The Professional Gamer - January 19, 2018

Hello and welcome again! Unfortunately, I find myself at the end of another week without a lot of geekiness to show for it. I have read a little bit of comics and watched some anime, so let's get into the discussion.

Lately, I've had a lot of stuff to read for work, such that it has even spilled over into my personal time. I was given several great comic books for Christmas, but have not had time to sit down and really enjoy them. Instead, I've ended up rationing them, reading only one chapter or issue at a time. My current read is Giant Days: Volume 3. I continue to enjoy Allison's characters and exaggerated realism. In his writing, he does a great job of capturing how things feel even if it isn't necessarily accurate to what actually happened. I do miss Treiman's drawing style from Volume 1, but  Sarin has done a great job at maintaining continuity of character design and expressiveness. In summary, Giant Days continues to be a great series, and I recommend that you pick it up.

I have a confession: I have only watched one episode of anime this week. The rest of my TV time has been spent watching the Crash Course: Literature series. The danger of that series is that it probably makes me feel a lot smarter than I really am, especially since I have, on average, read only one book per season of the show. Someday, I will take the time to read some more great works of fiction, but it is not this day.

If you have been following, you can probably predict what that single episode of anime that I watched is: The Ancient Magus' Bride. I enjoyed the most recent episode, and I felt like I wanted to sympathize with Joel and the "vampire fairy". But somehow, I just didn't quite get the emotional connection. Although we have spent almost a full two episodes with both of these characters, I feel that neither has been developed enough to elicit strong feelings of empathy. And that's really unfortunate, because their story is interesting and could have had a much more rewarding climax. I also feel like the "end of episode cliffhanger" trope is getting a bit heavy handed. Especially given the lack of real danger or consequences that the fox pelt actually inflicted on Chise. I'm sure all of this would be much more clear if I would read the manga, but between my lack of reading time and a desire to enjoy the anime as a creative work in its own right, I'm not going to do that.

That's all for this week. I'll be back again soon with more stories from my leisure time. Have a great week and game on!