Manga and anime by L

(New) Voices in the Dark

noreply@blogger.com (L) — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 19:44:00 +0000

Ahoy mateys!

You'll never guess what I just did (other than give up on studying for my exam) – I just finished reading some manga. I must admit it's something I haven't done in a while and boy did it feel good. As you can probably tell from the title, it's gonna be a horror spree muahahaha. No, really, it was a horror manga again, by the only man who can freak me out on a regular basis – Junji Ito. You might remember him from a while back, when I wrote about his Uzumaki, Gyo and a little brainstorming and guess work on his little universe.

This time I read Voices in the Dark (Yami no Koe) and the sequel, New Voices in the Dark (Shin Yami no Koe - Kaidan). Both of them are comprised of seven short horror stories. Voices in the Dark came out in 2002 and the sequel came back a whopping 4 years later, in 2006. Before I break it down for you just let me comment a bit on the degree of horror the author hints at. At the end of the New Voices, Ito-sensei complains that writing it made his mood go down and that he doesn't have many memories of writing it, except for when he had a writer's block. Then he makes a semi-joke about the body wanting to block out bad memories. Seriously? People, when the author has so many bad memories about his work that he has to block it out it means HORROR on so many levels. Just...wow. On a funnier note, while I was searching for the publishing year for the New Voices I unwillingly read the tags that said what categories you could call this manga: drama (yeah, pretty dramatic), horror (I'll say...), josei (yeah....wait what??). This is josei? Really? For those of you who don't know, a josei manga is a manga aimed at middle aged women. And apparently, all the girls want after 30 is a piece of hard core horror. Something tells me that the person who wrote that there doesn't know much about women.

Anyways, in my personal opinion, you can expect to find the following types of stories while reading the Voices: the kinda spooky but for kids, the gross, the super horror/freaky and the WTF stories. Let's get down to it.

Kinda spooky but, at the end of the day it's still for kids. I'm particularly talking about Ghosts of the Golden Time, Roar of the Ages, The Earth-bound People and Dead Man Calling from the first volume and In The Valley of Mirrors, Library of Illusions, Songs in the Dark from the second volume. (I have to make a mention that Dead Man Calling also goes into the WTF stories.) So yeah, this is something you can let your 10 year old brother read, I'm sure he'll find it spooky and cool but for me and those who have read other horror stuff it just doesn't cut it. In fact, to be truthful, Roar of the Ages isn't even spooky. Perhaps supernatural meets romance is better suited for it. Library of Illusions only has one sort of spooky part in it, where you get a glimpse of a freaky dude coming in the library and at the end when you see the lead's father. Other than that it's pretty basic stuff. On another note, The Earth-bound People got a “Hell yeah we need that in our world!”. Righteous justice for all in this story.

The Gross is no something I particularly enjoyed, I'm more into horror than that kind of gore. By a long shot, Glyceride is the winner of this years Most Disgusting Scene. I can't even write about it without getting goose bumps. Sorry but you're going to find out for yourself about this one. Other honorable mentions in this section is Blood-sucking Darkness, though, it's a lot lighter that the first one. I don't really care for bats, though I now see why they are referred to as rats with wings, but it's a spooky, gross-ish story that can also be enjoyed by younger siblings cause, at the end of the day, it's not really hard core stuff.

And now (drum roll please) the super horror/freak stories. Ironically the first is Mystery of the Haunted House from the first volume and the second is The Soichi Front, Haunted House's sequel from the New Voices. So basically, you get the eerie atmosphere with your usual Ito serving BUT these stories had 3 character that genuinely freaked me out, one of them making me happy nothing can get under my bed due to it's construction. The story is about a traveling fair like gang, but the only attraction is a haunted house. The price to get in is very expensive but they guarantee the money back if you're not scared – which, between the some of us, I think was never ever the case. The first character that I found really scary is the manager and later-reveled general evil doer. He's just one of those guys around whom you instinctively get super defensive cause on a sensory level you can feel evil oozing out of them...or maybe it's all those Criminal Minds episodes talking here. Right, anyway, he freaked me out from the moment I saw him. A bit cliché evil doer but he does the trick. You can picture him as the front man in every horror flick you've ever seen. C'mon, you know the type: he's the guy that looks well intended but just ends up luring a bunch of crazed kids into monster inhabited places. Going from low to high, second place of freakishness is, you'll never guess, the first dude's wife! From whom he is running away – I lol'd at that but hey, I can't say I blame the man. She makes only a short appearance at the end of both stories so it's really only her physique that is in the horror section. And now, time for the character that gave me nightmares and quivers and just guuuh – the child of afore mentioned couple. Everything scared me about him: appearance – gives me flashbacks I can do without, the attitude – nothing quite like desperate and eager monsters, is there? Not to mention his, uh, diet. I'm not a big fan of amusement parks but if I'm ever going into one again, I'm steering clear of any and all haunted houses.

Oh, I really dreaded this category, the WTF stories. The first and truly 99% WTF has to be Soichi's Beloved Pet. WTF is the only reaction it got from me, aside from a single page. It's more annoying than anything else. However one page from this story single highhandedly made it into three sections: WTF, gross and PURE HORROR!!!!!!!!!!!! Let me show you:

First of all: NOT THE CAT!!! NOOOOOOOOO!! For those of you who still don't know, I have a cat addiction and automatically repulse any and all inappropriate conduct or representations of or around cats.

Second: GROSS, WTF is it holding in it's mouth and where the heck do these people live? Things like that really roam free around Japan? Jesus!

Third: “No! Don't eat it!” Really??? You'd rather have that thing go free and move around? I'm not a big fan of that scene but heck, if that happened in my yard I'd be waving my shoe around praying it doesn't come near me. Wouldn't you rather have it eaten by something else that have it coming towards you? Take into account that it's roughly larger than a domestic cat.

All in all these volumes were a good read. As a passionate horror manga devourer I have to express my deepest sorrow for the fact that not all of Ito's work is translated and easily available.

I'd love to stay and chat some more but I have to get some shut eye. T-1 day until my last exam.

Until next time, this is L signing out.

Liar Game

noreply@blogger.com (L) — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 19:43:00 +0000

Uh boy it’s been a while. A bit too long and I’m really sorry for it. Before anything else, here’s a late Merry Christmas - I hope you guys had a blast – and an early Happy New Year!

I don’t know if you remember or not but a while ago I made a promise (to me and you) that I wouldn’t review works that were still ongoing in the event that they might turn bad in the process and my initial hype about it might seem…misplaced. However here I am, type towards the break of said promise. The particular work that made me go back on my word is no other than Shinobu Kaitani’s Liar Game. It has its ups and downs but even if it does turn bad from now on, at least you would have enjoyed it this far.

Pseudo-leading lady Kanazaki Nao is one of those stereotypical Japanese girls – demure appearance and very VERY honest. One day she receives a box and once she opens it she finds a letter and 100 million yen (about one million dollars). The letter states that her opening the box acts as consent to enter the Liar Game - a game based on tricking your opponents out of their 100 million. Thus at the end, you would either have 200 million or be 100 in debt. After being conned out of all her money by an ex-teacher she seeks the help of Shuichi Akiyama. Akiyama just got out of jail and is rather famous for the cons he himself pulled off. He accepts Nao’s offer after she promises to give him 50 million. And that’s how it all starts.

I really can’t tell you more than that without spoiling it and twisting all the brains involved. As I’ve mentioned beforehand, this manga has its ups and downs.

Downside one: stereotypical characters that irk me to no extent sometimes. For one Nao is just too simple for her own good. In real life I think people would just snap if they were around her too much and proceed to beat her with a large, somewhat sharp object. I got the fact that the author wanted to stress out how innocent, trusting and pure she is but this is stretching it! Akiyama fits into the childhood trauma cold-hearted genius type you see floating around everywhere. I think I might let it slide given the fact that he makes up absolutely wonderful strategies to win the Liar Game Rounds. Of course, it goes without saying that, when he starts to degrade in any way due to the love interest that I fear is coming (like we saw happen to the much beloved Haruhi) I’ll rant on him like there is no tomorrow. Perhaps the only character that somewhat saves face is the antagonist turned side kick, Fukunaga Yuji – a quirky, short tempered transvestite (with implants). Despite being smart and coming up with a few strategies himself, I’m sure he was written in for the lulz. I’m not even going to start about Bandana Guy.

Downside two and Upside one: super brain twisting strategies. The good part about such a super smart plot is that it keeps you tuned in because you’re curious how on earth they can win a game that’s seemingly based on the luck of the drawn. The downside however is that after a point it might get tiring. I know I was in the mood for a good read but halfway through Akiyama’s explaining the plan I decided my tired neuron just wasn’t gonna cut it.

Upside two: no idiocy. Really the most refreshing thing about this manga is its lack of people saying their going to protect someone else. That phrase makes me angry in an instant. I know you might feel that Akiyama is kind of protecting Nao but at least he doesn’t do it after filling up 3 pages with a detailed synopsis of his feelings and internal turmoil.

Upside, downside, I don’t even know. The plot seems to be beating around the same bush a little too many times. Every round, there’s a new game, a new cool strategy to win, some intense suspense and then, here we go again, and again and again. Don’t get me wrong, the games the author made up – and the ways to win – are super duper interesting so more power to him, but a little more side story could go a long way.

The artwork is pretty clean though I think Kaitani-sensei is sometimes having just a little trouble with Akiyama’s emo hair. One thing that most particularly caught my attention was the way the fingers are drawn - big thumbs up. One thing that I don’t really like, on the other hand, is the faces of our characters. That’s mainly due to the fact that in certain angles they look weird and deformed. Not to mention the fact that facial expressions have a very limited range. The décor isn’t really good or bad. The action takes place in locations that don’t really have anything special about them and detail would be out of place.

I think the manga reached volume 10 in Japan, after being serialized in Weekly Young Jump, published by Shueisha and spawned a two season drama *cough* poor casting *cough*. Basically, that alone should indicate that it’s going to have a hold on a certain percentage of the target population.

So, if you’re the intellectual manga reader that enjoys a twisty plot and long complicated dialogs and strategies, this is the thing for you. Pick it up, give it a try and then go from there.

That’s all folks.

Until next time, this is L signing off.

Various short stories (part I)

noreply@blogger.com (L) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 09:22:00 +0000

Hello everyone! Sorry to keep you waiting for so long but I have two rough years in front of me and things just started to gather and cramp my schedule. To be completely honest, I’ve been thinking for a while about what to write but nothing seems to fit my mood. In the end I suppose a short story or two is in order. They were in the plan some time ago but the idea of putting more that one story in a post never did appeal to me. So let’s get cracking...archives.

I cam across a pack of mangas and there were a few that really stuck with me.

White Clouds

White Clouds definitely is something apart from what you regularly see on the market today. Unless you know about it or have read something else by its author, you’re not going to give it the light of day let along your precious 3 minutes. The amazingly low number of pages is a general source of distrust but I can’t say anyone tackled more sentiment and philosophy than Hisae Iwaoka.

The story has a somewhat peculiar narrator, an old dog named Shiro (needless to say, the first page gave me some She and Her Cat flashbacks). Shiro is 14 years old and reminisces a bit about his life with his owner, Grandma. Unfortunately she passed away from old age so it’s just the dog and Grandpa now. The two treasure an old plastic bottle that Grandma used to use when she got sick...Read it for the ending!

