C2Comics Blog

Finally, I have gotten around to watching the new Fullmetal Alchemist series.  Of course, I must admit that although I have been looking forward to it, I put off watching so I could get some back-to-back viewings in.  So now, having dedicated the last three days to six hours of the new series, I must say….I’m disappointed.

yes, I said short

Don’t get me wrong, it is not that I am one of the purist, who cursed the day they heard a new series was on its way – I enjoyed the old series, very much, but I also enjoy the original comic storyline and cannot wait to see some of those in action.

The problem lies in that the new series cannot wait to get to those storylines either.  There is an old saying: “If you drop a frog in boiling water, it will jump out right away.  However, if you drop a frog in room temperature water, and slowly bring it to a boil, it will not leave.”  As a biologist I have to say that, in terms of actual frog behavior, that is completely untrue.  However, it is a good comparison for the new and old series.

The great irony that stands out right now is that this new series is supposed to more accurately reflect the comic than the old series but for the first few episodes the case is just the opposite.  Both the comic and the old series started out somewhat benign (well, as benign as a story about two boys who failed to resurrect their mother from the dead and suffered horrible consequences could be….), adding darker and darker elements until, at one point you suddenly pull away and say, “how did things get this bad?”  The adventures of the Elric brothers gradually became less fun and more dangerous, and the heat was noticed too late.  That is some damn fine storytelling!  That damn fine storytelling is lost on the new writers, who drop you into a big vat of “Oh shit, everything is horrible and dangerous these kids are in soooo much trouble!” right off the bat.  It makes you want to jump out.

Admittedly, the new series has a huge disadvantage the old one didn’t.  It needs to straddle the line between attracting brand new viewers and keeping fans of the previous series, a difficult feat that it is not winning.  In trying to get to the “new” stuff for the “old” viewers but trying to get in the “old” background for the “new” viewers the first several episodes, indeed the entire first dectet, cannot find a balance.

The first episode of the new series is original, and in all honesty should probably be skipped by brand new

the new anime will include characters not shown in the original, such as Major General Olivia Armstrong

viewers.  The majority of main characters are shoved into your face and introduced here – an exercise that is unnecessary for “old” viewers and unecessarily complicated for “new” viewers – as is the major plot.  While the old series took a while to string together the many small incidents being connected to a bigger, larger problem, the new series slams it onto the table the first episode.  Back-tracking follows in future episode, but it is too late – we know the problem is there.  The comic, too, took its time to string together and, since the third and on episodes try to follow the comic, the actions of the main characters make little sense in light of what happened in the first episode.

As the new series progresses, the balancing act continues, without much more success.  Some stories are replayed from the first series (so far as some of the original footage being re-used) with very little change.  The changes certainly pull the storyline closer to the comic – with scenes becoming more of what they were in the old series (more funny, more grim, more sad) and more accurately reflecting Hiromu’s original work – but it can get to be tedious waiting for that 5% which is new.  To compensate for the tedium, stories are cut.  Sometimes they are cut in length, sometimes they are cut entirely, which is worse than it being tedious.  The Youswell story seems to have been cut entirely, despite a character introduced in that storyline, Yoki, having a large part later.  This is taken care of by someone passing around a picture of Yoki and saying, “Oh, Fullmetal took care of him!”  A poor device, in my opinion.

Technically, the art style is somewhat the same. Ed is blonder than before, with a darker yellow outlining his hair instead of the former black, which isn’t much by itself, but combined with the fact of the other blonds in the series retaining the black outline of their hair, it is a little weird. The cinematography has changed a bit. The over-use of split-screen detracts from the experience, but the gradual color wash-out, fading almost completely to grayscale, during the creepier scenes, adds to the experience, so overall it’s no better, no worse.

Some voice actors have changed – Romi Paku is still doing Ed’s voice, which is fantastic, but the voice actor for Roy Mustang is new. Miki Shinichiro is doing an okay job, but he seems to lack the essential smarminess Toru Ohkawa brought in the first series. My brain cannot comprehend a non-smarmy Roy Mustang. Once again this is neutralized as the voice actor for Envy has been change to Takayama Minami, who is just better at delivering the lines than Mayumi Yamaguchi was. In fact, although there’s been a step back in Roy’s va, there’ve been two steps forward for Envy’s, so the voice work is better than series one (so far). I was surprised to see Rie Kugimiya was still the voice actor for Alphonse, as it sounded much different for the first episode, though it could just be the distortion needed for Al’s voice has been changed.  Some of the fluffier scenes have been removed so there is less adorableness for her to voice.

