A Crime Against Logic

An Abrupt Return (with a bit of content)

2010-12-24T22:46:00.004+08:00

It's been forever since my last post, but whatever... Since I was sufficiently bored waiting for Christmas, I decided to make a quick post.

Ever since Onemanga stopped hosting manga scanlations, I've been out-of-tune with new manga these past few months. As a result, I don't get to read much stuff aside from the usual Jump fare.

Despite that, I'll be discussing a relatively new manga series for now.

ENIGMA

I'm not exactly sure if the title is really Enigma or Enigme (due to a bit of spelling confusion), but I'll just go with Enigma since the alternative doesn't make sense.

Synopsis (shamefully copy/pasted from Manga Fox):
Haiba Sumio is a student at a Tokyo High School with an interesting ability... He occasionally falls asleep and wakes up with premonitions of the future written out on his "Dream Diary". With this ability, Sumio helps out people in trouble before anything bad happens, until one day when his peaceful life completely changes.

What I like about this title is that it falls under my favorite genres: Mystery and suspense thriller. As someone who enjoys works like Mirai Nikki, Doubt, Higurashi, and Umineko, I found myself entranced by the story from the get-go.

The story wastes no time with pointless exposition and introductions. Right from the start, we are buried into the heart of the mystery as seven unrelated people are trapped inside the school in a merciless survival game. It already raises numerous questions such as "Who is Enigma?" or "How were the seven of them chosen?".

All that said, the great potential for horror and suspense this title possesses is further heightened by the inclusion of supernatural elements into plot. I'm not sure if that will be helpful in the long run, but I'll just wait and see.

The strangest thing about this manga, however, is where it is published.

Believe it or not, Enigma is currently being published in the Weekly Shounen Jump. While I will not dispute the quality of this manga, this manga does not match with the general style of most Jump manga. I'm surprised that Jump would actually publish such a dark work, but I'm glad as well. This is a good sign that Jump is actually quite flexible.

I've only read this 12-chapters in, but it's still pretty good so far. From what I hear, this title seems to be well-received in Japan for a new work.

I do hope a group starts scanlating these regularly soon. Such a good work needs to be shared to as many people as possible.

Anyway, to conclude this post, I greet everyone a Merry Christmas.

The Bizzare and Obscure: Bungaku Shoujo

2010-07-28T05:53:00.008+08:00

Well, after a month, here's another installment of this little segment.

Today's focus is on Bungaku Shoujo, translated as Literature Girl in English. Originally a set of award-winning light novels, it has spawned a couple of manga adaptations, a movie, and a set of of OVA adaptations.

Before anything else, here's a short summary pilfered from ANN:

The "mysterious school comedy" centers on the unusual members of a high school literary club. Tōko Amano, a high school senior who calls herself the "literary girl" as the club president, is actually a supernatural creature (yōkai) that devours stories — she tears pages from books to munch on them. Her club subordinate is Konoha Inoue, a second-year high school boy who writes stories every day for Amano to eat. He once wrote an award-winning novel, but he wrote it under the penname Miu Inoue so readers thought the author was a mysterious 14-year-old bishōjo novelist. The stress from the novel's fame and its movie and television drama plans turned Inoue in an introverted recluse.

While the given summary has errors, it does effectively capture the heart of the series. The summary does emit a sort-of school life vibe, but in truth, the story goes a bit deeper. Having read Baka-Tsuki's translation of the first novel, I can tell that the mystery is one of the story's strengths. It makes for a fun time figuring out whoever is saying the the small excerpts that appear every so often. I wouldn't say that the mysteries are exactly "solvable", but the atmosphere is overwhelming nevertheless.

Of course, while the story often veers towards a more serious tone, it can be emotionally rewarding. There is this feeling of redemption and catharsis that washes over you when everything is there and done. One is free to shed tears or anything of the sort.

The plot of each novel is supposedly loosely related to a plot of a particular novel, so I'm guessing that some aptitude for literature might make this series more rewarding. The first novel, which is the only one I've read, is based on the novel Ningen Shikkaku. From what I hear, it's a pretty depressing piece of work about an unfeeling person who hides behind a mask to fit in with society. I won't say much more since it's a spoiler.

Now for the characters...

