Witches and Ray-Guns

Today I happened to notice that I had one hundred subscribers on ArtStation. It’s not exactly a huge milestone. It’s a tiny milestone. More of a rock at the side of the road, hidden by grass really. On the other hand, for a non-artist who never makes it onto the Trending page, I’ll take the win.

And to celebrate, I posted some character references from the book I’m currently working on. You get a sneak peek. Not that I’m telling you much more about it.

News: BAD_CODE did not go so well, so that’s off the list. Something called BAD_CODE is going to turn up sometime, because I think it’s a great title. I am now working on something else, which is going well and will be my next book.

I had a medical problem sneak up on me over the past few months. Pretty much the last year, really, but it’s only really started being a problem since last winter. I just did not realise how bad it was getting until they put me on a massive dose of drugs for it and suggested the next stage would’ve been a trip to accident and emergency. I also didn’t realise how much it was affecting my work until I realised how much better things were going after the drugs kicked in. The past three or four weeks have been amazing! I just hope they have a solution which will keep me in this state once the current treatment ends.

Moral of this story: if you even think your health may be deteriorating, ask someone.

Anyway, things are progressing. I don’t have a date for the next book yet, but it’s coming along. Before the end of the year. Hopefully, significantly before the end of the year. (I might even manage another one before Christmas if my current pace keeps up, but I am not promising anything.) I’ll reveal more about the new book at a later date, but for those of you who care about this stuff, it is planned to be a series.

Stay healthy. Enjoy the pics.

When I wrote the two storm impacts in the Fox books, I was projecting some future trends regarding extreme weather events and climate change. I didn’t expect to see scenes I could have written myself on the new channels this morning.

If you’re in the area affected by Ida, good luck and stay safe.

There was a bit more to show you than I thought. Click on the image above to go to the ARTStation page.

A couple of comments on my last post about Violet Evergarden were from people who either haven’t watched anime before or haven’t watched it in a while. Now, I’m not an expert on anime, but I did get sucked down this rabbit hole recently, so I feel like I should inflict it on a few more people… Uh, I mean that I have something to say about getting into anime later in life. It’s a bit of an extreme case for me, I’m pushing toward 60 steadily, but this is meant to give some suggestions for anyone not coming to the subject having watched anime from a young age. Or if you just want to try something new, whatever works.

I’m going to give as many examples as I can from Netflix, because they have a fairly substantial anime collection and a lot of people have Netflix subscriptions. I will also be taking some examples from Funimation and Crunchyroll, both of which provide free-with-advertising videos as well as trial periods for their subscription services if you feel like giving them a go.

Couple of notes.

• Anime is not a genre. Anime is basically a shortened form of the Japanese word for animation (which is an English borrow word, so we use a word from Japanese which they borrowed from English), and it has many genres of entertainment beneath it. If you like Anime A, there is no surety that you’ll like Anime B, but the same is true if you change like to dislike.
• Anime is not for kids. In fact, some anime should never be shown to kids. Just as anime is not a genre, anime is produced for all age ranges. Viewer discretion is advised.
• Anime and hentai are not the same thing. Actually, if you’re Japanese, hentai isn’t a thing. The word hentai is Japanese, but it means something akin to pervert. The Japanese would describe what the West calls hentai as ‘pornographic anime.’ Still, most anime you can find on Netflix and the other streaming services is absolutely not hentai.
• Dubs and subs. I’ve focused primarily on series with English dubs available. This is more accessible, I think. If you get into it, you’ll end up following season shows, and that really means subtitles. Due to some truly awful dubs back in the day, there’s something of a prejudice against dubbed anime in the fandom, but the truth is that modern dubs can be just as good and they’re almost always easier to watch. Go with what you like, but it’s usually easier to start with dubs unless you happen to understand Japanese.

On to the good stuff.

First, the classics. Akira is a post-apocalyptic cyberpunk anime with violent biker gangs, body-horror, seriously OP psychic powers, and space lasers. It’s one of the first anime I ever watched, long before I really got into it. I didn’t like it, but recently I thought to give it another go and, well, I still think it’s overrated. I can appreciate the animation more, and I believe I’m a minority viewpoint, but I don’t like Akira that much.

Similarly, I tried to get into Neon Genesis Evangelion and I failed. It’s got a somewhat compelling story, but I found the characters entirely unsympathetic and it didn’t hold my interest beyond about eight episodes. It is, however, considered awesome by the majority of fans, so it’s probably worth a crack. Unlike Akira there are a bunch of Evangelion series, so if you like them, there’s plenty to watch.