Sincerely I cannot applaud it enough for how emotionally touching it is. Iwaoka sensei can bring you to tears in little under 20 pages. If that’s not talent I don know what is. However, don’t go expecting a world of lavish colors or sharp faced characters. The simple story is very beautifully accompanied by simple art and minimalistic backgrounds. In the end, I think her choice of lines was very effective as the little old lady and her spouse look every bit the good natured people they are.

White Clouds is a wonderful story with a twisty (happy) ending that makes you wonder just how much feeling goes into everyday life.

Bunnies

Let not the title mislead you, this is not a fluffy animal story! But when has that ever discouraged me?

Testu Kasabe’s short story starts out pretty interesting and even though the climax isn’t that hard to guess the last few panels deliver a well received comedic effect.
The very first page sets a horror mood with a haunted looking house and a somewhat gooey writing informing us of the title. And then our three characters make an appearance and possibly winning the World Record for cultural references per 5 pages. The first character, whom ends up being the unsuspecting victim, is a reporter, much to my surprise – at the sight of his hat I immediately thought of the famous mister Holmes. The second character it the Professor, a short, bald man with pointy ears who is the spitting image of Nosferatu and just happens to be an evil genius. And to complete the picture, in comes to butler, Franken. Really, do I need to say more?

The Professor invites the reporter over for a little innocent chit chat about one of his projects – a machine that can allow someone to see his future. After spiking Reporters drink he tests this concoction on him and allows him to see his last moments as an old man, surrounded by Bunny Girls. The reporter is hyped about the success but it seems the machine might not work as well as planned.

As you already know, I am a big fan of horror manga and this one doesn’t really fall short of my expectations. It has important characters, eerie setting, an unlikely plot and at 16 pages it delivers enough of anything to prevent you from feeling ripped off at the very end.

Until next time, this is L signing off.

SaiKano: The Las Love Song On This Little Planet

noreply@blogger.com (L) — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 07:18:00 +0000

Hello people! I still have about an hour before my friends comes and drags me to the gym so let’s get cracking… and hopefully finish in time.

Saikano (Saishū Heiki Kanojo, lit. She, the Ultimate Weapon but translated as My Girlfriend, the Ultimate Weapon), ah this brings back the good old days. This was one of the first anime I ever saw and (somewhat ashamed to say) the most emotionally disturbing. Although I loved it to the maximum level possible, it’s not something I will be re-watching any time soon. Few anime had such an impact on me but then again at that time I was young and impressionable. Even so, I wasn’t the only one touched by it. This is the first and only anime that I have ever watched in which the fansub team that had take on the project, left their otherwise very objective stand on things and put out a warning at the end of episode 10. It was something along the lines of “If you want to believe in happy endings stop here, don’t watch the rest.” But when did I ever take any warnings seriously hehehe.

Saikano is a manga, anime and OVA series created by Shin Takahashi. The manga spans for 7 volumes, the anime has 13 episodes and the OVA had 2. I didn’t read the manga but I did see both the anime and the OVA – Saikano: Another Love Song. Since we’ll be speaking about the anime I’m just going to come right out and say it: after you’re done with the anime you absolutely have to watch the OVA. At that particular point it won’t really seem so appealing but trust me, it’s worth it.

The narrator of this story is Shuji, a high school student from Hokkaido, who also happens to be the male lead. For the most part, the anime consists of Shuji’s flashbacks and so the tale starts to unravel. One day a fellow class mate of his, Chise, declares her love. She’s really very shy and builds up a lot of courage to say the words but Shuji is rather insensitive, going all tsundere. Both are unsure how to express their feelings but after a few bumps in the road they get together. Unfortunately their happiness doesn’t last long. As Shuji was shopping in Sapporo one day, the city gets attacked by bombers and the war starts. In the midst of it all, he sees a small red light that destroys the foreign planes. Later on he finds out that the red dot in the sky was actually his girlfriend Chise who, without notice or consent, was turned into a weapon of mass destruction by the Japan Self-Defence Forces. As the cyborg implants eat away at Chise, the two must figure out how to cope with change, war, love and chaos.

If there is one thing that sets Saikano apart from other anime then it obviously means we’re not talking about the same anime because there are a lot of things that make Takahashi’s work stand out from the heard. The most impressive part is without the shadow of a doubt the characters. They are indeed a rare treat in the sea of Xeroxed anime protagonists. Unlike most of their siblings in the industry, they actually break free from stereotypes and adjust their actions and attitudes to what is currently going on. Yes people, there you have it, an anime with 100% believable, lifelike characters – never thought you’d see it, huh? And on these perfect canvases, the author paints a wide variety of feelings, much to my delight. All states of heart and mind are so incredibly portrait that, at times, the heart-wrenching feelings grab you by the gut and make Saikano almost painful to watch. The level of empathy is sky high!

Another absolutely wonderful thing is how Takahashi-sensei managed to pull of something that, at first glance, might see a bucket o’cliché but is actually one of the most original of them all. Sincerely, I had tremendous good luck I got to watch it when I was still at the beginning of anime devouring. If I would have heard about it now I probably wouldn’t have picked it up. Most people just don’t want another “guy meets girl + mecha” anime. If I had to guess, I think the fact that this is a character driven story saves it from the shameless pit of cliché, as it doesn’t become just another tournament style war flick…that and the truthful depiction of feelings.

Another thing that I just simply have to mention is the fact that Saikano goes the extra mile to show just what war does to people. It is credible and lifelike to the point of being as terrifying as the real thing. I can name only one other anime that manages to do that, a masterpiece delivered by Studio Ghibli under the careful guide of Isao Takahata.

But let us not forget the artistic side of this anime that, in my opinion, doesn’t fall short of its great story. It’s most definitely not the style you see in contemporary anime, if anything it’s like a manga sketch. The whole anime seems like a watercolor slide show with a warm, fuzzy and romantic feel to it. All this contrasts with the computer generated graphics of war machinery and the cold hard truth about the reality out young couple lives in. The author didn’t cheap out on character design either. They might not be the big eyed sharp chin type but they all look individualistic without chipping at their normality. On a different side, the voice acting is out of this world! The biggest mistake you can ever make is watch Saikano dubbed. Trust me; you don’t want to do that! Every time I remember Chise going “Shuu-chan” a cold shiver goes down my spine. Hauntingly good, one might be tempted to say.

All in all, Saikano is an emotional, heart-wrenching ride; an authentic look into the hearts of young people facing extreme events; something that, if it isn’t already, will very soon become a classic piece in the anime industry.

Don’t forget to watch it along with the OVA as well. It’s crucial!

Until next time, this is L singing off.

Misc all the way

noreply@blogger.com (L) — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 09:40:00 +0000

As the tile suggests this post won’t be related to manga or anime, it’ll just be some miscellaneous things I feel like writing about.

First of all I have to say I’m in a pretty bummed out state and nothing seems appealing anymore. I’ve pretty much locked myself in the house and haven’t left for a while. Now the cause for my recent transformation into a hermit is the heat: 38 degrees in the shade T_T...so not much activity here.

In my idleness I decided to take up an RPG again. Now since my bandwidth is shared I generally avoid client based MMORPG and go for the browser based kinds. Back in highschool I started playing Legend of the Green Dragon (LoGD) on this really cool server which I can’t find anymore. So I looked it up again only to find that most servers are really not interesting. But fear not, I found one that is pretty close to the original one I played on (aside from a few annoying things) however... not a lot of players are on it...not a lot as in 2 other active beside me. That being said, if you have nothing better to do, can read English and like the magic wonderland type of games then come on over to [spam] http://www.rpdragon.com/home.php? [/spam]. Yeah. You can Ye Old Mail me or something. I’m Skoll.

On another note I’m pretty pissed off with Blogger for having a faulty quick link service. As in for the last couple of posts I can’t seem to be able to put links where I want them. For some reason the Publish Post button obliterates any and all links that were inserted. This sucks. Maybe it’s just a browser related glitch cause since I started Opera a lot of things don’t work like they should (not even Y!Mail for Christ sake). I’ll know more after firing up Firefox. Heh that’s pretty funny.

Ok that’s all. See ya.

L

ES - Eternal Sabbath

noreply@blogger.com (L) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 09:35:00 +0000

Hello everyone! Without any further delay and babble about how I have the current weather and want to move to the North Pole let’s get right to it.

So I found an 8 volume manga by Fuyumi Soryo called ES - Eternal Sabbath. To be truthful, before I actually began to read it I circled around the title for quite some time but refused to pick it up because I thought it was going to be some mindless romantic nonsense. Afterwards, I circled around writing about it, like a cat around a fish bowl, because I was afraid I wouldn’t do it justice. Eventually, gathering courage and finishing all the Criminal Minds episodes, there could be no more beating around the bush. Perhaps if I had read something about Soryo-sensei, I wouldn’t have hesitated so much since she did win the Shogakukan Manga Award for a shoujo manga, Boyfriend...I was to busy eating grapefruit to do that...yeah.

The whole things starts when a bunch of scientists research ways to become immortal. Eventually, they stubble across the ES gene, which provides 200 years worth of life span and immunity against all viruses. Little did they know but along with the incredible life span came mind-control abilities and the power to alter one’s memory. But, we find this out a little later, after meeting Kujo Mine, a neurological specialist from a physiology research institute from the U.S. She’s smart and beautiful if you look closely but doesn’t have any boyfriends and constantly scares her omiai partners with fun biological facts, like fish mating habits. [Really, I can’t tell why they were so freaked out but whatever.] She meets Ryosuke Akiba who proves to be carrier of the ES gene. When he realizes that he’s been found, Akiba tries to alter Mine’s memory but is unable to do so since she is one of those “dense people” (read as someone who’s minds is not easily altered). So he enrolls in her research departments and spills the beans on his true nature. Akiba’s real name is ES00 or "Shuro", named after the palm leaves in the bible. In Catholicism, a cross applied to the forehead with the ashes of shuro leaves a sign of repentance. He broke out of the lab where he was born after a great fire. Shuro doesn’t really care for people and can barely tell what is right or wrong. But, needless to say, all of that will chance after he enters the influence of out female lead. The real Akiba Ryosuke was a kid that died in a car accident leaving his grandfather grieving. ES00 decided it would be easy to assume his identity for his own purpose. Now Shuro was brought up by the scientists as a regular kid or so they thought. Since he could read their mind, he knew that they didn’t really care for him and only wanted to study him. Thus his altered perception of worth and love. And since ES00 was so perfect, the National Hygienic Laboratory couldn’t risk anything happening to their perfect sample and decided to clone Shuro and dissect the clone to see what makes it tick. After several attempts, nearly 10 years after the original ES was made; they finally obtained ES01 or Izaku. His name too comes from the Bible: in the Old Testament, Abraham offers his son, Isaac, as a sacrifice to God and like his namesake Izaku too was born to be sacrificed. Izaku wasn’t meant to come in contact with the world outside the mechanical womb that held him in order to avoid the "rise of sentience" but again, he read the minds of all the scientists. When he managed to escape, he started a killing spree and eventually went into the world applying a childish sense of justice. Now it’s up to Mine and Akiba to stop him before he kills everyone.

Good God, where should I start with the praise?!

Well, as good as place as any is the ABSOLUTE THRILL you will get from reading this. Heck I was on the edge of my chair and – although I am somewhat ashamed to say it – had to stop for a breather from time to time. The way some minds work is just so creepy. Not to mention that Soryo portrays the amorality of children in a terrifying way: when explained, Izaku’s crimes seem almost justified and his reasoning almost without fault. Combine that with the strength of his power and you’ve got one of those killers that make you seem helpless and utterly terrified. The tension is almost always on, which I must admit is sometimes tiring, but you’ll definitely get a chill down your spine when you recollect what you’ve read. Still, the author’s greatest achievement is scaring the life out of the readers not by supernatural happenings, but by regular events and reasoning.

