witness it. There did not seem to be filler as much as there were characters that maybe weren't as important to you. I suppose if you weren't locked into the story as a whole and just wanted to see the primary thing resolved then it may seem like a bit of filler, but I felt that it was perfectly written and if we hadn't seen what happened with those characters we'd be left wanting.

I just can't get over how good the writing is for this show. How strong the characters are. Jessica Jones is one of the greatest characters I've seen in a TV show or movie in years and she's all the more strong for being portrayed as a real person (albeit one with superpowers—including the superpower of impossible alcohol tolerance).

She's damaged with PTSD and has been the victim in the past, she doesn't consider herself a hero but secretly desperately wants to be one.

If anyone does get short shrift in the show, I'd say it's probably Luke Cage near the end. We never really get to see how he is dealing with the revelations Jessica has shared with him (I suppose these will be addressed in the sequel series centering around him . . . but I really hope Jessica occupies a role in that show also).

David Tennant as Kilgrave is brilliant, and if you weren't sure if maybe he was a one-hit wonder with Doctor Who, the guy can act and he brings it to bear in this series.

I honestly can't think of any particular weaknesses that wouldn't just be nitpicking. I didn't particularly love the implied-incestuous-twins or the turn the sister character took later on, but as far as side characters, they were a lot less annoying many in other television shows, and even though I didn't care for them, I didn't hate or loathe them.

It helps that they don't take up that much screen time and they actually do help the plot progress when they do show up as well as give us some more character development for Jessica's character.

All-in-all, people approaching this series to fill the unbearably long void between Marvel movies may be disappointed. It has action and superhero goings on, but it is not a Marvel movie. The focus is tight, characters rule the day, it's more of a noir than an action-adventure (especially the first episode).

This show should appeal to all but the worse dude-bros, misogynists, and purists (or any combination of the three). I can definitely see a certain subset of the population being upset about the looks of Jessica Jones (beautiful, but not exaggerated comic book standards of beauty), her outfits (personally, I loved the tops—although I was a little exasperated by her jeans—but no, I'm referring not to her sense of style, but rather to the fact that she's not wearing spandex, that is, her superhero outfit), and the fact that she's an honest-to-goodness real character.

As far as Luke Cage's look . . . I think the first time he's introduced he's wearing something similar to his comic book shirt (but that's just a yellow t-shirt, sooooo, yeah). Honestly, he looks about twice as good without a shirt, and the show is not afraid of displaying that. I don't think anyone will be complaining.

He's very good looking.

Kilgrave is a real bastard of a villain. I thought for a hot second there they were going to make him a sympathetic villain, but they doubled down on him being a bastard hard. He's terrible. Really great addition to the show. Kilgrave looks like Doctor Who, but in some really nice expensive looking clothes, with the purple theme throughout. (In the comics, his skin is purple).

As I said in the 3 episode review, Jessica Jones has completely spoiled me for Supergirl. I don't see myself returning to that universe anytime soon, and I am all the more excited for Luke Cage and Season 2 of Daredevil. More Jessica please!

Have you seen it yet? If not, what are you waiting for? If so, what did you think? Comment below. Thanks for reading!

3 Episodes of Jessica Jones

Halfway through the first episode of Jessica Jones and I realize I'm ruined for Supergirl.

I'm not even going to attempt a review of Supergirl now. Something had been holding me back from doing a first impression review and then a 3 episode review and I realize now it's that the show is underwhelming. The promise of Superman style adventures was the only thing that kept my attention. I love Superman content and I love the idea of Supergirl, but the show was "ehh". I may write an article comparing it to Jessica Jones in the future, but I don't even know if I'll continue that show now.

Contrast this with Jessica Jones, a character I think I maybe have heard of in some Spider-Man comics, but otherwise have no exposure to. Within ten minutes I was riveted to the screen. Within a half hour, I was pissed off at every other superhero television show I'd ever seen for not being half as good as what I was watching, and within the space of one episode, I realized that Jessica Jones was something I'd never seen before.

Simply-stated, the show is stellar. Possibly better than the Marvel movies, let alone any of the television shows from Marvel or DC.


It has a noir feel to the first episode especially, but this feeling persists to a lesser extent through everything I've seen so far.

The character of Jessica Jones (played by Krysten Ritter) is one of the best written female characters I've ever seen in television or cinema. She's written as a strong character, not a strong female character, and the fact that this is so noticeable makes you realize that most female characters are written females first. Jessica is a PI suffering from PTSD that has seen and done some shit, with a certain level of moral ambiguity, suffering with complex emotions and motivations. Her relationship with Luke Cage (played by Mike Colter) is especially interesting.