Ghost in the Shell… Both of the above two are available on Netflix, GitS isn’t (at least in the UK). You can find two of the four Arise films on Netflix, the live-action movie, and their own series Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045, but the original movie isn’t there and neither is Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (upon which SAC_2045 is based). Funimation has pretty much everything GitS-related aside from the live-action movie and SAC_2045. Now, I don’t hate the original animated version of GitS, but Stand Alone Complex is better. SAC is closer to the manga all this is based on. It’s funnier, has more and better action, and I’d argue it covers the themes the film does in much greater detail without the confusing rubbish of the last few minutes. Anyway, GitS is the basis behind Aneka, Fox, and Tatsu, so I’d consider it a worthwhile view in any form.

Anything by Studio Ghibli… and I have to admit that I keep meaning to watch a bunch of these and I never get around to it. Studio Ghibli has produced so many classic examples of anime, it’s just about impossible to list them all, but you can find a list of most of them on Netflix who have a huge bundle of Ghibli films available. Noted examples in no particular order: Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Naursicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Kiki’s Delivery Service, and Howl’s Moving Castle. There are a bunch of other ones.

And now let’s move on to the more modern stuff, which I generally prefer, to be honest. Having said that, there’s a specific genre I can’t seem to get into, that being:

Shonen Battle. Shonen literally translates to boy or youth, it’s the designation for manga and anime targeted at teenage boys (no, not that way; get your mind out of the gutter). Shonen battle anime does exactly what it says on the tin: it gives you over-the-top battles, generally spanning multiple episodes, tournament arcs, and usually younger male protagonists. Shonen Battle is the physical embodiment of power creep. There’s always a bigger, badder bad guy, and there’s always a bigger, more OTT power the protagonist can pull out of his arse to defeat him. Classical shonen battle is (you guessed it) Dragon Ball and all its franchised follow-ups. Also in the famous category are Naruto and Hunter x Hunter. They aren’t on Netflix, but My Hero Academia is, and that’s one of the most popular shows in the genre currently. I got about eight episodes into MHA, got bored, and stopped. I got a little further with Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, which I definitely think is a cut above the rest regarding the animation, but these shows all seem the same to me. I keep hunting for one I like, and I’m not doing well.

Also in this category, sort of, is One Punch Man, though it’s very much a satire rather than a straight take. It’s the story of an ordinary man who manages to make himself so powerful that he can take down any enemy with one punch. He then becomes entire disillusioned because nothing is a challenge any more. It’s funny. Season one is on Netflix. I recommend it. If you like it, season two is on Crunchyroll.

If you tried Violet Evergarden and liked it, you may wish to try a few more of its ilk. There are a bunch on Netflix: A Silent Voice, Your Name, Your Lie in April, Anohana, and Erased. Anohana in particular is known for making grown men blubber. I can’t really recommend any because I haven’t watched them. I’ll save them for the next time I want a cathartic experience.

I should mention JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. Haven’t watched, don’t want to go down that rabbit hole. It’s… weird. Just from clips on YouTube, I know it’s weird. Netflix has two seasons of it, and it’s very popular with people who cannot shut up about it online.

What got me into anime this time around was A Certain Scientific Railgun, so let’s cover that franchise. The A Certain… anime series are getting pretty voluminous at this point. A Certain Magical Index is the base series, taken from a light novel series. That got a manga spin-off concerning a girl who can fire coins at hypersonic speeds, hence her nickname of Railgun. One of the villains of her arc (actually appearing in both Index and Railgun from different viewpoints) goes by the name of Accelerator, a boy able to manipulate vectors and one of the most OP characters there is. He got his own anime, A Certain Scientific Accelerator. Index and Railgun have three seasons each, Accelerator currently has one. There’s also an Index film, The Miracle of Endemyion, which just turned up on Netflix, but you’d need to go looking on Funimation if you want the rest. The worldbuilding in this franchise is great and the setting is partial inspiration for the Death’s Handmaiden setting as well as some aspects of Ultrahumans.

The other inspiration for that series is The Irregular at Magic High School. The first season of that is on Netflix, but it is subtitled Japanese. If you want to watch the second season, you need to go looking on Funimation, but there’s a dub of that (but the sub is better). If you want to watch the movie… Well, I had to order it from somewhere on Amazon. It was scripted by the author of the light novels, but it’s not really required viewing.

Some of my favourite anime falls (at least partially) into the Slice of Life category. On Netflix, there’s Love, Chunibyo, and Other Delusions. One season on Netflix, a second available on Funimation. Two films on Netflix. Elsewhere you can find Nichijou, Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid, Interviews with Monster Girls, The Helpful Fox Senko-san, and numerous others. Those last three are my go-to anime to watch when I’m feeling down, particularly Monster Girls which manages to be wholesome, funny, sexy in the right way, and touching. As with most Slice of Life (otherwise known as Cute Girls Do Cute Things), nothing happens in an interesting way.

