Binan Koukou Chikyuu Bouei-bu Love

TL;DR magical boy anime

Honestly, if a magical boy anime in and of itself isn't enough to convince you, I don't know what will.

Just the concept of Binan Koukou was pretty hella. I found out about it through tumblr, though there was a considerable amount of dislike for it because some people were mad that the "only genre specifically for girls" was being "infiltrated". Honestly, it's very along the lines of Free! -- I feel like Binan Koukou is still very much marketed towards girls, but at the same time, it's not girly. 

I could probably make a whole post just about how Binan Koukou is great in terms of defying gender stereotypes. It's not like they took the concept of magical girls and made it masculine. It's literally just Madoka Magica or Sailor Moon with the girls replaced with a cast of guys. I want to see more of this trend. Like, why aren't guys allowed to have sparkly transformation sequences and flashy attacks with cute names? 

Binan Koukou kind of makes fun of itself and magical girl tropes, too. I'm pretty sure they break the fourth wall on more than one occasion. It's very light-hearted, but it does brush on stuff like self-hate or jealousy or lack of communication. Everything works out okay for the characters by the end. 

I really wish this were longer than 12 episodes. I feel like the plot could have been expanded on a lot, or at least that there should have been a little more filler. 

And the ending, though. Like, it came completely out of nowhere, but at the same time, I'd noticed some of the setup for it as I was watching, so it wasn't an Allegiant kind of ending. I think they could have foreshadowed a little more, though. And I kind of wish that they could have focused more on what they revealed in the final episode. 

TL;DR please watch it. It's great. 

Orleans by Sherri L. Smith

TL;DR speculative fiction about the downfall of New Orleans

(finished 3/24/15)

I kind of knew this going in, but Orleans is really dark and gritty. I almost stopped reading it fairly early on just because I felt like I couldn't handle it. I do think it was worth reading to the end, though.

Honestly, I don't really know how plausible the story is at all, since I'm not very good with science or viruses. I'm also fairly sure that New Orleans should have been completely underwater with the climate change that happened within the story, but I've only been to the city once and don't know much about it, so I'm going to trust the author on this. I also don't know how easily the US government would be like, "Yeah, nah, we done with you". 

I can't really say that the story necessarily stands out much? It's unique for me in regards to New Orleans and "blood wars", but I don't think any of the characters were necessarily groundbreaking. I'm still trying to figure out if Fen and Daniel really had any true character growth. Fen opens up and trusts him, though I don't know if that really counts. And he was just naive all across the board. 

I don't know if I can really comment on the worldbuilding. On the one hand, I feel like it does a good job of setting up a post-apocalyptic society, but at the same time, I'm not familiar with the city or how a virus so revolved around blood would change things. There weren't really any obvious failures other than just me wondering about sea level rise, though. 

There's not really much else I can think of to put in a review;; Like, the thing that stands out the most to me about Orleans is its grittiness. And I'm not usually one for dark and gritty books. It was a good read, but I don't think I was really within the demographic for it. 

TL;DR it's a pretty solid 3-star book. You probably won't want to read it if The Hunger Games was too violent / gritty. It's along a similar line. 

Favorite New Music: March

So most of this music isn't necessarily "new"; it's just songs I've found recently and fell in love with. Hopefully you guys find these songs cool too!

I don't remember how I found Crystalline. I think it was in my YouTube recommendations. I was surprised! This was the first Gumi song in English that I've found, and it's so good. Vocaloids have come so far since I first started listening to the songs in middle school. Gumi's English still sounds a little robotic-like, but it's easily understandable, and the lyrics are in the video. 

I found Wildfire through Crystalline, and I think this is my favorite out of the two. It's really catchy. 

This isn't new by any standards, but our school did All Shook Up for our spring musical, so we've been playing this song on the morning announcements for the past week. It's catchy, too. I saw the school play twice and I'm really proud of all my classmates! I'm sad that this is the last time for a lot of my friends to be in the play ;o; It was bittersweet. 

I actually found this song through an artist I follow! She storyboarded part of the song as a school assignment, and out of curiosity I looked up the rest of it. It's a lot different than the music I usually listen to, and it's helped me work on Aperture a little bit! 

I found this video through my cousin. I haven't listened to it much yet, but it has a very One Direction / 5SOS feel, so I think I'll end up listening to it a lot as the weather gets warmer. I've been really into 5SOS lately, and I know I'm gonna end up looking into The Vamps a lot as well. 

Uptown Funk isn't all that new, either, but I found this cover recently! It's got less of a pop feel and more of a rock one, I guess? It's catchy all the same. 

Wake Me Up has been out for a while, but I found this cover that combines the original English lyrics with a Japanese translation, and it's really pretty. It's a really chill song. Wake Me Up is definitely one of my favorite songs. 

Jackaby by William Ritter

TL;DR "Doctor Who meets Sherlock" historical fantasy / mystery

(finished 3/17/15)

Jackaby was a lot better than I expected. When Gigi told me she'd checked it out from the library because I'd added it on goodreads, I couldn't even remember looking at it. (I add a lot of books. A lot.) 