Make no mistake – you have to be into thinking type manga to fully enjoy ES since it’s psychological almost to the core (except those few moments of full fledged gore). Both protagonists are well rounded highly, intelligent and a little dense in their own way. The dialogs are a joy to read: smart ideas without any sense of over thinking, short lines that go straight to the point and accessible language. No silliness what so ever. In my connoisseurs’ experience few authors can do this level of intricacy without bombarding the reader with enormously tiresome paragraphs that leave us, the fans, wondering if we really get what’s going on. Not to mention that this makes everything so dynamic.

The art is pretty ok: clean lines, no weird paneling. The thing I liked best about it was the subtle show of emotion Soryo gives her character – absolute genius! These guys express emotion just like every other person in the world, not over the board but full of feeling. However, sometimes, the characters seem to have a blank expression that can be quite puzzling but you’ll learn to love it. You get to enjoy most events in this manga without having your intelligence insulted by an abundance of weird sound effects that would have only crowded the page. Thus enjoinment is based solely on your perception of things and what your own feelings are on the subject.

Truly, the only thing that still surprises me is the lack of a serious, raging fan base. C’mon people, stories this good don’t come along every day, ya know?

Therefore go get it this instant because if not, you’re going to miss out on one of the best manga out there. ES doesn’t have busty gorgeous women, no epic battles of tensioned romance j-dorama style; just a pack of chilly thrills and intellectually refined dialogs. It definitely gives most titles out there a run for their money.
My only advice on the subject is to get all the volumes at once because if not, you’re going to give yourself a kick in the behind for not spending a little extra in order to be able to enjoy such a great story.

At one point I didn’t think I’d ever read a manga that I would enjoy more than Death Note but now I know better.

Until next time, this is L signing off.

P.S Did I mention that the characters are absolutely gorgeous? Well they are.

Great Teacher Onizuka

noreply@blogger.com (L) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 10:02:00 +0000

Hello everyone! Exams are over and though I had a slight 0.4 drop from my straight A average I won’t be going to reassessments. That means I’m officially free for the summer.

Given the recent release from school duties I figured it would be only suitable to take a peak at Great Teacher Onizuka [“officially abbreviated GTO”] the (only) acclaimed work of Tooru Fujisawa. Contrary to my latest practices GTO is 25 volumes long and spanning a mind boggling 200 chapters. I don’t really read such long manga anymore but i kept on going and got through this one.

The main character, around which all revolve, is Eikichi Onizuka, graduate of a fifth-rate university, bleach haired, former bōsōzoku, 22 years old and still a virgin. I’m just going to say it out right, he’s an exaggerated kind of character but a kind hearted one. Initially he had nothing better to do that look up girls’ skirts at a mall when he kind of gets picked up by a high school student. When they reach a love hotel her boyfriend pops up and he’s also her teacher. However he’s short, bald, wears glasses and whatnot so in comparison to Onizuka he’s not really a catch. But he has such a power over this girl that she jumps out the window even though they were at the second story (I think). And that’s how Onizuka decides he’s going to become the world’s greatest teacher. He’s aiming at high school but he ends up teaching middle school. The story really kicks in when he’s assign as the home room teacher of class 3-4 at the Holy Forest Academy, kids who seem nice and all but drove 3 teachers to insanity through bullying. Up to the end Onizuka helps them, one by one, to solve their problems and wins them over with his straight forward attitude.

Now, to the praise of Fujisawa-sensei, all the students in the class are individualized. They each have their specific problems and complexes and are, almost each of them, treated to at least two chapters of one on one interaction with their home room teacher. Eventually, after most of the issues between the students are solved you get those classic school tales of festivals and trips Onizuka style. Due to the multitude of interesting characters present among said students, i’m not going into each and every one of them because if I do we’re never going to finish. Now don’t get me wrong, the students aren’t the only ones that are worth noticing. The other staff members at Holy Forest Academy are quite out of the ordinary, ranging from calm and calculated to down right perverted, used for comedic relief or just to creep you out.

Basically, up until now, the only reason (other than its length) why Ikind of avoided this series is because it sounds like the male version of Gokusen...or maybe Gokusen is the female version of GTO, Ireally don’t know. I can’t really comment on how Gokusen the manga is but I saw 3 seasons of the j-dorama so compared to those, GTO’s unchanging students are refreshing. I think at one point the author had doubts as to where to take the plot but I think he made the right decision. The first few chapters gave me the impression it was going to be just as segmented as the afore mentioned drama and it almost made me stop reading. But in the end I kept to it and I can’t really say I regret it.

Now when talking about this manga one word definitely pops up every second thought: exaggerated. For one, Eikichi’s entire character is exaggerated with a capital E. For one he’s ridiculously strong and is really REALLY die hard. I mean he makes Bruce Willis look like a kitty. Also, the fact that he manages to keep his job is amazing. Even if the director wanted someone to reach out and tame class 3-4 it’s not likely she would put up with all the things he does. The students don’t really fall short of exaggeration, making me go “C’MON!!” more often than I would have liked. I think Fujisawa’s the biggest mistake, credibility wise, is the fact that he made everyone a middle school student. Should they have been in high school it would have been a lot better. Kids that age wouldn’t have the knowledge, means or acquaintances these kids do. So, it’s a little far fetched.

The art is ok, nothing spectacular really. Pretty clean cut lines and every other panel is without a background but other than that Idoubt there’s much worth mentioning.

All in all, GTO is a sort of must read. After you’re done with it you’ll know how every other generic “ambitious teacher vs. bad students” series goes. It’s bit long but entertaining enough to keep you going if you can digest the pile of bratty attitude. Plenty of fan service (read as nudity and hits of S&M) to be had in these 200 chapters and I think I can say with some level of certainty that it’s mainly directed at boys.

Until next time, this is L signing off.

Mail

noreply@blogger.com (L) — Mon, 18 May 2009 15:30:00 +0000

Hello everyone! To be perfectly honest I wasn’t really planning on posting anything until the middle of June but it just so happens I have a little spare time and decided to do some typing...that and my back is absolutely killing me. I really have to figure out another way of learning, other than sitting on the floor.

That being said, I would like to bring to your attention Hosui Yamazaki’s Mail. Now mister Yamazaki is no stranger to our little blog since he has been previously mentioned when I wrote about The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service (KCDS) by Otsuka-sensei. Even though he now works on illustrating Otsuka’s manga, before that he wrote and drew a short series called Mail. Currently it’s published by Dark Horse Comics, the same company that publishes KCDS.

The leading man here is Renji Akiba who seems to be your average trench wearing detective. Then again, looks just might be deceiving since Akiba only investigates the dead. This mister has a theory about nearly all those weird moments we experience in life, all of said theories involving at least one dead person. So, when people unwillingly encounter a ghost, Akiba comes to the rescue and, using his special dead killing gun Kagutsuchi (“the tool between God and earth”), fights off any malevolent spirit while chanting a custom prayer. Of course, he’s a complete gentleman and always calls or writes first so the innocent protagonists, as in the ones that are still alive, get their fair share of horror and despair while waiting for Renji Akiba in shining armor.

This manga is unfortunately made out of chapter long stories. Really, it’s just our detective solving unnatural phenomenon caused by vengeful ghosts. Aside from him, I think we can put together the collective character of regular people that just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Most of them seem like genuinely normal, down to earth people who, a little to my delight, are skeptic about what’s happening until they get dragged into a wall or possessed or...well you get the picture.

The story, being so fragmented, may not be everyone’s cup of tea. I wouldn’t exactly call it a weakness though. I mean it’s a good short read, which is what I think Yamazaki-sensei intended, so all you have to do is finish the chapter and then mind the stuff you should be doing, without something itching in the back of your brain asking you to pick it up again. Hmm...Maybe that didn’t really come out right. It’s not that it’s not interesting, but rather it’s just something that can wait until your work is done.

Still, if you take every short story by itself, there’s great value in all of them. Sometimes you get the feeling that you’ve seen the setting and the “regular turning macabre” somewhere before but every little page still manages to send shivers down your spine. If there is one thing that Yamazaki knows best, that’s pacing. All the tension peaks at exactly the right moment and that’s mister Akiba’s queue to swoosh in and coolly deliver his holy bullet and catchphrase. Therefore, it’s no understatement that the grim psychology gets you coming back for more even with all the familiar surroundings.

Other than some pretty nifty storytelling, you also get the wonderful art, all in one package. I’ve been a fan of his drawing style ever since I picked up KCDS: nothing like a good, clean cut line to make a child look really spooky. Also worth the mention is the killer perspective Hosui pulls out of his hat! Absolutely amazing! It doesn’t matter if it’s one page or a full fledged two page spread, the perspective adds so much to the story and the atmosphere it’s almost crazy.

Since both KDCS and Mail are published by Dark Horse their external package also looks the same: the anti-glossy cardboard cover, rugged pages and shrink wrap cause, you know, too much violence for little kids. What does differ is the cover art, which in my opinion isn’t worth the money. When you see it you really don’t want to pick it up. So yeah, Dark Horse could have gone with some more appealing art.

All in all, a quick chilly read, perfect for those who want quality macabre on the go.

Until next time, whenever that might be, this is L signing off.

Ouran High School Host Club

noreply@blogger.com (L) — Fri, 01 May 2009 18:16:00 +0000

Hello everyone! We are currently pressed by time so let’s get to it!

Now Ourah High School Host Club is a manga made by Bisco Hatori. It’s currently still ongoing in Japan but it was adapted into an anime that covers the first 9 volumes.

I was really excited when I started to see the anime. It’s about Fujioka Haruhi, a common girl that is very smart and attends the prestigious Ouran High School as a scholarship student. Due to circumstances she’s forced to pretend to be a boy and is forcefully admitted in the Host Club. Needless to say this is an inverse harem anime. I thought the level of conspicuity with which the other host club members are built was rather refreshing at the time. They sure do lay it out clear for everyone. Basically the plot follows the members of the Host Club receiving and entertaining guests, usually girls with a lot of time and money. The characters are really the frosting on the cake for me, or at least they were.

Tamaki Suou is the Prince type and the King of the host club. Almost 80% of the guests that come to the club request that they are entertained by Tamaki. His personality is a little over the top: he is very passionate about things he like and generally oblivious to his surroundings. Even with his goofy self, he’s actually pretty smart and always ranks second in his class. Even though he comes from a rich family his troubled early life made its mark. Tamaki, after meeting Haruhi, becomes obsessed with the commoner way of living: he likes ramen, enjoys sitting at a kotatsu and other such things.

Kyouya Ootori is the Cool type [and my personal favourite] as well as a guy version Megane character. Given my extensive knowledge in the field of anime and manga, the presence of his glasses announced early on that he is the intelligent type and so it is. He always ranks first in his class and is in charge of the financial matter concerning the host club as well as management. Other members refer to him as the Shadow King because he can manipulate Tamaki into making decisions and thinking they were his own. Although he is just the third son of a wealthy family, he has an ambition to inherit his father’s business. Even though Kyouya and Tamaki are rather different in personalities they are good friends.

Hikaru and Kaoru Hitachiin [second in my list of preferences] are identical twins and for a long time no one could tell them apart. Eventually Haruhi came along and she was the first person to be able to recognize them for who they were. In just about everything I have read about Ouran, as well as the anime/manga itself, they are described as being the Little Devil type though, in my personal opinion the Mischievous type would have sufficed. That being says they like to play games on everyone, but especially Tamaki since “he has the kind of innocence you want to tease”, and are easily bored. Even though they are twins they start to develop in different directions further on in the story and actually start making an effort to get people to tell them apart.

