Quotes of December 2013, Part 4

Jason Thompson on Banana Fish: "Yes, Banana Fish slips into the manga bad habit of having the side characters remind us how cool the main character he is.  OTOH, Akimi Yoshida gets a free pass because Ash really is that cool."

Connie C on Pretty Face: It turns out Rina has a long-lost twin sister named Yuna!  And Rina is so happy to have Yuna back!  And Rando can’t possibly explain what’s happened, and doesn’t have anyplace to go, so he feins amnesia and just goes along with it, living in the same house as his crush and pretending to be her twin sister.  He eventually finds a photo of himself, but when he realizes how crushed Rina would be to lose Yuna again, he decides to play along until he finds the real Yuna.  This is somehow simultaneously as creepy as it sounds and not nearly as creepy as it could be.. . . its ribaldry can be simultaneously entertaining as well as creepy.

Ash and Michelle Smith on Attack on Titan:
ASH: If Attack on Titan has one thing going for it, it’s the series’ intensity. And tragic deaths.
MICHELLE: I feel very wrong that “tragic deaths” has seriously made me consider Attack on Titan.
ANNA: I feel the same way. What is the ratio of tragic deaths to non-tragic deaths per volume?
MELINDA: I also would like to see some statistics on this. Yes.

Sean Gaffney on Are You Alice?: "Are You Alice? has a 2nd volume that may potentially have something comprehensible happen, which Vol. 1 lacked, in my opinion."

Movie Review: 'When the replicants learn the role they've been designed for, they do not rebel; they submit. This ostensible passivity may perplex some U.S. audiences even more than the humanoid plot twist. "It's not a very American theme, is it?" says Ishiguro. "It's antithetical to the American creed of how you should face setbacks — that if you fight back, love conquers all." No, it's more a Japanese creed, that accepting one's fate is a form of heroism.'

Shaenon K. Garrity on Phoenix: "Tezuka is getting into his groove here. All life on Earth is destroyed halfway through the story, and it just keeps going."