One Piece

And that video above is about the best you can expect of One Piece. Yes, it is finally time for me to speak my piece on the last of the Big Three, and I have been putting this off because t is one of the worst I have ever seen. I still watch it so I can keep up with the fans who insist it's great, but it is insanely ridiculous. It startedout somewhat promising, the problem is that every time you think you have a handle on the wierd, the show introduces some new even weirder thing that makes you want to throw your TV out the window. Then you calm down, wrap your head around it, and then just when you think it all makes sense, something even wierder comes up and it starts all over again.

One Piece is about pirates, specifically the Straw Hat pirates, led by Monkey D. Luffy. Luffy grew up admiring a pirate named Red Shanks and told him that one day he would find the legendary treasure of Gol D. Roger and become King of the Pirates. Red Shanks admired the Luffy's ambition even though he was young and gave him his straw hat telling him to give it back when he was King of the Pirates. Luffy is commited to this dream, but he has one significant obstacle, he has eaten the cursed Gum Gum Fruit that makes his body like rubber but also means he can't swim. This is silly yet inspirational in the beginning, and I will explain the significance of the cursed Devil Fruit later because it is that big of a deal that it warrants it's own section. However, the silliness builds up and becomes overwhelming despite Luffy's serious attempt to become King of the Pirates, in fact, the whole idea of his search for the legendary One Piece seems to be overshadowed by other problems that come up. First of all, Luffy finds Roronoa Zorro, a bounty hunter who fights with three swords, one in each hand and the third in his mouth, which is easily the most ridiculous fighting style ever, but he makes it bad ass. Zorro manages to get himself into enough trouble for a death sentence, but Luffy offers to save him if he will be his first mate. Zorro agrees not knowing two things, one that Luffy's determination and rubber powers will allow him to actually succeed, and two, that Luffy has neither a boat nor a crew aside from the two of them. A girl named Nami is impressed enough to join their crew as a navigator and help them along, though we later find out she has ulterior motives. After a few adventures they pick up Usopp, son of Yasopp, one of Red Shanks crew and a friend of Luffy's along with a new boat named the Merry Go, and also Sanji, a chef who aspires to cook the grandest seafood feast ever and has learned to fight using only his feet so he can save his hands for cooking. Usopp is a great marksman, but he also has a tendency to exaggerate his stories wildly. Sanji is a ladies man with a big crush on Nami, but most peculiar is how his hair always hangs in front of one eye, which I was willing to let go until one episode he was upside down and some how the hair still hung of his face in complete defiance of the laws of physics, but even physics is arbitrary in the world of One Piece. Then we find out the truth about Nami, she is actually working for the Fishmen and trying to collect enough money to buy freedom for her hometown. When Luffy finds out how Nami is being manipulated he leads the crew to fight the Fishmen because he is always looking out for his crew and wants to help Nami. Then things get really weird. The next crew member is Tony Tony Chopper, a reindeer who ate the Human Human fruit, the only fruit that will turn an animal into a human. He is now a short anthropomorphic reindeer who wears shorts and a top hat and is actually a vey competent doctor, but will forever be alone, until of course Luffy recruits him. From there they begin travelling through a series of islands, each one stranger than the last, including Skypeia, the island that floats in the sky and is populated by winged people. Wait there's more, but your head will explode if I go any further.

Going back to the Gum Gum Fruit, it is one of many Devil Fruits. The Devil Fruits are supposedly very rare, and yet everywhere they go it seems at least one person has Devil Fruit powers. The Devil Fruits are believed to be possessed by the Sea Devil, or rather, each one is possessed by a different devil that gives it it's power. The fruit in itself doesn't really do anything except look unique and weird. But once someone takes a bite of it, the devil transfers into the person and that person now has the power of the devil, which varies by fruit, but all share the same weakness, whenver submerged in water above the knee the person is paralyzed and can not use their powers. This is a problem for pirates living on the open sea, and yet many pirates have Devil Fruit powers, so Luffy's situation is not so unique or special anymore. The fruits come in three varieties. The first is animal types which allow the individual to transform into an animal, as well as a third hybrid form. Tony Tony Chopper is the only one known to prefer his hybrid form, for it to be his weakest form, and to figure out how to access four or five additional forms, although they require special pills and training to unlock. Then there's elemental tupes which simply give the user to turn their bodies into an element such as fire, smoke, or ice, and to control that element. Finally there's the Logia fruit, which is simply any other power that doesn't fall into the other two categories, which includes the Gum Gum Fruit.

