Matteo

The ending in a story represents maybe the most important part of it. A great final section of the narrative remains forever in the mind of a reader/viewer/player, with all the emotive pathos arriving at his peak. A great last occasion to show the best of what you can offer, among a splendid plot twist, new discoveries, a cliffhanger for the future of a franchise or an epic melancholic search for eternity. Babel offers a remarkable ending, but the problem is that all the contents we find inside the novel run out in the few conclusive pages.
Babel is an historical low-fantasy book which promises for great events and strong worldbuilding while never fulfilling this ambition. It is a story about racism, cultural appropriation, colonialism and imperialism. It is both a praise and a critique to the entire academic system, and it is the representation of the worst moments in the history of Britain. Our protagonist, Robin Swift, arrives in Oxford after being raised to eradicate his Chinese origins and appear as pure English at all. The problem is that the branch of Oxford in which he studies, the Institute of Translation called Babel, sees him as a sort of instrument. As soon as his objective should arrive at an end, he could be thrown out and substituted. In this setting the steampunk inspiration of the Victorian age is changed using the concept of silver. The “silver tablets” are this sort of magic object whose property of channeling the forgotten meaning of words in their different translations is used to enhance the common life. All the ideas of poverty, overusing of resources inside the colonies and disparity between riches and humbles are maintained as we have studied them.
The problems starts as we see how Kuang has inserted her fantasy grounds inside the real part of the world, without creating substantial differences and most importantly focusing the story more on the academic life than on the main plot. Babel feels like this enormous rush to the end in which the pages of diaries of a frustrated student finds place, adding just the glimpse of magic we all experience every day. While all the meanings, the way you arrive to hate the terrible persecution made in that period represents the core of a brutal, violent and distinguished ending, the lack of personality of the setting and the frustrating passages around exams and all the anxious and the stress lived by the students kills the possibility of a great fantasy tale.

STYLE: 4,5
STORY: 4
WORLDBUILDING: 1,5
RHYTHM: 0,5
PROTAGONISTS: 3
ANTAGONISTS: 5
ARTISTIC FEATURE: 4
ATMOSPHERE 3,5
EMOTIONAL IMPACT: 3

FINAL VERDICT: ⭐⭐⭐

My relationship with pop culture links the modern arts with fragments of my life. Cinema (with Movies, TV Series and Animations), Literature (among Novels, Comics and Books) and Video Games (without forgetting everything which could be declared as part of Pop Culture) are glimpse of eternity inside our existence, other than motivations of community, discovering new people, making new friendships and living the development of artistic moments. Goodbye, Eri takes exactly this meaning of infinity and turns it into an instrument for talking about multiple original arguments, rarely used in modern manga. The little fantasy of our life, the expectations destroyed by reality, the idealization of important figures of our life arriving at peaks of meta-narrative I rarely have seen inside this medium, going beyond it in creating a true compendium of what Cinema aspires to be. The story focuses its attention on Yuta, a boy in love with creating films, with the mother asking for videos of her life until the last moments, forced by a terrible illness. All the material created by the boy becomes a scandalous movie, whose presentation in the Festival of its school is slowly transformed into a way of making fun of the boy. When Yuta decides to end his life, he meets Eri, whose passion for cinema shows the kid clhe has the abilities for creating another project, this time around the mysterious girl. As it seems a normal slice of life, Goodbye Eri excels in creating twists, bringing the genre in lots of different directions (from dramatic moments to fantasy glimpses, with surprises and complete breaking of the screenplay rules). The creativity of Fujimoto explodes into a marvelous mosaic of ideas and messages, in which every single phrase counts, seeking for the last perfect scene, a searched closure for readers and for the protagonist itself. No one in Goodbye Eri appears as it seems, or at least as it is shown by the lenses of a camera, despite those moments appearing as more real than the madness of what happens in the absurd and death-linked Yuta's life. Because in the middle of the depression of never leaving the world, never truly loving its limitative nature, and the existence of constantly perish visions, only explosions create a sort of shock, and in this way, giving sense to everything.

