March 2018

Anime Review: A Place Further Than the Universe

This is totally out there even for me. Another review that *isn't* about a new/recent novel? Sorry about that. I've just finished Michael R. Miller's The Dragon's Blade: The Last Guardian, so that should be coming this week. Please hold onto your butts until then.

Usually I don't write Anime reviews, though admittedly, I did post a review of that painfully mediocre Final Fantasy XV movie here before. However, despite Anime being pretty disconnected from my usual review content, and this one certainly not being dark, serious matter, I just *have* to write this post.

Because A Place Further Than the Universe, or originally Sora yori mo Tooi Basho, is the best Anime I've watched in years. Week after week for its 13 episode run this past Winter Anime season, I was looking forward to it. Every episode brimmed with energy and passion to the point where it got admittedly tough to hold back tears at various points - not necessarily because of sad scenes, but out of sheer joy.
From the overall plotline of the show over graphics and sound design and the actors' deliveries, everything felt so spot on, it drew me in to the degree few shows manage to. I adored every step of the way. As such, I cannot, will not keep myself from recommending this Anime to anybody who would listen.

The Story:

"Filled with an overwhelming sense of wonder for the world around her, Mari Tamaki has always dreamt of what lies beyond the reaches of the universe. However, despite harboring such large aspirations on the inside, her fear of the unknown and anxiety over her own possible limitations have always held her back from chasing them. But now, in her second year of high school, Mari is more determined than ever to not let any more of her youth go to waste. Still, her fear continues to prevent her from taking that ambitious step forward—that is, until she has a chance encounter with a girl who has grand dreams of her own.

Spurred by her mother's disappearance, Shirase Kobuchizawa has been working hard to fund her trip to Antarctica. Despite facing doubt and ridicule from virtually everyone, Shirase is determined to embark on this expedition to search for her mother in a place further than the universe itself. Inspired by Shirase's resolve, Mari jumps at the chance to join her. Soon, their efforts attract the attention of the bubbly Hinata Miyake, who is eager to stand out, and Yuzuki Shiraishi, a polite girl from a high class background. Together, they set sail toward the frozen south.

Sora yori mo Tooi Basho follows the captivating journey of four spirited girls, all in search of something great."

The Review:

A Place Further Than the Universe is, at its core, a coming of age story of adventure, friendship and plenty of emotion. It is unique in so far as that it takes the journey to Antarctica, which should be the most unlikely place for a couple of teenage girls to end up. It is a story about overcoming obstacles, making opportunities happen by sheer perserverance and forming unlikely bonds.

In a sense, it is a series about overcoming not just obvious hurdles of logistics, but also the barriers in one's own mindset, breaking out of monotony and making dreams happen. While many shows, especially Anime, regurgitate the Follow Your Dreams(tm) mantra over and over, this one handles the matter in authentic ways, with hard effort and courage more so than deus ex machinae or mindbogglingly silly fantasy solutions. As a result, the series manages to feel refreshingly honest and relatable. The struggles are heartfelt and play on the audience's capacity for empathy more often than not.

Of course, all of it is packaged in a hugely entertaining way, with a cast that just clicks so well, I found myself laughing out loud a lot at their antics. In many ways I consider the cast of Kimari, Shirase, Hinata and Yuzuki to be perfect as far as character dynamics go. They strike a perfect balance between goofy and serious determination and competence.

While they are all strangers at the outset of the series, they quickly grow to learn one another's quirks and habits, and wonderfully play off one another's oddities. From Kimari's airheaded enjoyment of her newfound life of adventure, to Shirase going bonkers whenever spotting a penguin, real or not, to Hinata making of pseudo-philosophical quotes and Yuzu's general social awkwardness, the quartet, to me, form an idealized friendship of the kind I believe everybody would wish for. Their friendship is the core of their journey to the Antarctic.

I am not joking when I say that this series made me weep multiple times throughout. There are obvious tearjerkers towards the end, which the series builds up to very neatly, but even just random moments of overflowing energy had me on the brim with just how well executed they were. Not just the delivery of dialogue, but also the visual accompaniment, "camerawork", sound cues and insert songs running in the background. There is so much life here, it almost seems crazy for a show about going to the coldest, most devoid of life place on the planet.

Speaking of the locations, I was truly impressed by their presentation as well. A lot of research went into getting them just right not just on the matter of visuals but also overall feel for the environment. From the obvious starting point of Japan, with school life and what not, over to Australia and down across the ocean and into the harsh ice, I think A Place Further Than the Universe managed to take the audience to these places in a way few other shows do. We are party to the girls' journey and every step of the way feels significant and evocative. It is a true masterpiece in getting the viewer to commit to the journey and, in the end, this will be as close to Antarctica as we are likely to get in our lifetimes.

