Category Archives: manga

Let’s Get Ready for Otakon 2009

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Otakon is upon us, and I will be attending this year. Unlike previous years however, I will be running around trying to get interviews which I hopefully will be able to post right here on Ogiue Maniax.

Below is a list of panels and such I want to attend. A lot of these conflict and a lot of them are duplicates on different days, but I included all of them just in case one turns out to not catch my interest and I head to another or if I happen to miss a Q&A session with a Japanese guest.

I’ve included the times and rooms, but these are all subject to change. I’ll try to edit this post accordingly so that everything is fine and dandy and up to date.

I might also be updating my location on Twitter, so if you want, you can follow me at http://twitter.com/sdshamshel or just click the link on the side bar.

Friday
Mobile Suit Gundam: Celebrating 30 Years 10:45AM-12:45PM Panel 6
Yutaka Yamamoto 11AM-12PM Panel 4
Kikuko Inoue Q&A 11AM-12:30PM Panel 3
Anime Recruitment 12:45PM-1:45PM Panel 1
Madhouse Panel 12:30PM-2PM Panel 3
The Mecha Appreciation Panel 2PM-3pM Panel 5
Opening Ceremonies 3PM-4PM Panel 4
Aniplex Panel (or TBD) 2PM-4PM Panel 6
I Cant Believe You Haven’t Seen This! 7PM-8PM Panel 6
Concert: Mell 8PM-9:30PM Main Events

Saturday
Anime, Lost in Translation 9AM-10AM Panel 2
 Anime and Manga Studies 11:30AM-12:30PM Panel 1
Anime’s Craziest Deaths 12:45PM-1:45PM Panel 3
Fred Schodt Q&A 3pM-4PM Panel 5
Fred Schodt Autograph 4:30-5:30PM Autograph 2
Yutaka Yamamoto 5PM-6PM Panel 4
Noboru Ishiguro and Yukio Kikukawa 5PM-6Pm Panel 3
Otaku TV 4:30-5:30PM Panel 2
Genshiken: The Panel of Modern Visual Culture 5:45-6:45PM Panel 2
(Whoever’s running those two panels, I hope you’ve prepared well!!)
Dubs That Time Forgot 9:30-10:30PM Panel 1

Sunday
Anime Evolves 10:15AM-11:15AM Panel 5
Funimation TBA 10PM-11PM Panel 2
Maruyama Q&A 11PM-12PM Panel 3
Osamu Tezuka, Astro Boy, and the Manga/Anime Revolution, with Fred Schodt 12PM-1PM Panel 2
Noboru Ishiguro and Yukio Kikukawa 1PM-2PM Panel 2
Concert: Naomi Tamura 1:30PM-2:30PM Main Events

See you at Otakon! And if you happen to see me in the Karaoke room, know that I have quite a surprise in store.

“Why Spend Money on Entertainment?”

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Let me tell you a guy I know.

This guy makes quite a bit of money. He enjoys fancy cars and spending on expensive jewelry and fine clothing. He’ll take his girlfriend and friends and family out to fine restaurants. He is a big spender, in other words. By the way, he also downloads movies for free. Now, he still buys DVDs sometimes, but he’s just as apt not to, and the decision to purchase or not to purchase a movie seemingly alters at a whim.

You might be thinking, “If he makes so much money, why couldn’t he just go watch the movie in theaters? Why can’t he just buy the DVD?” And the answer is quite simple: he does not value movies as much as he does all of the things he actually does spend money on.

And this is the trickier side in talking about issues such as piracy and illegal downloading. People assign value to their entertainment that is fitting to their lifestyle and priorities in life. The person in my example does not skimp on everything. It’s not like a person who buys a counterfeit designer bag and then buys a bootleg DVD. He is willing to pay for real, good fashion. He is still looking for a bargain, but will not go as far as to buy something that isn’t “real,” again, because he believes in something beyond appearance.

This guy is not an avid pirate and bootlegger, as I’ve pointed out. He is not an anime fan eager to watch as much as possible for as little as possible. He is a casual fan of movies at best. And so if you wanted him to spend money on his entertainment, it would have to somehow fit into his core values about what is worth spending money on and what is not. And he, unlike the anime fan or audiophile or cinema buff, is part of the majority of people who consume entertainment.

