Issue #5: Winter, 2015 Jose Sanchez was born and raised in Miami, Florida on March 10,1968,where he still lives today with his wife Aliana. At the age of six, he was introduced to fingerpainting. By first grade, he had picked up his first pencil, but it was not until the summer of 1977 when hit the movie screens across America, that his imaginative spark was truly ignited! Like so many other people that were influenced by the cult phenomenon, he was too. So much so, that this led him to seriously explore and develop his talent for creating art further. As time has gone by and he has honed his skills, he has been notably influenced by the works of and artists such as: Stephen Youll, Donato Giancola, Chris Moore, Tim White, Jim Burns, David B. Mattingly and Michael Whelan, to name but a few.

He attended Lindsey-Hopkins Technical Education Education Center in Miami, Florida where he received a certificate in Commercial Art Technology-majoring in illustration and minoring in Graphic Design. Jose would ideally like to see himself one day working professionally in the motion picture industry as a Concept Artist. He had previously worked on a low- budget SF/Super Hero Animation flick titled: “Shadow Runner”, designing the individual character’s spaceships. “They tend to depend more on technology than they do on their own superpowers”. He is also interested in the publication and gaming markets. To one of his many credits, which have included several fanzine covers and one semi-prozine cover and interior artwork.

Also appearing in the official LucasFilm Star Wars Insider magazines: “City Patrol”, was chosen for publication in the March/April 2006/issue #86.

“Oil Bath”, “Artoo”, “Pair of Jawas” and “Land of the Rising Suns” in April 2014/issue #148 now being published by Titan Publications and online at starwars.com on the Jan.15,2014 Blog article: Bantha Tracks: Best of the Year, Online edition: “AT-AT Driver” and in the Blog article: Bantha Tracks: Art Galaxy, March 2014 “ Djas Puhr-Settling The Score!”

Much of his art can be currently seen at efanzines.com. Breaking It All Down: The ‘Zine – is edited and written by Alexander Case. Letters of Comment can be sent to [email protected]. If you’ve never sent a LoC to me before, please put “LoC:” at the start of the subject line, so it gets filed in the right place. I also sporadically appear on the Bureau42 Greatest Science Fiction Film Tournament podcast, available through the Bureau42 Master Podcast Audio Feed, which can be found on iTunes and Stitcher. My YouTube Channel, where the web-series that this fanzine is spun off from. can be found at http://www. youtube.com/user/CountZeroOr Contents Letters of Comment 4 Con Report – Kumoricon 6 Con Report – Portland Retro Gaming Expo 21 Con Report – OryCon 2014 22 5 Recommended SF/Fantasy of 2014 23 Book Review – 28 Letters of Comment It’s been a short hop since my last issue of the zine, the ball and managed my time better, I would have but I’ve still gotten a couple letters, one of is why gotten captions together for the pictures and a better there’s such a short turnaround. Text of the LOCs explanation of why these series are so frequently will be in bold, and in a different typeface then my cosplayed. For that matter, I would have put together comments. con reports for Kumoricon and Portland Retro Gaming expo. As it is, this issue I’ve got articles on all If you’d like to see your LoC printed in the next issue, three cons I attended, as well as my thoughts on some please send your E-Mails to alexander.case@gmail. of SF & Fantasy Anime of 2014. com Also, I would have had the sense to put a contact From Jerry Kaufman: E- in the issue, so I could get LoCs from people Thanks for giving Suzle and me the new issue at who hadn’t previously commented on the ‘zine. Orycon. I’m glad to see you got two meaty letters from To make up for this failure to plan, now that my two of fandom’s meatiest letter writers. internship and the term are over, I’m putting out I have to admit that some of the contents this this issue of the fanzine a little earlier than normal. issue were lost on me. The piece on Anime, “Most As it is, I have a slew of pictures of cosplayers from Frequently Cosplayed”, was mildly interesting, and Kumoricon that I didn’t use last issue which I’ll the thumb-sucking young woman was somewhat be using in this issue, and a couple have some neat attractive, but it all left me wondering. Why are these stories attached to them. shows Cosplayed? What character is the thumb-sucker From Lloyd Penny: supposed to be, not to mention those in the other photos? Dear Alexander: Your review of Guardians of the Galaxy grabbed Many thanks for issue 4 of Breaking It All Down my attention the most, because I saw it this past – The Zine. Time for a few comments, and I will flesh summer. I would say that part of the movie’s appeal is them out as best as I can. that its skeleton is the old “mysterious father” aspect. For me, the original Star Trek, the original Star I don’t know if this derives from the comics or was Wars, and dozens of SF anthologies and novels is what added by the screenwriters. I have the impression that got me started. I didn’t find fandom until that Star Wars screenwriters nowadays draw on Campbell’s Hero with year of 1977, but I have stuck around ever since. Well a Thousand Faces more often than not, to add a mythic done on the paid internship! Most internships here are echo. The hero of unknown origins who turns out to be salary-free, and some wonder at the legality of that. the son of a god or culture hero - or a galaxy-spanning villain - crops up in many myths, said Campbell. Being Good to see John Purcell here. I started as a captured and sent to that prison planet also matches the media fan, and helped to found a Star Trek club on the hero’s visit to the underworld