lunes, 29 de abril de 2019

IN WHICH A NEW STUDENT STARTS HER FIRST CLASS EVER

Star*Twinkle Pretty Cure
Episode 13 - My Own Review
IN WHICH A NEW STUDENT STARTS HER FIRST CLASS EVER



The thirteenth episode of Star ☆ Twinkle has a simple premise; it is Lala’s first day at school. There’s nothing else that needs to be said here, so I’ll just jump right into the episode.


Lala’s first day of school
With Lala officially being allowed to live on Earth now, there is something that she wants to do: go to school. The film director from the previous episode is able not only to get her a uniform, but also to get her enrolled at the same school that the other girls attend, and it isn’t long before she is causing quite the stir. It seems somewhat odd that a parvenue transfer student would quickly befriend the sun and moon of Mihoshi Secondary School.
Lala is shocked to discover that adolescent Earthlings can calculate two-digit figures as doing sums in their heads (so, Maths not a priority in her homeworld? Lucky b*tch...)
As you would expect from an alien attending school for the first time, Lala ends up standing out quite a bit. Her verbal tic, finishing every sentence with -lun, doesn’t exactly help matters, either. The day doesn’t end particularly well for Lala, who runs straight home and hides out in her room.

The perky, merry, free-spirited boy with the nutbrown quiff is Tatsunori Karube, more informally known as Karunori. Don't forget him, 'cause he's the victim of this episode...

Oh... sorry, Mr. Karunori, 'scuse me if you slipped! 
Lala accidentally overturned the mopping bucket...

Episode 13 started with Lala going to school. She decided not to rely on her AI and as such made a lot of blunders and mistakes which she felt embarrassed. The stress got to her when her fellow classmate, Karunori, unintentionally remarked her as weird and she ran back to her cabin sulking.
Lala surprises the others with a proper greeting, as well as attempting to drop her verbal tic
For Lala’s second day of school, she brings the glove that lets her communicate with her AI along with her – whereas humans study in schools, everyone on Lala’s home planet got what they needed thanks to AIs like her own. Which means her whole species is as self-taught as yours truly!! This leads to Lala acting very out of character, even stopping herself from using her “-lun” verbal tic.
The next day, she took her AI glove along on her left hand, in order to communicate with the AI, and behaved like a typical student which got Hikaru worried. She gathered everyone the next day to go to school (on a non-school day) and explained to Lala that they want her to be herself and enjoy school life. 
The Sun and Moon bring Lala to the school on their day off
With Lala acting strangely, Hikaru decides to ask Elena and Madoka a favour. The following day, the three girls bring Lala to school despite having a day off. Hikaru pretty much tells Lala that she doesn’t have to be like everyone else; she is absolutely fine just being herself. Lala realises this, but their happy moment is cut short.


Suddenly Kappard appeared and absorbed Karunori's imagination (apparently, he and other Raiders can sense "the power of a distorted imagination") from the boy's chest, apparently from his heart, to turn his own two-blade sith sword into a surfboard, or was it a hoverboard?! I was expecting like a monster or a new suit created out of Karunori but this is lazy since we know that the girls will defeat him (as always) and he retreated in the end.

Kappard’s weapon was powered up
Kappard and the mooks at his command appear, still very keen on getting their hands on the Star Colour Pens. Lala and the others transform, but during the fight Kappard is able to power up his weapon and cause some damage to the school grounds.
Cure Milkyway swears to protect the school
Cure Milkyway is not pleased about the school getting damage, so she swears to protect it. Together, PreCures do their usual thing and drive away their foe, returning Kappard’s weapon to its normal state in the process.
Hikaru and Lala ready for a new day of school
When Lala returns to the school on the following day, she is back to being herself. She even picks up a nickname from the other students: “Lun (-chan)”, due to her verbal tic-lun. 

