Little Battlers Experience W Review

Posted on August 20, 2016 by dreager1

It’s been a while since I reviewed the first series. I actually finished this one a while back and am getting closer to finishing the third series which is why I needed to get this one out. The first LBX series was a lot of fun and a great series all around. The characters were solid and we got a lot of great fights. W ups the game to another level and I don’t see any other LBX season defeating it. Wars has the best plot, but W has the best action scenes and the power levels were a blast. They were all over the place, but pretty hype all the same. With 2 arcs and a whole lot of tournaments included, W couldn’t get much better.

It’s been a while since Ban and friends won Artemis so they’re taking a long break from saving the world. Ban was hanging out at the mall when LBX robots suddenly go on a rampage and start attacking civilians. One kid is targeted so Ban quickly gives him a robot to fight with. The kid’s name is Hiro and he’s a natural prodigy at the game. It’s not surprising though since he is proficient at every video game that he has ever played, including the LBX game inside of the Arcade. The two of them fend off the robots, but at a lethal cost to Ban’s LBX from the original series. No worries though, he gets a new one and the two of them are set to save the world.

Who is threatening the world this time? A mysterious group of terrorists known as Detector are behind it this time. The stakes are quite serious this time as the terrorists are attacking countries around the world and destroying national landmarks. They won’t stop until every country bows before them. Naturally, America doesn’t negotiate with terrorists, but they are sitting ducks against the legions of LBX robots that assault them. Detector has the power to take control of any LBX and since America has hundreds of them lying around, it is a sticky situation. Ban and Hiro join the government in order to put a stop to this and are aided by American representative Jessica and Japanese brawler Ran. Jin and ex villain Yuuya also decide to come and help. The heroes have a lot of members on their side, but they are still outnumbered 100-1. It also gets personal when most of Ban’s friends from season 1 are kidnapped and brainwashed into joining Detector. Ban has to stop them now…no matter the cost!

The tone of this series is certainly more serious than the first season which makes sense, but it keeps a good balance of also being light hearted. Between the super serious fights there is still time for tournaments. The animation is very sharp and I’d say that it is noticeably improved from the first season. The best fights from the original series can still hold their own of course, but this one consistently had a lot of great fights and good speed showings from the characters. We even got a space fight in this series which was certainly a treat to watch. The series also kept the recycled footage to a minimum with the special attacks so the actual fights still had good animation. The special attacks always look nice and flashy as well so I still like to see them.

The soundtrack is excellent. There are a lot of great battle themes to be found here and the music can always be heard over the sound effects. Some shows put the music on a little too low at some points or you just can’t remember the music by the end. That’s not the case with W as most of the themes become fairly iconic by the end. I also really liked the first opening. The 2nd and third openings weren’t quite as good, but they weren’t bad either. Well…the third one may have been a little bad, but it wasn’t terrible. The first one was easily the most energetic though and it was the most fitting for this series.

Ban is the main character of this adventure once again although this time he shares the role with Hiro and Ran. I’d say that Ban still is The main character in the end though and he still gets the most hype. Several fighters like Kirito and Jessica wanted to fight Ban right from the get go since he has the reputation of being one of the world’s greatest players. He does a good job of upholding that title as well. He takes a few losses during the series when the big villains start to show up, but in 1 on 1 fights he always holds his own. If his robot hadn’t been broken in the first episode…things could have been very different as well. Ban’s a great leader and a super solid main character to have around.

Hiro had me worried when he first appeared. I really didn’t care for his design as the glasses were a bit much. Luckily, the show was just trolling and after he fell into a fountain, his hair style switched and the glasses broke. Suddenly he looked like the hardcore main character that I had been waiting for. In any other show, Hiro could have easily passed as the main character and nobody would blink an eye. His personality is a little different from Ban’s as he is less serious and likes to have a good time. In that sense, he’s like Ban from season 1. Unfortunately, saving the world so many times has taken its toll on Ban and he seems to have less fun than the others. Jin and Ban both reflect on this at one point as they may not be much older than the others physically, but it sure seems like it when the two groups are together. Hiro really likes superheroes and classic anime which makes him even cooler. His natural battle skills are great and while his special reaction ability isn’t really delved into…at all in the series, it is finally explained in the third title.

Ami and Kazu may have had a huge role in season 1, but their roles are minimal here. Ami doesn’t look bad, but she simply can’t fight alongside the others anymore. Her LBX has been completely surpassed even if it used to be very powerful. Kazu has also changed quite a bit as he worked out a lot and is more outgoing. Unfortunately, he developed into a completely terrible character. It involves a plot twist that I’m about to mention, but it erases any chance of me ever liking the character again. So much for character development.

Professor Yamano is to blame for Kazu’s downfall. So, remember the terrorist group known as Detector? They went around blowing up landmarks and terrorizing people. Yamano claims that they never destroyed anyone, but I find that incredibly difficult to believe based on the first episode. The LBX robots were blasting away at the entire mall and this was happening on a large scale around the entire planet. There were definitely casualties if we’re being honest here. They threatened all of the countries around the world and used fear tactics to accomplish their objectives. The big twist behind this is that Ban’s father created the group. What was his reasoning? He needed to steal a few vans worth of some material to stop the real villains from getting it and getting to space where they could destroy the world….

So the show is trying to say that Yamano…with his political clout with all of the high ranking officials, couldn’t have simply explained the situation? Even if he thought that the government was corrupted, he could have told just about any smaller security group or even have hired Ban and friends to secure it. Creating a global terrorist group and actually attacking all of these locations just to legitimize his group as a serious one is inexcusable. I don’t care what his excuses were, Detector did way too many horrible things to be forgiven. The twist made no sense and Yamano should have been arrested. No matter the reason, he caused a lot of large scale destruction and likely many murders. He shouldn’t be walking around the world carefree after all of that. I was really hoping that the final scene of the show would be him in jail. Even the cops and his friends barely seemed to care. Kazu knew about this and joined anyway…so he’s just as guilty. This is a good way to destroy 2 characters in one easy step.

Cobra is the American liaison who helps the characters get flights and whatever resources they need. He doesn’t really add anything to the show though. If he had been cut out, I wouldn’t have minded at all. A lot of the season 1 supporting characters show up during this title as well. Most of them don’t get much of a role, but it’s always fun to see the Power Rangers return. Otacross would have been better left to our memories though. Gouda and Sendou get decently large roles here. Surprisingly, they can still keep up with the new robots. Sendou isn’t too surprising I suppose since his Joker was all about speed and that keeps him relevant. His skills are actually pretty good and I find him to be significantly stronger than Gouda. Gouda feels like a parody at this point. His LBX is extremely slow and all of its attacks are predictable. How he manages to win anyway is beyond me. It’s a good thing that the show doesn’t really care about power levels. It’s fun to see them, but most of the new supporting characters are more likable.

Ran is the third main character of the group. She’s always eager for a fight and likes to brawl without a weapon. That’s certainly not how most LBX fight so it’s fun to see the hand to hand battles. Unfortunately, her LBX does start to get seriously outclassed by Ban and Hiro’s after a while, but she managed to keep up with them for most of the series. She’s definitely a likable heroine and a solid addition to the cast. I ended up liking her more than Ami from the first series. It certainly does help that she is a fighter.

Jessica is the other heroine and I feel like she had potential that was never reached. For example, she is very confident in her abilities. She believes that nobody can beat her 1 on 1, but why does she think this? Jessica never gives the viewers a reason to buy into this self hype since she never seems to be nearly as strong as Ban and Jin, let alone worthy of the title World Champ. Her gun skills are good, but her LBX doesn’t seem all that impressive otherwise. Ah well, I still like to see the characters have confidence. She just needs to prove herself a little more and since she missed out on the third season, she may not get that opportunity.

Jin may have been the big rival in the first series, but his role is a big smaller this time around. He’s a main supporting character, but his robot never got any real improvements so he is no longer to fight on par with Ban. It’s a shame, but you could tell as soon as he appeared that he wouldn’t be much of a threat this time. That’s because the design for his new LBX simply wasn’t that good. It had a throwaway feel to it and the writers didn’t even try this time. He still talks a good game and comes up with good strategies though. With some plot hax, he was even able to take Ban down once. He’s a fun character, but much like Zoro from One Piece, the time skip seems to have dulled his competitive flame. Jin is now content to just be an ally, as opposed to trying to surpass Ban.

Asuka is one of the new rivals who shows up. She was able to take on Ban and Hiro at once so her skills are certainly for real. I don’t believe she should be portrayed as quite That tough though since Hiro and Ban were given custom LBX robots that should be the strongest on the planet. How is Asuka’s so much better than theirs? I do like the design of the Vampire Cat though and Asuka certainly lives up to her hype. She even steps up to aid the heroes against the villains and ends up being one of the better new characters.

It was fun to see Yuuya return in this season, but I was never a big fan of the guy. His character is certainly very different since he isn’t being mind controlled anymore. He is just too serious and I typically disagreed with him whenever he was on screen. I wouldn’t have minded if he didn’t join the others as a main character and would have preferred that. Another old face to show up was Kousuke. He was a surprise stand-out character from the first series. He really just appeared as a cameo and got wrecked by Hiro, but it was nice to see him. I do think that the character was nerfed though as he should have put up a better fight.

Kirito had an intriguing plot during the series. He wanted to use a program to help bring his sister (I think it was his sister) back to life, but naturally this kept leading into dead ends. His journey was a futile one, but at least he learned how to like the LBX game again by the end. He is one of the stronger players and he made for a nice rival to Ban. Since Jin no longer counts, Ban needed someone who could compete against his skills. While Kirito may not live up to his name compared to then more popular Kirito, he is still a solid character. The fact that he is proficient with just about every robot is quite impressive as well.