in Campbell’s version of West coast of , but I had to ask what else there the hero’s journey. was, moved to Toronto, and found so much more. After so many years of SF literature, fanzines, con running, Also, the “mysterious father” angle gives the costuming and more, we’ve added steampunk to the mix filmmakers a good hook to hang a sequel on. to keep things fresh. And, we’re now vendors at SF cons Yours, and at craft shows, so there’s more fun to be had. Jerry Kaufman My loc…Yes, no Sasquan for us, and two of the senior committee live here, and they are not pleased So, this is why I’ve written this fanzine so quickly with us. In fact, I doubt we will ever get to another (hopefully) after the last one – I rushed my last issue Worldcon, unless a lottery decides to burden us with of the Fanzine out the door to get it ready in time for untold wealth. C’est la vie. OryCon, without giving it the editorial passes and formatting that it really needed. Had I been more on Thank you for the article on Attack on Titan. The uniforms seem to be mass-produced, and that’s why , which I mentioned in I saw so many of them. I gather there is a lot of anime passing my previous article, and also in an earlier that also contains a lot of steampunk, and Steam Boy article, either the Anime 101 article in my first issue, is the only title I can name, and the only title I own. or the Anime 102 article I wrote for The Drink , Would Black Butler be part of that mix? Some of the also falls into this sort of “diesel-punk” esthetic, other titles at the end? probably fitting into something similar to the 1930s in terms of the visual style of the world’s setting. Like Again, not much for me with gaming and video Black Butler, the series has a mix of technology and games, so I skip over them, and say that I am done for magic, though the magic in Fullmetal Alchemist is now. Thanks for this, and I look forward to the next more common and flashier than the magic in Black issue. Butler.

On the front, the Sakura Wars Yours, Lloyd Penney. series of RPGs also has a steam-punk style. The most Black Butler would be a little closer to recent title in the series – Sakura Wars: So Long, Steampunk, being set in Victorian England – though My Love – received an English-language release it contains a very strong occult element as well. Kia for the Playstation 2. In the Shin Megami Tensei Asaimya’s Steam Detectives (which was also series (which I started covering last issue, and I’ll adapted to an anime series) is another steam-punk finish up this issue), the Raidou Kuzunoha games anime. (Raidou Kuzunoha vs. The Soulless Army and Raidou Kuzunoha vs. King Abaddon) are set in during However, I’ve encountered more anime and this period and bring some diesel-punk elements to the manga that I’d describe as “diesel-punk” rather than table. “steam-punk” - featuring something of an art-deco esthetic, and with less steam and more gasoline (or a more fantastical source of energy), as source of energy in the setting. After I discussed the topic with a few of my friends who are more knowledgeable about anime than I, they came to a similar conclusion. As for why, I suspect the reason is historical. Japan’s “industrial revolution”, and all the flourishing of culture and science that came with it, was during the turn of the 20th century. This puts it during the country’s late Meiji period and during the Taisho period – when the country had completely stabilized after the civil war of the Meiji Restoration, and the country was having amazing cultural growth, and a level of economic prosperity that would not be matched again until the ‘70s and ‘80s. Among the shows that feature a “diesel-punk” that I’d definitely recommend is the anime series Last Exile, a SF anime with some excellent world-building and very well written anime series based around air couriers on an alien planet. The super-robot anime (which joins on the list of anime series with titles that don’t work well in English), also uses a similar estethic, and has an excellent narrative and also very well designed super robot action. Con Report – Kumoricon Last year I failed to make it to Kumoricon for various reasons. This year, I did not have that problem. As with last year, the convention was held at the Vancouver (Washington) Hilton, with the dealer’s room being in the Vancouver Red Lion, just a couple blocks away. Unlike the past few years I’ve gone, this year the convention has been increased in length from three days to four, going , August 29th through Monday, September 1st. This location is, probably, the best place in the Portland Metro area for an anime convention. While it doesn’t have mass transit access to the venue, like the Lloyd Center Doubletree hotel, it does have a very large park immediately across the street from the venue. Because anime conventions in particular tend to be very cosplay heavy, this makes for a great place to set cosplay photo-shoots, particularly since the convention happens towards the end of the summer, so it’s warm enough to spend a fair amount of time outside. The fact that Vancouver also has their farmer’s market around the time of Kumoricon helps, as attendees are able to get an affordable lunch within short walking distance of the venue, rather than having to hunt down a restaurant. Also, downtown Vancouver isn’t built-up enough to have the metropolitan-wind-tunnel effect you get at the downtown Portland Hilton (where the con was held a few years ago). Probably the other really significant shift from the last time I was here is that the dealer’s room has effectively doubled in size, taking up two rooms at the Red Lion. The last Kumoricon I went to, the Red Lion had taken a block of confrence rooms, removed the dividers into one large room, and that had been set up as the dealer’s room. This year they had to add a second room