Overall it’s still a great anime, but not as good as the previous one in terms of storytelling and music.  Although a cartoon it is still a more intelligent story than most television shows on these days.

I dare you to tell me how this could get cuter.

Imagine a room full of puppies.  They are wrestling, licking each other, and perhaps taking little puppy naps every once in a while.  Their tongues loll and their tails wag, and you wonder if this is it – if this is the most adorable thing you will every seen in your life.  Then imagine that while you are watching these adorable puppies, someone is droning on in the background about some boring-yet-slightly-creepy story.  Occasionally you can hear adorable yips from the puppies, but mainly while you are visually stimulated by the puppies, you are aurally assaulted by the story.  Imagine this going on for almost two hours.

This is what “Ponyo” is like.

Written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, the visuals of ‘Ponyo’ are on par with his other films (‘Spirited Away’, ‘Princess Mononoke’) but lacks their powerful stories.  The story of ‘Ponyo’ is boring at best, creepy at worst.  When viewing the trailer I believed this movie would be about pollution and how the ‘goldfish girl’ (Ponyo) is charged with saving the world from the disasters we humans created.  This was a story I was excited to see.

The movie I actually saw was a story about love, a love so strong that….a girl is willing to destroy the Earth for it.  I’m sorry, no man is worth THAT much.

Already tired of the inevitable romantic side-plot to non-romance movies, to say I was disappointed that romance was the entire plot of ‘Ponyo’ is an understatement.

In brief, a little fish-girl (humanoid body but arms that resemble flippers and a fish-tail instead of legs) sneaks out of her undersea home to explore.  She is caught up in some dredging and ends up in a glass bottle.  A young boy , Sosuke, finds her and breaks the bottle then puts her in a bucket to take her to school.  Sosuke promises to protect the ‘goldfish’ and names her Ponyo.  About a minute later her father comes back to collect her.  Sosuke is upset but after an ice cream cone is okay with the situation.

Not so with Ponyo.  Ponyo is absolutely livid with her father and determined to see Sosuke again.  Apparently she is magically and uses her magic to turn herself into some kind of chicken-frog-human-fish animal?  She gets into a pot of her father’s magic potion?  And that makes some really huge waves and brings to moon closer to Earth?  What?  Huh?  Okay, I guess?  Ponyo leaves right after this to track down Sosuke.

Ponyo’s father is worried about her but Ponyo’s mother decides that if Ponyo and Sosuke really love each other, they should allow her to become a human and live with him.  After they decide this, they leave to let Sosuke rest in order to face the grueling test they have planned for him the next day.  Their plan is a little spoiler-y, so it is under the ‘read more’.

On the surface it sounds like a lame romance.  Scratch the surface and it far creepier.   Here is a girl who has her own life in her own world and she is completely fine with giving up everything to be with this boy she has known for, what, an hour?  In fact she even gives up her name – before Sosuke named her Ponyo she had been name Brunehilde.  But Sosuke wants to call her Ponyo so Ponyo she becomes.  In addition, Sosuke talks about his ‘responsibility’ to Ponyo frequently enough it almost reads as a PSA for teenage pregnancies – ‘boys, you got her into this mess.  The least you can do is take responsibility.’  He got a bottle off her head, that’s it.  If I were, I dunno, caught in a bear trap in the woods, I certainly wouldn’t expect the hunter who freed me to offer their hand in marriage out of responsibility.  Is that just me?  Am I bucking the norm again?  If so, I’ve grievously offended a large number of hunters….

One of the weirdest things about this ‘true love’ story is that Sosuke and Ponyo….are about five years old.  Five years old!  Ponyo needs to decide whether to leave her family to live with Sosuke at the tender age of five?  And Sosuke has to take on the responsibility for this girl who is entering his household because of him?  Even in Japan that is about thirteen years under the age of majority.  Nevermind these kids have known each other for about two days.  When I was five, love lasted a week, tops.  At least in “The Little Mermaid” Ariel and the Prince were both of the age of consent….

