*warning: spoilers for PH and FMA*

*the red stuff is the actual review, the rest is just extra fluff*

Oh, Pandora Hearts, how I love you. Pandora Hearts has got to be one of my favorite manga of all time. It's dark, creepy, action-packed, AND has a healthy dose of sparkles. Pretty impressive, if you ask me.

Oz Vessalius is a-freaking-dorable. I love that guy. A lot of people are turned off when they realize that he's actually pretty nuts himself, but it just adds to his character. The fact that I like shotas is irrelevant >.>. I like Gil as well, and Alice. She's actually one of the few female anime characters that I really like.

Pandora Hearts is... intricate. As in, the plot exposition (you know that speech that the bad guy does at the end explaining his evil plan?) has taken 6-some-odd chapters to do. Seriously. If the reason behind a character doing something takes more than 4 chapters to explain, your plot is too complicated or you're telling way too much. I think that I understand it right now, but I think that the goal of the author is to drop a bombshell plot-changing infobomb every three or four chapters. They've managed it so far. Jesus, what the cuss is up with Jack?! And Oz is just messed up, poor little dude.

Elliot Nightray. Oh my god, I LOVED HIM TO DEATH. I don't know why. I just did. I freaking loved him. He was my favorite character, on par with Oz himself. He even beat out Gilbert (I like Gil a lot).

So you can imagine my trauma when he was accused of being the Headhunter. However, you cannot imagine my utter horror and despair when he himself was beheaded by the Queen of Hearts. Unless you've seen FMA when Major Hughes died. That was almost on par, but I liked Elliot even better than Hughes. I still can't believe that he died. He survived the arc that he was introduced in! He appeared in following arcs! That means he's a recurring character! Recurring characters aren't allowed to just DIE, at least until the final battle! He earned that much! He was Oz's FRIEND. And what about Leo? That'd be like... killing Gil! Oh gods, I hope they don't kill Gil. Or Alice, or Oz. Which, honestly, I wouldn't be too surprised if they did.

(to be completely honest, I can see why Elliot needed to die, I just don't like it at all)

Oh, I almost forgot, I loved the Cheshire Cat too! I'm disappointed that he died. Such a character deserved to be a recurring villain, or maybe even switch sides and be a good guy. He died at the end of his arc, though. At least they didn't get my hopes up by letting him live and come back later, only to brutally slaughter him simply to please the plot. *angry pout*

Anyways, despite my complaints, I absolutely adore Pandora Hearts. It's dark and pretty weird sometimes, but there's lightheartedness abound if you know where to look for it. You've got to pay attention to understand the plot, and even then you might miss something important. Despite that, I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a new manga.

P.S. I have a Pandora Hearts pocketwatch :3

P.P.S. this review only covers the manga chapters that have currently been scanlated in English by whatever team that does it. I thank that team dearly.

*spoiler alert - FMA stuff* 

Seriously, pretty spoiler-ish. 

Going in the spirit of things, I picked another well-known anime/manga. This time, I'm going with Fullmetal Alchemist. 

Okay, first off, this review is over Fullmetal Alchemist. Not Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood or Fullmetal Alchemist: Conqueror of Shamballa or any other series or spinoffs or movies that may have come from it. I've never seen FMAB and FMA:CoS is a movie. 

FMA. FMA is amazing. It's purely amazing. One of my favorite animes I've ever seen, and that's saying something. At first, I thought that it would be a very lighthearted series. I mean, the first few episodes were really funny and cute, and the cool serious parts had comedy tossed in. 

What really changed FMA and set off the plot was the death of Maes Hughes, which I must say was probably number 1 in my list of traumatizing deaths (I actually do have a short list of these). The rational part of my brain could see his death coming from a mile away, which in hindsight I find rather impressive, but the fandom part of my brain insisted that Hughes could never die, he's too nice, he's too awesome, I like him too much. So when he bit the dust I felt mixed reactions. Part of me lamented his demise, while part of me wanted to stand up and cheer and say "I knew it!". 

I feel that a small tangent is relevant: I tried reading the manga of FMA, since I heard it was pretty different from the anime. I got to Hughes's death and had to stop. Why? Because of the funeral page. Or, rather, the page before it. Edward, not knowing of his death, was talking about having to repay Hughes for his kindness visiting Ed in the hospital and helping Winry. The next page was Hughes's funeral procession. Most. Depressing. Thing. Ever. 

http://manga.animea.net/full-metal-alchemist-chapter-16-page-8.html 

Okay, anyways, his death kicked off the series, and it just got darker and darker. I'll admit, I can't recall all of the details of the series. It was one of the first I watched and that was probably a good two years ago. Anyways, I do recall being slightly confused. This was probably because, in an unprecedented stroke of genius, the Homunculi actually didn't reveal their entire evil plot to the protagonists when questioned. Shocking, I know. But I was rather confused as to what exactly the Homunculi were after. I was also confused as to who is who, but that's just because I was dumb. I don't recall if they EVER said exactly what the Homunculi wanted, and I'm still a bit fuzzy even now. 

SHOU TUCKER. 

SHOU MOTHERF**KING TUCKER. 