Mitsukuni “Honey” Haninozuka is the Loli-shota character... I can’t really relate to that but whatever. He’s 18 years old but like 1,53 m tall and eats cake all day. Honey sempai also has a soft spot for his stuffed bunny, called Usa-chan [I actually named my computer after it] that his grandma made for him. He comes from a long line of men who need to be martial arts experts and he is very strong. Even with his childish nature, out of the entire cast, other than Kyouya, he’s the most insightful of them all. What relieves me, really, is that Bisco-sensei doesn’t have a thing for shota because at the smalles hint of Haruhi x Honey I would have ran for shelter and spiritual healing.

However, small hints are thrown in that direction in regards to Takashi Morinozuka (funny how their names are so similar). He’s the tall, dark and handsome type a.k.a. the Stoic type. A man of great kindness and of few words, Takashi has a soft spot for animals and Mitsukuni. In fact he’s the only one that calls Honey by his first name. Apparently Takashi’s family has always been a sort of bodyguard to Honey’s family so they never separate. Takashi is also very good at kendo. Although he is generally rather insightful himself he oftern makes mistakes in judging others, such as underestimating Honey’s love for cake.

Other characters make apperances and are rather fun to watch but I’m going to let you see who, how and why.

Now I promised myself that I would not write a post on anything ongoing anymore due to me living under the impression that things might change for the better. Yeah, sometimes I’m a sucker for optimism. But here I am breaking my promise and taking up the issue of the so discussed Host Club. I remember when I was back in high school, the week before junior year started I discovered the anime version of Ouran. Albeit I was still under the influence of Hana Kimi I still loved it so much. Thinking back to that time always gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling. This was something I had never seen before: it was funny, it was satirical, it was interesting, it wasn’t mushy AND it was an inverse harem style anime with cute guys. C’mon, how often do you see inverse harem animes that aren’t mushy? Seriously? Needless to say I devoured the anime and loved every moment of it. So basicaly I had a very good impression of it. Few years later...as in this year, I discovered the manga and thought why not? So I took it from the begining. The first 9 volumes are just what the anime covers plus a few extras. Obviously I enjoyed that too. But reading further on, it started to disappoint me. It’s getting mushier by the page for Christ sake! Much to my disappointment Ouran is also turning in to a regular romantic comedy manga. Not to mention that I hate where it’s going. It’s like Special A with Hikari being the only girl and the rest of the gang being guys.

And Haruhi... I am disappointed beyond words with how Bisco sensei absolutely butchered her character. What happened to how she was in the beginning? That’s what I liked: she was the only female character that I could totally name off the top of my head that wasn’t built under the careful guidance of the Japanese Yamato Nadeshiko stereotype. I thought, and so it was announced by the first volumes, that Ouran would be a manga that would make fun of other manga written for silly girls. Every single character was built by stereotypes, hell it even says so in the manga and anime. So why did they have to be spoiled by falling in love? Don’t get me wrong, I go for romantic things just as often as is acceptable by reason but I also think people should stand by their ambitions and personalities. That being said, it’s painful to see a whole bunch of characters trying to “grow” in various ways. And oh boy do they grow awkward.

At the very beginning I thought it was great, over the top, exaggerated even. It was funny and cute; it had potential but played it safe. Somehow I wish I hadn’t picked up the manga. Now I think poorly of what seemed to be so great. Eventually a bunch of inverse harem mangas like this popped up and not many of them are worth mentioning originality wise. I realize every genre has it’s limitations but surely not all creativity is lost.

So people, if you want funny, cute with a pinch of romantic, pick up the anime or the first 9 volumes of the manga but please stop there.

Until next time, this is L signing off.

Miscellaneous topics

I’ve been wondering, why do they call them inverse harem? A harem consisting of boys is a serai so why can’t they just call it serai anime? There are so many weird words in the anime culture that are made up so why can’t we use a real word every now and then?

Anyways, the bad news is what I like to call School Training of Hell started. Meaning it’s T minus 3 weeks until exams start. My schedule is as full as hell and I can only hope to pull through with a quarter of my little grey cells still intact. So, as sorry I am to say it, no more posts till the middle of June.

Happy Easter

noreply@blogger.com (L) — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 14:33:00 +0000

Happy Easter everyone!! Have a nice day with your loved ones and we'll see each other next week!

L

Goth

noreply@blogger.com (L) — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 10:25:00 +0000

Good day to you all! How are you? I’m getting a little busy because there’s only one month left until summer exams start and I’m really getting nervous.

Anyhow, I still had some time to check out Otsu-ichi’s Goth. Now that I did read it I really feel like I should have gone for the novel instead of the manga adaptation. But due to the nature of the blog (among other things) I don’t think that was much of a choice. Now Ostu-ichi got Kenji Oiwa to do the art for the manga adaptation and I think it was a pretty good choice. Oiwa-sensei also did the graphics for Welcome to the N.H.K and for one of his personal creations, Tsukumo Happy Soul, which ran from July to October 2003, in Kadokawa Shoten’s manga magazine, Shonen Ace.

So, the story follows two high school students who are fascinated by death and murders. The narrator is Itsuki Kamiyama, one of the lead characters. He is absolutely fascinated by his classmate Yoru Morino: her hair is long and dark, her skin is pale, she has a white scar on her wrist and her hands just make you want to chop them off ... or at least that’s what Itsuki initially wants. Lucky for him, Yoru attracts the weirdest people, killers mainly. So they’re all out to get her for one reason or another. Lucky for her, Itsuki also hang around her and manages to get her out of tight spots. So together they face criminals, one more quirky than the other.

The manga adaptation of the novel only has 4 cases of murder presented, eliminating one of the original arcs and combining another two.

I really really like the art. It makes me think it looks like CLAMP’s cleen cut lines meet Katsura Hoshino’s character design. Even so, I still have some complaints about the way Oiwa-sensei made Goth look. For one, he got really lazy when it comes to backgrounds. There are some pages that have as little as one background in 5 panels or more. I’m not saying he should have wasted tones of ink on it but there’s only so much blank I can take without making a complaint. Now in the very last chapter, for about half it’s span, you can’t tell if it’s Itsuki standing in front of Yoru or not. Eventually you think you have double vision, because the two male characters there seem to be one and the same and, given the recent development of the story, you just think Itsuki popped a twin. But alas, it’s just another classmate. Still those are perhaps the only two characters that you might have trouble distinguishing. The others don’t really look alike, but it’s not much of praise since there are fewer than 10 characters in total.

I was going to say Goth isn’t really good but maybe that’s a little unfair. For one, I didn’t actually read the novel so I can’t comment on how it is. However the manga adaptation, in my humble opinion, lacks closure. It would be a nice start though, for a series. The lead characters have potential, they’re twisted, hell this could turn out to be a good creepy story should it be continued. But since I don’t think it will, they kind of leave you in the middle of the corn field: no closure at all. I still have all these questions. On the bright side, there’s plenty of gore and creepy to go around the block. The killers in this story all find disturbing ways of killing/torturing their prey so thumbs up for that one. But, with the amount of disturbing manga out there, this feature alone isn’t enough to save Goth.

All in all, Goth’s a fast horror read and if you don’t have what to read or do you can pick it up. On the other hand, if you really want quality entertainment maybe it’s better to look somewhere else.

That’s all for now.
Until next time, this is L signing off.

P.S. It strikes me how I’m always so surprised when I look out my window in spring and everything is so green. Crude green. I always wait for the moment, trying to see it actually turn green but every spring it just hits me. One day, everything is dull, next day everything is green.

Parasyte

noreply@blogger.com (L) — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 21:58:00 +0000

Right, so I ended reading Hitoshi Iwaaki’s Kiseijuu, which translates into English as Parasyte. Beats me why they added the “y”. Really, the only reason I read it is because I had some spare time and the title just kept on ubiquitously popping up at every darn “similar manga” list I ever read. So I figured “what the hey”, how bad can it be?

So the story starts on Earth with a little alien invasion. Snake-like aliens invade people’s homes and take over their brain. Afterwards they mutate a little and start to eat people. The main character is a high school student, Shinichi Izumi who, as per usual, is your average Joe. An alien tries to infiltrate his head and take over his brain but misses the mark and winds up taking over his right hand. Eventually, the two start to talk and Shinichi names his new friend Migi (migi means right in Japanese). They fight other parasytes and try to stop the killing spree with many casualties along the way.

It’s a little hard for me to write about it since I didn’t really enjoy it. I mean it’s not bad, I’ve read worse, but I just didn’t get the satisfaction I thought I would. It may have something to do with me having various thoughts about public expenses in the back of my mind while reading it but still. Maybe I expected too much.

The characters could have saved the entire story if you ask me. Nothing like a well constructed no-cliché character to get you out of a bind... but no, none of those here. For example, the male lead, Shinichi (who’s name I thought to be Shinji up until the last 5 chapters) is lacking a spine for the most part. Also, his awkwardness around people, due to lack of social skills really got to me. From what I’ve read the author wanted to make one of those sensitive but courageous characters that eventually toughens up. I didn’t particularly find his character’s development credible so needless to say he’s no exactly on my favorite list. This dude also suffers from the very well known Japanese disease of not being able to convey thoughts through words. He’s not particularly smart or hard working either, though he wants to come across as such. In spite of all these he is endlessly followed around (a little on the verge of stalking) by Satomi Murano, a girl from his class. Gah she annoys me to no end. She represents the prototype of the girl that awaits her knight in shining armor until he changes in exactly what she wants him to be. Basically until Shinichi proved he’s sensitive and what not she wouldn’t really accept him. Ironically, I would have though this goes against how Japanese see things in relationships. You know, the whole guys have to be strong and cool part. Moving on. The only character I did like was Migi. He was the only one with a brain and that staid true to his nature all the way. As for the other parasytes, most of them were unilateral, following the eat-eat-eat pattern. One made an exception but I’m not going to go into that.

The art doesn’t do much for the manga either. The original run was from 1990 to 1995 in one of Kodansha’s magazines so everything reflects how things were then, on the verge of the boom, before we had “the industry”. Everyone pretty much looks the same, but with a different haircut. An interesting point is how masculine everyone seems. Even the girls, compared to today’s standards they come across as not very feminine. You don’t see the inventive hairdo’s you see in today’s shoujo* manga and the facial features are rather dubious. As for makeup I doubt it was ever in the plan for the girls. But then again this is an early shounen* series so I can understand why the author didn’t really give this aspect too much importance. Some backgrounds are kind of plain as well.

As for the action, it has its ups and downs. There are a lot of chapters that show Shinichi just interacting with friends at school, with Satomi, with his dad so on and so forth. They’re generally very slow paced. Still, these parts contrast with the many fight scenes presented where you have limbs and/or other body parts changing shape and consistency. Of course, the package includes a fair share of blood and flesh flying left and right.

Much to my surprise, the story actually debuted really well. The first few pages actually got me thinking “Wow, this is going to be one of those super cool, psychological, supernatural manga that really stay with you.” I spoke to soon however. The beginning was too promising for what was to come.

All in all, Parasyte is your regular quest like shounen* flick made in the beginning of the manga phenomenon. If you’re looking for more, look somewhere else.

Until next time, this is L signing off.

