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Okay prince Benjamin has a much more charming narration then miss girl Punzie's thankfully

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Its a schoolastic rapunzel retelling I first read in middleschool. This is the first page:

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I remembered another rapunzel retelling I read as a kid and went to look it up to maybe reread again and

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RAPUNZEL'S REVENGE

graphic novel retelling of rapunzel in a wild west setting.

i first read this as a kid, then reread it again to refresh my memory of it. a good read!

the use of the western setting works really well, and the central "gimmick" being... what if rapunzel used her braids as lassos. and its a fun gimmick! rapunzel herself is written to be very feisty and brave, on some level a clear purposeful subversion of the expected naive maiden.

the sorta... girlbossification of fairy tale princesses is very hit or miss, and cowgirl rapunzel is a hit for me. she still has a realistic level of ignorance, and her skills are established early on and utilized through out the story.

as the title suggests, her story is that of revenge. after finding out she was stolen as a baby by the evil mother gothel, the witch that rules over the land, she lashes out and is sealed away in a magical tower for four years as punishment for her defiance. when she escapes, she plans to find and free her mother from gothel's mines, but along the way learning about the people hurt by gothel's empire, her plans change to also free the land from the tyrannical ruler.

the secondary protag of the story is jack. yes, that jack

we hear about jack's story in passing retrospective comments from the man himself, his eternal wait for his goose to lay a golden egg so he can buy his mama a new house after he accidently destroyed the laast one. he is a roguish trickster, as to be expected of a Jack, and he's very charming in his antics and clever plans, helping out rapunzel a LOT. the relationship between the two is also very fun and they have a lot of chemistry

the story is distinct and does it own thing while always staying a rapunzel retelling. it never stops being an adaptation, and its a good adaptation at that.

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rereading the graphic novel "Rapunzel's revenge" right now

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Dr Stone (manga)

dr stone is.... a mixed bag. but the parts of it that are good are FAR more interesting that the parts that are bad. dr stone is "bad" in the more boring, predictable, and expected ways typical adventure shonens tends to be bad. you can probably guess what most of those issues are just from the genre.

but dr stone is good in ways ill probs be searching for a way to articulate for years to come.

i do consider it to be the greatest deconstruction of both the lone super genius archetype, and the nihilistic asshole super genius archetype. and i think it succeeds where others fail in part bc Senku is presented in a way easily mistaken for that Type Of guy, but he isnt. it doesnt matter how smart he is, he needs the power of friendship if he wants to get literally anything done. he isnt a nilihistic asshole, he's just immature and rude, and he's actually very optimistic and has an upbeat attitude. he's a great protag i have a lot of love for.

but while i can wax poetic circles about my fascination with how intellect is handled in dr stone, thats an essay for another day. lets talk about the story as a whole.

dr stone's setting is set by a mysterious light turning all of humanity to stone for 3700 years, sending everyone back to the stone age. however its less a time travel isekai so much as it is a lord of the flies caveman arms race. it primarily functions under the typical shonen formula with the notable factor that it's magic system is... real life science. altho a bit elevated for dramatic effect.

the true zeitgeist of dr stone is the back and forth problem solving to build various contraptions to achieve various goals. every character has their own skill sets and personalities that allows them to bounce off of each other and play a role in reaching goals. the cast also has pretty great chemistry making exchanges and banter very entertaining 99% of the time.

while i think the characters are very well written, i have that opinion within the context of dr stone being a plot driven story, not character driven. character arcs are subtle and take a backseat to the wider plot goal posts. i dont consider the low level of character development to be a bad thing, the story just isnt about that and the cast is charismatic and enjoyable for the roles they play.

the setting of dr stone is very well realized in its simplicity. the artist, boichi is capable of drawing some beautiful scenery. the art overall i think is much more good then bad, and the character designs are fun and distinct if you can tolerate the girls looking kinda busted (boichi.... can not draw women i fear) ironically i found the moe eyes growing on me. but ill be real, the fan service isnt that bad. annoying, yes, but not nearly as bad as it could be. you wont ever see a guy fall on top of a girl and accidentally grope her boobs, so much as the occasional jarring ass shot and weird angles around badly drawn women. that said the young girl and mascot character, Suika, is never sexualized in this way, even though she is grown up by the end of the story

i wont claim the girls in the cast dont suffer from some of the typical shonen misogyny, but Kohaku and Suika at least are very well realized characters and solid female leads i like a lot.

