2chan.us

Light novels are the hottest new thing from Japan–a close sibling to manga that’s the basis for many popular franchises! These bite-sized novels include both black-and-white and color illustrations, and bring fans the most authentic reading experience short of learning Japanese!

Thanks, dust cover blurb. Thdurb.

So I got sent this book from the nice folks at Seven Seas, and part of the deal was that I write something about it on my internet web log by the end of the month. Unfortunately, I resubscribed to WoW at the beginning of the month, so the review got held up by the eternal quest for purpz and epic mountz.

Anyway, K-Ske Hasegawa’s Ballad of a Shinigami (Shinigami no Ballad for the folks at home) is part of Seven Seas’ recent rollout of a number of light novels, full of literary masterpieces of Staggering Genius such as Pita-Ten, and, um, strawberry panic. To be fair, these are all light novels, and while some releases like Boogiepop Phantom might break the mold, at least some of the stuff has to be aptly named. Here, let me quote you an example from an upcoming release:

“A love triangle comedy in the vein of Fruits Basket about a boy named Kouta and the fox and wolf girls that love him! On the very first day that innocent country boy, Oyamada Kouta, transfers to a city high school, the prettiest girl in school asks him to meet her alone. They meet in the music room, all alone. Her shining hair and entreating eyes! Her flushed cheeks! Her sweet lips! Her…fox tail?!! Who is this mysterious and alluring girl and just what does she want with unsuspecting Kouta? Winner of the First Annual Media Factory Japan Best Newcomer for Light Novel Award!”

That aside, I had higher hopes for Ballad, since I vaguely remember enjoying the anime a while ago, even though I think I got episodes of that and Hantsuki mixed up in my head. In fact, I actually own the novel in Japanese, but since I’m lazy, I never bothered reading it. Good thing that I’m getting the most authentic reading experience short of Japanese! Once I started digging into it, I was a little less than satisfied.

The basic premise of Ballad is pretty simple, as most light novel stories are. Each chapter is a nearly-independent story of a character who is in proximity to death in some way or another, and Momo, a shinigami, appears and generally talks some sense into them, catharsis ensues. Volume 1 has 3 longer stories followed by one short one. The stories all have pretty standard themes, especially for fiction aimed towards younger readers: Depressed artist-boy paints not for himself, but for his seemingly uncaring but deep-down loving father; boy and girl’s relationship is tested by stray cat they secretly take care of; emotionally-scarred orphan boy finds true love in even more-scarred girl. I wasn’t struck by many of the characters here, other than Momo, who seems to have an interesting character, but doesn’t get much exposition. I assume that the exposition gets spread out over the stories, but the concept of the bureaucratic administration of death and a loli LOOSE CANNON shinigami interests me more than teary vignettes. Guess I’m just a cynical jerk who read too much Yuu Yuu Hakusho as a child. Unfortunately, I didn’t think that the demi-parables offered up here were as rad as the novelized Kino stories, but I never really got bored while reading through. Also, all of the stories have a pretty strong “death sucks, yo” message to them, which is probably more suited towards hormone-filled teens than a far superior 20-year-old such as myself. Anyway, the stories are all interesting enough, and might make you tear up if you’re a wimp. I guess one of the biggest differences for me between the anime and the novelization is that the emotion and mood of the work comes across a lot easier in the anime, where you have the pretty pictures and music that help with that stuff, while this is not only just a chunk of text, but one that’s gone through the process of (a fairly literal) translation, adding another barrier to a reader accessing that side of the work.

A couple of more technical notes, while we’re talking about translation: one thing that bothered me was the transparency of the translation. Within 3 pages I read the jarring “The air that never changed”, “The unchanging scenery”, “his target destination”, use of a fairly awkward passive voice, etc. Honestly, this probably isn’t a problem for most people that don’t know much Japanese, but either way it seems a little stiff. It seemed to get better for most of the remainder of the book (except for a “the absolute worst” on page 18x), possibly because I got acclimated to the style, or possibly because I wasn’t being as critical. Either way, I think a little more care could have been taken in terms of translation. (side note to seven seas staff who may or may not be reading this: the author of this article has JLPT-2 and will work for dirt cheap rates!!)

