Yoshiki TanakaBesprekingen

Volume 7 of the Arslan saga has a very tight and fast-moving plot - once again, (and just like in the two volumes before that) some things are handled differently from the anime. I liked this element of surprise. It's just a pity that there wasn't time to focus on the characters, except maybe Arslan in the last couple of pages. Also, the drawing was quite sloppy at times, what was that about? I am still enjoying the series, hopefully the next volume is going to be an improvement.

A manga series that continues to impress and entertain. There were some scenes/details in this volume that were not in the anime (as far as I remember ;-) ), I appreciated it very much.

I love the characters, it's nice to know that there are still many volumes left for me to enjoy...

My goodness, how I rushed and flew through volume 8 :))) Things are leaping at you from every panel. The first third is about yet another battle. With war elephants! War elephants! Then there was Daryun’s duel. I knew exactly how it would go, but it still left me breathless. The art in this instalment is great once again (volume 7 was just a glitch, what a relief). I just loved the way the characters’ facial expressions were done.

Keep them coming ;)

I really enjoyed the anime series (it's on Netflix, check it out ;-)) and had trouble letting go. So, here I am, diving into the manga. Just like the anime series, this is an epic fantasy with great characters. (I'm particularly fond of Daryun and Narsus.) And despite knowing exactly what was going to happen, I swallowed the first volume quickly (too quickly) and with pleasure. I loved the drawing style!
Looking forward to the rest of the series...

Took me a moment to remember what had happened since it had been quite a while since I read the previous book. Still love this series. Things are getting even more interesting.

I have only watched the anime, but if you want a manga series on medieval warfare and salvery this is it. Also Arslan is an angel.

It's bad and cheesy. The writing is clunky (I can't tell if it's the translator) and there are whole chapters that read like cliff notes or a history book with dry exposition. Characters are cartoonish, tension in the wholly predictable plot non-existant. What it's got going for it is how ridiculous it is.

The plot boils down to a bunch of plucky rebels from the democratic alliance fighting space Hitler leading the Fourth Reich. Surprisingly little SF in this story, it's mostly about military intrigue with a sprinkling of medieval style battles (except in space!). Honestly, it would translate seamlessly into a medieval fantasy setting without losing anything.

Most of the focus this book is politicking, with a little bit of space combat.

My video review will go up first Wednesday of October.

Well... one of our two leads has had their psychological cooling rods removed, which makes me very interested in seeing what they'll be doing next book.

While this book was published this year, it was originally published in Japan decades ago, and it shows. I still enjoyed the book, but it suffers from some pacing problems. It definitely avoids the "rah-rah military over sheeple civilians" problem some mil-SF runs into, though the best works of Japanese mil-sf tends not to have that problem.

I am unsure why this is receiving such good reviews. I have read all the previous ones and thoroughly enjoyed them. I am extremely disciplined at finishing books but threw in the towel at around the half way mark. Frankly, it reads like a dull history textbook. Perhaps it improves significantly in the second half (although there are no indications of that from the other reviews).The second half would have to be amazing to justify the effort of working through the incredibly dull first half. Now I have a dilemma - do I try the next book or just give up altogether ? Perhaps I will wait until others write some proper reviews here in case I missed something.
Edit

This is the first volume in The Heroic Legend of Arslan manga series, there are nine volumes in this series right now with the tenth scheduled to be released in late 2018. This was a pretty typical fantasy war manga; I liked it but didn’t love it.

This book follows the young prince Arslan who is kind-hearted and curious (much to his father’s frustration). We follow Arslan through a number of years as he learns sword fighting and goes to his first battle.

The illustration in this manga is good but not amazing; there is some detail here and it wasn’t hard to follow. I enjoyed Arslan as a character, although he is quiet for much of the book. I wasn’t a huge fan of the storyline which is what I think of as “fantasy war”.

As for the storyline; during a huge battle much of the Pars forces are decimated and Arslan now much fight to reclaim his kingdom. Many pages in here of battles and politics. I enjoyed the sections with Arslan but didn’t enjoy the rest that much.

This series reminded me a bit of Vinland Saga but wasn’t nearly as good as that epic manga series.

Overall this was decent but not spectacular. If you are a huge fan of fantasy war themed manga (which I am not) you might enjoy this. The illustration is decent and the main character of Arslan is well done.