to accommodate more vendors – and that wasn’t including the booths in Artist’s Alley, in the parking garage under the Vancouver Hilton (alongside the game room). My suspicion for this decision (I didn’t ask), is that this spreads out the vendors, which means that main dealer room isn’t so cramped, and you don’t have as much of a problem with crowding (and potentially fire- code violations). This year I took a lot more cosplay photos than the last time I went to Kumoricon. This is in part due to my new smartphone, and the fact that I’d decided that I wanted to play “Cosplay Bingo” this year. By way of explanation, every year I’ve gone the con puts a “bingo card” of various cosplay costumes on the back of the pocket guide. Attendees can then take pictures of cosplayers dressed as the characters pictured – get a bingo, you get a button. The bingo card is announced far enough in advance that cosplayers who want to dress up as those characters have time to put their costume together. I didn’t go to as many panels as I’d like, partly due to losing track of time, and partly because a few of the panels I wanted to go to were early in the morning or late at night and as I was not staying at the con hotel, I simply wasn’t able to make it. That said, there were a few panels of note I managed to make it to. Carl Gustav Horn of Dark Horse Comics was on three very good panels – one on the anniversary of the manga “Oh! My Goddess” (which will be coming to an end soon), Dark Horse Comics own panel, and one on the long-in- development-hell sequel to GAINAX’s first film – Royal Space Force: Wings of Honiammise. The sequel, titled Uru in Blue (or Aoki Uru), could be described as the anime equivalent of Jodorowski’s long in the works . Not in terms of the surreality, but in terms of the names and talent involved. Masamune Shirow, writer and artist of the manga was attached as a mechanical designer. Satoshi Kon, writer and director of Perfect Blue, Paprika, , and Millenium Actress, was also involved in the art for the project, and Hideaki Anno, writer and director of Gunbuster and set to direct. So, with the report itself out of the way, let’s talk about the cosplay photos. 1. Attack on Titan There were a lot of Attack on Titan cosplayers at the con this year. This isn’t surprising as the show and manga remain popular, both for the writing, and because the character designs are interesting from a cosplay standpoint. Each of the characters in the Scout Force, while they are wearing uniforms, are visually distinct, whether through their hairstyles, or through their scarves. Additionally, the uniforms of the characters have a lot of interesting costume detail, from the boots to the patches – with the additional added element of the 3D Maneuver Gear as an interesting prop. 2. Hetalia: Axis Powers The popularity of Hetalia for cosplay is kind of related to the popularity of Attack on Titan, for cosplay, even though the two series could not possibly be more different. Hetalia is a tongue- imbedded-firmly-in-cheek gag series based around the idea of anthropomorphic personifications of various countries from the 1910s to 1940s (specifically in the form of prettyboys), with the political alliances of nations being replaced with romantic entanglements. However, all the characters, with a few exceptions (like the Hetalia version of America pictured here), wearing some form of uniform – not particularly resembling any sort of historically accurate military uniform, but still a uniform, with enough little bits of variation at the fine detail level to make things interesting. For what it’s worth, Hetalia is not a show I’m a fan of and not one I’d recommend, and the show’s fanbase in both the US and Japan is generally into the slash side of things instead of the comedic take on history side of things. 3. Final Fantasy Video games by Square-Enix, particularly the Final Fantasy games and the Kingdom Hearts games have been part of anime and video game convention cosplay for a while, in part because the costumes have a sort of elegant simplicity that allows for a lot of variations on the same character design, depending on how much or how little detail the cosplayer wants to add to the costume. Some of the more recent games in the Final Fantasy have had more elaborate and involved designs as well, giving cosplayers who want a more flashy costume to wear (or a more difficult one to create), somthing to shoot for. 4. Death Note A similar thing applies to Death Note. On the one hand, the character of Ryuk, the shinigami who sets the events of the show in motion by giving the character of Light Yagami his Death Note, is very elaborate and very involved – perfect for someone who wants to design a very flashy costume. On the other hand, characters like the detective L, who this cosplayer is dressed as, are simplistic in their costume design, but have some distinct elements like the hair and eye-shadow, that make them work well for someone who is either new to cosplaying, or wants a costume that’s a good “walking-around- the-con” costume. Oh, and the thumb sucking? The character of L has a tick of lightly biting his thumb while he’s thinking – and he spends a lot of the show thinking. 5. Assassin’s Creed The Assassin’s Creed series of games has gotten a particular degree of popularity among cosplayers because of what I’d describe, as something of an outsider, as “user-friendly complexity”. The costumes of Altair from the first game, Ezio Auditore da Firenze from the second game, and so on have a great deal of fine detail to the costumes. However, because the game is in 3D and has a third person perspective, it’s possible to get a really good look at the elements of the character’s costume, and because the games are set in the past, it’s possible to use historical costuming materials and reference books to get an idea of how to replicate the elements of the characters’ costumes. 