In terms of physical quality of the book, I have to say I prefer the Japanese version. The color on the color illustrations is a little warmer, the paper overall feels a little more weighty and solid while the product is thinner, and we get a proper dustcover. I honestly don’t think anyone would actually care about that, especially for a book that costs less and will entertain you longer than an average volume of manga. ($7.95, ymmv on time but I think I took about 2-2.5 hours.) Overall, I’d recommend Ballad, but really, don’t come into it expecting much more than material for a fairly quick read on the train/between classes/on the toilet/etc.

I made an order for a bunch of manga on rightstuf a little over a month ago, and I would have liked to review it all at once. Unfortunately, 3 of my volumes are stuck in backorder hell, so you thankfully get a shorter entry.

Golgo 13 by Takao Saito, vols 9, 10, 12.(I’m talking about the series in general though – I totally need to pre-empt the issue of Otaku USA that’s probably hitting the stands as we speak.)

I’m really a fan of the way that Viz conducts their whole manga business, though a lot of it could very possibly stem from their very fortunate circumstances, as a lot of this industry stuff seems to fall. The way it looks to me, with the backing of titles like, well, their entire Shonen Jump catalogue, they’re able to bring high-profile but probably low-grossing titles like Golgo stateside, a move so crazy that I would normally think that it could only be made in the 80s. I’m honestly hoping that sales of this release will be bolstered by viewers of the new anime series finding out that getting scans of Golgo is harder than getting their hands on the fansub they just watched.

Really, there isn’t a whole lot to say about the plot of Golgo 13. Golgo is an assassin. A very good one, at that. He has sex with prostitutes and is instrumental to just about every significant political event of the last 30 years, along with a bunch of not-significant events, but that’s about where the overarching narrative ends. Saito shows incredible consistency in style and execution throughout the work’s 40-year history, keeping it pulpy enough to keep me turning the pages until I’m late for odd jobs (professional pianists don’t really need page-turners) and lending an almost timeless feel to narratives that acutely date themselves. I mean, there can be a ten-plus year difference in publication date of the two stories in each of the thirteen volumes that Viz is putting out, and I’d have a damn hard time picking them out from stories that are getting published now like the ones I have in Volume 140-or-so at home. The art might take some getting used to if all you’ve been reading is the Shana manga and Kodomo no Jikan scans while keeping yourself warm by burning all of your Seven Seas manga in protest, but everything from extreme long shots to close-ups are drawn in an effective, gritty way that echoes the tone of the stories. Paneling, as mentioned in the extras of volume 9, is very cinematic and formal in style, dynamically and intelligently pacing the unfolding of each story.

In fact, thats most of the reason that I’m not talking about individual stories in the volumes in the review: the series works by getting you hooked on its basic framework, and though each story has its own hooks you seem to most of all be reading “A Golgo Story.” I don’t mean to discount the individual stories, of course – “Wasteland” in volume 10 does an incredible job of capturing 80s nuclear paranoia, and “The Dark-Skinned Sniper” features a rare, refreshing not-horribly offensive treatment of African-Americans that I’ve really only seen in manga in Me and the Devil Blues. I’m sure that the scholar and gentleman of anime, Carl Horn’s editorial oversight helps ensure the highest of quality from these stories, too. Also, the bonus sections included in each volume are short but absolutely packed with Golgo-related knowledge that WILL make you a better person.

I know that a lot of people have the same negative reaction to Golgo that they do to shows like Fist of the North Star, but I would honestly recommend this to just about any manga fan that enjoys a good, serious story. Sadly, I can’t say the same about FotNS, but it is best for one to come to FotNS, as it is not to be forced on an individual, no matter how wonderful it may be. Kind of like Christianity, only a lot better. Buy this, please? I promise I won’t start drawing parallels between this and Aria if you do. (Don’t think I won’t. I’m crazy.)

These next reviews are shorter, I swear.

The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service (or the KUROSAGI corpse delivery service depending on how faithful I want to be to the cover/spine) by Eiji Otsuka, illust. Housui Yamazaki. Vol 2.