First off, there's the titular "Literature Girl" Amano Touko. She plays the role of the wise and dependable senpai who just happens to have a taste for good stories. Having watched the fist OVA, my admiration for her has since heightened. Then there's Inoue Konoha. Behind his average facade is an award-winning ex-author who has since quit writing. A complex protagonist is always a good sign. His reasons for breaking down and quitting most likely lies with his ex-girlfriend, Miu. Then there's Kotobuki Nanase. I'm not sure about what I read, but she actually hates Konoha being fake and pretending. Quite unusual for a potential love interest.

Overall, this is definitely something to try out for fans of mystery, drama, romance, and literature. If I were a Literature Girl, I would definitely gobble this one up.

Hm. That's it for my evaluation. Sadly, Baka-Tsuki has long removed the Bungaku Shoujo translations from their site. I'm considering buying the English-translated novels online.

If anyone is interested in a copy of the 1st novel translations, feel free to contact me through email or through the forum. I'd be happy to share such a wonderful piece to everyone. It truly saddens me that so few are actually aware that this wonderful series even exists.

Not sold?

Here's the OP from the OVA. See if this doesn't pull a few heartstrings.

From the Depths of Obscurity: Utsuro no Hako to Zero no Maria

2010-06-28T19:49:00.007+08:00

It's been a while since I've made a post(not that anyone is reading this to begin with). Today, I have found a great way to spend my free time.

Why don't I just blog about all the under-appreciated goodness out there?

Really. All I hear nowadays are people raving about Naruto, KHR, and all the like when there are so many undiscovered gems out there that are much better. There's nothing wrong with sticking to mainstream, but it would be best to widen our horizons. With that, I think it is my obligation as an anime/manga fan to open the eyes of the ignorant masses of the true vastness of the world of manga, anime, light novels, and visual novels.

And without further ado, I present...

Utsuro no Hako to Zero no Maria

Synopsis from Baka-tsuki:

It was March when the new transfer student Aya Otonashi arrived at the classroom 1-6. The entire class was stunned by her beauty and curious about the reason she transferred in the middle of the term.
Her "self-introduction", however, ended with a blunt mention of her name, upon which the classroom turned dead silent.

That is, until -

"Kazuki Hoshino"

- she called out my name.

"I'm here to break you."

Ah yes. I came across this light novel series in the AS forums a week ago or so. I was bored, so I decided to try it. I'm glad I did. Somehow, this series has redeemed light novel translations in my eyes after being plagued by horrid translations and pointless plots.

What sets this series apart, for me, is the quality of the mystery. Mystery is a common genre in fiction, but very few can do it right. All throughout reading the novels, I could feel the suspense and suspicion felt by the characters. I find myself questioning the characters' motives constantly. The supernatural element does not hinder the experience. In fact, you could say that the mystery depends on it. This sort of reminds me of Bungaku Shoujo, but I'll leave that for another day.

As for the main characters, Kazuki initially seems like the typical protagonist, but he eventually develops to be much more. He's still mostly typical, though he does have some moments of brilliance.

Maria, on the other hand, for lack of a better term, is awesome. I would compare her to Bakemonogatari's Senjougahara Hitagi in terms of personality. She is strong-willed and confident, especially when it comes to her goals. She also shows some wit and playfulness whenever she teases Kazuki mercilessly.

This is a great read... if you're a fan of supernatural mystery and philosophical themes.

Rosa Musou: The Game

2010-01-07T20:41:00.005+08:00

Well. It looks like our favorite abusive parent gets her very own sidescrolling shooter...

You play as Rosa as she fights her way through goats, butterflies, and stakes to rescue Maria for the clutches of Beatrice, that's what I think at least. Armed with only a shotgun, a fountain pen, and some bars of gold, she takes down everything in her path, living up to her title as Rosa Musou.

Despite being such a simple game, I found it horribly addicting, particularly because Rosa is so damn awesome. I never believed I could get so much fun from randomly shooting goats and scantily-clad girls. Aside from that, I found the art really cute and BGM is very catchy.

The game costs money to download, but here's a link to the Demo version:
http://ww3.tiki.ne.jp/~ri-msx/zero/rosa.htm

Controls:
"← →": Move left and right. "↑" jump. "↓" crouch.
"Z": shooting. Right number of bullets remaining is displayed on the screen. Progress is also used in conversation scenes.
"X": short-distance attack by the fountain. Use to skip conversation scenes.
"C": Hissatsu techniques by gold "golden dream". Quantity of gold will be displayed on the right.

* For items:
Crown: to replenish the bullets.
Gold: "Dreams of Gold" to use. Enter and clear without a bonus point.

