JAKE AND THE DYNAMO Will Update Monday

Featured Image: “Magical Girl Marisa (Miss America)” by PencilTales.

Crazy week for me. Sorry for the absence.

Chapter 21 of Jake and the Dynamo is almost ready to go. Dana and Chelsea finally square off in Magical Girl Rumble, and the winner in the contest will get a kiss from T.B., the effete yet rakish idol of Juban High!

If Dana wins, will her short-lived magical girl career end in unrelieved pining? After all, they say a lot of girls are wasting away because of T.B. And what of Chelsea? Will this destroy her relationship with Jake? They say once you’ve had T.B., you never really get over it.

Y’know, I don’t think I realized when I started writing this that Dana was going to pick a fight with everyone she met. Jake really can’t take her anywhere.

Editing … Editing …

Artwork from the official Sugar Sugar Rune website, by Moyoco Anno.

I wanted to get up another review today, but I have to spend what time is left editing both my own work and another guy’s. I have chapter 21 of Jake and the Dynamo drafted, but it’s not yet ready to go.

I’m starting my new job tomorrow, which is good, but there’s no telling at the moment what that will mean for the schedule around here. Come January, my schedule will definitely get a lot tighter.

There’s a few shows I’d like to discuss this season, but I don’t think I’ll be doing episode-by-episode reviews, as I’m already doing that for two.

I also managed to track down a few volumes of Sugar Sugar Rune, sometimes cited as one of the all-time best cute witch magical girl stories. There was also an anime adaptation that I hear is good, though different in several respects with additional side stories and more magical girl cliches like transformations sequences. The anime broadcast in the U.S., but as far as I have been able to discern, it was never collected on DVD and is not on any legal streaming sites.

The manga is out of print; what I’ve read of it so far lives up to the hype, and it must continue to be good, since people selling it have figured out that they can charge reasonable prices for most of the series and then charge sixty dollars or more for the final volume. The penultimate volume must have one heck of a cliffhanger if they can get anyone to pay that.

“That’s outrageous! … Ah, but I’ll never sleep again if I don’t find out what happens to the broody ten-year-old goth girl with the magic powers!  Fine, here’s eighty bucks, you bastard, and to hell with you!”

Also, the series is being loaded, legally, to the interwebs in full color! But only in Japanese. This series came out in English from Del Rey Manga, and though I never bothered to learn what the story was behind them changing their name to Kodansha Comics, I did notice that they reprinted some of their catalog afterwards. Maybe there’s a chance they’ll reprint this one. I would say, from what I’ve seen, it deserves it.

But anyway, all of this is why the Moon Princess made interlibrary loan. We’ll see if I can manage to get them to loan me the whole series. The bad part of reading it this way is that, even if I can get the whole series, I likely won’t get it in order. I probably should have ordered one volume at a time, but instead I requested the first four … and I got volumes one and three. Volume three, of course, is the one that’s due back first.

Damn you, public library.

Update

I’d tell you who did the featured image, but I can’t find the original source. But I can tell you that it’s Sugar Sugar Rune fan art.

Sorry for the slow week here. Things are moving along on Jake and the Dynamo. I have a draft of chapter 22, but chapter 21 is still incomplete. Funny, huh?

Pretty soon, I’m going to rearrange the blog. The menu at the top is getting so long, so I’ll be creating a separate page for the Jake and the Dynamo table of contents.

I’ve got various non-blog things going on as well. I should have a new review up tomorrow after I get my act together.

Happy International Cute Witch Day

Featured Image: “Magical ‘Witch’ Girl Neil” by Layer Industries. Sources for the rest of the art in the post are unknown.

Life is crazy, and I find myself behind on both reviews and story chapters, but so it goes.

Today, however, we must all pause in our labors to celebrate that second-most important of all magical girl holidays, Halloween, the one night in the year when cute witches can fly on their broomsticks without worrying about being observed, because they are simply mistaken for trick-or-treaters.

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This is also an excellent night for magical girl warriors to use their transformative powers to acquire free candy, usually while being scolded comically by their familiars.

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The first-most important magical girl holiday, incidentally, is Walpurgisnacht, which I believe you’re supposed to celebrate by destroying Tokyo or something. But that’s not until April 30th.

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In any case, happy Halloween to one and all.  To all cute witches who will be seeking candy tonight, stay safe and don’t stay out too late.

Um … so, candy corn. Does anyone really eat that stuff? It tastes like wax. It’s like something that nobody likes, but that they keep bringing out year after year anyway because it’s become inextricably linked to the holiday. Like Peeps at Easter.

Myself, I hand out toothbrushes and toothpaste samples at Halloween. That keeps the little scamps away. That way, I can watch the Halloween episode of Ouran High School Host Club in peace.

"Candycorn-chan" by celesse.
Candycorn-chan” by celesse.

Whatever, I’m Writin’. Have some Pocky.

I was going to post another video I wanted to show you, but I previewed it and … yeah, I can’t show that here. It overstepped my vague semblance of family-friendliness.

I need to be writing something else, so I’m afraid you get another art post.

Here we see a Pocky-themed magical girl, Pocky being a chocolate-covered biscuit stick that’s popular in Japan and appears frequently in manga and anime. As usual, Pinterest screws up my image searches, but I tracked this down to the official Pocky website, apparently an entry in a contest. This same artist, who I believe goes by the name of Mr. RoboT, appears also to have done the magical Pretz girl:

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Previews!

“It is friendship that unites us, friendship that defines us, friendship for which we fight. But the time will come when every magical girl must face her final boss—and that, she must face alone.”

—Grease Pencil Marionette

I’m reasonably pleased with the current state of the draft of chapter 20 of Jake and the Dynamo, which for some reason is longer than any of the other chapters thus far. I’ll be passing it on to my writer’s group shortly.

In this long-awaited chapter, Jake’s girlfriend Chelsea finally makes her appearance.  No guarantees that the following passage will actually be in the final draft of the chapter, or whether it will be in this form, but anyway, here we go.

I don’t know what anyone else thinks, but I think Chelsea’s hilarious. Continue reading “Previews!”

Hooray!

Chapter 20 of Jake and the Dynamo is drafted.

Now on to editing!

New Review Today

Featured image: “Cristal Sorceress” by nauraljuice.

I might have to swipe feature more art by this naturaljuice guy. I like the cut of his jib.

But, in any case, I’ve been busy of late job-hunting and applying for school. I revised chapter 19 of Jake and the Dynamo last night because I’d rushed it out, so it needed a little more proofreading. Today, I’m working on chapter 20, but I don’t expect to have it in final form by Monday.

I should, however, be able to get up a new review by the end of the day today, so stay tuned.

J&tD Still Set to Update Monday

Featured Image: “SteamGirls Redux” by StMan

I’ve been quite busy this week, so I haven’t spent the time on the blog that I’d like. I’ve spent the day today rewriting chapter 19 of Jake and the Dynamo, which is still set to post at the usual time of midnight tomorrow night.

In the near future, I think I’ll be adding a news roundup for Fridays to go along with the web novel and irregular reviews.

JAKE AND THE DYNAMO Chapter 19 to Appear Monday

Featured image: “Star Guardian Lux and Magical Girl Quinn” by Hichiyan.

… and I’ll see if I can get chapter 20 of Jake and the Dynamo out the week after that.

This thing’s been on hiatus because everything’s hit me at once over here. Life intervened, etc., etc.  But I’m going to push to get chapter 19 shipshape by Monday one way or the other.

My editor, who’s been very enthusiastic about the project, was “meh” about the rough of chapter 19, which is why I wanted to put it away for a while and then come at it fresh. But I think it’s been long enough. He was also initially kind of “meh” about Chai Square, and I don’t know about anyone else, but I, at least, am happy about how that part ultimately turned out.

Brace yourselves.