More reviews...?

After that massive review post a little while ago, I wasn't planning on reviewing anything for a while.
Except I've just watched a few of the Rurouni Kenshin OVAs. I'd heard they were depressing, but I was curious about them anyway.
I saw the Kenshin backstory one with Tomoe. The animation was much nicer than the main series. And yeah, it was depressing. But this part, at least, was in the books too. Although I'm petty certain that Tomoe didn't cut Kenshin's face with a knife. That was... weird. I don't have that specific book in the series, so there's no easy way for me to look it up, but I remember that the knife fell and hit him, or something?
Also, I noticed that the battle scenes were much better. I don't mean bloodier (which they most definitely were) but they actually showed all of the moves and blows and parries. In the main anime, from what I've seen so far, a lot of it is dramatic still-shots and lines across the screen to indicate the sword slices.
But then, about five minutes ago, I finished watching the first episode of the other OVA, which apparently takes place after the books end.
Duuuude...
Sooo bleak.
The summaries have cut out every fun thing about the series. They're taking all of the sad, depressing parts from the entire series, and cramming them down your throat all at once. Jeez. There's none of the fun Kenshin. He's just gloomy and depressed. The whole time.

Oh well. While I'm at it. I'll be brief in looking at the Pokémon Adventures manga. Recently I tried to catch up with it, since I didn't look at it for ages (since there's 10 random chapters missing that they never put back up, so I had to wait for the books to come out in America so I could get past that gap). The Diamond/Pearl/Platinum one's pretty fun. They spent most of the series working with about 2 Pokémon each. But it annoyed me how right around the Spear Pillar battle, they suddenly caught the rest of their teams at the same time. It wasn't spread out at all. They just chucked them at you all at once, and we weren't really introduced to any of them.
And the Black/White manga... Kinda annoying. First of all, N's really creepy, and he doesn't behave like he did in the games. Plus, in the games, he says that Pokémon battles can hurt Pokémon, and he doesn't really enjoy them much. But in the manga, he says that Pokémon can only be happy when they're fighting. What the hell?
And then the series of events... dude, they cut out huge hunks of events. They just mention them later on. I can understand if they cut out gym battles. I might even buy it if they cut out evolutions. But they've also cut out events that are important to the development of the plot. If you've played the games, then you can understand what happened. But usually they're so detailed. I actually checked on a couple different websites to see if some chapters got skipped, but both sites had the same thing. Grumble. I'm still hoping that I've just missed some of it.
(They're releasing these books in America right now, but they're so small. There' maybe 1 chapter per book, or something? Why didn't they just release them in the normal size manga? Even if I liked this arc, I wouldn't buy these. I'd need to buy five times as many books.)

Hmm. I think watching that OVA has made me annoyed.
Change the topic to something good!~
I just finished reading the fourth Twelve Kingdoms book no the way home from the Writer's Retreat. It's definitely good! Especially after reading so many of those Limyaael's Rants on fantasy writing (still haven't read them all). I just read the rant about people from our world traveling to a fantasy world, and the author pretty much addressed all the stuff Limyaael complains about. The world is very interesting and well-developed. Especially politically, which is something that I have trouble developing.
I gotta say, the 4th book (3rd season of the anime, with Suzu and Shoukei) has got to be my favorite. The way that the friendship between the three girls slowly develops, and the whole political struggle thing. There are some awesome moments in this book. Like when Yoko tells Suzu and Shoukei who she is. And when Yoko and Keiki ride out to confront the armies, and the general guy goes "Hooooly krayp, I really screwed up."

Okay. I'll scan a couple of the things from the workshop, and probably post them right now. I shall bury this whiney review post for you. You can have the fact of the day then.