Dr. Mummy is a villain that I couldn’t take seriously. I didn’t like how he had to take a deep breath between every sentence. That gimmick got old incredibly fast. The character gets a pretty big twist at the end. I can’t say that the twist really mattered all that much though and didn’t help the character much. It did get rid of the gimmick though so I was super glad about that. At least Mummy had more of a purpose here than Gojou though. I always like seeing villains betray each other and Mummy pulled that off. Gojou is an Egyptian LBX player who randomly shows up, gets wrecked, and then shows up again. There’s no real rhyme or reason to the character and he is really pointless. As you can tell…I’m not a fan.

While not a character, Achilles Deed was a fun villain to have. Someone is operating him of course, but the mystery of it all was neat. Achilles was such a fun robot from the original series and I was always a little sad that Ban never got him back. Seeing a new and improved evil version of the robot was definitely a lot of fun. It could fly as well, making Deed one of the most powerful LBX robots of all time. I was definitely very impressed with it. Another robot that got a lot of hype was Killer Droid. It’s not an LBX, but it is a robot that was created to destroy them. It is rather large, but I don’t consider it to be that fast. The problem is that it is incredibly difficult to injure the beast at all. Speed is great, you don’t get hit by Killer Droid, but if you can’t hit him, then it is an endless stalemate. He does get a weakness by the end though so suddenly everyone can beat him.

An underrated character is Jack Gelato and his LBX Proto-1. It was one of the original LBX robots and it is so powerful that it was able to take on the hero group. Hiro, Ban, Ran, and possibly some others were there, but Jack was handling them all rather well. He’s a great character and a government agent who is actually portrayed as really competent. His Proto-1 can hold his own against any robot based on that impressive fight and it’s good to have a government agent who can rank that high. Sadly, he only appears a small handful of times, but his opening fight is what really sold me on the character.

There was a random episode to tie into the Izuma 11 Go vs LBX movie. It was really good though as aliens suddenly show up and challenge Ban and Hiro. Surprisingly, the duo is completely overwhelmed and the aliens leave right before the heroes would have been destroyed. If that episode is any indication, then the movie must be incredible. I love the concept of alien LBX robots showing up and just dominating. Aliens are always a good story device to use in order to give the series some fresh and powerful villains. It was easily one of the best episodes in the franchise and I’d say that it was the best movie tie-in episode of all time. It was straight to the point and the whole episode was basically just one big fight.

After the initial arc with Detector, we get a mini arc after that. The LBX robots are on a rampage again and this time it is because of an A.I. program known as Mizel. The arc felt like filler and it didn’t really serve much of a purpose, but we got some more good fights so that is always a plus right? Mizel’s robot can infect other robots so you must defeat it without making any kind of contact. That’s incredibly tough, but it made for some good fights. The arc itself is rather bland, but I don’t think it could have passed the first arc anyway. At least Mizel has a good character design. We also get to see what a giant life sized LBX would look like. That made for a fun villain and even Godzilla may have had to back away from this foe.

One thing I have to say though is that the Chief of Security wasn’t too smart in the series. At one point, he finally figures out that the Vice President is one of the big traitors who is working for the villains. So…what does he do about it? He tells the President while the Vice is still in the room. Naturally, this results in the President getting kidnapped along with the Chief since the foot soldiers were also in on it. Aside from how terrible a decision that was by the Chief, I also just can’t buy it. I don’t care how much corruption there is, not all of the guards would be bribed and the President was in the White House. I don’t think you could kidnap her so easily. The whole thing just screamed plot hax.

Also, as mentioned earlier, the power levels are all over the place. At least the show doesn’t even pretend that it is logical though. Characters just fluctuate constantly with Ban having trouble against light-weights and then going on to fight the strongest villains. Everyone gets speedblitzed from time to time and the characters have to keep upgrading their robots to stay relevant. This typically happens with toyetic shows though so it’s to be expected. Just look at the first fight between Bass and Slur from Stream. That was lunacy!! It’s not something that would hurt the score though. It can still be entertaining although I admit that I would love to see the power levels be straightened out. It would make the villains more impressive when they beat Ban and Hiro. Instead, it happens so often that it becomes expected.

Overall, LBX W is a superb title. With its constant action and great characters, it’s virtually a perfect anime. There is no fanservice, language, or other such negatives that plague the average title. It’s a blast and a half from start to finish. It always remembers how to be a fun show and there are only 1-3 episodes that may have not been all that entertaining. For a long show like this one, that’s mighty impressive. The fights are so good that something should always be happening. I highly recommend this show to anyone who likes a solid action scene. One of the best fights in the series is the 5 way free for all at the Artemis finals, but there were dozens of awesome fights so I couldn’t even say which one was the best. Even fights that seem like throwaway battles have a tendency to be awesome by the end. Just look at Jack Gelatto? That didn’t seem important, but ended up being epic anyway. This has definitely been a fun franchise to get into and I look forward to reviewing the final installment in this series!

Overall 9/10

Donkey Kong Country 3 Review

Posted on August 19, 2016 by dreager1

After all these years, I finally got to play Country 3. While the DK series never got quite as popular as Mario or Kirby, it turned into a decently large series in its own right. The games are always fun and they are pretty consistent. This one may be the weakest in the trilogy, but it’s still a good game that has a solid amount of replay value and the campaign length is fair.

There’s no real plot to this game unless you read the booklet. You just start off on the adventure as Dixie Kong and her partner Kiddy Kong. The two of them blast away at bosses as they go through each world. Eventually, you defeat the last boss and find Diddy Kong and Donkey Kong. It turns out that they were kidnapped while they had been dreaming about bananas. It’s a pretty big twist since it turns out that they were also controlling one of the many murder bots that had been chasing the heroes for a while. I don’t think DK will be able to talk his way out of this one!

You can’t really call spoilers on this considering that there is virtually no plot. The gameplay is why you’re playing a DK game anyway. It has the standard jumping and avoiding obstacles as well as some extra features. Dixie Kong can glide which you can use to cheese quite a few levels. Kiddy Kong can perform a roll which knocks out most enemies. Various animal friends will also come out to play. You can transform into a bird which lets you fly or into an elephant which can be pretty neat. Unfortunately, the elephant is afraid of mice so prepare for a lot of stopping. It’s usually better not to use the elephant, but you aren’t always given a choice.

There is something about the gameplay that does make it less engaging that the average side scroller. Granted, Mario and Sonic set the bar rather high. I think it is due to the fact that the DK levels are typically a little more slow paced. You can blast through the ones that are horizontal, but the vertical levels must be taken at a slow pace or you will hit enemies before they even show up on the map. That definitely wouldn’t be any fun now would it? Unlike Mario where you just jump along and hope for the best, you must use some more strategy and carefully decide what to do. If you lose, prepare yourself for the long climb back up at times since there are periods where you must wait.

Still, it’s definitely fun and the game does have a good difficulty curve. It starts off rather easy and by the end it gets a little harder. It never gets too insane though and ends up having a nice balance of “fun” and “tough”. The bosses are usually tough until you figure out what you are supposed to be doing. Once you figure that part out, they get quite a bit easier to deal with. The final boss definitely took me a few tries as I would beat one phase, but then die on the next. I did this again and again until I finally conquered all 5 phases. It was a well made boss fight.

For replay value, there are a lot of coins to collect. You’ll want to focus on the DK coins and the Gold Coins since the silver ones appear to be unlimited. The DK coins are obtained by defeating the shield wearing Kremlins. You must throw a barrel behind them in order to defeat this minion. It usually involves a fun puzzle. The Gold Coins are obtained by completing the B Barrel challenges. They are fairly quick, but mess up and you’ll have to replay the level again to give it another whirl. One unfortunate part about collecting these things is that there is no way to check which levels you have already done. That means you have to manually check them out and complete the challenge again to see if the Gold Coin is still around. This can be a little tedious if you plan to grab them all so you should have a notepad on hand.

Also, beware of the boat guy. He builds you a new boat after every few worlds so that you can travel to new ones. On the final expedition, he’ll ask for 50 Gold Coins. It may seems like you need to get them to make it to the final world, but you can actually go up the waterfall with your other vehicle. I’m sure that it’s a fun post-game vehicle, but you should at least be aware of the fact that it is optional. That’s probably a good thing since grabbing 50 Gold Coins would take a very long time.

Graphically, the game holds up well. Kranky Kong taking out his sunglasses at the end was pretty intense and all of the level designs look decently good. I do wish that more of the levels took place outside though. The best looking ones were the early beach levels. I didn’t care for the factory ones quite as much since the dark backgrounds and colors made everything a little harder to see. The brighter levels had a tendency of looking a lot sharper. As for the soundtrack, it was all right. Unfortunately, I can’t say that any tunes were memorable, or even all that good to be honest. It is certainly not ready to go to Mario levels of awesome quite yet in this regard.

Overall, Donkey Kong Country 3 is a decent way to end the trilogy. It’s a fun game, but I don’t think that the gimmicks worked all that well. The fundamentals were sound though. I would have preferred to have DK be the main character and we could have just had Dixie replace Diddy. Based on the dialogue, Dixie may actually be a little more intense than Diddy Kong. She got some good burns in on King K Krool. (I don’t see why the guy is a fan favorite. I never cared for him all that much as a villain) Diddy Kong basically spent the game being starstruck so he didn’t do much. I didn’t like Kiddy Kong at all, hopefully he’ll be better once he grows up a bit. More of a plot would have been fun to flesh out the characters…or at least an opening cutscene to show DK being kidnapped. The bosses are nice and imaginative and the game has a good amount of replay value. If you don’t have this game yet then I definitely recommend it. You don’t need to compare it to the other side scrollers and you can just enjoy it for what it is. A fun little game that help beef up your Nintendo collection and DK knowledge. Now I’m one step closer to being caught up with the series.

