Manga – “Angel Sanctuary”

Posted on 2004-12-18 by Stephan Sokolow

Title: Angel Sanctuary
Author: Kaori Yuki
Genre: Epic Sci-fi/Fantasy
Length: 20 Volumes

I recently read Angel Sanctuary by Kaori Yuki and I liked what I saw.

The basic plotline is this. God has sealed himself away, things are going downhill, and only the angel Alexiel can stop it. However, Alexiel was sealed away for revolting against God, her body in crystal, her soul in a cycle of reincarnation and death. Every incarnation suffering, every incarnation dieing young. Her current incarnation is a human boy named Setsuna Mudou. But Setsuna only cares about one thing, his forbidden love for Sara, his sister.

Now that I’ve done what all of the synopses do, it’s time to be a bit more specific. It’s a well written epic but there’s definitely much more that I love. Through the course of this story, the main character defies heaven and hell to keep his love. Along the way, he gains the affections of a demon, defies God himself, and participates in the greatest power struggle of all time.

I often find manga stifling after a while. I don’t really know why but there’s some aspect of Japanese culture which I pick up on and dislike. It’s partly the restrained social rules and sexism but there’s more that I can’t grasp. Regardless, this manga didn’t feel like that.

Unlike the vast majority of manga and anime out there, Angel Sanctuary has female character who, despite being a princess, and falling in love, doesn’t seem to surrender to the ideals of Japanese culture. No matter how much manga I read, it seems that at least 90% of tomboys become culturally acceptable japanese girls either to attract the one they love, or as a side effect of finding love. Angel Sanctuary proves that being a tomboy and being in love aren’t mutually exclusive. Also, unlike so much manga out there, it doesn’t just ignore the fact that women have less social and political power, it actually integrates it into the story.

Another aspect I enjoy is how heaven and hell differ from expectations. There is no such thing as pure good and pure evil. If a character acts evil, we will eventually see why. There are evil angels and victimized demons. Heaven has slums and hell has palaces. These are characters you can understand, characters you can sympathize with. Not only that, but the plot twists make sure that there will always be more to learn. No matter how far I read, I never got bored.

In summary, Angel Sanctuary is a realistic epic based on christian mythology, the characters are believable and well thought out, and it breaks free from the stifling mire which consumes so much other manga. I’d probably give this a 9 out of 10 but I haven’t decided on a rating system. Either way, if you don’t mind a littly dirty realism in your manga and you’re tired of the standard fare, give Angel Sanctuary a try.

Posted in Manga | 4 Comments

Rating System

Posted on 2004-12-18 by Stephan Sokolow

Well, I’ve written my first fanfiction review and, as you may have noticed, it’s rated out of 6 rather than 5 or 10.

The long and short of it is, I wrote down degrees of quality and there were 7. Since the lowest is so bad I’d never review it, the count starts at 0. Here is a listing of the different degrees.

Zero – Can’t even read it. It’s that poorly written.
1. Complete and utter crap. Ignoring or contradicting canon, grammatical errors, stupid or nonexistant story without declaring it as a spamfic.
2. Like #1 but somehow manages to redeem itself slightly. For example, a badly written story with self-insert syndrome (solving all of the problems no matter how much you have to bend the characters and setting) that has some intangible hook that makes you want to read it again.
3. Grammatically OK, plain story, nothing extraordinary in terms of quality. Not good but not bad either. Risks getting boring or does get boring.
4. Grammatically fine, interesting story but not exceptional. Ends before it gets boring and is a good way to pass some time.
5. Well written and highly enjoyable. Has novel concepts and fresh ideas or uses a fresh viewpoint. May evoke an emotional response other than mirth. Something I would seek out.
6. Extremely well written. Quite likely to evoke a full spectrum of emotions. A must-read among fanfiction. Very likely to be re-read once or more within the coming year.