This is probably a better "Game of Thrones". It's grimdark, it's gritty and has "grey morality" however it doesn't have the rape. The only rape I've seen is a short description of what the Lusitainians are doing to emphasize that they are monsters. (They fulfilled their 3 lusts as it was called.) That was it. No long detailed descriptions that the targeted male audience can fap to as ASOFAI has.
As for the story it's about a King who we think is the good king, but killed his brother to take the throne what that means for Arslan who doesn't know. All the characters who are trying to figure out what is going on. Enemies that are the cross between the crusaders and the conquistadors and this is all set in fantasy ancient Persia. So everyone has Persian names. (Kodansha actually screws a LOT of them up, not having done the research.)
The female representation is pretty lacking, only having Farangis. However in the book and the picture she chooses to dress in "male attire" and wears armor. (Unlike the manga that has her sexualized for the NEW male audience.)
So what DO have to work with is good. This isn't a modern book however so I don't know if Tanaka got better, though from what I've seen of the Ryouko anime, it's pretty good.

Pretty good, marred only a little by Viz's changes to modernize it. Since this is the second book, it continues the story of the first book. All I can say is that for one part of the story near the end, it just seems to go a bit too fast on what happens. The anime does this too however. Also I don't get why nobody is blaming Oberstein for anything since he's the one that came up with everything. Seriously he look too suspicious here.

However if you are good you can pick up the foreshadowing of what's to come.

So for that most part this book plays out like a shounen story. Each leader is super smart and powerful and knows how to out maneuver the regulars only with space ships and armadas. Only a shounen story told more intelligently and without 99% of the misogyny.

Don't get me wrong. Tanaka's views are rutted in the past, with the men doing everything and being the heirs of everything. However looking at some of his other works. it looks like maybe his views evolved over time since this was written in the 80s. Even then the women in this book usually have agency, like Greenhill, Windsor and an upcoming character. They are smart, some ambitions and feel as fleshed out (or un-fleshed out) as the male characters are. He does seem to describe the women by their looks, but not grossly so like modern light novels.

As for the shounen part. Our two main characters "power up" every so often, done by ranks and gaining ships and people. It's done in a believable way and not like some inane "The power level of my ship is over 9000!"; through actual use of tactics and maneuvering. Now that part that feels shounen-y is the ass pulls that these leaders do. Like Kircheis suddenly having Siffl particles to get through the minefield. Yang being the only smart one capable of holding his own, Yang being able to beat the BLack Lancers because of W/Bittenfeld's sheer brain dump of tactics. Mind you that W/Bittenfeld was built up to be some kind of powerhouse too. So yes there's a bit of that shounen flavor going on with the ass pull wins. The text itself however focuses on the people mostly than the fighting and if they are fighting, it's mostly on how the people fight and not on tech specs of the guns and how they are exactly tearing apart the ships every single blast. Some is mentioned, but only for effect.

Really I would read this before starting the anime, or read along to the anime as there is a lot more explained in the book that you might not get watching the anime.

This book out of the series is probably the most boring. There's lots of political maneuvering and one big battle right at the end that really doesn't amount to much. However this book really speaks volumes to what's going on today, right now. This book was written back in the 1980s and it's almost a prediction for what Dump is doing. There are protestors being beaten and shot and then blamed for "starting riots", there's the military trying to gain control of the government and then there's Trunicht.
So if you like Dump Truffle, you'll hate this book as it specifically calls out crap like that.

The story is kind of starting to drag since they split up. We are focussed on what is going on in Hirmiz's camp. They are trying to humanize him, giving him a long lost love that was probably killed, but keep in mind he murdered some women for no reason other than she was a fake Queen and they were with her.

You want to root for him, but he also cast his lot in with the Lusitanians that are murdering, raping, and destroying everything.

Humanity is divided. The Galactic Empire is ruled by a dictator while the Free Planets Alliance desires democracy and autonomy from the Galactic Empire. The great imperial army will have none of that and seeks to force the rebels (Free Planets Alliance) back into the Galactic Empire. Two great military geniuses will face off again and again as this war rages on. Reinhard von Lohengramm fights for the Empire even as Yang Wen-li fights for the Alliance.

This book held a lot of promise and I was pretty excited to get my hands on a review copy. However, I was underwhelmed by it. While we have the two main military geniuses, there are many, many side characters and more and more get pulled into the story as the tale progresses. However, most of them are given little more than a name and station; I often felt like they were merely being described as game pieces. I found that I never really got attached to any of the characters. So this made it difficult to care about their motives or the outcomes of the few action scenes.

