Review: The Demon Ororon Vol. 1 (1998)

 Posted by Anastasia on April 30, 2009  No Responses »
Apr 302009
 

Ororon Vol. 1The Demon Ororon Vol. 1 by Mizuki Hakase
Publication: TokyoPop (April 6, 2004), 240 pages / ISBN 1591827256
Genre: Graphic Novel, Fantasy, Romance
Rating:
Find @ Amazon or IndieBound

One sentence review: Had a lot of possibility, but turned out to be a dud.

When I was younger and untrained in the ways of manga, I’d read whatever I could get my hands on and not care about the art style or story content. Now that Ive branched out beyond shonen and shoujo (into seinen, actually), I’m much more picky, and unfortunately this manga does not make the cut.

Summary from Amazon:

Chiaki is the orphaned daughter of the Archangel Michael and a human woman. Ororon is a devil with a bounty on his head. Together, they struggle to stay alive as the battle between devils and the angelic order rage around them.

The plot is a feasibly interesting one: king of Hell runs away to Earth, meets a angel-human hybrid, falls in love, questions his morals, etc. In reality it’s melodramatic and weepy and I was frequently confused. Though I can handle angst when it’s necessary and done well, here it’s just piled on and then sledgehammered into a slightly recognizable shape: waif no-one loves finds someone to love her; he does, etc. It’s kind of like the poor little match girl, except with demons and fashionably androgynous clothing.

So, yeah, melodramatic. Also I hated the art (everyone was so thin and stick-like, like they’d break if ever caught in a stiff wind), the characters (boring!), and the story. It seems like it’s been done before, and done better, and I don’t think The Demon Ororon brought anything new to the table. Also I was frequently confused with all these new story lines brought in abruptly and then abandoned like so much dirty laundry. It jumped around a lot, and yet was simultaneously boring.

For all that, it wasn’t absolutely, completely terrible. I can see the attraction someone might have to it, especially people who love angel/demon romances. The art could have been quite stylish if it was more consistent and if the characters didn’t all look the same. And the romance itself, once you shifted out all the dreck, was kind of sweet. If it was written in a different way, with some different art, I might have even liked it.

Oh, and though it’s marketed as 13+, it’s got some nudity and sexual violence in it, so, er. I’d say 15+ minimum.

Other reviews: Welcome Consumer | Mania.com | Tiamat’s Manga Reviews

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 2/5, Graphic Novel

Thursday Tea: April 30

 Posted by Anastasia on April 30, 2009  No Responses »
Apr 302009
 

Thursday Tea Thursday Tea is a weekly meme hosted by yours truly. To play along, all you need is some tea, a book, and the will to answer some very simple questions: what tea are you drinking (and do you like it)? What book are you reading (and do you like it)? Tell us a little about your tea and your book, and whether or not the two go together.

You’ll notice this time I actually got my post up in a timely fashion! I wrote it in advance this time, ha. And since I have a little more time to work on my blog in the next few days, I was wondering: is my TT spiel understandable? Is it too long? Too many parenthesis? Should I rewrite it? What do you think?

Acai BerryThe tea: For the last week or so I’ve been drinking a really delicious tea from Stash: Acai Berry. It’s a caffeine free herbal tea that tastes wonderful, kind of fruity and but not overly sweet. It’s best without milk and one spoonful of sugar and is perfect right before bed.

Stash says it a little more detailed (and succinctly) than I do:

Fruity blend combines tart hibiscus with natural acai berry, blackberry, and blackcurrant flavors.

The book: I just started reading Only Human by Tom Holt, but I quite like it. Reminds me of Good Omens, a little. It’s funny and quirky and I hope I’ll enjoy the next 300 pages as much as I enjoyed the first 30.

Only HumanHere’s a summary from Amazon:

Something is about to go wrong. Very wrong. What do you expect if the Supreme Being decides to get away from it all for a few days, leaving his naturally inquisitive son to look after the cosmic balance of things? A minor hiccup with a human soul and a welding machine soon leads to a violent belch, and before you know it the human condition—not to mention the lemming condition—is tumbling down the slippery slope to chaos.

Do they go together? Um. Well, I wanted to say “yes,” but…I don’t really think so. It’s not that the Acai Berry is a horrible match, but Only Human need something a little quirkier and perkier. Like this Wintermint Herbal tea, maybe.

What are you drinking/reading this Thursday?

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 Memes, Thursday Tea

links for 2009-4-28

 Posted by Anastasia on April 28, 2009  No Responses »
Apr 282009
 
 Uncategorized

links for 2009-4-25

 Posted by Anastasia on April 26, 2009  No Responses »
Apr 262009
 
  • Why should I care about e-books? Lessons learned the hard way from the newspaper biz | for.theloveofbooks.com
    “Seriously, folks, the future of books is being decided now, much like it was being decided for newspapers 5-7 years ago. I’m not at all bashing e-books. I think they’re great in many ways (like being stuck on Atlanta tarmac and downloading John Buchan’s The 39 Steps to your iPhone). But, there are some extremely important questions involving books and technology these days which – left unheeded – are defaulting in a direction which may not be the world of books we want to live in.”
    (tags: books ebooks newspapers)
  • Harvard University Press Publicity Blog : Printing gets greener with thin ink technology
    “Printing with THINK™ allows manufacturers to avoid the use of curing devices, ovens, and blowers to help dry ink, reducing the amount of electricity used in the printing process, and reduces drastically the amounts of VOCs, or volatile organic compounds, released into the air as a byproduct of the manufacturing process.”
    (tags: books publishingworld)
  • Only half of publishers have digital plans | theBookseller.com
    “Just over half of publishers have put plans in place to sell books in any digital form, according to a survey taken at this year’s London Book Fair. Only 53% of the almost 200 respondents to the questionnaire—conducted by IBS—said they had plans in place currently, while 43% have no arrangements made. A further 4% said they did not know. But the survey also found 42% of publishers expected to “significantly increase” the amount of titles available in a digital format over the next five years.” Gah, percentages. And gah, publishers! Get with the program, please!
    (tags: books publishingworld ebooks)
 Link Posts