Overall 7/10

Fairy Tail Zero Review

Posted on August 14, 2016 by dreager1

It’s time to look at one of the Fairy Tail spinoffs. It certainly has quite a few, but this is the first one that I have read. It certainly starts them off on a good note as this one is leagues ahead of the main series. I won’t be reviewing that one anytime soon since it shows no signs of ending at the moment, but the excessive fanservice ruined what could have been one of the ultimate manga titles of all time. That’s a story for another day though. This manga plays it straight for the most part and makes for an interesting action title that does a good job of setting the stage for the main title. There are some name drops to help expand the mythos, but I have to say that most of the names went over my head or simply didn’t matter much. The actual story and main characters are the main draw for me as a casual FT reader. Big fans will be able to appreciate this volume even more though.

The story starts off with a little girl by the name of Mavis. FT fans will remember her as the legendary leader who created the Fairy Tail guild. This story is about the birth of Fairy Tail and we learn that Mavis wasn’t always an ultra powerful, super fighter. She never gets to be all that super powerful here either, but it takes time to get to that level. At first, she is an ordinary girl who lives among shifty characters who adopted her for kicks, but don’t do much else. They don’t seem to care for her either and force Mavis to walk around without any sneakers. Mavis ends up getting used to this though and ultimately never wears any footwear again.

They all get burned to a crisp though as the land is destroyed so Mavis escapes along with Zera, a girl around Mavis’ age. Zera was never all that nice, but after this traumatic event, she began to warm up to Mavis. The two of them lived alone on this island for quite a while until some treasure hunters showed up. They came to grab the legendary Jade jewel. Mavis duels one of their members in a strategy game to see who will claim the jewel, but it has been mysteriously removed already. The two groups then decide to join forces to reclaim the jewel and so starts the beginning of their partnership. The owners of the Jade are the notorious Blue Skull wizards so the heroes will have to fight hard to defeat them. After all, they don’t know any real magic yet.

This one shot could have potentially been a little boring if handled wrong. I’m not a huge fan of the jungle setting after all and big cities don’t appear all that much. Luckily, the writing is good and as a result, the one shot plays out like a fun little fantasy adventure. It’s similar to something like Slayers or Orphen. The character interactions are good and the main cast are all pretty likable. You’ll find yourself breezing through the volume even though the length is longer than your average volume. It never drags on and the pacing is nice and quick.

Mavis is the main character and I can safely say that she is the best Fairy Tail Guild Leader. Her match of wits against Yuri was something that you would expect from HXH or another strategy title. I certainly didn’t think it would come from Fairy Tail and most of the current members on the team certainly wouldn’t do too well in this kind of event. The game was about mentioning truths in regard to the person that you are fighting. To make sure that neither participant can lie, a magic crystal is used. (Sadly, this is why the game wouldn’t work too well in real life) You can’t use truths that can be applied to both people (So no “You’re a human” as a truth) and you can’t use truths about clothing or other obvious/minor details that would drag the game out forever. As both participants are ideally strangers to each other, it gets to be very tricky right away.

Mavis decided to up the stakes a little though and boldly claimed that she would win the game on a single turn…and then did so 2 times in a row. It was quite impressive and her wins were both legitimate. No real plot hax here, just good strategy. Mavis doesn’t have any real flaws to speak of and can easily hold her own volume. She’s a good hero who looks out for her friends and is eager to stop the villains. Mavis is certainly worthy of her role as leader.

Zera is Mavis’ best friend and appears as a main supporting character during the volume. She may have been very mean at the beginning of the story, but she was a little kid at the time and certainly couldn’t have been expected to be all that mature. She is fairly anti-social and has a hard time getting used to the others, but she gets used to having friends by the end…or at least makes an effort to get along with them. She can’t fight so she mainly serves as moral support for Mavis. She’s a nice character to have around.

Yuri is easily the best member of the Treasure Hunters and he is very close to being as cool as Mavis. I like his competitive spirit and he certainly has no shortage of confidence. Yuri is rather greedy and isn’t willing to just let Mavis win for free, but that’s a good thing. He’s in it to win and gives everything his all. That definitely makes him a good rival to have around and it’s be cool to see him in the main series. Unless he is a minor character or got a name change, I can’t remember him ever appearing. He would be super old though so I guess that makes sense.

Warrod is someone who has shown up in the main series, but he’s my least favorite member so that’s too bad. He’s not a bad character in this volume, but he’s just not all that interesting I suppose. He tries to sound wise and he has a decent amount of magical power, but I find him to be over hyped. I don’t know how he got such a high position of honor in the main title. He’s technically heroic and a solid ally though so he’s just not great compared to the others. If you just look at him as a character with no comparisons, then he’s not bad.

Precht is the final member of the Treasure Hunters and he is pretty cool. Of course, he does go on to become one of the big villains in the main series, but here he is a hero for the full volume. He’s the best fighter in the group and he also has a very cool design. He seemed very reliable so it’s a shame that he ultimately decided to join the darkness. This is Fairy Tail though so maybe he will become a good guy at some point in the future once more. Only time will tell I suppose.

Zeref gets a mild appearance here. He’s been hyped in the main series for quite a while and I’m looking forward to seeing him fight someday. After all, if the demons were created to defeat him and the heroes could barely take them down…just how strong is Zeref? His field of death is certainly a great ability since just getting near him can prove to be fatal for most living things. He seems like a fairly nice guy so it’s too bad that the ability eventually led him down a dark path. He did play a pivotal role in helping the heroes even if his screen time was brief.

The villains aren’t bad even if they don’t get a whole lot to do here. They’re here to serve their role as villains, but only the leader really gets a personality/actual design. He’s not a bad villain leader as he is fairly powerful and knows a good amount of magic. He may have underestimated the heroes, but it is easy to see how he rose to power the way that he did. This guy wasn’t half bad and I was satisfied with him as the big antagonist.

This is Fairy Tail though so the author managed to squeeze in a quick hot springs esque scene with Mavis and Zera. It’s only 2-3 pages max and isn’t as bad as the usual stuff though. The 3 flashbacks to it via small panels were super unnecessary, but they were quick panels and could have been worse. It’s not enough to really hurt the score all that much or anything like that, but I can’t say that I was surprised at this moment. It’s a shame since it was literally one quick scene away from being a Fairy Tail series with no fanservice. That would have been monumental. Ah well, it’s a fairly quick blink and you’ll miss it scene and as the characters are fairly young, the actual fanservice is fairly minimal considering the situation. The anime version seemed to nerf the moment as well so that’s good. I don’t know how this volume was stretched out to almost 10 episodes though, I hope that doesn’t hurt the pacing.

The art is solid throughout the manga and the character designs are good. The action scenes are also well drawn and that helps to elevate the series. As seen with the Madoka series, bad art can really hurt a series even if the writing is on point and the plot is interesting. It’s just a super crucial element in any manga and instantly gives Zero an edge. Good art starts a manga off on a high note and then it’s just up to the writing/characters to keep it at that level.

There is also a big twist towards the very end of the manga which is handled well. I certainly enjoyed the twist and while it is fairly sad, it does make sense. It explains away some interactions which would have been fairly odd otherwise. I would have just explained the oddness away due to the trauma or something like that, but this makes even more sense. It’s definitely a sad plot twist, but it’s not over the top or super dramatic like other series would have done. It adds a layer of depth to this one shot.

Overall, it is a little ironic, but this prequel completely destroys the main series. It is actually a well crafted volume with the writing being sound and the art is consistent. The characters were all fun and engaging which helped make the adventure fun. An adventure is only as good as its characters after all and the strategic elements were also really good. This one shot did a good job of showing off Mavis and her skills as a tactician. She may not specialize in physical fighting or raw power, but you don’t really need that when you have wits right? I almost forgot to mention this, but her magical abilities specialize in illusions. This is a fairly bad power to have for the most part since it is easy to see through after a while, but that’s where the intelligence factor comes into play. In the end I recommend checking out this manga. Don’t read the main series, but read this one shot anyway. It can stand up on its own and you don’t need to appreciate all of the cameos and name drops to really enjoy this adventure. Hopefully the rest of the spinoffs are also able to bring this level of quality with them.

Overall 7/10

Rurouni Kenshin Restoration Review

Posted on August 13, 2016 by dreager1

Kenshin was an amazing series and one of the greatest titles of all time. I was pretty pleased to here that the author was doing a little remake project of it. It’s definitely a fun little series, but I wish it had been longer than two volumes. There is only so much that you can cover in such a short length. The art is crisp and the characters are still awesome so it’s still a great series, but it is over before you know it. True Kenshin fans will be pleased and should feel nostalgic upon reading it. That being said, considering that the summary for this series speaks about all of its new twists and turns….it is not all that different from the main series. Due to everything being sped up to such an extent, events do happen a little differently with the players being switched around and showing up when they should be gone, but it’s nothing all that drastic. You could still essentially call this a remake.

For those who haven’t read the original series, here’s a basic summary. Kenshin was once a warrior who fought during the great wars of old and he was the strongest in the land. He vanquished all who opposed him, but once the war was over, he decided to live a life of peace. Kenshin has sworn never to destroy another person again and now lives the life of a wandering swordsman. Unfortunately, villains continue to pop up anyway so Kenshin has to deal with them as he makes friends with Dojo owners and wandering fighters.

The Kenshin artist has had years to perfect his designs of the characters so you can probably imagine how well tuned the art is. It’s some of the best art in the biz and makes for incredible action scenes. They are a little on the short side so the original series wins in this area. It wins in all of the areas though so we may as well not even compare them. This series has no need for cheap fanservice tricks which also helps to keep the series at a high level. It feels very professional and this is certainly a high caliber action title.

