Count_Zero

I’d heard about the manga The Men Who Created Gundam a while ago from an article on TVTropes – and later had heard that the manga had been licensed by Denpa, though I found it was only available in a physical release, so that ended up serving as something of a hold-up on my picking up the series. However, at long last I’ve picked up up the omnibus release of the series.

As the title suggests, The Men Who Created Gundam tells the story of how the original Mobile Suit Gundam series (colloqually referred to as “First Gundam”) came to be – in a very tongue-in-cheek kind of presentation. The focus is on Yoshiyuki Tomino, who is presented as an almost Spider Jerusalem-esque figure. Not just in the sense of his bald head and ever-present sunglasses (and lanky figure), but his somewhat obnoxious and confrontational attitude, in a manipulative and obnoxious kind of way.

We have a few other supporting characters that provide point-of-view perspectives on the story, like the composite character of Momoe Kusakari, who represents much of the female production staff of the series. She also unfortunately often ends up on the receiving end of some of the regressive attitudes of the time when it comes to sexual politics, with her frequently getting groped (often by Tomino). Yoshikazu Yasuhiko (who is drawn like a rock star) also gets a fair amount of spotlight time, though never as a point of view character.

That ties into what probably is one of the biggest issues with the manga itself – Tomino’s letcherous habits and sexual harassment of women in staff is played for comedy at best or as a a charming element of his character at worst. It makes for a frustrating part of the story, where we see the build-up to the New Century declaration at the start of the launch of the Gundam Compilation movies, but we also see him harassing the staff, with that basically being treated as something of an endearing feature of him. Arguably this is a fictitious aspect of the character that’s being played up for exaggeration, but the problem is that it’s still mostly ever-present in the story.

In all, I enjoyed the manga, but I did always feel a bit of a sense of dread in the manga whenever Tomino and Kusakari were on page at the same time, for fear of what “comedy” beat would come next. I did enjoy reading the manga, and honestly it does make for a good jumping off point for later reading of what actually happened, but intentional groping, by adults, in the workplacek, played for comedy makes this a hard recommendation.

If you know anything about me at all, I have a passion for the history of tabletop roleplaying. One of the books that helped stoke my interest was the book Heroic Worlds, which I read when I was in middle school. That book was a high level overview of the roleplaying game books that were on the market at the time – like the tabletop RPG equivalent of all those Leonard Maltin books giving an overview, one-to-two sentence of a film’s plot, and a one-to-two sentence review combined with a score. Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground provides a more close in view, covering a selection of RPG books from each decade of RPG history to date, with more involved looks at the various games.

So, if there’s a major RPG title that came out over the medium’s history, it’s generally covered here. Dungeons & Dragons? Check! Runequest? You bet! The Fantasy Trip? Sure thing. Vampire: The Masquerade? It’s in there. Apocalypse World and Blades in the Dark? Sure thing. Even (as the subtitle says) Mothership. These are included alongside various smaller titles and significant, if not as well known, sourcebooks for the various games that are covered. Stuff like some of the adventure collections for Call of Cthulu or Cults of Prax for Runequest. We even get a couple significant titles from Palladium – like Rifts and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles And Other Strangeness.

We get some very nice, involved looks at the games and sourcebooks, with the author’s serious thoughts on the books, along with how well they have or have not held up with time – such as with the Sanity rules casually shoehorned into TMNT or the entirety of Oriental Adventures. It’s not a full-fledged buyer’s guide, instead serving something of a critical overview.

It’s not without some problems. While the book is very much aware of some of the prejudices and biases in past works (again, Oriental Adventures), the book has a massive oversight issue. Specifically, the focus is very heavy on games from the Anglo-European zone – while some translated games are covered, they’re exclusively European titles like In Nomine or Kult. Games translated from Japanese (like Maid) or works inspired by Asian media – whether anime (Big Eyes Small Mouth), action cinema from Hong Kong and Taiwan (Hong Kong Action Theater and Feng Shui). The most we get is a passing mention of the Robotech RPG in the entry of TMNT.

This is particularly odd considering, for example, Feng Shui’s mook rules would help influence the Minion rules for Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition (which is mentioned in the book). Robotech introduced the Megadamage rules which would carry over to Rifts. However, there’s no real mention or in-depth entries on either of those games. It’s kind of head-scratchingly frustrating (not helped by the fact that it also perpetuates the worldview that TRPGs are an Anglo-European (and predominantly White) thing. This is particularly weird because, again, the book does try to acknowledge contributions of Black and Asian creators in the book.

I did very much enjoy the book, and it makes for a very good starting point for people who want to learn more about historical titles in tabletop roleplaying history. However, I do feel like the book runs into some bugbears that are specific to me.