What else… Oh yeah, isekai. Isekai isn’t really a genre, it’s a set-up. The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe would be isekai, if written by a Japanese author. So would A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Aneka is, by some tokens, an isekai. Basically, take someone out of their normal environment and toss them into another one. It’s a literary convention which allows exposition without making the characters look stupid: they need to explain things to the noob. The one that really kicked off the isekai bandwagon was Sword Art Online. I can’t recommend it because I haven’t watched it and thanks to the deluge of reviews denouncing it as trash, I probably never will. I suspect that, if you like it, you’ll love it, and otherwise you’ll hate it. It’s on Netflix, however, so it’s available. Angel Beats is also on Netflix and is supposed to be a lot better, though I only kept going for a few episodes.

In an isekai class of its own is Konosuba. Correctly, it’s Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku o! which translates as God’s Blessings on this Wonderful World! It’s a character comedy, technically a satire on the isekai genre, but really more like a sitcom. There’s a film, The Legend of Crimson, which I went to the cinema to see. You don’t have to, but you will need to try out Crunchyroll to watch it. At least you can watch all of it dubbed (though the subbed version is at least as good, maybe better, depending on preference).

Oh, another isekai worth watching is The Saga of Tanya the Evil. This one has some excellent world building and some interesting philosophy, if you’re willing to look past the setting which has been heavily mistaken for Nazi Germany. It’s not, but I can understand how people might see it that way. Personally, I liked it enough to buy it on BlueRay. There’s a series and a film on Crunchyroll. It’s well worth the viewing, but the film has never received a dub. Oh, and the music in this one is awesome too.

I nearly forgot the slimesekai! That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime is a bit like Konosuba, but it’s more of a deconstruction of the genre than a satire. Like Tanya, it features an older protagonist (prior to their death anyway), but Tanya gets reincarnated as a human (of the opposite sex) while Rimaru gets reincarnated as the world’s most powerful slime monster. It’s a funny series, getting kind of dark as things progress. Season two is running on Crunchyroll at the moment (subtitled), while the dub is available on Funimation (coming out a couple of weeks after the Japanese version).

And Ascendance of a Bookworm is on Crunchyroll too. Watching that pushed me into writing The Empress’s Mage.

I could keep going for pages… Quick-fire round:

• PSYCHO-PASS (Funimation) is good and added some colour to Tatsu. (You’d get the joke there if you watched it.)
• Cop Craft (Funimation) was one I enjoyed. A sort of reverse isekai.
• Overlord (Funimation or Crunchyroll) is another isekai I should’ve mentioned already. It’s a bit different. Funny as well as very dark in places.
• The Rising of the Shield Hero (Funimation and Crunchyroll, I think) is another isekai which I’m less fond of.
• My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom (Crunchyroll) is a very funny isekai with a twist.
• One Piece is a very, very, very long anime which you’ll have to find for yourself. Has a lot of fans. Probably not for the beginner.
• So, I’m a Spider, So What? (Crunchyroll) is an iskai with a twist so big it corkscrews and a weirdly sympathetic protagonist. Currently being dubbed, but you get 24 episodes in the first season.
• The Misfit of Demon King Academy (Crunchyroll) takes the concept of the overpowered protagonist and dials it up to 15 (11 wasn’t high enough). There’s argument over whether it’s a straight comedy or meant to be taken seriously. Whatever, it’s funny. In the first episode, the protagonist beats someone to death just using his heartbeat.
• Blend-S (Funimation and Crunchyroll) is ‘cute girls doing cute things’ dialled up to 11 with a subtle hint of unintended sadism. Funny, but only available subtitled.
• I’ve been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level (Crunchyroll) is cute girls do cute things in another world. Well, I think it’s funny and you may too.

I’m going to stop now. I’m sure there’s stuff I should’ve mentioned and haven’t. If you want to give more anime a go, these are some ideas for what to try. Just remember, pretty much everything is an acquired taste. If you do find something you like, let me know in the comments (and I never usually say that).

On Monday night, I was looking for something to watch and I finally got around to watching Violet Evergarden. I kind of knew what I was getting into when I decided to do it, but damn if it wasn’t even more affecting that I thought it would be. If you can make it through the thirteen episodes of the main series without at least wanting to blubber like an infant, you have to hand in your humanity membership card.

Violet Evergarden is probably best known (in the West) as an anime series produced by Kyoto Animation. It was based on a light novel of the same name (except in Japanese) by Kana Akatsuki and illustrated by Akiko Takase. It tells the story of an orphan – Violet – raised as a living weapon to fight in a war and never really socialised. She’s essentially a sociopath without the negative aspects; she can’t empathise with others because she’s never been taught or shown what emotions really are. She loses her arms in the war but her world seems to have some fairly crazy technology because they manage to replace her lost arms with fully functional metal ones. Having known only life in the military, Violet now sets out to make her way as an ‘Auto Memory Doll,’ essentially a ghostwriter for the many people who can’t write or those who want a letter written that they don’t have to skills to write themselves. Violet has to learn emotions and empathy in order to do her job, and that’s basically the journey we go on with her as the series unfolds.

