Movie Review: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

I wasn’t going to write about Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them -- I really wasn’t! However, after sitting through a recent meeting at my school where several English teachers disparaged the movie, calling it “hard to watch” and “drivel,” I felt the need to take to the Internet in order to defend this cinematic diversion into a new era of Harry Potter lore.

Now, I am what one might describe as a Harry Potter “superfan.” I also don’t fit the common trope  of having read the novels as a child and possessing that sweet nostalgia, but, instead, coming to the fandom quite late, as an adult, and proceeding to empathize more with the Hogwarts educators than the rambunctious students. Then, when Alan Rickman died, I cemented my obsession with a tattoo. As one does.

So, I went to watch Fantastic Beasts with minimal spoiler knowledge and a cautious optimism. I wasn’t sure what to expect. But, I feel confident saying that the movie fulfilled what I wanted to experience from a new HP story line, without leaning too heavily on nostalgia from the prior movies (*cough cough* Star Wars).

The positives:

First of all, Fantastic Beasts passed the Bechdel Test. Hooray! Although, there is quite a lot of talk about men, I still think the movie is a clear “pass.” Also, the two main females, Queenie and Tina Goldstein, could not be more different. Tina is a pants-wearing, ex-auror, a “career girl,” while Queenie is more openly feminine. The magic of their relationship is that they are accepting of one another’s characteristics without being judgmental or undermining. They work their magic in tandem to create dinner, which I think is a perfect visual representation of their relationship. In addition, President Seraphina is also a black, female leader in the 1920’s -- a woman! And one who's obviously well-respected by her peers!

Of the two main female characters, I found myself thinking mostly about Queenie in the intervening days following my initial screening. Queenie, first introduced in a shift and proceeding to bake for the visiting men, I worried might be a typical “sex kitten” character trope. All ditz and no development. Instead, Queenie embodies the power of femininity -- even her magical empathy, the ability to read thoughts intentions and emotions, makes her more powerful than any of the other main characters, causing her to keep that power a secret. I got a distinct Luna Lovegood vibe from her, so she was my hands-down favorite character.

The beasts themselves also had personalities and were far more interesting and “fleshed-out” than I expected them to be. They ran the gamut of cute to terrifying, and, if questioned, my favorite will always be the mooncalves.

Mooncalves, as common as they are throughout the world, are mysterious little creatures. Incredibly timid, Mooncalves only emerge from their underground burrows during the full moon.

The negatives:

This was JK Rowling’s first attempt at writing a screenplay, and it showed a bit in the occasional lack of fluidity and explanatory methods (for example, I all but forgot about Grindewald, until the end, as he had only been a newspaper headline). I think, as a debut, it was good, but there is definite room for improvement.

I was also confused about Grindewald’s relationship with Credence from the very beginning. I made all sorts of suppositions, including Grindewald being his father -- I still don't really get it. I happened to guess that Colin Farrell’s character was, in fact, Grindewald from his first or second scene and was waiting for the reveal, rather than experiencing any sort of surprise from it. I’m just saying, Voldemort held out a little longer. And Johnny Depp, really? *shakes head*

I also thought the clear appropriation of Native American mythos without including any Native American characters was, at minimum, disrespectful. Hopefully we will see more diversity in subsequent movies.

Overall: 

Fantastic Beasts was a wild and fun-filled adventure -- just what I had come to expect from the Harry Potter universe -- replete with well-drawn characters, more diversity than in the past movies (still some work to do). Beautiful design, and fabulous costumes from an time period I possess a personal affinity for. Would it be too much to call it "visually stunning"? Essentially, I will not stand for it being called "hard to watch." If you liked Harry Potter, there is no reason you won't also enjoy Fantastic Beasts.

Rating: 7/10

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Comic Review: Zodiac Starforce.

Zodiac Starforce is a bubble-gum-fueled, magical girl romp that reignited one of my most notable latent teenage obsessions. Most magical girl stories feature regular high school girls with superpowers and lengthy transformation sequences involving creative costume changes and some kind of magical item (wand, scepter, or, in this case, necklaces). Although the genre never fully took hold in Western media, as a teen, I loved Sailor Moon and Tokyo Mew Mew. Despite obviously playing with the magical girl trope, I also think Zodiac Starforce harkens somewhat to Jem and the Holograms -- bright colors, fabulous costume design, high school crushes, the silly (and sometimes melodramatic) dialogue -- gimme!