That this was an Anime Original production with no novel or manga basis amazes me, but is also part of the reason why this show excelled the way it did. There are no missed beats, no moments where the viewer will feel like they're missing out on something between scenes, between lines, that was elaborated on more in the original work. SHAFT's movie trilogy adaptation of Nisioisin's Kizumonogatari for example had so much content and character stripped from it, that I absolutely hated the results. Every time a series gets adapted into an anime, you can be certain that people will be complaining about x or y being cut for time and pacing reasons (sometimes to a degree that even Hollywood novel adaptations don't often see). With A Place Further Than the Universe, the pacing is on point in every single episode. Everything is sketched out well and belongs right where it is, with the animation choices, camera angles and visual effects underlining things. There is not a single scene I thought didn't need to be in there, and by the end I felt the series achieved all it set out to and, honestly, didn't need to go any further just to pad things. On top of that, every episode deals with its own set of problems and usually resolves them in a satisfying fashion while opening the door for the next stop on the trip. I have nothing but respect for the production team and director for making such a polished, well-put show.

However, while my recommendation is admittedly glowing and universal, I will stress here that I do not think this series should be watched dubbed, if it ever gets dubbed to begin with. The voice actors' performances across the board are brilliant and half of what makes this series work. Even with supposedly increasing dub quality by English publishers, I have little faith that they will be able to maintain this level of quality. Even if you don't understand a word spoken by the cast, the emotions their voices deliver are palpable, audible, even to the untrained ear. They go hand in hand with their expressions and the general mood of every single scene, above and beyond what I've seen in any Anime dub to date. The voices of Hanazawa Kana, Minase Inori, Iguchi Yuka and Hayami Saori are integral to the experience. Though I will admit that I dearly hope for a German publisher to license it for a dubbed Bluray release over here, so I can force my family to watch the thing...

Thankfully, the entire series is available on demand via Crunchyroll with various subtitle languages, so whether you are a native English speaker, German, Spanish, French, Italian or Russian, you'll be able to enjoy this series entirely subtitled, and even for free (in 480p) or with a Crunchyroll subscription. I'm not going to sell you on one of those, but I will say that this anime looks glorious in Full HD, which you get with the subscription (or a Free Trial, go for it).

To put my own gushing into wider context, some stats:
On Crunchyroll alone, the series scored 5 star ratings across the board for each episode, at well over a thousand ratings each. The entire series stands at 5 stars with about a hundred votes cast, and only 7 stray voters (5 of which rated it with 4 stars). On MyAnimeList, the great aggregator, the weighted score sits at 8.64/10, with around 25,000 votes, and just made its way up out of the 100+ range onto the #61 ranked position on the entire site, which is bound to go further up as more people finish watching the finale over the coming days.
While I don't intend to go all ad populum here, I think it worthwhile to point out that the overwhelming majority of people watching this show adored it, despite many having initial misgivings about following a "moe" show, as they tend to be quite bland and pointless, if entertaining. This one is still entertaining, but anything but bland and pointless, thankfully.

On top of that, the entire first episode appears to be available on Youtube, in HD, on Crunchyroll's Youtube Channel, so you're free to dive right in and decide for yourself if you enjoy the tone of the show. I'll embed the video below for your benefit.

All this said, I truly believe that A Place Further Than the Universe is currently the strongest contender for Anime of the Year (though admittedly, we're only a quarter into the year with four more seasonal blocks still to come). This show has left me so completely satisfied with it, that I had no hesitation at all to rate it a perfect 10/10 and call it a Masterpiece of the genre. I hope you'll find at least some sense of the same appreciation for it as I did, should you choose to give it a chance.

A Place Further Than the Universe on Crunchyroll

Review: Cult of the Spiral Dawn by Peter Fehervari

First off, I apologize for all the radio silence. It wasn't my intention to stay away for so long, not in the slightest. Things have been weird in life, moving stress and what not, and I made the (possible) mistake of starting Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace (and am halfway through that monster). I'm almost 20 entries behind schedule on my Goodreads challenge too! Anyway, I hope to get back into the groove soon. Stay tuned.

For now, however, I feel the need to make this post here. It is a repost of an earlier review. Today the long overdue paperback edition of Peter Fehervari's Legends of the Dark Millennium: Genestealer Cults finally went up for order, under a new title: Cult Of The Spiral Dawn, which is massively better than Genestealer Cults. If only the cover was as unique as the novel itself, I'd be all-round happy.

