Things No One Cares About: Slayers The Hourglass of Falces

Slayers started out as a series of light novels involving Lina Inverse,a short tempered sorceress,Gourry Gabriev,the dim-witted swordsman and a rotating cast of companions. It evolved into a successful anime/manga franchise that is much more well known. I've already discussed the first two movies based on the prequel series,Slayers Special, and I finally got my hands on the last three movies so we'll look at those in more detail in the coming weeks but we're going to talk about something Slayers related I actually did read this week,The Hourglass of Falces.

Slayers manga has always sort have taken a backseat to the novel and anime components of the franchise. The longest part of the manga(Super Explosive Demon Story) only covers the first eight novels in 7 of 8 volumes. The fourth volume being an adaption of Slayers Return. The various manga projects tend to cover various side stories and alternate time lines. Luckily they usually are wrote by Kanzaka himself which at least insures great writing if nothing else.

However like Lina's companions the artist for the manga tends to rotate. You have the Rui Araizumi the Gourry to Kanzaka's Lina who is responsible for the light novels illustrations. Then there is Tommy Ohtsuka that' has drawn the Slayers Special manga,Knights of the Aqualord and a few others. Shoko Yoshinaka who worked on Super Explosive Demon Story and Kanzaka's other big franchise,Lost Universe. However for Hourglass we have yet another artist simply know as Arashi who's only other work is a hentai compilation manga. After reading this manga that fact came as no surprise to me. So enough talking about Slayers lets talk about Slayers.

The story is fairly typical and nothing special,but like most Slayers stories it is more a vehicle for the comedy more than anything. The plot concerns an island that sits between some mystical pillars that can power some weird Groundhog Day style magic. It brings up your typical letting go of the past themes that has been done pretty well elsewhere. It tries to bring up a moral dilemma of letting these people stay stuck in the time loop or actually breaking the spell and ends up coming off as silly in the wrong way.

There is also the problem of it feeling just too long even though it is only four chapters long. Sections are spent on exposition from various characters on happenings that could be summed up in maybe a panel or two. Even more ridiculous is that the last chapter just seems to start mid-battle with little lead up. It is jarring as heck and feels rushed despite the manga taking its' sweet time up to this point.

The plot usually takes a back seat to the jokes though sadly they just aren't able to handle the driving that well. There are a few good jokes but they are few and far between. This is the man who has wrote the excellent Return and Gorgeous,here he is not bringing the A-game. Most of the jokes are meh and the ones that are funny have been done better in another part of the franchise.

So the plot is passed out drunk in the back and the comedy is too short too reach the pedals. Luckily some one gave the characters the map and by god are they trying to salvage this god forsaken road trip.The advantage to having Kanzaka writing is that he knows how to write these characters. Everyone is playing the parts they need to play and their interpersonal relationships are kept intact. This is the first and I believe only project where all of Lina's companions get to team up. For me this is the first exposure I've had to Luke and Millina from the later novels and it just makes me want to read those novels even more if this is how they interact.

As for the original characters for the manga there are three and they are all terrible. The villain is poor mans version of Rezo the Red Priest from the early novels and the women who serves as his motivation is might as well be the patron saint of purity sues. She gets a rushed back story about being a prostitute who never forgot how to love. The other original character Noa is a moe blob that redefines useless. Kanzaka may have unintentionally created the first moe blob style character with Amelia way back in the 90's but she actually has character,spunk and is genuinely funny. Noa has none of that and angst about everything while declaring her own uselessness. She actually wets her self at one point and I'm just embarrassed for her. Her design actually ties in beautifully to the biggest complaint about this book:the art.

If the comedy is the driver and the characters are navigating then the art is the moron attempting to car surf. However he really can't do that well and they have to keep pulling over to pick up the idiot who doesn't look that great after making out with the asphalt. Everyone just looks ugly and off model in the book. Lina and Gourry get off by looking half way decent till they have a reaction then it's straight back to looking ridiculous. Zelgadis looks like Arashi could decide if he wanted to draw Zelgadis or Blackjack and in the end tried combining them. However this is to say nothing of the female characters and the idiocy of what happened there.