How do you solve this problem? Take away his ability to download and pirate, and he’ll just wait for movies to appear on cable and watch them there. He’s still not going to be willing to part with his money over it. It’s easy to say, “Hey let’s just make a movie that he’d be willing to spend money on,” but as long as he de-emphasizes entertainment media in his life, there’s no way it’s going to reach him.

The Improved Character Art of Initial D

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Initial D has always been ridiculed for its poor character artwork, though for a series like Initial D it doesn’t matter too much as long as the races are sweet and intense and there’s Eurobeat playing, real or imaginary.

However, upon actually viewing some of the recent chapters, I’ve noticed that over the course of many years the character artwork in the manga has become much better, though only in specific moments. And I think you know exactly what moments those would be, i.e. those scenes which are considered most important to Initial D.

Here’s Takumi from an early chapter.

Now here’s one from a later chapter where he’s just standing around talking.

Not so bad, right? He’s pretty similar to the one from many, many chapters back, so why would there be anythi-

WHOOOAAAAA! Apparently now when Initial D characters get to a car, their entire designs become 10x more intense. And really, if you look at when they’re NOT in a car, they look like the previous image. It’s only when there’s a race on the line that the character artwork makes this dramatic jump to match the quality of the racing.

It’s the kind of thing that tells you exactly what the artist and the fans care about most.

Who is Goku’s Greatest Mexican Rival?

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“Fajita.”

July 8th Vertical Vednesday: Sports Manga

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Vertical Vednesday, courtesy of Vertical Inc and Ed Chavez, is back for another informative around. This time, the topic is a genre of manga that doesn’t achieve much success in America for a a number of reasons, Sports Manga.

Sports Manga has a very long history and some of the most beloved titles in Japan are sports-themed ones, such as Ashita no Joe, Touch, Attack No. 1, Ace o Nerae!!, Kyojin no Hoshi, and even Eyeshield 21. Also, given my previous experiences with Vertical Vednesdays, if you attend you’ll get the chance to chime in on what YOU think are the steps to getting Sports Manga accepted more readily in the US by both regular folks and manga readers.

Like last time, we’ll be meeting up at around 6 to 6:30 at Kinokuniya on 6th Ave between 41st and 40th in Manhattan, and then depending on the size of the group will either stay there or find another location nearby to sit.

Topics covered so far in previous Vertical Vednesdays are Seinen, Josei, and Yankii.

The Reverse Thieves’ Otaku Diaries: And Now the Results

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Some of you may recall that back in February I mentioned an interesting project by the Reverse Thieves called the “Otaku Diaries.” The basic premise was that they wanted anime and manga fans to fill out a survey about various aspects of their lives, from age to love life to of course questions about their fandom. As someone who is always interested in information such as this, I participated as well. Well now the Reverse Thieves have finished compiling their data and are ready to discuss the results.

This initial post establishes some statistics and is mainly there to get the ball rolling for future posts about the Otaku Diaries. For the near future, the Reverse Thieves will be devoting the first Monday post every month to discussing the Diaries, and I think there will be a wealth of information to be had.

One thing to point out is something said right in the statistics post: these results are not absolute, and are personal truths instead of absolute ones. Even if the sample size is somewhat small, there’s still a lot that can be learned, and I am eager to see what Hisui and Narutaki have to say about the results.

A Base Twist: Psalms of Planets Eureka Seven (Manga)

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Before I start talking about the Eureka Seven manga adaptation, I’d like to explain what Eureka Seven is as a franchise. Eureka Seven was designed by Studio BONES and Bandai to be a sort of multimedia franchise that reaches out and expands beyond the normal frame of any single anime or manga series. You have the flagship anime, video games which retell the story of the anime, video games which act as prequels to the anime (which I’ve never played, but if I do get my hands on them some day I may review them too), a manga that is a prequel to the prequel video games, as well as a recent movie which is an alternate setting using the same characters. The Eureka Seven manga I’m about to review is somewhat similar to the movie in that it takes the characters and settings of the anime and adds a few twists to them here and there, but unlike the movie it sticks a little more closely to the plot of the TV series.