6. Code Geass Code Geass is a show that has gained a degree of popularity among cosplayers because of the show’s character designers, and their visual style. When , the animation studio who produced the series was producing the show, they approached an all-woman manga collective or “circle” called . CLAMP’s body of work has such breadth to it that they merit their own article. In brief, in addition to their stories complex plots and inter-character relationships, they are also known for the character designs of their characters. CLAMP had, prior to working on Code Geass, worked with several Japanese fashion designers to come up with outfits, and had also contributed alternate costumes for characters in the Tekken series of fighting games. Consequently, when Code Geass came out, there were a lot of fans who came for the action and political intrigue, and who saw the character and costume designs and expressed their fandom for the show through those costumes. 7. Kouta Hirano’s action-horror manga Hellsing, recently adapted into a direct-to-video miniseries or OVA (Original Video Animation) titled Hellsing Ultimate, got a fan following in the US for its creepy-cool tone, dark colors, and interesting details. Probably a great example of this is the main character – Alucard. Alucard’s blood-red coat, slouch hat, and scarf give him a recognizable visual profile, and the finer details like the magic symbols on his gloves and the writing on his guns, give more interesting fine details that make the costume interesting. The only thing that a cosplayer can’t really replicate is the way Hirano uses negative space and lighting with the reflections on Alucard’s sunglasses, and the way Alucard’s creepy “You’re lunch” grin glows when the rest of him is in complete shadow. The other major characters of the series – Vatican monster hunter Alexander Anderson, police officer turned vampire Seras Victoria, and the head of the Hellsing organization, Integra Hellsing, each have similar costumes which have distinct profiles, combined with lots of interesting fine detail. 8. Ace Attorney/ Series The Phoenix Wright series is popular for cosplay not only because of the distinct character designs, but also because it’s a series that is particularly well suited for cosplaying with a friend. The game series, which launched on the Nintendo and was later ported over to the Nintendo DS and 3DS, is a series of adventure games where the main character plays a defense attorney (either Phoenix Wright or Apollo Justice in later games), who must find evidence to prove their client’s innocence in court, and then once they’ve gathered the evidence, must stage a defense – presenting evidence in the right order and presenting counter-evidence to the claims of the prosecutor. When a counter-claim is presented to refute a statement made by the prosecutor, a large graphic saying “Objection!” or “Hold it!” is brought up on screen, along with some digitized speech. This in turn also makes these games particularly prop-friendly when it comes to cosplay. 9. Shows with school uniforms are also particularly interesting from a cosplay standpoint, as while uniforms for each show are standard for whatever school that they’re set, they are also very distinct and unique to that school (like with the school in Revolutionary Girl Utena). This in particular allows for a whole bunch of potential for fine detail in embroidery on the outfit, whether badges or trim.While other shows, like The Melancholy of and Ouran High School Host Club, are frequently cosplayed due to the popularity of their respective works and the unique elements of the school uniforms of their shows, the costumes from Revolutionary Girl Utena are particularly distinct. 10. Sailor Moon Magical Girl shows have always been popular from a cosplay standpoint, in large part due to the fact that magical girls have flashy costumes. Sailor Moon cosplay never really went away, but with finally re-licensing Sailor Moon for an English language release, I can reasonably expect to see more Sailor Moon cosplayers at anime conventions in the future. 11. Mobile Suit And here’s where I get into cool stories. I was in line for the AMV (Anime Music Videos) competition on the convention’s first day when I saw this guy’s costume (the RX-78 Gundam), and I asked for a picture. He obliged. When I went to the cosplay contest the next day, I discovered that this was the guy’s first costume. He entered in the cosplay competition in the Novice category, but due to the quality of the work the costume was bumped up a rank to the Journeyman category – which he won. 12. Spawn (from Spawn) and Akuma/Gouki (from the Street Fighter franchise) These two guys were hanging out in the park across from the convention, when I came up and asked if I could take their picture. Rather than just doing a basic pose, they went “hang on a minute” - and on the fly set up this sort of fight scenario pose out of the blue. I’m kind of bummed that the picture is so washed out due to where the sun was, but that’s the fault of my not having a real camera, as opposed to anything they had control over. 13. Neon Genesis Evangelion Ever since Evangelion came out in the US, there have been people cosplaying as characters from the show at anime conventions, due to both the popularity and impact of the series, and some of the interesting characters and costumes. The plugsuits warn by the Eva pilots in particular have lead to a lot of cosplay, by both men and women – this cosplayer is dressed as the character of Kaworu Nagisa, from the later episodes of the series and the second and third Eva films. I can’t get into any more detail on the character, as, frankly, the character is practically a walking spoiler. 