Zodiac Starforce drops us into Emma’s (Gemini) story en medias res. In the introductory panels, she’s studying at school, when suddenly -- BAM! Shadow monster! Although it appears her skills are bit rusty, she quickly vanquishes the fiend and Kim (Taurus) shows up unexpectedly to help.

From here, we discover it has been two years since the Zodiac Starforce, four girls given zodiac-themed powers by a mystical being / goddess known as Astra, banished the dark goddess Cimmeria to another dimension and subsequently disbanded. A distinct origin story is lacking, but the reader can draw educated conclusions to fill in the blanks. Although Kim and Savannah (Pisces) are eager to get the team back together, Emma (also the de facto leader) and Molly (Aries) are more reluctant. Emma’s mother was apparently killed during the battle, which explains her recalcitrant reaction. However, when the school’s resident queen bee / mean girl reveals her posse’s dark powers to them, the girls know they have to get back to business. Oh, and did I mention that Emma is also infected with a dark disease that’s slowly killing her?

I appreciated that, although on it’s face a seemingly frivolous comic, the author (Kevin Panetta) didn’t skimp on characterization. The protagonists are incredibly diverse -- all different races, shapes, and sexualities. Emma is the leader, but she’s dealing with her own grief and self-doubt. Kim, the tomboy, may seem tough, but she’s also keen on romance and mushy about her boyfriend. Savannah, the smallest of the characters, shows that she’s one of the most powerful and also illustrates the diversity of love with her bisexual romances (her girlfriend, Lily, gets a character arc as well -- no spoilers). Molly, though tough and edgy, clearly cares deeply for her friends.

The art in this book is absolutely beautiful -- warm color tones and a clearly feminine hand -- Paulina Ganucheau does not disappoint. Like, have you seen the panels? Look at them! The costume design is also on point. The magical girl genre relies heavily on the transition to “battle wear,” but Zodiac Starforce has a unique take that eschewed the frilly manga version, without succumbing to the overtly sexualized Western superhero costumes. The collection includes some costume concept sketches and I wanted to look at them forever.

Overall, Zodiac Starforce is a modern take on the magical girl genre. It deals with what happens when the battle is over -- how do heroes go back to their normal lives? -- and what happens when the vanquished evil rears its ugly head again. But, at the core of this story, is the dauntless power of friendship and a healthy dose of girl power. Zodiac Starforce lights the way!

Rating: 4/5 magical wands 
Recommended for: fans of Sailor Moon, diverse characters, beautiful artwork

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Comic Review: Junji Ito's Cat Diary: Yon & Mu.

What do you do when you discover that your favorite horror manga artist has created an autobiographical manga chronicling his struggles with sharing a home with his new fiancée’s cats? You buy it. Immediately. Without a second thought. When I happened upon a new volume of Yon & Mu at a local bookstore, I took one glance at the cover before impulsively snatching it off the shelf, giggling impishly while I gazed into the nightmare eyes of the cat illustrations on the cover. I remember saying out loud to myself, “A book about cats...by Junji Ito.”

For those unfamiliar with the author, Junji Ito is largely considered one of the modern masters of horror manga (please see: Uzumaki and Tomei). His vile renderings of body horror are a thing of legend, and therein lies the greatest appeal of this book -- this is a casual slice-of-life comic illustrated by the king of disturbing imagery and, my goodness, is it glorious. It reminds me of when I found out that T.S. Eliot had written Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. How could the same brain that had produced the “The Hollow Men” also spawn a book of poetry about cat names?

The book itself is slim and contains hardly a skeleton of a plot, consisting of only ten short vignettes. The major premise is that J-Kun (Junji Ito) and A-Ko (his fiancée) have moved into a new house together, but much to J-Kun’s surprise (and chagrin), A-Ko is bringing her family feline Yon in tow. J-kun, being a dog person, believes a curse will befall their new home due to the cat’s accursed face and skull-shaped fur pattern. What follows, as one might predict, is J-Kun’s slow about-face as he warms up to and inevitably falls in love with the cat. And that’s the plot. The vignettes are effective in their simplicity, however, as the moments of cat love (and fear) ring of a cat truth that all cat owners will recognize.