A strange thing in this film was the lack of disbelief from the other characters.  Everyone seems to see Ponyo as a goldfish, despite the fact she has the head of a frickin human!  When two five-year-olds are out in the middle of a flood by themselves, the passing townspeople simply say, ‘good luck!’ and send them on their way.  When Ponyo changes from human to the chicken-frog-human-fish thing, runs across flood waters, and kisses a baby, all the mother does is say ‘Thanks!’  Once again, would my freaking out at this metamorphosis and seeming miracle be out of turn?  Am I the only person who doesn’t experience this kind of thing regularly?  The lack of disbelief in the other characters is a drawback to the film as it makes me wonder why this story is special.  Since the townspeople are so used to this, obviously there must be tons of the goldfish people wandering around looking for love.  What makes this story so special?

Besides that the voice acting is bland at best.  It is almost as though someone asked all the stars to watch poorly-dubbed anime from the 1960′s and use the exact same inflection.  Lines are delivered stiffly and haltingly.  Tina Fey is especially bad as Lisa, Sosuke’s mother, though not many others stand out either.  Cate Blanchett does a fair job at Ponyo’s mother and Frankie Jonas and Noah Cyrus made Sosuke and Ponyo adorably voiced (respectively).  However, the ages of Sosuke and Ponyo were such that you expect strange speech patterns.  Were these voice actors doing a good job, or were their characters just hiding the flaws?

Another minor glitch I have with the movie is that ‘Ponyo’ is pronounced ‘Pahn-yo’, not ‘Pohn-yo’.  The name Ponyo is supposed to be representative of the sound something soft and squishy would make.  Somehow Pahnyo just doesn’t sound soft.

So in summary, adorable, visually stunning film to rent via NetFlix and watch while muted and listening to baby birds chirping.

Read more »

While in graduate school, more than one lunch break was spent running down the busy New Brunswick streets to the post office, sandwich from the cafeteria in one hand, cell phone in the other, trying to mail a package, eat my lunch, and schedule a dentist’s appointment without going over my half-hour lunch break.  I was so frazzled at one point that I asked a friend to be my wife.  I was only half-kidding.  Maybe less-than-half-kidding.  So when I came across Annie Sanders’ Book, “Busy Woman Seeks Wife” and saw (from the book summary on back) that it was about a working woman who, with no time to do her own laundry or cooking, advertises for a “wife” I thought the premise sounded delightful and purchased it straight away.

This was my first time reading Annie Sanders and it turns out, according to the “About the Author”, Annie Sanders is actually more than one person!  Annie Ashworth and Meg Sanders (AS from now on) began writing books after they met while pregnant.  It is mentioned in this section that “you have to know someone well to be able to say that at times her prose sucks and her plotting is slack”.  Reading this made my mouth fall open as I thought:

“At times?”

Busy Woman Seeks Competent Authors, more like

I read “Busy Woman….” straight through, in about six hours.  I couldn’t put it down!  But this is not because it was such an engaging read, but rather, I am in the habit of finishing what I start, and if I put this book down, I know there was no way in hell I would pick it up again.  Well, to be honest, there was another reason I kept reading – I kept expecting the story to pick up on the next page.  I am not sure why I thought that, but it almost never did.  Oh, there were a few high points, to be sure, but the high points of this book are only that in self-comparison.  Even the few well-written portions of this novel are simply that – well written.  This makes them stand out against the “sucky prose” and “slack plotting” (to paraphase) that is the majority of the book.

The real hindrance to “Busy Woman….” is that there are no real characters.  Oh, there are names, and they represent people in the book that do things, but because everyone in the book is glaringly one-dimensional, you really don’t need to read how a “character” will act in a certain situation, because you already know how the stereotype will react.  This does not prevent AS from laying out that stereotypical reaction in excruciatingly boring detail.