As mentioned earlier, Kenshin’s a great lead. He gets the job done and his decision not to end any more lives is certainly a good one. The villains really make this a challenge for him, but Kenshin never stoops to their level. He does still have that killer instinct within him and it tends to pop up when his friends are in danger, but he has learned to control it rather well over the years. One of the main supporting characters is Kaoru. She’s a nice enough heroine even if she is always getting into danger. What she lacks in power, Kaoru makes up for in spirit. She’s certainly much better than the other supporting character who sticks around. Yahiko is a character that I didn’t really care for in the original series and that certainly didn’t change here. He’s just a little on the annoying side and his fights are always a lot weaker than the others since he is just a kid. At least he doesn’t get much of a role here though.

Sanosuke is a good rival though and a solid character. He’s easily one of the highlights here and his fights are always fun. Since Sanosuke is one of the only characters who actually uses his fists as opposed to a blade, it makes for a good contrast. It’s a shame that he lost in a fist fight to a sword user who didn’t have his sword in the main series…but that’s how it goes. I liked his opponent a lot as well so it worked out fairly well. Jin-E is the main antagonist of this series and I always enjoyed him well enough in the first series. He’s pretty neat here as well even if his paralysis attack wouldn’t be all that effective against any of the stronger fighters. He’s not all that tough despite his bravado, but he can hold his own for a little while and his plans are sound. He’s a good villain who’s always ready to get in Kenshin’s way and cause some trouble.

While Aoshi doesn’t really get to appear this time, Saito gets a good role. Both characters were great rivals for Kenshin so it was great to see him here. He’s in character as always and makes for a great opponent. Other characters also show up for quick fights/guest star roles since one of the main gangsters hires them all to finish off Kenshin. It’s a way to show off as many villains as possible and I’d say that the series pulled this off well. It was a good change since I love fights and this gave us a good reason to have a bunch of them. Not to mention the fact that every fight scene is great even if they are very short.

There’s really not a whole lot more to say about the series. It’s essentially a gauntlet of battles where Kenshin duels off against iconic foes. If you haven’t read the original series, you’ll still enjoy this one quite a bit, but you will find yourself wanting more. It’s a good way to entice you to read the full series though. Think of this one as a preview to get you interested in the franchise and then the original series will take you from there. After all, this one doesn’t have a whole lot of time for plot or down-time to chat with the characters since someone is always attacking.

Overall, This was a great way for the author to pay homage to his Kenshin series and to help hype up the live action movies. I think more authors should do a cool remake like this. Imagine a 2 volume DBZ manga where we see Goku take on his foes at a much quicker rate and transform into new forms with each chapter? It would make for a fun little anime special/13 episode series as well. I highly recommend checking out Kenshin Restoration and it has that fun anniversary feel that keeps you excited throughout.

Overall 8/10

The SIlver Age Justice League of America Volume 1 Review

Posted on August 13, 2016 by dreager1

It’s finally time for another really old comic. This is from the good ole Silver Age…as you probably gathered from the title. This was a great age for comics and DC in particular as the Justice League had a superb roster and Superman was still nigh invincible. Of course, every villain and even the D listers had Kryptonite back in the day so it balanced out. It’s certainly a great comic collection and while it can get a little formulaic at times, it’s great to see these classic stories. It’s also interesting to see that Superman is the strong member as well as the smart one this time.

There are definitely a large variety of stories to be found here. They are all fairly formulaic so it is good that the writing is on point as it could get a little old otherwise. For example, one comic has a villain pit the Justice League against a group of other villains who were getting in his way. He sends them off in pairs to fight and each team goes up against a tricky situation where they end up coming out on top after each member is able to do something to help. There’s never a change to the formula with a character actually losing. It stays completely true to this and then in the end the team gets together and saves the day. It is very predictable, but it’s not something that actually ends up hurting the issue. I would enjoy seeing the issues stray from the format a little, but this works well enough.

Before talking about the issues a little more, lets talk about the art and the characters a little more. The art is consistent and all of the characters are in their iconic designs. This was definitely the classic era of DC and it’s cool to see all of the characters together. I can imagine that fans were incredibly hyped to see the team together. While this is volume one, the characters already know each other and the team is formed so I’m assuming that they came together in a different title. One comic has them all go into their secret identities which was also cool since they got to bring supporting characters along for the ride. The fight scenes all look solid and this art style will always be a lot of fun. It’s clear and easy to read.

Due to the writing being so sharp for this collection, all of the characters are fairly likable. Even someone like Martian Manhunter, who I am certainly not a fan of, is acceptable here. I still find him rather bland next to the other characters and his weakness against fire is so easily exploited, but he’s not super arrogant here and is a decent team member. Flash is solid as always and his speed is more consistent than the strengths of the other heroes. There are less excuses for villains to exploit it which really works in his favor. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for Green Lantern since literally anything that is yellow ends up messing with him. It happens quite a lot and he is the only hero who had to watch from the sidelines during the climax of the final adventure. He even mentions how he is sad that he couldn’t help out, but the other heroes cheer him up.

Wonder Woman’s only real weakness is that she loses her powers when she is tied up, but that never actually happens here so she does fairly well. She may still not be as strong as Superman, but she’s certainly a heavy hitter on the team. Naturally, the big two really steal the show here. Superman is great as always even if he gets less screentime than the other members. He is always very confident and isn’t afraid to call the other team members out if something appears to be off. He seems quite upset when he returns from a wild goose chase until he learns that it was all part of the plan. Superman is also shown to be super smart as he always knows what is going on even when Batman is forced to ask questions.

Of course, Batman looks great as well. He may not have super powers, but his gadgets always come in handy and he is still shown to be one of the smart members. He always has something up his sleeve and the team wouldn’t be the same without him. Finally we have Aquaman. His weakness is the most exploitable so the issues always have very forced moments where the villains sprinkle him with water so the hero won’t die. After all, Aquaman must make contact with water once every hour or he will perish so for the issues where he is knocked out for a few hours…..things happen. In one issue, we find out that his chair has an automatic sprinkler which blasts Aquaman with water every hour so even if he is tied up for a while, he ends up being okay. The other heroes find water for him as well once in a while, but you’ll really expect him to die on a mission one of these days. There are so many situations where water just isn’t around for a little while. It’s hard to get past that. Luckily, I believe that a lot of the modern comics got rid of this weakness or at least lessened it.

There are also some rare guest stars here like Green Arrow and Adam Strange. It was nostalgic to see Strange return since I read a lot of his adventures back in the day. He handled the situation well even if the ending was rather tragic for him as per usual. You’ll feel bad for Green Arrow when he shows up since he gets framed quite a bit (Although he could have defended himself a little better) and the whole team is eager to jump on him. They don’t doubt that something may be off for a second and are pretty harsh with the guy. It’s easy to see why he is rarely on the team. I certainly wouldn’t be eager to join after this issue.

One of the stories has a guy hypnotize the Justice League. He did a pretty good job of it as he simply tricked all of the Leaguers into running right to where he was and they all fell instantly. He then sold the JL members to local gangsters so that the League could steal things for them. The gangsters then decided to compete with each other so they had pairs of League members (formula) head to each artifact, where they then got to fight with each other. I’m always up for some good JL fights, but unfortunately, they all essentially ended as ties. The heroes then realized that what they were going to steal was already gone, which is why they had no reason to battle. The only match that was almost definitive was probably Martian Manhunter vs Wonder Woman, where the former certainly had the edge before it was interrupted. It was a fun story although the Justice League certainly didn’t look great that time. They tend to greatly underestimate their foes.

Of course, this collection also has some very iconic stories like the Starro Invasion as well as that time where Despero infiltrated JL headquarters and telepathically defeated all of its members. Flash then had to play the ultimate chess game with his friends hanging in the balance. Flash wasn’t pleased, but he is a good Chess player so he was prepared for this. Another story had Snapper find out about an alien plot to take over the world so he phones the Justice League in. Unfortunately, they were defeated rather easily and lost their confidence and physical abilities after being distorted by a magical trick mirror. (Close enough) Good thing Aquaman was at the ready!

The only character here who could be a little annoying at times was Snapper. It’s cool to see him as a hero since he is typically just a TV reporter who likes to insult the heroes. It was quite the switch, but his “hip” dialogue could be a little over the top at times. He also uses his snapping gimmick too often and just about all of his screen time is used up on this. I believe that just about all of the other human sidekicks have been more fun, but at least Snapper always takes the subtle burns fairly well. Nothing that the JL tells him ever manages to get the kid down.

Overall, Most of the other stories are fairly similar to the ones that I listed above. The JL is constantly kidnapped and forced to go to various places or they decide to split up and gather artifacts. Whatever the narrative reason, the team uses this excuse to split into pairs and then solve the mission. Perhaps every issue was treated as a special team up and this formula made it easier for the writers to think of new ideas. One idea would become 5 whole plots after all. It could have been more unique, but having the world’s greatest heroes teaming up will never get old. I highly recommend checking out these Silver Age comics and remembering how it started DC on such a great path.

Overall 8/10

Puella Magi Oriko Magica Extra Story Review

Posted on August 12, 2016 by dreager1

After reviewing the Oriko manga earlier, it’s time to look at a one volume AU for it. This volume works as a What If prequel where we follow the two main villains from the last title. While the art has greatly improved, this manga decides to follow Yuma’s plot more, which dooms it in the end. Otherwise, all of the other areas of the core manga have improved so this is a good sign for future Madoka titles. Just keep Yuma’s origin out and we’ll have ourselves a winner!

The manga starts with Kirika having no friends and eventually getting Magical Girl powers. She vents out her frustrations by beating Witches until she finally finds a friend that she used to have. She saved the girl and reminds her to always have hope as she physically defeats the friend’s mental demons and heads back home. It’s a nice little origin story for Kirika and she is already much more likable than how she was in the previous volumes. The fact that her boss, Oriko, is a good guy in this series changes things dramatically since Kirika does whatever the other girl says without question. Of course, a true friend should always be willing to call someone else out so Kirika’s definitely got to work on that.

