This is a gorgeous animated drama of a woman seeking revenge.
Mizu is an outcast in feudal Japan , a bi-racial child who narrowly escaped being killed at birth. She grows up determined to avenge her mother against the foreigner who ruined everything, living as a man and training as a warrior to achieve her primary goal: vengeance.
Bonding with other outcasts despite her efforts to remain cold and uncaring, she finds that her non-vengeance attempts at living push her back toward the violence she seeks.
The imagery in this series is strikingly beautiful, and I spoke to the television with delight over countless compositions. The lighting! The buildings! The skies! The waves! The reflections! Yes, this is a supremely violent action series, but it is also one of great beauty.
I love everything but the very end, though I understand it has been renewed, so the finality I seek (setting aside Mizu’s motivations) may yet be delivered in more gorgeous episodes.
These are the first two seasons (20 episodes total) of a series based on Isaac Asimov’s books about a galactic empire, and the organization set up by a mathematician to cushion that empire’s fall.
There are several stories overlapping across these series. Key figures include Hari Seldon, the mathematician who predicts the fall of the empire; Gaal, the mathematician who leaves her anti-knowledge planet and is immediately at risk of execution for associating with Hari; the Brothers Dawn, Day, and Dusk, genetic emperor clones who rule as a set in staggered life stages, decanted whenever one of them needs to be replaced; Demerzel, the last survivor of the empire’s attack on her kind, who is a ruthless and eternal enforcer of the empire’s rule; and the people who follow Hari, who appear to pose an existential threat to the empire.
Elements I enjoyed about it, that kept me eager for new episodes:
a high-stakes story about the future of humanity and its variations on thousands of worlds
scientists as leading figures within the story, including women of African ancestry in key science and leadership roles, in a ‘diverse’ future that looks like my port-city culture NOW
pleasant futuristic design of objects, grand spaces, technology, and mathematical displays, but with grubby and worn elements (away from the wealthy) adding realism (including truly remarkable interstellar ship life/suspension pods)
the character variations of Brother Day, as played by Lee Pace, who seems to enjoy the role, especially the Season 2 version of him I described to a friend as “louche” (which Google/Oxford describe as “disreputable or sordid in a rakish or appealing way”).
the general lack of warp-speed travel for most people, meaning that going to sleep in a suspended-aging pod and leaving your planet for a long trip meant everyone you knew would be dead long before you reached your destination
the display of the dirty elements of empires, such as genocide, prison camps, slavery, exploitation, obligations to provide young people as tribute to the ruling class, and so on
the disappointing persistence of anti-knowledge religions, and anti-knowledge repression, which I appreciate because it is entirely too realistic
Good pacing.
Foundation is enjoyable sci-fi / drama, and I look forward to future seasons.
Not Your Typical Reincarnation Story by Lemon Frog , A-jin published by Webtoon (55 chapters, ongoing) 2023 – present
Dislcosure: it is a reincarnation story, if you were wondering. But it’s an interesting one.
Suna Choi gets murdered in the contemporary/real world, and wakes up as a villainess in a novel she read before she died. While Edith Rigelhof as a villainess is glamorous, seductive, and famous redhead, Suna realizes that Edith is also completely doomed. No one is on her side. She has no friends, no support, and is unlikely to survive the well-intentioned character’s shoddy investigations into things she is accused of. As so many contemporary heroines do, Suna decides she will take control of the story by turning Edith’s life around, and will live to have a happy ending.
In these respects, this story DOES have much in common with other reincarnation manhwa.
Yet… Suna/Edith can’t tell the other characters how badly Edith is abused at home. She can’t reveal any of her secrets or plans, or she loses consciousness. Also, she learns in flashbacks to a place between her world and that of the novel that she is the 13th Edith to try to fix this narrative! (I would likely have called this novel Edith the Thirteenth.)
Worse: she isn’t just in a fully written book: she is in a hellish afterlife in which the author of the novel can (and will) intervene to make the story turn out the way THEY want. They are determined to kill off Edith, and give the blonde princess the best of everything.
Can Suna/Edith beat the author and survive? Or will the author/deity of this world keep pressing the other characters to hate / blame / attempt to kill Edith, despite her best efforts?
I appreciate that Suna, who was so broke and miserable in her modern life, really APPRECIATES the good things in her new life. Also, unlike countless other stories, she gets to enjoy her hot husband – she isn’t a child, she is having a grown up relationship! What Edith wants for him is better than what the author wants, and he is willing to become a better person to pitch in, as he should. Also: she gets to go to the gay fashion designer for her gowns, and I wish this for all good characters!
I’m rooting for abuse survivor Edith the 13th and her hot husband to defeat the author/deity who is conspiring against them.
I finally caved and bought this gorgeous magazine, because I’ve resisted long enough.
This magazine is one of the best examples of book / magazine design I have enjoyed. It combines black and white fine art photography (most of architecture and urban landscapes), color photographs centering on one topic (coffee enjoyment) which are laid out with plenty of white space, and concisely written passion articles about coffee.
It’s… perfect, really.
I have purchased books purely for their design in the past (because: of course I did), but this magazine is consistently gorgeous. Lots of blank space. Good contrast. Uncluttered. Consistent in its themes. I struggle to think of it as a coffee culture magazine alone, because its design is so lovely and the photography sells it for me. It’s so well designed that I fear I would have bought it even if it wasn’t about a city I adore and a drink I adore EVEN MORE.
I recommend it if you like: black and white photography of cities with saturated black and fine midtones (WHAT A PRINTER THEY HAVE!), and casual conversation about the coffee culture of wonderful cities.
