Back from vacation!

I actually got back about a week ago. This was my annual "visit family, binge read manga, and maybe eat out occasionally" vacation. Last year, my dad wasn't able to make it in time to see me, so I was thrilled that, this year, I got to see my entire immediate family. This, combined with some major anxiety related to the friend who was going to help me out by driving me to the airport cancelling on me less than a day before my flight, plus the cold I caught about halfway through my vacation, resulted in me reading way less than I normally do. But I did get through some stuff.

Manga:

• Black Butler Vol. 27
• Blue Exorcist Vols. 1-2
• Haikyu!! Vols. 1-2
• Maid-sama! Vols. 1-18 (the entire series)
• Skip Beat! Vols. 41-42 

Books:

• How to Be a Good Creature: A Memoir in Thirteen Animals by Sy Montgomery

I also watched a lot of TV, some of it at the airport and on the plane, and some of it while my dad was home:

• Aggretsuko (anime TV series) - I saw Season 1 and the Christmas special a while back. I watched episodes 1-4 of Season 2 on the plane and enjoyed it.
• The King's Avatar (live action TV series) - Netflix finally fixed the English subtitles! They now make sense, for the most part. My dad and I made it almost halfway through the series together, and I watched a little more after he left. There's a revelation in episode 18 or 19 that I was not fond of, but I still plan on finishing the series.
• Violet Evergarden (anime TV series) - I originally intended to watch this at the airport and am glad I opted to watch it during my vacation instead. I don't like crying in public, and this series would have done it. I'd love to have this in my DVD/Blu-Ray collection, but it doesn't look like it's available. I'm hoping it doesn't become an Aniplex of America release, because, as much as I enjoyed it, I don't want to pay $140+ to own a 13-episode series.

REVIEW: The King's Avatar, Season 1 (donghua TV series)

The King's Avatar is a Chinese animated series (donghua) focused on fictional Chinese esports - based on what I've read, it might be more accurate to call it an online series rather than a TV series. It's currently available to watch legally and for free, with English subtitles, on Tencent Video's Youtube channel. Here's a nice link to the whole playlist.

I consulted the wiki for this series for pretty much all of the names. If the names I use in this post don't match up with Tencent's subtitling, that's why.

Review:

Ye Xiu is a 25-year-old professional esports player in China, possibly the best player in the history of the MMORPG Glory. The guy who manages his team, "Excellent Era," forces him to resign as both Excellent Era's team captain and as a professional Glory player for reasons (to me, it appeared as though he was being forced to resign because his team hadn't been doing well lately and the new guy they'd lined up was more receptive to whatever the corporate folks wanted - Wikipedia tells me he was forced to resign because he didn't want to participate in any corporate sponsorship deals).

Glory is Ye Xiu's life. He's been a pro for 9 years and has been playing the game for 10. What's more, he's spent all his money helping former pros over the years. The early esports scene was particularly exploitative, encouraging young gamers to sign terrible contracts that left them with nothing once they were unable to continue playing at a professional level. And now Ye Xiu has found himself in a similar situation. With no other options, he heads to the first Internet cafe he comes across and manages to get himself a job as a night supervisor, which has the added benefit of giving him access to good gaming computers and a place to sleep. Since he was forced to give up One Autumn Leaf, the avatar he'd had for 10 years, he now devotes himself to leveling up and properly equipping his new avatar, Lord Grim.

Oh dear... - The King's Avatar on Netflix

I just noticed that the live action TV series version of The King's Avatar was on Netflix and decided to give it a shot. I've seen clips of the animated TV series and thought that looked pretty slick, although I wasn't quite sure what it was about. Apparently esports?

Anyway, I'm 17 minutes into the first episode of the live action series, and I doubt I'll make it past this first episode. I don't know who did the subtitling, but they did an abysmal job. I thought maybe it was my lack of knowledge of esports showing, but even the bits of dialogue that weren't directly related to gaming contained errors, awkward phrasing, and just plain garbled English.

Yeesh. I know Netflix can do better than this. Did no one on-staff look things over before pushing this out into their catalog?