Always quirky, sometimes sweet speculative fiction

Author: Kirstie Olley (Page 2 of 37)

Mother/writer/gamer Kirstie Olley is president of Vision Writers group and author of many quirky speculative fiction stories that have been competition winners, Aurealis Awards finalists, and honourable mentions in international competitions.

Alita: Battle Angel – My Thoughts

some of my earliest anime/manga purchases – yes, that is a VHS tape ;p

I’ve been a Battle Angel Alita fan for over 20 years. I first saw the anime while still in high school and I’ve been collecting the manga for 18 years (it was one of the first manga I ever bought!). As if I wasn’t going to go see the movie.(it did take me a couple of weeks to get to it though, with camping, road trips, and getting away from the children ;p )

I went in wary, after all western adaptions of anime hits have not always produced the best results…  I went in curious to see what would be changed, how much would be added, how much of the world and its future and history would be put in. I went in cautiously optimistic because of my long held love for this series.

And I was not disappointed.

The movie wasn’t without flaw. It suffered a bit from ‘put all the things in!’ syndrome, but it felt more like an enthusiastic I’m-a-big-fan driven urge, not wanting newcomers to miss out on any of the coolness that is Alita. This did cause it to get a bit shuffled around, and sometimes subplots lost traction because there were so many that sometimes the romance subplot or the motorball subplot wouldn’t even get a mention for six or seven scene. The problem didn’t  reach movie-ruining levels for me (though I’m left wondering if someone with no knowledge of the world might have felt somewhat lost).

Several of the iconic moments (Ido pulling Alita’s remnants from the scrapyard, Alita holding Hugo’s hand hanging off the side of cables of Tiphares/Zalem, ect) were beautifully rendered, and though only touched on it was fun seeing some of the little nods to the fans (like the quick look at Jashugan). The special effects are great – but you probably already knew that considering who made it and the availability of trailers.

I was a little irked by some of the name changes, Daisuke to Dyson is understandable for an American audience (though why ‘Dyson’ is he a vacuum cleaner?’) but what kept niggling at me was Tiphares to Zalem. It threw me every damn time.

just try and tell me she isn’t weirdly perfect for the role

I love love loved Rosa Salazar as Alita. Her voice, her acting, her look (which admittedly is largely cg, but shh) were all great fits for one of my all-time favourite characters.

The emotion remained there well too, (SPOILER ALERT y’all) I still teared up as Hugo’s elbow joint breaks and he plummets away, even though I knew it was coming (and have seen and re-seen that scene into probably the triple digits by now between the anime and manga), and I really enjoyed the romance elements (though the scene with the heart didn’t work quite as strongly as I think it was supposed to).

Overall I was pretty happy with it, and would be up for any sequels, but worry a bit how non-fans might struggle with it.

 

ps. if you liked it and haven’t read the manga do it! Do it because Sechs is AWESOME. (also say that last bit out loud to a friend beside you on the couch like I did and you’ll have a great long-running in-joke ;p )

February Goals Round-Up 2019

I really don’t want to write this one, because I’ve done so little. But when you realise how much I had to work around it’s surprising I got anything done!

I finished reading all of the Deep Editing lecture packet from Margie Lawson (though I’ve not applied it to ALL of Nothing Charming yet, only what I’ve edited so far). Speaking of Nothing Charming, I’ve edited a further 22 pages using both the Deep Editing class, the four beta readers’ feedback and my own nous. I know it doesn’t seem like much, but I only had access to a computer for ten days this month, and most of those I was working the day job, packing, cleaning, and critiquing other peoples’ work for the Vision Writers meeting this weekend.

To break down how I went with my goals directly:

  • Proceed with edits on Nothing Charming: I did 22 more pages. Progress FTW
  • Percolate some flash fiction ideas while driving on the holiday: I had two ideas while away, but I don’t know if they’ll end up being flash, they might be more my usual short story length ;p an idea’s and idea though, length doesn’t invalidate that in my opinion.

