Book Review: The Secret of the Unicorn

Review:  #876
Title:  The Secret of the Unicorn
Series:  The Adventures of Tintin – 11th book
Author:  Herge
Comments:  This is one of Tintin’s greatest mysteries yet.  As he frequents the markets, he stumbles across a ship replica and decides to buy it on a whim.  This sets a series of events, and a heaping of coincidences, into tracking down all three clues to find a lost hidden treasure.  While it has an interesting premise, this is only a prequel and set up for the next book in the series (the ending even shamelessly plugs it).  By the end of the book, you feel as if we have just done a completely 360 as Tintin was pretty close to where he had begun, after wandering around all over the place.  The sheer luck of some of the events cannot be overstated and while that is a trademark of this series, you can’t help but wish the plot could have been a bit tighter.
Rating:  6/10

Tokyo ESP (2014)

Tokyo ESP is a 12 episode anime based upon the manga series.  The anime starts by pushing you right into the thick of things.  Taking place in Tokyo, the world is suddenly attacked by people with extrasensory perception (ESP).  Their abilities range from anything such as teleportation to magnetic powers, seemingly only limited by imagination.  They take over the city, causing havoc in the process and indiscriminately killing.

As the people experience this in despair, one name that kept coming up was the White Girl.  Naturally, this holds no meaning to the viewers and thus we then get the backstory of how it got up until this point.  We're introduced to the heroine of the story, Urushiba Rinka, who was a normal girl up until she saw some glowing fish floating in the sky.  As the fish came near her, she ended up gaining special powers.  Rinka's power is one of being able to pass through solid objects at will.  We're quickly shown how she discovers her powers and then gain control of it.  She meets Azuma Kyotaro, a teleporter who becomes her friend and ally.  Various other people with ESP powers appear and Rinka inadvertently assists in taking them down.

The plot is mostly about how Rinka meets the antagonists, who are extremists.  They believe that they have evolved beyond mankind and by using violent, take over and create a new future.  They try to recruit Rinka and through their actions, we see how they have steered Rinka towards the person that she is.  Rinka is forced to question herself, what are her motivations?  What is she fighting for?

There are some interesting powers which leads to interesting fight scenes.  Not only does Rinka quickly grasp her own power and being able to use it effectively in combat, we see how annoying a teleporter is to fight against, or how overpowered someone with an impassable shield is, or even how despairing it could be to fight against someone who can cast illusions and simulate the feeling of pain.

The pacing is fairly fast in the beginning as it quickly explains the source of the power, being the glowing fish (although that was pretty obvious).  You could also feel the lead up to the opening scenes being swiftly set into place.  Unfortunately, this quick pacing stalls and eventually slows to a crawl by the midpoint.  The midpoint of the series is where you feel that it is still so far away from the opening scenes despite the pieces being set up in earlier episodes.  We slowly see Rinka's team eventually form, although it never feels as if they had camaraderie and they all aren't equally likable.  We see Rinka start to become serious, training in martial arts such that she'll be able to stand on her own.

Tokyo ESP tries to explore the political side of things when the "normal" humans try and deal with Espers.  They start developing behavior akin to racism, although the Espers don't help when a lot of them cause damage just for the fun of it.  The final few episodes are the culmination of all the build up and it quickly skips over the opening scenes and goes straight into the climax.  While you can surely sympathize with them, at the same time, it doesn't give them free rein to just take all those human lives.

Unfortunately, since the anime only adapts part of the manga, it doesn't have a satisfactory ending.  The lead up and explanation of the backstories were done well, but the conflict is far from over and there is no proper resolution to wrap things up.  Overall, Tokyo ESP is an okay anime.  It starts off really strong but falters before the midpoint and it never quite recovers.  The ending was explosive but at the same time, also lacking in terms of a proper stopping point.