Since the title and cover changed, I had the choice between a) changing the original review accordingly and b) reposting using the new info. Since the former would involve problems with people looking up the original release (which they still are!), I figured reposting with this disclaimer.would avoid confusion better.

Apart from the updated technical info, the review remains unchanged from its original October 2016 version. Please note however that the paperback edition here also includes the additional prequel short story Cast a Hungry Shadow, so even if you've read the ebook or original hardcover, this edition will be worth picking up. And I'd sincerely urge you to do so because I'm a massive Fehervari fanboy at this point. It even made it onto my Highlights of 2016! Incidentally, you can find out why by reading Cult of the Spiral Dawn ;)

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This is a difficult review to write, and probably to read. I've tried to keep things vague and abstract to not spoil the fun of the book. To put it bluntly: I'd highly recommend the novel. It is a great read with a lot of flavor and thrilling scenes. I certainly loved it and believe it is one of the best things to come out of Black Library's printers in quite some time.

The Story:

"Members of a seemingly loyal cult devoted to the Emperor make a pilgrimage to the world on which their order began. But what they find there puts all they believe into question…

The galaxy is vast, and worship of the God-Emperor by His faithful takes many forms. The Spiral Dawn is one of the countless sanctioned sects of the Imperial Cult. As a gathering of Spiralytes make their holy pilgrimage to Redemption, the sect's world of origin and a shrine world of the Imperium, they find not a haven of enlightenment and introspection, but a soot-choked hellhole where their order's founders and an unorthodox regiment of Astra Militarum maintain an uneasy coexistence. As tensions between the serene congregation and the superstitious Guardsmen mount, the new arrivals begin to unravel the dark secrets concealed at the heart of their faith."

This novel was previously available under the title Legends of the Dark Millennium: Genestealer Cults. This edition also includes the additional short story 'Casts a Hungry Shadow'.

The Review:

Legends of the Dark Millennium: Genestealer Cults, despite its highly generic title and cover, are anything but. The hint is in the author's name: Peter Fehervari.

While this is only his second novel for Black Library, he has a host of short stories and a novella under his belt, all of which share a common theme: The Dark Coil, which, at this point, seems synonymous with Fehervari's trademark atmosphere, sense of hopelessness and spiralling descent into madness, unravelling the characters to the core.
The "grim darkness of the far future" is something that is invited with every Warhammer 40,000 story, but barely any of them nails that as well as Fehervari. When you pick up his stories, you're in for tightly-knit nets of implications, revelations, and psychological horror, rather than the all-out bolter porn a lot of 40k stories devolve into.
You're in for well-crafted characters who are on the brink of breaking, walking a knife's edge between revelation and damnation. You're also in for inhospitable worlds, whether they be the thick deathworld jungles of Phaedra, the eternal night of Sarastus, the frozen surface of Oblazt or, with Genestealer Cults, the volcanic and ash-tainted claustrophobia of Redemption. A lot of thought goes into the stages for Fehervari's stories, and they always seem to strike you with a feeling of isolation and imminent danger.

While this novel is noticeably shorter than Fire Caste, in line with Black Library's short novel policy these days, I didn't feel that it detracted from the book. I would certainly have wanted more content - why wouldn't I? - but Fehervari did very well with the space he was given, and even snuck in a lot of references and parallels to his other works - something that I've come to expect from his works. Specifically, the novel features characters from Fire Caste and his Fire and Ice novella, printed in Shas'o / The Tau Empire (get the latter in paperback, it includes the former plus an additional novella), along with multiple short stories by him. Generally you can read any of his stories on their own, but the more you get involved in his sub-mythos, the more you'll be able to take away from his works.
This is especially true with Genestealer Cults. It straight up sees characters with ambiguous fates return to the fold, while introducing a load of new angles at things he previously talked about.

The Black Flags, this story's Astra Militarum regiment, is even made up of forces from across worlds previously named, and offers a natural way to reintroduce old friends. It is made up of stragglers and remnants from other regiments across the Vassago Abyss, reshaped into a somewhat coherent force with very peculiar mental tendencies. A lot of them are broken men and women, including their Witch Captain or Colonel Talasca, who often retreats into his tower to scribble madly at his walls. Everybody has his ghosts here, defying their past, present and future.

The primary protagonist of the book, Captain Cross, is a newcomer to the Black Flags. He freshly arrives on Redemption at the start on the book, alongside an imperial cult's pilgrimage to the shrine world. He feels that all the Sacred Spiral hogwash is fishy and doesn't trust it, prompting him to accompany the pilgrims, and Ariken Skarth, who he shortly befriended during his voyage. He gets involved in matters despite his better judgement, and the coil twists and turns til he is irrecoverably drawn into the unfolding holy war on Redemption, and the machinations of higher authorities.