It had been a while since I ordered vol. 1 of this, but volume 2 was on the top of my list of things to get when the rightstuf Dark Horse sale popped up. Fond remembrances of a rag-tag bunch of Buddhist college graduates fighting evil actuaries while trying to shuttle corpses around still found their way into my head after a long separation, despite my absolutely horrible memory.

Volume 2 covers one self-contained story about a corpse that the Kurosagi crew receives from the Japanese state after it was executed, and a very creepy organization that uses Kung-Fu (read: inexplicable magic) for evil. Well, semi-morally-ambiguous evil. Kurosagi really lives and dies on its characters and its scenario. That’s really my attempt at nicely saying that the art isn’t very good, the backgrounds are often sparse, and there’s nothing really stylistically eye-catching here. The volume has a neat bit of suspense, but nothing here really seems to fetch the $10.95 MSRP. I’ll probably end up buying volume 3, but I’m beginning to think that the character exposition and scenario explanation in the stories of volume 1, which I would gladly recommend, was its high point.

Mail by Housui Yamazaki. Vol 1.

Next up is the first volume of a work that the artist of Kurosagi wrote and drew. This one’s about a detective, Reiji Akiba, who finds ghosts and then shoots them to make them go away. Really, that’s about it. My feelings about the art are the same as Yamazaki’s work in Kurosagi, except no girls that are strangely, ambiguously sexy. The story for the first five chapters really are cut-and-dry in their Person Finds Ghost, Detective is Summoned and Finds Ghost, Detective Kills Ghost, Cursory Post-Explanation format. The last chapter is an origin story, but even that isn’t terribly engrossing. I don’t think I’ll be picking up volume 2, despite the prominence of a character named “Akiba.”

I’d write some words about Eden by Hiroki Endo, but for one thing, I need to go to sleep, and for another, it lived up to my very high expectations of Endo after reading Tanpenshu and I plan to buy a whole lot more in the near future, so I’ll review it as a larger unit at some later, undetermined time.

The visual style is really interesting; it looks like an animated comic (ie, it has the same colors as the only American comic I own, so therefore I’m an expert on it) and the Mononoke-like parchment effect over everything gives the characters just as much detail as the background, which is really unusual for anime. The OP is a pan over a bunch of panels with some hot beats. I hope the script actually goes somewhere; his credits (Pretty Cure) are no Mononoke.

Also Spice and Wolf was good, though being in HD means you can see every flaw in the cheapo in-betweening. For some reason, a bunch of fansub groups without us in them are convinced it’s not actually in HD — maybe we shouldn’t have taught them the word “upscale”. This is why I never believe anyone who says fansubbers are as good as professional translators.

Except a.f.k., of course.

Watched the movie this morning after waiting in a line for an hour with a bunch of nerds who were doing things like reading the Spice and Wolf novels and playing PSPs.

Part 2 concentrates almost exclusively on the initial meeting between Mikiya and Shiki. Mikiya pretty much instantly falls in love for Shiki because she is gigamoe he’s crazy/a teenager and Shiki doesn’t really appreciate this, because she’s kind of crazy/yandere, too. (I’m trying to avoid spoilers, but if you want spoilers then read the novel!!)

For a movie that’s essentially 50 minutes of introduction to the characters and setup to the rest of the films, this works out okay. It’s much slower and moodier than the first film, and the director even admits that action scenes are not his forte. (fun fact: he also directed coyote ragtime show. oops.) Mikiya and Shiki’s relationship here is the focal point of the plot, and it’s an interesting enough relationship to keep your attention for the span of the movie. I mean, on one hand you have kind of standard anime relationship plot points, female transfer student is shy and pushes guy away, guy is persistent and eventually gets girl’s attention. On the other hand, they’re both crazy, which may or may not account for Mikiya’s near-stalking of Shiki in the latter half of the film, and makes for a lot of boogiepop-style fun with Shiki. The ending is a semi-cliffhanger, which bothers me slightly, because I know I’m not going to get to watch the rest of the films for a while.

Again, the ticket was definitely worth my 1000 JPY, and again, I spent double that on merch. I’m not quite as enthusiastic about this one as I was about the first, but in the grand scheme of the 7-part cycle, it’s probably much more important than the first.