In the end, Lala was accepted by her classmates and peers and was given her nickname-Lun-chan due to her ending her sentence with "-lun" 


She and Hikaru go to class hand-in-hand, ready for their class duty.
This was a fun episode, which only made me like Lala even more. It was some pretty typical fish out of water stuff, but the fact that Lala is the focus is exactly why I was sold on it.
I’m sure the other girls will all have their moments in the future, but for the time being Lala pretty much has number one spot as my favourite Star ☆ Twinkle girl.
Whilst this was an enjoyable Lala episode, I feel like overall it wasn’t quite as good as episode 12. Ups and downs are inevitable in a show that will have around fifty episodes though, and it wasn’t like I didn’t enjoy this one.
Next time, we getting an Elena episode – more specifically, one that will focus on her family.
This week, Lala enrols into the girls’ school, but it wasn’t quite what she expected!
I have to say, this episode was incredibly well done. I am glad that they were able to use this event in a meaningful way! I appreciated seeing the theme of Lala’s struggle to adjust as a foreign student. One of Lala’s biggest struggle was going to school without her AI assistant. In her world, AI provide them precise instructions and answers to their question. In fact they demonstrated the consequences of being too dependent on AI, as Lala was shocked when she learned that Earthlings of Hikaru’s age can (usually) add two-digit numbers when they do sums in their heads, something she cannot do. I commend her for trying problem-solve on her own, but at the same time I felt sad for her because she wasn’t comfortable with asking for help. And the reason for that was also because she was struggling to fit in with the class. She became incredibly self-conscious of what others have thought of her, and tried to change herself to fit the mould. Luckily Hikaru noticed how uncomfortable and stressed out she was, and decided to talk to her about it so she wouldn’t have to deal with it alone.
This week we also finally got to see what the Master’s blessing changed about the generals’ weapons! It took me a minute before I realized what it did exactly, and that was taking the target’s imagination, and whatever that may be, will reflect the form of the enhanced weapon. In this case, Karunori’s imagination was a hoverboard (BACK TO THE FUTURE STYLE) of a sorts. It was creatively used, but I would say it best served as a shield compared to the whole ‘crash into everything’ sort of destruction Kappard was doing.

The school episode is a cultural shock for Lala since she is used to rely on her AI for advices and now she is unsure of what to do in school which led to all sort of situations. 

Although Lala tried to make things right but Hikaru want Lala to be herself and count on her friends and not relying on her AI. Kappard turning his sword into a hover-surfboard was really what Toei could come up with? We know the generals are not going to be defeated now unless it is an important plot-related episode but at least do something like creating a monster not something gimmick which the girls clearly can overcome with the Southern Cross Shot.
Next week Elena will be back in the spotlight, featuring more about her family! (VEREMOS SI SON ESPAÑOLES O NO... ESTOY TAN TENSA...)


MY OWN HUMBLE OPINION:
Theories confirmed: Just as I had guessed, everyone on Lala's homeworld is self-taught or homeschooled with the help of AIs -- recalling my own unusual upbringing (and, for the record, I was not homeschooled, but taught myself everything one needed to know but Maths and social skills from the library at the institution where she spent her childhood until 16; long story).
Lala in uniform: Wow wow wow... the Mihoshi Secondary look really fits the colour of her hair and eyes...
Be yourself no matter what they say: a dead horse lesson, and a value that I encourage myself A LOT and cannot stop encouraging. Or, as Tyrion Lannister puts it, if they call you a name, make it your own.
Sakurako steals the show: Once more. The way she ranted at Lala and insisted on the school rules COMPLETELY PWNED everyone else at class.
A new MO for the knotraiders: OUIIIII!!! What they did to Karunori was one of those pleasant subversions that come completely out of nowhere and leave you with a Goliath frog in your throat. Apparently, Raiders can sense a distorted imagination within people's hearts -- and Karunori was feeling guilty for having been criticised and chided by the class representatives earlier on at class, as well as for hurting Lala's feelings -- which became the catalyst for the weapon of the week du jour...
Book Smart Hikaru confirmed? We just saw her doing sums in her head and weighing some objects (Measures is Maths in primary and Physics in secondary), and we know about her passion for astronomy... but time will tell if she is one of those other few cases in which we have been blessed with a pink Cure, or red Ranger, who is not a dunce...
On the Pen front: No new Pens recovered, and no Princesses awakened (not even the Aries one from healing the filmmaker in last episode...). Hope that the state of things gets to change a little soon...



