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Count_Zero
Having the members of the Mugai-Ryu be just as bad, if not worse, than some of the members of the Ittou-ryuu does make for an interesting way of setting up shades of grey in the story, particularly due to how utterly reprehensible some of the members if the Ittou-Ryuu have been in previous volumes in the series.
I started reading this for various reasons, partly because I've been meaning to read this for a while, and partly because the manga came up during the J-Drama series “Blue Blazes”. I really enjoyed the manga, in part because while the story is somewhat serialized (in that there is continuity), it really its in with the “slice of life” genre a lot more than some of the other manga that have read that have been stuck into that genre (like K-On, like Sound of the Sky, etc.)
It's a portion of the ordinary lives of ordinary people, but rather than trying to be “literary” and putting the focus on lives of quiet desperation, as so many more pseudo-serious slice of life dramas and dramedies do, this manga gives these characters feel real without feeling boring or without moving things into the territory of the deliberately awkward family melodrama. Also, I'm pleased by the complete and total lack of (as of this volume) terminally ill people.
If I had two complaints about the IDW D&D comic that John Rogers wrote, they are that Tisha Swornheart's outfit is a little too cheese-cakey (primarily with the top - I can cut the dress a little slack because it has to accommodate the tail), and that there isn't more of it. The dynamic between the characters in the book is great, and Rogers makes the whole Points of Light idea that 4th edition was built around work incredibly well in the context of telling a story through a comic book, as opposed to an RPG campaign.
I'd say that if I had had the money to register for the Hugo Awards this year, I would have had a dead heat between this book and Ancillary Justice. Both books are impressive SF investigative thrillers, and both have gripping stories with interesting characters and equally interesting ideas. In the case of Neptune's Brood, the idea is basically building a Space Opera thriller around the old investigative axiom of “Follow the money,” and it works incredibly well. It's got adventure, pirates, mermaids, zombies, and transhumanism, all wrapped up in one glorious adventure.
I'm almost glad that I didn't have the ability to vote for the Hugo Awards this year, as I wouldn't know which one to choose.
Japan Sinks is sort of the literary equivalent of the big disaster movie, like The Day After Tomorrow, or 2012. The cause of the catastrophe is a force of nature, and the story focuses primarily on how humanity responds to the destruction, in this case the literal sinking of Japan. In particular, the focus is somewhat on how Japan would respond to a catastrophe like this one, and also how the international community would respond, considering Japan's cultural xenophobia and how spectacularly Japan had managed to PO large portions of the international community in the past.
My complaint with the book is due to its length, it never really spends enough time on any of those points - the personal tragedies, the societal response, or the diplomatic response.
This book reminded me a lot of Larry Gonick's “Cartoon Guide To...” books, like “The Cartoon Guide to Computers”. It does a pretty good job of explaining some important concepts in an entertaining fashion. That said, there is some important information that the book omits, and some significant geographic biases that reflect the book's applicability.
The book has a metropolitan geographic bias going with it. There are pieces of advice that are pretty much designed to work great if you're living in a city or suburb with a well organized mass transit system where the busses don't turn into pumpkins, everywhere you need to go is convenient to mass transit, and the climate is conducive to walking or biking. If you live in a suburban community that doesn't have mass transit, or the mass transit turns into pumpkins early in the morning/late in the evening/in the middle of the day, you're out of luck. Near as I can tell, the book's advice if you're stuck in those circumstances is “move” - which is not what I'd consider useful - especially if the problem isn't limited to your suburb (as I gather this a problem that is not uncommon in the southwest, midwest, and south of the US, as well as some parts of the Pacific Northwest).
All of this gives the book what I'd call an anti-car bias. While cars are certainly spendy, but one of the recurring refrains in the book is that you should get rid of your car, which, related to the above geographic concerns, I'd consider not to be valuable advice in most cases in the US. This is perhaps aggravated by the fact that while this book is at least willing to give lip service to the idea that you might need a car, they do not have any material in the book on how to maintain your car for less - like getting Haynes guides from the local library, getting parts from U-Pull-It places or online. If you're on a tight budget, being able to do maintenance on your own car is incredibly useful, and not having any discussion on doing this, is almost absurd. For that matter, you could probably put some good basic bicycle maintenance advice in there as well (lubricating the bike, replacing chains, etc.)
That said, there is some definitely useful stuff in here. The entertainment chapter is pretty well done, though I think that the chapter really doesn't stress enough how utterly important and useful libraries are when you're on a limited income. I generally liked the cooking section, though having a discussion on farmer's markets would be nice as well. Also, considering the cost involved, the urban agriculture portion of the book was somewhat iffy. In particular, the portion about raising farm animals felt like something that could, and should have been cut entirely, particularly since that space could probably have been used for something else.
I really enjoyed this book. It's definitely something you have to take as it is though. There were a few moments where I mentally went “wait a minute, you're downplaying all the other companies who made RPGs”, until I basically remembered that the focus of the book is on Dungeons & Dragons. I'm still definitely glad I read it.
This volume gets to probably one of my favorite parts of the story, both in the TV show and here in the manga (I haven't read the novel yet) - the confrontation in downtown Ikebukuro. This is really the point in the story where Mikado really comes into his own as a character, and shows his hidden depths that show he isn't your typical non-committal Light Novel protagonist.
Interesting fantasy manga from the creator of Fairy Tail. The characters are interesting and the action is really dynamic, which are points in its favor. Additionally, unlike Fairy Tail, Rave Master, at least in this volume, doesn't have Fairy Tail's problem with, well, the bust size of the female characters being rather absurdly large.
I've found the best Urban Fantasy novels are also great detective novels, except instead of ballistics, DNA testing, and the other tools of the science detectives trade that Sherlock Holmes & the like bust out, there's magic. The Peter Grant novels succeed at this fantastically. Aaronovitch creates excellent characters and riveting mysteries that really pull you in.
This is a chunk of the Gundam universe we've never really gotten a good look at - how Char and Sayla were separated and why, how the Zabi family came to power, and what Zeon Dekium was like.
Zeon's depiction is probably the biggest weakness in the volume. I was hoping he'd be more of a two-dimensional character, that he wouldn't be espousing the sort of spacenoid-supremicist fascist ideology that the Zabis were promoting. Instead, the two couldn't be more ideologically identical, with the sole difference being that the Zabis want to be in power, and find Zeon to be an obstacle.
Other than that, even if you haven't been following the manga thus far and you're a fan of the Universal Century portion of the Gundam multiverse, I'd recommend reading this volume.