Unlike a lot of anime or manga, the Eureka Seven manga was not really made to be an “adaptation” of some source material that already exists in public entertainment, despite me using the word adaptation numerous times. Instead, the manga and anime were released almost simultaneously, so one does not rely on the other to be an initial source. Instead, the “source” for both of them is the director, Sato Dai. The result then is that as a manga, Eureka Seven is something quite unique, both relative to other manga in general, as well as to the anime TV series.

Premise-wise, the manga is pretty much the same as the anime. You have an impetuous youth named Renton Thurston, an enigmatic girl named Eureka, an anti-government group called Gekkostate, and there’s sky surfing and trappar and all sorts of familiar sights. Many of the plot points between the anime and manga are similar, too. However, many plot points are also quite different, and these changes to the story also change the basic feel of Eureka Seven.

The Eureka Seven manga is a little more action-based, a little more violent than the TV series. There’s not superfluous amounts of blood flying about, but people get hurt in the manga pretty badly. In other words, it reads less like the crescendo that is the anime and more like a sforzando. Now, if you’re like me and only knew the word crescendo (gradual buildup), and had to look for another musical term to continue the analogy, sforzando basically means “sudden changes.” The manga comes at you fast and hard, and at times it can leave you asking, “Wait, when did that happen?” Not that it’s necessarily a bad thing, of course.

There’s also more fanservice in the manga, such as panty flashes. And by panty flashes, I mean a character literally lifting Eureka’s skirt in Renton’s presence in order to get a rise out of him, both emotional and physical. Anemone in particular is given some choice sitations, as well as an ever-so-slightly different personality, where her cheerful side and her not-so-cheerful side are just a bit more extreme on either end.

I personally feel that the manga is not nearly as good as the anime, lacking much of the subtlety and grandeur of the anime, but that doesn’t mean I think the manga is bad or mediocre. I know some people prefer the manga because it doesn’t dawdle as much, and it really does get to the point more often, although it tends to be at the expense of building up the characters more. Still, I think it’s worth reading whether you’re an Eureka Seven fan or not. In fact, you don’t even need to have seen the anime in order to enjoy the manga, and it’s even possible you might enjoy the manga more if you don’t have the anime for a comparison.

The creators of the Eureka Seven manga, Kataoka Jinsei and Kondou Kazuma, are currently working on their own original manga called Deadman Wonderland. Check it out if you want to see them working in a setting that isn’t tied to a greater franchise beast.

Saki Tacos: Yes This is the Best Promotion

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In a move I would have been angry about if no one ended up doing it, Japanese taco chain Taco Derio has decided to start using the face of this year’s most popular taco enthusiast in Japan, Kataoka Yuuki from Saki. Order at a Taco Derio and you can get a Yuuki-themed tray mat to show off to your friends and co-workers, and score hot dates with taco-loving ladies. The mat, by the way, says, “With Tacos Power, Victory is a Cinch!”

For those who don’t know, Saki is a manga and recent anime about girls who play Mahjong and possibly definitely like other girls, a one-two punch that few dare to attempt. In it, Kataoka Yuuki is a supporting character, voiced by Kugimiya Rie, who is a strong and aggressive player despite her diminutive stature, and is mostly characterized by her love of tacos. So great is her taco addiction that she cannot play at full strength unless she has a steady supply to keep her going.

To put it simply, this is an awesome idea and everything that I want out of anime cross-promotions. Code Geass and its Pizza Hut angle was great and all, especially with all the imagery of CC chowing down on pizza, but that was practically built in during conception. It’s almost cheating, in a way. But with this, Yuuki was originally from a manga and so the tacos thing was designed not so much to promote tacos but to add an additional moe aspect to Yuuki (as if the cat belt wasn’t enough already).

It’s not quite as extreme as the rise in sales of left-handed basses caused by the popularity of K-On! or the increase in tourism to one Japanese town due to Lucky Star, but it’s a step in the right shameless propaganda direction. And there’s no propaganda like shameless propaganda.

I’m going to end off on a personal message directed at something significant: Akikan.

You totally missed the boat! Why didn’t I hear of any soft drinks sporting Akikan characters, or custom Akikan flavors that are just the older flavors with new names, e.g. Akikan Cooler?

For shame. Learn your lessons from those mahjong-playing tribades and try again!