The real plot starts after this. Oriko happens to run into a little kid named Yuma, who is being hit with child abuse. Unfortunately, Yuma doesn’t want to leave the situation as she believes that being a good kid will take it all away. Oriko isn’t cool enough to break in and actually help Yuma, but at least she does give her some words of advice about the whole thing. That’s good….but helping would have been better. Especially when you consider the fact that she got a vision that Yuma was going to die. I didn’t mention it in this review yet, but Oriko’s magical ability is that she can see into the future. Unfortunately, she can’t control this ability so it happens completely at random.

Oriko doesn’t have a lot of time to rethink her moves either since a magical girl hunter in white has shown up. Her name is Sasa and Oriko is naturally on her hit list along with Kirika. The irony of all this….Oriko will have to fight hard in order to defeat this villain since Sasa has the ability to control other Witches. Still, Kirika and Oriko are fairly powerful so they should be able to handle this challenge with no problems!

So, Oriko’s a decent main character. As I mentioned earlier, she should have helped Yuma out more. Besides that, Oriko doesn’t really do anything wrong. She decides that instead of murdering every other magical girl like in the main manga, she’ll just go and fight the final Witch as best she can. We can assume that she died in this battle since even Homura couldn’t win in the TV show, but who knows…maybe she can pull it off. Either way, it’s much better than just trying to destroy someone. Hopefully the irony of Sasa trying to assasinate her and Kirika really hit home. It’s amazing how different a character can be in a what if though. The single difference of meeting Yuma before making her plan is hinted to have been the deciding point. (At least according to the volume) It’s hard to imagine Oriko’s personality changing so drastically, but it’s definitely a good thing since she was a very unsympathetic villain in the first series who was pretty bad.

Kirika’s also much better. She’ll still follow every order and while she talks about friendship, it comes across as hollow due to this. Naturally, Kirika looks a little weaker now that she’s one of the protagonists, but that’s a classic manga/anime trope so it’s to be expected. When she’s not around Oriko, Kirika is typically a lot more independent and heroic and that’s why she looked so good in her origin story. I don’t think the dynamic of Oriko and Kirika would make for great banter so I’d hope that more characters would be introduced in a long running series. Especially since the manga keeps trying to pair these two up and has a lot of teasing between them. Focusing on the action is much better.

Especially since we can finally see the action scenes this time. The art really has improved and it is leagues ahead of the first two volumes in the Oriko series. Those were almost unreadable at times while this one looks more like your standard action manga. It’s still not incredible, but it certainly rises up to an average level and is clear enough where you can easily get what is happening on every page. I was pleasantly surprised to see this.

As for the main villain, Sasa was okay I suppose. She fits the bill as the villain and her army of witches is also fairly impressive. She’s certainly very greedy since she wants all of the Grief seeds for herself, but this strategy definitely seems risky. Why go out of your way to attack other Magical Girls when there are already so many seeds to grab? Well, I guess she needed some kind of motivation. Her design was a little on the generic side though.

Finally, Yuma’s a good character. It’s too bad that she had such a tragic past though. The topic of child abuse is a little too dark for this title and especially since she actually died in one timeline. It shows that this threat was quite serious and it took Yuma too long to get out of there. It was great to see the grand parents show up and take her away. I would have liked to have seen a prison announcement for good measure as well, but this was a great start.

Overall, While this volume’s art was significantly better than the main series and Oriko/Kirika were greatly improved as characters, it was not able to beat the main title. I really missed having the main characters of the TV show around since they really held up the first manga. The fights were solid and since this was a single volume, the pacing was very quick as well. It’s an easy 7 if not for Yuma. If you don’t mind a dark plot like that, then I believe you’ll be able to enjoy this manga a lot more than the other one. If it is an issue, then I recommend checking out the two volume Oriko series instead. The art may be bad, but at least you’ll get to see Homura, Kyoko, and Mami with solid roles. They look really good and have the best scenes in the series. With this volume now complete as well, I look forward to seeing how the next Madoka manga titles fare. I’m still waiting for a definitive one!

Overall 3/10

Superman Red Son Review

Posted on August 12, 2016 by dreager1

It’s time to look at a classic Superman title that takes place in an alternate timeline. What if the Americans had not found Superman? That’s a question that many people ask themselves and this comic is essentially an interpretation of that concept. Being American is a rather large part of Superman’s character if you ask me so the character would definitely be pretty different, but his actual character should still be very heroic and just. Nature vs Nurture after all and his good heart should win out. This book starts to have him jump the fence a little towards the end, but for the most part he is portrayed well.

So, the soviets find Superman and he grows up to be their nuclear deterrent. Russia becomes a super power and nobody dares to mess with them. Eventually, every country falls in line with the Soviet Union except for the good ole USA. We’re not exactly team players after all and the USA will never bow to any other country. America hires Lex Luthor to put a stop to the Superman problem, but can his genius pull it off? Meanwhile, can Superman truly create a utopia as long as humans exist? Within Russia, the Man of Steel has managed to eliminate just about all crime, but a lot of bad things still happen constantly over in America. Free Will vs Security is the debate that he must wrestle with here.

As mentioned earlier, the comic is fairly well written and ends up being very engaging as a result. It’s always fun to read a good Superman story and this was a nice take on his origin. Seeing the Superman and Lex debates were certainly fun…even if the Lex hype may have been a little too much at certain points. Really just one in particular. Before Lex can verbally debate Superman, Brainiac quickly shoots the genius because he estimates that Lex would have talked him into suicide in a few seconds. (or minutes) This is essentially meant to be taken as fact and Superman was getting crushed in every single debate he was in, but I like to think that his strength of will would be a little better than that. At least it showed how Superman knew that he was getting to be in a dicey spot.

At first, Superman acted like his normal self. He saved people in Russia and protected the country without actually harming innocents or destroying anyone. He defeated his share of villains and also took out the fake Superman and other opponents who popped up. (I did feel bad for the fake Superman though) Once he saw the poverty in Russia and assumed command…that’s when things got pretty dicey. The power went to his head and the change was rather fast. He started walking into traps and he turned Russia into a complete police state. The way he sacrificed Wonder Woman for his plan also wasn’t a very Superman-esque move as he didn’t show a whole lot of remorse afterwards. At least he made the right call in the end, but it certainly took him long enough.

I suppose that the situation will always be tough for Superman after a while. Since he can hear everything across the world, there will literally always be someone who needs to be saved at some location. There will always be criminals and he really wouldn’t have any time for a secret identity. That part of the plot was also interesting since he didn’t have to bother with one in Russia. If he didn’t have to worry about being Clark Kent in the current comics, he could certainly save a whole lot more people. It would be at the expense of his daily life though and that could mentally burn him out a lot quicker than necessary. There is a big plot twist in the final page of the comic as well and it’s certainly a pretty cool one. I certainly like this time paradox and it adds another layer to Superman’s origin. It’s not one that actually matters, but it’s still cool all the same.

Lex Luthor was certainly a very good antagonist to have here. He’s not completely off the rails evil as per usual this time. He still wants to stop Superman at all costs and he is hired by the government to work officially which likely helps to temper him. If Superman had been on the US side…well we know how that turns out. It just ended up being convenient for Lex that Superman chose the wrong side. Lex’s intellect was certainly shown in its full force here as his elaborate plans were quite great. Of course, you can make the case that Superman’s intellect is roughly on par with how he did a lot of predicting of his own. The only facet of Lex’s character that wasn’t very good was his relationship with Lois. For some mild shock value, they were married in this comic and the pairing doesn’t really make any sense.

We are never given any reasons as to why Lois would go with him. He never has any time for her since he is obsessed with Superman and even randomly tries to divorce her at one point. I believe that they stick it out, but they’re essentially acquaintances by the end as opposed to a couple. Lane’s role is rather small beyond this so she didn’t get a chance to stand out. Batman gets a mild role here as well and he is a much more extreme “VIVA LA RESISTANCE!” vigilante than the Dark Knight that I am used too. It was a fun take on him I suppose even if I’m not sure why he changed so drastically here. Regardless, he did a good job of standing up to Superman and was a good mini boss although he didn’t get a whole lot of hype this time. He was a difficult antagonist to stop, but he doesn’t get too much screen-time. It was a fun little cameo in a way.

Wonder Woman and Green Lantern also appear at different points. GL’s appearance certainly wasn’t his greatest, but he seemed fairly decent. He just didn’t get a chance to do much and taking down Superman is a little above his pay grade. Wonder Woman looked good as she helped Superman out until he went over the deep end. With the friend zone intact, they made a good team. While Superman could have handled the situation a lot better, I don’t really get why she was so upset with him though. As far as I could tell, he did his best to make sure that her recovery was smooth and I don’t believe that he absolutely knew what effect the ordeal would have on her. Maybe he did though since he is a genius in which case I suppose she should be upset. She ultimately did decide to perform the deed though….lets not go in circles here.

Brainiac also shows up for a little while and he had a fun role. His final moments will be sure to please his fans since Brainiac would have not looked very good otherwise. He’s always been a solid villain even if he is less interesting than most of Superman’s other foes. The Man of Steel just has too many good villains to choose from at this point. There were some other side characters like the traitor, Pyotr, but they’re not all that important in the grand scheme of things.

I’d say that the first half of the comic is certainly better than the second. That’s probably because the concept is still very fresh and unique at the beginning and Superman still feels like himself through and through. That being said, it never jumps the fence and even though Superman may have not totally stayed in character, he didn’t go over the top for no good reason like in Gods and Monsters or even Justice League the animated series. Justice Lord Superman had been in character for a while, but deciding to destroy the Flash for kicks? That’s a “Jump the shark” moment for him. The ending of this comic has a lot of great moments to help keep it close to the first half.