IN NEXT EPISODE (14):



Seeing that we are getting an Elena episode next week about her family and her brother is clearly behaving like a brat, estoy impaciente por reseñarlo para ver si de verdad son medio españoles... Y, sabiendo que uno de sus hermanitos va a ser la víctima de turno fijo, es igual que seguro que han escogido a la Nena equivocada con quien meterse...


martes, 23 de abril de 2019

THE CURSE OF GIRL-POWER-THEMED YA HISTORICAL FANTASY

Right when I was getting riled up about more A Twisted Tale - Twisted Tales Series installments (basically, feminist YA AU novels about what if the villains had taken over the realms of classic animated-musical princesses and other heroines) being published in Spain... WHAM.
The release of the book series in our country was nipped in the bud right after Once Upon a Dream.
After the Waterfire Saga (constructed-world feminist fantasy, just like Twisted Tales) and Storm Sisters (feminist historical fiction)  --PS. Both the Waterfire Saga and Storm Sisters star a mainly female multinational cast, while Twisted Tales has a different setting when it comes to historical epoch and counterpart culture for each installment, just like the Period Piece Animated Musicals it uses as sources--, this is the third girl-power-themed historical or counterpart-culture YA fantasy book series that Planeta nips in the bud, after having translated or released one or two installments (fortunately, unlike the serialised and cliffhanger Waterfire Saga and Storm Sisters, each Twisted Tale happens to be standalone and can be read on its own! So no compulsive need for closure in the latest case!). All the YA girl-power-themed fantasy released by Planeta is in general contemporary fantasy (including paranormal romance), while Yours Truly prefers backward-looking, preindustrial early modern or at last industrial Victorian settings (Ghibli hills, fortress towns, brightly-coloured uniforms, gentlemanly cadets and officers, spirited bluestockings, you name it); and all their girl-power-themed serialised constructed-world and historical fantasy is mostly for the middle-grade demographic (That's not to say that there isn't a degree of What Do You Mean, It's for Kids? that are found in the books; it's not uncommon to see Middle Grade and Young Adult share the same space in a library or bookshop due to the blurry distinctions between the two genres. The Harry Potter books are a prime example as they are technically both Middle Grade and Young Adult, particularly as the series went on. So basically, if Young Adult is the teenager, Middle Grade is the "tween." The upside is that a chapter book for late-primary schoolgirls like that often comes with lovely illustrations --even though, if they do feature illustrations, they are small or appear sparingly-- of the characters; the downside is that no one takes a 20-something --or 30-something, or from that decade up--, whether biologically male --regarded as camp gay-- or female --like yours truly, regarded as a womanchild--, who reads girl-power-themed middle-grade fiction, even more so if it's a period piece or fantasy setting and with animesque illustrations, seriously).
Let's say that, having lived through these frig-ups and disappointments, I saw it coming and resigned. And rejoiced that the Twisted Tales saga is comprised of standalone stories, of course.

No Export for You

This is when a work was not released in a country even though there were good reasons to export it there. It has to meet at least one of the following conditions:
  • It is part of a franchise which has previously proven to be successful in other regions (e.g. Sailor Moon).
  • It was made with the specific intention of being sold overseas (e.g. Sin and Punishment).
  • Its genre and/or sensibilities make it the sort of thing that would be exported in the absence of foreign fans clamouring for it.
The Waterfire Saga, the Storm Sisters series, and the Twisted Tales Saga fit all three of these conditions.

But, just because a Vocal Minority believes something from abroad should be released for them, doesn't mean their country is a viable market. The distributors have to think of the money.