Hating Who You Used to Be

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I have a few questions to ask of you the reader, and I would much appreciate it if you responded in the comment section below. If you want to remain somewhat anonymous, feel free to not put down your usual username, etc.

1. How much do you feel you’ve changed since you’ve become an anime and manga fan?

2. Do you resent who you used to be, and if so, how much?

3. Do you feel that the changes to your person, as well as your resentment (or lack thereof) significantly impact what anime or manga you watch? Alternately, have you stopped watching anime and reading manga as a result?

To start off, I’ll answer my own questions.

1. The main difference between who I am now and who I was when I first started getting into anime is that I am a much more confident person. I don’t radiate confidence, but I’m now much more apt to speak my mind. However, I don’t feel I’m significantly different from who I used to be, other than I’ve been exposed to more ways of thinking and education over the years.

2. I do not really resent my younger self, even though I feel like a much-improved version. While there are some things about myself which I regret, I can see how those things shaped me to be the person I am today.

3. One thing I’ve grown less tolerant of are mecha shows which try to get by almost entirely on their mecha designs, as I feel you can’t carry a show alone with that. However, when I see a character who is similar to how I was when I was younger, I do not hate that character any more than I hate myself.

Now, it’s your turn.

Mandle in the Wind: Be a Man!! Samurai School

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Last weekend at the New York Asian Film Festival, I got the opportunity to see the live action film adaptation of the 1980s Shounen Jump manga known as Sakigake!! Otokojuku. The title translates into something along the lines of Charge!! Mancademy, but the official English title is Be a Man!! Samurai School, which while not a literal translation gets the point across just fine. The director and star of the movie, Sakaguchi Taku aka Tak Sakaguchi, as well as his head stuntman, was there watching the movie along with us, and would stay around for a Q&A session afterwards.

You see, Otokojuku is a school for MEN in every respect. Led by its principal, Edajima Heihachi, a man who can take out hundreds of opponents just by mentioning his name and his title, Otokojuku is an all-male school, and the only remaining school in all of Japan that trains men to be MANLY MEN. The story begins as Tsurugi Momotarou, an impossibly calm and cool Samurai-esque man who carries a sword with him everywhere and wears a headband that barely misses the ground, is entering Otokojuku as a freshman shortly after beating up a gaggle of thugs using the power of Punching Fast. He makes some friends, endures some hardships, and then has a Shounen Fight Finale. I don’t really think that’s a spoiler because what can you expect from a movie based on an 80s Shounen Jump property?

There are many things you might look for in a movie, such as plot coherence, solid character development, subtle themes and undertones, and a straight and sure path from start to finish. Otokojuku has none of these, and is instead just a bunch of scenes from the manga faithfully adapted and strung together. Now, don’t hold it against the movie that it doesn’t seem to flow too well, as it is literally a faithful adaptation of the manga, a series which tended to flop back and forth between comedy and serious action more than most Shounen Fight Manga. It’s almost treated as isolated vignettes of the various ways in which the primary characters of the movie turn into manlier men than they were previously. The movie is fun and nonsensical, and if you really want to know an equivalent, it feels somewhat similar in pacing to the live action Cromartie High School movie. Basically, it doesn’t really watch like a movie. If this bothers you, then I would not recommend it, and whatever you do don’t be an ass about it.

The highpoint of this movie in my opinion is the narration, done by the masterful Chiba Shigeru, better known as the narrator for the Hokuto no Ken anime and an expert at making anything he says sound serious and dangerous. Any time anything at all needed to be explained or any time there was a special move to announce, sure enough Chiba would be there to tell us with power and fervor about it. It left such an impression on me that during the after-movie Q&A session, I had to ask Sakaguchi about what it took to get Chiba to do the movie. Sakaguchi said that he personally went and asked Chiba to do it, feeling that he was necessary for the movie to succeed and reach its true form.

Sub over at Subatomic Brainfreeze informs me that the entire movie was filmed in only two weeks with a budget of $400,000. Based on what I saw, I believe him. Don’t let that hold you back though, as it is one of the truest adaptations of an anime or manga I’ve ever seen. More than Casshern, more than Devilman, and especially more than Dragonball Evolution, Be a Man!! Samurai School is the movie to watch  if you want to see a manga brought to life.