*see Common words

Densha Otoko

noreply@blogger.com (L) — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 22:07:00 +0000

Hello there! It’s 23:21 but I’m just too excited to go to bed without writing this. To be completely frank it’s been a very rough day. In the evening I decided to finish a series I started some time before but didn’t get the change to enjoy: Densha Otoko.

The plot revolves around a young man who is an Akihabara geek. One day on the train, he saves the lady standing next to him from a drunk. As a thank-you gift he receives from the woman two Hermes cups. He really wants a girlfriend but is certain that in his current state (long hair, geeky outfit, and dorky glasses) he won’t be able to win her over. He goes on 2ch to seek for help and writes on a daily basis about his relation with this woman. Because he writes his posts as Densha Otoko (Train_man) we know him only as Densha and his female companion is known only as Hermes. The entire 2ch community comes together to help Densha win Hermes over.

Wonderful! Simply wonderful on so many levels!!

I absolutely LOVE how the manga was conceived! Hidenori Hara is a freaking genius! The story is presented as a series of anonymous posts on the largest forum out there. No names are ever mentioned so you don’t really have to remember much. Though, much to my delight, we see the lovely reactions of everyone reading the Densha thread. They are random people really and come from very different social backgrounds: otaku, salary men, house wives, call girls, old geezers, yakuza, and just regular people. Though they may be regarded as a sort of collective character, they are a delight to watch. The very idea of finding support from strangers that don’t know who you are and who don’t expect anything in return, seeing them root (“rah! rah! D-E-N-S-H-A!!”) so honestly for someone just brings a smile on my face. To be completely honest, I think I like these guys better than I like Densha and Hermes.

Because it was thought as a series of forum posts, Densha Otoko absolutely filled with emoticons and Shift_JIS art. Every single mood is matched with such an expressive emoticon that it makes me wonder just how inventive some people are.

Everyone in this manga seems so realistic for me, because I myself do a lot of the stuff that is presented. Making the same face as an emoticon, jumping out of you chair when you see something you like, covering your face when your heart throbs and just screaming “WOOOOT!!!” when the jackpot was hit, these are the things that really strike me as life like. Yeah, you must wonder what my neighbors think of me. Even the art, which isn’t very modern, makes them seem more real. There are no bishounen or such, everyone is regular and divers.

Another nice thing about this is that we can see how our words affect other people. For example Densha writes about his fears and asks for advice. After a while, he become more confident, changes and gets the girl that he likes. But the thread remains on the internet and as more people read it, we see that more people try to change themselves, to improve themselves. Ironically, he who was in search of inspiration ends up inspiring others.

But really now, what I think I like most about this manga, aside from the great humor, is it’s view on people. We can all relate to some hardship in live or love and we all have it in ourselves to give a helping hand when we can. Because the characters come from such different backgrounds, everyone has a different view on love but in the end, love is in all of them. Young or old, they root not necessarily for Densha Otoko, but rather for the very idea that people should be in love. Bottom line, in the face of life’s most basic needs, we are all equal. The fact that no names are used makes it even more evident that they are stereotypical people, if there is such a thing. Though the current means of communication have should bring people together we find it ever so often that we are in fact secluded from others. But every now and then, miracles happen.

If you ask me, his is a great story. It’s soft, funny, shy, entertaining and just worth every penny you pay for it. I recommend it to anyone who likes a good romance comedy.

Until next time, this is L signing off.

p.s. Never before have I wanted to go and lurk on a forum in the event that something quite like this will happen.

Akira

noreply@blogger.com (L) — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 20:54:00 +0000

I recently watched Akira the movie. To be completely truthful I had it for quite some time now but never got around to checking it out. Really, the only reason I watched it was because at one point everyone was talking about it. I’m pretty stubborn and I must admit there are a number of shows I haven’t watched simply because they’re so popular. Yeah, maybe I should get over that. Anyway, I seem to be in a bit of a bind really since the 2,182-page manga that the movie was based on is still a mystery to me...just the thought of 2,182 pages kind of puts me off.

So the story goes something like this. The whole thing is set in 2019 (hehe that’s pretty close come to think of it) in a cyberpunk version of Japan’s capital called Neo-Tokyo. We meet Shotaro Kaneda, a young gang leader with a thing for red and his custom bike. On the back of his jacket there is a picture of a capsule, which refers to the fact that the gang is called The Capsules, though this is not mentioned in the movie. While Kaneda is the protagonist his friend and gang team mate, Tetsuo Shima, is the antagonist. While chasing a rival biker gang, Tetsuo runs into one of the Espers, namely Takashi (Number 26), and has an accident. The Espers are three children that have the proportions normal to their age but look like old people due to the tests that were ran on them. Also they have special abilities like precognition, teleportation and psycho kinesis. After the accident Takashi and Tetsuo are taken away and Tetsuo himself become the subject of many tests. In the end he gains special powers similar to the Espers. With his new strength he tries to rule over Neo-Tokyo, killing anyone who tries to stop him, including old team mates with whom he didn’t get along with. Kaneda joins forces with the three Espers and another resistance member, Kai in trying to stop his friend.

Well, there are a few things that bother me. Notice how the movie is called Akira, yet he only makes a brief appearance at the very end? I didn’t really appreciate that. I understand that for the sake of people recognizing what manga the movie is based on they figured it should be called Akira and that you simply cannot put 2000+ pages into 125 minutes of run time but c’mon. If it were called Kaneda or Tetsuo or Kaneda vs. Tetsuo or something else along those lines I’m sure it would still ring a bell. Maybe it’s just me.

Now, I read that Akira is considered one of the greatest animation films ever made. I don’t want to insult anyone who seconds that but really, it’s debatable. Basically this movie set the tone for the anime fan wave that struck the West back in the ‘90s. The story is pretty good if you really think about it. A lot of authors are still playing the post apocalyptic card quite well even now. For what it’s worth, I totally and absolutely recognize its merits. It sure set some standards for the future: lip synched dialog, the entire face was redrawn, details left and right, fluid animation. Now mind you, we young people got used to a heck of a lot eye candy so what I said just now may not be very impressive but Akira the movie was made in 1988. 1988!! I wasn’t even born then. With the limited resources were available at that time, Katsuhiro Omoto (a.k.a. the director) did an impressive job.

Character wise, it’s not so impressive. They’re all pretty one sided from my point of view. Not much development in anyone.
I tried in vain to break away from what I believe is me being biased. Even though I think that Akira has done a lot for the anime world at that time, I still can’t call it one of the greatest animated movies of ALL time. Detailed? Sure it is. But it totally fades in comparison to the few minutes of moving parade presented in Mamoru Oishii’s Ghost in the Shell: Innocence, which, may I add, is one of the most impressive, detailed, and all around incredible scenes I have ever laid eyes on. Deep? Philosophical? Of course it is. But hey, since then we all got to see Neon Genesis Evangelion (series plus movies) which I can safely call a bucket’o’philosophy.

Is Akira a milestone? You bet your favorite beverage it is! Has it been outdone? Most certainly, and thank God for that.

I admit I was very very biased today. I’m sure there are a lot of people out there who don’t agree with me but I’m only stating an opinion here.

Until next time, this is L signing off.

NOiSE

noreply@blogger.com (L) — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 10:05:00 +0000

Hello everyone! The first week of school has ended; new teachers are great (except the Public Finances one, which is a little up tight) and the new Japanese teacher finally arrived! I really have to practice more before I go to her course. Oh well, let’s get down to business.

As I mentioned before I might be in a bit of a cyberpunk phase. I’ve given a lot of thought to what I should present to you guys (i.e. what I can present in a way that will do it justice) and I came to the conclusion that the best choice would be Nihei Tsutomu’s NOiSE.

Since it’s the first time I mention Nihei-sensei I think I should say a thing or two about him (and also because this is most likely not his last work I will talk about). Needless to say his work is cyberpunkish and, from what I’ve read he has a very strong fan base (some would call it cult like fan base). He studied architecture and it definitely shows. As far as I’ve seen most of his mangas are black and white so no color eye candy for anyone.

NOiSE is set in a post-apocalyptic city and follows the actions of Susono Musubi, a young police officer who, along with her partner Clawsa, investigates the brutal murder of a gang of drug dealers as well as a series of strange kidnaps. They find the bodies of several children. Susono stays behind to see if any are still alive while Clawsa goes in other rooms to search for the suspects. At that point, someone kidnaps Clawsa. While the investigation of his disappearance is undergoing, Susono is prohibited from using her weapon. She buys a strange sword from a local weapons dealer and discovers her partner’s body. Unfortunately, she was too late, as The Order, summoning the power of the net chaos, transforms Clawsa into a Silicone creature. On the other hand, the Safeguards which were designed to protect people who access the Net Sphere began to kill anyone who does not have Net Terminal Genes (implants). Susono’s body is destroyed but it’s reconstructed on a silicone basis. The Safeguards want her to join them but they don’t have her adhesion. The last pages present Musubi’s thoughts: she couldn’t stop The Order, metal was brought to the city and it grew so much that, at one point, it incorporated the moon. The Silicone creatures continue their parasitic existence in what is now called The City and she has not seen a human being in more than 100 years. The end is obviously an open one, which is probably why Blame! fits in so naturally with its prequel.

Now since NOiSE came first, there are a lot of structures and concepts that are later used in Blame. For one, the Net Sphere. It seems to be some sort of integrated internet system available to everyone and protected by the Safeguards. However, due to human will or error, instead of keeping the ones without net implants out, they started killing them. Second of all, the Silicone creatures made by The Order make a lively come back in Nihei’s later work. Their shape changes a lot over the volumes but it is worth mentioning that the very first Silicone creatures that were made look more like agents of the Governing Agency from Blame!. The sword that Susono finds is actually a less powerful Gravitational Beam Emitter (weapon used by the protagonist of Blame). Still what I find interesting is that even before the unorganized growth of The City, is was still a mess. So no explanation is given as to how it ended up like that.

Now what I think is a delight to see is the way Nihei makes his backgrounds: crazy detail. And contrary to my usual practice I will give a sample from NOiSE (even though in my opinion the double-pages, background only views from Blame! are far more impressive).

The architecture changes along the way but to be completely honest, it doesn’t change the mood one bit. It’s sort of creepy all along the way but then again it is what we came for. The character design changes a bit along the way but realism is what the author goes for. His entire work in engulfed in pencil marks: from cracks in the buildings to wrinkles on people’s faces, it’s pencil like marks all the way.

Having read NOiSE, Blame!, Blame!2 and other related work like NSE: Net Sphere Engineer I can say without the shadow of a doubt that a lot of work goes into everything that has the Nihei label on it. When you pick up something made by him you’re not going to get some incomplete, no background paneled, cliché manga that you just want to burn in despair. I am truly amazed at how much work he put into creating the universe of NOiSE and Blame!. In fact, the complexity of it all makes it a little hard to follow if you read it when you’re tired but, since NOiSE is a one volume manga you shouldn’t have any such problems.

Still, as an avid manga and anime consumer, in my opinion, he’s work it kind of niche. The theme is definitely unique however it may not be the best thing to pick up too early on in your manga consumption. I give this advice since when I first started reading Blame! I only made it to the 3rd or 4th volume out of ten. Later on, becoming interested in it and having a little more experience with reading and appreciating manga, I found it enjoyable and didn’t want to stop reading it.

All in all, if you like cyberpunk themes sprinkled with a little quest-like atmosphere, don’t mind a little gore here there then this is the thing for you. However, if you’re just a rookie put Nihei-sensei’s work down and try something else or you won’t do it justice!