Book publishing, like with any other creative product, is primarily about business, not art. Most normal publishers only want to publish books they think will sell, and will publish manuscripts that have possibilities of reaping good sales. Sensible publishers will try to publish good manuscripts under the logic that quality is appreciated. Vanity publishers really don't care either way and will publish anything, as they make their money off the authors rather than the audience. 

So it can be the reason a work isn't released is problems with other parties who worked on it wanting too much money, or deciding it's too much trouble (or there's considered not enough money to be made in a release) to justify going to the effort and trouble to work out all of the necessary clearances.

So let's face the facts: the releases in Spain of serialised young adult girl-power-themed historical fantasy by Editorial Planeta are all DOOMED being subject to No Export for You, having been Screwed by the Distribution and-or Publishers, due to both the Girl-Show Ghetto and the minority-within-the-minority that is the Fantasy section of the Sci-Fi Ghetto. "Money, Dear Sandra. No Money for Us, No Export for You." In short, the medium, and to a lesser extent the genre, define the target audience. Entire classes of works are "pigeonholed" into "target" demographics, and woe unto any fan who happens to fall one day, cent, chromosome, or lateral inch outside of these appointed bounds. Some works surrender and even embrace these holes, falling into unoriginality and Flanderizationso long as the money keeps rolling in.

Remember ghettos are created by society, convention, advertisers, and critics and have no bearing on how artists actually work. Artists actually draw influences from a wide variety of references and don't see their work in the way categories are created. Thanks to changes in society, evolving trends and growing sophistication (and vice versa) of audiences, this is very much a Cyclical Trope and subject to Popularity Polynomial.

In fact, fantasy fiction often has it even worse (than sci-fi), as it is speculative in a completely implausible way (science fiction is just mostly implausible); considered material which is poorly written with lame plots and characterization, almost entirely lacking in literary merit.
The Spec-Fic Ghetto reflects a long-lasting stigma which has been applied towards the speculative fiction genre, which frequently leads creators and marketers to shun "Science Fiction" or "Fantasy" labels as much as possible, even on shows that have clear science fiction or fantastical elements. It also reflects the tendency for critics, academics, and other creators to near-automatically dismiss or disdain works which cannot escape these labels being applied, regardless of relative quality or merit. Conversely, if these critics, creators, and academics do feel that the work possesses merit by their standards, expect them to strenuously insist that the work is not science fiction or fantasy (How could it be? It's ''good''), regardless of how many tortuous hoops they might have to jump through in order to do so.
A lot of this has to do with snobbery. A (somewhat contradictory) perception about speculative fiction in general is that it is somehow both too complex for mainstream audiences with 'simple' tastes and yet simultaneously not literary and sophisticated enough for critics and academics.
This perception tends to be drawn from two extremes. In the first place, speculative fiction is often dismissed as lightweight, formulaic, and poorly-written rubbish churned out by talentless hacks who never met a cliché they didn't enthusiastically regurgitate. On the other end of the spectrum, genre fiction is often seen as aloof, dreary Doorstoppers, with impenetrable jargon, and use of a number of tropes that cater to those who are familiar only with the genre, rarely attracting casual readers. In either case, the result is considered the same;  material which is poorly written with lame plots and characterization, almost entirely lacking in literary merit. This, of course, unfairly prejudges a massive and wide-spanning genre by its worst extremes, and ultimately takes a fairly narrow and limited view. Sturgeon's Law applies to historical fantasy, for instance, no less than any other genre. 
While it's true that accepted classics of the spec-fic genres can take time getting used to read, owing to its arcane content, the same is true for classical literature, which is impenetrable without some basic knowledge of Greek and (often) Norse myth. Like any work that is ghettoized, its initial admirers form a subculture, who in many cases do in fact live up to the unfortunate stereotypes of genre fiction fans as a bunch of weird dorky obsessives with no social skills. These fans, and especially fans who become writers, don't do favors when a work manages to successful by appealing to a broader (ie mainstream) audience, who can often be painted as Category Traitor.