14. Other Old-School Shows I generally see a smattering of costumes for other old-school anime series throughout conventions. These are generally cases where people are fans of those shows and just want to dress up as their favorite character, as opposed to cases where a show is new and on everyone’s radar, and a costume is catching everyone’s eye. Shows like Ranma ½ and Dragonball Z (as seen in these pictures), fit this category. At this year’s Kumoricon I also saw, but didn’t take pictures of cosplayers dressed as Lina Inverse and Zelgadis from The Slayers, Lupin III from the show of the same name (in particular, I saw two Lupins, one in his red outfit and one in his green outfit), and Captain Bright Noa from Mobile Suit ZZ Gundam and Char’s Counterattack. Con Report – Portland Retro Gaming Expo So, the past two times I’ve gone to Portland Retro Gaming Expo I’ve tried to go on a different “track” each time. The first year I went on the fan- creator track, last year I kinda went on the “collector” track. This year my intention was to go on the historical track, but I ended up missing some of the panels I wanted to go to due to scheduling difficulties. That said, I did make it to two panels that were particularly interesting. First was a panel held by Howard Scott Warshaw. Warshaw is considered to have developed the best and worst games for the Atari 2600 – Yar’s Revenge (the best), and E.T. The Extra Terrestrial (the worst). Warshaw has been doing the con circuit after the recent discovery of the hundreds of thousands of buried copies of E.T. in a landfill in New Mexico. I’d heard about the internal workings of Atari Games, towards the end – which could be generously described as “completely nuts”, but it was interesting to hear about them from someone was present to witness the events firsthand. The other major panel I went to was Keith Robertson’s panel on Intellivision. I never owned an Intellivision gaming console as a kid. I had an Atari 800 and a 2600, and I later got a NES. As it was, being born in ‘85, by the time I started playing video and computer games the Video Game Crash had long since passed. So, learning about the pre-crash era (and particularly from the perspective of people on the inside) was particularly interesting. Also, I picked up a whole bunch of games, but in my infinite lack of thought, I forgot to take a picture of my haul before I merged it with the rest of my collection. So, in place of that, I have a picture of a cosplayer in a neat Mega Man costume. Con Report – OryCon 2014 OryCon this year was fun and enjoyable, though the panels I went to didn’t quite stick out with me, with a few exceptions. Most of the panels I went to were writing related, in part because there’s a fanfic idea I’ve got floating around in my head that I’ve been slowly, but surely, working on. In particular, I went to the panel on future weapons, and borrowing from history in SF, as well as a panel on writing dialog on the first day – in addition to going to the Opening Ceremonies and the Endevour Awards. I was kind of interested to see a fan booth at the convention for the Royal Manticorian Navy. If you’re not familiar with them, they’re an organization of fans of David Weber’s Honor Harrington novels that works kind of like the 501st Stormtrooper Legion and the Rebel Legion, in that they’re based around not only cosplaying as members of the Royal Manticorian Navy (from the aforementioned Honor- verse novels), but also getting involved in charitable works – combining spreading fandom and decreasing worldsuck. I also was able to drop off copies of my Fanzine with Jerry, Suzanne, and Ben at the DC Worldcon bid table. I’m not sure which Worldcon bid I’ll be voting for at Sasquan yet. Day 2 was more writing related panels, as well as a fanzine related panel called “Print is Undead.” The panel itself was fairly under-populated, with the only people present being the panelists and myself. That said, I did have a copy of my last issue of my Fanzine to contribute. The panel discussion was, basically everyone discussing their fanzines, with a lot of the ‘zines being focused more on community journalism over fandom, with mine being something of an exception. Also, in spite of having lived in Oregon and in the Portland area for most of my life, Day 2 was my first time ever having a Voodoo Doughnut. I decided to skip some of their more unique doughnuts—like the bacon doughnuts, their cereal doughnuts, and the cock-and-balls (a phallic cream-filled doughnut), in favor of an apple fritter, which is my general doughnut of choice. The fritter was delicious, and also huge. Without slipping into being a food ‘zine, I’ll say the apple fritter had a good, juicy apple taste – not in the sense that there was juice coming out of the doughnut but more like the juice had pervaded the dough well enough that if you took a bite that had no actual fruit in it you would still taste apple. This year I also stopped in at a few room parties in the evening, even though, since I didn’t book a room at the hotel (since I’m local) I couldn’t stay long and I couldn’t really drink. Day 3 was a little more fandom related, with some the panels I went to being about interesting female characters in SF and some of the impact of SF on the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) fields. While I won’t say that I had a lot to write home about for the con (at least as far as a con report goes), I did have a great time. 5 Recommended SF/Fantasy Anime of 2014 The new year has come, and the time has come to look back on 2014 – particularly since those of us with WorldCon memberships need to start thinking about nominations. So, here are, in no particular order, my top 5 recommended SF and Fantasy of 2014. These are shows which I definitely recommend checking out, even if you think they aren’t particularly worthy of a Hugo nomination.