I might have managed to edit a few more pages of Nothing Charming, but I recieved a nice rejection back for Mermaid In A Jar so edited that story both with the feedback from the rejection and with the Deep Editing course. I’ll do one more read through later today and submit it to the next publisher.

bonus points for the skink in the bottom left hand corner

The massive time suck was the road trip to Sydney. While it was no good for my writing and editing it was super fun in general. I also got to see a lot of baby (or at least immature) birds that I’d never seen before. I saw baby peacocks with their peahen mother, and an immature bush turkey (it was so small and scratching up his little mound already uber-cute!). There were kangaroos at every campsite, some sidling right up to our tent. We also met some super friendly possums and land-on-your-arm lorikeets – and those are the wild animals! We also went to Taronga Zoo and the Sea Life Aquarium (dugongs!).

As much as I goaled low for February, I need to make up for the lost time. Here are my March goals:

  • Complete edits on Nothing Charming (and maybe convince friends and family to chip in for a professional edit for my birthday ;p )
  • Prepare the plot outline for ‘The Handrell War’
  • Write two new short stories
  • Get all my back catalogue stories back out there. At the end of last year I fell seriously behind and I hate sending out stories that haven’t been self-edited between each rejection – you never know what I learned while they were out and what I’ll catch on a fresh read
  • Read through the current Written by the Stars draft, lift plot points, rework with Story Equation to create new plot outline for use in Camp NaNo in April

Yes I *know* I keep saying ‘no more NaNoWriMo’, but its a checkbox on the Five Year Best Seller course, and I don’t want to skip any steps.

And lastly, a stretch goal of:

  • Edit Lovely/Lonely

The list’s a bit long, but I’m confident I can handle it, especially with Harley at kindy an extra day a week to meet the minimum attendance requirements.

Lastly, for those who want to know, here’s the books I read in February:

Curlew At My Front Door

By now most of you should know I love bush stone-curlews, and today when I got home after picking the kids up from school I was ready to just unbuckle them and head on into the house, but Harley cried out, “Look, ducky!”

So I looked and it wasn’t a duck, but a bush stone-curlew, on my front lawn only a couple of meters away. It was watching me warily, but I snapped a few pics and pushed the kids inside and she’s still out there chilling even now a couple of hours later.

Obviously I’ve locked the cat flap too so they can’t go out and try to tangle with our guest. I might stay up late tonight and see if I can hear her singing 😀

January Goals Round-Up 2019

January was busy. Here in Australia this is summer school holidays, so I had both the kids at home all but literally the last three days of the month. On top of that I helped T-J fix some of our sagging ceilings in the house (he did the nastiest part of the work, the climbing in the roof during searing Australian summer days!), and also installed a new car stereo, which ended up being a much more complicated process than I’d at first anticipated (whatever happened to plug n’ play?).

There was good stuff too. Xander’s birthday is early in the month, and we took him to Paradise Country where they currently have all sorts of cool Shaun the Sheep stuff including a stage show, statues, meet and greet ect . You can probably guess we bought him quite a bit of stuff at the gift shop there too.

But you’re probably here to see how the writing is going(and whether or not I’m working on the story you want to read ;p ).

I set three goals at the start of the month and here’s how I went with them.

  • edit and resubmit several of my ‘in circulation’ short stories: I got two more back out there, but have several more I need to hurry up and get around to
  • compile beta feedback on Nothing Charming and complete edits using the Deep Edits lecture packet from Margie Lawson: It’s a longer path than expected combining four peoples’ feedback, your own new ideas, AND the advice from a course all at once. Also, school holidays >.< I’m just a little over half way done page count-wise, but previous experience tells me the ending often requires the most work, so time-wise I’m probably not really halfway done, but it’s hard to accurately guage.
  • compile beta feedback on Lovely/Lonely and commence edits:. I don’t like to be editing two things at once, too much risk of mucking up, so I haven’t even touched this.

So one completed, one half way done (approximately) and the other untouched. Not too bad considering I knew I was setting the bar high. It might come as a surprise, but I really didn’t waste much time at all on Ragnarok:Eternal Love. I did have a bit of fun, and can see myself logging in every now and again, but I’m not addicted like I was to the original. I don’t know if it’s me, the platform, or the game.