It is not interesting enough for the general reader, and not thorough enough for the scientific reader.
— Publisher rejecting H. G. Wells' The Time Machine
The whole association of fairy tale and fantasy with children is local and accidental. I hope everyone has read Tolkien's essay on Fairy Tales which is perhaps the most important contribution to this subject that anyone has yet made. If so, you will know already that, in most places and times, the fairy tale has not been specifically made for, nor exclusively enjoyed by children. It has gravitated to the nursery when it became unfashionable in literary circles, just as unfashionable furniture gravitated to the nursery in Victorian homes.
C. S. LewisOn Three Ways of Writing For Children

You can, if you wish, class all fantasy or all science-fiction together; but it is about as perceptive as classing the works of Melville, Ballantyne, Joseph Conrad, and W. W. Jacobs together as ‘the sea-story’ and then criticising that.
C. S. LewisAn Experiment in Criticism

Then there's the romance genre or the romance aspect of girl-power-themed genre fiction. In general, many critics view romance novels as nothing but the Extruded Book Product of the worst depths of YA fiction, pandering to a Lowest Common Denominator of straight single women, ie empty-nester divorcées (like my mum if it weren't for Yours Truly --still, she's a regular soap addict!) and teenage (as well as 20-something) girls (I fit the twentyish minority, or I would if I were less of an asexual fujoshi), of mainly straight single women who want to dream of an exciting new man. In this case, it typically overlaps heavily with the Girl-Show Ghetto, the implication being that no self-respecting red-blooded straight man, or cold-blooded professional woman, would ever read a novel like that.

"The belief that boys shouldn’t be interested in girl things is the main reason there’s hardly anything decent for girls in animation — or almost any media for that matter. It’s a backwards, sexist, outdated attitude."


— Lauren Faust, creator and former executive producer of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, now famous for its straight male periphery demographic of so-called bronies


Add that girl-power, just like prog rock (another guilty pleasure catnip of mine), appears to be regarded by the mainstream as a fossil from another decade (girl power from the 90s, prog from the seventies), as alive to the mainstream as the dodo is; and of course the mainstream is the star of the law of supply and demand (for instance; why are there so many fat people and why is fat food so cheap nowadays? Because the mainstream crowd voted with their fat-craving mouths that things would be so!)... What is not sauce for the mainstream is geekery, but we geeks call their viewpoint caviar to the general (Shakespearean equivalent of pearls before swine; the idiom refers to the general public, not the general officer!)...

No Export for You

This is when a work was not released in a country even though there were good reasons to export it there. It has to meet at least one of the following conditions:
  • It is part of a franchise which has previously proven to be successful in other regions (e.g. Sailor Moon).
  • It was made with the specific intention of being sold overseas (e.g. Sin and Punishment).
  • Its genre and/or sensibilities make it the sort of thing that would be exported in the absence of foreign fans clamouring for it.
The Waterfire Saga, the Storm Sisters series, and the Twisted Tales Saga fit all three of these conditions.

But, just because a Vocal Minority believes something from abroad should be released for them, doesn't mean their country is a viable market. The distributors have to think of the money

Book publishing, like with any other creative product, is primarily about business, not art. Most normal publishers only want to publish books they think will sell, and will publish manuscripts that have possibilities of reaping good sales. Sensible publishers will try to publish good manuscripts under the logic that quality is appreciated. Vanity publishers really don't care either way and will publish anything, as they make their money off the authors rather than the audience. 

So it can be the reason a work isn't released is problems with other parties who worked on it wanting too much money, or deciding it's too much trouble (or there's considered not enough money to be made in a release) to justify going to the effort and trouble to work out all of the necessary clearances. #MoneyDearSandra. Like Tywin Lannister once said, a lion (a powerful publisher) does not care about the opinions of the sheep (the vocal minority).