Until next time, this is L signing off.

Wonderful Days

noreply@blogger.com (L) — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 08:20:00 +0000

Hello everyone! Exams are over so that means we’re back in business.

I find myself in a cyberpunk ("high tech, low life") phase so please bear with me as we take a stroll down this lane. I know it’s not my usual cup of tea but hey, we all need some change every now and then. To be completely honest, I had a few concerns in regards to Wonderful Days, since it may not exactly be anime, but I think you’re going to love it none the less.

Wonderful Days (known in some parts as Sky Blue) is a South Korean animated film, released in 2003. The person behind it is Kim Moon-saeng who wrote and produced it. And what a movie he made!

The action takes place on Earth in the year 2140 when the world is heavily polluted: the sky is always grey and the sun never shines. Society is divided in two types of individuals: people who live in the magnificent pollution sustained city Ecoban and people who live in the wasteland outside, Marr. Ecoban is powered by generators that use the Delos system to turn pollution into energy. Since the Earth is starting to recover from the pollution, the government in Ecoban decides to pollute it even more, in order to protect their city. However this would mean killing more people and making the outskirts of the city almost uninhabitable. Even though Marrians outnumber the people living in Ecoban ten to one, they are used pretty much as slaves.
The story follows three old friends, who spent their childhood in Ecoban and meet now, after many years. Jay is a female captain in the Ecoban guard system, who is starting to doubt that she is fighting on the right side. Cade is a security commander and deeply in love with Jay. And last but not least, Shua, who was cast out of Ecoban as a child. Shua joined forces with Dr. Noah, the one who made the Delos system and who now wants to destroy Ecoban. In order to show his kid brother, Woody, a blue sky, Shua infiltrates the security Ecoban system in order to steal information. There he meets Jay who, more or less helps him escape the other guards. The two meet afterwards in Marr and they reestablish their friendship and start to fall in love. When Cade finds out that his old rival in back in the game he tries to push through the plan for more pollution. So the fight is on for the one they love and for their way of life.

Wonderful Days is a blend between the traditional 2D and computer generated 3D making it one big eye candy. The realness of the movie is also supported by the visual effects: animators played with focal points, depth of field not to mention camera movement. Also notable is that most action scenes objects like bullets, pieces of stuff fly in the direction of the audience. The entire movies is swamped with breathtaking animations and a wide range of colors and tones. I suppose it would be comparable to the Final Fantasy movies just with more color. Sound effects match the beauty of the art: from credible voice acting to the “vooom” sounds made by the machines. In the end, I say this with no reserve what so ever: Wonderful Days is wowing in every aspect of its art.

It’s a pretty good movie, if you ask me. I would recommend it to anyone who wants to enjoy a post-apocalyptic flick, which is gorgeous and educating at the same time.

That’s all for now.
Until next time, this is L signing off.

Winter exams

noreply@blogger.com (L) — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 08:27:00 +0000

Winter exams are just around the corner now and I really have to start cramming in advance. Therefor, no more posting until the 15th of February (most likely). Really sorry.

Horribly beautiful – Junji Ito’s view on beauty

noreply@blogger.com (L) — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 12:14:00 +0000

Hello everyone! Unlike other times, today I’m not going to review a manga or anime, but rather talk about how Junji Ito sees beauty, especially in women. Unfortunately this post will contain references to some of his work that I haven’t presented to you, like the collection of 6 stories Flesh Colored Horror (I will make reference to Long Hair in the Attic, Dying Young and Flesh Colored Horror), Tomie but also stuff that I have talked about (Uzumaki and Gyo). For the sake of discussion I’m going to very shortly present what the other stories are about.

Tomie is about an absolutely gorgeous girl who enchants every boy she meets. However they become so obsessed with her that they always end up trying to kill her – and most of them succeed. But Tomie always comes back from the dead. Having super natural regeneration powers and a sadistic taste she haunts her friend who desperately tries to save the boy she likes.

Long Hair in the Attic is a short story about a girl that gets dumped by her boyfriend. She has very long and beautiful hair that she grew on her ex-boyfriend’s request. Now that they split she figures she might as well cut it. But the hair has a will of its own. It severs the head of the girl and hides (along with the head) in the attic, eventually escaping in order to punish the ungrateful man that dumped her.

Dying Young is about how beauty affects girls’ high school life. Ugly girls suddenly started to get very pretty. They weren’t doing anything special but just started getting prettier. Their beauty was kind of anemic and eventually they girls started dying. Specialists said it was probably an end of century disease. The horrible part is that a rumor started: if you kill a girl you age in the 3rd Friday of the month you won’t die.

Last but not least Flesh Colored Horror – a story hat I guess could be summarized as beauty is in the eye of the beholder. A mother tortures her son in trying to reveal his true beauty. She has a formula that separates the body from the skin, leaving only muscles and tendons visible. She and her sister both used it and now wear their skin simply as a dress.

All that being said let’s get to the main part. The first thing I noticed was the fact that Junji Ito doesn’t really like long hair. Although girls that have long hair are generally considered more attractive than girls that have short hair, Ito’s work shows long hair as a sign of abnormality, of evil. All of the heroines have short hair or get it shortened later on. In a way, that would mean sacrificing their beauty for health or normality. In Uzumaki, Kirie has long hair in the beginning but that causes her to become the target of the spiral (making her long hair curl up in spirals). The hair grew longer and the spirals got bigger in order to attract attention from everyone – something that almost killed Kirie. When trying to cut it she (and her boyfriend) gets attacked. Also in Flesh Colored Horror, the school teacher – the kind and normal female lead – has long hair at the beginning but is forced to cut it. The fact that long hair brings bad luck is perhaps emphasized the most in Dying Young: the girls that were ugly but had long hair became pretty and died (some killing other girls in the process) while the one that had short hair remained ugly, sane and alive. In the same manner, the evil Tomie has long beautiful hair every time she comes back from the dead. Gyo’s female lead, Kaori has long hair and only cares about being beautiful, unlike her boyfriend, Tadashi who actually loves her for who she is. Apparently having long hair is also a sign of weakness in women – the case of Ms. Yoshiyama (Gyo) who is unable to stop her crazy boss from turning himself into a monster.

Another thing that pops out of Junji Ito’s work is the fact that beauty is only skin deep and also kind of evil. For example, Tomie has perfect skin and even a beauty mark under her right eye. But she once tries to revive from her lost blood and using a plastic sheet as skin. Also, when photographed, her true nature – that of a grotesque monster – is revealed and thus, sustaining once again the idea that what is pretty on the outside may be horribly ugly on the inside. Another aspect of beautiful skin is seen in Uzumaki. Kirie makes friends with beautiful girl named Azami. Apparently the source of her beauty was a scar on her forehead that has the power to hypnotize boys. Eventually that beauty mark turns into a spiral that eats her. Also, in Gyo, the female lead Kaori loses her mind after her skin breaks out in hives and becomes ugly. Flesh Colored Horror again presents this concept in a rather ironic way: the women who wanted to become extremely beautiful shed their skin unknowingly and become crazy or depressed because they are, in fact, ugly. In Long Hair in the Attic, although the female lead is beautiful on the outside, nothing shines from within and that’s why her boyfriend dumps her.

Ito-sensei also sees beauty as something opposing health. Each beautiful heroin lack some sort of health: the Dying Young characters are anemic (which leads to their death), Tomie is evil and not very stable psychically, Kirie, when she becomes beautiful it drains her life out of her but manages to escape by cutting her hair. In any way, beautiful women in Junji Ito’s mangas seem to lack a healthy nature.

The collective work of Ito’s work is a social satire. He makes fun of beautiful girls because they become wrapped in their external beauty, ignoring what is more important. But he also criticizes the men around them who only care about how they look. In most of the mangas the men end up killed, killing each other or losing their minds as a result of their pursuit of a lovely lady. Also shown in Ito’s work is the unjust view that seems to dominate society: ugly people are less than pretty people. All his pretty characters are possessive, self-centered and think they are entitled to almost everything. On the other hand, when it comes to how they treat the less attractive, I think several quotes from Dying Young explain everything “I’d rather die young and pretty than be ugly and old”, “An ugly girl like you should be the one dying”.

It’s interesting to see how an author that is known as a horror writer sees beauty and love as opposed to a mangaka who specializes in shoujo* or josei* manga. Usually, in those types of manga you see a girl who isn’t really ugly but rather has bad style and can easily become pretty. Ito has a very good point though: the sum of a person’s qualities is always equal. Those who own extraordinary beauty are more likely to have other flaws that will compensate for them having looks above the average. Thus people that look very good are portrait as being the odd one out.

I think this particular writer does a fantastic job at anticipating the progress of human thinking: Long Hair in the Attic originally appeared November 1988, Dying Young was first published in September 1991, Flesh Colored Horror in May 1994. Tomie, the work that is the most ironic regarding men and women’s behavior towards beauty was published even before 1988.

I hope you liked the fresh perspective you get from all these manga. After reading many girly manga (yes, contrary to popular believe, I do read my fair share of those too) this is a nice change.

Until next time, this is L signing off.

*see common words

Duds Hunt - The Network Survival Game

noreply@blogger.com (L) — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 20:55:00 +0000

Hello everyone! How are you? I’m doing ok; I can finally relax and wait for Christmas in peace. All this hassle with school has made me pretty tired.

Cutting right to the chase, today I’m presenting Tetsuya Tsutsui’s Duds Hunt – The Network Survival Game. Yep, it’s the same man who writes Manhole. So you can pretty much guess that this oneshot doesn’t fall far from the previous series. Again the author also does the art, something you easily notice due to his unique style.

Nakanishi, our main character (if we can really call him that) was into the “Old guys hunt” – guys walk around in packs and attack office men as they leave their work place. On one of his gang’s hits another salary man tried to stop him but Nakanishi ended up beating the day lights out of him while his young daughter listened on the phone. Due to the extensive injuries that man committed suicide to save his family from poverty (they could check in the life insurance). Nakanishi was caught by the police and sent to reformed school. Now he’s trying to make it as a clean cut office man, working for Hinata Life Insurance, a service that his boss also admits is a scam. Being from a reformed school it’s pretty hard to find a job so he has to put up with his boss bullying him. He has an internet buddy with whom he talks in order to relieve some stress. The two make jokes about their nicknames. Nakanishi calls himself K-boy because in his delinquent days his favorite weapon was a custom extendable baton (keibou) as for his internet companion, Eksam is the name they took because it’s the name of their dog.

Eksam tells Nakanishi that there is a game that might help him relieve stress: the Duds Hunt game. After sending the registration fee to a certain address you would receive a cell phone (called a marker), a PDA with a special GPS on it that shows the map and spots the markers (called a browser), credit cards and a seal under a false name. Now here’s how the game works. No one knows when and where the game starts but when it does you get a phone call. Someone tells you a location and, within 2 kilometers of that point is where the game is held. All you have to do is get the other players’ markers therefore “eliminating” them. For each marker you would get ¥100.000 (roughly $1000) and your own marker counts as well. Nakanishi has the time of his life “hunting the chicken” – one of the many strategies one could use - and making easy money each day. His violent past proves pretty useful in overcoming all sorts of situations. He quits his job and gets invited to the “Extra Game”. He thinks of it like a challenge but there is a certain someone he must run away from “like he was Death”. What will happen? Who is behind the Duds Hunt? Where does the money come from? Read and find out.

This is an ok manga if you have some time to kill. The idea behind it is somewhat laudable but it might not fit modern humanity standards. Still it makes a good basis for a crime/drama oneshot with a little irony here and there and an unexpected end.