1) Log Horizon is the best example of a sub-genre of anime fantasy which I call “MMO Fantasy” - fantasy series based around the idea of characters being trapped in a Massively Multiplayer Online game, or having to deal with events in an MMO that are having an impact on people in the real world. Rather than building on mythological concepts or existing fantasy tropes to build their worlds, the series instead focus on the people who play MMOs and the societal structures that build around them. I could do a whole article about the MMO Fantasy genre, and I will in the future. In the mean time, aside from Log Horizon, the other main series to know are the dot.Hack// and franchises. With most MMO Fantasy series, like the dot. Hack// and Sword Art Online (SAO) franchises, they work with the concept that something in the game is able to kill or harm people in real life. In Log Horizon, they take a profoundly different take. In Log Horizon, much like in SAO, the show follows the players in a MMO who are sucked into the game world, and who are unable to leave. However, with Log Horizon, death for the players works the same way it did before – if they die, they re-spawn at the Temple in the most recent town they’ve visited. They can’t die. However, NPCs from the game can die permanently, and they’ve also achieved sentience. Further, with sufficient real-world knowledge, and skill in the in-game crafting system, player characters can build things in the game world that were not in the in-game “recipe” list in the past – steam engines, cannons, etc. Consequently, the series ends up getting into the impact that these de facto demigods have on the world, once the game stops really being a game. The show is incredibly well written, and does a great job balancing an interesting world that, on the one hand, should be familiar to fans of fantasy literature – but on the other hand, due to the introduction of MMO elements, is radically different than anything that came before. Season 1 of this anime series started in 2013, but continued into 2014, and Season 2 started that same year, so if I understand the rules right, this is eligible for the Hugo Awards. Log Horizon is available for streaming (if I recall correctly, internationally) on .com, and within the US on Hulu.com. 2) Rage of Bahamut: Genesis Rage of Bahamut is a show that is far, far better than it has any right being. It is an anime series based on a cell-phone game, and a mediocre one at that. By all rights this should be a cheap cash-in with no merit in terms of plot or animation. It isn’t. Not only is it not a cheap cash-in, it’s also incredibly good. The story is an incredibly fun adventure story, with writing on par with the best parts of the Pirates of the Caribbean films (and a few action sequences borrowed from those films as well). The animation is also amazingly fluid – far more then I’d expect from an animated work made for TV in general – never-mind one based on a cell-phone game. The show follows Favaro Leone, a bounty hunter and general rogue; Kaisar Lidfald, the son of a knight who was disgraced after being framed for collaborating with bandits; and Amira, a demon. Amira has stolen half of a key used to imprison Bahamut – in this series Bahamut is described as a Dragon God that is capable of almost unstoppable destructive power. After Favaro lies to Amira, telling her that he knows the way to Helheim, the second place on their journey, she “curses” him with a devil’s tail – she’ll remove the tail once they reach their destination. Meanwhile, Kaisar pursues the both of them, seeking to get payback for all the ill deeds that Favaro has done to him (real and imagined) in the past. Rage of Bahamut is available for streaming in the US on Hulu.com, and outside the US on Funimation. com 3) Space Dandy One kind of SF series we haven’t had in a while is the anthology series. Episodic dramatic TV series in general have been on a downturn since the success of Lost and 24. Space Dandy is a series from Shinichiro Watanabe, the director of , which sort of seeks to combine the two concepts – it has recurring characters, Dandy, the dandiest man in space, and his crew of miscreants – but it also makes it something of an anthology series. Each episode of the show is set in a different universe from the last, and Watanabe takes advantage of this by bringing in a slew of guest directors to handle individual episodes. This allows him, as the overall show runner to keep a consistent tone to the series (or at least to keep the characters consistent), while bringing other directors in and letting them, basically, play in this toybox that he’s put together. That said, this can lead to a certain degree of inconsistency with the episodes. Normally, this wouldn’t lead to me recommending a series, because most anime series are very serialized, meaning you can’t necessarily skip an episode, with exceptions for things like recap episodes and filler arcs on longer running series.