My February goals are going to be pretty skinny. I’m on holidays so almost entirely AFK for two weeks, plus don’t forget the sort of planning and fall out such a big family trip has. And most of the first week of February I’m working lots of extra shifts at my day job while various bosses take their accrued days in lieu from the Christmas period. I’ll be lucky to get one productive week out of February, and I’ll probably spend most of that doing my feedback for the next writers group meeting >.<

So my February goals are:

  • Proceed with edits on Nothing Charming with an aim to ideally complete them(but the knowledge I probably won’t)
  • Percolate some flash fiction ideas while driving on the holiday(there will be much driving ;p )

I’ll shoot for the stars again come March ;p

I plan to share some views on some anime I’m really enjoying in the next few days, and I might share some stuff from my big trip too, so hopefully more blog posts between now and my next goals round-up (which was totally my modus operandi last year ;p )

And for those curious, here are the books I read in January:

Just a few books ;p

Did you read anything good last month? What about your goals for February?

The Magic of Differing Opinions OR Why Beta-readers Rock

imagine this is me, and that book is my beta-reader feedback

So I’m finally (yeah, I know, I’m bad) getting around to compiling up the beta reader feedback on Nothing Charming. Four  people sent me back their feedback and it’s wonderful because I’ve now got four different opinions on it.

One reader is all in on the romantic sub plots, another confessed she’s hardcore shipping the couple I intend to get together, but another person struggles with some of the relationships and the clarity of what happening, while another really didn’t get anything from any of the relationships. Which sounds bad, but it’s GREAT! Why? Because he identified himself as not being a fan of the particular type of fantasy I’m writing, so I have identified someone who is not my target market. He still found plenty to like(and his enthusiasm for those things has spurred a few spin-off short story ideas), but I now know what sort of reader these books won’t appeal to and can avoid promoting/advertising to that section of fantasy fans.

Another great thing about the differing opinions is I can balance them against one another. If most of them say the same thing in feedback, I’ve obviously got a problem I need to get onto. If two people disagree, I ponder which of them is closer to my idea of my ideal reader. And just because that one reader isn’t my target audience, doesn’t mean I ignore every note he’s made (and not just because that would be rude ;p ) but also because that different view could be just the right spice to offset elements of my story.

I love feedback, critiques, and beta-readers. It’s all so helpful to see how other people see my writing, and I’m excited to keep moving forward with editing Nothing Charming (even though I’m a little bit behind plan (and yet here I am blogging about it and not doing it, the fine art of procrastination ;p ))

January 2019 Goals

I specified my goals for this year, but almost forgot to lay out my goals for this month; the steps that will get me toward my yearly goals. So without further ado:

  • edit and resubmit several of my ‘in circulation’ short stories (stories I’m currently sending out and trying to sell).
  • compile beta feedback on Nothing Charming and complete edits using the Deep Edits lecture packet from Margie Lawson,
  • compile beta feedback on Lovely/Lonely and commence edits.

as long as I can resist playing this ;p

It’s a fairly hefty list (even if the last one is more open ended with merely ‘commence’ edits ;p ) considering it’s school holidays so I’ll be doing this with kids constantly at home around me. I have some lofty stretch goals for the year though (I didn’t list them in my yearly goals yet) so I’m planning to get as much done early on as I can.

Last year I gathered all this wonderful feedback, but haven’t had a chance to actually go over and get to work on the notes. So this month is the start of rectifying that.

Also, whenever I get a short story back with a rejection I always give it at least one run through before putting it back out there – after all usually at least a couple of months have passed and usually I’ve learned or thought of a few new things which I can use to improve my work. I do quite a few more than one if it was a feedback rejection, because I have notes to work with.

Anyway, here’s hoping I don’t spend all my spare time paying Ragnarok M: Eternal Love when it comes out, and get lots of work done!

Xander and How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World

For those who’ve been around a long time, you may remember my post on how my son, Xander, reacted when seeing How To Train Your Dragon 2 in the cinema. He still sometimes refuses to watch the movie even now, four years later (we have it on blu ray and do watch it every now and again).