i always feel like i should be harsher in my criticism towards this series, i do genuinely consider it enough of a mixed bag of quality ill hesitate to recommend it to people (tho lets be real, the fan service is always the biggest barrier recommending any animanga regardless of quality despite that) but i really do struggle to make a nuanced critique. even things that are more controversial among its fans, like the way the story progresses in its final arcs, i struggle to complain about. structurally the story delivers on its foreshadowing and progresses in ways that make sense and i do think was planned out by at least the half way point of the story.

the biggest most glaring issues are... extremely basic. very typical levels of shonen misogyny and weird politics. it gets kinda weird in the middle in a way i dont really feel equipped address in detail but am grateful a lot of that.. mess doesn't carry over into the rest of story. it gets tied up in bad, but also very common and unquestioned, colonialist mindsets and tropes just as much as it SUBVERTS and DECONSTRUCTS those same bad ideas. which honestly drives a lil nuts if i think about for to long. the narrative loves to kneecap its own themes and progressive philosophies to a frustrating degree, but i do genuinely think the end product is far more good then bad.

i have a lot to say about this manga, but know are to actually articulate maybe a fraction of it. after watching enough youtubers attempt to review it, im clearly not alone in that. lots of people seem to share my struggles in expressing why they also think dr stone is so good. and i think that complexity of how it grabs people in ways that arent easy to understand, are in itself is an aspect of what makes it what it is.

its a very good adventure shonen series that i think deserves a bit of staying power

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To Your Enternity (manga) (but only part 1)

Even if you don't read any further, at least read the first chapter. It is a masterpiece.

To your eternity is a story that drops in quality as it continues, but it would be more shocking if it didn't. It has the greatest first chapter of all time, and its first two arcs are.... perfect. The story gets worse come the third arc in that it goes from a breathtakingly stunning magnificent work of art to.... really good :)

The story is that of an immortal being who "evolves" through stimulus, primarily through harm inflicted upon him. His most notable and plot relevant ability is how the death of his friends allow him to mimic them. Carrying their form and memory with him as he continues to travel.

It is as much a story of self discovery, of the inhuman becoming human, then something more, as it is a story of grief.

Fushi is a very good, unique protagonist that is very well suited for the story being told. The rest of the cast are also well defined for the shorter periods of time they spend with Fushi, each leaving a notable mark on the story and the friend who will never forget them.

The later arcs suffer by comparison to the unreachable highs of its beginning, as well as what should be forgivable pacing issues. It ends in a way clearly designed to be open enough to lead into its sequel, which is fine, altho a part of me wishes part 1 was more allowed to be its own self contained story. But I don't know if its even possible for a story of this kind to even have a truly satisfying ending.

To your eternity suffers from its own perfection, interpet that as you wish

(Part 2 is another beast entirely, ill have more to say on it after its completed and I read it in full)

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The Nettle Spinner

i am discussing a very specific version of the story found here, it is very short and free to read.

the idea that all fairy tales have morals is kinda a weird myth. i blame it on how they are often equated to aesop's fables, which id argue are their own genre of fairy tales in themselves. but a lot of fairy tales are just.... weird thing happens.

anyways check out the first sentence of this story: "Once upon a time there lived at Quesnoy, in Flanders, a great lord whose name was Burchard, but whom the country people called Burchard the Wolf. Now Burchard had such a wicked, cruel heart, that it was whispered how he used to harness his peasants to the plough, and force them by blows from his whip to till his land with naked feet."

insert obligatory simpsons joke here.

the story starts with burchard, and how's he's a shitty bastard, but his wife is nice! his wife is not relevent to the story. the story is about a lady named Renelde, who Burchard becomes weirdly psychosexually obsessed with for no reason, which happens a lot in these kinds of stories. he wants to marry her, but she's not interested. unfortunately she herself can't get married to her actual bf without his consent bc of how laws work in their country.

the story is just him harassing Renalde for years, ordering her to spin nettles, sending his soldiers to kill her, and driving her bf out of the country. Renalde successfully spins nettles, dodges all murder attempts, then when lord dibshit kicks the bucket her bf comes back and they finally get married.

i can def see this one getting read out loud in its segments with pauses for commentary from the audience. its a solid tale, but lacks much room to be adapted into modern stories. but eh who knows. never know till you try.

