The upcoming, action-packed novel Rags and Muffin will release on December 10th, just in time for you to cozy up with it over Christmas break. Taking place in a sweltering city somewhere in the tropics and featuring a lot of fiery explosions, Rags and Muffin will help you think warm thoughts during the cold winter.
You can preview it right now. Chapters one through four are available as a PDF file:
Rags and Muffin Sample Chapters (PDF)
The wait is over. Instant gratification can now be yours.
The DRM-free eBook features full-color illustrations. The paperback features new, more readable formatting with illustrations in glorious black and white.
And if you read, remember you can do me a solid by leaving an honest review.
Jake Blatowski can’t wait for high school—basketball, calculus, and a cafeteria that isn’t under investigation by the health department.
But he’ll have to wait: A computer malfunction has assigned him to the fifth grade!
It’s bad enough that he bangs his knees on the desks or that Miss Percy is going over long division . . . again . . . but Jake has to sit next to Dana Volt, a perpetually surly troublemaker determined to make his life a living hell.
Worse yet, Dana secretly belongs to a coalition of girls who protect humanity from the horde of deadly monsters plaguing the city—monsters that have chosen Jake as their next target!
Jake’s no hero; he just wants to make it to varsity tryouts. But now the impulsive and moody Dana is the only one who can save Jake from certain death—and Jake is the only one who can save Dana from herself.
Tomorrow, , begins the book launch of Jake and the Dynamo, first volume in a new series full of adventure, laughs, and lots and lots of magical girls.
Upon release, the book will be available as a DRM-free eBook with unlimited lending. It will also be available on Kindle Unlimited and as a paperback.
This is the last day of the low, low preorder price of 99 cents.
Read the novel that fans already call “hilarious, insightful, poignant” and “a great story for anyone who likes humor, adventure, and a truly unique setting.”
The eBook will be an Amazon exclusive for three months. I will announce when additional purchase options become available.
Prétear, written by Kenichi Kanemaki and directed by Junichi Sato. Hal Film Maker (). 13 episodes of 24 minutes (approx. 312 minutes). Rated TV-14.
Available on Funimation.
Funny story: Although it looks like a much earlier series, the information on Prétear from the Funimation site claims that the show comes from 2010. Since that’s the year before Puella Magi Madoka Magica made its appearance, I was all set to interpret this show as the end of an era, the last of the primarily Sailor Moon-influenced magical-girl anime before Madoka took over the genre. But Funimation’s metadata is wrong (which is good because that means I wasn’t crazy when I thought there was no way this was from 2010); Prétear is actually from 2001.
That, however, suggests perhaps equally interesting connections: It bears some apparent influence from Revolutionary Girl Utena, and it also predates Princess Tutu by just a few years. It comes from the same studio as Tutu and resembles it in some respects; so while this isn’t a bridge between Sailor Moon and Madoka, it might be a link between Utena and Tutu.
Key: The Metal Idol, episode 10, “Bug.” Written and directed by Hiroaki Satō. Produced by Shigehiro Suzuki and Atsushi Tanuma. Music by Tamiya Terashima. Studio Pierrot, 1994-1996. 13 episodes and 2 movies. Rated 16+.
Available on Crunchyroll.
Hard to believe we have only a few episodes left until it’s time for the two movies.
Akane and Key are still looking for their big break, but it may come in the form of the creepy, bespectacled naked dude we saw in the two episodes previous. As it turns out, Tataki, who knows a lot of the ins and outs of the idol industry, recognizes him: He’s none other than Hikaru Tsurugi, a genius with many careers and his hands in many projects.
Continue reading “Review: ‘Key: The Metal Idol,’ Episode 10”
Key: The Metal Idol, episode 7, “Run.” Written and directed by Hiroaki Satō. Produced by Shigehiro Suzuki and Atsushi Tanuma. Music by Tamiya Terashima. Studio Pierrot, 1994-1996. 13 episodes and 2 movies. Rated 16+.
Available on Crunchyroll.
Man, this show can be brutal. The first third of this episode is an extremely bloody and magnificently directed action sequence. So far, I’m consistently astonished at how good this show is: Arresting imagery, compelling story, intriguing characters. It’s a brooding nail-biter.
