[August 2017] Summer Picks of 2017

If you're not following Game of Thrones, I suppose you can follow anime or if you're like me, you follow both things at the same time. As oppose to updating my blog posts on travel, I'm rewatching old series again. So far I've finished Black Lagoon for the third time and I'm starting Hellsing Ultimate and Persona 4 The Animation. Nothing beats some good old vampire hunting and Shadow pummeling. As ironic as it may be, I do have a vampire related title coming up on this summer list.

Castlevania

Ta-da! Netflix's original animation series, Castlevania, had debuted with four episodes in its first season. Based on the titular video game which I have not played, the story begins with the introduction of Vlad Dracula Tepes and how he ended up destroying most of Wallachia as revenge for townspeople burning his wife at stake accused of being a witch. I have to admit it was kinda fun breezing through the episodes. Sometimes it can be tiring listening to long conversations between characters, but the high production value makes up for it. There's a lot of effort put in combining drawing and 3D CGI which is something a low budget project would never be able to achieve. While Castlevania is easily one of the many vampire and monster hunting genres out there, I am hoping the second season can provide more insight to the story such as exploring the history of the Belmont, the castle, and stuff like that.

Princess Principal

This series was a total gamble for me. Someone had uploaded a gif from one of the scenes and captioned it a series with a terrible storyline. I read up the synopsis and found it intriguing. It's a steam punk espionage story where young girls act as spies for the Albion Commonwealth under the disguise of students at an all girl's academy. I watched the first episode with my brother and we both found it very thrilling.  There's action scenes and distinct characters making it memorable as well as a secret past woven into the story to give it mystery. It reminds me a bit of the anime "Joker Game" which is also about espionage except it deals with the Imperial Japanese Army in WWII. Each girl has her own story and the characters are very charming.

Saiyuki Blast Reload

It's nice to see that Saiyuki gets a respectable adaptation. Previous seasons had inconsistent coloring and drawing though season one retained most of the same humor as the original manga. The animation studio employed high quality works this time using camera movement, blurs and vignettes, and beautiful drawing. The Reload series continues from the manga where the Sanzo party has reached further to the outskirts of Shangri-la. A lot of the villages you see are rendered in Tibetan style representing how far west the party has journeyed. While the original Journey to the West is much different than Saiyuki, the deviation has spun out Minekura's own imaginative creation of adventure and bonds that transverse time. The series parodies their own tropes of constantly defeating demons by always completing with the lines of "this pattern never gets old." I recommend watching each episode until the very end not to miss the short, but funny Urasai skits.

Vatican Kiseki Chousakan

Thanks to Animage's small feature, I came to know the existence of this series. Two priests are sent by a special unit within the Vatican to solve the mystery of a virgin conception to see if it really is God's miracle or some other force at work. In addition to that, they are also tasked to find a missing ticket piece that is hinted to be connected to the case. When they arrive to the church where the virgin conception occurred, murders are occurring each night. While it is overly dramatic in presentation, the story presents itself as dark with heavy emphasis on testing the characters' religious faith. While I fear that the story may draw too much on the romanticism of Catholic religion by painting a superficial cliche of good versus evil, I hope that it is really a story about finding the truth in things using religion as a backdrop. There's too many books and series out there pairing Catholic priests and exorcism and I hope the story doesn't evolve into something like that.