Did you see that picture up there? Now imagine him without a shirt. Because he's without his shirt a surprising amount of times (although Google's failed me at the moment . . . I don't understand how this show can have been out for the last 24 hours and the Internet isn't swarmed with images of Mike Colter without a shirt on). The guy is ridiculously good-looking.

Ridiculously. And he's clearly not one-dimensional either (in fact, he sticks out pretty impressively in three-dimensions; OK, I'll stop objectifying). He's dealt with some stuff and he has a past and his interest in Jessica maybe begins straightforwardly (on his side), but once they realize they're both dealing with someone that has powers, let's just say that their courting gets turned up to 11.

And oh my god, David Tennant. Doctor fucking Who! What a great actor to play such a despicable villain as Kilgrave.


I'm only three episodes into the show. But I'd hold these three episodes up to any 150 minutes of any other superhero content, and really, up to any other show I've ever seen. We're talking making it into the all-time best list here.

And I don't want you to get the wrong impression. It's really good.

Really good. You should watch it.

This review got written in something like 30 minutes because I don't want to wait to watch another episode.

P.S. In case anyone hasn't heard of this show; the comic book images above are what the characters look like in the comic books; the show is live-action. Also, it's available on Netflix RIGHT NOW—why aren't you watching it already? 

The Good Assessment Paradox

So, unless your group of students is extremely non-standard, it's a practice in the Law of Diminishing Returns to design "good" assessments.

This is something that I have for years categorically rejected by the way. Even to this day it is hard for me to not ask questions that are designed the way they're supposed to be instead of defaulting to the regurgitation standard so commonly upheld through math classes.

The problem with this is that, typically, the easiest and possibly the most effective way to ask these questions is also the hardest to grade.

Like, really hard.

But it is possible to design effective multiple choice questions and entire multiple choice tests.

It's a lot more difficult, and the time-consumption is on the front-end instead of the back-end, but it's possible.

And if you throw in having incorrect responses causing a penalty score, it greatly improves the accuracy of the exam. (although don't get me started on hearing the students complain about that one).

None of this is the paradox by the way.

The paradox is that it doesn't matter what assessment you use.It doesn't matter if the questions are good or bad—so long as they are on-topic of course—unless your students are way above average or way below average on average, then they're going to fall along a normal curve for the most part. You'll have a majority of the class at average, another 13.5% one standard deviation above that, 13.5% one standard deviation below that, and your outliers symmetrically aligned on either end (amounting to an additional 5% total).

Furthermore, unless you're willing to fail the lot of them, you're probably going to apply a curve of some sort, and it probably won't be the traditional normal curve curve that aligns grades F-D-C-B-A according to the groups described in the paragraph above. It will probably be a flat curve that just adds to their scores. If the standard deviation is low enough, this might mean that a good portion of your class is all at Cs by this point.

I would like to be willing to fail an entire class. I really would.

But I don't have tenure, or even an option to someday have tenure. I like to think that my superiors are aware of my abilities, but I'm pretty sure if I had a class where a significant portion of them were failing I know what would happen. I don't think I'd be let go, at least not at first, but I'm pretty sure I'd be getting a visit telling me that I need to start making my tests easier or giving a curve right around the time the 3rd or 4th student went to complain.

The reason I'd like to be willing to fail an entire class is not because I'm a sadist, it's the opposite in fact. I still haven't found a way to detach myself from caring for my students. Me spending so much time trying to help them learn and share what I know with them compels me to care about my students. The reason I'd like to be willing to fail an entire class is that once the students believed in the failure, and if they didn't have the option of an easier professor, they'd be motivated to actually improve. Study after study has shown that expectation is one of the most powerful tools in education (although that expectation comes from multiple sides, the expectation of the teacher is one of the only things you can directly control).

But I can't fail an entire class, so that means I have to curve the assessments I give, which then means that it doesn't matter what sort of assessment I give because without much deviation based on format, the scores are going to be "normal", and after applying a curve so that the average is where I'd like it to be, they'll be high enough that the students shouldn't complain too much.

And with homework and class participation grades, any student that does at least average is not just guaranteed to pass with a C, but probably a B. If they take part in any sort of extra credit or do exceptional on a particular assessment, maybe an A!

Does that mean they know an A-level of the material for the course?

Not bloody likely.