I may cook up some other unique numbering system for other things I review but since they don’t fall as neatly into numbered categories, I’ll probably end up just using a pro:, con:, outcome: system.

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Fanfiction – “Did She Jump Or Was She Pushed?”

Posted on 2004-12-18 by Stephan Sokolow

Title: Did She Jump Or Was She Pushed?
Author: Mike L.
Source: Ranma 1/2
Rating: 5/6
Type: Murder Mystery
Length: Short to mid-length one-shot

“Did She Jump Or Was She Pushed?” by Mike L.

What if Ranma ran off leaving only a note and Akane jumped to her death rather than live with her grief? What if Akane might have been pushed? “Did She Jump Or Was She Pushed?” is a Ranma 1/2 murder mystery which follows Daisuke (one of the two named nobodies in Ranma’s class) as he tries to find the truth.

I give it a rating of 5 (out of 6). The people are in character, the writing flows well, the suspense is well planned, and you’ll probably never guess all of the twists and turns. I rather enjoyed the Sherlock Holmes-style explanation at the end and also the quoted lyrics from the Richard Thompson song of the same name. I’d highly recommend it to kill some time. It’s a short- to mid-length one-shot as stories go.

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Another RIAA bashing

Posted on 2004-12-18 by Stephan Sokolow

Well, I’m not really much for eloquence right now but I felt like I had to get this out. I’m not going to go on and on about how the RIAA is destroying the world and killing off our freedoms. Everyone else has done that already.

Instead, I’ll just give a little example. I like a wide variety of music and it pretty much fits these rules:
1. It can’t share a single-artist CD with any other song I like
2. It can’t share a month’s popularity with any other song I like.
3. The above rules are null and void if the music comes from outside North America.

Now, these aren’t me trying to be difficult. They are simply facts I observed while enjoying my music. Think of them as cousins to the evil overlord list and the magical girl list. Both are definitely worth a laugh but the second one will make more sense to anime fans.

Anyway, as you can guess from the third rule, I get a lot of my favorite music from elsewhere. In fact, my favorite methods of finding new favorites are to download random Japanese/Korean albums off of BitTorrent. With many of these songs, I don’t even know the proper pronounciation. (Well, can you read written japanese?)

But, let’s take one with a full-english name for an example. I don’t think I’d find “Fly Me So High (Trance Remix)” by Move (Remix by D-Z) on the local music store shelves. Heck, except for that line from the chorus, the lyrics are 100% Japanese. Besides, I’m not buying a two-disc collection at highly inflated prices (Japanese music can sometimes sell for as much as $40 for a single-disc album) just for one song. Now if I could pay 25 cents per song for unlocked music, that’s a different story. You’re welcome to buy your music but I’m voting with my money. Even if I could find it on the store shelves, what’s the chance I’d notice it among all of the other junk?

Whatever you do, try downloading some music. If you don’t like it, delete it and all you’ve lost is time. If you do, enjoy it. …whether or not you intend to buy it.

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First post

Posted on 2004-12-18 by Stephan Sokolow

Well, this is my blog. I used to think I’d never want to start one of these, mainly because I don’t like to be roped into schedules. However, after working with a wiki for a while, I realized that I liked being able to share my thoughts without having to type out HTML and then FTP it into place.

Don’t get me wrong, I still hate schedules. However, I think I have enough insight and make enough interesting discoveries to make posts on a semi-regular basis. The core difference being that I’m posting because of a wealth of comment/share-worthy stuff that doesn’t fit the topic of my wiki.

Here are some of the things I hope to put here as excuses to waste my time on the web. 😉
* Fanfiction summaries and reviews
* Info on useful programs
* Links to funny pages
* Pointers to little-known fiction, anime, and manga which should have received more coverage.

…just don’t expect me to post things as soon as they come out. I’ll post as a side effect of my constant (and extensive) wanderings. This is a hobby, not a job.

Posted in Geek Stuff, Site Updates | Leave a comment