The pace is pretty rapid with a lot of action happening. Needless to say the fight scenes are pretty detailed and bear Tsutsui-sensei’s personal style. But really, there is a great story behind all the blood.

The title is also befitting and I think anticipates to some extent the end. Since the game is called Duds Hunt it definitely make a reference to the quality and character of its players.

The characters are pretty simple. Nakanishi for example doesn’t really win the “Amazing Character Development” award since he jumps right back at his old habits given the opportunity. There are only two characters around which the story evolves really: Nakanishi and Eksam. Eksam, whom I will not name by his real name so I don’t spoil it for everyone, is actually the one that makes the wheels spin: he introduces his friend to the game; he also gives Nakanishi the opportunity to join the Extra Game speculating his violent nature. Other than that, there isn’t much to say about the characters. Interestingly enough a lot of social categories make an appearance in the manga: otaku, salary man, house wife, delinquent, school girl etc. Although simple, the characters fit the needs of the story.

A short manga with an intriguing plot behind it, one-sided characters and pretty realistic art – that’s how I’d summarize Duds Hunt. Probably not the best manga you’ll ever read, better that a lot of other creations out there but none the less worth a try if you have nothing to do.

That’s all fokls!
Until nest time, this is L signing off.

No time

noreply@blogger.com (L) — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 14:01:00 +0000

OK so as you probably figured out I haven't been writing anything lately. School is getting demanding and I have a partial exam, tests and projects that require my undivided attention. That being said, there won't be anything up for the next two weeks at least. I'm really sorry I didn't write this sooner to let you know. After I restart the writing I might change the update schedule but we'll see.

For those of you who don't know how the system works a partial exam is exactly what it sounds. You take an exam from half of the things that were taught and if you get a grade that you’re satisfied with you don’t need to be examined from those subject on the actual exam. At the end you have 2 grades: one from your partial and one from your exam and they add them and divide them by two in order to get the final grade.

So this week I have a Law partial exam. After that come the second Economical IT test and a test at Microeconomics, both of which I need to pass in order to be allowed to take the exam. Of course my goal is to get the highest grade possible, not just to pass. Also coming up is a project for Business Ethics and a presentation for Economical IT.

So that should give you a fair idea of why I’m not posting anything. But I’ll be back.

Until next time, this is L signing off.

Higurashi no Naku Koro ni

noreply@blogger.com (L) — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 20:32:00 +0000

Hello everyone, it’s me again! Happy Halloween!!

Now let’s get right to it people! Today I feel the need to present to you the first season of Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, known in North America as When They Cry (literally it would be translated as When Cicadas Cry). Yes, after the bunch of horror manga I wrote about I think it’s just about time I do a horror anime.

First of all this anime is based on a sound novel, produced by 07th Expansion and game with the same name. There have been two games released with 2 arcs but new story arcs are being made into manga format so there’s a bunch of related stuff just about everywhere.

Higurashi no Naku Koro ni takes place in 1983, in the fictional village of Hinamizawa, population 2000. Our main guy, Keiichi Maebara, moves there from the city and enrolls in the local school, which, because of its few students, teaches all the children regardless of age in the same classroom. There he meets and makes friends with Rena Ryuugu, Mion Sonozaki, Rika Furude and Satoko Hojo. They convince him to join “the club” and take part in their activities – card games, board games, hide and seek, water bottle fights etc. The village is quite, the neighbors are friendly, everything seems fine and dandy…but then again it always does. However, the eerie tranquility of the village is shattered by the approach of the Watanagashi Festival, a celebration organized in honor of the local god Oyashiro-sama. Keiichi finds out that for the past years, on the day of the Watanagashi Festival one person is brutally murdered and one goes missing. Keiichi gets himself in all kinds of trouble trying to find out the truth behind the murders. Is it the local god? Is it someone in the village? Each episode brings paranoia to him or one of his friends as the dark nature of rural Hinamizawa is uncovered.

The entire show is structured in arcs. So even if the first 3 episodes are an arc and someone is the killer, in the next episodes everything rewinds and takes a different course. However each episode reveals something about the characters’ past or present life which seems to remain true throughout the series. Its fragmented nature may be a bummer for some of us but the show is still very good and has some finality. And let’s face it; there was a large dose of creativity involved in its sick and twisted plot.

I think it is my duty to say that this anime is not for the faint hearted. You might have to have a slight preference for the brutal and the violent in order to fully enjoy When They Cry. Visual violence, blood – in various splatter patterns – and just all around freakiness is at every corner in this series. Nevertheless, the urge to find out just who is responsible for the murders kept me going through all the gore and mind twisting (but rather various) tortures that take place as the episodes unfold. The intense rhythm and the strong feelings that just pop out of the screen right at you had me on the edge of my seat for hours. Not to mention the violence! If you like seeing eyes being pulled out, people eating needles, people being forced to remove their own finger nails, people being tortured until they bleed to death and people being made to hear all that then there’s something in this show especially for you.

Given the nature of this show I think that the North American title, When They Cry, is absolutely genius! I don’t know who thought it up but it’s even better that the Japanese one. I think it has more relevance really - from the first minute you can pretty much guess what’s coming…or at least so you think.

Now Keiichi is just about your average Joe: he moves with his family to a new place, makes some friends, joins a school club, has friendly fun with little cute girls. He is actually the only normal one, with no hidden dark secrets, no bloody past. That’s why in the first episodes he’s a sure target for some torture. Even if at first there wasn’t much graphic violence the suspense was terrifying. The idea that someone is out to kill you and is first playing cat and mouse with you is enough to make anyone lose it. Throughout the series he tries to protect his friends (when they’re not out to get him) and, at the end of the day, just make it out alive.

Rena Ryuugu is very close to Keiichi and plays the moe character more than anyone. She likes to go to the dump yard and take things that she thinks are cute. Sure, every now and then she hides body parts there but nothing out of the ordinary for the local school girls. She is one of the first ones to go berserker and tries to whack Keiichi for snooping around, seconded by Mion.

Mion Sonozaki is a tomboy who appears to be the leader of the club. Even though she acts tough she has a soft side that she keeps hidden. The thing that intrigues me the most is the fact that she always carries around a gun but no one seems to find that out of the ordinary. She’s the oldest daughter of the local mob clan and she must obey what they say, no matter how painful it is. She has a twin sister, Shion, who looks exactly like her so they’re able to switch places and no one can tell the difference. Shion is the crazy one, really, but her sister isn’t really the most normal person out there.

Satoko Hojo is a girl younger than Keiichi but she’s clever and ambitious at winning the games they play at the club. Even though she’s very cheerful her past is rather traumatic and that sometimes shows. She has a brother, Satoshi, but he is one of the people that got hurt because of the Watanagashi Festival. She picks up a large kitchen knife every now and then but nothing much.

And last but not least, Rika Furude, heir of the local shrine. She lives with Sakoto and is a very special character. I’m not going to give anything about her away because I think it will be very interesting to find out for yourself.

And now here are some random facts. The village of Hinamizawa was modeled after a village in the Gifu prefecture, Shirakawa. It is currently a World Heritage Site. Also, the series received the Best Thriller – Mystery/Murder Award and the Best Villain Award in 2006 from the Anime Reactor Community. So if they say it’s good, then it’s good.

In the end, I have to admit this was one intense series for me, and I’m not exactly a stranger to horror manga and anime. It’s sick, scary, twisted, it will make you afraid of villages and neighbors, you’ll never think a school girl is cute without trying to figure out if she's packing a hatchet or kitchen knife, make you paranoid but so help me God it’s worth every minute of your time… if you can take the heat that is. So if you think you’re currently sleeping to well at night give Higurashi no Naku Koro ni a try.

Until next time, this is L signing off.

Pale Cocoon

noreply@blogger.com (L) — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 13:56:00 +0000

Hello everybody! Sorry for the delay but college started last week and some courses are already getting pretty demanding. But then comes the ever saving weekend with some much needed rest.

This week I’m afraid I feel the need to rewrite my opinion on Yoshiura Yasuhiro’s work. I wrote about it before, at the beginning of the blog, but I feel I didn’t do it justice and those posts were done in haste. Therefore I’m going to give them posts of their own and take down the one I made before.

As the title says, today I’m taking another look at Pale Cocoon.

The action takes place in a post apocalyptic era. The few characters that make the story live in a shell like structure, with almost no means to reach the surface. The Earth has been long gone and the collective memory known as history stops at some point. Ura works at the Archive Excavation Department 092, an almost deserted government institution. He restores degraded files about the world that once was, mostly pictures. Even though the Department was once fully employed and everyone would rejoice at the sight of a new file, Ura is now the only one left, as his colleague tells him he’s going to join the others in the lower levels. The only one that hangs out at that level, besides Ura, is Riko, a analysis technician. However, she’s only there because he’s there. One day, Ura’s inquisitive nature pays off when he comes across a video file that explains the truth.

For me, Ura represents an almost ideal person. He has an inquisitive nature that won’t let him be and pushes his search further until, alas, he discovers the truth. Always he wants to do more than his work would imply. I find him to be a very strong individual because he searches for the horrible history regardless of consequences. But then again he is very soft when faced with a picture of a flowery field or the savanna. In the bleak, grey world he lives in, these pictures that are blooming with live and color must be like a breath of fresh air. Breaking free of his imprisonment, he acts according to his beliefs, that truth is better than uncertainty.

Riko, I suppose, is the other side of human nature. She’s very smart and already anticipates what happened to Earth, even before the video that Ura restores. Riko spends most of her time at the bottom of a tall staircase. People don’t go up there anymore, though they used to live there. We find her somewhat in despair. Her relationship with Ura is at the end, as shown by the painful silence between them, though she is very much in love with him. Few words are exchanged between them on this matter but she would like them to go live on the lower levels and not know about what happened. In a heartfelt moment she tells Ura that “It is better not to understand the green world and the people that destroyed it. I don’t want to lose more hope...”

Choosing between the dreadful truth and blissful yet painful ignorance is obviously difficult but I think the emotional struggle these characters go through gives them a lot of credibility and an overall sense of reality. The last but not least, the third character in this lovely short film has something very special about him. Ura’s colleague, who to this day remains unnamed, is actually voiced by the man himself, Yoshiura Yasuhiro.

For most of the movie, the lighting is dim and the colors (except for the things that Ura recovers) are dark. The clothing they wear makes you feel the cold caused by the deterioration of the live maintenance system. For most of the movie the action is very static, not much moving from one place to another. All of that is absolutely blown away by the climax, when everything changes. Up until now there were no background songs and a pretty pessimistic atmosphere was surrounding everything. For those last minutes of screen time, when the video Ura restores starts to play we witness change: the song (Aoi Tamago by Little Moa) is a synthetic expression of all the feelings the characters go through, the upward motion of the elevators coincide with the burst of will the main character has and somehow, out of all those metal structures, after all that pain and suffering, after all that silence hope gently appears in a hauntingly beautiful scenery.

To be truthful, the animation is so beautiful to the point where you can turn the sound and subtitles off and still be 110% enchanted with what you see.

These are one of the best 23 minutes of screen time you will ever see. I could say that Yoshiura Yasuhiro’s work is visually stunning, emotionally shattering, mind blowing but they would all be understatements. Studio Rikka is very fortunate to have him as an employee.

Still this movie holds a dreadful truth that is in the making. In a few hundred years that could be us. Maybe not my children, maybe not my children's children but someday someone's children will be like Ura and the others. Even so, the end is somewhat hopefull.