Slayers has always had a bit of fanservice here and there with Naga being the notable example. However she is played as more ridiculous and goofy parody of Ms. Fanservice. Here no one except Lina is below a C-cup and they are on full display. Amelia wears a stupid outfit that is supposed to tie into her family's habit of wearing provocative clothing that gives the artist free rein to draw panty shots galore. Noa has as the book calls them "Cow udders" and where a shirt that apparently doesn't button. It just makes the whole story feel cheaper than it all ready is.

In the end this is a really bad Slayers story that fails at almost every turn and is just shameful. It has it's moments but nothing to fully redeem it. Only read this if you really need a Slayers fix and have read everything else possible in the series.
 
Till next time:Stay Positive

Things No One Cares About: Free! Iwatobi Swim Club

A vocally straight friend and I were discussing Kill La Kill and he made mention of the teacher's weird and hilarious fan service scene. He found it gratuitous, I didn't. It reminded me of how he had mentioned Free! And it's own gratuitous male fan service. This is all the motivation I needed to watch Free! Iwatobi Swim Club.

Free! Iwatobi Swim Club is known in most circles as the swimming anime and all others as "look at that body". Notable for it's high fan service aimed at females and a guy who is often shipped with water. It should also be noted for having actual interesting characters and a half way decent plot.

The plot follows a group of boys with girly names and their re founding of the high school swimming club after meeting up with their friend turned rival. They train for tournaments,have team building adventures and get characterization on motivations. The Free in the title refers to both Freestyle swimming and the characters desire to be free from the past. Most of the boys has something holding them back from becoming a successful and fulfilling their dreams. It adds a nice layer of depth to an other wise standard sports plot and made each episode worth watching. Every episode the we learn more about the characters and why stick with this whole mess even if they don't have to.

The show moves along at a nice clip while giving the characters time to reflect and let things soak in(pun intended) .It seems like the first competition did come up somewhat fast but once I made it to the end of the show,it came at just the right time. The series is also pretty funny for not being a pure comedy series. Haruka and Rei are the comically serious while Makoto gets to over react. They are also not above poking fun at themselves with jabs at Haruka's love of water and the gratuitous amount of male physique on display.

Our main cast has five boys:First is Haruka Nanase,the boy who loves water. He sort of comes off as just plain weird; sometimes often talking about the water as if it were a person, and seems to only eat mackerel. He is also an amazing swimmer (only freestyle though) and the glue holding the swim team together. He starts of wanting to be ordinary but every encounter with childhood rival Rin has him questioning what he actually wants and how he can get that. Figuring him out can be somewhat difficult just due to him rarely speaking. It's left to pieces of flashbacks and how other characters act around him. He has a dolphin motif that nicely contrasts Rin's shark motif.

His best friend/mother figure is Makoto Tachibana, the new swim team's captain. Makoto is sort of the Wilson to Haruka's House. He's always watching out for him and trying to keep him safe. When he does become captain of the swim club he evolves into the team mom constantly looking out for the boys and putting aside his own fears for the team. He's not as troubled as Haruka outside of a fear of water but is still the emotional center of the team. He has a Killer Whale,a symbol of leadership, as his motif which fits his personality to a tee.

Nagisa Hazuki is the most enthusiastic of the boys and has a hero worship relationship with Haruka. He is all boundless enthusiasm and excitement. He doesn't learn any real lessons outside of teamwork which he's pretty well versed in from the beginning . His bouncy personality is cute and he helps to keep everyone going. His goofy/flighty nature does well to hide his strong love for the team and when things go wrong he is trying his best to set things right. He is also the only person who will tease the boys about their girly names often adding -chan to their names. His animal motif is the penguin and more specifically the Rock hopper penguin as it's the teams mascot drawn by Haruka.