A gag manga featuring quirky girls in school. Though my reasons for buying this are faulty at best (was placed next to Yotsuba& on display, author uses archaic “wi” in name) I was greatly rewarded for my purchase! Of course, I’m not very well-versed in gag manga, so this might be very standard fare, but I do know that it was a hell of a lot easier to read and harder to put down than Gag Manga Biyori, which seemed to benefit strongly from an anime adaptation unless you can read Japanese at like 50 characters/second.

Anyway, quite a few laughs were had, and the art is well-drawn, fun, and kinetic. In other words, this manga is everything that the Sketchbook manga isn’t, and as such I strongly recommend it.

When planning my trip over here to Glorious Nippon, I had initially scheduled something very foolish. That is, I thought that I’d be able to go catch Kara no Kyoukai on the night of the 28th at the 10pm showing, despite having to be up the next day at 6 for comiket. I’m not entirely sure why I thought that this would be remotely possible, but I didn’t give up on this plan until about 2 hours before the movie that night as I was laying down onto my futon, about to sleep for a good 10 hours. Thankfully, the film gods had blessed me, as one of Tokyo’s thriving second-run theaters picked the movie up for another 3 weeks or so. (I don’t exactly know why they’re only showing this in one theater at a time, maybe they only made one film print to distribute?? This is probably projected anyway, so whatever.)

Long story short, I got to go see Kara no Kyoukai first thing in the morning (9:40) yesterday in Ikebukuro. I was very impressed by it.

I’m sure going into the movie with fairly low expectations helped this, since I’m a male on the internet, and therefore a contrarian prick. I mean, the director of Girls Bravo and not much else with animation by ufotable, creators of… Coyote Ragtime Show and Manabi Straight? (note that I haven’t seen either of these shows, please don’t kill me omo) Also, Type-Moon properties haven’t really had the best track record when it comes to anime adaptations. Of course, I now notice that the animation director for Death Note and the art director for a whole bunch of good anime were on-board, but that’s enough looking at ANN for one review. (wait, before we leave — you did notice Mad Bull on that last link, right? Good, just making sure.)

I went into the film not having read the novel/the translation of the novel, so I was really going into this blind. Since it’s customary, a short plot summary (spoilers may follow): A string of teenagers committing suicide by jumping off of the same building is taking place in late-90s Japan. Our heroine, Shiki, tries to find out exactly what’s going on, mostly because the object of her tsundere affections, Mikiya, has fallen into some sort of coma and for some reason they just know that this is linked. Maybe if I was more familiar with the Nasuverse then I’d know why this is obvious, but I’m assuming it’s just because all of the main characters in Type-Moon works are super-powerful badasses. Anyway, I’ll spare you from any more plot summary and potential spoilers here, the novel link is 4 lines up.

Speaking of super-powerful badasses, Shiki. This isn’t whiny eroge lead who can cut anything male Shiki, but tomboy amnesic tsundere who can cut anything female Shiki. I will make this clear right now: my favorite female leads are the ones who can unapologetically kick ass (note that this does not say “punch to the moon”), which T-M tends to do well. In other words, I am so fucking moe for Shiki.

Shiki actually gets a good portion of the 50 minutes that this thing runs, including a nice 90 second stint where she eats ice cream with one arm. (MOEEE.) Of course, this thing has a very limited cast, so that’s not much of a surprise. We get a few stretches of pseudo-philosophical talk, some interesting on a base, romantic level, some rehashed GitS-style “WHAT IS A MAN” stuff. Thankfully, there are some really beautiful backgrounds and generally well-framed shots that can keep your attention through that business. The high visual quality is a constant throughout the film, especially in the huge action payoff a little more than halfway through the thing, which I might pay the thousand yen just to see again. It might not be Paprika-level “jesus christ everything is so colorful and moving and oh god my eyes” stuff, but it was exceedingly fun.