Ariken herself is a strong character as well. A healer by trade, she joined the Spiral Dawn pilgrimage to Redemption yet isn't as firm in her beliefs as most others. She is, in many ways, a driving force in the Black Flags' resistance, and her character develops heavily throughout. She was presented as intriguing, caring yet also increasingly ruthless as the stakes increase. Ariken, too, is drawn deeper into the spiral to the point of no return to ignorance.

But all that praise basically comes down to one thing: Peter Fehervari was the perfect choice for writing this first, defining novel about the modern incarnation of the Genestealer Cults. His skill set is focused on subterfuge, insidious plots, ambiguous characters and spiralling madness. This makes him the ideal pick for presenting the insidious nature of the Genstealers' indoctrination and the cult's inner workings. He touches on psychological aspects far more than any other author writing for the publisher, and that is exactly the close-up that this faction needed to flourish on the page. He dives right into the cult's activities while maintaining a front of ignorance on the side of the imperial troopers, up until the point of escalation.

Few things on Redemption are clear-cut. The Black Flags are made up of ambiguous figures, and from the beginning it is clear that there is more than meets the eye on the planet. While we, as the readers, are aware from the start that, hey, a Genestealer Cult is at work on the world, Talasca and co are oblivious as to what is going on. They suspect the Cult of the Spiral Dawn of treachery and danger, but the cult's fascade and stealthy indoctrination of their own troops, keeps them in the dark until it is almost too late. The initial reveals of hybrid monstrosities hit home, showing how out of their depth the loyalists are. Where they suspect the taint of Chaos, the reality of the situation is quite different.
However, the Genestealer Magi actively use the fear of the regiment to turn them on one another, and sway further soldiers to seek refuge in the Spiral. It really was nicely put together, and highlighted the psychic manipulation of the cult, and showed why these xenos infiltrators are as successful at undermining whole societies as they are.

From the first page on, up til the very last, the Genestealer infestation is showing its magic. In fact, right in the prologue we get to see the first steps in the Patriarch's evolution through the first infection on Redemption. They grow their strength and even penetrate the sanctity of the local Adepta Sororitas abbey! The whole prologue and later sections dealing with the more alien hybrids and aberrants are utterly inhuman and as close to the Tyranid psyche as you're going to get.

Honestly, this is the most difficult type of review to write for me. There are so many cool scenes and characters in here that I cannot really touch on without spoiling hugely enjoyable parts of the book. Across all of Fehervari's stories, the sense of mystery and satisfaction of discovering twists and turns and connections between stories is one of the things I cherish most, and I'd be doing any potential reader a disservice if I were to address them directly. So I have to talk in the abstract far more than I would like.

To give you a more direct example of how grim, gruesome and terrifying the Cult is depicted here, let me quote you one snippet:

[character a] sighed. ‘The last time I saw [character b] she was two months pregnant, though it looked closer to six. Their spawn grow fast.’ He shook his head. ‘She was overjoyed because she’d been honoured by the cult Iconward.’

Yep. That really twists your stomach, doesn't it? I know it did mine. And I loved the book for it. It doesn't try to hide the utter perversity of the infection. It hits right where it hurts, on multiple occassions. Not a single major character here is ever safe from the cult's influences and attacks. They can die in droves, just like that, without big acts of heroism or the often criticised plot armor. Fehervari was never afraid of getting his original characters fall to madness or an enemy's (or ally's) guns, and this is true here as well.

To my delight, there are various plot points left open for the future. While the plot itself is wrapped up as well as one can expect, Fehervari leaves the door open for themes and characters to feature in his future works, carrying on the Dark Coil's legacy. Thus the spiral turns again, deepening the overarching mysteries while delivering a damn fine read in its own right.

Genestealer Cults is one hell of a novel. It kept me awake at night, staying up longer than I should have, just to finish one more chapter, one more chapter. I ended up taking a few days off from reading more, just to let it simmer a little and not burn through it too quickly. After all, I waited years for Fehervari's next novel, so why cut the experience short. But even when I got back to it, I was drawn right into the thick of Redemption again, as if nothing had happened. The book does a fantastic job staying interesting and engaging all throughout, without any dull downtime, and when the cold war escalates and the Spiral Dawn reveals its true nature and purpose, things never let up again.

I'd highly recommend this novel to anyone with even a passing interest in Genestealer Cults as a faction, or anybody really who wants more out of the 40k IP than just numb bolter action flicks. I'd call Legends of the Dark Millennium: Genestealer Cults one of the best books to come out of Black Library this year - and they had a lot of pretty good stuff this time around...

Cult of the Spiral Dawn on Goodreads