So when How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World came out down here in Australia, releasing on his birthday, we really wanted to take him, but weren’t sure if he’d want to go. After a long fun day of meeting Shaun the Sheep at Paradise Country and shopping for Bendy figurines, we showed him his cinema picture and the movie poster and asked him if he wanted to go. The answer was a resounding yes. We also showed Harley and she became super excited (she and I have been watching the tv series recently).

The kids loved it, and Xander has now grown enough to be able to understand that what he is watching is fiction, that the dragons being tied up and taken away aren’t real creatures suffering before his very eyes. You can still see him get tense and worried, but it isn’t the near meltdown levels of anguish he would experience before.

It’s wonderful to see him grow and mature, and it’s also fantastic when certain triumphant scenes happen he claps and cries out ‘yay!’ in the cinema he’s so happy. (and the patrons directly behind us thought it was cute <3 ). Also you should definitely check the movie out.

My Favourite Books Read In 2018

I read 101 books this year, so obviously I can’t rave about every last one of them here, but you can access any and all of my 2018 reviews by checking out this link to my Goodreads 2018 ‘Year In Books’. I am however going to highlight some of my stand out favourites here.

shut up and take my money memeMost of these books had premises that pretty much had me screaming ‘Shut up and take my money’ but there were a couple of surprises too, as well as an old favourite.

The Cruel Prince: It’s early January, and my good friend Jake messages me and tells me ‘shut up and read this’. So I do. And he knows me sooo well that it was my first five star of the year, and so early in the year ;p Wicked fairy people, half breeds, political machicinations you do (and don’t!) see coming and TWISTS. Damn son. The next one comes out soon(like seven days from today ;p ), and you better believe I have it preodered on Audible.

The Obernewtyn Chronicles: ok sure, it’s not ‘new’ but the audiobooks (most of them) came out this year, so you know I was there ;p Doubly because Isobelle Carmody read them herself and does a damn good job.

I got into this series when I was about 15 (not perfectly sure, mid teens ). Not long after I read the first book was when I learned that the author had been my age when she wrote it. It blew my mind and that was when I first realised I could actually write for a living, I wasn’t ‘too young’, because here was this amazing story written by someone my age, published and in my hands.

The Calculating Stars & The Fated Sky: An alternate 1950s timeline, a space race not merely against other countries but for the sake of humanity, and a super clever female lead – shut up and take my money. I was extra excited to find out that when I finally got around to reading The Calculating Stars, the Fated Sky had just recently come out, so I could binge them like they were a show on Netflix ;p

Girls Made of Snow and Glass: Such a good reimagining of Snow White, and expanded far beyond the originating fairy tale so you have so much more to enjoy, plus deep insight into the ‘evil queen’. When I was done I started scrabbling around for the author’s other books and… couldn’t find them. I want more of your stuff Ms Bashardoust!

To Kill A Kingdom: Funnily enough this one popped up as a recommendation after reading Girls Made of Snow and Glass. I read the description and promptly threw my money at it. A very wise decision evidently. Sirens instead of little mermaids, cursing queens, pirate princes, enemies to lovers, star crossed lovers – omnomnomnomnom.

The Poppy War: This one is going to sucker punch you. Even with this warning it will STILL sucker punch you. There are some serious themes in this one, severe violence, war crimes, drug use, but the character arcs and the characters themselves are amazing!

Stuff & Nonsense (The Threadbare series): I’ve finally started reading litRPG, after all this gaming, and loving anime set in game worlds, I finally started a few litRPG books, and for the most part I’m loving them. Especially this series! I seem to have a thing for typically non-playable races as main characters, perhaps because they’re so out of the box. Also,this one doesn’t go overboard with the stats, there will be regular level ups with little bits to follow, but no big character sheets slapped between every single chapter murdering the story’s pacing in cold blood. It’s hard not to love a book which is about an animated teddy bear who just wants to be with his little girl, and leveling up while doing it ;p

I also read the last of The Heartstrikers series that was in this same list for last year ‘Last Dragon Standing‘ and it is a smashing ending to the series, seriously that book is a masterclass on how to satisfyingly finish a series(though you’ll have to read the whole series as well to see what a bang-up job she really did – not that’d you’d be complaining).

