The Fanboy Review

Dragon Age: Dawn of the Seeker (Blu-ray/DVD), Early Review

Marc — Mon, 07 May 2012 08:00:49 +0000

The Fanboy Review is back with its second ever joint review! Join Alex and me as we take an early look at the first animated adaptation of the popular Dragon Age franchise.

Co-produced by EA and Funimation Entertainment, Dragon Age: Dawn of the Seeker made its debut in Japanese cinemas back in February and will be hitting US shelves on May 29. This is the first bit of animation that is a Funimation ‘original’ (rather than a licensed film/show.) How does their first original production hold up?

No packaging to review this time, screener didn’t include the retail packaging. What we can tell you is that this is a three disk set, consisting of a DVD with the English version of the film, a DVD with the Japanese version of the film, and a Blu-ray with both versions. The DVDs will be available in their own set without the Blu-ray.

Both the Blu-ray and DVD menus have nice and readable text (As always, sorry for the poor BD cap, still can’t figure out how to get a clean menu cap off a Blu-ray.) Both menus do their job well. The only complaint would be the DVD menus use a piece of production art for the film that has been used in far too many places.

Making its first appearance in 2009—which is still pretty new as far as we’re concerned—BioWare’s Dragon Age has gone from being a single video game, to a popular, crossmedia franchise. Today, fans of the original game can purchase a sequel, several novels andcomics, a tabletop RPG, and even action figures of some of the characters! It seems only natural, then, that this fantasy world would take a step into the world of television and movies: that’s where Dragon Age: Dawn of the Seeker comes in.

The story, which sits somewhere between high fantasy and swords & sorcery, details the past of Cassandra Pentaghast, a character fans will remember from the second game, and explains how she rose to her prominent position. We join Cassandra when she’s still a low-ranking yet promising member of the Seekers of the Truth, an order that exists to root out corruption and protect their religious order, the Chantry, from both external and internal threats. What begins as a battle against an evil order of mages and the rescue of a kidnapped elven girl quickly spirals into one such internal threat, leading to a story full of intrigue and conspiracies within the Chantry itself. Cassandra, who has despised all mages following a tragic event in her youth, is forced to team up with a well meaning magic user named Regalyan d’Marcall (Galyan to his friends), and must get over her own prejudices in order to protect what she believes in from the sorcerers who truly deserve her scorn.

Though this story focuses on a conspiracy, it’s also heavy on the action. There seems to be a sword fight every few minutes, often leading to gore and dismemberment, though never becoming pointlessly gratuitous. Our two heroes find themselves up against armies, sorcerers, demonic-looking beasts, golems, and more—and through it all, Cassandra never ceases to amaze by charging in head first and slicing through every enemy with her simple sword. They don’t call this girl a dragon hunter for nothing!

It all sounds like a recipe for a great flick, but, unfortunately, there were one or two flaws. The most obvious one for us was that while someone with no knowledge of Dragon Age can watch, follow, and even enjoy the film, it feels just a little bit generic when viewed from such a perspective. You’ve got swords, sorcery, dragons, elves—all that good stuff—but what sets it apart from every other fantasy story with the same? Neither of us knew the first thing about Dragon Age going into this, and without that knowledge, this film didn’t feel like it had any sort of hook. We couldn’t help thinking, “If you’ve seen one fantasy, you’ve seen them all.”

Now, maybe the above paragraph isn’t being fair. This film was made for the fans, not for clueless people like us, right? And for those fans there is a hook: it’s the same world from the games, and it explores the history of a familiar character. In fact, upon doing a little research into the franchise, we found that the Dragon Age world is a rich, intricate, fleshed out and very interesting place, which is an impression we just didn’t get from watching the movie alone. This is a shame, and we can only conclude that Dragon Age: Dawn of the Seeker isn’t the best place to start if you’re new to the franchise.

Another flaw unrelated to Dragon Age knowledge may have been the length. This is a full ninety minute long movie, and while the pace doesn’t exactly drag, there was a point where Alex thought, “This feels like it’s nearing the end,” only to find there was still more than a third to go. We can’t help but feel that some of that time could have been used to develop some of the characters some more; several were interesting and had potential, but we only learned the basics about them. The worst has to be the elven mage, Avexis, who, despite being integral to the plot, has zero lines from start to finish. The official website claims that she originally had dialogue and that the director chose to remove it and leave her as a strong silent type; unfortunately, we feel this left her as not much of a character at all. She’s nothing but a walking MacGuffin—minus the walking, since she’s just carried from one place to another until the very end.

However, it’s not all bad. The story is about Cassandra, after all, and with the help of Galyan, and likeable character in his own right, she clearly does grow and overcome some of her personal demons over the course of the film. Throw in an exciting climax that makes the somewhat slow build-up more forgiveable, and you’ve got yourself a good enough fantasy adventure.

One of the film’s stronger points is its animation. It’s all CGI, but there are moments—mostly scenery shots or close-ups of small animals—where Alex felt you could just about mistake it for live action. The human characters are a lot less realistic in appearance, but the way they move can be impressive, and one or two of the fight scenes had quite good choreography. Each character had a unique look and shape to them, and some of the locations, particularly the giant courtyard towards the end, were simply beautiful to look at.

Unfortunately once you pay more attention you start to notice issues. Very often everything looks nearly perfect and gorgeous, other times characters hair or armor have line stutter. And other times it appears characters have been pasted onto pre-existing backgrounds (looking alot like early Resident Evil games or PS1-era RPGs.) Much of this can be hidden by movement, but if you do notice, it can be a heavy distraction.

It’s also worth mentioning that the Japanese and English cuts of the film are slightly different, which leads to each getting it’s own DVD, and it’s own encode on the Blu-ray. Both get plenty of room to breathe on the Blu-ray and we don’t believe sharing a disk lead to any of the video problems, rather we believe they were issues with the production itself.

English- AVC, 23965kbps, 1080p

Japanese- AVC, 23984 kbps, 1080p

Both audio tracks get rich Dolby TrueHD tracks. The only oddity worth mentioning is that unlike most of their anime releases, Funimation’s English track here only gets 16-bit audio and not 24. There is a normal 5.1 Dolby track at 448k embedded in both, which we believe to be identical to the DVD audio.

The music was good, but not great. There were no pieces that stuck out, seemed catchy, or were memorable. However, that also means that nothing stood out as bad. It was fitting and subtle, and the people arranging it knew when a scene would be better with a bit of silence. As such, we wouldn’t recommend buying Dawn of the Seeker OST, but it gets the job done nonetheless.

The Funimation dub (as it’s called in the credits) for this release is a fairly strong one. It’s not the best voice acting you’ll ever hear, nor is it anything to write home about, but it’s not the sort of thing you listen to and say, “Oh yeah, that’s a dub all right.” In fact, Alex had to ask whether it was made in English and translated into Japanese or vice versa, which is always a good sign. The voices fit the characters, at least as far as we’re concerned, but it might be worth pointing out that they’re not the same actors who provided the voices for the games. Cassandra, for instance, is voiced here by Colleen Clinkenbeard, whereas her in-game voice was provided by Miranda Raison. We can’t say whether this will mean anything to the gamers already familiar with the character, but if not, you shouldn’t have too many complaints. There are plenty of actors who avid Funimation consumers will no doubt recognize, such as Chuck Huber (Android 17 and Emperor Pilaf in Dragon Ball), John Swasey (Dodoria in Dragon Ball and Crocodile in One Piece), and J. Michael Tatum (Zarbon in Dragon Ball Z Kai and Scar in Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood); and they all do a good job with their respective roles.

As we mentioned, Alex wasn’t sure which audio track came first, and this remains a bit of a mystery even now. The credits call the English track the “Funimation dub”, but does that mean it came after the Japanese track? When we looked closely at both the English and Japanese versions of the film, we found that the lip flaps match the English track much better than the Japanese, which might indicate that the English audio was a pre-lay and the animation was made to match. As such, we’re not going to give this one a dub grade, but if we did it would no doubt get a good score.

The set’s extras are located on both DVD 1 (which contains the English version of the film) and the Blu-ray. The first is an 8 minute long tour of BioWare, which covers the creation of the games and makes them look pretty interesting—perhaps more interesting than we found Dawn of the Seeker itself. The second, and more relevant to the film, is a 21 minute long behind the scenes video featuring the creative director, Mike Laidlaw; the art director, Matthew Goldman; and the executive producer, Mark Darrah. They give their reasons for why they decided to make a Dragon Age anime (which you may or may not agree with) and go into a lot of detail about how this story ties in to the franchise’s canon. They also explain a lot of things that you wouldn’t know just from watching the film, so if you did watch the film without knowing anything about the Dragon Age world, you’ll probably find this informative. It’s clear from the way they talk that a lot of thought and effort went into this production.

The only thing that makes the Blu-ray’s extras different from the DVD’s is the production art gallery, an old staple of anime releases. On the DVD it’s a standard gallery that you can scroll through with your remote’s arrow keys, but for the Blu-ray they’ve made it a video stream, complete with background audio.

There’s also a trailer for Mass Effect, which is really just production art with audio over it.

This is undeniably a well-made film with a lot of effort put into it every step of the way. The designs are intricate and detailed; the animation, while not perfect 100% of the time, is very well done where it counts; and even though it’s hard for us non-fans to see, this is clearly meant to build upon the lore already established in the Dragon Age universe. Most of the flaws we had with it likely come from the fact that we’re outsiders looking in; in fact, upon doing the research, Alex—who isn’t even a gamer—actually became interested in checking out the games. If just reading some Wiki pages and watching the extras can cause such a reaction where this film can’t, then clearly this film isn’t a good way to get into the property. If you already like the games, on the other hand, then there’s sure to be merit in giving it a watch!

Show: C+ (We can only judge this through our Dragon Age newbie eyes. After a second viewing Alex felt the pacing and flow of the story didn’t seem so bad—which also happened to be after his research—so perhaps even that is a result of us being clueless about some of the things the characters are discussing.)

Packaging: N/A (This early screener came with no packaging.)

Video Quality: B (Well done encode with some unfortunate production issues at times.)

Audio Quality: A- (Good quality audio, only hurt by the ‘genericness’ of it at times.)

Extras: B (There’s a decent mix of extras. The behind the scenes featurette was of particular interest, showing how much enthusiasm the creators have for this franchise.)

Overall (not an average): B- (A serviceable film for anyone looking for fantasy, would likely mean a lot more to a Dragon Age fan.)

This film was reviewed using a screener.

The DVDs are labeled for Region 1 and 4. The Blu-ray is labeled for Region A and B

Gallery and copyright information under ad. All caps are lossless PNGs taken in MPC-BE, feel free to request more. (Caps are sized 1080p, minus the DVD menu cap.)

©2010 EA International (Studio and Publishing) LTD. © Dragon Age Project. All Rights Reserved by FUNimation/T.O. Entertainment

Flashpoint Comic Event- Part 2, Review

Alex — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 04:24:28 +0000

I said to look out for a Flashpoint #2 review soon, didn’t I? Well, maybe this isn’t exactly “soon”, but that’s because this is much more than that! We’ve decided to do several Flashpoint updates, covering the event as it happens, mostly from my semi-clueless perspective. Today I’ll be covering both Flashpoint #2 and #3, as well as several of the tie-in issues that have come out recently.

At this point there are more than twenty issues relating to Flashpoint available. I normally try to avoid giving away big spoilers, but it’s going to be almost impossible for these updates. If you don’t want anything spoiled, I’d advise you to read no further.

Seeing as there’s so much to cover this month, I’m going to be breaking this down into sections. First up, let’s take a look at issue #2 of the main book.

Flashpoint #2

Flashpoint #2′s cover depicts The Flash, strapped into an electric chair and out in the rain, with Batman in the shadows behind him throwing the switch. My first thought when seeing it was to ask myself if this was how Barry planned to recover his powers, or whether it was purely metaphorical. This strikes me as being another simple cover, though in a slightly different way to the one before it; like the one before it, though, it features The Flash himself prominently. There isn’t a lot else going on, and the only other character in view is in the background. If you ask me, it’s the second cover in a row to be good at grabbing your attention, and it’s drawn really well. This cover was done by Andy Kubert and Sandra Hope.

The second issue of Flashpoint picks up where the first left off. Having no one else to turn to in this strange new version of history, Barry drove himself to Gotham and snuck into a rather sparse looking Batcave. He’s soon confronted by a very untrusting Batman, whom he tries to convince was his friend in the universe he’s from. But Barry’s made a miscalculation, which was the twist at the end of issue #1: in this world, Batman is not Bruce Wayne—he’s Thomas Wayne. Barry quickly realizes that in this history, it was Bruce who was killed in Crime Alley, leading to his father’s personal war on crime.

This new version of Batman wastes no time breaking bones and tossing Barry around, obviously not believing his rantings about being from another world. That is, until Barry’s senses are suddenly overwhelmed with new memories—the memories he should have had if he was the Barry Allen of this world. He realizes that his mind is changing to fit the new reality, and that can mean only one thing: it isn’t an alternate world, but his world, changed. And if he doesn’t act fast, he may just forget that history has been changed at all.

For some reason, after these mental flashes, Barry’s Flash ring seems to drop to the floor, apparently from his person. Seeing it as his chance to prove to Batman he’s been telling the truth, Barry explains how it contains his costume and shoots it out to show him. But it isn’t his costume that pops out; it’s the costume of Professor Zoom—the Reverse-Flash. Barry believes this is Zoom’s way of telling him that he’s responsible for the changes in the timestream, which certainly isn’t out of the question given his past exploits. Finally beginning to believe that the intruder might not be completely crazy, Dr. Wayne gives in and goes along with Barry’s…well…completely crazy plan to get his powers back. This involves strapping Barry into the electric chair from the cover, on the roof of Wayne Manor, in the middle of a thunderstorm, with beakers of the appropriate chemicals balanced all around him—in other words, completely recreating the accident that gave him his powers in the first place. The twist at the end of this issue is that it ends exactly how you’d expect it to end if this weren’t a comic book…

The bulk of this issue is about the interactions between these two characters, but we do cut away from them a couple of times—first to see Aquaman and then to see Wonder Woman. The Sea King makes his appearance at the beginning of the issue, attacking Slade and some other assorted villains when their pirate ship drifts too close to Paris, which is now underwater. The Themyscirian princess is introduced later in “New Themyscira”—which used to be Britain; we learn through her interrogation of Steve Trevor (who in other universes had been her love-interest, ironically) that everyone’s favorite reporter, Lois Lane, has been spying on the Amazons for Cyborg.

As I already said, Barry still doesn’t get to become The Flash in this issue. I was still sort of disappointed by that when I first read the issue, but at the same time, I felt like I was starting to get an idea of what sort of pace the story was going for. This is only issue 2 of 5, after all; you could say that we’re only just getting past the beginning of the story, with the middle on its way in issue #3. Issue #1 introduced us to the concept and kept us as blind and confused about the new world as Barry himself, while this issue fleshed out the Flashpoint Earth more and explained some of what’s going on, once again leaving me curious about what will happen next.

Andy Kubert is once again the artist in this issue, and his art continues to please me consistently. I think this issue’s visual highpoint is a two page spread of what used to be Paris; now little more than a ship’s graveyard, the ruined tip of the Eiffel Tower jutting up above the waves hints at how much Europe has been flooded—although it’s an extra at the back of the issue that reveals the true extent of this.

This issue also gives us our first good look at Wonder Woman and Aquaman’s Flashpoint designs. Aquaman’s is pretty good, sporting what looks vaguely like a red and black version of his normal costume and wearing a constantly serious expression on his scarred face; after seeing his pre-war design in a later issue, I’ve come to appreciate this one a bit more. But of the two, it’s Wonder Woman’s I find more interesting; her Flashpoint counterpart wears full warrior’s armor that is very different from the costume we’re used to, or even from her more recent costume (yes, the one with the pants). I quite like it.

Both of these new designs are by Andy Kubert himself, and further details about them—as well as details about the designs of Flash, Batman and Cyborg—are found as extras at the end of this issue. It’s clear when you look at these notes that Mr. Kubert put some thought into the finer details on each costume, some of them being things I wouldn’t have noticed in the panels of the comic itself.

Another nice little extra is a map of the Flashpoint Earth, illustrated by Freddie Williams III. It shows all the territories and war zones, as well as the extent of the flooding. If issue #1 was to introduce the concept and issue #2 was to flesh it out, I think this was the perfect time to throw in something like this. Like Barry himself, we’re just starting to get an idea of what this new world is like. I’m also quite pleased to see that New Zealand—which is where I live right now—is part of the neutral territories!

With issue #2 out of the way, I was ready and eager for more. However, I think it’s safe to say that I underestimated the scale of a DC event. By the time issue #3 of the main book was out, about twenty tie-in issues had been released as well. It’s been quite a task going through and summarizing them all, but here they are—Flashpoint’s first batch of tie-ins.

The Tie-Ins

First up is Batman: Knight of Vengeance, of which two issues have currently been released. This comic serves to flesh out the alternate dark knight more, showing us just how different he, his allies, and his enemies are from the world we knew. Plot wise, these three issues seem to be covering the case of the abducted Dent children, which was mentioned, and still unresolved, back in issue #1 of the main book. Thomas Wayne makes an older, gruffer Batman, but apart from one big thing at the end of issue #2, I don’t think the story really adds a lot we didn’t already know about him. The rest of the cast are another matter, with almost every role being quite different from the regular timeline. The story takes a dark and bloody turn towards the end, finishing on another major plot twist.

Both issues were written by Brian Azzarello and illustrated by Eduardo Risso, and I found them quite intriguing. I think my only criticism would be that the covers seem very forgettable to me.

Abin Sur: The Green Lantern #1 came out around the same time as issue #1 of Knight of Vengeance. My first thought was that the cover looks much like an old science fiction movie poster, which I like. The story begins with us being introduced to Abin as a child, learning from his sister that he should respect all life, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant; we then cut ahead to Abin, grown up and in the Green Lantern Corps, fiercely dismembering a Manhunter robot while yelling, “You are not alive!” Once again, the reader learns through the dialogue that this is a very different world: the Black Lanterns are still running wild, Kilowog is dead, Sinestro is still a Green Lantern, and both Abin’s sister and his homeworld Ungara have been lost. The Guardians charge Abin with retrieving the White Entity from Earth before the planet destroys itself with war and fear. While he makes his way to our doomed little world, Sinestro visits Atrocious and asks him a surprising question, hinting that the Red Lantern might know more about this whole big event than we do!