Details are another drawback of this book, in that there are too many of them that don’t have to do with the actual plot, and those that would help are noticeably absent.  When Alex goes shopping we get a complete list of what was bought and when Frankie gets mail we learn of every piece of mail received, despite it having absolutely no relevance to the story.  Alex’s house, however, could do with a little detail, as it is described both as having a guest bedroom and also being tiny.  Now, this could be a culture difference (the story is set in London) but houses/apartments that have two bedroom are usually, by their nature not “tiny”.  Did the guest bedroom used to be a utility closet?  That is a detail I would like to have been told, if only to reconcile the two contradictory descriptions.

Now what woman wouldn't want a figure like these beans'?!

Common sense, too, seems to be lacking in this book.  Alex’s mother is called “The Bean”, due to her figure. Now, reading this I pictured her as rather round and squat, like, well, a Bean.  Almost a hundred pages later it is revealed that she is quite tall and slender.  Maybe this would make her a beanpod or beanstalk, but certainly not just a bean.  It is conceivable that “Beanstalk” was shortened to simply “Bean”, as the latter is easier to say and projects a cuter image, however, this was not mentioned, and for a good portion of the book it creates an incorrect character image.  While on the topic of appearances… at one point Alex wishes she had her mother’s delicate frame, as opposed to her father’s athletic one.  While this might seem like a reasonable request, it must be noted that Alex love sports and athletics, so essentially she is wishing for a body type that would make it more difficult to do what she loves, and that is just silly to me.  Also silly to me was, forgive me, one paragraph that sticks in my mind – let me set the stage….Frankie has just come home after an audition, and his sister, Ella, is in the apartment, Frankie then…

“…looked around in disbelief.  How had she managed to make so much mess in so little time?  He’d left that work surface immaculate before he’s left – now it was ringed with sticky brown coffee residue and slopped with hastily poured milk”

This occurs on page twenty-one, and sets the tone for what we’re in store for.  When a couple coffee rings and sploshed milk is considered a huge mess that normally takes a considerable amount of time to create, well…..

But silliest of all is the “plot” of the book.  Is it the main plot?  A side plot?  I’m not sure – all are equally bland!  However, since the denouement occurs after this plot’s climax, I assume it is the major one.  I will try to keep this spoiler-free in case anyone still wants to read it.  In a nutshell, Alex, the busy woman, is trying to set up a launch party for a new line of athletic apparel.  It becomes clear (quite early on) that someone is sabotaging her work. It is glaringly obvious who the culprit is, but the main characters are, as previously stated, one-dimensional, and no character turns up on the “intelligent” facet, so we must slog through at their pace.

I have to say, this was probably the most enjoyable portion of the book for me – although glaringly obvious who it was, it was not obvious what the motivation was.  Due to my hopes being highest, this was also the biggest let-down, as the motivation was to win Alex’s job.  Considering this would be like a janitor sabotaging the school principal in order to win the job, finding out this was the motivation was just, well, lame.

Alex’s money-troubles, brought up at the end of the book, were also confusing.  Throughout the majority of the book she is paying someone to be a “wife” (which has the price tag, the authors guess, at $1000.00/day, a figure which I am honestly inclined to agree with considering the work – cleaning, cooking, chauffeuring, shopping, caring for a relative, etc.).  This spans several weeks’ time, and in the last few chapters it is revealed that she has money troubles.  These two facts (just like a tiny flat with a guest bedroom) just don’t mesh well.  Likely AS, realizing the lack of characterization of Alex, decided to throw in the money troubles off-hand to provide another measure of empathy towards her from Frankie (the “wife” and love interest).

Since the poor characterization bugged me so much, I have more detail on the actual “characters” after the cut, but in summary, this book was a waste of time and money.  It was an interesting concept, but poorly executed, and leaves me to wonder how this crap even got published, as it is not even as titillating as your dollar-store romance novel.  When flanked by “Idiot America” (by Charlie Pierce) and “QED” (by Richard Feynman), I fully expected this to be the fluff portion of my June reading, a slice of chocolate cake, if you will, to the rice and vegetables. But just as I expect my chocolate cake to be edible despite the lack of nutrition, I expect my fluff reading to be decent literature, despite a lack of great mental exercise.

All in all, the authors sum it up best themselves with “prose that sucks and plotting that is slack”. Read more »