The true draw here is the cat art. The human characters and their surroundings are drawn in a very basic, minimal style, while the cats are drawn in a hyper-detailed, realistic fashion, creating an unsettling and remarkably unnerving contrast. Never has the face of a domestic house cat evoked such a level of eldritch horror. Ito, at full command of panel angling and subtle action, somehow manages to make a scene of a cat exiting a cat crate the spookiest comic page I’ve seen in years. I also have to comment on the way Junji Ito draws his wife. A-ko’s eyes are pupil-less throughout the book, her face a constant mask of creepy cat obsession as she fawns over her feline babies. The effect is jarring yet hilarious.

This is not an essential manga by any means, especially for those in search of any semblance of plot or drama, but it is an entertaining distraction if you enjoy quirky stories of the everyday cat variety. This comic contains two very specific elements, cats and psychological terror, and so it will only appeal to a very specific reader. Curious to know if that reader is you? Just gaze into the dread eyes of Yon and there you will find your answer.

Rating: 3.5/5
Recommended for: fans of horror stories, cat stories, and horrific cat stories

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Book Review: Uprooted by Naomi Novik.

I had been craving a new fantasy read -- something standalone (not a series) that had some teeth (or fangs) and an interesting premise -- when I glimpsed Uprooted by Naomi Novik and, drawn in by the description on the back of the book, brought it home with me.

Here, I found a fantasy novel that, while not offering anything particularly ground-breaking, had well-developed characters, a likable narrator, strong female friendships (as well as some strong females in general, the men mostly didn’t know what to do with them) and an original take on traditional lore. Admittedly, much of fantasy involves a series of tropes that make the genre comforting in a way, albeit occasionally repetitive, but Novik inverts many of these standard tropes in her storytelling. Yes, there are dragons, witches, sorcerers, magic and a complicated royal court, but not always in the way one might expect.

Our Dragon doesn’t eat the girls he takes, no matter what stories they tell outside our valley. We hear them sometimes, from travelers passing through. They talk as though we were doing human sacrifice, and he were a real dragon. Of course that’s not true: he may be a wizard and immortal, but he’s still a man, and our fathers would band together and kill him if he wanted to eat one of us every ten years. He protects us against the Wood, and we’re grateful, but not that grateful.

I have a soft spot for fantasy with deep roots in folklore / fairy tales and Novik does an admirable job mining Eastern European folklore for her novel. Agnieszka, the daughter of a woodcutter, lives in a valley near the Wood, where nothing much ever seems to happen -- except for the nightmare creatures that come out of the Wood to carry people away and drive them mad. They allow the Dragon, a powerful sorcerer, to protect them, in exchange for “sacrificing” a girl to him every ten years. But, those women return, clad in beautiful dresses, and leave for better lives outside the Valley. They emerge unscathed, but do not return home.

Agnieszka worries for her best friend, Kasia, the most beautiful girl in the village. Since birth, everyone assumed the graceful Kasia would be chosen as sacrifice. And everyone, including Agnieszka, is shocked when she is the one who must go to the tower instead.

The Dragon didn’t always take the prettiest girl, but he always took the most special one, somehow.

Unsurprisingly, Agnieszka is gifted with a hidden magic -- which is what the Dragon is actually hunting for. However, in a fairly low-magic world, her skill is precious -- and Agnieszka must navigate learning how to use her newfound skills and trying to understand the dark rage hidden within the Wood as it inches ever closer.

Agnieszka, who describes herself as ordinary and clumsy, begins to tear down the Dragon’s expectations (and tug at his heartstrings -- again, unsurprisingly) as she gravitates more toward a type of natural magic he doesn’t understand or can’t quantify, eventually discovering her own way to becoming a powerful witch -- a discovery with its own implications.

There is also quite a lot of darkness in Uprooted -- horrible monsters, brutal murders, and battles that leave evil triumphing over good more than a few times. The wizards and witches stand apart and are more chaotic neutral than lawful good -- their emotions stunted, their reactions calculated. In the end, Agnieszka’s love interest isn’t Prince Charming, but a cranky sorcerer, she ends up in a cottage, rather than a castle, and she tends to do a fairly impressive job of saving herself.