Pale Cocoon proves that you don’t need a big budget to make a masterpiece. As someone said before me, it is definitely refreshing to find that there are certain individual out there that can break free of all the clichés and kitsch and produce such incredible works. I truly hope that Yoshiura Yasuhiro is just one of the young talented people in the anime industry that will enchant us for years to come.

Until next time, this is L signing off.

As a side note, this is one of the few anime that made me cry.

Romance Character Rant

noreply@blogger.com (L) — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 10:00:00 +0000

Yes my dear readers, this week we have a rant.

To be completely honest I’m in a manga phase. That means I don’t really watch anime but rather search for new, good manga. Usually, before reading, I check out the description and genre of the piece I’m about to enjoy. Every now and then I like a good romance story but I find that it’s increasingly hard to find one out there. For me, there is one major story killer: a weak girl character. Yep, petite figured (read as rather flat), overly emotional, soft spoken - and by that I mean barely articulate - , big teary eyed, Yamato Nadeshiko type of girl just isn’t going to cut it for me.

Let’s take it from the top. Ah yes, the petite figure. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m also against the large breasts type of character you see in ecchi anime and manga but c’mon – there’s got to be a limit for everything! An average size pair of breasts will do just fine. Don’t expect me to stick around and watch a “love story” that involves a girl that has the figure of a child and be fine with it. In fact, if you find yourself attracted to a girl with no waist and no breasts, take a step back and slap yourself! You’re pretty close to becoming a pedophile. Height is also an issue: if she’s not as tall as the guy shoulder it’s just bad for the eyes.

Also, another fact that bothers me is why the hell are all these characters overly emotional? Every little bit of intense emotion, surprises, shocks, rude or loving comments, just about anything will make their eyes get teary. Please notice that normal girls don’t cry from everything out there. It is a fact that girls are more sensitive to tear jerkers than guys but if someone cries from anything it means they probably have a hormonal imbalance and need to see a doctor. Also, isn’t it annoying? You bring them a present – they cry, you tell them they’re no doing something right – they cry, it’s a no win situation! I think it limits your manifestation as a person a great deal because virtually anything can cause the sprinklers to start. What the hell?

And what is up with the stuttering and low voices? Someone with a speech disability is not cute. Also, I think it is an act of cowardice to stutter and say something in low voice. It’s your opinion, take responsibility for it and say it properly. This should be a general quality of human beings. So a girl that can’t articulate what she thinks and wants isn’t exactly a perfect match for anyone, in my opinion. I mean, isn’t that what cats are for? Only once have I seen stuttering done with a good reason and that was when I was reading Eugenie Grandet.

So can everybody just please stop writing stuff about immature underdeveloped girls.

It saddens me a great deal to see that anyone’s ideal of the perfect woman would be a small, subservient representative of the fair sex. In the end, life is but a long line of battles. He who will hold the sword in one hand and have to support his fainted female partner with the other hand is definitely going to be on the losing side.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off in my never ending search of good reading material and normal girl characters.

Until next time, this is L signing off.

Genshiken

noreply@blogger.com (L) — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 13:06:00 +0000

Hello everyone! I think it’s just about time for a good slice-of-life manga. That’s why for this week I chose one of the best representatives of this genre: Kio Shimoku’s Genshiken. Seriously, if you have had any doubts about what to call slice-of-life, read these incredible 9 volumes and you’ll understand quite a lot.

Genshiken is about a handful of Shiiou University students that gather together and form The Society for the Study of Modern Visual Culture and try to closer the gap between manga, anime and video games. Since the name of the club is so long - Gendai Shikaku Bunka Kenkyūkai - it is almost always referred to by it’s shorten title. The main story arc – if one may call it that - is composed of club activities: greeting new members, having activities for the cultural festival etcetera. If I were to be mean I would say this is a manga about nothing because, in fact, nothing extraordinary happens. But then again, it’s the little things that make life enjoyable, is it not?

To be frank, this is a character driven story about the fascinating life of the otaku – people that are completely captivated by the anime and manga phenomenon. Their troubles are portrayed so realistically that Genshiken comes close to a documentary on ways of life. The contrast between normal people behavior and the way otakus behave in society is rather conspicuous.

The Genshiken club is composed of representatives from all the anime and manga subculture plus one “normal person”. After giving it some thought I think I absolutely have to say a little something about the characters that make this manga a masterpiece.

Kanji Sasahara is perhaps the most tempered otaku member of the whole group. In a way, he could be considered the main character since the manga starts with him joining the Genshiken club and coming to accept his love for anime, manga and hentai* games and doujinshi*. He later becomes the president of The Society for the Study of Modern Visual Culture and manages, through a group effort, to put out a doujinshi* under the club’s name and sell it at Comifes. He has a nice personality and gets along with everyone. He is also the most sensitive to Kasukabe’s needs and tries to make her and the rest of the Genshiken members get along.

Harunobu Madarame is already a member of the Genshiken when Sasahara joins. He is the most eccentric otaku in the whole club. His “ultimate technique” at buying erotic manga often causes him to spend money intended for living expenses. Not even a broken arm can stop him (for long) from hunting the best manga and doujinshi. Also, he states that only 2D women can turn him on, although we later find out that’s not the case. I didn’t really like Madarame that much in the beginning but he kind of grew on me. To the end I think he has one of the most impressive character developments, next to Ogiue’s. He gives the story a little soft touch – even hard core otakus fall in love and suffer.

Saki Kasukabe is the only non-otaku member of the Genshiken. She tends to hate the way of live that otaku have but alas, she hangs around and later forced to join the club. Her only real reason for being there is her boyfriend Kousaka. Even though she tried her best to make him quit his otaku ways failure awaits every time. As a person she is very attractive and stylish, known to spend $1000 “like nothing” on clothes. She is also very manipulative and has a short temper, often physically abusing the other Genshiken members when angered. Even so, Kasukabe-san is the one who gets the club out of most pinches.

Makoto Kousaka, although hard core otaku, mostly interested in video games, he is the only one that really sticks out. For one, he is the first member to have a girlfriend. Kousaka is also rather handsome and dresses neatly - something that put his girlfriend off. He has a very optimistic and happy nature and his confidence makes him stop at almost nothing.

Mitsunori Kugayama is the overweight member of Genshiken and the only one that can actually draw until Ogiue comes along. He stuttering gets even worse when he’s around people that he doesn’t know.

Souichiro Tanaka is a representative of the cosplay subculture in the midst of Genshiken. He likes making costumes and taking pictures of cosplaying girls. That’s why there is little surprise when he and Ohno get together. Tanaka also shows a rather great interest for plastic models that you assemble and paint yourself.

Kanako Ohno is the first girl to voluntarily join the club. She has long black hair and is rather soft spoken. Ohno has great regard for cosplay and likes to dress up as different characters. Tanaka makes most of her costumes but she doesn’t really stop at that: she takes on the personality and habits of the characters she’s playing at. Also, she likes yaoi* and shounen-ai* doujinshi* with middle-aged bald men. Ohno regularly tries to get the other female members to cosplay and is rather pushy about it.

And last but not least, Chika Ogiue - the last addition to the Genshiken group. She is, in fact, very otaku but hates herself for it because of an incident back in middle school. She draws yaoi doujinshi and even makes one with Sasahara x Madarame. To the end she accepts herself for who she is and somewhere along the way sparks begin to show between her and Sasahara.

The art of Kio Shimoku is very appealing through its lovely, clean cut lines and perfect character design. There are no enlarged eyes, everyone looks just about average. The only character that undergoes a visible change is Saki Kasukabe. In the first volume her hair is rather curly and dress style is more playful – both change along the way. Even though there are no chibi* moments you get to enjoy a very, VERY wide range of facial expressions throughout the manga. Also, to the author’s praise, the backgrounds are crazy detailed. Nothing is left behind and forgotten, every single little thing is drawn exactly how it is in reality.

Now since this is a manga about otaku, I think I’m going on a limb here stating the obvious: there are tons of references to other series like Laputa: Castle in the Sky, Gundam, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Final Fantasy franchise, Inu Yasha, Slam Dunk, Azumanga Daioh, Lupin III, Fullmetal Alchemist and that’s just the start of it. Needless to say that you need some manga/anime knowledge in order to fully enjoy all the inside jokes. Many video games are also mentioned. However, most of the references are to the fictional long running manga Kujibiki Unbalance (shortened to Kujiun). Maybe this was introduced to avoid possible copyright problems but it kind of gives Genshiken a 2 in 1 feel. Shimoku presents the character design for the Kujiun cast. Even though Kujiun was fictional at the time Genshiken was written, it is now an anime and manga on it's own.

I was wondering the other day, what a live action movie or a drama would look like if it were made after Genshiken. Oh well, I realized I did see something a bit like it, though with a little more action and drama. The series is called Akihabara@DEEP and I think you might want to give it a shot.

All in all, this manga is in my top 3 list. I think it takes great talent and dedication to make everyday life seem so entertaining.

Until next time, this is L signing off.

* see Common words

Toki o Kakeru Shoujo

noreply@blogger.com (L) — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 08:13:00 +0000

Things have been hectic around here so today I’m taking some time to write about one of the best anime movies that I have seen to this day.

Toki o Kakeru Shoujo a.k.a. The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (also called TokiKake for short) is the name of the 2006 Japanese animated film produced by Madhouse studio. It is one of the many adaptations of Yasutaka Tsutsui’s novel published in 1965.

The Story follows a girl named Makoto Konno, a regular high school student that goes to school in Tokyo’s Old Town. One day she supernaturally escapes from a train accident that would have killed her and realizes that she has the power to go back in time (time-leap). So she starts to use this power for her own benefit like going home early to eat her pudding or switching placed at home-ed class to avoid a series of silly accidents. After a while she starts to see how her coming back affects her friends and also understands that she has a limited number of time-leaps. She unwillingly causes the death of two close friends and finds out that her classmate Chiaki Mamiya is not who he appears to be.

After thinking a while, giving away more that this would be a shame. You need to see this and I guaranty you will enjoy it a lot. This is also a growing up kind of movie but the story is wonderfully presented. To be honest, after watching TokiKake you start to pay more attention to your actions since it becomes obvious what effect they might have on the ones around you. Instead of running away from hardship people should embrace them in order to grow strong. Also, I think that the fact that the story was written in 1965 is a remarkable achievement in itself.

The animation is charming. The images are crisp, the colors are nice and it has an over all natural feel to it all. It’s not as visually stunning as 5 centimeters per second for example but it will capture you in more ways than one.

You will also love the characters. Makoto for example, though pretty oblivious to the ones around her isn’t a spoiled brat, something I appreciate a great deal (especially after seeing Oseam but we’ll get to that later on). One of the most heartbreaking characters is actually Chiaki. I felt genuinely sorry for him at the tear jerking end. The character design is also great. Their physique matches their personalities exactly! The development of everyone involved in the story is quite remarkable as well. It would be nice if all of us could grow so much in such a limited period of time.

At the end, I want to point out just how good this movie is. It won the Gertie Award for best animated film at the Sitges International Film Festival of Catalonia and to mention the Animation Grand Award, given to the most entertaining movies of the year at the Annual Mainichi Film Awards. It was recognized as “Animation of the Year” and won several awards at the Tokyo International Anime Fair. Also, it is in the AniDB Top 10! - something not easily achieved.

Toki o Kakeru Shoujo is one of the best anime films out there; no doubt about it. There are few impressive anime films out there that are worth seeing and owning. TokiKake is definitely one of them.

Until next time, this is L signing off.