Clean - Freak Fully Equipped

Sata Senda is a hardcore germophobe who takes compulsive cleaning to beyond socially awkward levels. A childhood experience at an amusement left him forever haunted and his future classmates forever weirded out. Seta is befriended by a classmate named Anna Aiuchi and they become close over the duration of a school trip. It isn't too last though when Aiuchi suddenly moves away overseas. While now one friend down, Seta soon enough finds himself surrounded by a group of sudden acquaintances including a persistant wannabe-girlfriend, shy-guy bunny lover and a hyperactive raincoat lover. Now he needs to learn to juggle helping friends with keeping himself emaculate in the process.

Sata Senda is this series' titular clean freak. Booger-trauma from his childhood has left him voluntarily living the life of a bubble-boy, spraying cleaners and disinfectant on every surface. The plot of the series is watching this troubled-teen leave his self-made shell as he begins making new friends. Unfortunately what Clean Freak ultimately proves is that you can definitely have too much of a good thing and its regrettably that it doesn't refer to the quality of the manga itself. The book's first chapter is its strongest. It introduces us to Sata and the catalyst for his psychosis, while focusing on the present day and his growing interaction with a classmate named Anna Aiuchi. Cute, kind and honest, Aiuchi is the first person in a long time to get close to Sata. A school trip is the backdrop for them to get to know each other and the chapter ends strong with a character-defining moment. Unfortunately everything after this point goes downhill. Aiuchi moves to New York and her departure from the story leaves behind what now feels like a gaping hole in the set-up. For the remainder of the book she communicates with Sata through letters and DVDs, becoming not only his love interest but a beacon of support. She seems revered in a way that doesn't feel deserved for the short interaction we readers were privy to. With the way she's shown so briefly from here on, it would've been more effective to have her first introduced as the long-distance friend who is then eventually more fleshed out instead of the other way around. Sata's interactions with others are from over though. Throughout this volume he meets a variety of fellow students, all of whom have their own bizarre qualities. Second to Aiuchi in relevance is Yui Anzai, a vibrant young boy with a strong emotional attachment to his raincoat. His unwavering-attachment to Sata is definitely the most persistent and perhaps also one of the most loosely explained. Along with Anzai, Sata finds himself in the company of the class's boyfriend-hopper, Sonoko Yumeno, who's set her sights on him, and Sotsugu Kiriyu, a soft-spoken friend of Anzai who leads the two boys on a search for a pregnant bunny rabbit. Everything in the book feels rushed, especially the introduction of new characters and the systematic way they're brought in. It feels like the artist is so eager to get onto her next idea that she fails to fully flesh out out the last one. Character upon character is introduced in a way that not only leaves each one feeling significantly less important but also devalues the importance of Sata's social awkwardness. While there's rarely a break in his OCD need to be clean, how anti-social he is quickly feels much less important, or even supported which takes away an element of his personality that was worth exploring more. Sadly the art isn't much of a save and could've done with a lot of cleaning up itself. The artwork is manic, delivering an energy that compliments the story but isn't as forgiving on the eyes. Pages are cluttered with wildly inconsistent use of panels and each one awash in needless screentone that covers artwork haphazardly. The characters vary a lot in the way they're drawn which comes across more inconsistent than intentional. Scenes that are meant to be important do have extra care taken to them however, such as a desperate attempt to save flowers from a watery fate. These scenes stick out like roses in a thorn bush, more polished and dramatically screentoned regardless of how brief the scene itself is. Nice as these are though, they only serve to make the rest of the book look sloppy. A quirky plot will only get you so far and Clean Freak may keep up the ethanol-enthusiasm to the end, but it does so at the expense of developing characters readers will truly care about. Humor is the story's near-saving grace and it makes for an entertaining read, yet too many characters introduced one after the other make it a superficial one. Clean Freak's over-eagerness to skip ahead is its downfall and even Tokyopop's strong work on the book - most notably the fun logo and complimenting cover designs - does little to polish this raw material into something worth while.