The art was quite good in this comic. I liked Superman’s new design and the whole atmosphere is slightly darker, but not in a gritty sense. It’s more like a dark timeline where everything is a little sandy, but still light. Even when it’s day time, the comic makes it feel more like the afternoon. It does a good job of capturing the political element along with the action and solid dialogue. You can also see how Superman and the other characters age throughout the comic. Art plays a big role in any comic and it really helped this one live up to its potential.

Overall, Superman Red Son is definitely a very good Superman story. It’s certainly not his best as Superman Unchained still takes that title (as well as the title of best comic of all time) but it’s up there. I haven’t read a great deal of Superman comics to be honest so this is probably in my top 5 by default. I really need to check more of them out considering that he’s my favorite comic book character of all time. Of course, I have read quite a few JLA stories so I suppose that they count. I definitely recommend this comic. It has a good amount of action as well as political drama, which makes for a good mix.

Overall 8/10

Midnight Special Review

Posted on August 12, 2016 by dreager1

I remember seeing the trailer to this in theaters and not being too impressed. The concept of a kid with super powers can be done well and has been in the past. Just look at Superman. Unfortunately, this film doesn’t go all that far with the concept. If you were hoping for a thriller with the heroes trying to escape the aliens and ducking the government….well that’s not going to happen. It’s mostly just the main characters trying to get from point A to point B and not much besides that. It ended up being a bit of a boring thriller, which is never a good thing.

The film starts out with a news report that a boy has been kidnapped. We then see the main character Roy and his son Alton. The government is after Alton because he has super vision and it seems like he can intercept radio broadcasts. This is a security risk and something big is happening in 5 days (around that much time anyway) so they have to catch him ASAP. This won’t be easy though since Roy has a gun and he’s travelling with another guy named Lucas. The government may be after him, but what can they do? Not much it seems as the government looks incredibly bad the whole time. Let’s hope that the big event doesn’t spell their doom!

So what is the main problem with this film? Well, I’d say that it is the film being rather boring which is the problem. It really drags on and on and on as the characters just sit around and talk. Even as the government starts to learn about the kid, it’s not as interesting and sensational as you would hope. This is due in part to the fact that the kid’s abilities aren’t all that impressive. He can shoot blue lights out of his eyes, which is all right I suppose, but his other abilities wouldn’t even seem that odd. If he hadn’t been tapping into the government frequencies, they likely would not have even known about it.

It’s also tough for me to stay engaged in a film where a kid is one of the main characters. I dunno, they just can’t act well enough or in this kid’s case, Alton doesn’t really act like a kid should. It’s partially due to the twist of course, but he tries to sound wise beyond his years at some points. It doesn’t work since he is a normal kid at other times. He needs to pick one side and then just stick to it for a while. I didn’t care for the two adults either though. Roy panics and yells a lot. I actually figured that the other guy was the Dad for a while before they mentioned that it was Roy. I dunno, I just never got that vibe from him so it was pretty surprising. I guess Roy had no reason to be happy so it makes sense that he was downcast the whole time, but he just wasn’t likable.

As for Leon, he seemed a lot more reasonable the whole time. The fights between him and Roy did get real old real fast though as they seemed to always fight about the same exact things. It also doesn’t help that he destroyed an innocent cop who was just trying to do his job. When you consider what the actual goal was, then it’s even worse. The journey didn’t seem to matter all that much by the end as nothing was really accomplished as a result of the journey. The only difference is that we don’t have a cop anymore and the government chase is over.

One of the few supporting characters is a guy named Paul. He’s from the NSA and is doing some snooping into this case. Unfortunately, he’s in over his head with this and as he seems to be puzzled about why he is even here, Paul decides to just help Alton out. This leads to a large amount of plot hax as the kid and him slip past a few dozen armed guards at a heavily protected government installation. How did they escape? The film couldn’t be bothered to explain so we’re led to believe that shutting the lights off was enough to scare the guards and get them to scatter as Alton and Paul escape. Great….I’m not buying it though. At least the government wasn’t completely evil this time. They were fairly reasonable with how they handled the kid. Getting two random cult gunners to come and secure him though? A little iffy, but maybe they did it of their own volition. We don’t know for sure.

Since the film was a bit of a snorefest, there was one thing that could have easily saved the movie. A cool alien attack at the end. Imagine the hype if aliens had suddenly rained down on the cities and started firing at everyone. Not only would it have immediately forced the film to switch genres, but the whole situation would have gotten 20x more exciting in a single instant. That would have definitely been a blast if you ask me. After all, this film’s premise heavily implies aliens from the Get Go. A classic “He’s warning us that they’re coming!” would have been a nice thing for the film to build around instead of just focusing on the journey.

Overall, Midnight Special is easily one of the most boring films that I have ever seen, but it technically doesn’t do a whole lot of things wrong. It’s boring, but not inappropriate and I’ll always take the former. I suppose that’s enough to keep from giving it a negative score this time around. I still wouldn’t really recommend it as you’re better off watching the recent Star Trek Beyond film, but if you want to see a alien esque film without the aliens/action…then this could be your cup of tea. Just prepare for a very long car ride with lots of plot hax moments sprinkled in for good measure.

Overall 5/10

Suicide Squad Review

Posted on August 9, 2016 by dreager1

Suicide Squad got a lot of hype early on since it was going to be a “superhero” film about super villains. If the concept behind this wasn’t terrible enough then the actual product makes sure to finish the job. I would actually go as far as to say that this is the worst superhero film of all time. This is only counting titles that I have seen of course as Batman The Killing Joke and other extreme titles like Deadpool could possibly still lose to this one. As it stands, Suicide Squad did an admirable job of lowering the bar considering that titles like Catwoman, Flashpoint Paradox, (While not on the same level of terrible, Flashpoint destroyed an entire dvd line so there’s that) and Justice League Gods and Monsters. There’s really not much to like about this film, but a whole lot to despise. In all fairness, I had a hunch that I was not going to like this film from the start and my hunches are rarely wrong. The tagline of them being the worst heroes was already a sign of things to come. It had some of the worst posters that I have ever seen for an action film and the trailer was pretty bad. I really didn’t think that the film could turn things around.

Like Batman V Superman, this film may also be getting an R rated extended cut as some point. As with the former, I’m sure that it’ll be even worse. It hasn’t been confirmed, but good ole Reddit scooped up a rumor of the scenes that were cut and if even half of those are true, this film really could have gotten a 0. Whoever did the editing for this film definitely deserves some props. That being said, he should have cut out another good chunk of the film to really make it watchable.

The plot involves a corrupt business woman named Amanda Waller. As she is a murderer who is protected by the government, she decides that it would be a good idea to get more murderers into the streets. They can go on suicide missions and possibly get some other people along the way. She manages to capture Harley Quinn, Captain Boomerang, Deadshot, and some other guys with a little help from Batman. After putting a bomb in their necks, she sends them off on their first mission to stop a supernatural threat which has been murdering people for 3 days. (A little late eh?) Can these humans hope to win?

Let’s back up one more time. The Suicide Squad idea was presented after someone asked a hypothetical question about what the government could have done if Superman had burst into the White House and attacked. Amanda brings up the Suicide Squad, but there should have been a lot of laughter in the room with several members running out the door. These guys would have trouble with Batman…they wouldn’t last a second against Superman. This has to be the worst idea ever presented when you think about the fact that there is 0% chance of success. Ah well, I guess it’s good that the government is humoring Waller before she stabs them all in the back.

The main problem with the film is the general gritty vibe that it goes for. This translates into every other aspect of the film. First and foremost is the terrible writing. The characters use the s word more than some abridged episode on Youtube and those titles don’t shy away from language. There’s a curse word in just about every sentence and it just never, ever ends. Every single joke has to use a curse word as well and you’ll wish that there was a censor. The amount of beeps would drive everyone crazy, but it would be worth it to save the writing. Harley Quinn’s very first scene is her pulling a “New 52 Starfire” as she lets the guards know that she is a free woman, but on her terms to put it nicely. Harley Quinn’s a terrible character like the others, but more on that later. Unlike Batman V Superman, which had some of the greatest dialogue in a CBM, this one had no good lines and all of the moments that could have been cool were destroyed by the language.

Next up is the terrible soundtrack. It is easily the worst soundtrack of all time. The songs naturally have a lot of cursing in them as well with the quick f-word drop to remind us that every PG-13 film has to use it at least once now. Hopefully the Marvel Cinematic Universe keeps it out of their movies. Even if the beats were occasionally cool, the lyrics threw you out of every moment and the film would have been better off without any songs. Silent films did work fairly well back in the day after all. If a film’s got nothing nice to say, then it should keep everything to itself.

For a film with this intense name, there isn’t actually a lot of cool action in Suicide Squad. There’s only one real fight scene at the very end of the film as the team takes on a mystical god. The problem is the fact that the writers should have never put a team of humans to take on such a powerful fighter. The villain could have destroyed all of them in an instant, but plot hax took control at this point and steered the villains to safety. The way that the Squad deals with the threat by the end is terrible and makes no actual sense. The writers had put themselves in a hole and couldn’t get out. For the rest of the film, you only get to see the Squad beating up police guards, army men, of CGI rock creatures that can’t fight back. Not the most thrilling fight scene if you ask me.

