Friday 2 December 2011

Sailor Moon Reboot


Keeping up the manga posts I read the Sailor Moon manga for the first time, it's great that they are finally widely available in English. I thought by now I would have outgrown it having fallen in love with it eight years ago but nope, turns out I love it more than ever. The manga is a hundred times better than the anime (granted I've only seen the highly edited dubbed version) and has more depth that I was expecting. Given how quickly the plot proceeds it's amazing how much character development is in there. I'm only onto the second volume and already the four Shitennou are dead, Mamoru is possessed, and all the Senshi have united and discovered their identities. I can't wait to see what the next two volumes have in store, I can only imagine how they will stretch out the ending of the series to fill two volumes.


Personally I loved all the original designs but I can see how it was easier and simpler to have them in plainer uniforms and also it made sense to have them co-ordinate, still it was nice that initially even in the official manga Sailor Moon did start out with a mask and Sailor Venus kept her Sailor V pen to transform.

It's a pity the Shitennou did not get much development, they really were in and out of it, especially since they were brainswashed the whole time and you only really got a glimmer of Kunzite's true personality. It was nice to see the personalities of the Senshi coming out even though they were all introduced so quickly and one after the other you still get a real feel for their unique traits and you do see an equal amount of them.

The romance between Usagi and Mamoru is a lot more believable and less annoying than the anime made it out to be. Sailor Moon is a stronger heroine in the manga, not needing to be rescued quite as much, and overall the manga series is darker and more adult than I was expecting.

The story of the Moon Kingdom, the forbidden romance and the horrific, fatal ending of it, is truly tragic. You really do feel for Princess Serenity and Prince Endymion as their Romeo and Juliet styled romance plays out and ends in murder and suicide, leading to end of the Moon Kingdom forever.

The artwork is simply beautiful and it's great to see the addition of never before seen artwork at the end, it's interesting to see how much Sailor Moon's costume design developed, and it's also good to see explanations for certain translations.

Thursday 1 December 2011

The Tudors


A guilty pleasure for me, definitely my favourite period in English history, this family were fascinating and I devour the fictional portrayals of them. Last night I rewatched Episode One of Henry VIII, a 2003 ITV production starring Ray Winstone, Helena Bonham Carter, David Suchet, Emilia Fox, Sean Bean, Mark Strong and Emily Blunt. I just purchased the dvd having not seen it since it was first aired all those years ago and I love it now as much as I did then.

Of all the films and shows out there Henry VIII and The Tudors are my favourites despite their numerous inaccuracies. I feel that Ray Winstone was perfect for Henry and that his accent takes an unfair bashing, it's not like Scarlett Johansson or Natalie Portman offered great English accents, and that Helena Bonham Carter did a terrific job as Anne Boleyn, although Natalie Dormer remains my favourite Anne.

Ray showed Henry as unstable, emotional, loving and yet cruel and cold and most definitely a womaniser. At first he is happy with Katherine of Aragon and seems understanding of the pain she inflicts on herself (wearing a hair shirt) because she believes that suffering will grant her a son but then he turns on her and blames her for their stillborn children as he starts to fall for Anne. Equally he loves Anne and promises that he is marrying her because he loves her not because he wants a son but when she fails to give him a son he turns on her too and blames her for her stillborn.

Helena shows a clever, cunning and bold spoken Anne who is not afraid to speak out against the king, saying that he broke up her marriage, that being at court is being in prison and implying that he has mistreated her sister. She shows Anne's fiery side and her ambition but also her emotional side as she turns to her brother for support and is reduced to tears almost constantly after the stillbirth of her son.

I like how they do include George and Mary and allude to Mary being pregnant with Henry's child and George and Anne being close, something which The Tudors did not really focus on. Mary was hardly mentioned and George was only really thrust into it towards the end of series 2 I guess because they felt they had to properly show him. It's interesting how both The Other Boleyn Girl (the book anyway) and The Tudors portray George as homosexual or at least bisexual when there is no evidence for this and one source actually writes that he was an infamous womanizer. It did make for an interesting twist though.

I still have yet to finish The Other Boleyn Girl novel it is good, interesting and full of detail and for a fictional story it is gripping but at times my interest with it has waned and I feel there's too much detail in the novel and it's unnecessarily long but I suppose the author just didn't want to leave anything out. The movie, the 2008 version, was for me a huge disappointment. For me it was woefully miscast, I only really liked Jim Sturgess as George, and I wish they had put an English cast in the main roles. Natalie Portman does look a little like Anne but her accent is grating and her performance lacklustre, and Scarlett does not fare much better. Eric Bana is alright as Henry but not at all how I pictured him. Really the best thing about the movie was the costumes.

Ultimately, Henry VIII does seem best remembered for his numerous wives and mistresses, which have inspired tales of tyranny, romance and scandal. Usually Henry ends up resembling a womanising, self-centred brute obssessed with a son who is negligent to many of the women in his life, and Anne is viewed as an ambitious, cruel whore, in ways this is accurate but there is a lot more depth to them and it is nice to see when books, tv series and films show that despite inaccuracies and exaggerations. As none of us were around at the time we rely heavily on sources, some of which could well have been made up or exaggerated as they were written by people who did not like Anne or Henry etc.