In books on the craft of writing my stand out for the year was The Story Equation. There were some ones I know would be good for newbies, but for me this one had the most fresh information and certainly came at it all from a different angle.

I also read quite a few biographies of trans people so I could do better justice to my trans characters rather than just basing them on my trans friends. I especially liked Janet Mock’s, Redefining Realness and Surpassing Certainty (the second extra much because it’s focused on life post transition, whereas nearly every other book I read was very pre- and during with only a tiny bit of post). I also enjoyed Being Jazz and wish that every trans child’s parents could be as supportive as hers. I’ve still got a long-ish list that I want to read still too ;p

Were there any stand out books you read in 2018? Any recommendations for me to read in 2019?

2018 Round-Up and 2019 Goals

I loved my gifted cat calendar from Japan so much I regularly posted pages on my Instagram

When I first went to write this post all I could think of was the last third of the year, where things were not great, especially not writing-wise. I thought “I’ve barely achieved anything this year. Man, I don’t want to write a round-up post about how much I failed.” But then when I looked through it, of my nine goals, three were partially completed and five were thoroughly completed. That’s only one actual fail. I cheered right back up.

On the other hand, I don’t want to entirely gloss over the failure. After all, imagine how much more I could have achieved if I hadn’t gotten bogged down in my own head/bad habits for the last few months?

I found a place which makes amazing udon near me, so this was me a fair bit of the year ;p

I love giving feedback, but this year, partly out of ambition, partly out of obligation for the large amount of beta-ing I was asking others to do, and partly because I struggle to be the no-saying meanie I severely over extended myself in the giving feedback department. In addition for my 5-6 short stories I critique every month for my writers group meeting I also beta-ed eight novels. Near the end I started to get frustrated it had been so long since I’d worked on my own stuff and that turned into a bad habit where, when I felt like I wasn’t getting anything done, I’d fall back on games for my sense of achievement, instead of using them as my treat for a job well done. I’m sure you can guess how much that helped the sense (and reality) of not getting things done…

Vicious cycle.

On the upside, compared to 2017 I didn’t burn or severely slash my hands and arms, though 2018 didn’t like my right foot since I slashed the underside of my foot rushing to get a bin out in time and later severely sprained my ankle  running to the park with Xander (it was six weeks before I could walk properly, and it’s clearly never going to be ‘back to normal’ because it’s very easy to pull if I walk or land funny). Generally though, health-wise, it wasn’t as awful.

my special little snowflake ;p

Harley is very much a threenager. Someone please tell me the tantrums go away >.< Also she gave me a LOT of late nights while trying to drop her day nap but failing. This mean she’d have her nap late in the afternoon, and would wake in the evening refreshed and ready for play for a few more hours, meaning we’d be up super late. She’d sleep in the next morning so *she* got the right amount of sleep, but I’m up early to get Xander ready for school and on the bus, so no helpful sleep-in for me. However, she is adorable. You should hear her singing ‘Baby Shark’ XD and her vocabulary is exploding (she’s a little late in speaking, and considering Xander is non-verbal this was a massive concern for us). She is also nuts for My Little Pony. She struggles with words more than two syllables long, unless it’s Fluttershy, or Twilight Sparkle, or Rainbow Dash, then she has allllllll the syllables ;p  Also, I can’t believe she starts kindy this year!

Xander is still a sweet prince. He puts up with Harley like an ANGEL. This boy is the kindest big brother in the universe. Harley is even one of his very few verbalised words (and the way he says it too too cute!). He’s doing well in school and I can’t wait for his birthday in a few more days because he’s going to love some of his presents and where he’s going for the day.

