Fairy Tail – Overall Most Well Rounded Endless Shonen Show

The cover of the first volume of Fairy Tail(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Bleach, Naruto, Gintama, One Piece, Fairy Tail – long-running shonen shows that have drawn many thousands of viewers, they are based on long-running manga that is still running, we’re talking over a decade. There’s a lot of money in these shows, and as such they keep them running though often there is no real content to show – so things get paced poorly (see my post on Naruto), and they add a lot of original content that’s usually a lot poorer than the original content (called “Filler”). But it keeps going on, because we enjoy watching those shows.

A month ago I’ve began watching Fairy Tail, and over two and  a half weeks I’ve watched all of it (minus the filler episodes), aside from how silly the first episode was – which actually filled me with concern that I won’t like the show, it was just too silly and random – I’ve really enjoyed this show. I am sure that it might not be the favourite show of anyone, but I still think that out of the shows above, it’s the most well rounded one, and might be the best as well.

(This is a Things I Like post, it’s not a review, but more a discussion of the show and of ideas that have risen in my mind as I’ve watched it. I expect no spoilers in this post.)

[TIL] Domu – Horror is Atmosphere, not Story

I’ve had this manga book, Domu: A Child’s Dream, on my shelf for around 2-3 years, and I’ve found myself looking for something to read, my memory reminded me of Domu and where it was on my shelves (even though my shelves look like this, I know where all my books are!). So I picked it up, and a couple of hours later it was done. And I have some things to say, and this is my blog, so say them I shall!

(Guy’s Note: Well, Hobby Search not loading its pages in English means the “Figure Friday” of sorts post I was meaning to make will be postponed for sometime during the week (or next Friday).)

For those who don’t know, Domu is an anime written by Katsuhiro Otomo, the creator of Akira, and had been written (and serialized) between 1980 and 1982. I’ve read the graphic novel version translated by Dark Horse, unsurprisingly. The story follows an accursed housing block in Japan. Accursed you ask? There’s an astonishingly high number of deaths and disappearances around the block, and they send detectives to investigate the matter. And things escalate into a psychic duel.
And this covers the general plot of the story, which you could probably find out online with minor poking.
(This is a “Things I Like” post, and as such covers more my thoughts, and is less focused as an actual bona fide review. There will be a LOT of spoilers in this post.)

Scott Pilgrim – The Awesome Zeitgeist.

Scott Pilgrim against the world. A comic book released in the form of books, 5 released and 6 total planned, by Bryan Lee O’Malley.  Well, there’s a movie now so I’m sure more people will hear of it, and hopefully the creator will also earn more money. It’s not like independent comic writers (comic sold through Oni Press, which houses a lot of independent and manga publications) are known for the piles of money they swim in.

Anyway, it may very well be that Scott Pilgrim is a reflection of the generation that I am a member of, the “Y Generation”, or in the case is, which Scott Pilgrim makes quite convincing, the “Yeah! Generation.” You see, Scott Pilgrim feels to me like an invention that hails in spirit from Seattle, though it’s actually Canada, but let us assume that it is Seattle’s spirit for the moment, the city that had brought us Grunge, the city that had brought has Starbucks. In other words, it’s a hipster city. I have hipster friends who live in Seattle or in its environs and whom I can think of as “Seattleans” in my mind – even though I’ve never actually been to Seattle myself.

So Scott Pilgrim against the world. The plot as there may be is that Scott falls in love with this girl called Ramona (note, it’s been two-three years since I’ve read any Scott Pilgrim). But there’s a problem, Ramona’s evil ex-boyfriends, all seven of them. What follows is a mocking super-hero-esque series of fights where the hipster, broke, slacker Scott Pilgrim is someone we (IIRC)  find out to have never lost a fight, and who is “too cool for school”.

Note: It’s been a couple of years since I’ve read Scott Pilgrim, so on one hand consider it a review of my memory of the comic, and on the other, I use it as a stepping stone to speak of a wider issue. Thank you.

[Ewen's Corner] Nekomimi Days Review.

Another cross-post from Neko Machi, because I’ve been really busy of late.

 Nekomimi Days (ネコミミデイズ) is an obscure manga by Houki Kusano (草野ほうき) that I discovered on Amazon.co.jp and ordered from the local Kinokuniya. It’s a curious work in that it involves a rather strange genre fiction element, but more as a backdrop than a plot element. It takes place in a world where there’s a “cat-ear cold” going around. It’s like the common cold, except that people who catch it often grow cat ears. They can also acquire certain catlike traits, like an obsession with fish or susceptibility to catnip.

Hina Mochizuki (Hii-chan) is a normal girl who lives in an area where there are a lot of both cats and people with cat ears, including her best friend Yuzuko Asahina (Yuzu). The one thing that is a little unusual about Hina is that cats and people with cat ears are naturally drawn to her for some reason.