May also invoke Screwed by the Network if it's only later seasons of a show that is not being exported and the show has been taken off the air in said markets where the show had been screwed, which may result in a case of Keep Circulating the Tapes, or in this case, Keep Circulating the Novels (when a series you like is denied to you, except through methods of questionable legality — shady file-sharing sites... it's either that, or the series is likely to be lost outside of fan recordings and company archives), if they are any of them obtainable on any Russian pirate online reading site (seriously, I think Russians are doing it both for themselves and for those EU readers who distrust online shopping and distribution of foreign books and would rather have the same read for free -- such as Yours Truly).

Nothing sucks more than a certain series you want to see translated not getting one. Sometimes even a Fan Translation can't help, since the company may throw a Fanwork Ban at you, stonewalling any translation attempt. That was what happened to the Spanish fanslations of the ASoUE novels 9-13 (from The Carnivorous Carnival to The End) when the last book in the series translated was installment 8, The Hostile Hospital, the series having been Screwed by Montena due to supply being cut off due to lack of demand. So yes, there are fanwork bans when it comes to fanslations --whether of graphic or written literature--.

After steam stops shooting out of your ears, the question you're asking is probably... why? Well, a typical answer is that the companies (correctly or incorrectly) don't think there's enough of a market for it to be worth releasing them, but it's not always their fault... directly

Just say that copies exist out there on the Internet, and leave it at that. 

Still, with today's primary distribution point being online for music (iTunes, Amazon), games (Steam), movies (Netflix), books (Amazon), and television (Hulu), you gotta wonder about the motivation behind regionally restricted release when manufacture and shipping costs simply don't apply.

After all, Amazon... well, let's say I have always been a bit of a shopping Luddite, even though I now have got a card of my own.

  1. Maybe because of sheer impatience; Instant Home Delivery of printed books is something that only exists in fiction as an Acceptable Break from Reality: 
  1. 1. Instant Home Delivery: When you buy something, it shows up instantly or at least much faster than in Real Life. Waiting for a month for backorders is already frustrating enough in real life, so why would that be included in a game intended to be enjoyed?
  2. Maybe because of the never-to-be-underestimated force of custom (usus tyrannus, the Romans already said). 
  3. Maybe because shipping costs will be added to the prize of the novel. 
  4. And maybe because of my own privacy concerns and fear of giving personal information on the Net in the paying form (what if someone finds out my name, ID number, physical address. et al, and uses these data for sinister purposes?). 
Very many shopping malls are in decline (so-called "dead malls") with competition from [···] online shopping  

In fact, the real reason for my shopping Luddism is all four of them above.
Seeing the film Storks and regarding how it depicts online shopping (In that film, basically the premise is that the baby-delivering storks are bereft of their usual duties to do Instant Home Delivery for online shopping sites... until two human orphans, a teen and a baby, step into the picture... I won't spoil the ending, but merely give you a clue that it's a pretty pungent and precise satire of online shopping!) confirmed my shopping Luddism even more.

Yet, considering the implications of both systems, capitalism is the Scylla to five-year-planning's Charybdis.
(For those who don't get the reference to classical myth; Scylla guards the right shore of the strait and ensures you will lose a certain number of men; Charybdis guards the left shore and is a maelström that sucks in all or nothing... and nothing is the outcome in the rarest cases).

Well, maybe this is a self-centered faux-left turn caused by a member of a vocal minority interested in fairytale/early modern fantasy. After all, finding the final Waterfire book outside the Protestant North is a Herculean task compared to, let's say, catching a wild Vaporeon in Pokémon Go! Or a Shiny Dunsparce, for that matter.


No Export For You / Literature

  • The Norwegian series Phenomena has only been released in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Germany. It sells well in both Norway and Germany, but still no word of it ever to be given out in other countries.
  • Another Norwegian series Halvgudene has only been translated into Icelandic.

There is a Waterfire wiki, but no trope page (see here: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/TheWaterfireSaga). Ditto for the Twisted Tale book series!