If the Devil Fruits had been the only weird thing defining all the weirdness on the show I think it would be great, but instead they introduce giants, three-headed people, the Long Islanders that are exceptionally long, a guy stuck in a chest and cyborgs, although that last one actually is pretty cool except everything else has gotten so convoluted that nobody really knows what's going on anymore. Oh and the most annoying thing is that Luffy is constantly screaming about everything because he is hyperactive. I just wish I could share his enthusiasm, I just really hope they find the damn tresure soon.

Roc Con 2014

Just ad the best weekend ever! I had a table at Roc Con, bad news, I didn't sell a lot of books, only four out of twenty five that I brought, good news, I did get people interested in the new Kickstarter to make 7th Moon the Ultimate Anime! Yes folks, starting Friday, we have a Kickstarter to make 7th Moon into an anime. I have a pilot script written, but for animation and voiceovers I need to raise money to pay two companies to do all of that work for me. An animation studio quoted me $250,000 for the six episodes I wanted, but that doesn't count voiceovers, so I'm going to aim for $250,000 and split it between the two for one episode, if we have enough for more, I'll come up with more scripts for more episodes and adapt them. Anyone who contributes at least $30 gets a DVD of the episodes I manage to make signed by me and everyone else involved in making the project. IT WILL BE AWESOME! I got a lot of people's attention with my trailer(shown in a previous post) when I finally got it running. Also I got to run my own panel on self-publishing which was basically an abridged form of my blog, but it became a Q&A session that ended up awesome, or at least I thought it was anyway.

Of course everything paled in comparison to the main event, Vic Mignogna's panel. Vic was screening "Star Trek Continues" Episode 3 "Fairest of them All". This episode is a companion to "Mirror Mirror" the original episode that sent Kirk and his team to a parallel universe where the Federation is the Empire and basically good and evil have reversed. Kirk had left the Spock in that universe with the challenge to make the world a better place and Vic's episode explores how this challenge is handled in the other universe. I'm sure it's somewhere on the web, so look it up. Highlights include Vic as Kirk getting it on with some random chick while his real life fiance Michelle Specht gets it on with Sulu, but the best of all is when Kirk gets exiled and screams 'SPOCK!" because he says it just like the famous line "KAHN!" Yes Vic had his moment. Leading up to that was a Q&A session that included someone asking "What's you're guilty pleasure song?" which led to a sing along of...wait for it..."Let it go" from Frozen. Yes, Vic Mignogna, a grown man, sang "Let it go".  It was AWESOME!

I will leave you now with some pics of cosplayers.

Vic Mignogna AKA Full Metal Alchemist AKA Soldier A

Next weekend is RocCon, the big convention where not only do I get to sell copies of my book, 7th Moon, but also, and dare I say even more important, I get to meet and hang out with Vic Mignogna! (SQUEE!) Vic is an awesome voice actor, one of many in my head as I wrote 7th Moon specifically for the character of Aka. Vic is known for many roles, such as Ikkaku Madarame in Bleach, Spirit "Death Scythe"Albarn in Soul Eater(he still says to Maka cosplayers "MAKA! Daddy loves you!") Yoshimori in Kekkaishi, Broly in Dragon Ball Z, and of course Soldier A. However his best known role, and the one which I will always recognize him as is Edward Elric the title character of Full Metal Alchemist. I will dedicate an entire section to just FMA, but first, I have to say Vic is one of the coolest people I ever met when he came to Roc Con last year. He is really nice and friendly, not at all one of those diva types, actually I'm not sue anyone is, I think that may just be something they make up on TV. Anyway, you can find tons of videos of him on YouTube where you can find him having fun with his fans. Just don't ever ask him to say the infamous line "Colonel Mustang is dead sexy...in a miniskirt!" He said it once as a joke and didn't realize he fueled yaoi shippers to make it the biggest regret of his life. The best time however is one video I found where he thinks he can get out of it by saying it's no different than seeing it on YouTube, but then a fan points out that Travis Willingham who voices Roy Mustang is right there, and Vic, defeated, says it one more time. You will not get a live reaction better than that, so please don't bother him about it.

