Count_Zero

As with any anthology, this is a mixed bag. Some of the stories are really, really good, but others are more iffy. There wasn't anything I particularly hated though.

The volume is visually interesting, but the plot is basically nonexistent.

I'll have a review coming up on Bureau42 by next week at the soonest.

Aside from what I learned about this period of horror fiction, this book made me really wish that there was an artbook of the covers from the horror novels from this period.

I listened to this as an audiobook, which is probably the ideal way to experience it.

I started reading this for my Halloween Manga Reviews at Bureau42, before deciding to do Uzumaki by Junji Ito instead. However, I'm very glad I picked this up. It is definitely a horror manga (and I might consider saving it for next year's Halloween reviews - if it weren't for the fact that I want more people to read it), and it's very well written. If you consider yourself a fan of horror (or, for that matter, mystery stories), you should definitely check this out.

I'd forgotten that Keiichi and Belldandy do kiss this early in the manga. While the pace of the two's relationship is very, very slow, I do like the fact that in the manga, any introduction of love triangle elements are going to be short lived, as the characters like each other enough that any hypotenuse which tries to interfere is going to find themselves eventually getting ignored.

I'll have a full review later on Bureau 42.

I'd describe this a post-apocalyptic, in addition to being Transhumanist Cyberpunk, for reasons that I can't get too far into due to spoilers. The book has a bit of a rough start for it's first couple chapters. It's an interesting book though, and I'm definitely going to continue reading the series.

Covers Griffith obtaining his knighthood, and the battle with Nosferatu Zodd. This makes for an interesting chapter, as we see Guts finally warming up to his comrades, and the further hint that something dire is in store for Griffith.

Now the Golden Age arc is really getting rolling here. This volume actually bothers to introduce some legitimate comedy (albeit black comedy) to the work, something the last few had basically been missing, with the sole exception of some material with Puck.

I'll have a broader review on Bureau42.com later.

Here the manga gets a little more serialized, and drops the “Demon Of The Chapter” aspect of the story. For that matter, it also fleshes out the characters a little more - so while the villain of this volume, The Count, is certainly monstrous, he does have his humanizing elements.

This is a very weak start to the series. The stakes are very low, and I can't I don't have any real driving story for the series in future volumes, unless they're planning on making it a High School Romance series with occasional magical action, which is a plot I'd expect from a light novel series (or an adaptation thereof) not a manga in Shonen Jump. Maybe it will pick up next volume.

Without spoilers, let's just say... The Plot Thickens!

This is the first manga by Urasawa that I've read before, and I'm enjoying it immensely. It's got a great start, and I'm definitely going to read the rest.

Well, straight-up, the manga has some notable differences between from the anime, from very early on. It's still absolutely gorgeous, but I would say that a few of the changes are for the worse (not by much, but just a little bit for the worse).

I'm rather surprised that this book basically reaches the conclusion of the film in the second volume, but with several more volumes to go.

Very good start to the series, and I'm definitely looking forward to starting volume 2.

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.

This is definitely a very clear precursor to Akira, and for someone looking for a more contained example of Otomo's work, this is definitely worth giving a read.

This is a very fun, very good manga, though one that's exceptionally violent.

A decent adaptation of the first Vampire Hunter D novel, thought the art in this volume is very heavy on the lines, to enough of a degree that it disrupts the flow.

This felt a lot like the manga equivalent of an exploitation film. We practically get the shots of characters on 42nd street, in front of the array of various grindhouse movie theaters. However, unlike exploitation films, this manga has a production valume you can see on the page. Akimi Yoshida has an art style that reminds me, a lot of Katsuhiro Otomo, from the way she draws faces, to the detail in her background.

If I was to lay one complaint at her work, it's that she doesn't draw black people very well. It's not that the characters are drawn like Black Sambo (like some artists have a bad habit of doing - lookin' at you, Akira Toriyama). The character of “Skip” is supposed to be a black kid in his mid-teens - but his lips are drawn just a little too big. It's not so much that it's a caricature, but it's enough to stand out and be jarring.

Interesting start to the series. I'd like to see more about where it goes though - as while it's got a unique look and style - the fact that James Cameron wants to make a movie out of this is kind of making me look for the “James Cameron” movie in this - and I haven't found it yet.

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.

So, one would think that Heavy Metal musicians would be terrible cooks. This line of thinking is horrifically wrong. Considering that at various points in their careers most musicians end up on tight budgets, the ability to cook becomes something of a necessity. Thus, they tend to come up with interesting recipes of their own.

This leads to this book, which is basically a collection of recipes which aren't necessarily complicated to prepare, generally aren't expensive, and which don't use a lot of dishes. Some of the recipes could be described as “advanced bachelor cooking”, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. The recipes do err on the side of spicy, but as someone who likes spicy food, I don't really have a problem with that.

This book has one minor problem that isn't exactly a problem. While some of the contributors have figured out the proportions of the ingredients in their recipes so they can be reasonably re-created by someone else, others aren't. Consequently, I've encountered a few recipes where I felt kind of lost without some idea what the end result should look like.

Otherwise, I'd say this is a really good cookbook for the aspiring home chef - particularly ones who like spice, like heavy metal, or both.