Review: Stone Reader (2002)

 Posted by Anastasia on April 25, 2009  No Responses »
Apr 252009
 

Stone ReaderStone Reader (2002)
129 min, Dir. Mark Moskowitz
StoneReader.net
Buy it at Amazon (used), StoneReader.net (3 disc special edition) / Watch it at Netflix
Rating:

Summary from Netflix:

Eighteen-year-old Mark buys a novel by a little-known author and starts reading it, but is unable to get through the whole thing. Twenty-five years later, Mark decides to give the book another try and finds the story absolutely spellbinding. When he tries to buy more copies of the book, he finds that it’s out of print and no one seems to know where the author can be found, sending Mark on a yearlong search for the elusive writer.

I’m a big fan of documentaries, especially documentaries about weird things, like bingo or crosswords or spelling bees. Documentaries about books and authors, if done well, can be just as interesting as a documentaries about people who dress up as superheroes, and this one is quite good.

Though I never heard of Mark Moskowitz before, I could empathize with his desire to find out more about a book and author that no-one else seems to have read or heard of. I’ve run into that problem myself a few times, but I never thought to actually track the author down and see what happened to them. You’ve gotta admire that kind of determinedness, and of course it makes for a good film.

It’s not a straight-forward documentary. It encompasses a few years Mr. Moskowitz spent finding out all he could about Dow Mossman and his book, The Stones of Summer, and it frequently dips off into other bits of things, like other one-hit wonders, Mr. Moskowitz’s forays into literature when he was a kid, etc. This makes the movie longer, but I think it makes it richer, too. And since I’m a big ol’ bookish person myself, I love hearing about which books turned people into bookworms for life. (For Mr. Moskowitz it was Catch-22; for me I think it was the Little House on the Prairie books.)

My favorite part was when Mr. Moskowitz finally tracked someone down who not only remembered Dow Mossman but also had read his book! I threw my hands up in victory, I was so excited. And then he finds Dow Mossman himself, who laughed at the thought of his book being republished. Little did he know, eh?

Stone Reader is a film about a book that fell into obscurity, but was nevertheless loved by at least, uh, five people. It’s a film about the power books have on people’s lives, for better or worse (Mr. Mossman had a nervous breakdown while writing Stones of Summer and had to be hospitalize!), and it’s a film about how obsessive bookworms can be when they latch onto something wonderful.

I suppose Stone Reader is successful in that Mr. Moskowitz got to find out about what happened to Dow Mossman, got Mr. Mossman’s book republished, and now got me wanting to read it. It sounds wonderful (comparable to Faulkner and Joyce, apparently), and I look forward to reading it.

What documentary inspired you recently?

Read more: A lost novel rediscovered: Mossman’s ‘Stones of Summer’ has triumphant return to print | The Stones of Summer Rolls Back | Book review at Culture Vulture

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 ! Non-book, 4/5, Reviews

links for 2009-4-23

 Posted by Anastasia on April 23, 2009  No Responses »
Apr 232009
 
 Link Posts

Thursday Tea: April 23

 Posted by Anastasia on April 23, 2009  No Responses »
Apr 232009
 

Thursday Tea Late again! At this point I suppose you should just expect it, heh.

Thursday Tea is a weekly meme hosted by yours truly. To play along, all you need is some tea, a book, and the will to answer some very simple questions: what tea are you drinking (and do you like it)? What book are you reading (and do you like it)? Tell us a little about your tea and your book, and whether or not the two go together.

Shaken PassionThe tea: My very favorite cold Starbucks beverage is their shaken iced tea (and lemonades). I particularly like their passion fruit tea with melon syrup– it’s fruity and sweet without being overpowering, and I can polish off a venti (large, for those uninitiated) in about 10 minutes. The melon syrup gives it a little different flavor than the regular syrup does, makes it a little fruitier. DELICIOUS.

The book: I just finished this, actually, but I was reading it for around three days so I’m using it for this post.

Interstellar Patrol is a collection of short stories based around the Federation of Humanity world written by Christopher Anvil. It’s free from WebScription.net and is utterly fabulous. It’s sci-fi but not hardcore, and there’s subtle humor strewn throughout. Here’s a summary from WebScription:

The starship crew was stuck on a planet where the well-meaning schemes of ivory tower social engineers had created a nightmare of battling gangs. So they pretended to be the “Royal Legions” from a distant star kingdom in hot pursuit of an unspeakably evil and nearly all-powerful villain who was hiding somewhere on the planet.

Interstellar PatrolThings went even better than they had hoped, and the planet was rapidly becoming civilized . . . and then the real Royal Flagship showed up. They thought they were doomed, but instead the new arrivals (who also weren’t quite what they claimed to be) thought the crew had shown just the sort of initiative and ingenuity that the Interstellar Patrol was looking for. So they were inducted into the Patrol.

And that was just the beginning. . . .

Do they go together? Um. Not really. But then, the deliciousness of the tea and the awesomeness of the book worked together to make my afternoon better!

What are you drinking/reading this Thursday? Leave a comment with a link to your post!

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 Memes, Thursday Tea
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