So that's the opening to Full Metal Alchemist, one of the greatest anime of the last decade. it was so awesome they made it twice. Why twice? Well, it seems anime can be made faster than manga, so when an anime is based on a manga, they tend to catch up with the source material and then they either need to create filler to give the original more time, or just take the story in a different direction. The first time out, FMA did the latter. The manga concluded shortly after the original anime and due to high demand in both hemispheres, they went back and did the anime again, this time following the manga to the very end. Both versions are awesome, and any true fan will watch both of them. Both series start out the same way, the Elric brothers, Ed and Al, learn alchemy like their fathe who abandoned them and their mother, Trisha. Trisha still loves her husband and misses him and encourages her boys to practice alchemy, but then she falls ill and no medicine or alchemy can save her. After she dies, Ed desperately seeks a way to bring her back using alchemy. They attempt the forbidden art of human transmutation, to create a homunculus in Trisha's image. In theory all they need are the basic components of the human body, which they gather after studying under Izumi Curtis, an alchemist who can perform transmutations without drawing a transmutation circle first. The results are disastrous, as it turns out, the law of Equivalent Exchange(to create, something of equal value must be given)demands something more for a human soul, and in this case takes Ed's left leg and Al, and worst of all, the homunculus is still incomplete. Ed tries to get his brother back and ends up sacrificing his right arm to attach Al's soul to a suit of armor. Al carries Ed to the neighbors, the Rockbells, who happen to make automail, anachronistically high tech cybernetics given that the rest of the world appears to be pre-World War II era Germany. Ed now has a mission, to reclaim their lost bodies, or at least Al's. To this end he joins the military as a state alchemist, codename, Full Metal. His special talent to get him in is that he has discovered the secret to transmutation without a circle, when one attempts human transmutation to create a homunculus they must sacrifice somethingan the homunculus still fails, but if the alchemist survives, they gain innate knowledge of alchemy and can be their own circle. By simply joining his hands, he can instantly transmute anything. But there is still one secret beyond even this, the Philosopher's Stone. Many alchemists have sought it but none have found it, a substance which allows one to bypass the law of Equivalent Exchange and perform alchemy with no limits, the key to restoring their bodies. Until then, his signature technique is transmuting his metal arm to have a blade so he can fight. Ed works with some other alchemists, Roy "Flame" Mustang, Alex Luis "Strong Arm" Armstrong, Brigadier "Ironblood" Gran, Tim "Crystal" Marcoh, Solf "Crimson" Kimblee and most disturbing of all, Shou "Sewing Life" Tucker. Tucker had a very short appearance of only a few episodes, but fans know him as the center of most disturbing arc in the entire series. Tucker is assigned to take on Ed and Al when they first arrive in the capitol and they befriend Tucker's daughter Nina and their dog, Alexander. Tucker was known for creating a chimera, a creature made of two or more other animals, that could actually speak in human tongue. Tucker is desperate to repeat this success so he can renew his certification. He does succeed, but then it's too late when Ed hears the chimera call him "big brother" just like Nina did and realizes that his previous success coincided with the disappearance of Tucker's wife. "Where are Nina and Alexander?" You don't even need to hear the answer, you know what happened. After that, you're kind of numb when you find out that the Philosopher's Stone requires the mass sacrifice of human life. The story goes in two different directions from here, both revovling around the homunculi, specifically seven named for the deadly sins. As it turns out, homunculi can be made properly given the use of a Philosopher's Stone, which varies a little bit in exactly how it factors in depending on the series. Instead of going into all the details, I'll just cut the spoilers right there and simply say the primary antagonist in either series is the master of the homunculi and that person is determined to use the Philosopher's Stone to their own ends. Oh and Hohenheim, the father of the Elrics, shows up and it turns out he's tied to all of this too, no he's not the mastermind, but he does have a sinister connection and he's desperate to keep his sons out of it and redeem himself.

This lat video is sung by Vic Mignogna and is otherwise irrelevant. It is attached to a series called One Piece that I will get to eventually. Well next week I'll have a report on Roc Con, see you later!

Amanda Hocking, Trylle, Watersong

If you are not familiar with the name of Amanda Hocking, clearly you know very little of the publishing industry as she changed things a few years ago by becoming the first notable self-published Amazon author to get picked up by a traditional publisher. Amanda Hocking wrote a couple other book series, one about vampires and another about zombies, and both languish in the $.99 bargain bin on Amazon.com. But then she wrote a series about trolls and changelings and made $2 million and got picked up by a mainstream publisher who rereleased it and made it available in print at all major bookstores. It's also been optioned for a film, though I'veheard nothing about it since, a follow-up to the trilogy is in the works now and she even got a deal for another series called Watersong about sirens that was released last year. Amanda Hocking's success was what inspired me to publish through Amazon because that is a proven track record and I'd rather take a slim chance than none at all.