When Iron Widow came up on the list of the list of rejected Hugo Award nominees in the controversy over the Chengdu Worldcon, I figured that I should bump the book further up my reading list (it was already there, it was just further in). Then it became a Sword & Laser book club pick, and I made sure to get ahold of a copy from the library – and I was not disappointed by this book at all, and I’m eagerly looking forward to the sequel.

The premise of Iron Widow is that it follows Wu Zetian – not the version of our world, but a different one (this is extremely loosely inspired by her rise to power), a girl from basically the sticks, who volunteers herself to be the consort of a Chrysalis pilot – someone who supplies qi to the pilot of these shapeshifting mechs so they can fight the monstrous Hundun who attack the country – a position that also puts the consorts at great risk of death, indeed most consorts die. However, Zetian has a secret reason for this – the pilot she wants to be the consort of murdered her sister, and she wants revenge. When she succeeds in her mission, but not in the method she had in mind, she ends up becoming a consort to another pilot, Li Shimen, who has previously killed numerous consorts, but together their qi balance allows them to work together successfully – and in turn overturn the systems of power that seek to victimize them both.

In short, Iron Widow goes – the story moves at a tremendously brisk pace. It’s not so fast that you lose track of the story’s events, and who is doing what to whom and why. However, it’s also tremendously easy for a significant plot beat to also be overshadowed by a slew of other plot beats. By the climax of the novel, there are a string of character deaths that happen with the rapidity of characters getting killed off of the climax of a Tomino-helmed Gundam series, though not in the “Kill-Em-All” Tomino kind of way.

To be clear, I’m not just making the mecha anime comparisons in a “Guy who only watched Boss Baby gets Boss Baby vibes” kind of sense. When I read the description of the piloting system of the Crystalis mechs, my first thought was, “Huh, I’m getting Darling in the Franxx vibes” – and then I reached the acknowledgments at the end of the book and, lo and behold, Darling in the Franxx came up multiple times, in a clear “This book is in dialog with that anime” sense. As someone who wrote a fanzine for several years for the specific objective of, Parent Trap-esque, trying to get Anime & Lit-SF fandom back together again, I had to stifle a squee in the breakroom at work.

Darling in the Franxx was enjoyable, but certainly flawed series – I didn’t dive into it as much at the time in my review, but it was a series that had sexual politics that were certainly problematic – with a focus on heteronormative romantic pairings likely as part of the political push of the Abe government to try to boost the declining birthrate of Japan’s ethnic Japanese population, and thus failed to examine, interrogate, and explore the other aspects of the sexual politics of the world they were creating, and similarly refused to seriously work with the ideas of having different compatible gender pairings than male dominant/female submissive (which, to be clear, is something that at least Goddanar was willing to consider back in the day – so desire to be horny on main is not an excuse). By contrast, author Xiran Jay Zhao clearly went into this having already interrogated these ideas herself, and was willing to incorporate the results of that interrogation into the book – with plenty of room in the upcoming sequels to explore that further.

Also, the character dynamics in the story are great – especially the core trio of Zetian, Shimin, and Zetian’s childhood friend Gao Yizhi, with a few solid supporting characters like strategist Sima Yi. Not to make this “my year of fiction about polyamory”, but the three make for a great polyamorous relationship, and seeing the relationship between the three build throughout the novel is wonderful. How that relationship will go into the second book is… hard to get into without spoilers, but it’s something I’m excited to read about, but also anxious over how it will turn out – which admittedly is probably what Zhao was going for, so Mission Accomplished.

One other thing I also appreciated – a thing that bugged me about She Who Became The Sun is that it was a fantasy novel heavily inspired by Chinese history that wasn’t really willing to interrogate some serious aspects of it – because the focus was on overthrowing the Mongol government (referred to as the Hu Dynasty, instead of the historical dynastic name of the Yuan dynasty) – so there’s no consideration of the thought that historical China, being an Empire, was generally often in the process of, to use the modern parlance, “Doing an Imperialism”, and the barbarians attacking at their borders were just as often peoples seeking to resist conquest as those seeking to raid and conquer, and in the process, reiterated old stereotypes that basically lead to the Mongols being written like stereotypical Orcs (in the ways that some interpretations of Orcs by Western authors are written like stereotypical Mongols). Instead, Iron Widow through the back half of this story also interrogates the romanticization of Imperial Chinese history – calling out that the country, through its surrogate in this novel, was an empire, and did the things that we justly and rightly call out other historical empires as having done, whether in the form of the brutal subjugation of peoples (particularly ethnic minorities), and using the satellite areas of the nation for resource extraction for the wealthier imperial core. That crap happens in the world of this novel, and it’s one of the numerous injustices (including the heavy institutional misogyny that kicks off the story) that Zetian is seeking to overthrow.

