{"id":1671,"date":"2019-08-22T15:00:33","date_gmt":"2019-08-22T21:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=1671"},"modified":"2019-08-15T10:34:10","modified_gmt":"2019-08-15T16:34:10","slug":"book-mecha-samurai-empire-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2019\/08\/22\/book-mecha-samurai-empire-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"BOOK: Mecha Samurai Empire (2018)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"MechaMecha Samurai Empire<\/u><\/strong>
\nYear: 2018
\nAuthor: Peter Tieryas
\nLength: 447 pages<\/p>\n

***THIS BOOK WAS RECEIVED FROM THE PUBLISHER***<\/p>\n

For a genre that\u2019s usually associated with Japanese anime and manga, I haven\u2019t seen many \u201cmecha\u201d novels (or movies, for that matter, with Pacific Rim<\/em><\/a> (2013) being the only notable example). Consequently, when I received an advance reader copy of Mecha Samurai Empire<\/em>, I was looking forward to reading it. While there were still a few grammatical and proofreading errors in this book\u2014of which I\u2019m sure have been fixed in the final version\u2014portions of the plot didn\u2019t sit well with me. My main qualm is the main character who really isn\u2019t good at anything but still gets to pilot a huge and complicated piece of machinery just because he wants to.<\/p>\n

A clear and obvious mix between The Man in the High Castle<\/em> and Neon Genesis Evangelion<\/em>, the few strong elements of this book were in the mecha battles themselves. The problem is that the references sprinkled throughout are so obvious (I had to roll my eyes at the Mega Man 2<\/em> reference) as to distract from the story. I don\u2019t mind if other stories influence writers, but at least make their influence less obvious when crafting something \u201cnew.\u201d At its worst, Mecha Samurai Empire<\/i> holds to all the tropes and clich\u00e9s present in mecha anime and manga. If you’re into that kind of thing, this probably isn’t a problem.<\/p>\n

While I still enjoy the spectacle of giant robots fighting, a good story needs to come down to its characters. Since I didn\u2019t particularly like the main character, I tried to grab onto some of the minor ones. Unfortunately, while some of the character arcs were highly predictable, most of the minor characters didn\u2019t stand out either (and the one that did was super<\/em> annoying). Just like Pacific Rim: Uprising<\/em><\/a> (2018) made me lose faith that we\u2019ll see live-action adaptations of mecha anime like Evangelion<\/em> or Gurren Lagann<\/em>, Mecha Samurai Empire shows we still have a way to go before novels of this genre are prevalent.<\/p>\n

An obvious mashup with pretty good action, I give Mecha Samurai Empire <\/em>3.0 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n

\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" \"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" \"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\"<\/strong><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mecha Samurai Empire Year: 2018 Author: Peter Tieryas Length: 447 pages ***THIS BOOK WAS RECEIVED FROM THE PUBLISHER*** For a genre that\u2019s usually associated with Japanese anime and manga, I haven\u2019t seen many \u201cmecha\u201d novels (or movies, for that matter, with Pacific Rim (2013) being the only notable example). Consequently, when I received an advance […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,54],"tags":[1020,55,2016,2013,2017,2015,268,1319,2019,2018,8,2014,1697],"class_list":["post-1671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-3-0-stars","category-book","tag-1020","tag-book","tag-gurren-lagann","tag-mecha-samurai-empire","tag-mega-man-2","tag-neon-genesis-evangelion","tag-pacific-rim","tag-pacific-rim-uprising","tag-peter-tieryas","tag-references","tag-review","tag-the-man-in-the-high-castle","tag-tropes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1671"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1671\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1677,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1671\/revisions\/1677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}