That dry synopsis does not do justice to the rollercoaster ride you go through when watching this series. Apparently, the novel handles the sequence of events differently, which is a bit of an issue for the series. In the novel, you uncover Violet’s backstory slowly; she starts out as a letter writer with metal arms, and only as the story progresses do you uncover why she is as she is. The series frontloads the backstory, at least to some extent. The first three episodes have Violet collected from hospital and set her up in the role of an Auto Memory Doll. Only in the third episode do we get a hint at the way the rest of the series will largely play out.

Most of the episodes in the series are technically told from the viewpoint of one of Violet’s clients. Violet is hired to write something for someone, and we are shown how she overcomes whatever hurdles she has to in completing her contract, how she develops as a person in doing so, and how what she does affects those around her. Simple, right? Nothing new. Stories of personal development are two-a-penny. True enough, but when you combine the writing, the animation, and the soundtrack, Kyoto Animation have elevated Violet Evergarden into a true masterpiece of emotional manipulation. I hate it when characters are given thorough development and background just so you’ll empathise with them when something terrible happens to them. That’s one of my pet peeves with season three of Overlord. I should probably hate Violet Evergarden, but the manipulation doesn’t seem forced this time and it will get you in the feels every single time. Episode 10, in particular, will pull out your heart, stuff it in a blender, and reduce it to mush. I’m tearing up writing this because it’s giving me flashbacks. One of the reviews I’ve seen online said (paraphrased), ‘What it took Clannad forty episodes to do, Violet Evergarden can manage in twenty-three minutes.’ Clannad is one of those famously tear-jerking anime I refuse to watch. I guess I was kind of suckered into Violet…

Anyway… It’s pushed me to try to make this recurring idea I’ve had work. I want to write a book about a truly inhuman character; a character who doesn’t think like a human. Violet’s not really like that, but that’s the story I wanted to make work after watching it and I might have figured out a way to make it work. We’ll see. It’s going to take some development. The current working title, by the way, is Professor Orson’s Mechanical Daughter. So, make of that what you will.

And if you’d like to have your heart torn out by a cute anime girl with metal arms, Violet Evergarden is available on Netflix in all regions (I think). Look for the ‘Violet Evergarden Collection,’ which includes the series, a 35-minute ‘special’, and ‘Eternity and the Auto Memory Doll,’ a 90-minute movie. There is also another movie which was put out in cinemas and will hopefully turn up on Netflix eventually (though having read the synopsis on Wikipedia, I don’t think I want to put myself through that!). I do recommend watching at least the main series and the special unless you really do only read my books for the action and sex scenes. But have a box of tissues nearby when you do.

As it turns out, I didn’t do as many images as I thought for this book. Still, you’ve got almost all the major characters rendered. The only ones I have of Joe is the basic character reference (which is nude, and I avoid posting those) and the cover image. That was an oversight. Anyway, I hope these are useful/enjoyable. Click on the image above to see the gallery.

Titans is now available for purchase. Post-apocalyptic superheroes.

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No post, I just wanted to have a post called ‘mutability.’ It’s a great word.

Okay, so I lied.

First news: Titans will be coming out a week early. Since I never said when it would be coming out, this could be considered not-news, but hey, it’s a week early! Exact date will depend on circumstances, but expect it early next month, like very early next month.

Second news: UNO may get bumped in favour of the fourth Death’s Handmaiden book. I’m not absolutely certain about this, but I’m a little stuck for the middle of UNO and I had a sudden urge to write DH4 (along with a couple of bright ideas which filled in some needed gaps). Planning is happening. More when I know for certain.

Okay, so I seem to have decided to go with UNO as my next book. I have a basic plot worked out, sort of, and a setting, sort of. Then I thought… What if?

Most LitRPGs I’ve heard of are based around a fantasy setting. LitRPG-style anime is the same. UNO is also currently a sci-fi world hosting a fantasy game. Magic and all that. I could go with a sci-fi game. Well, a fantasy-sci-fi game. We’d be talking Outriders, Destiney, and Borderlands rather than Final Fantasy, Dragon Age, or, for that matter, D&D (which shall be forever damned for introducing the idea of levels which video game designers think are required).

I’m asking for input. Now’s the time for a change in setting. I haven’t put finger to word processor. Everything is fluid. I don’t even have solid character designs done yet because I’ve been working out the game mechanics. (Even if I won’t focus heavily on those, I need to know how the game works to make this ‘realistic.’)

What do you think? Stick with the fantasy tropes? Go with something a bit different? Let me know what you think in the comments below! (If this was YouTube, I’d ask you to like and subscribe. Thankfully, it’s not.)