Space Dandy is available for streaming on Funimation.com and Hulu.com (if you’re in the US). 4) Kill La Kill is something of an odd duck. It’s from Studio Trigger, which is made up of a bunch of alumni from GAINAX (creators of Neon Genesis Evangelion and – which I covered a few issues ago), and in particular the team who worked on Gurren Lagann. Consequently, Kill La Kill is a show that uses the same kind of stylized action and over-the-top tone that appeared in Gurren Lagann. Kill La Kill is a sort of mix of a sort of Go Nagai styled magical girl show (like Cutey Honey – see the Magical Girl article earlier this issue), combined with a Juvenile Delinquent show. The show follows Ryuko Matoi – who is searching for the person who murdered her father, and she’s been transferring from school to school, looking for clues, and raising hell until she finds evidence that brings her closer to her father’s killer. This brings her to the fictional school of Honnouji Academy. The school is run by a fascist student council (which spouts maxims which are literally right out of Orwell’s 1984), and the heirarchy is controlled through special school uniforms called Goku Uniforms, which made using “life fibers” - which grant their wearer’s special powers, based on the level of the uniforms, going from 1 to 5 stars (the more stars, the more powerful the uniforms). Students can challenge the system by trying to defeat someone with a higher grade uniform. Failure means that they are literally stripped of their uniform and, if they’re lucky, merely humiliated and expelled. At worst, they can be killed. As Ryuko enters the school, she ends up befriending a girl from a poor family, Mako Mankanshoku, who manages to be both hyperactive and something of a slacker and literally falling into an incredibly powerful uniform made out of life fibers. This uniform, named Senketsu, is a type called a “Kamui” (which translates as “Godrobe”), which can transform into a combat form that gives her incredible speed and combat ability, though the outfit is also incredibly revealing. Ryuko, along with Senketsu and Mako will have to get to the bottom of the source of the life fibers, and how they relate to the death of yuko’sR father, and some sinister plans by sinister people who are out to rule the world. So, Kill la Kill is a very campy show, and I admit that the risque nature of the Kamui makes this a show that isn’t necessarily for everyone. However, the show has a lot of visual style and flair, particularly with how the action is staged. Additionally, the characters are very well fleshed out, with the characters being memorable and the relationships between the characters feeling very organic. Kill la Kill is available for streaming on Crunchyroll, Hulu, and Netflix Instant. 5) Aldnoah.Zero This is the latest anime series from highly regarded writer-director Gen Orobuchi. The series is set in an alternate timeline where the moon landings discovered alien technology on the Moon which in turn let us teleport humans to Mars. The explorers, and later settlers, who went to Mars discovered additional advanced technology which in turn allowed them to secede from the control of Earth and form the “Vers Empire”. From there, the aristocracy of the Vers Empire ended up getting into internecine political squabbles, to the point that the Vers Empire was coming to the point of civil war. However, the aristocracy of the Vers Empire had a bright idea – rather than fighting this civil war in their own backyard, and in the process destroying the territory they wanted to rule – how about waging their civil war somewhere else – like Earth. This leads to the main thrust of the series, which follows a bunch of, well, Earthlings, who are caught in the middle of this civil war, while the Earth government tries to fend off this invasion, and a Martian princess attempts to stop the war and save everyone. Gen Orobuchi is one of the best writers and directors working in anime today. He has a strong sense of characterization, and a knack for spotting exciting and interesting scenes within the universe he’s either created (in original works, like Madoka Magica, Gargantua in the Verdous Planet and Psycho-Pass), or within the universe he’s working within (like with the recent series Fate/Zero). Additionally, he’s got a strong eye for action and the staging thereof. Pretty much every time Orobuchi does a show, it’s a must-watch. Images for Rage of Bahamut & Space Dandy taken from official publicity art. Images for Kill la Kill & Log Horizon taken from US Blu-Ray releases. Image for Aldnoah.Zero taken from Hulu.com. Book Review – Ready Player One Ready Player One is a book that I’d hesitated to read for utterly inexplicable reasons. I think, for a large part, because the buzz I was getting from the book was less related to SF circles and more related to some of the video game journalists I follow online. While I trust pretty much all of these people’s opinions on video games (and the ones I don’t trust I do find entertaining), I’ve found them questionable on other topics. When the topic of tabletop RPGs comes up, their line of inquiry ranges from “People still play those?” to “There are games other than D&D?” and to “Oh, $GAME is making a comeback after being nonexistent for years” where $GAME is a game which had several video game adaptations back in the ‘90s, and which has seen massive amounts of support, several new editions, and a thriving player- base over the past decades. Consequently, my usual response is to post a link to LL Cool J’s video for the song “Mama Said Knock You Out” (which opens with the lines “Don’t call it a comeback/I’ve been here for years”) and I move on. When Lit-SF comes up, it is exclusively in the context of licensed fiction (either licensed from a video game, like the Halo novels, or from another game related universe, like the Warhammer 40K novels). While certainly some highly acclaimed SF writers have played in these other universes, the end results don’t always show these writers at their best, leaving me to squirm in my seat as people who are completely unaware that Greg Bear has written other books mock his work on the Halo novels. Consequently, when Ready Player One came out and lead to rave reviews from people who may know a lot about 80s pop culture and video games and absolutely nothing about literary SF, I was hesitant to pick up the book. On the one hand, the book could legitimately be good. On the other, this could be case where I was picking up a book recommended by people who had only just discovered Godfathers Pizza after a lifetime of Digornios – good pizza, but not comparable to higher grade of pizza. I’m glad to say that I really should have read this book sooner, as it’s an incredibly enjoyable, and fairly smart read. It’s not exactly a work of hard SF, but it’s clever in it’s plotting. Earnest Cline, the book’s writer, puts together a world that generally make sense, with characters that are interesting enough to follow that it makes up for the difference. The premise is that in the Just-Far-Enough future of 2044, a resource crisis has lead to a decline in large chunks of western civilization, leading to a dystopia. Poverty is rampant and the only real escape for people is OASIS, a virtual reality based environment that’s like the Metaverse from Snow Crash combined with some of the elements of MMORPGs. OASIS was created by a programmer named James Halliday. OASIS is almost entirely free to play, costing only a 1 dollar entry fee, with money for the OASIS corporation being made through micro-transactions with users and other corporations who to use OASIS for corporate space or to create items for the game. As global travel has become prohibitively expensive due to reducing oil supply, OASIS has become a vital place for people to do business, go to school, work, and do numerous other tasks. At the start of the story, Halliday is dead. In his will, Halliday set up an elaborate scavenger hunt that would grant the winner, whoever they were, control over OASIS. This leads to the book’s plot – as it follows a poor kid, Wade Watts, from a slum near Oklahoma City, was he searches for the end goal of Halliday’s hunt – his “Easter egg”. Along the way, Wade, who has taken on the OASIS handle of Parzival, will have to semi-join forces with several other egg hunters, and contend with the corporation Innovative Online Industries, who wants to claim OASIS and make it subscription based and ad supported (which seems counter-intuitive, but knowing corporations, is still a plausible business decision). This is a book where references to the ‘80s and old video games and various pop-cultural entities could overwhelm the plot. Cline weaves the references in with the same deft touch that Jo Walton did with various works of literary SF in – the works referenced tell us something about the characters they’re referenced in context with – Halliday, Parzival, and Parzifal’s friends Aich, Art3mis, Shoto and Daito. Additionally, I listened to the book with the unabridged audiobook narrated by Wil Wheaton, as I was working at the time and didn’t have enough time for casual reading. The audiobook is very well done, though some of the more “l33tsp3@k” inspired portions of the text didn’t translate as well to the audiobook format, for obvious reasons. I absolutely enjoyed this book. As a kid who grew up in the late ‘80s and the ‘90s, and who wasn’t particularly well off (most of the SF books I read growing up came from my local library), this book spoke to me in a big way. The premise was incredibly engaging, and I look foreward to reading Cline’s next book. As a brief aside, apparently this book has been licensed for a film. I’m really not sure how that will work. Elements of ‘80s pop culture are entangled with the plot in a way that I don’t think will be feasible to execute without throwing massive sums of money at the raw licensing problem. As an example – there is a video game series in Japan called Super Robot Wars, which is a strategy RPG series involving mecha from various franchises of Japanese animation and other mediums. There are mecha that serve prominent roles in this book that have never made it into a Super Robot Wars game. I want to hope that I’m wrong, and that Warner Brothers, who licensed the book, can pull a Wreck-It Ralph sized miracle and get, say, the RX-78 Gundam, Raideen, and Mechagodzilla together in one film, but I really doubt it. Next Issue! The conclusion of the Shin Megami Tensei article! A discussion of Carl Gustav Horn’s fanzine in honor of the anniversary of GAINAX’s first film – Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise! Anime 202: Madoka Magica and the Magical Girl Genre And much more!