[Ewen's Corner] Suzunari! Manga Review

Hey there; I’m back. This review is cross-posted from Neko Machi, a weird little webcomic I do in collaboration with the very talented C. Ellis. Since Neko Machi is about a bunch of catgirls, I’ve started doing a series of posts reviewing other works featuring them.

Shoko Iwami’s Suzinari! is yet another of the 4-panel manga that Yen Press licensed from Houbunsha. With a catgirl right on the cover I couldn’t very well not pick it up, could I? It has two volumes total, and it winds up being short but sweet.

Naruto’s Intelligence; Anime vs. Manga.

I usually prefer watching or reading a show in the original form it was released, book, manga, anime, whatever. The new creation can be valid and good on its own, but for the definitive take on the story, one should look at the original.

In anime and manga, this is quite important. We all know how some shows begin serialization before the original story is finished, and thus have to not only change things, but make up a lot of it as they go along (Fullmetal Alchemist), or that they descend into more and more “Filler episodes” of original and usually subpar material (such as Naruto and Bleach). But sometimes they go beyond.

The infamous "Shadow Clone Technique" in action. Overkill!

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Yandere Kanojo Vol. 1 Manga Review

This is the first of a series of manga reviews by yours truly. I’ll be concentrating on off-the-wall stuff that I happen to like, and largely avoiding the really popular stuff that other people have already covered extensively elsewhere. I mostly buy my manga in the original Japanese (at the local Kinokuniya), and many of the titles I’ll be reviewing–including this first one–aren’t yet available in English.

Title: ヤンデレ彼女 (“Yandere Girlfriend”)
Mangaka: 忍 (Shinobi)
Publisher: Square Enix (GanGan Comics JOKER)
Price: ¥476 (US$7.55 at Kinokuniya U.S.A.)
Publication Date: August 22, 2009
Page Count: 144

Yandere Kanojo Cover

Yandere Kanojo is a gag manga with a very direct, straightforward style. It stars Reina Ryuuzaki and Manabu Tanaka. Reina is the leader of the female delinquents in her school, and Tanaka is a diligent but otherwise unremarkable student. “Yandere” normally refers to a girl who’s sick and twisted (from yanderu/病んでる) but has a flustered, lovestruck, sweet side (deredere/デレデレ). It’s a scarier variant of the tsundere thing that’s become so trendy. Yandere Kanojo doesn’t have a yandere character; instead, the “yan” in the title comes from Yankii (a female delinquent). Reina is this peculiar kind of “yandere,” a mean girl who can kick the crap out of anyone who crosses her path, but can be embarrassed and downright sweet when it comes to Tanaka.

Classroom Deathmatch RPG! Jake Richmond Interview part 2.

Panty Explosion is a role-playing game about psychic girls and school drama. Classroom Deathmatch, the next RPG Jake had worked on is based on Battle Royale, to a degree. A game where a class of students must fight to the death.

This part of the interview will deal mostly with Classroom Deathmatch, but also with The Magical Land of Yeld, a fusion of Zelda, the secret worlds of Narnia, and Final Fantasy Tactics’ job-system, a game about children in a magical world of adventure.

The previous part of the interview can be read here, dealing mostly with Panty Explosion, and the work-process Jake and his co-creators engage in.
I will have my comments (in italics and parenthesis), and most links had been added by myself. Hope you’ll enjoy it

1. How did you decide on Classroom Deathmatch after Panty Explosion?

Matt and I had been selling Panty Explosion at GenCon (The biggest role-playing convention in the world, AFAIK), and the booth across from us was am import DVD seller called Cine-East. The couple running the booth were really enthusiastic about the game and helped us promote it at the show, and Matt and I ended up buying a whole mess of DVDs from them. Survive Style 5+, Saikano and a whole bunch of other stuff. One of those was Battle Royale 2, and Nick came over to the house and watched it with me a few weeks after the con. We were about half way through the movie and one of us was like “we could totally play this with Panty Explosion”. And then at the same time we both blurted out something about a Battle Royale/Panty Explosion game. We wrote the entire thing that night.

Originally we had planned to release a yaoi-flavored version of Panty Explosion, but it never really happened. Maybe someday.

 

Haruhi-Chan 3 Limited Edition: Otaku Yuki Nagato Petit Nendoroid Review.

I’ve ordered the third volume of “The Melancholy of Haruhi-Chan Suzumiya”, the parody/comedic version of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. The limited edition came with a short “The History of Itsuki Koizumi“, and what interests us, a petit nendoroid of Yuki Nagato as an otaku. This is especially interesting to me, as while I don’t speak Japanese, I certainly can’t read it!

BTW, I also got a copy of Tony Taka‘s “Shining World” artbook, so that’s what Yuki is standing on sometimes

Yuki, accoutered in her otaku regalia