Images by guavi.
It’s a few months late, but maybe you can use these next year … if, you know, you’ve been sent back to fifth grade and need Valentine’s Day cards.
My Job Here Is Done
I noticed the traffic ticking up mysteriously last night and into today, so I said to myself, “You guys really like all that hard work I put in on the review of Sailor Moon S, eh?”
No, it actually turns out that there’s a Reddit called “AskWomen,” where someone posed the question, “What childhood crush did you have that you still cringe about today?” The answers are kind of hilarious, and include the following:
The link labeled “white tie” goes to my essay on Tuxedo Mask’s fashion faux pas. I see now that my labor in the name of men’s formalwear was not in vain.
It so happens I was thinking of writing a sequel on Haruka Tenou’s fashion faux pas. Maybe I’ll get on that.
Anime Review: ‘Sailor Moon S,’ Part 1
Better than it has any right to be.
Sailor Moon S: Part 1 (Season 3)
Long have I desired to discuss Sailor Moon S with you, mostly because I get to write the word “Uranus” over and over again. I highly recommend that you take every sentence in this essay containing the word “Uranus” and read it aloud, preferably in the presence of someone who doesn’t know the context. Continue reading “Anime Review: ‘Sailor Moon S,’ Part 1”
Sailor Moon S!
All right, this review is taking me more time than I expected, and it’s getting pretty long. It’s like I’m writing another frickin’ novel over here. But I’m not done: there are a lot more things I want to say about Uranus. A lot more.
(Adolescent snigger.)
I didn’t get this done on time, and I got stuff to do tomorrow, so I’ve got to call it quits. Expect a discussion of Sailor Moon S to go up tomorrow night.
New Review Tomorrow
Featured image: “Mahou Pinku Rangiru” by EUDETENIS.
I’m writing up a new review for you all. It’s kind of a big one, but I should have it finished tomorrow. Peace out.
IT DOES EXIST!
Pictured here is the Wenger 16999 Swiss Army Knife Giant
I always carry a Swiss Army knife on my hip. I use it quite often, and I’ve been thinking about replacing my current one with a larger one with more features, especially since I’ve lost the toothpick and tweezers (I hate when that happens). If I didn’t have a still-intact toothpick and tweezers on my Swiss Army knife keychain, I probably would have replaced it already.
Right now, I’m thinking it would be great to have the Wenger 16999 on my hip, though I’d have to have a custom-made holster for it. Still, it’d be worth it just to haul it out when someone asks for a screwdriver.
Unfortunately, this is apparently a “display only” piece. According to the one Amazon review that isn’t a joke, some of the implements can’t even fold in all the way.
To find the serious reviews, though, you have to wade through dozens like this one:
Received this knife as a gift for my 18th birthday. Wish I’d have known what it was because as soon as I touched it, I grew a mustache and became a Navy Seal. Mom fainted and my dad laughed and handed me a beer. I was born a girl.
Minus 2 stars because my breasts were really nice.
Art … ?
Featured image: “Mahou Shoujo Girly Blue” by JohnSu
So … that just happened.
Art + Update
Featured image: “Mahou Shoujo Cotton” by Maruuki.
I just finished working through my final pass of my upcoming novel, Jake and the Dynamo: Down and Out in Fifth Grade. I was waffling on the bonus chapter I had previously written for the end, but I think I’m going to expand it slightly and keep it. It’s not long enough to be sufficient bonus material, so among other things, I’m going to spend today working on a short story that will also go in the book, the working title of which is, “Young Rifle Maiden Plays It Safe.” That story, like the bonus chapter, will not be available on the blog.
I think I have things worked out with Roffles Lowell. He’s interested in doing the interior art. Right now, he’s just waiting for me to tell him what size, dimensions, and format he needs to work in, and whether I need black and white as well as color. He also offered to produce pictures for the chapter headings and section breaks, and I think I’ll probably take him up on that to give the book the appropriately gaudy YA novel look.
So things are coming together, albeit slowly. In my most recent pass over the story, I expanded a few sections, revised others, and fixed the inevitable typos that slipped through the earlier editing (and I wouldn’t be surprised if I missed a few on this pass, too). Also, because of the way I’m writing the story, posting as I go, a few inevitable inconsistencies have crept in here and there, so I’ve taken the opportunity to correct those as well. They mostly involve minor issues like the length of T.B.’s hair, Tsubasa’s threat competency rating, or how much access Marionette has to her own computer code. These are the same kinds of things you’ll notice in, for example, long-running web comics, even ones by creators who make more careful notes than I do.
The initial drafts go through my writer’s group and also get about three go-overs from me (once before going to the group, once after, and once in hard copy) before they go online, so what you see when the story updates is what we might call “upper middle draft,” as opposed to rough or final. Now that I’ve given the novel version my own edits, I think I’ve done all I can without someone else’s eyes on it. I haven’t lined up an editor yet, but hope to have that underway in the near future.
Presumably, after the editor has given it a go-over, it will need some rewriting.
A few years ago, it crossed my mind that it would be fun to write a light novel series, so I guess I’m living the dream, though Down and Out in Fifth Grade perhaps does not qualify as a light novel, since it’s about 95,000 words, whereas light novels generally run 40,000 to 50,000. So I guess I’m writing a novel series that’s light-novel-ish.
And if you’re following the series online, we’re already six chapters into volume 2, which presently has the working title of Jake and the Dynamo: Dead to Rights. It will probably contain approximately twenty chapters and around 100,000 words, just like volume 1.
Major Old-School Anime Titles Hit Blu-Ray
Format war can have a silver lining. As Blu-ray continues to replace DVDs, it seems some old anime series have come back to the market this year. I haven’t been keeping a super-close eye on this like a fanatic, so when I say “back to,” I might be speaking loosely in some cases, but still.
I only regret that, due to life circumstances, my current anime budget is zero. If it weren’t, I’d snatch these up. So, just to be clear, this is a list of stuff I want, not stuff I’m reviewing. I believe strongly in compensating artists for their work, so I don’t do bootlegs, and that has the unfortunate effect of putting a lot of gaps in my first-hand anime knowledge. I’m passing on the news of these titles because a few of these are works I tried to acquire legitimately in the past, but failed to do so. For that reason, their re-release is notable.
This is a handful of arbitrarily selected “want to see” titles based solely on my personal taste. (NOTE: You may need to turn off Adblock to see the images.)
Continue reading “Major Old-School Anime Titles Hit Blu-Ray”
Review: ‘The LEGO Batman Movie’
It’s not the Batman movie we deserve, but the one that we need.
The LEGO Batman Movie. Directed by Chris McKay. Written by Seth Grahame-Smith et al. Starring Will Arnett, Michael Cera, and Rosario Dawson. 104 minutes. Warner Bros. Rated PG. CNS Rating is A-II—adults and adolescents.
This may be the greatest Batman movie ever made. And heaven knows a lot of them have been made.
Although it comes from before my time, I grew up watching the Batman television series from the ’60s, starring Adam West. As a small child, I thought the show was hysterically funny. I would sit in front of the TV and laugh my head off, and my father assures me that his cousins used to do the same thing when he was a kid, watching it in its original run.
I was in grade school when Tim Burton directed Batman starring Michael Keaton. When that movie came out, Batman was suddenly all the rage. Every kid at my school was in to Batman, except for me. I didn’t care for this new, bloody, violent, brooding vision, even if it was closer to the spirit of the source material. The Batman I loved was bright and colorful and happy, with really, really cheesy acting. Continue reading “Review: ‘The LEGO Batman Movie’”