Final Fantasy XIII PlayStation 3, Xbox 360

Final Fantasy changes. It might look like a stagnant series, with each game starring glamorous young heroes distinguished only by their improbable hairstyles and penchants for melodrama. Yet every Final Fantasy also tries new things, usually altering just enough in gameplay and storytelling to alienate some longtime fans. And that's kept the series remarkably fresh for something with over a dozen proper entries. Final Fantasy XIII is an experiment in some ways and a throwback in others, streamlining combat while indulging in the glitzy theatrics that made Final Fantasy what it is today. It's also a test of just how much bland introduction a player can take.

Final Fantasy XIII borrows a common sight from the anime/RPG milieu: a massive city called Cocoon floats above a savage wilderness called Pulse, and both lands are governed by powerful beings called fal'Cie (get it?). These seemingly callous deities mark humans as their servants, branding them as l'Cie and putting them to use in dangerous and vaguely understood wars. When a fragile young woman named Serah is deemed a l'Cie and dragged off to Cocoon, her sister Lightning chases after her, with largely unwanted help from Serah's moronic fiancé Snow and his band of rebels. Snow and Lightning soon become l'Cie themselves, as do others connected to them: the muffiny-haired pilot Sazh is searching for his Cocoon-abducted son, the gloomy kid Hope's mother died fighting beside Snow, and the relentlessly upbeat Vanille is apparently just tagging along. And then there's Fang, a dedicated spearfighter who shares Vanille's strange background and Australian accent.

Every Final Fantasy needs some time to get going. The first few hours typically see the player fighting some tutorial-heavy battles, meeting the lead characters, and learning about the world around them. There is a point, however, where the storyline kicks into gear, a full party is assembled, and the game gives the chance to explore and customize freely. In most Final Fantasies, this point comes around the three-hour mark.

Final Fantasy XIII takes 15 hours to get interesting. Fifteen.

During this astoundingly long setup, the characters trek through the outskirts of their civilized world with the Cocoon military pressing close behind. The group splits into pairs: Hope follows the determined Lightning, Sazh learns to tolerate Vanille's insipid ways, and Snow and Fang work for a shadowy benefactor. They resolve some predictable conflicts, have a few minor breakthroughs, and generally don't do much more than establish the world and narrate flashbacks to happier times. Meanwhile, the Cocoon forces remain a vague threat, driven to keep the peace by exterminating anyone infected by the land of Pulse.

The game's six playable characters similarly divide their appeal: Snow and Hope are insufferable despite the best efforts of their voice actors, and Vanille and Lightning are initially unsympathetic. Vanille's constant attempts at comedy are awkward. and Lightning's far too distant and cold, as though the writers were so intent on creating a tough, competent heroine that they forgot to make her at all compelling. Sazh, who many expected to be a comical and borderline-offensive stereotype, comes off the best, as he's an older, wearier voice in a cast of headstrong kids. There's also the likeably brusque Fang, though she's the last of the characters to join.

It'd be easier to endure Final Fantasy XIII's dismal crawl of a plot if the battle system picked up sooner. The game pares down the menu-driven system of a typical Final Fantasy, letting players control only the party's leader through commands. The other two members run on automatic during battle, and the entire group is governed by the “Paradigm Shift” system. Teams are formed with each character in a designated role: Commandos and Ravagers attack, Medics heal, Synergists and Saboteurs cast weakening or strengthening magic, and so on. It seems needlessly cumbersome at first: instead of picking battle directions from one large menu system, players have to switch between Paradigms if they want to do something as simple as healing before attacking.

Final Fantasy XIII is slow to let players take control. The game limits itself to two-character parties for most of that long opening, and so the battle system seems much more repetitive and limited than it should be. It also cranks up the annoyance of having to peck out commands from a menu (or use auto-battle) when you're guiding only one character. Why not let the player control Lightning or Fang like the lead in a full-on action game? Every Final Fantasy has allowed players to direct each individual party member; even Final Fantasy XII, which offered the option of AI-controlled characters. The Final Fantasy series is often criticized as lacking interaction, and XIII almost parodies the idea of someone actually playing the game.