The issue is written by Adam Schlagman and drawn by Felipe Massafera. The art is of very high quality and has an impressive amount of detail. My overall thought on the issue was that Abin Sur seemed surprisingly violent and insubordinate, but I suppose you can’t blame him after losing his home and his sister.

The second issue begins with a flashback showing Abin training with Sinestro, as well as Sinestro meeting Abin’s sister, who would be his wife in the main continuity. We then return to the present, where Abin has crashed after being shot down by us humans…some advanced alien he turned out to be. He is found by Hal Jordan, but he’s pushed out of the way almost immediately by Cyborg, and Abin is taken away by the government. It doesn’t take him long to break out of his containment tank, however, and he quickly agrees to join Cyborg in trying to save the world, even though the Guardians threaten to take away his ring if he does so. While looking for survivors in Europe, Abin is met by Sinestro; initially thinking he’s there for his ring, it turns out he’s learned of the Flashpoint Prophesy from Atrocious, and describes it as an event in time that changes everything moving forward. He’s also learned that The Flash can put everything back as it was, and thus if he controls The Flash’s power, he can put it back better than it was, so that Abin and his sister are alive in the new timeline. Abin believes Sinestro’s mind has been poisoned by Atrocious’ lies, and knowing he can’t succeed while Abin lives, Sinestro bluntly goes on the attack.

I thought the first issue was a little fast paced, but the second feels outright rushed to me. Hal Jordan’s in it so briefly before being told to go away, Abin joins Cyborg in the shortest conversation possible, and Sinestro resorts to attacking Abin with such little provocation. On the other hand, I am curious about how Atrocious knows about Flash’s role in all this. The art is by Robson Rocha, Felipe Massafera and Joe Prado, and is definitely the issue’s strongest point. Felipe Massafera once again provides a stylish cover.

At first I thought Secret Seven was a comic I knew nothing about, having never a Secret Six comic…but as it turns out, the two apparently have absolutely nothing in common anyway. The cover alone makes it stand out from other current DC comics, looking quite psychedelic with Shade—our main character—looming over screaming, red eyed heads. It’s crazy…but actually, rather fitting once you’ve been introduced to the guy. Indeed, his first appearance in this issue has him reminding himself that while his hallucinations aren’t real, he is real; that’s not really something most people would forget. Shade has reality warping powers that stem from his “Changing Vest”, an item of alien origin. His is going a little wrong, however, and his insanity isn’t helping matters. This all results in an issue that’s sometimes like watching a trippy music video…and I have to say, I enjoyed it. The art is very colorful and, in a way, slightly more cartoony than the other DC comics I’ve been reading lately. Written by Peter Milligan and pencilled by George Pérez, this was a fun one to check out.

Issue #2 has another cover by George Pérez, with the same screaming heads as the first, but this time with Amethyst and Abra Kadabra instead of Shade. The rest of the issue is laid out by Fernando Blanco and finished by Scott Koblish, resulting in a somewhat less cartoony style than the first. I didn’t find this issue as much fun, personally; in fact, I mostly just found it even more confusing. Shade’s vest seems to be causing trouble left and right, possibly due to his increasing madness…or maybe the madness is due to the vest? Whatever the case, despite gathering two members of the Secret Seven without really meaning to, Shade seems no closer to leading a team and helping Cyborg than when the story started. The issue ends with Mr. Kadabra, apparently believing Shade is dangerous—which probably isn’t wrong—revealing the identities of the Secret Seven to the world, followed by another confusing twist right at the end. This one definitely wasn’t as fun for me as the first, and with only one more issue to go, I can’t imagine that this team is actually going to do anything to help the world; at most I think they might just save it from Shade’s broken vest.

Citizen Cold #1 provides some backstory for this universe’s Leonard Snart, a.k.a. Captain Cold. In the Flashpoint timeline, Cold fancies himself some kind of hero, and is apparently Central City’s greatest. That’s to the public, at least; if anything, Cold might actually be more villainous here than in the old timeline. Rather than simply stopping criminals, he lures them to his city with false information so he can defeat them and increase his popularity, and he seems to have no problem with killing them outright to boot. This first issue does a good job of letting us see into Snart’s mind, and he’s an interesting character to say the least. We also see a lot of familiar faces from Flash’s comics, including a lot of his rogues—now Cold’s rogues. The issue was written and drawn by Scott Kolins. The art has a good level of detail. It’s a strange thing to mention and not something I’d normally notice or comment on, but the panel layout was also really well done.

Issue #1 of Deathstroke and the Curse of the Ravager gives us a closer look at that ship (the titular Ravager) full of assorted bad guys from Flashpoint #2. They’re modern day pirates with Deathstroke as their captain, taking advantage of the chaos the world is in for their own profit. But Captain Slade himself only seems interested in one treasure in particular: his missing daughter. This issue seems like a bit of a wild goose chase, with the pirates following the girl’s trail only to always be one step behind. There’s a lot of action and bloody combat, which you’d probably expect after seeing the cover. This issue was written by Jimmy Palmiotti and pencilled by Joe Bennett; I feel the bright coloring work by “The Hories” deserves a mention as well.

Emperor Aquaman #1 is an issue that answers some of the questions people have had about the Flashpoint world. In fact, most of the issue is backstory. We learn that Diana and Arthur were to be married, and are told through the dialogue that Aquaman had her mother assassinated on their wedding day, kicking off the war. We also learn that Themyscira was destroyed and that the Amazons took over Great Britain soon after. The final reveal, which the issue more or less revolves around, is the how and why of Aquaman sinking western Europe; the twist of what fuels his weapon of mass destruction is a little predictable, but nonetheless unsettling. My only real complaint is that the narrative jumps around a lot, showing us “10 months ago”, then the present, then “8 months ago” seemingly randomly. I’m also not that fond of Ardian Syaf’s cover, but his art for the rest of the issue is very good, with lots of detail. The issue was written by Tony Bedard.

Written by Jeff Lemire and drawn by Ibraim Roberson, Frankenstein & the Creatures of the Unknown is one of the oddest titles for a comic I’ve ever come across. The comic itself is pretty bizarre, too. Towards the end of World War II, the Americans happen to discover Frankenstein’s monster buried in ice somewhere in the North Atlantic. Sensing evil in the Germans, the monster—simply going by Frankenstein here—joins the Allies in their fight. This first issue is pretty fast paced, the story skipping ahead years every other time you turn the page. The “creatures” mentioned in the title are super soldiers, supposedly based on Frankenstein himself and inspired by other classical monsters; along with Frankenstein, they fight for the freedom of the world, but are all betrayed by the American government when the war ends. Frozen in cryogenic suspension, the group awakens and escapes in the present day, leaving issue #2 to deal with what effects their presence will have on the modern Flashpoint world.

Personally, I think this first issue might have had a bit too much crammed into it. You can’t really blame the writers when they have to fit the whole story into three very short issues, but I felt like I barely got a chance to know the characters. Most of them didn’t even get a single line of dialogue before being shoved into suspended animation tubes. We’re told that Griffith, the wolfman, can’t even form a sentence anymore following their long sleep, but I wouldn’t have known that was anything new since he never got to utter a word before that point. Still, the fast pace did cause some unintentionally funny moments, such as how dang quickly and easily they beat the Nazis. There’s also an interesting moment when they’re escaping from the lab under Metropolis and pass a giant, broken vault with Superman’s shield on it; this is our first hint at where this timeline’s version of Superman has been. Roberson’s art is very polished, and despite them being classical monsters, the designs of Frankenstein and the creatures are unique. Doug Mahnke’s cover isn’t quite up to the standard of the art within, but it’s striking and brutal nonetheless.

Deadman and the Flying Graysons #1 introduces us to this world’s Deadman, a.k.a. Boston Brand, and Dick Grayson, a.k.a….well…he’s not Robin in this reality. It was only when I remembered Deadman was originally an acrobat in life that this match up made sense to me. The two, along with the rest of the Grayson family, are performers in a travelling circus that found itself stranded in eastern Europe when Aquaman sank the west. The circus continues to travel, trying to bring some smiles to the bleak little world of Flashpoint. This issue kind of feels like the opposite of Frankenstein and the Creatures of the Unknown #1; where that rushed through action scenes very quickly, this book spends its entire first issue introducing the characters. There’s very little in the way of actual action in this one, but the cliffhanger ending hints at a lot coming in issue #2. I feel that this pays off and actually works better, and I was intrigued by the interactions between the characters all the way through the issue. J.T. Krul, the writer, does a great job of making the characters compelling, and there’s some simple yet really good dialogue between Dick and Boston towards the end of the issue. Mikel Janin’s artwork is of very high quality throughout, and the cover by Cliff Chiang and Jared Fletcher looks almost like something out of the Silver Age.

The first one-shot of the tie-ins is Grodd of War, which details the modern life of Guerilla Grodd in the Flashpoint world. The cover, drawn by Francis Manapul, shows Grodd in war armor holding a bloody, human skull; Manapul is a great artist, and this cover is by no means bad, but I find it a little forgettable. The rest of the issue is sort of a mixed bag. The premise is interesting, with Grodd growing bored of his peaceful rule after conquering all of Africa. He takes his violence out on whomever he can, and even seems to let enemies go so that they might return for revenge at a later date, as if he’s always looking for a challenge. There are some parts, however, that a casual comic fan like myself just didn’t get. I never would have known who Congorilla was without looking him up, and without knowing he was already an established character, his brief appearance in the issue was confusing and seemed pointless; on the other hand, perhaps I should have guessed that a character with such an elaborate backstory wasn’t created just for this.

Sean Ryan’s writing here is simple…or should I say subtle? It doesn’t ram explanations down your throat. Grodd doesn’t monologue or overly explain his feelings to the reader, yet Ryan’s writing and Ig Guara’s art do a good job of conveying them anyway. It’s definitely a well done comic, but…like the cover, I don’t find it very memorable in the end. No one in the Flashpoint world seems to care that Grodd’s taken over Africa, and with everything else that’s going on in their world, maybe I find it a little hard to care, too.

Sorry, Africa… That’s pretty mean of me…

Legion of Doom #1 does a good job of subverting expectations. The issue follows the incarceration of Heatwave, a.k.a. Mick Rory, after he murders Jason Rusch in a crazy bid to become the superhero Firestorm himself, a desire sparked by his obsession with fire. We see him on death row, and around that point, I started to wonder what this had to do with the Legion of Doom. As if on queue, the comic cuts to the classic Hall of Doom rising out of the swamp…but it’s not what you expect. In the Flashpoint world, the Hall of Doom is death row—a high security prison owned by “Green Arrow Industries”, and the place Mick had been imprisoned all along. He doesn’t plan on sticking around, however, and enlists Cluemaster—a Batman villain—to smuggle a very surprising package in for him…with gruesome results. Rooney Buchemi’s art varies a bit from page to page, but on the whole is very good, with some of the more brutal moments (such as Jason’s death) being rather cringe worthy. The dialogue seemed pretty average to me, however.

World of Flashpoint #1 has a pretty fitting cover, depicting the star of the issue sitting with the Flashpoint Earth in her lap; drawn by Brett Booth and Andrew Dalhouse, it’s simple yet eye-catching. The story, written by Rex Ogle, follows the life of this reality’s version of Traci Thirteen, a “Homo Magi” (that is, a human born with inherited magical powers) who was just trying to have a normal life learning witchcraft from her mother. Unfortunately, her family happened to live in Paris, and I think we all know by now what happens there… Traci and her father escape Aquaman’s tsunami thanks to her magic, but she isn’t powerful enough to save her mother or brothers. The guilt and regret weigh heavily on both of them, straining their relationship; several months later, Traci secludes herself refining her magical gifts, while her father turns to the H.I.V.E. organization in an attempt to save the world, no matter the cost. Both father and daughter have their own ideas of how they should help the world and what sort of price peace is worth, but it seems to me that both are using their respective ways as an escape from the tragedy they have suffered. The issue ends with their ideals clashing in an explosive way when her father and H.I.V.E. decide to blast New Themyscira off the map with a satellite weapon, leaving only Traci to try to stop them before they murder millions of people. This issue has some good emotion in it, as well as a few appearances from characters we haven’t seen in the Flashpoint world up to now.

Speaking of cameos, Traci pays a visit to Madame Xanadu, one of DC’s mystic Arthurian characters. Her crystal ball provides us with yet more backstory, mentioning the Justice Society and how they failed, falling because they lacked someone “faster”. Does this mean Jay Garrick didn’t become The Flash in this world either? Has this world never had a Flash? We also see that an alien craft fell on the city of Metropolis some time ago, apparently proving fatal to the inhabitants; the stylized “S” on the side makes it even more obvious whose ship this was, and while it explains why there’s no Clark Kent/Superman around, it leaves us wondering just what could have caused the spaceship to touch down in such a different place.

World of Flashpoint #2 begins with a cover by Brett Booth, Norm Rapmund and Andrew Dalhouse. This time Traci is floating amongst unique tarot cards, with the Flash logo on the back and various characters from the Flashpoint world on the front; not only did I love this cover immediately, but I want that deck. In this issue, Traci narrowly escapes from H.I.V.E headquarters after being drugged by her own father, returning to her mentor, Madame Xanadu. Unfortunately, she seems to be on the verge of death—something she’d predicted in the previous issue—and can only advise Traci to let her tarot cards guide her around the world, to let her see why it’s worth saving and then show her father the same. Almost the whole issue has Traci teleporting around the world, meeting the Flashpoint versions of other DC characters such as Red Tornado, Guy Gardner, and Jason Todd…who has a surprising occupation in this reality. Traci is disappointed that no one she meets will join her and help, but in the end, that wasn’t what Madame Xanadu told her to do. The issue ends with her going back to face her father, who appears to have a few surprises up his sleeves.

Issue #1 of Lois Lane and the Resistance begins with more valuable exposition. We’ve already learned that an Atlantean assassinated Diana’s mother, but here we find out that the Amazons themselves destroyed and sank Themyscira in an attempt to kill Aquaman and other members of the ruling class of Atlantis, who were all on the island at the time. These two enormous events, as well as the Amazon occupation of the United Kingdom, all happened within the space of of a measly three months; the issue’s story begins nine months later, with Aquaman sinking western Europe. Reporting in Paris at the time of the disaster, Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen soon find themselves fleeing from the resulting tsunami; Lois survives by taking refuge with a priest at the top of the Basilica of Sacré-Cœur, but Jimmy is tragically killed as he heroically tries to help an old man. Soon rescued by the Amazons and taken to England, Lois is surprised to find that Jimmy’s camera is actually a high tech communicator, providing a direct link Cyborg. Yes folks, Jimmy Olsen was some sort of secret agent, and Lois jumps at the chance to pick up where he left off, becoming an informant behind enemy lines.

This is an interesting issue because it gives us our first real look at what New Themyscira is like—and it’s a pretty dark place. Non-Amazonian women are offered re-education seminars, and anyone who refuses to subscribe to their beliefs is sent to some kind of concentration camp; given that they refused to save a Christian priest earlier for his belief in a “false god”, I guess this policy isn’t too surprising. The Amazons are apparently even recruiting civilian women, attempting to give them Amazonian strength through some unrevealed process, though the success rates are low and the consequences of failure are pretty dire. All in all it’s an intriguing issue, drawn competently by Eddie Nunez and written by both Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning.

The Canterbury Cricket is another candidate for the weirdest title ever award—and that’s coming from somebody raised in Britain. This story, written by Mike Carlin, gives us our first introduction to the titular character. It begins with the British Resistance—made up of Etrigan the Demon, Godiva, Mrs. Hyde and Wicked Jinny Greenteeth—fighting for their lives against the Amazons; the group is saved in the nick of time by our hero, who can only be described as an enormous cricket. The large insect man, apparently being a very patriotic Brit, joins their cause in a heartbeat, and the rest of the issue is mostly him explaining his peculiar origins to the group. Despite it being almost entirely backstory and character interactions, there’s a fair sprinkling of action in this one, and the way the characters talk with each other is pretty good as well. Honestly, how can talking with Etrigan not be interesting? The issue’s art is done by Rags Morales, another great artist who draws some wonderful facial expressions, especially when it comes to Etrigan. The cover is by both Morales and Ruffino, and it matches the inner art very well. Using the colors of the Union Jack for the title text was a nice touch.

Being British myself, I was asked if anything about this comic seemed strange to me, or if England had been misrepresented. The only thing I can think of worth mentioning is that the Cricket seemed to speak very proper, formal English throughout the entire issue, but then blurts out, “Ruddy hell!” on the last page, which just doesn’t strike me as something a person with formal speech patterns would say. Maybe it was intentional.

Project Superman is a tie-in starring a character named Neil Sinclair, a man who volunteers for Sam Lane’s project to create…well…a superman—not a surprising goal when the Amazons and Atlanteans are already supermen/superwomen. Neil is infused with alien DNA from the mysteriously named “Project Six” (whom I’ll get to later in the article) and gains the power to adapt to basically anything. The more tests they put him through, the more super-powered he becomes…but is he trustworthy? Lane begins to keep more of a distance from him and seems like he might have moved on to other projects; perhaps as a result, Sinclair begins keeping certain powers such as x-ray vision and super hearing to himself. Still wanting Lane to see him as a success, he continues to push himself, but they seem to decide he was a mistake after all when he slaughters everyone during a mission, including his own support team. The issue ends with Neil locked down in the facility, just as Metropolis is devastated above by the arrival of a familiar alien baby—just as Madame Xanadu had told us. This issue, written by Scott Snyder and Lowell Francis, is okay, but I’m far more interested in where the story will go from here than what has happened so far. Gene Ha is the artist, using a style that seems almost…how should I say it…old school? He also provides the cover, which depicts Sinclair standing over Metropolis as it’s hit by a meteor shower—the arrival of you-know-who!