I honestly can't tell you how accurate the "Doctor Who x Sherlock" tagline is, because my knowledge of both shows extends only to what I've picked up from tumblr. I think Supernatural would be a little more accurate than Doctor Who, since it deals with the supernatural more than sci-fi stuff like I associate with DW. I also don't really like comparing books to other series like that, because it's kind of lame and usually isn't very accurate, but it was the most concise way I could come up with to describe the book. I got kind of lazy.

I really liked Abigail as a narrator. I think some of her potential went unused because her "eye for the mundane" only really was used a couple times, and Jackaby did a lot of the work. Which is kind of to be expected since he knows a lot more about the supernatural than Abigail, I guess. Abigail wasn't a pushover at all, and she went with the flow instead of digging in her heels and refusing to believe Jackaby. Jackaby was a really interesting character, too, and Jenny and Charlie were cool.

Abigail's narration also didn't match my expectation of what a historical mystery would read like, and I really appreciated that. I don't think any of the characters are necessarily 100% accurate to the time period; for the most part, they sounded completely normal to me. I think that's part of the reason why I rated it so highly. It made it easier for me to be engaged in the story.

I do have to say that I liked the book the most because it felt very fluffy. It was surprisingly not dark and depressing despite being about murder investigations. I mean, the circumstances themselves were kind of dark, but the characters weren't all serious and brooding. The plot / timeline moved along at a good pace; the whole book only covers, like, two or three days, I think. A lot happens in a short amount of time. It didn't seem rushed to me, but I guess that could be up to debate.

TL;DR I really enjoyed it, but if you really like Doctor Who / Sherlock / typical historical / mystery stories, then you're probably gonna find it too fluffy.

City of Masks by Mary Hoffman

TL;DR time / space travel to renaissance Italy

(finished 3/11/15)

I'm gonna admit, I'm biased towards this series. I've loved it ever since City of Masks helped me calm down and fall asleep after my side of the house was hit by a car a few years ago. (That's kind of a long story.) Anyway, the car did relatively little damage to the house, but it hit the foundation right under my bed, so I didn't sleep in my room until someone came and said it was definitely safe. City of Masks kept me occupied while I tried to fall asleep in our living room. 

City of Masks reads very much as a middle grade novel, but if you're fine with Harry Potter, then I think you should be fine. The biggest issues I've ever had is spelling and the differences in quotation marks than I'm used to because Mary Hoffman lives in the UK and it was kept the same in all the copies I've read.

The premise of the story is really cool. It's pretty magic-y -- again, like Harry Potter -- but a lot of it is also science and is explained to an extent. I don't know if these explanations necessarily make sense logically in the real world, but for me it was enough. (Also, you're not going to get 110% accurate science from people living in the renaissance era. Rodolfo and Dethridge are good scientists, but they're definitely not all the way up-to-date with the 21st century.)

I also think Arianna is a really strong role model. She's not afraid to try and get what she wants, even if she has to sneak and break a few rules in the process. She steps up to challenges and has human reactions to things. That said, I think her character is a little limited within City of Masks, but I think that's mainly because the book reads like a standalone. I don't know whether or not Mary Hoffman knew she was going to write the Stravaganza world as a series or not when City of Masks was published.

(Honestly, I'd love to see Arianna as the focus character for City of Masks. I love Lucien and all, but Arianna's more strong-willed and fiery. She's also kind of the root of most of the problems if you really think about it. In a vague "half the stuff connects back to her if you step back and look at it" kind of way.)

Also, it's time-space travel. This was really the first book I've read that's done that, and I can't remember any off the top of my head that I've read since that do the same. Talia is incredibly interesting, partially because it's half-based on real-life Italy. I guess it's more of like alternative fiction. I don't have a very good knowledge of Italy, and the whole Stravaganza series does really well with setting everything up and explaining the differences between Talia and Italy.

And there's like no romance subplot! I mean, there are with two of the adult couples, but Lucien and Arianna don't have any sort of romance, and I love that. Spoiler: they do end up together in later books, but they're such a good couple and it builds up realistically and OTP 5ever basically. The lack of romance could also be because it's middle grade-ish, but hey, I'm not gonna complain.

As a side note, I've never been able to find these books brand new. Only at thrift stores. It's like that theory that all the Goosebumps books showed up in school libraries one day already beat-up.

I think the narration would really be the biggest turn-off for anyone. It does come off as kind of simple at times, and because it's third person, there are a few times where there are three different perspectives on a page. I think it's helpful for setting up events going on at the same time, but I do realize that a lot of people have been frustrated by the short passages. The short ones almost always foreshadow some key detail, but a lot of them do seem pointless at first and I'll admit I didn't notice most of them until I'd re-read the book at least once. A lot of the complaints I'm seeing on goodreads is also that the plot is too simple or predictable, and I can't really say anything about that because it's been so long since I've read it the first time. But again, City of Masks reads as middle grade, so I think it could be of going a little too far with avoiding tons of subplots or implications that younger kids wouldn't necessarily understand.

There are six books in the series, and each of them focuses on a new character and a new city while tying back to the characters and the plot of the previous books. It does get a little excessive by the most recent book, but honestly I love all of the characters across the whole series and it's awesome to see them build friendships as they go along.

TL;DR this is like my favorite underrated book, though if you don't like middle grade books, I really don't think you'll like it.