Though these three girl-power-themed Sagas use so many tropes that there SHOULD be a trope page, right?
To quote a few: Fantasy Counterpart Cultures, Gotta Catch 'Em All, Aloof Ally, Love Makes You Evil, Magical Girl Warriors, Bastard Bastard, More Than Mind Control, Careful What You Wish For, Rage Against the Heavens... the list is endless.
Three words: SHINY BLOODY SMEGMA!!!

Maybe a dooming factor in the Spanish/Italian perception of the Waterfire Saga happens to be this sort of Public Medium Ignorance:

Girl Show Ghetto


Mainly, the Double Standard most people have regarding media: that women's entertainment should only be enjoyed by women with no crossover allowed — despite it being okay for women to watch shows primarily marketed towards men — keeping in mind most media is male-focused. Not to mention the stigma that media specifically tailored for women is 100% guaranteed to be of inferior quality, no exceptions.

Women-targeted entertainment has a reputation of being worse than other shows. Common criticisms are that women's media is overly touchy-feely, simplistic, poorly-written, and shallow. This is mostly due to the aesthetics of the media (and not to mention a lot of it is fashion-based). The men can be the badass heroes and problem solvers who go on questsbut women don't do much except entangling themselves in their relationships and wallowing in a soup of hormonal emotions (OR SO THE STEROTYPE SAYS).

Actually, the Waterfire books are a feminist fantasy saga that subvert these stereotypes. And this Girl Show Ghetto perspective led to Waterfire slumping in Romance languages half-way across the saga. While Germany and Denmark have completed the saga. 

Compare this to the similar case of A Series of Unfortunate Events. Not a girl-show, but actually unisex, with an interesting equal-opportunity cast (aside from a Lemony Narrator that hearkens back to the nineteenth century and inspired Yours Truly's narrative style). Suddenly interrupted in Spain, where the last book released was eighth installment The Hostile Hospital, but which was completed to the very last book, The End, the very last out of 13, in Germanic languages (German, Danish, and Swedish to name three).
Similarly, all three Monster Blood Tattoo books were released in the Anglosphere; second book Lamplighter (introducing both Winstermill [the Academy of Adventure setting, a monster-hunting cadet boarding school] and Threnody Vey [IMOHO, a really badass female character and a true predecessor to Merida Dunbroch of Brave fame]) was released in Sweden and Germany, unlike the to me less-interesting trilogy finale Factotum; while the Spanish edition (in detriment of hardass Winstermill and Threnody fans like Yours Truly) never made it past the first book.
The 2010s Little Prince Franime graphic novels and DVD'd episodes were all of them published in France; their Spanish translations halted release after The Planet of the Astronomer, volume 5 out of 24, leaving a lot of exciting adventures which had been screened in Spain never to get a printed (or, for that matter, a DVD) release in the same country and in many others.

Yes, there have been critics ranting and raving against the Waterfire Saga and Monster Blood Tattoo, against Storm Sisters and A Twisted Tale; just like my favourite Sailor Moon series Sailor Stars and my favourite Yu-Gi-Oh series Zexal appear to have far more haters than they have got fans like me. Add the fact that my mum is a hardcore Jar Jar fan, which makes me think that my preference for obscure and/or criticized fiction runs in the blood.


PS. In the Commonwealth, a middle-grade magical girl-power-themed franchise (chapter book series, YouTube webseries, and fashion dolls) with an animesque aesthetic and a cast themed around the Western Zodiac has been subject to the same tragic destiny:
  • Disney heavily underutilized the Star Darlings series, with near-invisible advertising, a lack of merchandise in general, focus on the Star Darlings band of 5 instead of all 12 girls, and a shallower, shorter webseries compared to the more serious books, but the dolls are where things really get bad. Of the 12 Star Darlings, only the core 5 had both a Starland outfit and Wishworld outfit (Cassie's Starland look was UK-only), none of the supporting cast got dolls, and Scarlett's doll barely resembles her official art and webseries look. The books were cancelled in January 2017 with three planned books being shelved, the webseries last aired in late 2016, and the toyline is similarly inactive, with Jakks Pacific ceasing producing the dollss.