And back to the writing, here’s how I went with my 2018 goals:

Goal#1 – Publish the Charming Series: I want to have the first four ready to go, I’ve currently got the first two ready, and three needs me to action its feedback (I’ve gathered the beta feedback just haven’t yet actioned it), so I’m close, but I’m determined to not just rush junk out there, I’d rather have them well-polished and ready for rapid release.

Goal#2 – Get beta feedback on Lovely/Lonely: Success, I gathered it. I haven’t actioned it yet, but the goal was specifically about gathering so I count this as a win.

Goal#3 – Continue writing and publishing short fiction in traditional publishing markets: I wrote six new short stories (Alone Time, Delivery Man Wanted, Money For Meat, The Taste of Blood, The Last Breath Before Foam, Against The Black Knight). One story was published this year, Groundskeeper in Stupefy Stories#22. I’ve been waiting a while to see this one finally in print so am super happy, plus , it’s a part of my Retailored Fairy Tales world which I’m planning to focus on a fair bit this next year or two. As for other stories such as the six new ones I wrote I’ve been submitting almost exclusively to pro markets this year, which means less sales so far, but I have had some hold requests and feedback rejections, which is always promising.

Goal#4 – Take my back catalogue of short stories that are out of their exclusivity periods and self-publish them: this was planned to fill out small gaps in the publishing schedule of the Charming for Hire series, so since I didn’t release that I didn’t want to squander these. I did do some work regarding formatting and covers though, so this is a partial complete with a good reason for not finishing.

Goal#5 – Start working towards creating a monthly fiction podcast: well, yes, I’ve *started* but still only at the most basic levels, looking into hosting, production schedule, what I’ll need, basic fiddling with Audacity, but no recordings. I’m still undecided as to whether I’ll do a serial show (a novel read in parts) or a short fiction podcast (different story each episode).

Goal#6 – Continue being a good president to Vision Writers Group: I feel I completed this duty well this year. When the Yahoo boards glitched out I swooped in like a superhero (;p ) and found us a new home for the group as well as carefully laid down the foundation for my retirement. Yes. This was my last year as president of the group, I’m still remaining and active member though. Gotta get my critiquing/being critiqued fix somewhere ;p

Goal#7 – Complete one of the unfinished novels: I finished ‘Keys, Clocks, Quests’ just after Camp NaNoWriMo back in April. The two halves are quite different from one another and the plot outline mutated a bit so extensive self edits will be needed, but hey, I’ve still completed the first draft of my fourth novel.

Goal#8 – Continue learning: I’m fairly confident in this one. I added a few more podcasts to my already hefty subscription list, continued on almost entirely up to date with the 5 Years to Become a Bestseller course, and also took part in Margie Lawson’s ‘Writing Body Language and Dialogue Cues Like A Psychologist’. I read 10 new craft books this year as well. I also beta read 8 (yes EIGHT) other people’s novels in addition to my normal feedback for Vision, and you learn a lot when teaching/critiquing others too.

Goal#9 – Rewrite Written by the Stars: I didn’t even touch this. Unfortunately it was scheduled for the ill-fated end of the year, so didn’t stand much of a chance. It’s now scheduled for the start of 2019 at least.

Even my crossword app is giving me ‘subtle’ hints I need to get to work

Like I said, not as bad as I thought. I also did all of my mini goals set last year (updating the site’s look, adding my ‘books read’ to my monthly goal round-ups, and upping my reading speed). Not to mention I read A LOT. 101 books officially completed and reviewed. I did read a few books which were bleh and I didn’t finish. I didn’t review them and aren’t counting them. I also listen to a lot of fiction podcasts.

I also enjoyed a lot of story in the form of watching anime while up late trying to get Harley down, and through my bad gaming habit. I posted about my favourites already. If you missed them or are curious here’s my Top 8 Anime of 2018, and Favourite Video Games of 2018(at least I got a blog post out of all that distraction ;p ).