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Toy Review: Transformers Bumblebee Optimus Prime (Speed Series)

Review:  #521
Name:  Optimus Prime
Brand:  Transformers
Allegiance:  Autobot
Line:  Bumblebee
Year of Release:  2018
Size Class:  Speed Series (Wave 1)
Mold Status:  new

TRUCK MODE:

Despite being in the movie universe, as the film itself was set in the 1980s, Optimus transforms into the more familiar red cab-over truck.

As the figure has a simplified transformation at such a small size, there are heaps of robot kibble such as the exposed robot shoulders that stick out and the robot feet as the bed.

Speed Series is equivalent to the Legion size class and so he's pretty small.

At this size, this is a pretty decent vehicle mode.

TRANSFORMATION:

Getting to robot mode is really easy as the legs just fold down from the back.  You rotate the waist around to reveal the thinner torso.  Fold the arms from out of the cab.  The head flips up as part of the panel which is slightly annoying.

ROBOT MODE:

Optimus tries to replicate the complicated movie design at this size with a simple transformation and it's no wonder that there are compromises everywhere.

There's plenty of kibble such as the wheels under the arms and the truck grill on his back.

The headsculpt is indistinct and since the head is attached to the panel, it doesn't look good at all.

Optimus gains a lot of height in this mode, he is taller than most other Legion figures.

Unfortunately, articulation is pretty bad.  He only has balljointed hips and elbows.  The shoulders are swivels which means he cannot lift his arms out.

You cannot believe how limited poseability is without the ability to lift the arms out to the sides and this is his biggest flaw.

An average robot mode, too compromised even at this size.

OVERALL:

For a cheap figure, Optimus prime is okay.  He's not the best in the size class, it is neat that he doesn't have the peghole for the vehicle launching gimmick at an awkward place like the rest of the line (the hole ends up at the bottom of his feet).  The restrictive articulation is the killer and the blandness of the color scheme makes him slightly hard to recommend.

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Book Review: The Shooting Star

Review:  #875
Title:  The Shooting Star
Series:  The Adventures of Tintin – 10th book
Author:  Herge
Comments:  While melodramatic, The Shooting Star feels like the beginning point of some of Tintin’s most fascination adventures.  This one doesn’t really involve a dastardly plot (although there is still an antagonist of sorts).  It’s the end of the world when a meteor comes down to strike the Earth but as always, Tintin manages to survive through luck and joins in an expedition to find the fallen meteorite.  During the journey, the anticipation builds as the meteorite is hypothesized to have unusual properties.  Sadly, upon their destination, the pacing ups quite a bit and we never got to see all the awesome features that could have been.  Nevertheless, it is enough to pique your curiosity.
Rating:  6/10

Finding Dory (2016)

Finding Dory is the sequel to Finding Nemo, and as the title suggests, it focuses on Dory.  Taking place one year later from the first film, Dory suddenly remembers something about her parents and sets off with Martin and Nemo to find them.  The premise isn't as strong as Finding Nemo and neither are the set pieces.  It doesn't quite capture the same charm.  However, the animation is amazing, it looks really from the light gleaming off the water to the tiny sand particles.  The trio meets various familiar characters who feel as if they were put into the film just for nostalgic reasons.  The new characters are not all likable but will eventually grow on you.  One of the neat things is how this sequel fits into the Dory that we know from the original film and builds upon it.  A few of the jokes are worn and tired but overall, Finding Dory is an above average film but you really do feel that Disney Pixar are creating sequels just for the sake of creating sequels as it definitely lacks the same amount of originality as the first.

Suikoden II (PS1)

Suikoden II is the second installment of the series and the sequel to the first Suikoden, released for the PlayStation.  It is set years after the first game although you will meet familiar characters upon your journey across the land.  The first game was clunky in its user interface and the combat system and so the first thing that hits you with Suikoden II is how the developers have improved upon these aspects.  It has updated everything from the first game to make it smoother and much easier to grasp.  The graphics gained an overhaul and is a lot more detailed and the sprites are exceptionally animated.  The player character has the ability to dash from the get go without being required to waste a Rune slot.