FINAL VERDICT: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

My love for Dungeons & Dragons starts during the pandemic. The beautyness of the stories told using the most famous roleplaying game of all time captured me and brought me in this wonderful world. As a huge fan of D&D, one of my greatest curiosities was around the birth of this tabletop experience, and while searching for a gift for a friend, I have found “Rise of the Dungeon Master”, a graphic novel about the theme. This comic is the adaptation of a famous Weird article about Gary Gynax made by David Kushner, with the drawings of Koren Shadmi, an isreali author. The style of this creation is not one of my favourites. I don't like the “adult-swim” inspiration Shadmi has, and I find the amount of content found by Kushner impossible to reduce to a single volume. Despite that, those are little critiques to a huge operation.
The entire production starts from the rise of D&D, his first ideas and the debt it has with the tabletop war games, coming to the last moments of the creator of this marvellous universe.
Rise of the Dungeon Master is an heartwarming tribute to a cultural movement more than to a simple game. Using he great technique of investigative journalism, Kushner and Shadmi perfectly portrayed all the figures who contributed to this success: Dave Arneson is the light-hearted dreamer searching for the funniest game; the videogame developers are personalities ready for tributes and new creations expanding the base; William Dear is a meticulous private detective ready to hunt down D&D and than chaning the opinion on the game. All these names are little encounters in the life of a hero. Gary Gynax is the tormented author the readers loves these days, but he shows so hard his geek lifestyle to represent those kids fighting for their passions. The atmospheres and the emotional impact of this incredible reportage have the power of memories and meloncholy, with a supported rhythm similar to one-shots and campaings made with friends.

STYLE: 3
SCREENPLAY: 4
RHYTHM: 5
REPORTAGE QUALITY: 3,5
CHARACTERS: 5
ATMOSPHERE: 4
EMOTIONAL IMPACT: 5

FINAL VERDICT: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

The main elements which made me curious about the Blackwater saga were mainly two: the incredible art style of the Italian publication, whose cover is so good that his creator is featured among the main comic convention here around; the suggestion made by Stephen Kings which says he loves this world and all the horror elements which composes it. When I was approaching the first book of this franchise I immediately felt thrilled, the same sensation you can try when you are going to a big event in your city, and the fact that the reduced dimensions of the new edition granted me to read it during my daily trips was that plus which increased the atmosphere of the moment. As soon as the story starts, we feel the flood happening because of the overflow of the Perdido River, and we make acquaintance with the mysterious Elinor Dammert...all the events evolve in Mary Shelley's like stuff. Because what I didn't know about Blackwater is that the gothic horror it purports to be is nothing else than a mix of lovecraftian weird events and family vicissitudes. In particular, the development of the Caskey's Family is built around the fight between two generations. The young one, polite and open-minded to news and people from outside the protagonist city and the old ones, ready to control others or accept facts only for their individual objectives. We enter an intricate web made of marriages, love affairs, threats and heritage problems, on the background of a racist town of the end of 19th Century. The entire representation of all the peculiar characteristics of that age are wonderful, granting the reader the curiosity around the intriguing destiny of every single figure, even the most secondary ones. As you can imagine reading these worlds, it seems really difficult to find, inside Blackwater, horror traits. Lots of the creepiest moments are linked with the true nature, shown at the very beginning of the book, of one of the center of the narrative, a powerful lady who doesn't display herself completely, while weaving her plans and killing around in the most brutal way. A villain which is incredible in premises, but then the scenes in which we really understand the potential of this danger are only a few.
We can't say that Blackwater is not engaging, mainly because of good stylistic choices and an organic system made by fantastic art features and atmospheric moments of great tension. Yet, all the qualities are engraved inside this “noblemen and houses” fiction, whose predominance sacrifices the space which would be granted to purest horror.

STYLE: 3,5
STORY: 3
WORLDBUILDING: 4
RHYTHM: 3,5
MAIN CHARACTERS: 3
VILLAINS: 4
ARTISTIC FEATURE: 5
ATMOSPHERE: 4
EMOTIONAL IMPACT: 3

FINAL VERDICT: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Look Back is an intimate One-shot created by Fujimoto. The author of Chainsaw Man and of Goodbye, Eri reduces, but not eliminates, the supernatural elements in favor of a story about the sacrifices made by Mangaka to follow their dreams, asking himself if it's worth it following this road. Look Back intertwines perfectly the stripes, styles and concepts of friendship of the two protagonists with a world which doesn't understand their passion, considering the artists as otaku you should exploit to have fun or immerse in great stories, and never following it as a true art to avoid distancing yourself from the social mass. Serialisations and personal achievements affect the frustrations of the multiple people who don't obtain success in a cruel world, with a destiny broken by individuals lost on the streets. In this sense when “Look Back” returns to the weird peaks to which Fujimoto has accustomed us, proposing “what ifs” and temporal connections made with different realities based on comics, we observe genius ideas mounted on the edgy artistic style of the author. Instead, when the slice of life and construction of the world of mangakas takes over, it forces the reader to notice the exaggerations and the plot holes which the other projects turned into strengths. Look Back is a production which doesn't abandon the road of the eternity of the art and the remembrance, but yet it works less because of an excessive realism linked with telling a more personal set of events.

STYLE: 4
STORY: 4
WORLDBUILDING: 5
RHYTHM: 5
PROTAGONISTS: 4
ANTAGONISTS: 3,5
ARTISTIC FEATURE: 5
ATMOSPHERE 5
EMOTIONAL IMPACT: 4,5

FINAL VERDICT: ⭐⭐⭐⭐