Also, once again….I just can’t root for these villains as the main characters. They don’t care for justice and they work for a mass murderer who always takes out innocent civilians. You really want the CGI rock creatures to defeat them and put an end to the whole debacle. It’s quite telling that the film jumps into the climax very quickly, but then spends an extremely long time getting out. This is complete with beer breaks and the like. The pacing was admirable, but the film clearly didn’t know what it wanted to do from there. It also couldn’t handle the suspense as well as a film like Resident Evil because the characters in the Evil series were much more likable even if they were throwaways. At the very least, you could root for Alice. Here…even the GI Joe character was fairly bad the whole time. It’s also a comic book film where the Squad have equipment/actual powers so it’s hard to get up to the same intensity. Maybe if the rock creatures had actually been Xenomorphs or if there was a good soundtrack, but there wasn’t. The film tried to play itself out as a zombie outbreak kind of title, but never went all the way because of its identity crisis.

All right, let’s take a quick break from bashing the film. The special effects were fairly good even if they were out of place. The two supernatural villains had fairly good designs. One of them went for the classic “Gods of Egypt” look which was cool. He actually looked like a cooler version of Apocalypse than what we got in the new X-Men film. His abilities were great as well and he was a great antagonist. It’s a shame that he had to be put in a film consisting of D listers. The other villain looked like something out of the Grudge and she tried to throw the horror aspect into the story. Once again though, this element disappears as swiftly as it arrives and she turned out to be too powerful. She could have eliminated the Squad many times and her plan really should have succeeded, but we do need those sequels….

The visuals look like what I’m expecting from the Ghost Busters film or even Dr. Strange to an extent. The film really goes all out trying to make the villain very eccentric and ritual-esque. She does a lot of odd dances even has basic hypnosis. It felt like something from the 90’s. It worked fairly well, but again..you should never pair a god against random humans. So, at least the visuals were a positive and the villains worked pretty well. Too bad we couldn’t save them for the Justice League film as that title is desperately looking for a villain. Even the Wonder Woman film would have been glad to have them.

Back to the negatives. Lets look at it from a character by character basis. Captain Boomerang is terrible as he’s just another drunk murderer who tricks other people into dying and has a nice laugh about it. There’s nothing to like with this guy. Deadshot is the most “heroic” of the bunch, but he’s not a hero by any definition and only helps people according to his own sense of twisted morals. It is quite telling that his number one wish for happiness is to murder Batman. He may try to be sympathetic, but he’s as ruthless as they come and no amount of jokes can help gloss over the fact that he is a mass murderer.

Harley Quinn may be the character who is supposed to stand out in the film, but she is portrayed in a very negative light. For starters, she is mainly used as fanservice with her costume basically just being a pair of undergarments for the entire film. A great deal of her lines are suggestive and her relationship with the Joker is very twisted. He tortures her when they first meet and there’s nothing shown to suggest that things have changed in the slightest. She’s basically his possession and that’s certainly not a proper relationship. As long as she stays with him, her life certainly isn’t going to get any better and I’ll be rooting against them since this is not the kind of relationship that should be portrayed in a positive light for any span of time. Her actual character needs a lot of work too though as made obvious during the really random CPR scene as part of her flashback. That scene was just brutal.

This is the worst portrayal of the Joker as well. He’s portrayed as your average mobster who isn’t very confident and is very obsessed with Harley Quinn. There is no moment where you feel like he is an evil genius and he doesn’t seem to care about Batman at all. There is no hero/villain dynamic there as the Joker is just a nobody who runs away from Batman and keep crashing his car. It’s also a huge plot hole to have the Joker around at all. Let’s face it, since Batman is a mass murderer in this series, there is no way that the Joker would still be alive. If Batman couldn’t find him, then it just further proves that the Batman of this film universe isn’t very smart. Even once Joker resurfaces and starts attacking installations all around, Batman never shows up. I’m still banking on the theory that the Joker is Robin, but it doesn’t really help this plot hole as Batman would likely still finish him off anyway. This Joker tries to be over the top crazy and slightly effeminate, but it just ends up leaving a broken character who makes the Lex Luthor in Batman V Superman look good.

Killer Croc was all right. He didn’t really have any character and was just around to bite people. He barely even qualifies as a character, but automatically that does mean that he beats most of the cast. Katana is around as well and she’s another character who really enjoys murdering others. She basically lives off hype though as she doesn’t really get a chance to do anything on screen. When she finally does fight, Katana looks incredibly weak and anticlimactic. She lost in a sword fight to add insult to injury. It’s going to be very hard to take her seriously after this.

Rick Flag is the “good guy” of the group. He was in the army and knows how to end a fight. He has crossed the line in the service, but still has a moral compass. Unfortunately, he is a complete yes man and starts to get black mailed very quickly. He has to resort to asking the people that he taunted for help and the whole thing is a very sad experience for him. After opening up to the other villains the film tried to make him a likable character, but it didn’t really work. The fact that Waller predicted that he would fall in love for a hostage that she sent him to find shows what a shallow/superficial guy he was from the start. I think I’ll probably prefer Steve Trevor from the Wonder Woman film.

Almost forgot about Diablo. He’s portrayed as the nice character who doesn’t want to be a villain anymore. The film gives us a very dark, gritty, and tragic past to forcefully push this message at us. Of course, he finally embraces his powers at the end along with a quick curse word as he runs at the villain. Another possibly good moment wrecked. At least the team has someone who can fight thanks to his true form, but the past was too tragic for me and I’ll find it very hard for this character to be even remotely likable.

Waller is another fan favorite character, but I don’t really care for her. I like the tough sounding government guys and I don’t even mind when they’re evil sometimes like in the latest Bourne film. Perhaps I wouldn’t mind her if she had been portrayed as totally evil because she is. Waller is a mass murderer who should be locked up like the others. My problem is that nobody seems to care as even Batman gives her a pass. I mean…are you kidding me? Batman giving her a pass is ludicrous and makes him look terrible as a hero. I know he crosses a lot of lines and probably doesn’t mind villains as much in this version, but locking her up has to be a top priority. The problem is that she can black mail him as well so there probably won’t be anything happening on that corner. Waller was great in the Justice League show because she actually cared a little more about her country. She still used underhanded methods to succeed and committed many villainous acts, but killing a group of men just because they knew too much? I believe that would be out of character for her and it was just too much when that happened here. The film went too far trying to make her appear as a hype character.

I remember there being a lot of articles about how significant Batman’s role was going to be here and how he was going to be super scary and the main antagonist. That never happened so either the scenes were removed or it was more fake hype to build up the film. It’s too bad as that could have helped the film a lot since Batman’s scenes were the best in the film. “I don’t want to do this in front of your daughter” was a great fake line from Batman as he very clearly chose this time to attack since it would put Deadshot in a bad position. He knew that the villain couldn’t go out and risk hitting his daughter. Luckily, this Batman has very few scruples about using underhanded tactics and that’s how he was able to conclude the fight. The line just adds more salt to the wound since there’s nothing Deadshot can do about the situation. Batman is ruthless and since he is also eager to cross the line, he makes for a compelling villain. I wish that the films played Batman straight, but as it is, the other characters make him look like a perfect individual by comparison. I don’t know where the film would be without him.

It goes without saying that you should stick around past the credits. The scene is the best one in the film after all even if it makes someone not look too smart yet again since another individual has found out about his identity. I’m always up for some classic tough talk from both sides. It can be annoying when it’s one sided so the trade here is good. The film could have done a little more with this, but as it was, I was pretty satisfied. The tributes to the rest of the DCCU were fun and one character looked a lot better than how he was in Batman V Superman so that’s a good start. I think the cinematic universe from DC should go strongly from here. I am a little worried for Wonder Woman since there doesn’t seem to be much of a villain yet and her fighting ordinary soldiers is going to get old even quicker than this film’s fights, but I have hope that there will be big fight scenes. Surely DC wouldn’t let such an easy opportunity for more Man of Steel esque (Slower I suppose, but still hype) battles slip by would they? I have similar concerns for Justice League, but mainly because Superman isn’t there yet and the idea of having a Justice League film without its leader/main member would be an incredibly terrible idea.

Another negative is the fact that this film makes no real sense when placed into the DC expanded universe. This doesn’t affect the score, but it’s a problem that starts to appear a lot in expanded universes. If this supernatural monster has been destroying a city and its inhabitants for 3 days…where are Batman and Wonder Woman? They definitely should have been on the scene. Even Marvel’s gotten rather dicey with that as the President gets captured and nobody arrives to help. This is almost as bad since it’s an entire city and its been attacked for 3 whole days. At least you can make the argument that Batman and Wonder Woman are not heroes so maybe they didn’t care. It’s possible that they just saw it on the news and chuckled. Of course, that would go against Batman’s character development as he wants to help the world thanks to Superman. It’s feasible that Wonder Woman would not care though. She did stay out of the Man of Steel fight after all so maybe she would rather leave the humans to their own devices at this point. Hopefully the writers plan for this a little better in their upcoming films.

Now, how could this film have been saved? First of all, the excessive language has to go and the soundtrack’s got to disappear. Next, some of the grit has to go. Do we need to have shots of Harley Quinn being zapped and shocked by the Joker as well as the jail? No. We can also get rid of Diablo’s origin story which is gritty to be gritty. After we get rid of all this and give Harley Quinn an actual costume, we have to tone Waller down so she’s not completely insane and evil. Make her an antagonist, but a reasonable one. Batman needs to appear a lot more and there should be more DC cameos. Preferably with very loud and obvious rock music as we see the hero logos and the Squad learns about the Justice League. Throw in some more action scenes and give the main villain a better debut than to be cradled in a very awkward scene that was quite sad. Mix all of that together and we’ve got ourselves a decent film.

I could go on, but let’s start to wrap up with one last improvement. The film should have chosen a genre and stuck to it. It tried to throw in elements from Ghostbusters, (CGI supernatural threats) The Avengers, (All of the one liners and puns…just the terribly written versions) and Resident Evil. (A few lone survivors up against zombies) It just did not work at all though. You can’t be dark and gritty and expect to pull off something like the Avengers. Likewise, you can’t have a super down to Earth Resident Evil adventure when there are super powerful beings trying to destroy the whole world. The film needed to pick one angle and stick with it.