The combat system remains effectively the same as you have a party of six characters, organized into two rows.  Placement gives characters an advantage and disadvantage, some characters can only attack from the front, while other characters who are on the back row are less likely to be attacked.  Each character can attack, defend, use magic if they are equipped with a Rune, and if applicable, use a Unite attack with another character.  Perhaps the best thing is that the inventory system is handled a lot better.  While each character still has their own equipment slots and accessories slots which is shared with consumable items, you have a party-wide inventory bag.  It makes its so much better to organize items and equipment compared to the first game.

The rock papers scissors minigame return in the form of one-on-one duels, and plays exactly the same.  While the large scaled battles have now changed into a SRPG affair.  Unfortunately, these "World Battles" are horrible as the vast majority of them are scripted and means that your input is pointless.  It only prolongs the game when you are waiting for the scripted event to happen, it's a massive waste of time and as much as the first game's version was luck based, this is even more so.

The game begins with you naming the main character.  He and his childhood friend, Jowy, are part of the Highland Army when they are suddenly attacked.  The pair manages to escape but find themselves betrayed by their country and ends up joining a mercenary group in the neighboring Jowston.  Thus beings their journey of recruiting characters to their cause and defeating the villain.  The villain this time around shows up much earlier and feels a lot more personal.  The game doesn't shy away from sad scenes and shows the suffering of civilians as the collateral damage of some guy's ambitions.  It's unfair, it's cruel, and the game throws it in your face with plenty of hard hitting emotional scenes.  However, it takes around three hours before you finally get sucked into its world.

Once again, there are 108 characters able to be recruited, known as the Stars of Destiny.  While not all of them can be in your party, the majority of them can.  Unfortunately, some are permanently missable and thus you pretty much require a guide to recruit them all if you don't want to spend heaps of time aimlessly wandering around.  Even when you know what to do, the requirements to get all characters are much more annoying than the first game.  This includes backtracking through long dungeons (and suffering through the random encounters), doing specific tasks like earning over a certain amount of money through trading and knowing where to get items (which is very random) that the character asked for.  It's much more like a chore rather than a bonus now.

Despite the improvements there are still a few quality of life issues.  Recruiting characters is annoying without a guide.  There are situations where you temporarily cannot recruit any characters, which is extremely annoying.  There are also a few characters which relies on luck or some tedious grinding to get.  A big negative is how long it takes before you can teleport.  In the first game, you gain the ability to immediately return to your castle and also go to any town you want pretty early on.  This time, it takes around half the game before you can teleport to places you've already been to, and then another fair chunk of time before you get to teleport back to your castle.  It doesn't help that the story forces you to trek back and forth between cities using a slow walk on the world map.

What's also annoying is how heavily reliant the game is on magic users.  Magic deals a significantly higher amount of damage compared to melee attacks.  It's extremely annoying when bosses have large HP that forces you to heavily rely on magic.  Another big boss later on forces you to use characters that you have not leveled, making it frustrating when you have one (or maybe two) strong party that you wanted to use and be able to easily deal with the boss but instead have to spread your characters thin.  The worst part is that normal enemies are so easy but the bosses can hit hard with multiple attacks per turn.

There are a few difficult spikes throughout the game, mainly due to the bosses.  It's inconsistent which bosses have a save point before them and which ones don't (forcing you to redo the whole dungeon if you end up dying).  The final boss is one such spike since it's various attacks are damaging, can attack multiple times per turn and worst of all, extremely resistant on magic which is deadly if you have a magic orientated team (which is likely since magic is so much more convenient in dealing massive damage to bosses).

Overall, Suikoden II significantly improves upon the first game with better graphics, quality of life improvements and a pretty satisfying story.  Unfortunately, there are still some niggling quality of life issues like the fact that you cannot fast travel for such a large portion of the game, inconsistent difficulty and the boring world map war battles which is little more than RNG and predetermined results making them pointless exercises wasting 20-40 minutes of your time in each battle.  It's still a solid JRPG but definitely not a top-tier one.

