Review: BNHA, volume 1

- I waited months in my library’s hold queue to read the first volume of this manga. When I finally got it, I found that my iPad was too old for Libby to even deign to download thereon. Computers proper are not allowed to interact with Libby at all, for secret reasons. I was thus only able to access this comic on my phone, and only in a landscape orientation (so sideways—the panel wasn’t even upright), with finger-pinch zoom and great swathes of black space on both sides. I have no idea what this interface design was meant to do, but it completely failed to meet my needs as a user. I wanted to support my library and legitimately access this item (in part because I wanted to read an official copy with a vaguely-decent translation), but it was literally illegible. I had to wait until I happened to get a new iPad after mine broke and then renew my hold to engage with this.

- For manga, Libby asks you to swipe left to access the next page rather than right. My sister in Weeb, that is simply not necessary. Konichiwhat the fuck is this? You can have your original panel order, but pagination no longer affects layout in a material way: you certainly don’t need to design an entirely new turn UI just for manga, throwing regular users off! You truly can just stop!

- I know Shonen Jump is a major publication, but the production quality of even early BNHA as collected in this serialisation really surprises me. There are good shadows, fabric details, and lots of well-realised background characters. The architecture particularly shines, especially in the wider city-scape shots. All of that has to take time, and thus money. This looks significantly better than a lot of manga I’ve seen (excepting titles that are specifically Arty). The production team here may well be using sophisticated tools I’m not familiar with to help create these textures et al semi-automatically, but even so, the effect is impressive.

- Bakugo wears his backpack in a dumb way, like a backwards purse. Nil points. (I think this might actually be a fairly standard way to wear a Japanese school bag, but Jade says that while the bag is immensely efficient in terms of carrying capacity, this way of wearing it is too uncomfortable to practicably sustain.)

- It’s very interesting to see the mangaka’s notes at this early stage, when he had fairly loose, developing ideas about the plot and story-world.

- I guess this review sort of presumes familiarity with the anime. I think the issue is that the baseline thoughts I have about the story would be best elucidated in relation to the manga, my first and core exposure to the title.

Review: "Lockwood & Co."

- Lockwood & Co. is good, I just wish it weren’t about teens. I’m so sick of teens. There truly is no reason this show has to be about teens? It’s just Sapphire and Steel, with babies.

- The slowed-tech worldbuilding and cultural accoutrements are cool, like how all the 2000 AD merchandise shows it’s still popular in this universe. George liking it makes sense for his character. The funniest thing that could happen as a result of this show is a bunch of zoomers learning what 2000 AD is and getting really into that shit.

- Imagine caring as much about what other people working in your field are up to as these teens. “OoOo I see you’ve left the accounts receivable team. You will regret that, Tammy!!”

- After episode two, I theorised that Lockwood had locked his ghost parents in the land of Spare Oom. I mean it could just be like, a bedroom filled with cherished memories or some bullshit, but 'Ghost Parents' is more fun than baby photos.

- There are parts of this that feel very written—perhaps even over-written. Theatrical, rather. But the bulk of the script just feels like fairly generic tv show writing, which gives me a strange and uneven idea of the native register of this fictional universe.

- What is this Havisham-ass room nobody’s cleaned in the iron-monger’s castle? You have twelve hours of daylight to go 'round, get a Merry Maid in here, Jesus.

- This show does not understand what a jewellery hallmark is. Later, they also have an auction that doesn’t really look like a UK auction. It’s interesting that they didn’t think it had to: oops all vibes.

- Lucy's comment that a ghost feels like she’s ‘still alive’ makes me think that the problem was initially caused by an attempt to access eternal life (but instead of fetch happening, fetches happened). Later, the Kensal Green cemetery director has the same lyre motif lapel badge as Penelopy Fitz did at the funeral of her mother's colleague (if that even was her mother, rather than her before a supernatural facelift). We also saw this motif on the boxes that were removed from the iron mogul’s castle, and on said mogul's goggles. ‘The lyre represents the peace of Elysium, the paradise where heroes were sent after they were appointed immortality by the gods’. So there you have it, in terms of the arc plot.

It’s nice of the baddies to wear a big ‘I LOVE CAUSING THE PROBLEM!’ badge on their chests every day. “Ope, can’t leave the house without my ‘I absolutely did it’ sign!”

- The whole problem of this episode at the start of the Biggerstaff (lol) arc is that they have to do this work at night, i.e. the most dangerous time, because otherwise the council won’t be able to claim ‘type 2 removal’ funding from another part of the government, because there won’t be any visual proof—

This is the realest shit I’ve ever heard. A spot-on depiction of the UK reaction to real shit going down.

- ‘The problem’ is worldwide, so how are other countries responding? In some ways this is a straight-forward ‘cultivators subdue yao’ story, but with white people.

- Book of Dust was also a low-tech Modern Britain--what is this small-c conservative fantasy/aesthetic doing? It's not an aesthetic they really carry through with either, the seventies were way, way uglier.

- “Trust me!” Head in a jar, you are not the one.

- “London would be a lot safer with three less amateurs around!”
Me: Shouldn’t that be—
Katy: Yeah.

- Katy observed that this cemetery director has been sent over from Dickensian central casting, home of yer shamblers.

- We’re doing a bit of a Great God Pan here with this Victorian occultist’s experiments, but unfortunately that mostly serves to remind me that Arthur Machen was somewhat better at vibes.

- For the party Lockwood combs his hair in the stupidest way imaginable, into a kind of celebratory widow’s peak (a widow’s mountain range, honestly).

- The show consistently makes an interesting use of parts of the city that very much still exist (but which don’t get a lot of filmic or general attention) to create an ‘alternative’ version of the city: industrial docks, Kensal Green, weird corners of the Barbican and the QE2. The technique feels inflected by "Life on Mars" use of Manchester.

- The design of the auction sequence is pure Harry Potter movie. Meh.

- We go big on Found Famiwies UwU very fast, but these people have known one another all of a fortnight.

- Lockwood straight up got an ally killed, but thankfully the narrative retroactively rescues him from culpability.

- The writing slips in the last few episodes. Everything with the mudlark being possibly untrustworthy is an exercise in generating a kind of purposeless tension.

- You can tell this antagonist is seriously evil because of all the guyliner.

- The end game MacGuffin is just like, a bi disc with a mirror stuck in the middle. In the end, said mirror cracks from side to side. Guess they won’t be returning the whole jade disc to Zhao. The Victorian decoupage is accurately shit for the 1870s: dem bones in clear resin could easily be the stuff of a table top in a middle class household in Basingstoke.

- Me: A really strong showing for 1970s British ceramics throughout.
Katy: They haven’t made any new ceramics since the trouble began.

- Someone has paired this Victorian tiled washstand in the attic with an Ikea-esque mid-century modern cupboard, which doesn’t make a lot of sense.

- I think the chapel they’re saying is in Kensal Green is actually the one in Highgate East? I think Kensal Green doesn’t have this pneumatic catacomb lift system (Highgate’s was for underground transportation across the road, to Highgate West—their catacombs are above ground, and much further back). I hope they filmed the real lift in action. They don’t run that for the tours, so it may be your only chance to see it in motion.

- Lockwood finally, bravely reveals that the locked room contains his dead parents’ extensive fur suit collection. Everyone is uncomfortable. Season ends.