Overall, I’m glad that Rotten Tomatoes is taking so many shots at the film. I tend to disagree with the site quite often, but for once I’m on their side. This film was just hard to watch at times. If the film wanted all of the Suicide Squad members to be unlikable then they succeeded, but at a large price. It’s a shame since the Batman scenes were nice. I do like how the cinematography is so different from Marvel’s. The scenes look like they’re out of a TV show episode instead of a movie. It’d hard to describe, but the Batman vs Deadshot scene totally encapsulates this as opposed to the average Marvel fight scene. It’s less glamorous and stylized, but works quite well. Oddly enough, the hand to hand scenes are far better here than in the latest Bourne film, where you would expect it to be better. The fight scenes were the one part of this film that were not gritty. Unfortunately, the terrible soundtrack, characters, and writing keep this film way down on the totem pole. I don’t expect that I’ll ever see it again and I highly advise you to stay away. You’re better off watching Man of Steel again.

Overall 1/10

Puella Magi Oriko Magica Review

Posted on August 5, 2016 by dreager1

Well, it’s time to take a look at a short Madoka Magica What If story. Since Homura went back and forth in time to save Madoka so often, it makes sense that sometimes things would turn out very differently. This manga plays out like that as this universe has a new magical girl who can see the future and she decides to do something about it. Unfortunately, while the plot/concept are fairly good, the manga really fumbles the ball with the poor dialogue and really bad art. What should have been a home run knockout instead turns into a manga that just barely breaks even.

The plot involves three new characters who were made up for the series. Yuma is a girl whose parents were destroyed by a witch. Kyoko was able to vanquish it, but not in time to stop Yuma from being an orphan. As a result, Yuma tags along with Kyoko for a while and eventually becomes a magical girl with healing abilities. She makes for a good support fighter to have on the battlefield. Unfortunately, Kyoko then hears that someone is going around destroying magical girls so she sets off to stop this.

Meanwhile, Mami is actually the one who gets in on the action as she does a lot of sleuthing so Oriko deems her as a threat and sends Kirika to dispose of her. This will be a tough fight for Mami, but luckily Homura is also around and Kyoko manages to enter the fray as well. Can the classic Magical Girls defeat this pair of evil fighters or are they doomed in this timeline!?

Everything about this manga is a little off. Let’s go back to the art first since that’s probably the biggest issue here. It’s incredibly hard to see what’s happening during the fights. The art is all over the place and the character proportions don’t have any consistency. The facial expressions are downright crazy like one that I attached to the bottom. Homura’s face just makes no sense considering that she just blocked Kirika and is poised to win the fight. This is an issue that affects all of the characters throughout this two volume series. It’s so chaotic that it’s actually a lot clearer to read the series online since it is just one page at a time on a white canvass so everything is a lot easier to read through. Of course, this should never be necessary for a manga and still doesn’t make the actual quality any better. This is certainly a contender for worst artwork in a manga.

The pacing is also very odd. The first volume focuses almost completely on Kyoko and Yuma as they bond and fight witches together. It’s even mentioned by Kyoko that there are no other magical girls around since they’ve all been destroyed by the Magical Girl hunter. Then we cut away to Madoka’s town where there are Magical Girls everywhere. Mami just shows up out of nowhere and instantly becomes the main character for the second volume. Timeline-wise, this basically gets us to the start of the TV series except that Kyoko and Mami already know each other and Homura is a lot meaner than usual. In this timeline, Homura decided to be Madoka’s friend right from the get go and threatens anyone who even gets near them.

The tragic backstory for Yuma was also pretty unnecessary. She had bad parents which traumatized her as a kid so now she feels like everyone is going to abandon her. Yuma does a good job of coping with her powers and becoming a dependable ally at least. She ends up giving the heroes the pep talk that they needed to continue the fight. That being said, only having healing abilities is definitely a pretty big liability in a fight and I can’t say that I’m a huge fan of her design. Nonetheless, she’s not a bad filler character I suppose.

On the other hand, Kirika is a fairly underwhelming villain who isn’t really likable. She really wants to please Oriko and doesn’t really care to think about anything else. She forgets all other details because they apparently take up too much space in her mind. As a result, she’s the perfect killing machine for Oriko to use. Her abilities aren’t bad as she can slow down an opponent and has a lot of magical knives to use against her opponents. She nearly defeated Mami so that’s definitely a pretty impressive feat. It’s not enough to make her a good character though.

We’ve also got Oriko, who is the main villain here, but she’s no better either. She saw the future and immediately pulled a Bruce Wayne from Batman V Superman, but takes it to the next extreme. “Everyone has to die!!” is basically her view as all magical girls are far too dangerous since they can turn into Witches. I’m assuming that after she destroyed them all, she would end up destroying herself and Kirika as well. She’s very unhinged as the manga shows. Her power is basically precog and she has some exploding energy balls as well. She’s certainly not that great in a fight. I also don’t get why she encouraged Yuma to jump into the fray as that just adds another target for her to destroy, but maybe she just has fun this way.

As for the real characters, Madoka and Sayaka don’t really get to do anything in this version. Neither one of them has powers after all as Homura has gone to great lengths to ensure that they never get them. At least Madoka realizes that Homura isn’t helping the other heroes out and is only protecting Madoka so the heroine calls her out on it. This doesn’t work all that well though and then Madoka just walks into the battlefield to help out. This wasn’t her greatest plan, but she was a solid character as always. It’s certainly in character for her to try and help out.

Kyoko gets a rather large role as you would expect. She looks pretty good. Unfortunately, Kyoko never really gets to test her mettle against the villains, but I’d say that she would have held her own quite well. It’s definitely hinted that Mami and Homura are stronger, but being the third best isn’t all that bad. Getting depressed for a few pages after learning about the Witch revelation felt rather out of character though. It was pretty forced in there. While Kyoko isn’t good at being a nice person, at least she tried with Yuma.

I didn’t care for Mami in the TV show because she cracked under pressure and tried to murder the whole cast, but she did a good job here. As always, she also got depressed towards the end, but at least she was just willing to let her friends die and didn’t actively expedite the process. I know that strength shouldn’t really affect how much you like a character, but it really did help her case a lot when she was able to defeat Kirika. If she had lost that fight, I definitely would have been a little upset. As it stands, she did a good job of using strategy to claim victory and proved to be the second best character in the manga. The franchise really loves to hype her up as one of the strongest fighters, but I’d definitely say that Homura deserves the number 1 spot.

Naturally, Homura was my favorite character in the manga. She got a lot of hype from the villains since she already knows the truth about the Witches and has seen the end of the world multiple times. To Homura, this predicament is nothing new as she’s been through a lot over the years. Homura’s time stop ability is still super useful as well and I dare say that she probably would have been able to beat both villains on her own. I was hoping for more of a direct win without any help, but the end result was fine. This version of Homura definitely doesn’t mess around as she goes for the kill shot the instant that she sees the two villains and even tries to trick them by pretending to negotiate. Homura was really handled well although she was a little too drastic when Mami just tried to talk to her. Seriously, Homura spends about 90% of her time threatening or trying to destroy someone in this manga.

Unfortunately, the ending is quite bad. It’s not horrendous in part due to the fact that Homura is here so the ending has no real stakes. Had the series been longer or Homura was not in the equation, then I think the ending would have hurt the manga more. As it stands, it just doesn’t make much sense and I don’t like how it allowed Oriko to get one last laugh. There’s no way that this plan should have worked to even the slightest degree. Even Kyubei wasn’t too thrilled with how things played out and usually he’s grinning from ear to ear.

On the bright side, since this manga is only two volumes long it has to move at a very rapid pace. Volume 2 in particular feels like an abridged series as all of the characters just quickly meet up and get ready to rumble. It’s a lot better than the first volume if you ask me and if the series had kept going on for a while maybe it could have redeemed itself. Of course, the pacing may have been slower so the whole thing could have backfired instead.

Overall, This manga spinoff wasn’t very good. There have been several titles that have come out for Madoka Magica and this one technically has one of the cooler sounding plots. Hopefully the others are better at the actual execution of it. Some of the other manga out there definitely sound promising and it wouldn’t be hard to top this one. The art is just so bad for this manga and the writing was sub par as well. Throw in the aspects that are Yuma’s random tragic past and the only thing that really keeps this manga together are the characters from the TV show. They’re still a lot of fun to follow and the action scenes were fun/hype even if they were hard to read at times. If you’re a big Madoka fan then I recommend this title since it’s great to see the cast in anything since the show was so short. It makes titles like this a lot easier to swallow since you’ll jump at anything. It’s why I want a big Madoka fighting game to help fill in this void. Ah well, just don’t go in expecting anything too good or you’ll be gravely disappointed. Keep your expectations tempered and you will have some fun with this manga.

Overall 5/10

	thezofinfinity on Alien vs One Above All
	thezofinfinity on Why Mario Odyssey is better th…
	thezofinfinity on Why Mario Odyssey is better th…
	thezofinfinity on Sonic vs One Above All
	thezofinfinity on Sonic vs One Above All
	Anonymous on Invisible Woman vs Molecule…

DReager1.com

The Ultimate Fighting/Review Site

Category Archives: Reviews

Little Battlers Experience W Review

Donkey Kong Country 3 Review

Fairy Tail Zero Review

Rurouni Kenshin Restoration Review

The SIlver Age Justice League of America Volume 1 Review

Puella Magi Oriko Magica Extra Story Review

Superman Red Son Review

Midnight Special Review

Suicide Squad Review

Puella Magi Oriko Magica Review

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: