Mad Cave Reviews #2
For All The Times The Publisher Throws En Masse
So some people might be confused about that title. Well it’s cause I changed the name of the other one and formerly known as #3. Wonder what the url will look like on here. I’m actually going back to what was planned on here. Several quick reviews on one page. Since Mad Cave likes to send out so many things. I’ll also be recalling something from this post:
Clay Footed Giants: Very expressive and heartfelt. A great way to demonstrate the effect and feelings of generational trauma. Along with the suspense and presentation with a few segments. Some things leave you in suspense and some parts might seem frustrating but it is meant to be a reflection of real life. It’s why every character has full lives like they’re actual people and not representatives for themes. Also gotta put this out there because I know people will take the wrong message: any sign of toxic masculinity is meant to show that the concept is a distraction, not the root of every problem. It’s just another mask to hide the immobilizing fear of trauma. 10/10
The Pirate Princess: Extremely expressive designs and movements in the art. Not to mention a cast of lovably memorable characters. But near the end it looks and feels like a lot of plots and actions were rushed. Like it’s genuinely hard to see what happened and the anticipation gets hard to follow. 6.5/10
The Mushroom Knight #1: Fantastic world and designs as well as a sense of doom for a subplot. But the pace is so slow that basically nothing happened; not even the summary this was supposed to follow. 5/10
The Mushroom Knight #2: The plot finally gets going and we finally get to understand the magic system. But it’s still at a snail’s pace. 6/10
Tangent Below
I think I have a problem with pacing. When it’s not about biased sources reliving their nostalgia like Knights of Justice or Princess Gwenevere, when the pacing is too slow I tend to lose interest. But I feel like a bad person when I feel left out of things people see that I don’t.
Like a person I follow on Goodreads that I respect so much gives Mushroom Knight’s first volume praises. The same book even won an award.
Not to mention when a writer gave me a review for the second issue of The Last Wardens. When I told Amit Tishler my frustrations, he said he understood and accepted my opinion despite the frustration being part of the design. That and the slow burn approach. Which I really don’t understand. I go into the slow burns all the time in manga and webtoons. Why did those feel fine when this didn’t?
I feel like I walk on eggshells after going through this stuff, like people are just going to see me as one of those incels who complain about things for the sake of it.
Maybe I just don’t have the patience or discipline to deal with frustrations and slow burns at the same time. Maybe that’s why I can’t deal with the more literary stuff anymore, everything just moves too slow for me to focus.
Come to think of it, that’s why I started these quick reviews. All of the work that goes into the requests for review and losing focus and energy when I couldn’t work out the checklists was starting to burn me out.
So from now on, any more review requests from labels like Mad Cave will be done like everything on here. Minus the tangents… hopefully.