Cleverly Titled Column: Sweet Blue Flowers review

Cleverly Titled Column is my weekly (honest) column, where I'll be talking about anime, manga, and tokusatsu (live action special-effects shows) that catch my eye. My main focus will be on the mecha genre, tokusatsu hero shows, and romance manga, but I might branch out into other things if I feel strongly enough that I need to rant or rave about them.
 
Normally, if someone said "you should read this manga about high school lesbians, it's the best thing", I'd assume it was full of pandering to the yuri fanboy audience with no real substance. But Shimura Takako's Sweet Blue Flowers (also known as Aoi Hana) is a wonderful manga with excellent characterisation, really well-written relationships, and absolutely no fanservice or anything of the sort. In other words - you should read this manga about high school lesbians, it's the best thing.

The Manga Snob: Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou.

Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou

“ We are born of the assembly of those experiences that humans savour.
Alpha. We are humanity's children.”

The setting is Yokohama, Japan in the not too distant future. The world is in it's twilight. Many towns have been lost to the rising sea levels of global warming. The population is in a slow decline. Soon all that will be left of humanity is the cities, the strange luminescent mushrooms that look eerily like lampposts and the androids. No reasons are given as to why these things are happening, there is no lecture on the destructive nature of man. Humanity is just declining. So it goes.
Faced with this ecological apocalypse, mankind has decided to live out it's last days in peace.

Something I've Read: Bunny Drop

“Don’t you think this world is better than you expected?”

When the committee were trying to decide what anime to show this term, we decided that we wanted to show a plot based action show and a more episodic slice of life show, and Usagi Drop (or Bunny Drop) was one of the first anime we looked at. We rejected it for reasons that aren’t actually related to the anime itself, but rather the manga’s reputation, in particular, the ending. And…you may see why.

Something I've Read: One Piece

Around...five years ago now, my brother began to try to convince me to read a certain series about pirates. I was already into some manga, and in particular it was around the height of my enjoyment of Bleach, so it wasn't that big a leap, but I will admit, I just couldn't get into it. While it was sort of fun at the beginning, the pacing of the arcs was pretty slapshod, the art style was pretty dull and all the fights ended with the main character Luffy curbstomping the villain. After about thirty chapters, I gave up on it and didn't read it again for about six months.

Classically, it turns out I quit right at the wrong time.