So here I am grading an exam that took me a long time to write and much longer to  grade, finding that the students might not even understand basic reasoning and each freaking problem taking me m-i-n-u-t-e-s to grade. So each test takes several minutes—on the order of half an hour or more to be honest. And I already know that the scores are going to be on average failing, and not far from "normal", with 68% within one standard deviation of whatever the failing average is, another 13.5% within another standard deviation above and another 13.5% below, and another 2.5% above that and another 2.5% below that. It's just a matter of separating them into those groups.

And with the curve, the students aren't motivated to do any better than that.

Well, some are I suppose, and that's why I started by saying it's an exercise in the "Law of Diminishing Returns". Because if you make good assessments and people aren't doing well on them before the curve, then there are a few that will be motivated enough to try harder and do better and maybe learn some strategies they wouldn't otherwise try for.

So why do I make so-called "good" assessments?

Because I'm a sucker.

"Comet Lucifer" — A Jack of All Trades?

3 Episode Rule

I was really hoping Comet Lucifer would be amazing. It seemed to have the potential, but I got too annoyed after the 3rd episode to feel like completing this one I'm sorry to say.



In the 3rd episode, which is about the first episode after the set-up for the anime, the protagonists had the idiot ball wayyyy too much for me to be able to watch them endanger themselves for another 9-21 episodes.

So pacing issues—not only not resolved from the first episode, but escalated to the point of incredulity—characters acting stupid to advance action scenes/"plot", and a failure of the show to know itself and be that, all tell me that I will not be checking this anime series out again.

How about you? What did you think of the first 3 episodes of the show? If it's been a while since they've come out, have you seen the rest of the cour? Any good?

"The Martian" by Andy Weir

In anticipation of the recent Hollywood film directed by Ridley Scott, I decided to purchase and read The Martian by Andy Weir. I was very pleasantly surprised by this book. The story is basically a castaway on Mars story, but both the science feels real and the humor (mostly from the smartass character of Mark Watney) is funny and consistent throughout. It's one of the best sci-fi stories I've read in years, and I hope that both its publication and the subsequent movie will inspire the next generation to move off planet.



Have you read or seen The Martian? What did you think? I'm really looking forward to seeing the movie myself. It looks great and I've heard Ridley Scott is back to form.

"Comet Lucifer" First Impressions

Comet Lucifer (コメット　ルシフャー) is a very pretty, new anime this season that caught my attention straight away with its science fiction fantasy aesthetics. I wonder if it is a coincidence that something whose first episode begged a comparison to Star Wars is released in the current climate or if it was done deliberately.



(Note that this is written in katakana, ソウゴ　アマギ, so I am assuming that the naming conventions are following Western style of given name first, family name last. You can never really tell when an anime isn't set in Japan unless the characters have relatives around.)

Sougo is an errand-running, hover-scooter-bike-riding typical SFF teenage protagonist, and, through no agency of his own, gets tangled up in both his friend's (Kaon, カオン) arranged marriage fleeing and an autonomous god-mecha protecting a magical girl (Felia, フェリア) hibernating in crystal. His greatest skill appears to be his scooter riding, able to hold his own in a chase with a veritable pod racer. (From right-to-left in the picture above, we have Kaon, Sougo, and Felia).

This was all in the first episode mind you, and it set up wayyyyy too much to really get a feel for what the anime will be like. The aesthetics, particularly the landscapes, are gorgeous, and the characters seem interesting, although the arranged marriage plotline seemed rather absurd (not that arranged marriages happen, but how the characters handled the arranged marriage happening). In fact, the male fiance chasing the runaway bride seems to be there almost solely for unnecessary, absurdist, comic relief. It was a little weird since the chase was super-high production quality, but the reasoning behind the chase seemed pointless.

At one point, it is clear that the creators don't have much care for physics. Unless there will be some reason explained in the future that a mile-long fall didn't result in any negative consequences.

I understand a lot of anime has things like this happen, but when you set up the show to be science fiction, it feels out of place. The characters can't fly (without machines) and aren't particularly trained in martial arts or anything. They should be dead.  Sorry audience, time to start over with new characters. These ones died from reality.

When the mecha started showing up, the feel of the show shifted more in the direction of Escaflowne, which wasn't necessarily a bad thing, but again, just another thing thrown into this first episode.

All in all, I'm interested, but I'm not enthused. There seems to be a lot of potential and any one thing in this episode could be expanded on and fleshed out successfully, but there are a LOT of things going on. I'll go ahead and give it the 3 episode rule to see if it can manage some of its pacing issues. I hope so, I'm very interested in the potential of the show and setting.