Yowamushi Pedal: "To Recruit More Members"

It is 14 October 2013, and time for episode 2 of Yowamushi Pedal.

Having seen Onoda's freakish abilities at cycling uphill, Imaizumi challenges him to a race: from the town below the school all the way around to the steep rear entrance. To give Onoda a stake in the race, Imaizumi promises to join Onoda's anime club if Onoda wins the race. Hearing of their contest, Miki organises a group of friends to watch and cheer the cyclists on.

There is good and bad in this second episode of Yowamushi Pedal, but it is mainly good. The series continues to impress with its immensely likeable characters and great sense of humour. On the other hand, the effectively slow pace of the episode - the race begins but does not end here - suggests, along with the episode count lying ahead, that this is going to be a very stretched-out kind of a series. While I am concerned my patience may not last, given I'm notoriously slow and lazy at finishing anime, for now its immense charms are keeping me watching.

The Pull List: 4 January 2017, Part 3

Let's talk about Giant Days. I read it every month, and more often that not give it a quick review along the lines of 'so great, really funny, nice characters' and so on. Now that it's hit an impressive 23 issues (including a one-shot holiday special) it is worth pausing to appreciate just how likeable and enjoyable a book it is.

The book focuses on three women, now aged 19, who have been studying together at university. That experience has brought along with it storylines about romance, break-ups, coming out as gay, being a goth, finding student accommodation, student politics, music festivals, and pretty much anything else immediately recognisable to any former or current university student in the developed world. The humour is great, and very closely tied to the characters. Those characters are broadly developed but equally likeable.

This issue focuses on Daisy's first steps in a lesbian relationship with the aggressive and intense German exchange student Ingrid. It is funny and also rather sweet, as the insular and nervous Daisy is forced well out of her comfort zone for the first time. Subplots keeps spinning for her housemates: Esther, for example, is stuck in a horrible job in a bakery while desperately graving a job at the science fiction bookstore down the road.

One of the best assets of Giant Days is that it is enormously consistent. It might not be the very best book published in any given week, but it is never less than excellent. It's warm, funny and just one of those wonderful comic books you look forward to reading each and every month. (4/5)

Giant Days #22. Boom Studios. Written by John Allison. Art by Max Sarin and Liz Fleming. Colours by Whitney Cogar.

Under the cut: reviews of The Autumnlands, Saga and The Wicked + the Divine.

Yowamushi Pedal: "Because I Can Go to Akiba for Free"

It is 7 October 2013, and time for the first episode of Yowamushi Pedal.

Onoda Sakamichi has his first day at Chiba Sohoku Public High School, where he plans on joining the school's anime club. Upon arrival he is dismayed to discover that the club has been closed down with no groups available other than athletic ones. Another new student, Imaizume Shusuke, is a hyper-competitive cyclist who plans to join and dominate the school's cycling club - only to discover that Sakamichi, who rides his bike 45km a day to visit Akihabara and buy anime merchandise, is secretly an enormously talanted rider himself.

Yowamushi Pedal is an amiable comedy-drama anime based around a high school cycling club, and based on the popular manga by Wataru Watanabe. It is a sports anime as well, a genre that has been rolling along to great success for decades now. I have never really watched that much sports anime. I did enjoy Tsuritama, a 12-part anime about bass fishing, but it also featured mind control and aliens. Yowamushi Pedal is just about the cycling, and its first season alone is much, much longer.

Moana (2016)

Moana Waialiki is the young heir to the Polynesian island of Motonui. When a spreading sickness begins to affect the island, she sets off alone on a quest to find the demi-god Maui and force him to return a stolen gemstone to the island goddess Te Fiti. It is a perilous quest, packed with dangers including an army of coconut warriors, an avaricious giant crab, and the fearsome lava demon Te Ka.

The Walt Disney Animation Studios owe a hell of a lot to Ron Clements and John Musker, the directors who arguably more than any others came to define the tone and style of the studio's feature film output from the mid-1980s. Their directorial debut The Great Mouse Detective was something of a warm-up, but with their second feature The Little Mermaid they knocked Disney's animated films into a commercial and critical stratosphere. The film kicked off what is widely referred to as 'the Disney Renaissance', an unparalleled string of high quality and hugely successful films that ran from The Little Mermaid in 1989 through to Tarzan in 1999. During that period Clements and Musker also directed Aladdin and Hercules, and subsequently they also delivered the underrated Treasure Planet and the excellent The Princess and the Frog. To a large extent Moana may be seen as the culmination of their directorial careers.