Hal Jordan #1 of 3 has a nice cover by Rags Morales and Gabe Eltaeb, with Hal against a blue-sky background and three jets flying by in the foreground. The art, provided by Ben Oliver, is very detailed and realistic compared to most of the other books. The story gives us the normal Hal Jordan backstory—how his father was a pilot and died in a crash, yet Hal still became a pilot anyway. In this reality, Hal and Carol Ferris were drafted to fly planes as part of a coastal patrol; this leads to their planes being attacked by some kind of man shark of all things, and Hal shows off his normal reckless side, wrecking their expensive aircraft and getting himself in trouble. But this doesn’t stop him from flying off in another plane without permission, and as he flies, he encounters someone as reckless and insubordinate as him: Abin Sur. More specifically, he witnesses Abin being shot down by a purple beam of some sort—which I still don’t know the origin of—and lands to see if he’s okay. This ending ties in with the second Abin Sur issue I looked at earlier. To be honest, I think the issue felt as rushed as Abin Sur #2 thanks to things like a complete lack of transition between Hal taking off and seeing Abin shot down; I almost thought it might be written by the same person, but the writer for this one was Adam Schlagman. Still, since we know Hal doesn’t get the ring from the Abin Sur issues, it’ll be interesting to see where they’re going with this one.

Green Arrow Industries #1, written by Pornsak Pichetshote and drawn by both Marco Castiello and Ig Guara, introduces us to quite a different Oliver Queen. In the normal timeline, Ollie is the guy who stands up for the little people and is one of DC’s most left-wing characters; here, though, he’s the head of the faceless Green Arrow Industries corporation and very literally couldn’t use a bow to save his life. The company is apparently named after the missiles they create rather than a superhero and makes all of its money reverse engineering and repackaging supervillain weaponry. I suppose this explains Ollie’s Legion of Doom prison to an extent. In this issue, assassins break in and kill all of Queen’s staff, including Roy Harper and several generals who were visiting. Oliver follows the only surviving intruder, armed not with a bow, but weapons and gadgets from various DC villains. He ends up in a fight against the much more skilled female assassin and learns what he’d done, whether he meant to or not, to earn the anger of the group; as it turns out, the research centers studying the equipment of villains had been devastated by those very bad guys when they came looking for their property. Not only does this issue end in tragedy, but it’s a one shot as well, so there’s no chance for a happy ending here. As a fan of Green Arrow, it’s pretty disheartening to see Ollie as hopeless and lost as he is here. It does come with a fantastic cover by Viktor Kalvachev, however.

The Outsider #1 gives us our first real introduction to The Outsider himself…and I mean ever, because he didn’t even exist before his appearance in Flashpoint #1. The issue’s story begins in Chandigarh, India, the year 1960, where a woman is giving birth. The baby is unusual, however, and she doesn’t survive the delivery; when the father rejects the strange child, no one else in Chandigarh survives, either, the entire city being engulfed in some sort of unexplainable disaster, leaving only the baby alive at its center. Years later this child, given the name Michael Desai by an orphanage he ran away from, has grown to acquire wealth, power, and fancy business suits. This first issue establishes the character as a generally calm, intelligent, and rather charismatic individual, and despite him being a bad guy, I find it kind of hard not to like him. He seems to have his fingers in many illicit pies, and after an introduction that lets us see another side to a scene from Flashpoint #1, the rest of the issue involves one of those pies coming back for revenge. Fans of Mr. Terrific may not like how this one ends.

This issue, written by James Robinson, is a good balance of characterization and action—a fine first issue for a new character. Javi Fernandez is responsible for the art, which is generally very detailed, but may be let down by some very blank backgrounds during the action scenes. The cover is by Kevin Nowlan and depicts The Outsider standing over a vanquished Batman, Cyborg, Abin Sur, and new character Blackout, whom The Outsider seemed quite interested in capturing in this issue. As they’re both new characters, I have to wonder if this relationship between them is going to become important later on.

Written by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning, I found Wonder Woman and the Furies #1 to be one of the most interesting of the tie-ins. It begins “fourteen years ago” on Themyscira, where a younger, more innocent Diana plans to secretly set out to sea so she can see the world beyond their shores. She’s attacked almost immediately, by a Kraken of all things, but is saved in the nick of time by good old Aquaman. Finding that she’s been poisoned by the monster’s venom, Arthur takes her back to Atlantis for treatment. This act of kindness starts the two ancient kingdoms’ relationship off on the right foot, but as we know, it all turns tragic. The rest of this issue covers the wedding in detail, and for the first time, we get to see exactly what (and who) sparked off the war; as I suspected early on, there’s more to the assassination than the world knows.

What I really like about this tie-in is that Diana and Arthur weren’t always the war leaders we’ve come to see them as in Flashpoint. Until the disaster at the wedding, both characters were actually a lot like they should have been—happy, optimistic, heroic, and both sort of carefree; although this is later spoiled by treachery and deceit, it makes me wonder if there’s a slim chance for peace in this timeline after all. I also really like Ed Benes and Peter Pantazis’ cover for the issue, which is a great shot of Wonder Woman in her war armor, standing in the ruins of London. The rest of the art is by Scott Clark and is of the same high quality I’m coming to expect from the comics in this event; the details on the backgrounds and scenery are especially good.

The final few I’ve saved till the end due to how different they are from the rest. While every other tie-ins feature alternate versions of characters we know (and a few altogether new ones), these three feature characters who, like Barry, aren’t really from this new timeline at all. The first of these is the Reverse-Flash tie-in, although to be fair, this issue seems to be mostly flashback and doesn’t directly take place in the Flashpoint event; this begs the question, of course, of what the point of it is. Is it just to bring people like me up to speed, or is there a hidden meaning in here somewhere? Time will tell, I suppose.

Reverse-Flash, a.k.a. Professor Zoom, a.k.a. Eobard Thawne, is an interesting character with an interesting, though slightly confusing backstory, which I’ll try to keep as brief as possible. Born far in the future, where spandex superheroes are only myth, Thawne was obsessed with the legendary Flash and, through studying him, managed to replicate his powers and become the fastest man alive in his time. Thawne is pretty unstable, though, and Barry Allen puts a stop to him; this of course leads to him becoming the villainous Reverse-Flash. In this issue, we see Thawne use his time travelling abilities to go into the past in attempts to exact revenge on his former idol. His first experiment is to prevent the accident that turned Barry into the Flash in the first place, but this proves to be disastrous for him; with no Flash in the past, he would never become the Reverse-Flash in the future, and would cease to exist Back to the Future style. Realizing this, Thawne takes it upon himself to travel further back and subtly ruin Barry’s childhood, hoping small changes during those years wouldn’t lead to his own non-existence. It seems to work, and the issue ends with him arriving at Barry’s home to kill his mother—something we know he succeeded in doing in the main timeline.

As I said, the main oddity about this issue is it’s all mostly things fans already know. If there’s a clue to the cause of the Flashpoint event hidden in here, it’s hidden well. Another oddity is that the cover calls this issue #1 of 3, but it’s apparently only a one-shot. This was another issue written by Scott Kolins, but this one was drawn by Joel Gomez. The art seems rougher around the edges than almost every other Flashpoint comic, but I kind of like it—particularly the backgrounds, which sometimes looked like water paintings. The cover was drawn by Ardian Syaf, Vicente Cifuentes, and Kyle Ritter, and shows Reverse-Flash destroying objects representing Batman, Wonder Woman, Superman and the rest as he runs, seeming to try to make us believe Thawne is responsible for all of Flashpoint…but I still have my doubts about that. The cover’s art doesn’t match the issue’s art at all, but that’s more of an observation than a criticism.

Next up is Kid Flash Lost #1. Starring Bart Allen, this one actually does take place within the Flashpoint event. The first thing to mention about the issue is that the cover is by Francis Manapul, which I’m beginning to spot right away thanks to his unique style; Manapul was the artist for most of the pre-Flashpoint Flash comics and will be drawing and writing the post-Flashpoint Flash comic after DC’s reboot, so it’s nice to see his take on the current, pre-reboot Bart here. The art inside, provided by Oliver Nome, is different, but by no means bad; again, it’s got the high amount of detail I’m coming to expect from this event. DC seems to have a lot of good artists these days.

The issue seems to begin with Bart trying to talk to Barry, who strangely keeps running from him. But this is all a trick. Noticing subtle mistakes, Bart uses his head and concludes that he’s trapped in a simulation—and once he’s realized that, waking up is a cinch. The young speedster finds himself in a strange lair, but isn’t concerned…that is, until he finds that his speed powers are gone. In fact, according to him, the Speed Force itself is gone…which, if true, is far worse than the situation Barry is in. The rest of the issue has Bart fending off an attack from the surprising owner of the lair, rescued by an unexpected ally, and discovering that he’s in some kind of Matrix-esque future. He realizes that the timeline has been tampered with and that without his speed force powers, nothing is protecting his existence; like Barry’s memories, Kid Flash himself may soon disappear. Of all the tie-ins so far, this is probably the one I’m most antsy to see more of, since it seems to be the one most likely to tell us what’s happened to the timestream. It was written by Sterling Gates, and I thought he did a good job of writing Bart’s part.

The tie-in I’ve saved until the very last was, ironically, the very first to be released. The reason I saved it for last is that it’s the most unusual: Booster Gold #44 and #45 are indeed Flashpoint tie-ins, but they’re also standard issues in the Booster Gold comic. Like Barry and Bart, the Booster here is exactly the same Booster from the original timeline; also like Barry, he finds himself in the middle of the Flashpoint world, and is quickly mistaken for some kind of Atlantean enemy by the United States government. Booster struggles to make sense out of what’s happening and believes he’s in some kind of alternate timeline, since time travelling is something he does regularly. When he and his robot Skeets try to return to their time, however, it doesn’t work, and Skeets’ conclusion really verifies things for us: they’re not in an alternate timeline—they’re in the only timeline.

Issue #44 ends with the arrival of an enemy Booster never wanted to run into again: Doomsday…or as they call him in this world, “Project Six”. This time he’s apparently under the control of the US military—under the control of General Nathaniel Adams, who was Captain Atom in the original timeline, to be precise. Anyone who knows anything about Doomsday can probably guess that this is not a brilliant idea, but it seems to be working for now, and Booster is forced to retreat while rescuing a somewhat reluctant damsel. The rest of issue 45 has him learning about the strange new world via the internet and coming to the same conclusion as Barry: that Reverse-Flash, whom he’d run into in the timestream not long ago, must be the one responsible for the changes in history.

Both Booster Gold issues were written and drawn by Dan Jurgens, who does an excellent job with both. I’d actually say the art may be some of the best I’ve seen in the event. Both covers are fantastic, featuring Booster prominently and several other characters and places in the backgrounds; in issue #44′s you can even see the Superman vault from Frankenstein and the Creatures of the Unknown. On top of that, the writing does an excellent job of introducing the character to someone like me who, despite knowing who Booster Gold is, has never read an actual Booster Gold comic before now. Like Kid Flash Lost, I feel like this comic has a high chance of actually explaining the Flashpoint event, since timelines are what Booster does for a living. Let’s just hope he lasts against Doomsday long enough to figure it all out.

As I said earlier, I definitely underestimated the scale of a DC event such as this. This has been my first time following an entire event, and even though DC’s issues are just over 20 pages long these days, reading and analysing every tie-in was a tougher task than I would have guessed. There’s so much information here that it’s sometimes hard to keep track of everything, and despite that, the biggest mysteries of Flashpoint still remain unsolved. But don’t think for a second that this deters me; at this point, I’m more curious than ever about how all of this is going to turn out.

After much ado, I find myself at the true middle of the story.

Flashpoint #3

The issue starts with another cover by Andy Kubert. This one features Flash, Batman and Cyborg breaking through that big ol’ Superman vault door, all three of them looking shocked at what they find inside. The cover teases us by only showing the back of the occupant’s head, but the short black hair makes it clear that it’s Kal-El himself. He seems to be behind several inch thick glass, and the entire room is bathed in a red light; those who know a little about Superman will easily guess that this ill-boding glow is the sort of radiation you get from a red star, which robs Kryptonians of their special powers. The subtitle of the issue is present on this cover: Project Superman Revealed.

This is another good cover by Kubert. It once again chooses a couple of colors and sticks to them, which really seems to bring things together. Predictably, though, my dominant thought when I first saw it was whether Barry would finally get to be The Flash in this issue!

We join Cyborg as he converses with the U.S. president. As much as they’d like to, the government can’t spare any more time for Cyborg’s team to come together. Victor insists that sending in the U.S. military to try to break up a superhuman conflict would be disastrous, but with Steve Trevor presumed dead and the message he was carrying to the resistance presumably intercepted, their hands have been forced; they can’t wait any longer for Batman and the others to come to their senses and help out. Incidentally, it seems the counterspy Wonder Woman spoke of in issue #2 is Element Woman, whom we see sneaking about in his headquarters. Relieved of duty, Cyborg’s chance to save the world may be lost.

Meanwhile, back in Wayne manor, Barry is bandaged from head to toe and clearly in incredible pain…not surprising since he was electrocuted and covered in flaming chemicals. You would think this would be enough to deter anyone, but the first words out of Barry’s mouth are: “I need a bigger bolt of lightning.” Dr. Wayne thinks he’s crazy—which seems to be becoming the norm—but relents and lets him have it his way after listening to his reasoning. Barry knows that if he doesn’t get his powers back, his memories of the original timeline will soon be overwritten; he won’t even realize things aren’t the way they’re supposed to be anymore, nor will he remember his wife, or Thomas’ son. The two return to the roof, and before they can even strap Barry back into his chair, an enormous bolt of lightning hits him directly, blowing Batman off the roof in the process. But before the caped crusader can meet a grisly end on a spiked fence below, the moment we’ve been waiting for arrives: Barry rushes down the side of the manor as quick as lightning and plucks his fellow crime fighter from the jaws of death.

Finally, The Flash is back!

After using the Batcave’s chemicals to construct himself a new costume in a flash (haw), Barry uses Dr. Wayne’s rather disappointing personal computer—no super Bat-computer in this reality, apparently—to search for potential allies, much like Booster did. With Abin Sur still alive, Hal Jordan never became a Lantern, so Barry can’t risk putting him in danger; Wonder Woman and Aquaman are obviously out of the question; with such options unavailable, he asks the obvious question: where is Superman? Explaining the Kryptonian’s origin to Thomas, he repeats what we learned from the tie-ins: a rocket crashed into Metropolis at the time Barry specified, killing thirty-five thousand people. Not knowing what happened to the ship and its occupant after that, Batman calls the only person that can find out.

The two meet up with Cyborg, and Batman surprises him by agreeing to be the strategist in his army. His terms are simply that he gets to pick the members himself, beginning with The Flash and the occupant of the rocket, whom Cyborg will have to find by hacking government systems. Cyborg is against it, but he can’t pass up a chance at getting Batman, and thus others, on his team. They find the location of both the rocket and its occupant—“Subject 1”—and the rest of the issue covers their break in and discovery of the Kryptonian himself; what they come face to face with, however, is definitely not the Superman we’re used to…

Issue #3 has some interesting moments. The occupant of the rocketship is definitely Kal-El, but we can’t really call him Clark Kent; this Kal-El has been in a research facility his entire life, and thus was never raised by the Kents. Jonathan and Martha made Clark the man that he was, so it’s hard to guess what kind of guy he’ll turn out to be in this reality. We also learn that two more rockets were found after the first, which I presume must have belonged to Krypto and Kara; disturbingly, the three heroes happened to pass a room with a canine skeleton marked “Subject 2” on their way through the underground lab. Finally, it’s mentioned there’s a bridge in Central City that leads nowhere and that no one knows—or perhaps remembers—where it’s supposed to go; I wouldn’t have known this by myself, but this bridge is apparently meant to lead to Keystone City, the home of Jay Garrick. Not only that, but the villain known as The Fiddler once shifted Keystone City out of phase with the rest of the world to get revenge on Jay himself. That seems to be what’s happened here, but if Jay wasn’t The Flash in this reality, why did Keystone City still end up being hidden? Perhaps Jay was a Flash and is still there? I suppose time may tell.

I’m really starting to like Thomas Wayne as Batman, and his interactions with Barry—who’s practically his opposite—are a lot of fun. Barry is an unendingly hopeful optimist, just the kind of person the people of this Earth need right now. He even trusts that Kal-El’s heart will be the same no matter how much history has changed, and even though Dr. Wayne seems to think he’s insane and naïve most of the time, he’s still been persuaded to go along with him so far. My favorite moment between the two of them in this issue was when Barry voiced his disapproval at the way Thomas lied to Cyborg about joining his team—something the Batman doesn’t really plan on going through with; Dr. Wayne countered that if Barry succeeds at putting everything right, none of it will matter anyway. Issues written by Geoff Johns always seem to have a least one little exchange between the characters that I find myself liking. I know I’ve fixated a bit on Barry getting his powers back, but the truth is, Mr. Johns makes him a great character even without them.

Andy Kubert is once again the artist here. I’m finding it increasingly hard to have anything to say about his work, which just seems to be continuously flawless. It’s extremely detailed and easy to follow. In truth, it’s probably the best in the whole event, which makes sense since it’s the main book. What more can I say than that?

This issue gives us our first look at the Flashpoint version of Superman, once again designed by Kubert himself. Like a lot of things in the Flashpoint world, his appearance is bleak and depressing. They’ve got him wearing some sort of jumpsuit with an “S” on it, but it’s different to the Kryptonian one they slapped on the vault, and actually stands for “Subject 1”.

Like issue 2, #3 ends with more character designs from Mr. Kubert. Three of them are for characters from the British resistance: Lady Godiva, Mrs. Hyde, and Canterbury Cricket. These three characters were only in one panel of this issue, so it’s good to see their designs in more detail if you haven’t already seen them in the Canterbury Cricket one-shot; however, unlike the others so far, these three aren’t colored. Superman’s is, though, so you can get a better look at his design and read the brief notes on it here.