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Dusk Maiden of Amnesia (2012)

Dusk Maiden of Amnesia is a 12 episode anime plus an OVA based upon the manga series.  The anime starts off on a weird note.  First of all, you don't know what the tone is until a fair bit in.  You feel as it is supposed to be serious but then anime tropes come into play to inject humor and all the tension vanishes.  The second episode reaffirms that the anime is not overly serious and likes to play around.

The plot is equally muddy.  The first episode jumps straight into the thick of things, leaving the viewers easily confused.  It portrays a scene from two different angles.  The first time from the view of an outsider, and the second time we see what is really happening.  Then the second episode jumps back in time to tell us how all this came about.  It's an odd way to tell the story and it doesn't quite work.

The anime itself follows Niiya Teiichi, who is our typical high school teenage boy protagonist.  There's nothing really remarkable about him except that he attends a school which has been expanded upon to the point of it being a maze.  He ends up getting lost and finds the ghost that he had been hearing rumors about.  The ghost is of course the titular character, otherwise known as Kanoe Yuuko.  She had died in the school many years ago but had forgotten how or why, thus she became a ghost.  She's not a malevolent ghost though and is nice enough when she meets Teiichi.  The slight unique aspect here is that Yuuko can interact with the real world, meaning that Teiichi can actually touch her.

Afterwards, the pair forms a friendship, against the unlikeliest of odds no less.  They form the Paranormal Investigations Club in order to investigate Yuuko's death and the anime just follows the various members that join and their activities.  Two more characters join the club which rounds out the cast.  Okonogi Momoe is an energetic girl who easily believes any ghost stories she hears, but cannot see Yuuko.  She is indebted to Teichii as she believes he saved her from a ghost.

The other club member is Kanoe Kirie, who also has the ability to see Yuuko.  Despite putting on a brave front, she is scared of ghosts.  She is the more serious character of the group, and feels like she is the only one genuinely wanting to find and understand the circumstances behind Yuuko.  Throughout the anime, another evil spirit is frequently mentioned or glimpsed at.  This malevolent ghost forms part of the mystery.  What doesn't help is that you feel like it is connected to Yuuko in some way, especially when she admits that she appears as what the person wants to see or expects.  Thus she is usually the source of most, if not all, of the ghost rumors swirling about the school.

The anime has a darkish color palette, with a lot of black and red.  This dark tone feels somewhat at odds with the humor at times.  The animators do not waste any chance to have some sort of fan service scene involving Yuuko and Teiichi acts as your typical embarrassed protagonist whenever this happens.  Although this starts to tone down as the episodes goes on.  The midway point of the anime is where the plot threads start to merge.  What seemed like episodic content eventually becomes linked and the nature of Yuuko starts to become clear.  This is also the point where the anime becomes a lot more interesting with some sudden and unexpected events happening.

Despite only having twelve episodes and released at a time when the manga was still ongoing, the anime provides a definite conclusion.  The lead up to the big reveal was done fairly well as it kept your interest and it wasn't a cop out.  There were times where it felt the pacing slowed too much but on the whole, it was satisfying.  The ending was definitely a sad one.  You don't realize how much you like the characters until the end and it feels a bit emotional, especially with the sad music playing in the background.  This is the point where you feel you haven't wasted your time watching the anime.

The OVA takes on a lighthearted and silly tone compared to the main episodes.  It's pretty much just the characters investigating some more ghost rumors and having fun in general.  It makes a nice change after all the depressing scenes but at the same time, doesn't add a lot to the series.  Overall, Dusk Maiden of Amnesia feels like a sleeper hit.  It starts off normal enough, a bit confusing, but it slowly creeps up on you until you realize that it's actually quite engaging.  The second half in particular is where the anime hits its stride and becomes a pretty decent show.