And to wrap this all up, my goals for 2019:

  • Rewrite Written by The Stars, ideally also do my self edits and get some feedback so I can send it out to agents and publishers again.
  • Complete edits on Lovely/Lonely. I have the feedback, now to action it so it too is ready to be submitted.
  • Get the Charming For Hire series ready for publication and release it. This year for sure! I still want to have the first four 100% ready and ideally the 5th close to it so I can use the rapid release tactic.
  • Continue writing and publishing short fiction for traditional markets. I love doing this. Not sure I could stop if I tried.
  • Work on my fiction podcast. I’m not going to rush this too much, but I’d like to seriously start recording some stuff very soon. It’s something I really want to do, but also want to do well.
  • Write at least one new novel. What will it be? Even I don’t know yet ;p
  • Work on more Retailored Fairy Tales stories. I’ve got the loose plots for some Troll’s Toll sequels rattling around up here as well as some other ideas.
  • Continue learning. This one’s always here. It will never not be.

Are you setting any big goals for yourself in 2019? Anything you wish you could see from me? Your enthusiasm might make me add it to my goals list.

My Top 8 Anime I Watched In 2018

Most people know I’m an otaku, and this year I actually had some time for anime. While this list will largely be 2018 releases, there will be a few anime that I only watched for the first time in 2018. Also, this is in no particular order.

Like a true anime snob, I watched most of them in sub form, but this time mostly because I was watching late at night after most/all of the family was asleep(and while I tried to get the final one down for the night) so I had the volume barely audible, and needed them. 

The Ancient Magus’ Bride

I’ll call this a 2018 one since it didn’t finish until early 2018 ;p

Y’all probably already know I love anthropomorphic skeletons (and this fact will come up again later in this post ;p ) and I was really intrigued by Elias’ design.

I was really into the way the story took actual myths and worked with them, embracing that many fairy stories are actually dark, eg/ I *knew* those little fairies were trying to trick her. I also enjoyed seeing Titania and Oberon and their interactions and Leanan Sidhe. The way the magic was worked into the real world was quite cool too.

I love unusual male leads for the romantic roles (hence casting a skeleton and a troll  as romantic leads in my own stories) so Elias is my kind of leading man, not to mention broody backstories are such a hit <3

Their romance is so cute and adorkable, but also they themselves as individual characters are so rich, as are the others around them.

If you don’t mind a bit of dark in your romance (a bit? scratch that, fairly sizeable is more accurate) and unconventional male leads then you’ll love this one.

Cells at work

I was LIVING for the vibe between White Blood Cell and Red Blood Cell.

I’ve never found something so educational to also move me. Seriously the number of times I was edge-of-my-seat during this show was surprisingly high, even moreso considering the content. I mean they’re cells – why was I so emotionally involved? Seriously, 2 million blood cells died inside me in the time it takes to put the period on the end of this sentence.

One problem though was I was constantly wanting there to be an opportunity for Red Blood Cell to save White, but thanks to my (limited) knowledge of biology I knew it was never going to happen and it was frustrating to know that but still have the want deep inside.

A slight heads up for those who aren’t a fan of gore, White Blood Cell spends half his screen time covered in blood, typically from slashing his way through various bacteria and germs.

Wotakoi

For serious, this was soooo good. It was my Friday morning treat for when I finished my word count and trust me, the words never flowed faster any other day of the week for those couple of months ;p

A gamer for the male lead and a fujoshi for the female – I was instantly connected to both of them. Every episode had both at least one ‘problem’ for the characters where they dealt with something nerd related that I almost always sympathised with fully, and one romantic moment which left me swooning. Such a good combo. I could watch this show forever, but I have a sneaking suspicion it’ll never get a second season, so I’ll just content myself with the manga.

Also, I definitely fell in love with Hirotaka <3 and that’s when it dawned on me: I have a type. My favourite characters in anime I watch consistently have:

  • glasses
  • dark hair (this is occasionally a missable option eg/ Shiho Kimizuki from ‘Seraph of the End’ and Yuta Sakurai from ‘Recovery of an MMO Junkie’)
  • adorakble

Extra points awarded for broody backstories and hyper-competence at something(especially if that leads to cluelessness in other things enhancing the requirement of adorkable).

Masculinity is not a requirement though, as I also love Mirai Kuriyama from Beyond The Boundary  (glasses + adorkable + broody back story).