With this, we’re now halfway through the whole event. The first half has had some good parts and some average parts, but I find it hard to think of any bits that were outright bad. There were times where I thought an issue didn’t add much to the overall story, such as Grodd of War, Legion of Doom, and Captain Cold, but if you take all the tie-ins as a whole rather than individually, they serve to paint a much bigger picture, to give this world character and backstory, and to help immerse us in it. On the other hand, I think this means a lot of the tie-in issues may only interest people who, like me, are trying to follow the entire event, and that can obviously be an expensive task.

The writing may have had its ups and downs, but in my opinion, the art has been absolutely superb throughout. DC seems to have itself a lot of good artists these days, and it really feels like they’re giving it their all. The few pieces of art I haven’t really liked have been from some of the covers, which seems pretty odd to me. From my childhood, I remember comics always having fantastic covers to attract you, but mediocre art inside; here it sometimes feels like the other way around. There have, of course, been plenty of great covers as well, my favorites being by Dan Jurgens, Francis Manapul, and Andy Kubert. I hope this level of quality is kept up through the second half of the event.

If I had to make a prediction for what will happen next, I’d guess that we’re on the verge of unravelling the mystery. I believe the answers will start appearing in the first part of this second half, centering around Flashpoint #4. That will leave our heroes time to take action in the final fifth of the story. But what will their actions lead to? With a massive reboot occurring right as the Flashpoint event comes to a close, the solution to all of this seems as uncertain as ever.

Make sure to join us next time where I’ll be taking on the entire second half of the event. With two main issues and an even greater number of tie-ins on the way, it will undoubtedly be even more of a challenge for me!

Covers: B- (Some good ones, some not so good ones, but some great ones to make up for them.)
Writing: B (The writing seems to range between good and average to me, so a score somewhere in the middle of that seems reasonable.)
Art: A+ (Ranges from good to great. I can’t really think of any way they could have done better.)
Extras: B (Only Flashpoint #2 and #3 have really had proper extras, so I can only judge the event based on those. #2′s were better than #3′s.)

Overall (not an average): B+ (A very good event so far. The Flashpoint world has already become so detailed and fleshed out that it’s impossible not to be drawn into it. There was twists around every corner, constantly challenging your expectations, and it’s almost impossible not to sit around with fellow fans trying to solve the mysteries yourself.)

Since there are were so many issues covered here, we decided I should make some recommendations for people to check out. Like I said, it’s expensive to follow the whole event, so these are the tie-ins I think are worth checking out:

> Booster Gold #44 and #45. As I explained, this one is very like the main Flashpoint comics because it stars a character from the original timeline. They’re well drawn and have a good chance of revealing some of the event’s secrets.
> Kid Flash Lost #1. Pretty much the same as above. Manapul’s cover is very nice.
> Wonder Woman and the Furies #1. Out of all the flashbacks so far, I think this was the best. It showed us what Wonder Woman and Aquaman were like before their lives became nothing but war and obsession with revenge, and it shows us definitively how the war began.
> Batman: Knight of Vengeance #1 and #2. The first issue is n’t that great, but the second has one of the best surprise endings out of the whole event so far. Plus, with Batman playing an important role in the main book, this seems like a logical choice.
> Project Superman #1. With Kal-El making an appearance in Flashpoint #3, it seems like a good idea to learn his backstory here.
> Emperor Aquaman #1. Just if you want to know what really happened to Europe.

Everything else can probably be skipped for the most part, but there isn’t really anything bad enough for me to suggest avoiding at all costs. At worst, there are just a few that don’t seem very relevant to understanding the event. These are:

> Grodd of War. Not a bad one-shot, but so far Grodd’s actions don’t seem to have had much of an impact on the world at all.

> Legion of Doom #1. Does it really matter to the world that Heatwave is trying to escape from prison?

> Frankenstein and the Creatures of the Unknown #1. The story seems very isolated so far.

This comic was purchased at retail.

The mystery of the Flashpoint will continue…

Fanboy Review won’t have ads for the time being due to the legal issues between Amazon and the state of California. Enjoy!

The Flash and all related characters – © 2011 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Flashpoint #1 (Comic), Review

Alex — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 02:10:47 +0000

I’m reviewing another western comic already? Apparently so. This is issue #1 of the new miniseries, Flashpoint.

Flashpoint is Geoff Johns’ latest big event, and he and DC themselves have said it’s fine if you just want to pick up this book without reading the large amount of build up to it. To be honest, I hadn’t even heard of it, and I didn’t even know it was a Flash story when I was asked and agreed to review it! So once again, I’m going to be finding out if this comic really can stand alone and be enjoyed by someone who’s completely out of the loop.

The first thing I have to say about the issue is…that the cover is pretty awesome. Having a bit of a slow moment, I didn’t realize Flashpoint was a Flash story right up until I first laid eyes on the cover, but just seeing it once was enough to get me pumped about reading it. The soft blue backgrounds seems to push your attention to both the bright yellow title and to The Flash himself, clad in his bright red costume, which seems to be coming apart at the seams from his incredible speed. In the background, colored more darkly, are the silhouettes of Cyborg, Batman, Aquaman, and Wonder Woman; my first impression, judging from the imposing way they’re drawn alone, was that they might somehow be the villains of the story. Though your attention seems to be diverted away from the passive blue skyline in the background, if you look carefully enough, you’ll find that a lot of the building have Wayne Industries logos on them, further hinting that Batman is a key character in this issue.

The cover, like the rest of the issue, was drawn by Andy Kubert. I think its simple, contrasting color scheme works really well, setting it apart from some of the more kaleidoscopic comics sitting beside it on the comic store shelf. It’s the sort that captures your attention and, for me at least, somehow evokes a sense of excitement.

That excitement only built further over the first few pages. A nameless, unseen narrator introduces us to Barry Allen, the current (and arguably most iconic) Flash. We’re told that after becoming The Flash, Barry found love, a family, and friends, and we’re treated to a two page spread of him and just about every other DC hero charging off into action. Who wouldn’t want to see what they were about to face?

Unfortunately, we don’t find out; the next page drops us into the middle of one big mystery.

Barry awakens in the police station where he works, but things seem strange. Everyone, including him, is meant to be working on a case he’s never heard of. The director, Singh, tells us that they already know Citizen Cold is the murderer, but he’s apparently seen as Central City’s greatest hero. Even someone with relatively basic comic knowledge like me realized that Citizen Cold must be Captain Cold, one of Flash’s villains, and it’s confirmed that things just aren’t right when Barry not only realizes the special ring he keeps his costume in is missing, but also runs into his long dead mother, now apparently alive and well. Welcome to the Twilight Zone, Barry.

Yes indeed, it’s clear even to someone out of the loop like myself that Mr. Allen has found himself in some kind of parallel world, where his mother’s alive, Captain Cold is seen as a hero, and The Flash simply doesn’t exist at all. Seeing as how he tripped down some stairs while trying to speed up and then had to borrow his mother’s car to get around, I don’t think Barry even has his Flash powers in this universe. And frankly, I was a bit disappointed by that.

It seems The Flash isn’t the only superhero absent from this version of reality. His mother’s never even heard of Superman. But we quickly learn that Batman exists, and the story soon shifts to Gotham City—which seems to be covered in signs advertising Wayne Resorts and Casinos—to check him out as he chases down a Harley Quinn-esque Joker henchmen I’ve never heard of. This version of Batman seems to have no qualms about dropping his opponents off of tall buildings, so… … …I have no idea if he’s darker than the regular Batman or not. He’s interrupted by Victor Stone, aka Cyborg, who has with him a large group of heroes and villains.

The remainder of the issue is mostly just raw exposition from Cyborg. It seems that in this reality, Themyscira and Atlantis have waged war on the rest of the world, and Cyborg is trying to organize a group that can put a stop to Wonder Woman and Aquaman—no matter the cost! Several pages are spent introducing us to each of the characters one by one; this is good for someone like me who doesn’t know all of them, and also good for more dedicated comic readers who just don’t know anything about these alternate versions of them. I’m particularly curious about Captain Marvel—or Captain Thunder, as he’s called in this world—who, if I’m not interpreting the scene wrong, seems to be some kind of “by your powers combined” deal now, with the power of Shazam spread between six people.

The issue ends on a cliffhanger, with Barry meeting up with this world’s version of Batman and realizing something startling about him. I won’t spoil what it is, but it’s pretty interesting.

I’m sorry to say, the excitement I had at the start of the issue didn’t last. There’s very little action in this story so far, and most of it was taken up by exposition and character introductions. However, I can’t be too hard on it for this; it’s a 30 page book, and this is only issue 1 out of 5. I really don’t think it’s fair to judge it by itself, and when I look at it like that, having issue #1 introduce the characters and concepts makes a ton of sense. There may not be much action, but I’m still curious to see what happens next.

Andy Kubert’s art is consistently good throughout this issue. It’s not the most polished or detailed I’ve seen, but I don’t remember seeing a single oddly drawn panel or art mistake. Just about everything’s drawn clearly so that it’s easy to tell what’s going on, with only one exception I can think of: I’m still not entirely sure whether those six kids became Captain Thunder or just summoned him. I think they did, since you don’t see them again after he appears, and he seems to be standing right where they were…but it could have been a little clearer, I think.

In a lot of the outdoor scenes, the backgrounds seem to be drawn in quite a subdued way. I kind of like how this gives emphasis to the characters in the foreground, quite like on the cover. Other times, the background is made more clear, like in a two page spread of Gotham covered in Wayne signs; I noticed one reads “Wayne’s World”, which I’m going to assume was intentional. This spread is also our first real look at this universe’s version of Batman, and his design is pretty darn cool.

Though I don’t think the art is quite as detailed as it is in something like Action Comics #900, there are some parts that do stand out above the rest—the above shot being a good example. And since the closest thing I have to a complaint isn’t really much of a complaint at all, I can’t say anything else other than that this issue has some solid artwork.

Flashpoint #1 has its good and bad points. There’s a lot of standing around and talking, but it’s still only the very start of the story. Despite the rather slow pace, it’s still intriguing enough to peak your curiosity, and even I, still lacking any real knowledge of how Barry has ended up in this world or why, am very interested in reading on. Maybe you’ll see an issue #2 review from me not too long from now?

I just hope there’s some actual Flash in it next time…

Cover: A- (Using bold colors against subdued colors really works here, if you ask me. I’m quite a fan of this cover.)
Writing: B+ (A major lack of action, no Flash, and lots of exposition. But despite all that, the dialogue is still well written and compelling.)
Art: B+ (No mistakes. No weird anatomy or postures. The design of this version of Batman is pretty cool, too. Overall solid work.)

Overall (not an average): B+ (It has its ups and downs, but I liked it. Even though I don’t know quite what’s going on, at the same time, I somehow don’t feel that lost. I guess it’s because Barry’s in the same boat as me; I get the sense that all the mysteries will be revealed as the story progresses further, rather than the sense that I need to go back and read any of the build up to the event.)

This comic was purchased at retail.

The mystery of the Flashpoint will continue…

The Flash and all related characters – © 2011 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Action Comics #900 (Comic), Review

Alex — Tue, 10 May 2011 05:58:31 +0000

This isn’t the kind of thing I’m normally asked to review, but there’s a first time for everything. Today will be my first review of a western comic book: Action Comics #900.

#900 is a milestone issue, so as well as finding out just what I think of it, I’m going to be asking myself if it’s a good place for new readers to jump in. I haven’t read a DC comic since around the Blackest Night event, so I might just have been the right person to ask!

In addition to the standard cover by David Finch (pictured above), this issue of Action Comics also has two variants covers—one by Adam Hughes, and the other by Alex Ross. You only get one, of course, so if you don’t plan on buying the same issue three times over, you’re going to have to decide which one you like best. For the most part, it’s probably a matter of personal opinion.

Out of the three covers, Finch’s is probably the one that has the most to do with the issue’s lead story. It’s dark and gritty, and it features a view of Lex Luthor’s head in the background, complete with glowing eyes. Superman stands in the foreground, shedding his Clark Kent clothes and looking rather intense with glowing, Terminator-like eyes. It feels rather ominous. But I have to say, even though it’s the closest to working as a cover for the main story, it still doesn’t really resemble or describe it at all.

The variant by Alex Ross has quite a realistic style and an interesting perspective. The scene seems to be a road at night, with some bad guys in the foreground holding a gun to a hostage’s head, and Superman behind them, casually tossing a car into the air. Superman is practically a silhouette in the night, lit only by a set of headlights behind him. Something about it makes me think of those old Superman serials, or perhaps the Fleischer Superman cartoons from the 1940s. I can’t really explain what that something is, but even though it’s not my favorite of the three, I do find the imagery striking in its own way.

I’ve been told this cover could be a throwback to the original Action Comics #1 cover. Now that I think about it, the car tossing and the expression on the civilian’s face are pretty familiar…

But my favorite of the covers is the one by Adam Hughes. This one features Superman breaking out of some chains with a simple flex of his muscles, sending the remains flying in all directions. Some of the fragmented links spell out the number “900”, which some would say is a bit gimmicky, but I like it. It goes well with the cartoonish way the letters of the “Action Comics” title are trying to explode off the page and, in my opinion, gives it a fun feel. This is the first issue of Action Comics Superman’s been in for a while, after all, so I think a colorful and dynamic shot of him like this works well.

It’s been suggested that this cover could also be a tribute to Neal Adams’ Superman #233 cover.

Action Comics is a series that has often had several stories packed into one issue, and #900 is no exception; this is a 96-page spectacular containing no less than six separate tales, all of which feature or revolve around Superman. And why not? Action Comics is the series that first introduced Superman to the world, and this issue marks his return after an absence of nearly a year.

The first story, and the lead story for the issue, is The Black Ring Finale – Reign of Doomsday, which was written by Paul Cornell. As the title suggests, this is the final part of an existing story—one that began all the way back in Action Comics #890! A reader who hasn’t been following the story thus far gets to find out what’s been going on along with Supes himself: Lex Luthor, in a bid for ultimate power, has been hunting down mysterious spatial anomalies known as “Black Spheres”, which appeared throughout space and time after the events of Blackest Night. And as if the thought of Luthor with phenomenal cosmic power wasn’t bad enough…he’s already succeeded. Before he knows any of this, Superman is dragged through a rift to the depths of space where a godlike Lex plans to torment him for a few eternities.

Personally, I’ve always found Lex to be one of the best things about the Superman series. He makes a great bad guy and a great antithesis for Superman because his point of view is always believable. He makes good, realistic points to back up his stance. You may not agree with him in the long run—you may even think he’s deluding himself—but some of his points really do seem fair. Can humanity reach its true potential while an indestructible alien is holding its hand every step of the way? “They need someone to wake them up,” Lex told Superman in the Last Son storyline. “They need someone to show them they can reach the stars without you flying them up there. They need someone human to aspire to.” Whether you agree with him or not, I think that’s some great writing.

When I first read The Black Ring Finale, however, I was a little disappointed. Lex didn’t make any of these points I’ve come to love. Instead, he was completely wrong; he did nothing but claim that Superman couldn’t understand simple human emotions and insisted that only something ridiculously over the top like the deaths of worlds could possibly make him shed a tear. But that isn’t to say this is out of character him—it’s just another side of his character. As intelligent as he is, he’s completely bound by his arrogance. You see it come out whenever Superman actually counters one of his well thought out arguments. But in this story there was no such argument to counter; Lex was just wrong, and when shown so, still managed to twist it into an insult against himself and have a tantrum about it. I hate to say it, but I’ve seen Luthor written much better before, and that’s unfortunate, since not only did this story focus on him and his point of view, but…it was Lex Luthor with god-powers. I just feel that it could have been more than it was. Maybe I was expecting too much?

Superman himself felt like a man who knew what needed to be done in this story. It’s pretty obvious that violence isn’t going to do much against a god, so that was out. That left reasoning with Lex, but he wasn’t really in a mood to be reasoned with, either. So Supes tried to appeal to him—tried to get him to be the hero he apparently knew he could be. Only Superman can have that much faith in someone like Lex.

Pete Woods was the main artist for The Black Ring Finale, and it’s apparently the last time he’ll be drawing Superman for a while. There’s a lot of attention to detail in his work and good uses of colors to set the scenes. There are times, however, where the art of one page feels quite out of place with the rest. This is no doubt a result of there being so many different artists working on the one story—in fact, one page that seemed to stand out to me is signed by Rags Morales, who is indeed listed as another of the artists. But these moments are few and far between; overall, the art is wonderful for this story, which is good, because you just can’t settle for adequate when depicting a towering, glowing, omnipotent Lex Luthor in the middle of space. As an aside, I’m also really fond of the facial expressions in this first segment.

Of course, that’s just one story out of the many contained in this issue. The moment the reader finishes The Black Ring Finale, they’re thrust straight into the next story without warning—quite literally, since the title for this one, Life Support, is at the end rather than the beginning. This short story was written by Damon Lindelof and illustrated by Ryan Sook, and despite only being ten pages long, it packs quite a punch. It’s a simple tale, covering a simple (well, relatively speaking) conversation between two men. Few words are actually exchanged, to be honest, but the writing and art convey the weight of the situation. I’m sure a casual fan like myself can be forgiven for not realizing just who one of the characters was at first, but when I did, I understood the scene perfectly. Surprisingly short, but surprisingly powerful, Life Support was definitely one of my favorites.

The next story is Autobiography, which was written by Paul Dini, pencilled by RB Silva, and inked by Rob Lean. This one’s even shorter than the last, being only three pages long. It’s simply a cosmic space-hippo named Sarva—whom I’ll admit, I don’t remember at all if he’s an existing DC character—telling a younger looking Kal-El a story. I quite liked this one, too. Sarva’s story describes a moral dilemma that he was once faced with: was it better to save a species, knowing they’d have to go through the suffering and misery of starting life over in a terrifying new place, or was it better to simply let them die a peaceful death? This kind of dilemma certainly isn’t a new one in fiction, but science-fantasy often allows them to be presented in ways that would only be hypothetical in real life. After all, how often would any of us ever be faced with such a massive decision? The artwork here is bright and detailed once again, and I really liked Sarva’s design.

Following Autobiography is Friday Night in the 21^st Century, written by Geoff Johns and drawn by Gary Frank. This one’s only four pages, and two of those are just a two-page spread. I’d barely even call it a story, really…more of a fun extra, showing us Superman and some of his friends getting together for some down time. It’s something you don’t see often, and it’s pretty funny seeing a bunch of heroes in full costume hanging out in some apartment.