This episode continues from the cliffhanger of the episode previous: Sergei, the stone-cold killer working for Ajo Heavy Industries, has marched into a meeting of a snake cult and begun killing everyone to get to Key, who’s currently unconscious after performing an apparently miraculous healing. Key’s longtime bodyguard Wakagi shows up, and he and Sergei proceed to seriously maim each other. Prince Snake-eye, foolish yet sympathetically portrayed, tries to intervene—and pays for it.
THE UNIVERSE IS OUT TO GET HIM … BUT THE UNIVERSE DIDN’T COUNT ON HER!
Have you wanted to hold Jake and the Dynamo: The Wattage of Justice
Well, now you can!
… Except that’s kind of weird.
But in any case, Jake and the Dynamo
Jake Blatowski can’t wait for high school: basketball, calculus, and a cafeteria that isn’t under investigation by the health department.
Well, he’s going to have to wait: a computer malfunction has assigned him to the fifth grade.
It’s bad enough that he bangs his knees on the desks or that Miss Percy is going over long division … again … but Jake’s sitting next to Dana Volt. She’s a perpetually surly troublemaker who doesn’t even have to exert herself to make his life a living hell.
But no, it gets better: Dana secretly belongs to a coalition of girls protecting humanity from the horde of deadly monsters that plagues the city. But Jake’s no hero; he just wants to get to varsity tryouts!
When the monsters choose a new target, Jake’s not at all surprised that the target is him. Sure, why not? That’s the kind of week he’s having.
Now the impulsive and moody Dana is the only one who can save Jake from certain death—but Jake is the only one who can save Dana from herself.
Although Nancy now wore her full magical girl outfit, the other girls had nothing but their housecoats. That apparently didn’t bother Junie B., who was too tough to need shoes and too young to understand modesty, but Judy and Amelia clutched the coats about themselves as the rain quickly saturated the terrycloth.
“Time to find out of this works,” said Cam. She raised a hand into the air, much as Nancy had earlier done—but she didn’t give any miniature speech in French. Instead, to Nancy’s shock, she threw off her housecoat, and a suit of metal, like closefitting armor, unfolded across her wiry body. It looked like glossy black plate trimmed with shiny chrome at its edges, and in the joints were what looked like thick blue fabric. Above her temples appeared little boxes that blinked with LED lights. The outfit wasn’t the kind of thing Nancy especially liked, but she had to admit it was pretty in its own way, and Cam somehow looked noble in it, though it might look silly on someone else.
Cam glanced down at herself and flexed her hands in her shiny black gauntlets. “Looks like the nanoprobes finished building my exoskeleton,” she said. “That’s a relief.”
With that, she raised her right hand and pointed it at the robot. A long tube unfolded from the vambrace on her forearm and flashed rhythmically, making the staccato thud thud thud of an automatic gun. A small opening appeared in her wrist and ejected spent shell casings.
Continue reading “The League of Extraordinary Grade-Schoolers, Part 8”
The long-awaited day has arrived. Book one of the Jake and the Dynamo saga, The Wattage of Justice, the first American light novel from Superversive Press, is now available.
And here’s the book trailer:
The Kindle version is currently available. The paperback will come available within a few days.
This book features:
Read about it on the Superversive Blog, where Ben Zwycky describes the novel as a “gloriously over-the-top satire.”
And visit my new Amazon author’s page.
The original bloody mess.
Battle Royale: Remastered
Here it is, the instant classic that has informed so much of Japanese pop culture in the twenty-first century. If you like anime and manga, you sooner or later run into allusions to Battle Royale. Indeed, if you’ve followed this blog, the anime version of Magical Girl Raising Project, which I discussed at length, is basically Battle Royale with magical girls.
This novel by Koushun Takami appeared in 1999 and was an instant sensation probably in part because it resulted in some pearl-clutching. As an exercise in ultraviolence, it received some condemnations, and its notoriety was secured in the following year when the movie adaptation received criticism from members of the Japanese parliament. I noticed a DVD of the film at the store one day and saw that the blurb on the back proudly boasts that it is banned in several countries.
The effect of Battle Royale on pop culture reaches outside Japan: it is arguably the source of the slew of teen dystopias that have populated YA fiction of late, as it is a likely inspiration for The Hunger Games