Rating: 4.5/5
Recommended for: fans of well-crafted stories, folklore / fairy tales, strong female characters

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Board Game Date Night: Odin's Ravens.

The basic premise of Odin’s Ravens is that the ravens, Huginn and Muninn, are racing across varying terrain in order to bring Allfather Odin news of the human world. Naturally, the ravens have become slightly competitive in their quest and often enlist the help of the trickster god, Loki, to expedite their journey or sabotage their partner.

The game itself is a fairly straightforward card management racing game with crucial moments of trickery and deception. It takes a brief minute to explain the rules and, after a practice round, approximately 15-20 minutes to complete. After laying out the land cards to create the racing “track”, each player draws a hand of five cards, which can be a combination of terrain and Loki cards, and chooses a raven token. Each round you can play as many cards as you like, in whatever combination you like. There are several creative workarounds if a player finds themselves without a playable card, but occasionally you may have to skip a turn. At the conclusion of your turn, you draw three new cards from either your terrain or Loki stacks.

Gameplay boils down to mostly the card draw, but the Loki cards add an element of strategy that elevates the experience. The goal is to get your raven to the finish line (which is also your opponent’s starting line) first! In our experience, every win has been extremely close -- the losing raven trailing behind by only a few spaces.

Abby’s Take: 
The first thing I noticed about Odin’s Ravens was the box it came in -- matte finished with fabulous illustrations and a runic font. I imagine that since the game was reprinted by Osprey, originally a book company, they placed an added emphasis on design -- judging a book by it’s cover, and all that. The card design is also worth noting -- they are of a streamlined shape and just as beautifully illustrated as the box. Also, we both got very excited when we noticed the land cards have interlocking Norse designs that provide a continuity to the game’s “world.” Normally, I would consider a game like this more of a “filler” -- fun, fast-paced, not too complex -- but, Odin’s Ravens, despite being our newest acquisition, already has staying power for us. We immediately played it through three or four times (all of which I won, just saying). However, I loved the character design for Loki and found myself wanting Odin to be featured more prominently -- they are his ravens, after all. I also think they could have done a little bit more with the raven tokens, but perhaps I am just being greedy about the design because I have seen what they are capable of.
TLDR; Unique racing game with beautiful artwork and clean, fast-paced gameplay.
Rating: 4 out of 5 mythical ravens

Brad's Take:
I lost seven straight games of Odin’s Ravens in a row -- seven in a row! My disposition remained cheery and hopeful after my first few defeats, seeing as how the game appeared to rely heavily on the luck of the draw, but by my fourth loss I began to contemplate whether something more complex was at work under the surface of this seemingly simple card management game. Was A secretly a savant at raven themed card games? Was my color blindness impairing my ability to decipher land types correctly? Was Muninn, my mythical raven of choice, actually cursed in the eye of Odin? There had to be a logical explanation as to why A was kicking my little albino raven’s tail up and down Midgard time and time again. Edda sonnet Grίmnismál, as translated by Benjamin Thorpe in 1866:

Hugin and Munin 
fly each day 
over the spacious earth. 
I fear for Hugin, 
that he come not back, 
yet more anxious am I for Munin.

There you have it: Muninn is the underdog by nature and is constantly working against the hand of Fate! (Denial is a powerful thing, folks.) Raven balance issues aside, Odin’s Ravens is a wonderfully fun game of high speed pursuit and board manipulating trickery. Though the game’s core movement-by-card mechanic is quite simple, the Loki cards add just enough depth and sabotage to the race to keep players engaged. A picked up on a number of terrain tactics quite rapidly and deployed them in devastating fashion. The game is also quite suspenseful due to the low number of cards drawn every turn, making the most routine of draw decisions into nail-biters. Often times I would hear the dramatic swell of a string quartet in my head as I struggled between choosing a Flight or Loki card. The terrain artwork is lush and majestic, fitting of a primeval Midgard where the elements still hold court, but I was left disappointed by the fact that Odin doesn’t play a larger role in the game. He is the Raven God after all! I may look into picking up an Odin miniature to preside over future raven races.
TLDR; Fantastic concept, execution, and packaging make Odin’s Ravens into a keeper for speedy, casual gaming.
Rating: 4 out of 5 mythical ravens

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