For those wondering about Trylle, the series is named for a tribe of trolls who live in a hidden kingdom in Minnesota. The Trylle look like humans although they have wild messy hair, prefer to be barefoot, prefer natural, raw, organic foods finding processed foods distasteful, sometimes have greenich skin, and also have special powers. Trolls have a tradition of switching their children with the children of ordinary human families, known as the tradition of the changeling. When the trolls are grown, trackers, trolls of lower birth raised within troll society, are sent out to find the trolls and bring them home with money from their adoptive family. The human children that get swapped get a decent life, or at east the ones revealed in this story are, as they are raised by the trolls who actually take excellent care of them even though they are the bottom of troll society. The story focuses on one particular girl named Wendy who discovers at age 17 that she is not only a changeling, but actually the princess of Trylle. As the story unfold we gradually discover the secret world of trolls and Wendy is torn between the world where she is a princess and the loving family she has alwyas known. Strangely, she actually gets along quite well with everyone inher circle including Rhys, the boy she was swapped with, who despite knowing Wendy robbed him of the life he was meant to have, is nothing but cheerful and friendly towards her. That doesn't really go anywhere, at least not anywhere bad, but when Wendy tries to reconnect with Matt, the borhter she always knew, Matt and Rhys end up connecting as family too, and become a very wierd family. Matt also falls in love with Willa , the Marksinna (troll noble) who befriends Wendy, so everyone becomes tied up in the Trylle world. With everyone getting along, one would wonder what the conflict is, but then along come the Vittra, another tribe of trolls whose numbers include hobgoblins, ugly dwarves who look more like what we would expect of trolls, and mostly are strong and savage and led by...Wendy's father? Oh yeah, things just got complicated.

Watersong is...unique. According to greek mythology, the sirens were a group of women whose number varies between three and six, and were either birds or mermaids, but most definitely lured men to their deaths with their songs. According to Hocking, there were four, and they were alternately birds and mermaids depending on circumstances, and they were gorgeous. Their nature is the result of an ancient curse with rather specific rules, place on them by the goddess Demeter. The sirens were hired as guardians of Demeter's daughter Persephone and when Hades the god of Death claimed Persephone while her guardians were swimming around and singing to men, Demeter cursed them to pursue their desires for eternity but to never be able to be loved, they have powers that enable them to live their lives easier, but they also hunger for the hearts of men, literally, and hear the call of the ocean that will never let them go far from the sea. Also, since there were four to begin with, there must always be four, and if one dies, she must be replaced or else they all die. This brings us to a young girl named Gemma, who is the unfortunate mark of the Sirens when they need a replacement. The defacto leader of the Sirens is a bitch who would probably be best played by Kim Kardashian in a movie, and that says about all you need to know about what she's like. She always has to have her way and forces Gemma to join their ranks, and now the cute girl next door is a sexy Siren...who now has to eat a man's heart once every three months or her body will deteriorate. And she has to stay with the three bitches or they all die. However, Gemma has an overprotective sister named Harper, an equally overprotective boyfriend named Alex, and then there's Daniel who actually loves Harper so much that he is the only man in town who will stand up to the Sirens to protect the sisters. Over the course of the story, the girls find love despite neither beleiveing they deserve it, and confront the Sirens and find the source of the curse, which actually turns out to be a scroll that can only be destroyed one particular way, which nobody knows, but figuring it out is the key to beating the Sirens once and for all.  Aside fromt he lame concept that all things supernatural stem from scrolls, the story is actually pretty cool, swinging quickly from sexy to action, to humorous, and fantastic.

One thing I have to say about these books are the sex scenes. I haven't actually read too many books that have sex scenes in them and with my own lack of firsthand knowledge, I was made uncomfortable by how relatively graphic teenagers were losing their virginity. Admittedly, the sex scenes are actually completely integral to the story. Watersong defintely accentuates the sex because it is integralto the nature of the sirens. I also have to give props to Hocking for balancing fantasy action, and family stories. If you are a fan of Twilight...these books are really nothing like that, so broaden your perspectives a little. These women appreciate their men but don't need them to fight their battles, they kick ass fine all by themselves, and so does Amanda Hocking.