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Book Review: The Crab with the Golden Claws

Review:  #874
Title:  The Crab with the Golden Claws
Series:  The Adventures of Tintin – 9th book
Author:  Herge
Comments:  Perhaps Tintin’s greatest story yet.  Tintin finds himself stumbling into an opium smuggling plot.  This is the story that introduces another recurring character, Captain Haddock, and while he is a bumbling buffoon at times addicted to alcohol, he has a heart of gold and means well.  Tintin is surely a man of many talents, able to get out of any situation (although mostly by luck) and handle any vehicle with no issues at all.  The pacing of the story is strong; it keeps the reader interested the whole way through.  While the final revelation and conclusion of the story is somewhat simple, it was an enjoyable read.
Rating:  6/10

Toy Review: Transformers Generations Power of the Primes Elita-1 (Voyager)

Review:  #520
Name:  Elita-1
Brand:  Transformers
Allegiance:  Autobot
Line:  Generations - Power of the Primes
Year of Release:  2018
Size Class:  Voyager (Wave 2)
Mold Status:  retool of POTP Starscream

JET MODE:

Elita-1 transforms into a pink and white jet of varying shades.  As a retool of Starscream, this is a really chunky jet with way too much undercarriage kibble.

The robot feet are unceremoniously tucked as landing gear at the back which is quite horrible.

Perhaps the worst aspect of the figure is Hasbro's cost-cutting tendency to use a massive amount of stickers for detailing.  Elita-1 has too many separate stickers, particularly on the edges of joints which causes them to easily peel even straight out of the packaging.

Above is a comparison against Titans Return Optimus and you can see that Elita-1 is pretty massive, but hollow.

As part of the Power of the Primes line, Elita-1 comes with a character art card.

The robot weapons, which doubles as the combined mode's feet, peg onto the underside of each wing.

Despite its flaws, this is still a decent jet mode.

TRANSFORMATION:

As you can probably tell from the huge amount of kibble in jet mode, the transformation isn't too hard.  The legs extend from the back, the sides become the arms and the nose folds away allowing you to reveal the head.  It's almost too bland...

ROBOT MODE:

It's rare to get female Transformers, and even rarer when they're not overly slim.  Elita-1 is bulky but still pulls off the female aspect and looks really good.

She carries quite a bit of kibble on her back, being the wings and nose of the jet.

The headsculpt is nice and accurate to the G1 design.  It is on a balljoint so has a wide range of motion.

She's pretty tall here as well and while she may look bulky, the whole figure is hollow, from the forearms to the legs.

The hollow legs are more of an issue since it her center of gravity is higher than normal.  The multiple joints also likes to unpeg the panels.

Otherwise, articulation is decent with mostly hinge and swivel joints.

There are a few weaponry options, the first are the small red guns that she can hold in either hand.

The reason for the huge forearms is that they double up as combiner joints, it kind of throws off the proportions of the robot.

Elita-1 has the Enigma of Combination which is the same shape as a folded up Prime Master.

The other weapons are the combined mode's feet which appears as some sort of gauntlets or shields.

There are multiple places where Elita-1 can use the two pieces, the best place are her upper arms to act more like shields.

The Enigma can peg onto the pieces to "power" it up.

Just like jet mode, despite some flaws, this is still a solid robot mode.

TRANSFORMATION TO COMBINED MODE:

Combined mode is pretty easy in theory but ends up being quite a mess.  This is because there is a reliance on panels (mostly being the wings and top of the jet) but lacks solid connections.  The arms form the knees while everything else folds into a lump to form the torso.

COMBINED MODE:

Elita-1's combined mode is named Elita-Infin1te, which is a unique name to say the least.

The torso looks pretty good but as touched upon in the transformation section, it doesn't quite hold together as well as you would hope.

The headsculpt is similar to the core robot but with a bigger crown.

Size-wise, it is much taller than a Voyager and Deluxe as expected.

Poseability is good, the combiner ports all have ratchet joints which is able to hold the weight of the figure.

The feet now have ankle ratchet joints which is a boon since by being able to keep the feet flat on the table, the combined mode is a lot more stable.

The torso has a unique layered look which is really nice.

A good looking combined mode, if a little bit unstable.

OVERALL:

Elita-1 is a solid figure.  It's not the best Transformers in the line but it does a good job of being fun and versatile.  The biggest flaws are the usage of stickers, the hollowness and the slightly unstable combined mode.

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