The last member of the new team is Rei Ryugazaki,who shares Haruka's role as the comically serious and is a lover of beauty. He is the last member to join and also gets one of the better jokes in the series which I really don't want to spoil. His obsession with beauty is fairly low key once he joins the team and most of his arc is focused on him becoming part of the team and culminates in a crowing moment of heart warming. He constantly struggles with the fact that he doesn't have the history the others have and he eventually learns what must be done so he can be "free" to join the team.

Rin Matsuoka is the rival and main antagonist of the series. Most of the series for him is spent taunting Haruka and the team. It's all a facade to mask his own crippling failure as a solo swimmer. Like Haruka they are trying to come to terms with their reasons for swimming and by extension living. He channels his rage into beating Haruka and is baffled when he doesn't feel satisfied by beating him. He is a joy to watch struggle through his issues and finally take his life in his hands and move on. I do wish that they would explore more with of his relationship with his family as there is a bit of a goldmine there from guilt over "ruining" his father's dream and his poor relationship with his sister

The supporting cast are nothing special but do provide a good laugh or two. Rin's sister,Kou, is used as a bit of an audience surrogate in regards to the fanserivce going on. Also I swear that Rin's kohai looks like a middle school age Yu Narukami without the panache. All of them are at least memorable but not particularity well developed.

The animation is gorgeous with bright colors and a clean look. The character design does leave a little to be desired as it's pretty much stock bishonen stereotypes. Being bishonen they do look very handsome so that helps. Apparently their bodies are also accurate to what a swimmers build would look like. I personally wouldn't know as I'm no expert on muscles outside of well that looks nice. The ending animation is bizarre and oddly compelling telling a weird little tale about Haruka in the desert looking for water with a random club scene thrown in. I couldn't tear my self away from it and was sort of disappointed the last episode lacked it. The music all around is not bad with the OP and ED being kind of catchy if generic. Also the rest of the OST does answer my question: What if Shoji Meguro tried to compose while massively drunk. The answer:not bad.

So in the end is Free! worth your time if you're not a lover of the male body? I'd say yes. If you can look past that there is a interesting plot with some fun characters. If you are a lover of the male body then hey your getting a pretty good show with some eye candy to boot. Till next time, Stay Positive.

Little Miss Thinker:Otona Ni Nuts and Fanservice

If you can recall the far flung past of last Wednesday and my questionable review on Otano Ni Nuts I commented on the weird amount of fan service.If this was a Shonen, I wouldn't bat an eye, it's par for the course there.However this was a shojo manga and one of the covers looked like this:

I understanding wanting to broaden your demographic but this is just shameful. Yes,some girl manga put a changing scene or the like just to get  some male readers but it usually flows with the story. Nuts decided that half of volume two should be about putting our lead in loads of revealing swimwear.It just bizarre and is fairly creepy when you remember that this girl is in the fifth grade.

I actually thought the Tokyo Pop covers were pretty clever and were wasted on this series. I'd describe them but I'd rather show you so here one is:

 It takes the needlessly risque cover and turns it into something nice that would not make me think this is boring tripe.Not the most exciting cover in the world but still not bad.It looks like the publisher was trying instead of "hey boobs". I don't mean to come of as a prude,I'm defiantly not.I'm all for go go action sexy,but it doesn't need to pervade everything.

Might as well  I make some comments on fan service in general.I'm okay with it for the most part.Yes,it can ruin pretty ok shows like last year's Sword Art Online,but used in moderation I don't mind it. Fan serivce can use it to great effect when done right to make great sex comedies like the hilarious  "My Balls". It works there because the book goes whole hog on it and is not trying to be serious. Same thing with High School Of The Dead, the fan service fit the very sleazy zombie movie feel the show was aiming for. Shojo tends to be more subtle about it's fan service for the female gaze,letting it occur naturally.It can be gratuitous Ala Absolute Boyfriend but usually stays on the believable side.

In the end do I think fan service is bad:yes,it can cheapen a great show,cripple an alright show but if used the right way it's perfectly fine.
 
Also as a challenge to the five people who read this blog, go check out Otana Ni Nuts' first volume and tell it wouldn't be a decent one shot before that stupid doctor shows up. Till next time: Stay Positive.