It made for a novel that I enjoyed immensely, and I’m eagerly looking forward to the sequel. Also, with how well this book turned out with Zhao riffing on Darling in the Franxx, there’s a chunk of me that really hopes she watched Getter Robo or Gurren Lagann, because there’s a bit of that I’d be interested to see if she riffs on in a future book.

This volume gives considerable more development for Eiji Nizuma, changing him from a villainous looney toon to a character who is more likeable, though his “request” makes for an odd plot thread. Additionally, this volume provides more background on the life and role of an Assistant then I knew about in the past.

In short, assistants in Anime & Manga are comparable to inkers, letterers, and (to a certain degree) colorists in western comics. Their importance to the end result is significant enough that I kind of wish assistants got credit in the tankoubons.

Benson does not do a good job of weeding out all the dialog from the game that was actually meant for the player as opposed meant for Solid Snake.

This is certainly a mixed bag, when it comes to the storylines. On the one hand, the first Annual, with the Flyers, is very well done, as is the whole storyline with The Wheel. On the other hand, the clear “Seven Samurai”/”Magnificent Seven” storyline that kicks off the the comic's first original story after the events of A New Hope is a bit much.

I've generally always liked the Darwin Awards books, and this one is no exception.

Good conclusion to this adaptation of the first book. From what I understand, the second book is being adapted in a separated series, which I'm definitely going to read at some point in the future.

SpoilerI'm also disappointed that Issac and Miria didn't show up.

A very good rundown of the various stripes of Japanese film, though there are a few occasions where it feels like Macias is recommending certain films ironically.

The recipes in this book are certainly interesting, and it definitely provided some useful dishes to add to my culinary arsenal. However, that isn't the focus of this book. The focus of this book is to discuss various eateries and restaurants throughout the US and particular dishes of note. This is great if you can afford to travel. I can't.

Though, fortunately, Portland (OR) did come up on the list a few times, so I'll make a note of the places they suggested in the book for future reference if I'm hungry in Portland with some cash to spare.

Better than the first book, with more of a traditional narrative, and more fleshed out characters.

I read this at the Kumoricon reading room. I thought it was okay, but it didn't really grab me. To be fair, I haven't watched Neon Genesis Evangelion, so this might be hurting my impressions on the comic. I'll probably revisit after I finish watching the show.

Good critical analysis from a gaming (Feng Shui in particular) perspective of various action films, from Hong Kong and the west, along with a bunch of great film recommendations. Definitely worth picking up.

Decent enough book. While each entry is fairly light, the size of the book prevents it from being particularly light reading. I do recommend the book though, as the games they've chosen for the list do fit.

This is probably the longest arc in the manga thus far - not that it's a bad thing. I really enjoy this arc and I'm looking forward to seeing how it turns out. Look for a longer review on Bureau42.

This is probably the most informative and most helpful cookbook I've found on how to make Chinese food for someone who had never made Chinese food before.

Start of the End of the World Arc, which means the next volume is gonna be a gut punch.

This is probably my favorite of this year's Hugo Award nominees, and definitely my pick for this year.

Honestly, while there is some merit to reading these to find out how the episodes were changed from script to screen, I'd say watching the episodes is a better way to experience these stories.

I'm disappointed by some of the points in Chinese history the book brushes over.

The Hawk Moth has survived, Kunato is messing with things that he probably shouldn't be, and the exodus by the Lem most likely lead to everyone there getting killed.

Very good book - I should hopefully have a review up on Bureau42 next Monday.

I'd say that if I had had the money to register for the Hugo Awards this year, I would have had a dead heat between this book and Ancillary Justice. Both books are impressive SF investigative thrillers, and both have gripping stories with interesting characters and equally interesting ideas. In the case of Neptune's Brood, the idea is basically building a Space Opera thriller around the old investigative axiom of “Follow the money,” and it works incredibly well. It's got adventure, pirates, mermaids, zombies, and transhumanism, all wrapped up in one glorious adventure.

I'm almost glad that I didn't have the ability to vote for the Hugo Awards this year, as I wouldn't know which one to choose.

Of course the heads of the club would take advantage of this opportunity to foist more work onto Morisato.

This was a really good volume with some hilarious stories - Hayate having to stay outside the mansion for 3 days (and ending up broke again), Hayate bringing home a kitten and Tama (Nagi's pet tiger) getting jealous - just a big pot of comedy gold.