“You must REALLY like coffee,” said the gentle bookseller. Yes, yes, I do, and we also talked about how much coffee I like because so much of it is good around here, how fabulous fancy espresso drinks are, plus the Bay Area’s Jazz Station (which we both love: I broadcast this by wearing their jacket).
Either this book cover was very upsetting to the man sitting two seats away from me, or my hair was attacking someone without me noticing. I’m still unsure why he kept looking at the book/me reading and then away…
David Sedaris is a storyteller, and whether that story is a real one about having a truck driver attempt to persaude him to exchange sexual acts, or an imagined one about majoring in Patricide at Princeton, he tells these stories in a dry, engaging, and periodically distressing way.
I laughed loudly enough that I may have alarmed the neighbors. (To soften this strong endorsement, I admit that I laughed less often than I did while reading Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls: some of this relates to being familiar with his work, and laughing quietly rather than loudly. You know what I mean.) The only repeat story was the Normandy creepy-old-man story, but all others were new to me.
I recommend this collection if you like his other story collections.
A Martial Master Wakes Up as a Concubine by LICO, koyanghee published by Webtoon (44 chapters, ongoing) 2023 – present
If you hear me cackling after dinner for no apparent reason, it is likely because I’m reading this comedy comic.
Nyeonbi Cheon is a famous villainess who somehow winds up romantically entangled with a famous hero. After her boo kills her (!?!), she wakes up in the body of an imperial concubine who appears to have died simultaneously. She has no memory of this concubine’s past, but instead has her own villainy-filled memories, plus a desire to avenge her death against her unexpectedly cruel former love.
If there is anything a famous, powerful, crude villainess struggles to pull off, it is the manners required of an imperial concubine. Poetry? Tea making? Polite chit chat? Oh, goodness no – these are critical failures! The backstabbing and rivalries are familiar enough concepts, but Cheon isn’t allowed to murder her way out of them. (Or is she…?)
Whether it is chatting with the guy who brings her rice cakes, telling the emperor how much she wants to see his package (which makes him want to… not let that happen), or faking the aftermath of a fight to preserve her secret past identity, no one messes ordinary activities up more obliviously to social graces than she does! I really do laugh out loud – this is so silly in a fun way.
My In-Laws are Obsessed with Me by seungu, Han Yoon seol published by Webtoon (100+ chapters, ongoing) 2022 – present
This comic has a cheerful prologue to reassure you that things WILL GET BETTER . Because you need that reassurance so you don’t panic and flee after the first full episode!
Pereshati is getting murdered as the story opens. She tries to convince herself that her clear murder memory is all a dream when she wakes up in what appears to be the past. That can’t be right – time travel is impossible! However, she soon realizes the events leading to her murder are playing out EXACTLY as they were before, and she wants to make it stop.
Her rash new plan seems to be going well… right up until she is being buried alive. But somehow, waking up as the dirt hits seals the deal she was trying to make with a scary Grand Duke. After this, she can seek revenge against her murderers from a position of power and try to not get murdered again!
This story suggests that a “curse” might just be a technology we don’t understand; that intimacy is difficult with people who are literally poisonous; that you shouldn’t rule out your daughter-in-law’s accusations that someone might be committing terrible crimes using [the family secret]; that it’s good to make your husband blush now and then; and that being kind can make your in-laws very CLINGY.
I reread the series up until the present chapter, and realized its long serialization made me forget key details. I enjoy the story even more for having refreshed my memory.
Pereshati looking shocked is hilarious; I like her outfits; I like her facial expressions (and the jokes about the Duke’s facial expressions)… She seems like a rather nice, normal person going through some extremely terrible things, and trying to remain kind while doing so. The Duke also seems rather… like a normal person? (Dukes in other stories are merciless killers who draw their sword several times a day to dish out punishments; this one is somewhere between chill and chilly.)
Cute, fun, with good collars, with accurate-feeling scenes of awkwardness… I’m looking forward to more.
My very red Pilot Metropolitan. The ink is likely Diamine Syrah.
This Pilot Metropolitan (yes, another) is another satisfying, well-designed, reasonably priced pen. It writes smoothly and looks great. It has spent many hours in my hand, and that time has been pleasant.
The pen friend who recommended this to me was so right – and so good – to encourage me to read this!
Sadie is visiting her sister in a hospital when she meets Sam after his life-changing accident. The fact that he speaks with her (and almost no one else) leads to her return, and then to a friendship that spans decades – and the creation of multiple immersive video games reflecting their joint and separate (and often disparate) visions. Estrangement, reconnection, deep friendship, creative collaboration, fundamentally knowing each other at the geekiest levels, affection, exploitation, and the fraught business of being opposite sex business partners in the world of video gaming make for an engaging, emotionally developed story.
Zevin creates a window in time when real innovation in video games was possible, when leaving MIT to create a game as one’s life’s work felt right, when friends made in youth become lifelong, when life happens to members of a group at different rates, and when creative credit and blame were never evenly distributed.
The collaborative elements, design, and friend-strife all feel compelling. It is hard to dream and create with other people! Even people you know well. ESPECIALLY people you know well.
This is an adventure story, a tech story, several relationship stories, a tribute to geek culture at its university-spawned-finest, and the story of several entwined lives running on slightly-misaligned-yet-deeply-caring tracks. I was deeply engaged throughout.
Whoever designed this butterfly should be very proud.
I’m posting with the hesitation of someone who realizes that dumb and indifferent AI programs will steal and then vomit up my (incompletely digested) content in no coherent order. (What a world.)
I’m relaxing, playing with ink, buying paper, and eating delicious (vegan Vietnamese) food with a friend I haven’t seen since the Before Times. These are good days.
