Ghibli Month: The Cat Returns

MadameAce: Hello, Ace here, and welcome to yet another installment of Ghibli Month. I have some bad news though. Rin is unfortunately not here for this review, so you’re stuck with just me today. I know; it makes me sad too.

Anyway, The Cat Returns centers on highschooler Haru, a shy girl with little no self-confidence. She’s a klutz who never wakes up on time, is always late for school, constantly trips over her own two feet, and is laughed at and picked on by the other students, including her best friend. Her life gets much harder when one day she saves a cat about to be run over by a truck—breaking her friend’s lacrosse stick in the process. While Haru is catching her breath on the side of the road, the cat in question stands up on his hind legs, brushes himself off, and calmly thanks Haru for saving him. It turns out that he is Prince Lune from the Cat Kingdom. Later that night, on entourage of cats make their way to Haru’s house. Among them is their king, who wants to thank Haru personally. The cats give Haru a piece of paper that has a list of all the marvelous cat gifts they want to bestow upon her for saving their prince. The cats have vowed to not stop until Haru is perfectly happy, regardless of her feelings on the matter.

Ace plays Final Fantasy VII: The Evil Corporation

Many stories struggle with showing over telling. While I can think of a few notable exceptions, I’ve noticed that it’s not very easy to make the supposed heroes of a story actually heroic when they’re terrorists. There’s nothing that grinds my gears more when characters are presented to me as self-righteous heroes before doing some pretty unheroic things. Final Fantasy VII struggles with this a bit.

Our playable party consists of people belonging to the terrorist organization AVALANCHE—which is apparently not an acronym, so I don’t know why it’s written like that—and their goal is to save the Planet from the evil corporation Shinra. As mentioned in a previous post, Shinra is an electric company, and it gathers power from something called Mako, which comes from the Lifestream. The Lifestream is essentially the Planet’s blood, so by sucking it out of the ground, Shinra is subjecting the Planet to a slow and painful death.

Once again, I feel the need to repeat that, yes, the world is actually called the Planet.

Fanfiction Fridays: It’s Quiet Now by inthe_redshirt

[tw: incest]

Okay, so the whole premise of this fic is mad spoilers for the really excellent book Havemercy by Jaida Jones and Danielle Bennett. What’s that? You haven’t read it? Well, just… put down your computer right now and go. Even if you don’t want to read this fic when you’re done. Read Havemercy. I’ll wait.

Book Review: Storm Front

In my opinion there are two kinds of fiction: the kind that has intense heavy themes, allegories, symbolism, etc., and the kind that doesn’t (like crack for your brain). This book is the latter. I personally prefer books that I can pick up, read, enjoy, and then proceed to go on my merry way. Every so often I go for the deep, heavy book, but that’s not common.

Storm Front is the first book of The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher, which is a series of fantasy mystery novels. Storm Front follows Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden, wizard and private investigator, as he helps the police solve a series of violent and grisly murders with magical origins.

I love fantasy-set-in-the-real-world books. I adored Harry Potter—who didn’t though?—and the Artemis Fowl books (before they went south, which really means I liked the first one and the premises of all of them). Fantasy is actually my favorite genre; I like it much more than science fiction. The juxtaposition of the real and the unreal makes for interesting and fun reading.

My favorite thing about this book is its voice. When I read something, I like being able to imagine someone actually saying all of the words. Not as in reading the book aloud, but as if the author and I were sitting in the same room and he was just talking and telling me a story. I know I tend to write how I speak, and I love an author who does that too. Butcher really gives Harry a voice by writing the book in first person. And I enjoyed what Harry said/thought and how he said it.

It’s not a very long book—I read it in under three hours—but it’s definitely worth the read. I’m really trying not to give anything away because it is a really enjoyable, shorter book. So go read it!

Manga Mondays: Lament of the Lamb

This is one of those series that I forgot existed, until, at a loss for what to write, I went scrounging around my house for ideas, and lo and behold, there it was shoved into the back of my closet. I wouldn’t say Lament of the Lamb by Kei Toume is entirely forgettable, but it’s been nearly ten years since its debut and it’s not particularly memorable in terms of plot. What initially drew me to it is its art—which is probably the most notable part of the series. It has a very distinctive style, especially on the covers, and even after coming across my forgotten collection, while just one look at the cover wasn’t enough to make me remember the story and characters—except in the most basic sense—my thoughts were immediately flooded with the visuals before even turning the first page.

Video Game Review: Sonic Dash

And the iPhone game saga continues.

Sonic Dash is a free iPhone game that is very similar to Sonic Adventure 2 Battle (if you’re playing as Sonic or Shadow), but you have a touch screen instead of controller. All you do is run through the course collecting rings and killing bad guys without dying. You can play as Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, or Amy.

There is extremely little I like about this game, but I will put forward that I might have set my expectations too high. I love Sonic the Hedgehog, and Sonic Adventure 2 Battle is one of my favorite games of all time. So when I say I had high expectations for this free game, I really did expect a lot from it.

But this game is a horror scene. Whoever thought that making everything the same bright colors is a moron. You can’t see some of the obstacles, and making some of the objects you go over and some you go under look the exact same makes the game play confusing. Additionally, the game consistently puts obstacles in awkward spots so you don’t actually see some of them before you need to avoid them.

The game does not respond quickly to one’s touch, so if you want to avoid something at the last second it will not work. I also don’t like that tilting the phone doesn’t do anything (unlike Temple Run 2) and that you have to use your finger to do everything; it’s really annoying.

The most irksome thing for me is how much the ‘free’ game relies on money. Unlike Temple Run 2, in order to advance in Sonic Dash you do need to spend real money. I don’t mind if people spend money on a game if they want to, but if you are going to have a free game don’t make buying things once you’re in it necessary.

In case you couldn’t tell I’m not recommending this game to anyone. It’s a wonder I haven’t deleted it from my phone already.

Ace plays Final Fantasy VII: The Plot Thickens

So I’ve already given an overall review on the plot of this game, but for any of you who either didn’t read that or didn’t play the game, here’s what the plot boils down to in its simplest form: some asshole’s mother tells said asshole to summon a meteor to murder the Planet, so he does it without question. Of course, that doesn’t really do the plot justice, because as I said last time, Final Fantasy VII can become really complex, especially when we take into account the setting and character backstories.

Furthermore, VII did something completely unexpected and shocking: It killed off a main character.

This is not something that often happened in games at this point in time. The death of Aerith has to be one of the most memorable moments in video game-dom. Unfortunately, though FFVII did succeed in giving Aerith’s death meaning, her passing is still surrounded by plot holes.

They also made her Jesus.

Fanfiction Fridays: Anyone up for some old-school slash?

Okay, to be fair, I haven’t seen Star Trek Into Darkness yet. I’m seeing it tonight. So I don’t know what happens in it or what beautiful relationships blossomed or were furthered or which ships were brutally sunk.

Either way, I felt like starting off this Star Trek day with a little good old-fashioned Kirk/Spock, yanno, the pairing that started it all. Of course, in keeping with the fact that it’s nu!Trek day and not Original!Trek day, this fic is set in the rebooted Star Trek verse (sometimes referred to as XI).

Kyliselle’s “How High the Moon” series is sort of famous in the reboot’s K/S fandom (although probably not as famous as her “Baseball” series). Back in the day when I followed the kirkspock LiveJournal comm, her fics were a perennial favorite, considered a must-read for both newbs to the fandom and old guard slashers alike.

“How High the Moon” is in five parts, and follows Kirk as he tries and fails to forge the fabled connection Spock Prime promised him he should have with his commanding officer—a friendship that would define them both, as it were. However, Spock doesn’t seem the least bit interested in Kirk as a friend or anything else, and his rejection of Kirk may be hurting Jim more than either of them realize.

This fic has great imagery, a really solid basis in both reboot and TOS canon, great tension and characterization, no lady-bashing, and, my favorite in fanfic, buckets of hurt/comfort situations (and my secret weakness, Vulcan endearments). Check out this series here and let me know what you think!

The Road So Far: “Sacrifice” Review

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!

Saika: Okay, so much shit happened in this episode that I didn’t think I could go it alone, so I dragged Luce into co-writing this with me. How is this only our first copost?

Luce: …

Saika: Anyway, so, the season finale. Let’s be real, guys, this was all over the place. Hit the jump for spoilers.

The Winter Witch

Since everyone in my neck of the woods has been enjoying relatively warm weather, I thought I would discuss a novel set in wintry Wales. I was hesitant at first to review this book because I found it in the teen section. Teen novels are not everyone’s cup of tea. However, I try my best not to discriminate against books based solely on their intended audience. Not every teen novel is stupid and more than a few have a good story to tell. They will often even have interesting heroines and heroes. Paula Brackston‘s The Winter Witch is a pretty cool novel. I’m always up for a book about magic, but what I got was far more than another book about a teenage witch who finds love. I don’t think it’s a stretch to call The Winter Witch a fantastic piece of fantasy fiction, and the protagonist Morgana a well-written and interesting character.