Carnivale review

Carnivale (there should be an accent thingy over the second 'a', but it's been too long since I took a French class, and I forget how to do that) Season Two started last night. I adore Carnivale. It's beautifully shot, but more than that, the concept hits nearly every single one of my story kinks: traveling circus, epic battle of good vs evil, confusion over what constitutes good and evil, creepy priest, canon femslash, strippers, a freak show, baddirtywrong incest, a historical setting with neat, little-known details, ghosts, characters refusing to accept destiny, backstories of tremendous angst, slowly building romances, snake charming... everything. If it had a manic depressive, self-sacrificing hero with short-tempered but protective friend, I would never watch anything else.

Which is my long way of saying that, if you aren't already watching it, you totally should be.

( Spoilers for <i>Los Moscos</i> )

Pimp

I have to thank questionable537 for introducing me to a new manga that I have completely fallen in love with. ^^

It's called +Anima (sometimes also written as Plus Anima or just Anima), and it is so cute it hurts me. It's a fantasy/adventure type story, set in the typically vague medieval world of a lot of generic Western fantasy (and maybe Japanese fantasy too; I know nothing about this topic). The story revolves around four children- Cooro, Husky, Senri and Nana- whose ages aren't specified, but I would guess they're preteens. They're traveling from village to village with no goal other than to make enough money to keep from starving to death and finding others like them.

Because the twist on this story is that none of them are quite human. They're "anima", humans with the characteristic of some animal. Cooro can sprout crow wings, Husky develops gills and a fish tail, Nana has bat wings and ears and hearing, and Senri can turn one of his arms into a bear's. The majority of the time, they walk around looking like any other human, but if they're in danger (or trying to scare someone. Or hungry. Or bored.), their special talent pops out.

It's not a deep story. There is no meaning or symbolism or layers here. It's so cute and fluffy that it puts Fruits Basket to shame. Although there are occasionally hints of darker topics, mainly having to do with how animas are treated by others, or how it is that four children came to be wandering alone without friends or family, but most of it is obviously a story about children. It's sweet. It's bouncy. And? Cooro and Husky are totally the chibi-versions of Tsuzuki and Hisoka. They even look alike. To prove my point:

( Big image )

See? It's so similar that it's scary. And judging from some spoilers I've seen, they even end up having similar angsty backstories.

I'm having a lot of fun with it, so I want other people to read it and squee with me. You can find downloads for up to the second chapter of the third volume at toriyamaworld.com, or up to the third chapter of the third volume on IRC (server: irchighway.net group: manga-koejke).