I had to work so hard to get this under the 3 minute short limit y’all!
I’m sorry for any rough cuts, it was literally getting down to a matter of shaving off frames
Full Bloom is out and like I promised, I made the final story of Muttday Morning News #15 A review. Surprisingly absolutely no one I hope, it is great!
It’s fun, silly, childish in the most positive ways, it strikes all the Magical girl chords and knows what it’s doing with them! The Villains , Allison Webb and the Sorceress Makula bounce off each other so well while maintaining very different dynamics with our heroes, with Webb playing an even more chaser-y version of Elon Musk, while Makula has more of a vibe like she sort of knows she’s a big boss and enjoys the spotlight and the banter.
And of the girls are so back, sure Claire, Hazel, and Bloom take center stage, but it really feels like Nova, Cass, and Hana also feel like they get to show more of themselves this outing as well.
(Transcript of the Full Review)
And of course, my review of Magica Riot Full Bloom
And the Magica Riot Full Bloom Review
Read it.
Unless you haven’t read the first book, in which case read that, then read Magica Riot Full Bloom.
Kara has often compared her work, rather fairly, to the anime that helped inspire her. She wrote Magica Riot with the idea of it being the pilot episode or first few of a new magical girl anime. Her novella, Jade Evergreen and the Perils of Polybuis was supposed to feel like popping in the second or third episode in a more episodic 80’s show.
They both hit the nail on the head. She’s said she was aiming for Full Bloom to be Her Sailor Moon S, the fan favorite arc with a bunch of big emotions, multiple big baddies butting heads, and really getting to see everyone be their gayest selves…. well she did it.
I’m going to try and sneak by with as few spoilers as I can, but it’s really good I promise.
Everything around Bloom is just great, she manages to be a quippy character who I don’t want to punt through a the nearest wall because that’s not all she has going on! Kara has mastered the surgically placed quip, far superior to the belt fed shotgun approach popularized by Joss Wedon and Clap Trap. Not that Bloom is the only one who gets away with it, but she just speaks so differently from everyone else they’re lent a bit of extra oomph.
I also love how shamelessly horny it is! No one pretends they can’t see how attractive other people are just because they’re in a relationship. And not only is there no shame, Hazel, my darling Hazel, the only character I identify with more than Bloom, literally encourages other girls to flirt with, and fluster her girlfriend, it’s the best!
As for the actual narrative, it wags, it wags y’all!
The 4 parts, sorry side, Kara was very committed to the music motif, structure really let’s each side feel like a mini episode while still flowing with the arc plot.
It helps bring more weight to the passage of time we don’t necessarily see on the page.
One thing I have to bring up, I love that at no point is Allison Webb, one of the two overarching villains, outright stated to be a chaser, but those vibes ooze off her every word without it ever needing to be said Good on you Kara, I hate that you did that, but damn did you do it well.
I’m always hesitant of queer joy as a selling point, so often it means a narrative and story so smooth and edgeless it would make a great ball bearing, but not an enjoyable or engaging piece of fiction.
But Full Bloom is queer joy that understands you can’t have joy without loss, without having to know why it’s worth fighting for.
I want to call it childish, if that didn’t have such a derisive connotation. It has that energy you normally only see in kids the first time they find out a system isn’t fair and they get, intuitively, then we should change it so it is.
It’s the kind of energy I wish I could bring to bare against all the world’s problems.
Full Bloom, Like Magica Riot before it, is exactly what I needed in this moment and didn’t know it.
I’m only sad my physical copy isn’t here yet so any book shots I use will have to be screen shots
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