Some awesome screenshots:

Rosa shooting some goats without mercy

Rosa vs. Beelzebub. Guess who wins.

Poor Belphegor...

Pondering on a New Year

2010-01-05T20:44:00.006+08:00

Happy new year non-existent readers.

To celebrate the new year, allow me to present something I came across while mindlessly watching a DVD copy of How I Met Your Mother Season 4.

This is a short song from the episode, "Possimpible".
This is, in short, a part of Barney Stinson's awesome "video resume".

This is what a resume should look like.

What made this so appealing for me is that the video reminded me so much of a real life resume by a man named Aleksey Vayner. His 2006 resume, "Impossible is Nothing", takes a similar tone of pompousness and ego as this one. Inevitably, he soon became an internet celebrity.

I'm guessing if Barney's resume is an intentional parody of Vayner's resume...

You be the judge.

A huge thanks to Witch Hunt for the EP5 patch!

2009-12-28T22:09:00.006+08:00

I cried tears of joy looking at this.

The Umineko EP5 patch I've been long anticipating is finally here. I've just finished reading it, and I'm exhausted. Maybe someday soon or later I'll be able create a detailed reaction to EP5, but for now, I'm too overwhelmed to say much. The best I can muster are a few stray comments...

My comments:
1. Bernkastel in this game is pure win. She makes no effort in hiding her malevolent nature. She spends most of the game wallowing in the sadistic pleasure from watching the struggles of others (particularly Beato, Battler, and Natsuhi). I am now sure. I love her.

2. Erika is a rather curious character. A lot of fans seem to hate her. After reading the Episode, I can understand where the dislike comes from. To put it simply: She's a bitch who always has to have her way. However, that is probably one of the reasons I like her. She shares the malice and style of Bernkastel (not surprising since she is Bern's piece to begin with). For me, her main flaw is her excess in pride. It cost her dearly in that game. Still, I am looking forward to seeing more of this "intellectual rapist".

3. The Episode does a great job in dissecting the entire mystery genre. It presents various interesting facts concerning the genre, such as the trust between writer and reader and the existence of clues that are not recognized by the detective. Many of these are tackled in Dlanor A. Knox's Decalogue. Knox's Decalogue proves useful even when reading casual detective novels. The ???? particularly reminded me of the "Anti-fantasy vs. Anti-mystery" reading provided by Ryukishi07.

4. The game brings up various bits of information that help greatly in the interpretation of the events in the past four games. This is strengthened by Knox's Ten Commandments, which provide the laws that any proper mystery must follow. That goes under the assumption that the story is a mystery and not a fantasy.

5. I also learned that the scenes presented are mostly free for interpretation. One can judge scenes to be real or fake as he/she wishes. The only things not open for interpretation are red truths. Well, this was already fact for a while now, but this game truly drilled that point in.

6. Next game is Endless Sorcerer Battler vs. Erika? Did the human side and witch side trade places? Regardless, I can only wait for the EP6 patch which is due many months from now, for my answer.

More stuff soon... hopefully.

A Merry Christmas to All...

2009-12-25T09:23:00.001+08:00

Before anything else...

Maria and Sakutarou would like to wish everyone...

MERRY CHRISTMAS!
__________________________________________

Now that the obligatory greetings are done and over with, time for another blog post. This time, I'll be expressing my reaction towards the long-awaited finale of the anime adaptation of Umineko no Naku Koro ni. This is the one episode that I have been waiting for since the time I completed Episode 4. Theoretically, this episode should contain the most epic scenes in the entire EP1-4.

Sadly, my expectations were not met. I don't know what went wrong. It wasn't a bad episode, but it still felt like utter fail when I watched it. Perhaps I raised my expectations too high from the episode preview. I really should have expected this. After all, Episode 25 definitely screwed up the pacing for this episode.

SPOILER ALERT
--------------------

Allow me to bring back that list from my previous post...

1. Ange's death while holding Battler's head in place

Fail. This scene wasn't done right. Ange was supposed to be holding Battler's head during this scene, so he wouldn't be able to look back. Also, her death was changed from being ripped apart piece-by-piece by burning hot pincers to spontaneously bleeding and fading away. The emotional impact is gone. Oh, and all the red text that should be there is gone too.