I was excited by the big sweeping background. There’s obviously generations of history built into the backstory of how this conflict came about. All of that comes through clearly. I was pretty intrigued by those characters that have engineered bits (like a replacement bionic eye) and the politics of the two factions concerning that. However, that turned out to be a very small part of the book and little was done with it. Much of the book is spent on characters contemplating the politics of the situation and this made the story rather slow for me.

I did enjoy that Yang is a fan of tea and that his ward, Julian, is rather fussy about how to make Yang’s tea. There’s also plenty of ethnicities represented by the characters. However, there are few female characters and they are often in support roles and/or romance interests. Their looks were usually the first (and sometimes the only thing) mentioned. Some of them, like Yang’s aide de camp Fredericka Greenhill, were given additional attributes. Women are allowed to serve in both militaries, but only in background, non-combat roles. This made me sigh. First, it’s fiction and we’re in the 21st century and women can be cast in lead military roles without ruffling feathers. Second, when an entire gender is cast in only support roles, this makes those characters rather predictable and that can make the story predictable.

The whole book was a meh for me. I have heard that this book first came out as a manga and I think that might be more interesting. I may or may not check that out at the library.

I received a copy at no cost from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

The Narration: Tim Gerard Reynolds does a good job with the numerous accents. However, in between dialogue, he tends to fall into a monotone, making him sound a bit bored with the book too. I really liked how he made Julian sound young and fussy. I also loved how his accents weren’t necessarily dictated by a character’s last name or his looks. After all, it’s a big galaxy and an Asian looking man can sound like a Tennessee gentleman.

The rating here is for the TRANSLATION as I read a fan translation of the novel before.
For that review go here.

However ViZ/Haikasoru decided to treat us all like we are kids and give it the "Let's modernize old sci-fi and make it modern cuz people r dum!" or something.
I'm sure the people reading this book all know that it was written in the 80s and that the anime is from the 80s, so changing the fact that Julian was reading republished books to "e-copies" is kind of a slap in the face to our intelligence. They don't even stay consistent with the changes as 3D television was changed to... something else, however later in the book we are back to 3D displays.
Also suddenly we have to VERY SPECIFICALLY point out that the gunners are using touch screens? That was not in the original and I can only think the "e-gram"toward the end of the book is another 'vizlation'. (My fan version cuts off after chapter 7)

Let me also get it out of the way that the UC (Universal Calendar) was changed to SE (Space Era). There is no explanation to why ViZ did it that way. I can only think because of Gundam. However I think I will just go with. "Because ViZ like to change and censor things and this is REALLY apparent in their manga." I am hoping the wiki sites out there will keep the "UC" as that is used in the original novels, the anime and the gaidens and make some note how ViZ is being silly.

Still to modernize a book written in the 80s reeks of treating us like children in how Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys are rewritten for then to all have cell phones and such.

Also they seem to like to use big words for no reason other than Sci-Fi likes to use big words for no reason.
Also++ they seem hooked on the word "countenance" when talking about people's face like DMP does in their Vampire Hunter D [bc:Vampire Hunter D|16599|Vampire Hunter D|Hideyuki Kikuchi|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1302669309s/16599.jpg|18277] books.

Overall though the translation doesn't seem to meander from what is written. Nor does it seem to add flavor text like I hear some of TokyoPops stuff does. So I'll give them credit for not horribly mucking it up. Just if you are going to read it. Realize that it has been modernized "for the kids, yo".

It looks like Kodansha finally changed Himez's name more to what it should be than "Hermes" which was outright wrong.

The expressions on some of the characters this go around are hilarious, especially since most of them are on the bad guys.

Also, INB4 Avatar: TLA because people are certainly going to say this manga ripped off Zuko when the novels to this were written WELL BEFORE Avatar: TLA was even a thing.

I like the fact they are starting to get into the politics and that the Lusitanians ARE being framed as fundamentalist Christians and the way they go to other cultures and completely trash them.

中世ペルシアがモデルになっており、ジェネレーションの劣化のようなものはないはずだが不思議。文体やシナリオに25年という年月を感じてしまう。とはいえたかだか四半世紀であり、違和感というほどではない。スペクタルというか、ワクワクドキドキ感というかが足りないのだ。何回おんなじ相手と戦えば気がすむのかという感じで続巻をよむ意欲がわかない。いまとなってはライトノベルの隆盛を感じる一冊。いちおうファンタジー作品ではあるが、1巻はほぼそういう要素はなく、2巻からは地面に潜むスキルが登場するのだが、たかだかその程度でファンタジーらしさはほぼない。½