See here for a small strip of some of my favourite characters.

 

*character walks on screen wearing glasses/puts on glasses*

me:

Violet Evergarden

Wow, the emotional depth in this one is amazing. The way it handles the effects of war on people, both soldiers and civilians and takes the care to show how not everyone responds and reacts the same too. I can’t even tell you how regularly I cried watching this.

I was fascinated by Violet herself, and wish we got to learn more about what happened to her before the Major came into her life (though maybe that’s covered in the light novels?). And what sort of stone heart wouldn’t be moved my her memories of him? *cue tears again*

Her mechanical arms were also really intriguing to me. I wanted to know so much more about the maker, the designer, whether this sort of prosthetic was common, or insanely expensive or unique to her alone. Some of the questions got a bit of an answer but largely even those answers felt a bit glossed over. Thinking about it all got me excited and gave me a story idea, though, so I’m not complaining.

I also enjoyed the special that came out after the series.

Magical Girl Ore

I do love me some magical girl anime, especially how more recent series are all trying to go in new and exciting directions. But lately the trend has been to darker paths, eg/ Puella Magi Madoka Magica, The Magical Girl Raising Project, and Magical Girl Site, which is all well and good, but I’m delighted to see some out of the box but still light-hearted fun.

It does lean a bit more toward the ridiculous though, with a yakuza for the ‘cute mascot’/guide, enemies with hella buff bodies but cute teddy bear-esque heads and the main two girls’ ‘singing careers’. There’s the trope of course of the lead girl being head over heels for a boy, but that boy, Mohiro, is hilarious oblivious and blase. Also, the magnificent tangled romance of it all, it’s like a romance dodecahedron rather than just a triangle XD

My Hero Academia

Ok sure this has been out a while, but I only just started. Considering my love for super heroes I should have been in on it earlier, I’ll blame the delay on my irritation with never ending series.

I binged the whole three seasons in four or five days. The kids were into it too and it was school holidays – that’s my excuse ;p

Something I really love though is how so many of the quirks are highly unusual and how quite a few have downsides and repercussions – something I love putting on my own super powered characters (read Short Circuit if you’re not sure what I’m talking about). It really makes me want to get back to writing in that world.

You can probably predict based on what I said about Wotakoi who my favourite character is (no prizes, cos it’s too obvious).

My one issue with the series though is even at the end of the third season they were still regularly putting the character names and their quirk up on screen for characters who had been primary characters from the start. I’m serious, yes, I freaking know who Todoroki and Ochaco are and what their freaking quirks are because I’ve been watching them for the last 60 something episodes.

Skull-face Book seller Honda-san

Obviously with my passion for anthropomorphised skeletons as characters I was 100% in for this show from the start, but add on how true to life the retail worker experience is between not just types of stores(Honda-san’s books store as compared to my video game store) but even in different COUNTRIES and I was impressed.

Honda-san sells comics, so there are lots of references and hilarious otaku characters, including fujoshi, in the show. All his fellow employees wear various monster ‘masks’ and are named for their masks, but as the character base expands they start to be almost anything sometimes, even a publisher asking ‘can i have a koala head’.

It’s also really fun to look at how book-selling works in Japan. I love learning about differences in industries like that, and would love to know as much about the Australian bookseller retail market as I’ve learned from Honda-san.

That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime

I’m also enjoying a lot of the LitRPG style anime, like ‘That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime’. This goes back far though, to Konosuba, Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash, and Log Horizon (no prizes for guessing who my fave is in that either).

The opening episode is awesome both in watching him sacrifice himself, but also how every thought he makes as he passes factors into his ‘reincarnation’.

It’s so fun to watch him rolling around as a slime and solving problems. Since it’s still coming out while I’m writing this, obviously there’s much more fun to come, and I’m definitely looking forward to it.

 

You’ve probably noticed I’m a bit all over the shop genre-wise, but to be honest that’s part of what I love about anime, so so so many sub genres for me to sink my teeth into and try out 😀

Were there any stand out series for you this year? Anything you’re hanging out to watch next year?

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