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yes there will be a notable mix of the type of stuff i review/catalog and its my current fairy tale kick that gave me the idea for the blog in the first place. my goal is to eventually sit down and look at the garden of earthly delights and review it like it was a short film i watched

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Rapunzel. as in, the fairy tale

rapunzel, like all fairy tales, has many forms, both in its origins and in its legacy.

the basics are:

pregnant wife wants fancy lettuce to eat, husband steals some then gets caught by witch, sells the future daughter to the witch for the leafy greens, witch puts rapunzel in a tower, prince finds rapunzel and recites poem, they form romance, witch finds out and gets pissed, rapunzel gets her hair cut and cast out, prince is tricked, attacked, blinded, then wanders around until rapunzel finds and heals him with her tears.

there are other inconsistent factors, such as how the prince is caught having relations with Rapunzel. the most interesting one to me is the one where the prince is caught because Rapunzel gets pregnant, is only for how constantly its revealed they have twins. the pregnancy plotline seems inherently tied to the detail about twins for whatever reason.

of course the story is often reduced and boiled down to only the long haired maiden in the tower, but that's hardly new for these kinds of things. its actually kinda weird how much prince charming is made to be more of a hero in a lot of more modern reimaginings of the story when he's kinda a pathetic player who has to be saved by his girlfriend in the OG. for all my issues with disney's take, at least mr flynn rider is a decent adaptation of rapunzel's prince and all his loser glory.

because Rapunzel is never a damsel in distress as she's often mistaken for. the prince never saves her, he just becomes her secret boyfriend during Rapunzel's rebellious phase then gets beaten and blinded by her mom. Rapunzel is the one who saves him, not the other way around, and has been that way since the beginning.

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Romeo + Juliet

growing up i had a strained relationship with the play of romeo and juliet mostly due to it being assigned to me in english class 5 different times. even if i hadnt been a love story hater as a kid, the over exposure was enough to kill it. sometimes i wonder how much my love for twelfth night comes purely from my relief that we weren't reading fucking romeo and juliet again for the shakespear unit.

that said, its a beautiful story that's very over hated. i would not be surprized if others also only hate it for being forced to read it over and over and over and over and over and over again in school. it was only after leaving school i was ever able to get a retrospective appriation for the play, and the final step in loving it was this movie.

this movie is def up there in my top "aesthetic" movies, it feels like a very disinct world, even if chances are a large chunk of its vibes are simply just what 90s italy was like. its aged like fine wine, the dated aspects of its art direction only increasing its distinct feel and look as the years pass. the movie is also wet. its a very sweaty movie, you can feel the heat of the summer it takes places within, can smell the air, and it smells like sweat and fried food and gun powder.

the script is pulled straight from the source material with unedited shakespearian dialog and it works. nothing feels jarring or out of place, all the mixed elements come together to form a unique masterpiece. im not sure theres anything else quite like it.

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Monument Valley, and Monument Valley 2

Disclaimer: I have only played the mobile games, thus this is a review of those two versions of the games specifically. I am unaware if the steam versions are different in any way or not.

Monument Valley is a beautiful game. Puzzle games based on the work of mc escher, you play as a little pointy princess navigating that abstract surreal world.

There is a story, although a very simple one. I'd compare it to a fairy tale honestly. It serves its purpose as a narrative thread that gives the stunning visuals more emotional weight.

Its a short game, but very good, like a slice of fancy cake purchased at a Cafe as a treat. How much replayablity it has will very from person to person, and whether or not it resonates with you, I can't say. But it resonated with me, and I think about it a lot.

If you ever have 5 dollars you don't need, I'd give it a try. If the first game gets you, then the sequel will also satisfy.