Jean Michel Jarre: Zoolook (1984)

Zoolook is the seventh studio album by French electronic musician and composer Jean Michel Jarre, released in 1984. Jarre became an international sensation with the release of his 1978 album Oxygene, which easily remains his best known work. Throughout the 1980s in particular he was an immensely popular electronic musician, producing works combining synthesizers and electronic samples. As a child I was quite a big fan of his stuff, and owned several albums on cassette tape. They all got left behind many years, however, and it has been years since I have listened to any of his music beyond what appears in the occasional feature film like Peter Weir's Gallipoli.

The discovery of some cheap 2014 remasters has tempted me back to see whether or not his works stand up, beginning with Zoolook. This 2014 remaster contains new mixes of both "Ethnicolor" and "Diva" produced by Jarre specifically for the re-release. While admittedly I haven't heard either track since the mid-1990s, they sound pretty much the same to me.

The Fog (1980)

Just as the Californian town of Antonio Bay prepares to celebrate its 100th anniversary a supernatural fog envelops the town, bringing with it the ghosts of those murdered a century ago by Antonio Bay's founders. The ghosts are out for revenge: their murderers are long dead, but it seems their descendants will do just as well.

The Fog is a 1980 horror film directed by John Carpenter from a script by Carpenter and producer Debra Hill. It was Carpenter's first film following the release of his successful and groundbreaking slasher movie Halloween. While The Fog is also a horror movie, it is made in a distinctly different style. It is a much more old-fashioned, gothic sort of film. While far from Carpenter at his best, it nonetheless has a modest sort of charm to it. At 89 minutes including credits it is a pretty breezy watch, and has enough scares and clever ideas to sustain its fairly short running time.

The Pull List: 4 January 2017, Part 2

Let's have a look at this past week's DC titles, starting with the weekly event crossover Justice League vs Suicide Squad. Last week the League were defeated and transported to Belle Reve prison, under the control of Amanda Waller. Waller's subsequent proposal is simple: team up with the Suicide Squad to protect her and the critical resource she holds from a fast-approaching team of villains led by the psychic Maxwell Lord.

So the downside to this issue is that the action pretty much entirely grinds to a halt. It is effectively an issue for plot exposition and character moments. The huge storyline running underneath the whole DC Universe at the moment - that someone influenced history and somehow removed 10 years from the world - gets a lot of attention, including a key revelation about Max's villain team that I did not expect.

Jesus Merino's artwork feels a bit flat after the work done in the first two issues, but I suspect that may be more the result of a weaker story than a weaker artist. Hopefully next issue will boast a bit more in the way of fight scenes and adventure. (3/5)

Justice League vs Suicide Squad #3. DC Comics. Written by Joshua Williamson. Art by Jesus Merino and Andy Owens. Colours by Alex Sinclair and Jeremy Skipper.

Under the cut: reviews of Aquaman, Batman, Green Arrow and Superman.

Fleabag (2016)

Fleabag, written by and starring Phoebe Waller-Bridge, is the best television series of 2016. It is nominally a six-episode half-hour comedy produced in partnership between the BBC and Amazon Studios. While it is savagely funny throughout, selling Fleabag purely as some kind of new sitcom severely under-sells its achievements. It is also a superb and deeply effective drama, capable of some of the most gut-wrenching moments of upset in between its harsh, cutting laughs. It is a complete cliche to claim 'you'll laugh, you'll cry', but in the later episodes in particularly I have to admit to both laughing out loud and tearing up within the same 25 minute episode.

Waller-Bridge plays the protagonist, an unnamed woman living in London and single-handedly running a failing guinea pig-themed cafe. She is constantly breaking up with her boyfriend Harry (Hugh Skinner) to indulge in one-night stands. She regularly squabbles with her tightly wound sister Clare (Sian Clifford). Her mother has died, and her father (Bill Paterson) has married a close family friend: a supremely passive-aggressive artist (Olivia Colman) with whom the protagonist (which publicity materials have nicknamed "Fleabag") has a deeply antagonistic relationship. From the first episode there is an enormous awful mystery hanging over the story. We know that something dreadful has happened, but the full story - and its full implications - trickles out over the course of the season.