I hate that man. I hate that man so much. Oh gods, Sakura Haruno has NOTHING on this dude. Seriously. In the anime I hated him. In the manga I hated him. I hate him for who he is. I hate him for what he did to Nina and Alexander. I hate him for what he did to his wife. I hate him for what he said to Edward and I hate him because he didn't even feel bad for it. In case you were wondering I also have a short list of characters that I want to burn at the stake. Shou Tucker is at the top of this list, his chimera body being second. Oh, and what's up with that? I thought Scar killed him, so how was Tucker still alive? Why wasn't he suffering? At least he went crazy when Nina didn't come back. CUSS YOU SHOU TUCKER. 

Okay. I'm back. FMA. OH MY GOD EDWARD WENT TO OUR SIDE. I totally did not see that coming. Actually, I didn't really see anything coming in those last few episodes. The rational part of my brain had already been distracted by other things and only my fandom part was paying attention. But Equivalent Exchange was... false? That energy came from somewhere? From OUR world?

...I can just imagine some secretive group like the Illuminati or the Freemasons getting together and saying something like" Okay, guys, it's too peaceful. Their side is running out of energy. Let's start a world war." 

tl;dr - FMA is amazing, but it went depressing pretty fast, I hate Shou Tucker with the burning passion of a thousand suns

P.S. this is my second blog post :D yaaay! Feel free to express your hatred of Shou Tucker. Or defend him. But I will probably yell at you if you try to defend him, so I advise against it. 

Just in case, I am not in any way affiliated with Fullmetal Alchemist, Funimation, or http://manga.animea.net. This blog post is for entertainment purposes only, I am not profiting in any way from posting this. 

*spoiler alert: Naruto stuff*

This morning I noticed that I had yet to put up a blog post. Finding this rather unusual of me, I've spent the last, oh, six-and-a-half hours debating what I wanted to do my first post on. Maybe just a babbling jumble of stuff I like, maybe a rant on something I find stupid, maybe just a couple of cheesy jokes and too much caps. Then I realized how I could combine all of these: a review. And, if I was going to write a review, of course it would have to be over anime/manga. 

So I picked a pretty well-known (try globally worshipped) anime to start out with: Naruto. 

Okay, Naruto. I watched the anime of Naruto, I didn't read it. Funny story, actually, when I was a kid and anime came on TV at reasonable hours, my brother and I watched Naruto. Well, I didn't really. I was too little and immature and stupid to understand the storyline, but my brother liked the plot and I liked the colors and occasional explosion. But then my mother decided to watch an episode. So, what episode does she pick? The funny one about Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura trying to see under Kakashi's mask? No. The one where Kakashi is trapped by Itachi's eye-thing (forgot the name >.>) and is stabbed REPEATEDLY for THREE DAYS in his mind. Yeah. Needless to say, we didn't get to watch Naruto anymore. 

But anyways, the show. I watched the whole first series (skipping some dumb filler arcs) and some of the second. Honestly, I liked it at first. Naruto was a dork, but he could be cool. Sasuke was angsty, but his level head balanced Naruto's... Naruto-ness quite well. Never really liked Sakura, but that's just because she's pathetic. Anyways, the show was funny, action-y, dramatic, bloody, and the plot was pretty good despite the ridiculous amount of fillers. However, my main problem with Naruto is not its plot, nor its characters, nor its art. No, my first problem is with its length. 

Oh. 

My. 

God. 

So long. So long. It's great if you started early and have been reading this whole time, but if you're like me and only recently got on the anime bandwagon, you're sort of screwed. Especially if you're like me again and have the attention span of a coconut. I have trouble with reading completed series simply because there's SO MUCH to read (I usually read manga instead of watching anime, just preference). There's just no way I'm reading something with more than 200 chapters. Oh, did you know Detective Conan has more than 800 chapters? Yeahhhhh no. 

Back to Naruto, another problem I have is with the whole Sasuke thing. I'll say again, I only got to just past the time skip. I don't know any more about the recent happenings than what I hear from my friend who's caught up (which isn't much, really). But anyways, what the CUSS is up with Sasuke?! He could've just lived an unhappy, angsty life in the Konoha. But nooooo, instead he has to leave and live an unhappy, angsty life somewhere else and be a bad guy. And Naruto is OBSESSED with bringing him back. Like, dude. Pretty creepy. Oh, and Sakura is bitchin' and cryin' about Sasuke still. Gods, I hate her. She can go and drive a truck into a lake. With the windows rolled up. Tied to the seat. 

Third problem boils down to one word: Orochimaru. Hate that guy. I wish that he had never existed. He's the reason that Sasuke went bonkers and the plot lost me. Really though, the reason I dislike him is not because of his character, specifically, but because of the fact that he's the annoying bad guy that just won't die. And even though he did finally die, I guess Kabuto absorbed him or something? Anyways, Kabuto's Orochimaru, the dude never goes away. Oh, but I liked Kabuto at first. He was cool. Even as Orochimaru's henchman. Now he's a few horses short of a calvary, though, if you know what I mean. 

tl;dr - I liked Naruto at first, but it's too long and kind of went off the deep end

P.S. if anyone actually reads this, feel free to comment however you please. I don't care what you say, it'd just feel nice to know that someone actually read this post.

Without wax, ~Nevermore117