2. Epic red truth/blue truth exchange

This one was so so. The scene was nowhere as awesome as the one depicted in the SN. The red and blue text felt very rushed as expected. Some of the text wasn't even colored. However, my biggest gripe is the stakes that pierce Beato. They are supposed to be representative of the blue truth, so why aren't they at least blue in color? I also kinda expected the last one to come from the sky instead of the ground... This one passes barely.

3. Ghost/Dragon Kinzo

I applaud this one. The image says it all.

4. "Watashi wa... dare?"

This too. This one managed to evoke similar emotions I felt when playing the SN. This is Beato's "final" riddle... It felt like it too.

5. Small bombs

Wow. They actually included this one. Good work!

6. Ange burgers

Now we go to ?????, or the tea party of witches. This part was the biggest failure of the entire episode. They cut out all the parts where Bernkastel and Lambdadelta have fun mocking Ange's death, calling her a hamburger. It probably has to do with them changing Ange's death to become more "child-friendly".

7. Bernkastel troll

Moving on with the witches' tea party, Bern and Lambda starting talking about Beato's hopeless situation, and how Beato's victory is impossible. They included that just fine, but they left out Bern's epic troll face during that part. The only reason I've lasted so long watching this is for that scene, and it turns out they omitted it.
Observe:

This is what a troll face should look like.

Well, yeah. That was my reaction to Umineko no Naku Koro ni episode 26, though it was actually just more of me whining at how the anime messed up. In case it wasn't obvious, those were just my personal nitpicks on the episode. This is in no way what an objective review should look like.

This is just me wasting time until the EP5 patch is released. 'Til then I'll probably be obsessed with Umineko. Please bear with me.

A rant on Umineko 26

2009-12-23T22:53:00.000+08:00

With the English patch of EP5 of the Japanese sound novel, Umineko no Naku Koro ni, due for release this month, I can't help but be excited. No matter how much I say that Witch Hunt can take as long as they want with their patch, I feel the exact opposite. Needless to say, I can't feel comfortable lately without checking their site every few hours. Right now, my obsession is at its peak, so I need some way of diverting that excess energy...

Anyway, despite the overwhelming concensus that episode 26 of the Umineko anime will be epic fail, I'm still keeping my expectations up. Sure, they might just hastily cram all the best moments of EP4 into something horrid, but there is nothing that says that there is absolutely no chance of a decent episode adaptation ever happening, just look at the previous episode after all.

One might ask me, "Why are you so optimistic?"
I'll answer with this:

Okay, okay... I know a single episode preview doesn't prove anything, but all I can say is that the preview appealed to my emotions. The preview made me remember some of the most touching moments that I had forgotten in those parts of the SN. Hell, that preview made me love Beatrice a whole lot more. Not to mention, the BGM used was simply beautiful.

I'm not expecting a perfect episode. I just want something that will attack my emotions the same way that the preview did. Of course, I also have my nitpicky side which will rage if the anime omits certain parts.

SPOILER ALERT
--------------------

These will be the things I will be looking for in the episode (and it better be done well):

1. Ange's death while holding Battler's head in place
2. Epic red truth/blue truth exchange
3. Ghost Kinzo
4. "Watashi wa... dare?"
5. Small bombs
6. Ange burgers
7. Bernkastel troll

I doubt the anime can actually include all of these, I'll probably be fine as long as they still include #7. Not including that is instant failure I think. Well, the English subs will probably appear by tomorrow hopefully, so only time will tell.

An opening post... plus Superman.

2009-12-22T23:22:00.000+08:00

Well, this is my blog.
I made this since I was bored at the time, so no guarantees on the frequency of updates...

Aside from that, I won't be posting much about my life in this site. My life is dead boring, definitely not something to look forward to. Instead, I will be using this blog to post random things that I find amusing or unusual along my never ending journey across the internet and wherever else. I may be posting anime-related content from time-to-time, so no surprises when that happens. Anyway, I doubt many people would bother reading this since I'm only doing this as a means of self-satisfaction and relief.

For those who are curious, the name "raven paradox" is based on an actual logical paradox that attacks the reliability inductive logic. I don't feel like summarizing it, so here's a wiki link. This is a paradox that is often referenced in the Japanese sound novel, Umineko no Naku Koro ni, though it is called "Hempel's Raven" in the novel.

First off, here's a little something that made my day:

This site contains 200+ comic book covers of our "favorite" defender of justice being a jerkass. I'm already considering replacing my favorite superhero with this guy. He's definitely not the Superman I know.

My favorite so far:

God, this guy is such a dick. I love him already.
Will continue reading for now...