The final comic in the issue is called The Incident. Written by David S. Goyer and drawn by Miquel Sepulveda, this is another simple narrative that is essentially just one conversation between Superman and a man from the government. We discover through the dialogue that Superman chose to participate in a non-violent protest in Iran. Sounds simple—uh, by DC standards, at least—but tossing Superman into politics is like showing up at a peace talk in a tank. Supes’ actions lead to some surprising consequences by the end of this short tale, which might have some lasting effects. In the end, politics aside, this seemed like a feel good story with a happy conclusion to me. Then again, as I’ve said before, politics always seem to go over my head, and I’ve already heard of this event causing some controversy amongst the fans. The art is just as wonderfully detailed here as it is in the rest of the issue; maybe it’s because it’s a milestone, but it seems like everyone involved with the art was working really hard for this issue.

So that’s it for—oh, wait, there are still over fifteen pages left. That’s right, issue #900 has a couple of extras for you to enjoy. One is simply another two-page-spread, this one by Brian Stalfreeze (which is a pretty cool name, I just want to point out), depicting Superman’s evolution over the decades. I’m sure there are Superman fans who wouldn’t mind having a blown-up version of this on their wall. The other extra is rather unusual, but at the same time, it might just be my favorite thing from the whole issue: it’s a screenplay.

Titled Only Human and written by Richard Donner (director of the old Superman movie!) and Derek Hoffman, this short screenplay tells the story of an encounter between Superman and Cliff Carter, a charming former running back and center fielder. Having left his life as an athlete behind and become the spokesman for a company called SuperTech, Carter is interviewed by Lois Lane and tries to convince all those around him what a good idea it would be for everyone to have supersuits capable of turning anyone into a superhero. If you’ve read the rest of this review up to this point, you might be able to guess why I like this guy so much: a lot like Luthor, he makes some damn convincing points in his argument. There’s some great writing here—really enjoyable stuff. I may not even have read it if I hadn’t been asked to review the issue, and that would have been a real shame. Matt Camp provides some simple sketches of the scenes, so this is almost like a little storyboard as well as a script.

After 96 pages, the issue finally comes to a close with a message from the editors, Matt Idelson and Wil Moss, as well as a couple of letters from the fans that they picked out. They’re obviously proud of how #900 came out, and I honestly can’t blame them. There’s a ton of content, some good writing, and some really polished art. Every last element of the issue involves Superman in some way, shape, or form, so it really does seem like a great welcome back to the character. But as a milestone issue, how was it as an introduction for new readers?

Well, I’m not sure I’d recommend it for that purpose. Normally anniversary issues are a good place to jump in because they serve as an introduction to the characters and kick off a brand new storyline. Now, the lead story in #900 does start a new storyline, but it feels more like you’re jumping into the middle of something than really starting at a beginning. It’s not only the start of a new story—it’s the end of one that’s been running for almost a year. And even if you’ve read the past ten issues of Action Comics (which I have at this point), you still might not know how some of the characters came to be in the situations they’re in, since those events are explained in about five different ongoing DC titles. It’s a good story, don’t get me wrong, but as someone who’s been out of the loop for a while, I’m left with many questions. If I had to recommend a place for someone to start reading Superman, I’d have to suggest something more like Up, Up and Away—though I have to admit, comparing this one story in this one issue to a multi-issue arc set a year after anything that happened before it probably isn’t fair of me.

I really hope it doesn’t seem like I’m coming down too hard on this issue. It isn’t the greatest place for new readers to begin, but I’m sure it isn’t the worst, either. And to be fair, not being a good place for new readers to jump in definitely doesn’t make it a bad comic. If you ask me, this issue feels more like it’s celebrating Big Blue’s return than anything else, and with multiple Superman-centric stories packed into one issue, it does that very well. In the end, this one might be more for the fans who’ve been patiently awaiting his return than for new fans, and there’s certainly nothing wrong with that.

Cover: B+ (You get a choice of three, and I like them all in different ways—even the one I’ve seen described as “boring”!)
Writing: A- (Some weird parts, but also some really well written parts. The good parts more than make up for any of the not-so-good.)
Art: A (It feels like they really went all out. The level of detail is impressive.)

Overall (not an average): A- (Not a great place for new readers to jump in, but technically speaking, there’s no written law saying it had to be. A good, well-packed issue for a reasonable price that I’m sure almost any Superman fan would enjoy.)

This comic was purchased at retail.

Superman – © 2011 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

Gunslinger Girl: Omnibus Collection 1 (Manga), Review

Alex — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 22:22:05 +0000

Gunslinger Girl is hitting bookshelves again, this time thanks to Seven Seas Entertainment.

This first release from them is an omnibus collecting volumes 1 through 3 of the manga. That’s 544 pages of gunslinging action! This wasn’t my first attempt to get into the series, so how did I like it this time? Read on and find out!

I should note that I actually own the first volume of this manga from when ADV Manga released it. I bought it back then only because the genres listed on the back were action and comedy. What a typo that was…

The first word that comes to mind when I look at this cover is ‘classy.’ It uses subdued colors, a lot of black, and keeps the same serif font for the title that has been used on most Gunslinger Girl releases. You’re told on the front, spine, and back that this omnibus contains the first three volumes of the manga, so there’s little chance for confusion on that. The blurb on the back does a good job summing up the plot, although I think it might give away some plot points that don’t come up in these volumes. The back also gives you the price and rates the manga as being for older audiences (16+).

The picture they went with for the first cover depicts one of the young girls, Triela, sitting amongst some teddy bears, with a shotgun slung over her shoulder, a handgun in her holster, and several shotgun shells littered about. It’s a mix most people would probably find strange, but it captures the essence of this manga pretty well.

One thing I personally find strange is that they picked a picture of Triela for the first release. The blurb on the back goes on and on about Henrietta, who I’m sure everyone would agree is the “main character” in the story, and I feel that if I didn’t know any better, I’d assume the girl on the cover was her. This isn’t really a complaint, however. Who says the first volume has to have the main character on the front? It doesn’t matter at all; I just thought it was worth pointing out.

I definitely like this cover. It tells you everything you need to know, and the art has a good level of detail to it—something that seems typical of Gunslinger Girl covers.

I want to start out by saying that Gunslinger Girl isn’t the sort of thing I’d normally read. I don’t dislike the girls-with-guns genre, but I’ve never been a fan of it, either. I suppose I prefer more fantastic settings as opposed to the slightly more down to Earth idea of government agents shooting at terrorists with semi-automatic pistols. Of course, this manga is about government agents who are little cyborg girls, so maybe that helped a little.

Yes, as the first few pages of the comic will tell you, this story revolves around little girls who have been rebuilt as cyborgs so they can be used as assassins for the Italian government. The organization in charge of all this is known as the “Social Welfare Agency,” and on an official level, exists to help children who are disabled, either since birth or due to accidents. What everyone else doesn’t know is that after allowing these little girls to walk again with their advanced cybernetic enhancements, the agency then brainwashes them and turns them into unstoppable killing machines.

This all seems sort of…well…villainous, I suppose, but most of the girls seem happy enough. One of them, Rico, is incredibly grateful to have a working body for the first time in her life. But I suppose this becomes creepy in its own way; it’s definitely odd to read a story where these happy little girls laugh together and are grateful to be working for the Agency as they go around shooting bad guys and anyone else who endangers their mission. It can get a bit eerie how these girls can end a life without a second thought, like it’s something completely natural. And to them, who have no memories of their lives before becoming cyborgs thanks to the brainwashing, it really is.

The idea that a drug is needed to maintain the girls is introduced early on, and this serves as a hook when the reader is told that it will eventually cause memory loss. Indeed, all of the girls subtly exhibit memory loss throughout these three volumes, none more so than the original prototype cyborg, Angelica. This drug is needed for everything from the girls’ constant “conditioning” (i.e. brainwashing) to the physical repairs required whenever they’re injured, and it effectively shortens their lifespans each time it’s used. It’s pretty clear from this that there isn’t a happy ending in the future of any of these characters, which leaves me morbidly curious about where the story’s going to go.

Each cyborg girl is paired up with an older, so far always male handler. These pairs are referred to in the story as fratello—Italian for “brother”. Part of the girls’ “conditioning” (they always use the double quotes in the manga, so it’s not just me) makes them fiercely loyal to their handlers, to the point that it’s described as being similar to love. This leads to some interesting and varied relationships between the different girls and their keepers, depending on how their personalities mix.

Gunslinger Girl makes use of an ensemble cast, so even though Henrietta seems to stand out as the main girl, the story doesn’t revolve around her and her handler constantly. The first three chapters of the manga introduce the three main fratello one by one, and the story more or less sticks to this format of focusing on one pair per chapter throughout the book. This gives it a pretty good pace and lets it flesh out all of the characters nicely; I went from barely being able to tell some of these characters apart to seeing them all as very distinctive over the course of the three volumes. I think the structure really pays off when the chapters start forming one big plot instead of just being stand-alone stories, since it lets you see the mission through the eyes of different pairs one at a time. Pretty much every character has a role to play, and I tend to really like stories that can pull that off and make it work as well as this one seems to. It also makes the missions seem much bigger and more important, since the pairs are often in completely different locations to each other.

Overall, this manga can be quite brutal. It kicks off with little girls with tragic pasts, hints that their lives aren’t expected to last very long, and has them spend what time they have shooting people up. However, I can’t help but think the tragic nature of it all makes me want to keep reading, and a lot of the characters are surprisingly optimistic about their lot. I’m someone who, to be honest, didn’t understand much about the politics or missions in the story at all—another reason I’m not usually a fan of this sort of thing, I’m sure—but I still enjoyed it so much that I think I may buy and keep reading it as it comes out. I think that shows that this story can appeal on a few different levels.

For the most part, I really like the art in Gunslinger Girl. There’s a lot of detail in the scenery, and most of the characters look unique. This isn’t one of those comics where everyone looks the same except for their hair, that’s for sure. Well, Jose and Jean might be an exception—I mixed them up a few times early on because of their similar looks and similar names—but they’re brothers, so I suppose that’s not too weird. One thing I will say is that with a lot of the older female characters, it wasn’t always apparent to me that they were women when I first saw them. I applaud the artist for not giving them all huge busts, but quite a lot of them seem to have rather masculine faces. Maybe I’ve just seen too many “pretty boy” anime characters in the past, because I kept mistaking them for feminine males.

The only other thing that bothered me was the way the artist positioned the speech bubbles at times. Sometimes the character who’s talking is out of frame, and I found myself unsure of who it was that was speaking. Other times the characters are all in the frame, but the speech bubbles still don’t seem to be attached to anyone in particular; it’s almost like the conversation is a voiceover, or maybe they’re just speaking in such an order that the bubbles can’t be arranged right. This is one of those things you only start thinking about when it somehow stands out…

But in terms of the art alone, I applaud this manga. Its style is anything but generic; it has superb detail, particularly on the guns; and it’s fairly realistic—not really cartoony at all. The artist uses various degrees of shading in every single panel, which adds a degree of depth to everything. Also, assuming the final printing is the same as the digital proof Seven Seas sent us, it’s a lot less heavy on the ink than ADV’s printings of it were—something that can really hurt manga that have been grayscaled or, like this, have a ton of shading.

The translation is also better than ADV’s old release. Lines of dialog are often just clearer, if not outright more accurate in this version than in what used to be available. Some things make a bit more sense, while others seem to better shape a character’s personality. I think ADV’s translation may have been a bit blunt and literal compared to this, if that makes any sense.

There are some things that strike me as odd, however. For one, all of the girls call their handlers Signore—Signore Jose, Signore Jean, etc. I know they’re in Italy, but it feels a tad strange in the middle of something that’s otherwise in English. There are also other bits of random Italian like “bonjourno” thrown in at times. I’m not sure if anything like this was present in Japanese or if it was Seven Seas’ idea, but I found it a little jarring at times. Another oddity was that sometimes an organization would be mentioned—let’s take “NOCS” as an example—and a note would be given next to the panel explaining what the acronym stands for; unfortunately, NOCS stands for “Nucleo Operativo Centrale di Sicurezza”. This left me pretty confused, and I found myself going to Wikipedia to find out just what that was.

However, when I reached the end of the book, I found that there were a few extras at the back, and one of them would have cleared up my confusion if I’d known it was there at the time. There are two pages of translation notes after the final chapter of the book, and these explain what some of these Italian organizations are and what they do, among other things. The notes are organized by chapter, so I’m sure they’d be pretty helpful while reading the manga, so long as you know they’re there. In addition to these notes, there are several pictures that I assume are the original covers of the individual volumes. Finally, right at the end, there’s a 12-page preview of another manga, Venus Verses Virus, which is also being released by Seven Seas.

I liked this manga much more than I expected I would. It appeals on several different levels, so even if you, like me, don’t understand the politics that drive these terrorists and anti-government “bad guys,” you may still find yourself enjoying the more personal drama generated by the character relationships. There’s plenty of action, and despite how somewhat dark and macabre the story can be in places, there are cute and heartwarming moments as well. Just be aware that these can sometimes happen right next to someone who’s bleeding to death, so…even these parts can become creepy in their own way.

These three volumes don’t end on a cliffhanger, as such, but I wouldn’t call them a complete story, either. There are lots of loose ends that leave you wanting more. I have a feeling I’ll be buying the second omnibus when it’s available.

Cover: A (Classy, detailed, and quite fitting for this story.)
Writing: A (It works on multiple levels and draws you in, leaving you curious and wanting more.)
Art: B+ (Every panel is detailed and well shaded. The characters all look unique and varied.)
Translation: B+ (An improvement over the previous translation. Good, but with a few oddities.)
Extras: B (I’m not sure what more you could expect out of extras in a manga. Pretty good.)

Overall (not an average): B+ (An enjoyable release all around. You get three volumes for just a bit more money than you’d spend on one, less than the cost of one if you shop around a bit. It’s a great way to check out the series for the first time, and also a good item to own if you’re already a fan.)

This manga was reviewed using a digital screener. Copyright information is under the ad.

Gunslinger Girl – © 2002 Yu Aida. Translation rights arranged with ASCII MEDIA WORKS. Published by Seven Seas.

Amnesia Labyrinth: Volume 1 (Manga), Review

Jonathan — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 09:23:55 +0000

I’m extremely disappointed right now. When I read a manga called Amnesia Labyrinth, I expect to see someone wake up in a maze without any memory of how they got there. That’s not what this is at all!

Sarcasm aside, Amnesia Labyrinth isn’t nearly as exciting as its intriguing name would suggest. The series has just hit American shelves in graphic-novel format courtesy of Seven Seas Entertainment, and I can’t say I was riveted by the four chapters included in this first volume. In fact—and I know I sound like a bit of a bastard for starting out the review this way—the volume peaks in its first three pages. You look at the catchy (if misleading) cover, read the synopsis on the back, and settle down to read a good ol’ mystery manga about a couple of high-school kids. And what’s the first thing to happen in the volume? An innocent student gets shoved in front of an oncoming train.

That’s…unexpected…

It’s a shocking way to open the volume, and certainly grabs your attention, but by the end of the first chapter, all pent-up excitement brought on by the opening homicide has more or less evaporated. The series gets better from there—the first chapter is pretty awful—but at least in these four chapters, the story is never as gripping as it is in those first few pages.

Amnesia Labyrinth follows Souji Kushiki, a high-class student from a wealthy family, who returns home from boarding school to run the household after his older brother, Kazushi, disappears. His three younger sisters—Youko, Harumi, and Saki—are all eager to see him…a little too eager, in fact. Something strange has come over his disturbingly over-affectionate sisters, and when Souji learns that three students from his local class were murdered over the summer, he begins to get suspicious. The murders are brought to his attention by one of his classmates, Sasai Yukako, sole member of the school’s Intelligence Committee. She’s determined to track the killer down, and at her insistence, Souji reluctantly teams up with her to solve the mystery.

I could easily rattle off some of the problems I had with the story, but luckily, author Nagaru Tanigawa did it for me! In a “Message From the Writer” at the back of the volume, he writes: “Although an overall plot does exist for this story, when everything was said and done, I sort of ran out of things to write, and therefore I admit there are a number of lazy, phantom passages scattered throughout.”

That pretty much describes Amnesia Labyrinth in a nutshell—although I was very surprised to see the author essentially apologize for the narrative woes. There’s certainly a plot to the story, but it’s doled out lazily and with total disregard for the reader’s attention span. Relatively simple exposition like why Souji had to come home or his family background seems needlessly complex, and there are details listed clearly on the cover description that never become anything more than hazy throughout the volume. In the span of these four chapters, the plot progresses minimally, and the only real forward momentum in the ‘mystery’ comes in the form of a sudden M. Night Shyamalan-esque twist in the last few pages. As for the ‘phantom passages’ Tanigawa writes of, they certainly exist; many stretches, particularly in the first chapter, are overlong and ramble, while many small scenes or details seem completely inconsequential. Granted, I don’t know how the story will ultimately turn out, but in the span of this first volume, there’s an awful lot of dead space, and that’s not much fun to read.

Ultimately, though, the manga’s cardinal sin comes in the character department. I could certainly complain about Souji being ‘emo’—he has black hair, he broods and sulks, he’s completely antisocial, you can imagine a long, drawn out sigh at the end of his every sentence, etc.—but more importantly, he’s just boring. He has absolutely zero personality, he’s not likable, and he’s so generally underdeveloped that if I didn’t have the manga in front of me right now, I probably wouldn’t remember his name. He doesn’t even have any discernable character traits (well…beyond being emo…), except for the ones other characters assign to him. For instance, we’re told over and over again that he’s a brilliant student and a talented athlete, but at no point do we see him perform any feats of mental strength or show off his athleticism. The only reason I have to believe that Souji is smart or athletic or loved by his female peers is because other characters say so, and that’s not a good substitute for true character development.

It doesn’t help that he seems completely disinterested in every single thing that’s going on around him, because to be honest, his life is far from boring. His sisters have slightly more personality, but that may only be because they’re all super horny for their big brother. Yes, you read that right—once Souji comes home, all three of his sisters start making moves on him, and at no point, from start to finish, does Souji’s countenance change. It’s clearly not their normal behavior—Souji at least mentions that—but he seems as surprised by their odd sexual urges as you or I would be if we casually glanced down and noticed our shoe was untied.

Granted, one of his three sisters is technically a stepsister, and another a half-sister (provided I’m correct about that—the series is wildly unclear about all this) but still…it’s strange. It’s the kind of strangeness that you prepare for when reading manga, but shouldn’t Souji be somewhat cognizant of what the word ‘incest’ means? Not to spoil anything, but in the third chapter, we learn that Souji definitely does know what that word means…and that’s when things get weird. Surprisingly, the revelation doesn’t make Souji any more interesting.

The manga’s strongest character is undoubtedly Sasai, the intrepid intelligence-enthusiast who convinces Souji to help her catch the mysterious murder. She’s spunky, cute, and has an honest-to-God personality. The manga is at its most interesting when she appears, though, ironically, she makes no impact on the story whatsoever in these first four chapters, and I have yet to see what importance her role will serve in the narrative.

In the end, Amnesia Labyrinth is an underwhelming mess of bland characters, poorly paced and uninvolving story, and odd sexual scenarios. The writing isn’t always bad, and it’s never actively awful. There’s a discussion between Sasai and Souji about death in Chapter 4 that’s actually really well composed and serves as the height of the volume’s creative achievement. It falls somewhere in the middle, and the middle isn’t very exciting at all.

On the flipside, Natsumi Kohane’s artwork is gorgeous. It’s lavishly detailed, wonderfully realistic, and has a strong sense of depth and dimensionality. I didn’t find Amnesia Labyrinth very fun to read, but it’s a marvel to look at. The cover art is actually one of the more underwhelming drawings in the volume, as it gives almost no indication of the manga’s tone or story. But then again, I’m not sure what image would sum up the plot.

Seven Seas’ translation work is also excellent. I obviously can’t speak to the accuracy, but there’s absolutely no Americanization of any kind, and the writing is fluid and natural at all times. If anything, the translations are just a bit too accurate at some times. Many Japanese words or phrases are left untranslated and without a footnote to help decipher, and that can be confusing, especially early on when you’re still trying to learn all the names. For instance, the sisters all call Souji ‘Niisan,’ Japanese for older brother, and Souji, in turn, calls his missing brother ‘Niisan.’ The word seemed familiar to me, but because I don’t speak the language, I didn’t immediately recall it, and for a long time, I was sure they were referring to another character entirely. A simple footnote would solve this problem. There is a glossary of some terms in the back, though ‘Niisan’ is not included and you wouldn’t know the glossary was there when reading through the first time.

As you can tell, I wasn’t impressed by Amnesia Labyrinth, and I’m left with no compelling reason to continue following this story. Heck, if it wasn’t for professional obligation, I probably wouldn’t have made it through Chapter 1. There are some redeeming values, like the artwork, but overall, this isn’t something I can recommend. If you’re a fan of the author or artist or feel intrigued despite my negativity, do know that this is a very solid domestic publication; you can even buy it at some online retailers, like Amazon, for a highly reduced price.

Story: D+
Art: A
Cover: B
Translations: B+

This manga was reviewed using a digital screener. Copyright information is under the ad.

Amnesia Labyrinth – © 2009 Nagaru Tanigawa, Kohane Nasumi. Translation rights arranged with ASCII MEDIA WORKS. Published by Seven Seas.

Summer Wars (DVD), Review

Marc — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 22:37:52 +0000

Funimation comes out swinging with a big film release, arguably the biggest film they’ve released since the first Evangelion Rebuild film (and based on who you ask, possibly bigger.)

A big push is being given to Summer Wars: theatrical screenings, larger than normal advertising, even an attempt to get it nominated for an Academy Award. Is all the extra push worth it?

As a fun little experiment, Alex and I are reviewing this film together, since we both had things we wanted to say about it.

(Small Note- While the review is spoiler free, the embedded trailer from Funimation’s Youtube does have some spoilers from the film. Out of context they may not spoil much, but be warned.)

The packaging starts with a slipcover that uses the OZ avatars of various characters from the film. All the various characters on the front are textured very nicely. On the top of the front cover you see 7 awards Summer Wars won (along with another right above the film title near the bottom.) A sticker is even included with a quote from the Los Angeles Times. On the back we see a thin slice of the ‘real world’ counterpoint to the front cover, along with a few screenshots. We get a short blurb about Hosoda and a well written paragraph with a basic overview of the film from AnimeNewsNetwork. Everything about the slipcase is relevant and lists what is on the disk in a font that is relatively easy to read, if a bit ‘puffy’.

The case insert itself is done identically to the slipcover with a few fun changes. The most obvious is the main cover is now the ‘real world’ image and the thin strip on the back is now the OZ image. It’s a nice little touch. Colors have also been changed, but the layout is exactly the same. The case itself is clear, so we get a nice reverse image. It’s done width wide on the case and is a beautifully drawn image of the real world characters. While no spoilers are given, if you’ve seen the film you will notice some nice touches in this image to the end of the film. The movie disk is kept on a page style tray. It holds the disk stiffly and while it isn’t difficult to remove it requires a bit more pressure than you expect. The extras disk takes roughly the same amount of pressure to remove. The packaging for this release is quite honestly gorgeous.

The menu for Summer Wars is very clean and usable. The only complaint I have is that for the scene selection they only show a few scenes at a time, so there are over half a dozen pages. Other than that everything is amazingly clean. A great menu.

I know I can’t talk about this film without mentioning it, so let’s get this out the way right from the start: this film has many, many similarities to another of Mamoru Hosoda’s films, Digimon Adventure: Our War Game. Both films are about a digital threat—in Summer Wars’ case, an artificial intelligence that acts more like a virus—that hacks into and takes over a virtual world, resulting in chaos in the real world that depends on its functions. And it isn’t just a basic level of similarity that stops there. There are scenes in Summer Wars that are practically identical to scenes in Our War Game, and the film’s conflict builds to an incredibly similar climax. However, both of us are in agreement that the fact Mamoru Hosoda has basically created this same film twice (or even three times if you include the short film, Superflat Monogram) doesn’t stop it from being a very good movie.

The story follows Kenji Koiso, a 17-year-old high-school student who’s extremely gifted in mathematics. He works as a “code monkey” for a massive online virtual reality called OZ, which all of the real world’s technology is now networked into. His rather mundane life is interrupted—as is common in anime—when his classmate Natsuki hijacks him for a job in Ueda; Kenji doesn’t find out until he gets there that his “job” is to pretend to be Natsuki’s fiancé in order to please her grandmother, who will soon be celebrating her 90^th birthday. Natsuki has an enormous family, all of whom are present to join in the celebration, and a good chunk of the film is made up of the interactions between the family members themselves and Kenji.

Not long after arriving at the Jinnouchi family’s rural home, Kenji receives a strange message on his phone—a complex math problem with the instruction, “Solve me.” He solves it just to see if he can, mails it back, and the very next morning, OZ is in chaos. It turns out the supposedly innocent math problem was actually the key to breaking through OZ’s security, and now a mischievous artificially intelligent program named Love Machine is causing trouble for everyone. And worst of all, Kenji himself has been identified as the criminal!

At first it almost feels like the film has two separate stories going at once. The first is the story of the grandmother and her coming birthday, and most of the family is tied up in this story to begin with. Kenji’s story, where he’s implicated as some sort of cyber terrorist and has to stop Love Machine, feels kind of separate at first, and a lot of the family isn’t interested in it until it becomes really apparent that the things going on in the virtual world also affect all of them after all. Before this, it’s only really the fact that Kenji is pretending to be Natsuki’s boyfriend that ties the two plots together. When the two plots finally do converge completely, it all comes to a pretty epic conclusion.

There are a lot of characters in the film, but only a few really stand out, while the rest I think of as just “the Jinnouchi family.” There’s Kenji, of course, who’s sort of the stereotypical main anime guy; he’s nerdy and a bit of an outcast, but an all around nice guy who develops into the hero-guy over the course of the story. Natsuki, on the other hand, could very easily have become a Naru-esque cliché anime girl, but instead feels realistic and relatable. I wouldn’t go as far as to call her a tomboy, but she’s outgoing and strong willed, and you get the impression that she’s like a younger version of her grandmother with how all around together she is. Her reactions to what’s going on around her strike me as fitting for a girl her age. Her young cousin, Kazuma, is quick to believe that Kenji isn’t the criminal everyone starts making him out to be, and is the one who does the most “physical” fighting against Love Machine. There’s also Natsuki’s uncle (whom she apparently had a crush on when she was younger), Wabisuke, who by pure (contrived?) coincidence, also turns out to have something to do with Love Machine; he’s portrayed as a bit of a jerk, but it becomes clear that, in his own way, everything he did was for the grandmother, Sakae.

Grandmother Sakae is really the heart of the story. She’s the reason everyone’s where they are to begin with, and she’s also the thing that finally unites the two sides of the story into one. She’s a strong woman who holds the whole Jinnouchi family together in more ways than one. In fact, once you’ve seen the whole film, you might sit back and realize that everything—from both story threads—is sort of set into motion by this one character. That’s pretty interesting if you ask me.

Summer Wars is nearly two hours long, but apart from the first few minutes, it never felt slow to me. Mamoru Hosoda seems to be good at creating a constant pace, and there was never a point in the story where I felt bored or disinterested. It uses very different approaches to keep your interest, of course: on the one hand you have the Digimon-esque virtual battles and fate of mankind sort of thing, but on the other you have very interesting and realistic characters interacting with each other, and the sense of family between them all is unmistakable. Like I already mentioned, it’s sort of like there are two stories that circle each other before finally converging, and both are very good in really different ways.

Summer Wars is encoded at 480p. Overall the encode feels very soft. There is almost a blurry haze over the vast majority of the film. I’m not sure if it was an artistic choice or not. From what few screencaps I could track down from the R2, the Japanese DVD appears relatively similiar, so we aren’t getting the short end of the stick. Colors still look quite good. The DVD doesn’t look great, but it doesn’t look horrible. It’s just a shame that the DVD doesn’t look as fantastic as it could.

The film has great visuals overall. The real world and OZ both have distinctive looks that in both cases have been pulled directly from Our War Game. There is a wide range of character designs and you won’t ever really confuse anyone for another character in the film (although I can definitely imagine Kenji as Tai after a haircut.) While the design work arguably did start back with Our War Game, it matches and adds to the evolution of the designs seen in other Hosoda films (The Girl Who Leapt Through Time being the large target.) It’s very interesting to see things Hosoda has carried from film to film starting back with Digimon, be it the general art look or OZ having red outlines with an almost stark white ‘space’ to float in. The DVD doesn’t harm the great visuals, but it could have shown them so much more justice.

The audio is more like it. Both English and Japanese get 448k 5.1 Dolby tracks. Both tracks sound very good. Dialogue is louder on the English track, but otherwise the levels are largely the same. There isn’t much to say here; it sounds good.

The two things that will inevitably bother me the most when it comes to a dub are when the voices themselves sound unnatural and/or forced, and when the script is awkward and doesn’t feel like something a real person would say out loud. Thankfully, Summer Wars suffers from neither of these problems. Both the voices and the script seem entirely natural, and there’s nothing about them that will distract you or pull you out of the film. None of the cast really stands out above the rest, but there’s no one who seems like a weak link, either; they’re all just consistently good.

FUNimation fans may recognize many members of the English cast. Kenji is voiced by Michael Sinterniklaas, who semi-recently voiced Xellos in FUNimation’s dub of Slayers Revolution and Slayers Evolution-R; Natsuki is voiced by Brina Palencia, who voices both Puar and Chaozu in the dubs of Dragon Ball Z Kai and other newly dubbed Dragon Ball properties, as well as Chopper from FUNimation’s dub of One Piece; Maxey Whitehead voices Kazuma, and has also recently portrayed Dende in Z Kai; and J. Michael Tatum, who’s Zarbon in Z Kai and Scar in Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, plays Wabisuke.

Extras are above and beyond what is expected for an anime disk. We start off with a little over 23 minutes of interviews with primary cast members. After you hear them talk about their characters and their thoughts, you get a full 13 minutes from Hosoda himself. After those we get lighter fare: 2 short teaser trailers, a TV teaser, a full commercial, and a couple minutes of TV commercials. The interviews are presented in 16:9 but the commercials are letterboxed 4:3. It’s a nice set of interviews overall with a few commercials and trailers tossed in. First printings of the DVD also include four art cards. Each art card has two pictures on it for a total of eight shots. The extras are quite nice, but I imagine there could have been much more (the art cards are a first press bonus, and there are people who preordered who aren’t getting them, so they aren’t included in the final grade.)

Summer Wars is a fantastic film. It’s one of the best anime films either of us have seen in quite awhile, and it should be on the shelf of nearly any anime fan. The two disk set is nearly perfect. The only real flaw is video that should have been so much more, especially with the great art direction in the film.

Movie: A+ (An utterly enjoyable film that uses past knowledge and films of the director to polish past work into a near perfect piece of entertainment. It even throws in a few social messages about the human condition and perhaps where we are going as people.)
Video Quality: C- (It isn’t that bad, but more was expected based on it being a brand new film.)
Audio Quality: A (Audio quality on both tracks was quite good.)
English Dub: A+ (Arguably a perfect dub. The greatest compliment that could be paid to it is something Alex said during a chat: “There was never a moment where I felt like…I was watching a dub.”)
Extras: B (A solid collection of extras. There could be more, but what we got isn’t bad.)

Overall (not an average): A (A great film got a good disk. If the video was better we would likely have given this an A+.)

Let us know what you think of this little experiment having two of us review something together. We quite enjoyed doing it and are considering doing it again.

Gallery and copyright information under ad. All caps are lossless PNGs taken in MPC-HC, feel free to request more. (Caps are sized 853×480 so as to display properly on computer monitors, they were modified to this resolution via Photoshop CS4 as MPC-HC takes screen captures at 720×480 on the disc. Having the caps be 853×480 makes them appear at the properly intended aspect ratio.)

This show was reviewed using a screener in retail packaging for one of us. The other used a retail bought copy.

This DVD is labeled to work in Region 1.

©2009 SUMMER WARS FILM PARTNERS. Licensed by FUNimation®Productions, Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

Infinite Ryvius: Complete Collection, Retro Review

Prede — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 21:25:55 +0000

Infinite Ryvius is a top-notch psychological drama from Sunrise that aired in 1999. Bandai first put it out on DVD in North America in 2003, and it’s really worth a look.

Infinite Ryvius, on its surface, looks like the kind of generic mecha/sci-fi series that Bandai often releases. It seems like it has nothing new to offer and is really only for the hardcore Sunrise fans. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. There’s very little action in the show, and the mecha is only used a handful of times throughout the entire 26 episodes. So I’m not really sure if that crowd would enjoy this. No, this series instead seems aimed at fans of character driven dramas, and that’s perfectly fine. There is also some great insight on political systems, and what human beings truly are at their root. This series cuts deep into human psyche.

Bandai released Infinite Ryvius in an m-lock brick case that just doesn’t look very nice. While far from ugly, the cover art is boring and just seems lazy. It just has the title of the show and some green computer screen stuff behind it. This does not even hint at what the show is about, and just makes the box look plain. The back artwork fairs better, with some nice screenshots and a well-written synopsis. But even that is too simple for its own good. The menus are quite different; they look very nice and are easy to navigate through. They are fully animated, with brilliant computer graphics of the Ryvius ship itself. This shows some real effort was put into the release, at least originally.

In 2225, man has colonized most of the solar system, and space travel has become very common. There was a sudden rush in space exploration and colonization due to the Geduld phenomena that rushed through the solar system and wiped out a large portion of Earth’s population. This also left a “sea of Geduld” in space that is very dangerous to dive into, but can provide energy to space stations nearby. At the start of the show Kouji Aiba, a teenager with aspirations of becoming a pilot, heads off to the Liebe Delta, which is an astronaut training station (that acts much like a regular school on earth). He is joined by his childhood friend, Aoi, and much to his dismay his stubborn brother, Yuuki. Yuuki and Kouji do not get along at all, and their fights often turn violent. The Liebe Delta is also filled with around 500 other students, all of whom end up having a part in the show. Now not every single character gets developed, and many don’t even get named. But they all play a vital role in this overall story, which is much more a character drama that happens to be set in outer space than a space opera or mecha series. And I was truly surprised at how many characters they managed to flesh out, and how many of these teenagers are completely different people at the end than they were at the start of the series. The character development in this series is really impressive.

Eventually it becomes clear that all is not well on the Liebe Delta; saboteurs are on board and attempt to lower the ship into the Geduld far too deep, killing all on board. They manage to kill most of the adult staff and get control of the ship. However, an elite group of students training for high-level jobs figures this out and tries to warn the other students. The rest of the adults on board end up sacrificing themselves to save the children, leaving almost 500 kids alone, separated from society and all adults. In essence what we have is “Lord of the Flies” in space. And the series takes much more than that from Golding’s famous novel. The kids end up escaping to a top-secret space ship known as the Ryvius, and get branded as terrorists by some unknown outside force. Unable to return home, and having all their transmissions blocked, they aimless wander the solar system, cut off from society.

Infinite Ryvius attempts to show us what teenagers are, and what they are not. At times these kids can really surprise you at what they accomplish on their own, and yet their rash decisions and judgments may very well be their downfall. The series is not afraid to show us the darker side of humanity here. Infinite Ryvius is also allegorical in nature. It begins with the Zweis in charge, an elite group of students handpicked (or thrown in due to their parents influence) from the best of the best. The Zweis know much more about how to fly a ship than anyone else, and so it’s only natural they take charge at first. But eventually they are taken hostage by group of students and lose their power. And then this group is overthrown by a rebellion. Each new group in control of the ship is clearly there to represent a different political system, and this is intelligently woven into the narrative. It’s incredibly brilliant how the series portrays each political system, from tyrannical oligarchies, to strict dictatorships, to democracies. And what the show has to say about each of these forms of government may surprise you. Infinite Ryvius is not afraid to be brutally honest with all the political systems, as it doesn’t sugar coat any of them. It shows their weaknesses, faults and strengths quite clearly. For example, the group who represents democracy is slow to act and inefficient. They have a very weak control of the populace, and this hurts them in more ways than one. It would have been far too easy to paint democracy in good light, but this show pulls no punches. Infinite Ryvius is quite a deep, complex, and intelligent series, with more to say in its 26 episodes than others manage to say in hundreds.

But much more than a bunch of allegories, it is also an immensely compelling character drama. The characters portrayed in this series are anything but archetypes. They are living, breathing, and lifelike human beings. They all have their own ways of thinking, and all have different views on certain things, along with having their own goals in life and their own flaws. Yes, no one in this show is a perfect hero. This is quite a feat when you think about how many characters there are. And the character interactions are very interesting and entertaining to follow, as they grow and change. This show has some of the most realistic romance scenes involving teenagers I’ve seen in an anime. The staff here understands exactly what childhood romance is like, and do a wonderful job of portraying it.

The series is entirely tense, always on level 11 on the stress-o-meter. Even when the teens decide to throw a party to help everyone on board relax, things do not stay calm for long. Many times the Ryvius is attacked by this unknown enemy, and the kids all must figure out ways to defend themselves, using both the ship’s weapons and a deployable mecha that’s incredibly powerful yet difficult to use. The series is entirely serious, and it leaves all comedy relief for the extras, a place it’s more suited for in this case. Infinite Ryvius is incredibly well written, and from early on clues the viewer in on who to pay attention to and who is going to be important later on. This is an incredibly complex, mature, and sophisticated series, and yet it’s quite easy to follow and actually very addicting. I found myself watching episode after episode of the show, unable to put it down. And it’s never obtuse or hard to grasp, either. It’s quite blunt with its themes and statements about society and people.

The animation here leaves more to be desired. While some of the spaceship battles are animated very well, the rest of the scenes are very iffy. At times the animation of the Ryvius itself going through space looks very choppy, and there are way too many shortcuts used while showing the drama inside of the ship. Way too often does the series rely on panning and stills when it’s focusing on the characters. This is not a huge problem, but it does hurt the series a bit. On the other hand, the artwork is quite nice. Character designs are attractive and distinct. The girls look cute, yet realistic, and the boys look anything but generic. I also loved how the clothing of each character is distinctive. Each character had a certain clothing style, but nothing was too outlandish. And the mechanical designs are realistic, yet awe inspiring at the same time. Bandai’s disks look nice; there’s no bleeding or any other major problem to be found. But I do think the colors look a little bit off.

I found no problems with the audio in this release. The music used in Infinite Ryvius is a mixture of hip-hop and pop, and it really blew me away. This is beautiful soundtrack that completely and utterly caught me off guard. I was not expecting such great music all around for this show. I’m not really a fan of hip-hop, but I know I am a fan of this! The opening theme is remarkably powerful; it’s very grand and bold, yet hints at a future that is nothing but bleak and depressing. It is, in essence, the perfect opening theme for this series, and still to this day after listening to it 26+ times it sends chills down my spine. It’s also just very nice to listen to on its own. The background music is really top notch here, capturing the emotions of each scene magnificently. The ending theme, while not really something you’d want to listen to on its own, is the perfect fit here.

The dub for Infinite Ryvius was produced at the Ocean Group in Vancouver, Canada. They turn out an impressive dub, with very few problems. Brad Swaile plays Kouji Aiba, and he is a good fit for the lead. At times he does seem like he’s straining himself a little to sound like a young teenager, but for the most part he’s very good. Yuuki is played by Kirby Morrow, who does a great job at making him sound very menacing and like a troublemaker, but not a total headache either. Alexandra Carter plays Aoi, and she does a wonderful job here, making her sound sweet, but really authentic. Kozue, a friend of Aoi’s, is played by Jocelyne Loewen, who captured the essence of Kozue perfectly. Chiara Zanni plays Fina, a love interest for Kouji, and she scared me at how into her role she could get. She was truly great in this dub, and I can’t imagine anyone else playing this character. But the true star here is Kelly Sheridan, who plays Juli Bahana. Juli is one of the central figures of the Zweis, and Kelly Sheridan makes her sound strong, yet very vulnerable. The tons and tons of smaller roles are also handled with care, although one or two small roles may bug you a little. All in all though this is a high quality dub from the Ocean Group, in which the dialogue is natural, the casting is near perfect, and the acting is usually very good.

The extras here are pretty standard. Bandai just included some of the extras that were on the Japanese release. There are lots of commercials for the Japanese soundtracks, audio dramas, DVDs and so on, which are quite boring actually. Perhaps others will find these more useful than I did though. A few of the disks had art galleries on them that are worth a look. But the best extra by far was the “Ryvius Illusion” episodes. On each disk there are 3 short comedy segments, done entirely in chibi form with all the main characters. And they were all very funny. I know I will be re-watching these. It was nice to know that at the end of a disk (and all the drama), there was some fun humor waiting for me. I liked how the series restricted its comedy to these extras instead of trying to shoehorn it into the main show.

All in all Infinite Ryvius is an incredibly tense, compelling, and interesting character drama that happens to take place in space. It takes a lot from William Golding’s “Lord of the Flies” (including the wonderful ending), but adds so much insight that it can easily be called unique. The show looks at different political systems and what teenagers are (and in turn humans are), and what it has to say is sometimes profound. This series has made its way to my top ten list, and gets my highest recommendation. It’s a shame the animation leaves more to be desired, but the story is so good, the characters so interesting, and the music so catchy, it’s easy to ignore.

Show : A+ (Deep, compelling, interesting and addictive.)
Packaging: C+ (The cover is boring and brick cases are kind of dull to begin with.)
English Dub: A ( A top notch dub, with very few problems if any.)
Extras: B- (Kind of boring, except for the fun, cute little bonus episodes.)

Overall (not an average): A (An incredibly powerful, unique show, that you can’t put down once you start. It’s very smart, and has a lot going for it in terms of art, music, and it’s overall themes.)

This is a review of an older product. Video and audio may not be up to current standards. There is no video or audio grade because there is the question of if it should be judged from when this set was released or now… also, the reviewer isn’t good at that. This boxset came out in 2006. DVDs from this series first started coming out in 2003.

Gallery and copyright information under ad. All caps are lossless PNGs taken in VLC. (Caps are sized 720×540 so as to display properly on computer monitors. VLC corrects for the difference in aspect ratio by scaling up vertically rather than scaling down horizontally.)

This set was purchased at an online specialty retailer.

These DVDs are labeled to work in Region 1.

Infinite Ryvius – © Sunrise. Licensed by Bandai Entertainment. All Rights Reserved.

Fractale- Episodes 1 thru 3, Review

Jonathan — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 18:58:55 +0000

What is Fractale? To tell you the truth, I’m still figuring that out myself…

One of the latest additions to FUNimation’s incredibly robust online streaming repertoire, Fractale is being simulcast every Thursday on Hulu at 11:45 am (EST), one hour after the episodes premiere on Fuji TV in Japan…at least, that’s the plan. The simulcast was halted after the first episode when the show’s copyright holders demanded FUNimation take steps to stop piracy of the episodes. Once this was sorted out and the simulcast resumed, the massive snow storms and cold fronts sweeping much of America prevented this week’s planned simulcast of episode four (I know how you feel, FUNi – it’s cold here too!). Thus, this review covers the first three episodes of the series as part of a new plan on this site to review streaming content in ‘blocks.’ Fractale will only be 11 episodes total, so we’re planning two more reviews, each highlighting four new episodes, to cover the rest of the series as it airs.

Fractale is many things – nearly all of them good – but one word that kept coming to my mind as I studied these first three episodes was “fascinating.” It’s a series about very big societal ideas that opens on an extremely intimate scale, and by the time we hit the Theme Song in episode 1, it’s already established itself as thought provoking – though not, immediately, in a thematic sense. The first order of business is, in blunt terms, to figure out just what the hell is going on. Set in the far off future, Fractale showcases an entirely original world, society, and lingo, and it makes no attempts to hold the viewer’s hand as the story unravels. It’s jarring, initially, but ultimately works to the show’s benefit; you’re completely immersed in the experience, and once you do understand everything that’s going on, it all seems that much more revelatory and fantastic. Even by the end of episode 3, I still can’t say I understand how everything in this future functions, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

In this future, humanity has developed a new way of living through technology. The “Fractale system,” made up of several trillion networked computers, has brought mankind peace, stability, and contentment, all at a seemingly insignificant cost. Users install a Fractale terminal within their body, from which personal data is routinely mined as users pray to the mysterious “Day Star” at regular intervals. The Fractale system seems to have made the world into a Utopia, but….well, you can’t have a story without conflict, can you?

Our protagonist, a young boy named Clain (which you’ll probably hear as “Crane”), is one of the few in this world who seems discontent with his lot. The problem is, he just can’t put his finger on what exactly is getting him down, and the discovery of his inner turmoil is one of the major stories in these first three episodes. To the viewer, it’s clear that Clain is lonely. He doesn’t seem to have any friends, and his parents live in the house only as ‘doppels,’ extremely strange looking holograms that can be controlled by Fractale users. Most people use doppels in this time since, as Clain’s parents explain, it allows them greater freedom. Clain is one of the few who refuses to, and though he can’t admit it to himself just yet, he’d be a whole lot happier if his parents would just come home. Add to that the fact that Clain also happens to be an avid enthusiast of antique technology and it’s easy to see that he isn’t quite at home in this future. Clain’s baggage is exactly what makes him a likable lead – he’s got problems that many of us can relate to and sympathize with, but he’s far from your typical ‘angst-ridden’ teen.

As I said above, the series opens on an intimate scale. The first episode, “Encounter,” deals with Clain meeting a mysterious girl named Phryne, who arrives on a flying machine pulled straight out of a Miyazaki movie. The two immediately bond, though Phryne reveals little about herself, and after (innocently) spending the night together, she disappears as Clain sleeps. When he wakes up, he sees that Phryne has left him her brooch which, to Clain’s surprise, contains an extremely lifelike doppel named Nessa. The second episode, appropriately titled “Nessa,” is all about Clain’s new companion. She’s incessantly cheerful, speaks in the third person, and holds many secrets, some of which are delved into in episode three, “The Village of Granites.” Here, we meet a terrorist organization – The Last Millennium – living on the outskirts of society and determined to take down the Fractale system at all costs. They believe it to be oppressive and unnatural, and their assertions force Clain to rethink his entire way of life.

It may not seem apparent at first, but one of Fractale’s greatest assets is that it has a tremendous sense of direction. It’s not immediately easy to figure out what a ‘doppel’ is or what function the ‘Fractale system’ serves, nor does the story show its hand early on; three episodes in, the main thrust of the plot hasn’t yet become clear. Nevertheless, it’s easy to see that this story is going somewhere, and where it’s going seems pretty magnificent. The world is fascinating, the characters are all likable and intriguing, and most importantly, this is a series that makes you think.

Even early on, the viewer is confronted with big questions that don’t have an easy answer, at least not immediately. You can probably already gather that the role of technology in modern life is one of the biggest themes, and the creators definitely have something to say about how humans rely – or, perhaps, over-rely – on our precious technology. Clain’s parents make a haunting speech in the second episode about how their absence actually proves their love for their son. It sounds counter-intuitive at first, but what makes the sequence powerful is how directly the language is aimed at modern, tech-crazed humans like us. Their logic is actually completely understandable, even if it is disturbing, and the series has plenty more to say about the role technology plays in isolation. Lonely Clain, after all, is a direct byproduct of a world run by social networking – a world that, as we come to understand its many intricacies, doesn’t seem that far off from our own.

Yet I don’t think the series would be so thought provoking if it merely presented a ‘technology is bad’ angle. The first description of Fractale sounds like a textbook definition of the ideal socialist state, something that has never been historically implemented – real world socialism obviously doesn’t hold up to its idealized, philosophical standard. If Fractale could create this “perfect” Utopia where everyone is equal, happy, and has everything they need, are the downsides acceptable? A sequence in episode three demonstrates one of the clear, major benefits of the Fractale system: the flawless and instantaneous healthcare. The Last Millennium’s decision to forgo this benefit – especially considering the number of elders in their village – proves that their viewpoint isn’t entirely heroic. Nothing makes one question what would seem like foregone questions about the show’s morality more than the last sequence of episode three, which features an abrupt but powerful tonal shift into violent and disturbing territory, both thematically and visually.

In just three episodes, the series forces the viewer to think about some pretty hefty, real-world issues, and by the time those three episodes are up, you’ll have to rethink everything again. It’s not often I see a show – animated or not – that so directly challenges the viewer in this manner, and it’s an extremely rewarding experience. The key idea I’m left with after three episodes is this: loneliness is clearly a feeling we can all relate to, and it’s the core problem all the Fractale characters struggle with. But does this have to be part of the status quo? Do we really have to feel lonely in our most vulnerable moments, or do we impose loneliness on ourselves? Do we participate in societal trends to feel accepted, even while they may make us even lonelier in the long run? Fractale may be set hundreds of years in the future, but it forces us to ask questions that are absolutely applicable to contemporary life.

Of course, Fractale isn’t nearly as heavy as my review would so far suggest. Its thoughtful and intelligent nature is, I believe, its greatest asset, but taking all this out of the equation, it’s still a ridiculously fun and entertaining show with a great sense of humor. Much of the laughter comes from your typical Shonen-sexual-immaturity, but the interactions between the lively and endearing cast generate plenty of organic laughs as well. There’s a very funny group of antagonists in these episodes, led by a small, shrill-voiced girl, who consistently provide welcome comic relief. Tonally, the series blends the contemplative drama with lively humor and an occasional sense of whimsy without feeling unnatural – most of the time. There are moments where the shifts in tonality feel inconsistent, rather than organic, but they’re few and far between. I do wonder how well these elements will blend in future episodes, given the unforeseeably dark ending of episode three, but for now, rest assured that a splendid time is guaranteed for all.

Fractale features some truly jaw-dropping production values. I made notes about the animation during all three episodes, including ‘friggin’ gorgeous’ and ‘unbelievable,’ and while this hyperbole may be a bit much, the artwork really is beautiful. The use of color and detail, especially on the lavish backgrounds, is far sharper than in most weekly anime productions, and though I’m sure computers were heavily involved as in all modern animation, the art looks very classical. I was often reminded of Miyazaki’s films – the animation obviously isn’t on par with his work, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that “Laputa: Castle in the Sky” was one of the show’s visual inspirations.

The sound is just as impressive. The music is lovely and rich, and that extends to the theme songs as well; the music sets the perfect mood and is a big part of the show’s creative success. Meanwhile, the voice acting is strong across the board. I was particularly impressed with Clain’s seiyu, Yū Kobayashi; adult women voicing young men can often sound unconvincing, but she really does sound like a young boy, so much so that I felt compelled to check the gender of the seiyu. More than that, she instills plenty of personality into the character, handling the contemplative and silly moments with equal precision. The same could be said of the show’s other two leads, Minami Tsuda and Kana Hanazawa, who play Phryne and Nessa, respectively. Hanazawa in particular nails the character’s sense of playfulness and moments of despair incredibly well. There’s no clear weak link among the supporting characters, either.

On FUNimation’s side of things, I have to give a special shout out to the subtitles on these episodes. I wasn’t sure what I’d get with subtitles of a brand new series streaming online, but they are as good as any subtitle track I’ve ever seen. Fractale has its own unique linguistic rhythm and futuristic lingo that I would imagine is difficult to translate, but the point is always clear and lively without ever sounding mechanical. That’s what I love to see out of a good subtitle track, and Fractale doesn’t break FUNi’s streak of always delivering the (translated) goods.

In the end, I feel a little spoiled writing this – it’s my first review of streaming content and I’ve already stumbled onto a winner. Entertaining, exciting, funny, and thought-provoking, I wholeheartedly recommend Fractale, and there’s no better way to watch it, in America at least, than streaming on Hulu. Please don’t pirate this series – Hulu is free, it works flawlessly, and the video quality is absolutely DVD quality (though I have to say I’m excited for the eventual Blu-Ray release to see the art in Hi-Def). Support FUNimation here, because they’ve done a great job bringing this series stateside with an almost imperceptible turnaround time. It’s definitely something to be excited about.

Show (Episodes 1-3): A-
Streaming Presentation: A
Subtitles: A+

Gallery and copyright information under ad.

Fractale is available to watch streaming for free at Hulu, Funimation Video, and AnimeNewsNetwork. The first episode is embedded near the top of this review for your convenience and enjoyment.

Fractale – © Fractale Committe.

Tenchi Muyo! GXP: The Complete Box Set, Review

Alex — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 21:22:15 +0000

We’ve been meaning to have me write something for The Fanboy Review for a while—around a year, in fact—so here I am! This is my first review around here, and I’m quite happy with the show the boss decided on. So let’s get down to it and take a look at the latest release of Tenchi Muyo! GXP.

The truth is that I’ve been a fan of Tenchi Muyo! for a long time. I was always interested in animation in general, but I was first introduced to Japanese animation properly when I was still in school, and Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ohki happened to be one of the first shows I collected on VHS. As such, it’s surprising that this is my first time taking a proper look at GXP, but I just never got around to it. It’s about eight years old now, so how does it hold up as a show, and how good is this latest release of it?

Well, one thing I feel I should mention right away is that these disks aren’t exactly new at all; they’re actually identical copies of the eight singles originally released by FUNimation back in 2004. A friend loaned me his copies of those singles to do a proper comparison, and the only real difference we could find between the two is the tiny FUNimation logo on the disk’s label, which has changed since the singles were released.

Another thing to mention is that most websites list this as a “Viridian Collection,” which is FUNimation’s way of releasing their old shows on the cheap. Past Viridian Collections were notorious amongst fans for their poor quality packaging, made from “partially recycled materials” to keep costs down and to be environmentally friendly. Since this set is simply a collection of reprints of the same old singles releases, I had no problem believing that it was a Viridian Collection like Amazon and others sites said. But then the boss asked me if the packaging actually labels it as one, and funnily enough, it doesn’t. It also has much better packaging than I would have expected from one. So I did a little investigation and quickly found that there was a Tenchi Muyo! GXP Viridian Collection released towards the end of 2007, which apparently had the poor quality packaging they’re known for. At that point I figured the websites might have just been mistaken, but it turns out that even FUNimation’s official GXP site calls it a Viridian Collection. So…is it one? As far as FUNimation is concerned, I guess it is.

This release of GXP is what people sometimes call a fat-pack, and the series is spread across eight disks—as I mentioned, exactly the same as the original singles. The first disk contains five episodes, but all the others only contain three. All of these episodes are listed on the inside cover and are conveniently organized by which disk they’re on; I found this helpful, but the episode titles are only meaningful if you’re watching the English dub. The front and back of the box show off some decent artwork of the six main characters (including Fuku, the cabbit), and you get the standard region, aspect ratio and runtime information; there’s also a nice spread of all the girls in wedding dresses on the inside cover. There doesn’t seem to be any important information missing, and the artwork is sharp and well colored.

The case itself seems to be made of high-quality plastic and feels like you could drop it without it breaking. The disks rest firmly and safely in their trays, but also come out easily when you want them to. It’s quite unlike the thin cardboard boxes and paper disk sleeves the previous Viridian Collection apparently used. I don’t think anyone could be displeased with this packaging.

The menus are in 4:3 (as you’d expect for a 4:3 show) and feature images and background music from the show. The main menu gives you the standard options of playing all the episodes, selecting individual episodes, modifying the sound and subtitle options and looking through the extras. Each sub-menu has its own background and music.

Something worth noting about the episode selection is that it splits each episode into Opening, Intro, Closing, and Preview, in addition to four scenes that make up the body of the episode. The four scenes are represented by images, but the other options are just text. Maybe it’s just me, but I thought the way they laid it out wasn’t very intuitive.

I mean, it mostly makes sense, but having the “intro” (the little bit of episode before the title card is shown) as its own separate option seems a bit odd to me.

There have been many different versions of Tenchi over the years. A six-part OVA started it all, which was later continued by two more of the same, plus an extra episode here and there. There was also a 26 episode television series, known in the US as Tenchi Universe, which had no direct connection to the OVAs and was more like an alternate universe reinterpretation. Another alternate continuity came in the form of Tenchi in Tokyo, and there are other series and OVAs like Pretty Sammy, the Magical Girl that utilize alternate versions of the same characters in totally different settings, as well as movies that fit into some of these continuities. There’s also a manga that picks up where OVA 1 (and maybe 2) left off and takes the story in a different direction of its own. And to complicate matters further, the OVA canon can even be broken into two (the Kajishima canon and the Hasegawa canon), but I won’t go into too much detail about that.

Why did I have to explain this, you ask? Well, Tenchi Muyo! GXP has the honor of being the first full-length television series to be part of the OVA canon (Kajishima canon, to be precise), and thus adds to the story that Kajishima Masaki started way back in 1992. The OVA-verse is fascinating and unique. I feel that none of the spin-offs ever quite captured what made it special. But GXP, despite focusing on a new cast of characters, actually manages to do just that.

Despite being called “Tenchi Muyo,” GXP is a story about a boy named Seina Yamada. Seina is, without a doubt, one of the unluckiest anime characters ever created. The first episode goes to great and hilarious lengths to make this known to the viewer. His bad luck is destructive to himself and anyone brave enough to get near him, but despite this he is generally high-spirited, good-natured and…I’m not sure I’d say optimistic, but not really pessimistic, either. A realist who accepts his bad luck as scientific fact, perhaps? Whatever the case, he lives in the same area as Tenchi Masaki, star of the OVAs, but despite being friends with him, Seina has no idea about the alien origins of his houseguests. That is, until he drops by Tenchi’s house one day and nearly gets landed on by a spaceship!

A brief encounter with an extraterrestrial babe was all it took for Seina’s luck to get him recruited into the GP—the Galaxy Police, who protect and serve all of space. He’s quickly shipped off to the Galactic Academy for training, but isn’t even in space for a day before his bad luck attracts hundreds of pirates. Realizing his potential as a way of rounding up criminals, the GP soon puts his “skill” to use by making him a decoy. The series follows his strange adventures, from his training at the GP Academy to him commanding one of the most powerful ships in the universe, and beyond.

As I’ve said, the series primarily follows a brand new cast of characters, but it still ties in nicely to the existing canon of Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ohki. It gives us a deeper look at the sometimes-bizarre universe that the OVAs only gave us a glimpse of. We get to see the Galactic Academy for the first time. We get to see Jurai, a place that’s so intricate to the plot of the OVAs, but which we’ve only ever seen briefly in flashbacks. It also gives us our first real look at space pirates outside of Ryoko and Kagato, showing us exactly why the GP is needed. Even Seiryo—a bumbling would-be suitor for Ayeka who appeared briefly in the OVAs—comes back as a recurring pain-in-the-bum for Seina and his friends.

The new characters themselves are likeable, but I didn’t think they were as memorable as the classic Tenchi cast. I felt like some of them could have done with a bit more development, and it’s not like 26 episodes doesn’t give you plenty of time to do that. That said, they all got their time to shine, and they did grow on me. Director Shinichi Watanabe—most known for his work on and appearances in Excel Saga—even provides the voice (in Japanese anyway) of Seina’s robot, “NB”, who is the source for almost all of the show’s ecchi humor.

I didn’t know a lot about GXP before I started watching it, so quite early on I found myself wondering exactly where it fit into the continuity. I eventually realized that the whole series happens after OVA 3, but the funny thing about that is that OVA 3 didn’t come out until the year after GXP finished its run. Despite this, there are numerous references to the events of OVA 3, such as the presence of new characters who hadn’t been introduced yet, as well as relationship statuses that had changed in the meantime. There’s even a very specific reference to Ryo-Ohki chasing a butterfly, which didn’t happen until the second episode of OVA 3. That’s some impressive foresight there, and it makes me wonder what it would have been like to watch this series back when it was brand new in Japan. Since I’d already seen OVA 3 before watching this, you could say that I watched everything in chronological order and thus was able to understand all of these things, but I imagine that someone who watched GXP first would have been left wondering who Noike was and where she came from, amongst quite a few other things. Oddly enough, it also works in reverse; OVA 3 had a cameo appearance of Fuku towards the end, whom I knew little about because I hadn’t seen GXP yet!

If GXP has a flaw, I think it’s that it lacks a good villain. Nothing seems like a big enough challenge and, like Tenchi himself, Seina has so many amazing people ready to help him that there just aren’t any villains in the universe that can really compete. I think this is made most clear in one episode where, after being picked on and outnumbered by a fleet of pirate ships, Seina and Fuku are rescued by not only by the Choubimaru—a spaceship powerful enough to destroy an entire planet—but also by the even more powerful pirate ship Ryo-Ohki. Talk about overkill!

Tarant Shank, a dangerous pirate, makes several appearances and is built up to be the big bad of the series, but even he is consistently and easily outmatched thanks to all the advantages the good guys in the OVA-verse have. How are space pirates meant to compete when the good guys literally have gods backing them? To be fair, though, the series is probably meant to be taken more as a romantic-sci-fi-comedy than a story of good vs. evil. But that isn’t to say it doesn’t have some fun space battles.

One last thing to mention about the show itself is that there were actually two versions in Japan: a TV version and a DVD version. The TV version was slightly more censored, having towels on the girls while they’re in the hotsprings and the like; it’s easy to do when it’s a digital anime. FUNimation uses the DVD version, though I will point out that any nudity it has is pretty tame anyway.

Overall I think Tenchi Muyo! GXP is a good addition to the Kajishima canon, and it only makes me wish for more. A second season would be nice, or maybe animated versions of Kajishima Masaki’s Shin Tenchi novels, which offer even more background information. I’d love to see an OVA about Washu’s early life. There’s still so many questions that haven’t truly been answered; I once thought they were answers we’d just never get, but more than ten years later we got a new OVA that took care of some of them, so you really never can tell!

The video is NTSC, interlaced, and encoded at 480. The quality is sort of what you’d expect from an anime released in 2002. It’s 4:3, obviously, but it was also a digital anime, and the artwork itself has held up rather nicely over time. I remember thinking that it felt too different from the old OVAs when I first saw images from it, but it’s actually very similar to OVA 3, so maybe I’ve gotten used to it thanks to watching that. The character designs are a little different from the older OVAs, but some of the deformed expressions the characters get feel like they’re taken straight from them.

GXP seems to use the same sort of cel-shaded CGI for the spaceships that OVA 3 did. I actually think this is quite well done; it isn’t jarring at all to go from the 2D animation of the characters to the CGI animation of the ships. Compare this to something like Vandread, which came out only a couple of years earlier than GXP and which had CGI space battles that stuck out like sore thumbs. It even makes the designs and movements of the ships more clear in some cases; to this day I still can’t make heads of tails of the design of Ayeka’s ship, Ryu-Oh…

At a glance, I’d say that the video quality of the DVDs themselves has also held up decently after more than six years. The colors are fairly vibrant, and the picture seems crisper than my own region 4 copies of OVA 3. However, there are small problems if you look closer that might give away the age of the DVDs. For one, there’s a minor but ever-present case of frame-jitter. You might also find that lines sometimes break up slightly rather than looking perfectly solid, and two parallel lines that are very close together can almost blur into one big thick line. I also noticed some low quality moments during fast moving parts, particularly in the opening. The openings make use of multiple angles (something FUNimation did back in those days), which could just be amplifying the problem.

Apart from the above shots from the opening, though, these low quality moments are few and far between, and everything else takes a good eye to spot. It’s not perfect, and FUNimation’s DVDs have improved since it was released, but I wouldn’t say it’s badly dated, either. I thought it looked pretty good when I’d only watched it on a 37” LCD TV; it’s only after looking at it on a computer monitor for a while that I start noticing it could be crisper.

For audio you get the option of English Surround (Dolby 5.1 at 448k), English Stereo (Dolby 2.0 at 256k) and Japanese Stereo (Dolby 2.0 at 256k again). English Stereo and Japanese Stereo sound about the same when it comes to volume, while English Surround is louder even without surround speakers. I didn’t notice any major problems with any of these options; the sound is consistent, and the voices can be heard just fine over the music and sound effects.

When it comes to anime, it’s not uncommon at all to hear familiar sound effects. Sometimes they’re from other shows, while other times they sound just like memorable sound effects from movies. I swear I hear the sound effect of a proton-pack from Ghostbusters starting up in lots of anime, as well as the sound of the Millennium Falcon’s hyperdrive breaking down. Dragon Ball fans often point out that One Piece uses a lot of the same sound effects, and older fans might then add that a lot of those were in Hokuto no Ken (i.e. Fist of the North Star) before that. But GXP, despite being released a decade later, seems to use all the same sound effects as Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ohki did. It definitely adds to the nostalgia. Maybe I’m just going on about nothing here, but I think it’s impressive for sound effects to stick with you for a decade like that, and it definitely makes you feel like you’re watching a Tenchi series.

This is only slightly related to the audio, but there’s a “dubtitle” track available for the hearing impaired. It isn’t labeled as such, but turning subtitles on normally in the audio settings when you have it set to English Stereo or English Surround will use subtitles that match the English script. I probably wouldn’t even have noticed this if I hadn’t tried to watch the dub with subtitles on to directly compare the scripts.

As a final audio note, I found the opening very catchy and the ending quite amusing. The background music is fitting enough to not stand out, but rather more forgettable than what I remember from classic Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ohki episodes.

Now, the dub… Let’s just say that story, art and sound aren’t the only things that make me feel like I’m back in the 90s. It’s very reminiscent of Pioneer’s dub of the OVAs in a lot of ways. Your mileage may vary on whether the voices themselves are bad or not, but I found that the personalities of the characters came across subtly differently depending on whether you’re watching it in English or Japanese. It’s hard to explain it, but I suppose it’s a combination of differences in the script and the voice actors using a different tone as they say something, as well as the new tone and new lines not always matching the body language of the character as they say it. It’s interesting to watch both versions and get a slightly different feel of a character’s personality between the two. But to be fair, I don’t think it’s as bad in this as in the OVAs or, say, Dragon Ball Z’s old dub.

Like I just mentioned, there are script changes. I watched the show dubbed first so my brother, who can’t read, could watch it with me. As soon as we finished it I went back to the start and switched to Japanese, and right away I could tell that the script was very different—again, quite like the dub of the OVAs. Some things seemed to be different because they wouldn’t translate very well from Japanese. Others were different presumably because they were references to older anime that a casual English fan might not understand, such as Seina describing the faster-than-light scene from Space Battleship Yamato and wondering why Galaxy Police hyperdrives don’t produce similar psychedelic effects. Then there were yet more times where jokes or plot points were changed for no apparent reason (such as “he ran off with her best friend” being changed to “he became a transvestite and married her brother”) or left out entirely (Seina noticing that someone’s perfume smelled familiar and wondering if he’d met her before).

All the above examples were present on the first couple of disks, so I thought I knew what I was in for. But surprisingly, after a certain point, the dub script seems to become strangely more accurate. Not perfect, mind you, but not as blatantly different from the original as it was. I really don’t know what happened. The random changes don’t seem to return in force until towards the very end, where the dub even adds a marriage proposal that didn’t exist in the original script. Did they just decide to do whatever they wanted since it was almost the end anyway…? Very strange. Still, there are plenty of other oddities to be found throughout, such as the dub having Ryo-ohki speak in actual English instead of just meows. I honestly can’t imagine the reasoning behind choices like that, especially since she’d never spoken properly in the dubs that came before this.

Speaking of previous dubs, it has to be mentioned that most of the voice actors from the previous English versions don’t make a return. This only applies to the classic Tenchi characters, obviously; Tenchi, Ryoko, Ayeka, Washu and Sasami all have different English voices than old fans will be used to, but Rebecca Forstadt and Bob Papenbrook reprise their roles as Mihoshi and Tenchi’s grandfather. I wasn’t exactly a fan of the old English voices, but it felt weird hearing new ones even for me. I imagine fans of the old OVA dubs might not like them simply because they’re different, but it’s hard for me to say if they’re better or worse than the originals.

The final thing I want to mention about the dub is that it doesn’t translate or explain any of the Japanese text. There’s a joke where a ship’s name means something vulgar, but the Japanese name of the ship remains in Japanese in the English dub. The characters react to the name, but it never explains to an English viewer what it means. The dub even changes Seina’s reaction so that he doesn’t get the reference either, and the other characters comment that it’s a good thing he doesn’t have a wide vocabulary.

All in all, I had a better time watching it in Japanese than in English, and I recommend doing so if you want things to make the most sense.

The extras for this set are very limited. Under extras are sub-sections for Songs, Profiles, and Trailers. I don’t think I’ve ever seen them put under “songs” before, but this section contains the clean opening and closing. I believe there are three subtly different versions of the opening and two of the closing over the course of the series, and the clean versions in the extras change accordingly, so that’s nice. Something to note is that the clean openings and closings will be in whatever language you have the disks set to, since they dubbed both songs.

The profiles page contains a handful of character profiles each disk, and the profiles available change from disk to disk depending which characters are heavily featured at that point in the story. The profiles are written from the perspective of Seina himself, and to be honest, they don’t tell you a lot. They aren’t updated as the series progresses, either, so the Seiryo profile from disk 1 is identical to the Seiryo profile from disk 8. It even has the same typo in it!

The only other extras are trailers, but these are quite out of date. There’s a trailer for a Dragon Ball GT single that was due out back in 2004. This is obviously because all eight disks in this set are merely reprints of the old singles, so even though the trailers available are different from disk to disk, you probably won’t see anything you don’t already know about. One other odd thing is that each disks begins with a trailer before the menu, but this trailer never seems to be available in the trailers section.

In conclusion, this is obviously an old set in a new package. The episodes are needlessly spread out across eight disks, and the extras are extremely limited. But even so, it’s a nice little package that’ll only cost you about $40, and the show itself is enjoyable, especially if you’re a Tenchi Muyo! fan to begin with. It holds up well after eight or so years—well enough that it won’t feel outdated even if you’ve already watched the OVA that followed it. I’d recommend this set for any Tenchi fan who doesn’t already own the series.

Show: A (I may be biased because of how much I love Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ohki, but I found the show highly enjoyable. It’s set in a bizarre and interesting world, and it has the same sense of humor I loved from the OVAs. Watching this has actually re-ignited my love for the franchise for the first time in years.)
Packaging: A- (All the information I needed was on the cover. The box is made of sturdy plastic and the disks don’t come loose or anything. The only possible complaint I could make is that the website listed on the back doesn’t go anywhere anymore.)
Video Quality: C- (I bounced around on this one due to trying to take the age of the disks into account. C- is still better than it would get if this was a truly new release.)
Audio Quality: B- (Pretty average, but having three different options is nice, and I found no problems with them at all.)
English Dub: D (Your mileage may vary, but the dub script had so many parts that were inaccurate, vague, or changed for no logical reason. On top of that, some of the voices can be grating.)
Extras: D- (I’d say these disks contain the bare minimum when it comes to extras. The trailers are out of date, and the character profiles feel like something someone wrote just to add another bullet point to the list of extras.)

Overall (not an average): B (It’s a cheap way to own a good show. Nothing outstandingly special, but I’m happy to own it.)

Gallery and copyright information under ad. All caps are lossless PNGs taken in MPC-HC, feel free to request more. (Caps are sized 640×480 so as to display properly on computer monitors, they were modified to this resolution via Photoshop CS4 as MPC-HC takes screen captures at 720×480 on the disc. Having the caps be 640×480 makes them appear at the properly intended aspect ratio.)

This set was purchased at a major retailer.

These DVDs are labeled to work in Region 1 and 4.

Tenchi Muyo! GXP is available to watch streaming for free at FUNimation Video. Only the first four episodes dubbed are available right now.

I want to give a special thanks to Tenchi Muyo! Another Universe and Tenchi Muyo! FAQ, two sites that have always been helpful when I’ve needed to look up obscure Tenchi-info, including for this review. They’re like the Daizenshuu EX and Kanzentai.com of Tenchi, so check them out if you’re a fan.

Tenchi Muyo! GXP – © 2002 AIC/VAP • NTV. Licensed by FUNimation® Productions, Ltd. All Rights Reserved.