In fact, you know what? Had I not decided to spend a month’s tuition in order to buy and watch Honneamise (worth every penny), this would be the best anime movie I’ve seen in 2007, in terms of overall satisfaction. Seriously, erect dorsal hairs everywhere like you would not believe. Don’t get me wrong, this movie definitely has its flaws. The story is essentially a standard Japanese ghost story in the Type-Moon world, and as I said earlier, some of the dialogue may make the more cynical of us roll our eyes a fair amount. Of course, this is just one movie of seven, and it does work fairly well as a general introduction to the characters/prologue. I think it might be worthwhile to note that I did go back and read the novel translation to make sure that I didn’t miss anything, and I thought that this adaptation was way better. It could have just been the translation. Who knows. Maybe I’ll go and read the novel in Japanese when I turn 30 and get my JLPT1, if they still offer JLPTs in the nuclear wasteland of 201x.

If you couldn’t gather it from the rest of the review, or if you just skipped down to the bottom to see my overall reaction (hypothetically–I know no one actually reads this): I’d say that anyone who is not terribly averse to the whole post-Eva Guy Animes About Girls stuff should check this one out. I know you’re going to download it anyway, so you’ll be out a measly fifty minutes of your life in the worst case. I’ll just be hoping for a HD release to buy to make up for your pirating ass.

seriously, one day I’ll stop writing about things that awo hasn’t talked about that aren’t bartender but

Project A-Ko:
excellently animated popcorn action/comedy that exudes 80s with tits and missiles and explosions and shit for less than what a movie ticket costs, you should probably buy this if you haven’t already

Mononoke:
okay, well I just finished my intro to film class like a few days ago so even if there was something bad to say about this show I couldn’t bring myself to, really. because this is an INSTANT REVIEW I will just say that you should watch it and if Geneon was still around I’d say to buy the last disc of Ayakashi because it’s pretty much the same thing and also you should read this guy’s review because he’s more knowledgeable and eloquent about these things than i could ever hope to be

Plus it has Nazo no Kanojo X and Vinland Saga, and I can whack cockroaches with it. At $8 it’s a great deal.

But I have no idea how you could keep up with these things. It may only come out once a month, but at 1000 pages I’d never finish reading these before there was another one.

So this fancy-sounding anime called Ghost Hound came out. We’re all about the fancy-sounding anime up in here, especially when their websites advertise all the staff they’ve got who worked on our most favoritest shows serial experiments lain and Kino’s Journey, so I thought I’d better go watch it and see if I should go complain about it or not. It looks like I’m going to!

The first episode doesn’t have much to talk about; the young male lead Tarou has a terrible dream about his dead older sister, goes to school, falls asleep in class, and goes home to sit in his room, with occasional weird scenes inserted in between. The really surprising thing is that the episode progression is practically identical to the first episode of Lain:

Luckily, it gets better after that. Episode 2 is mostly about the school psychologist interviewing Tarou about his recurring dreams through E.M.D.R. (invoking the MYSTERIOUS ACCIDENT X YEARS AGO cliche), along with Nakajima, the mysterious transfer student character, explaining tons of backstory. I can’t summarize it, since it was kind of just a little beyond me and my JLPT4 test voucher, but you can find it at one of the many fine obsessive summary blogs on this here Internet.

Episode 3 is actually good; the first scene — Ōgami, the cool guy who’s really angry character, records himself playing the guitar (so he can get more YouTube hits, I guess) and it plays over an unexplained religious ritual with an old woman chanting — was neat although fairly meaningless. We get more plot explanation and they all go off to demonstrate Phobia Exposure by taking Tarou to the old hospital his sister died in. (summary)

The preview for episode 4 relieved a bit more of my fears of a bad Lain ripoff, showing that the gradient-eyes shots in ep. 1 were actually super-terrifying baby things. It’s not enough for me to get over ANN’s plot summary — ghosts, from an “unseen world”, unexpectedly breaking into ours? — but at least it might be through traditional horror elements and not through new revisions of the Internet Protocol.

Anyway, the biggest problem with it is that it didn’t get enough staff from those other shows. Here’s some bad screenshots of the main characters:

and their teachers:

Lain’s asymmetrical braid is a great and completely recognizable character design feature. Tarou is a generic and completely undifferentiated blob. And his teacher is a man wearing lipstick.

Lain and Kino both had plenty of good artists (ABe, Kuroboshi Kouhaku, this guy, etc.) doing character design. Ghost Hound, instead, just has the animation director doing it. I remember her from Hell Girl; Ai and the Scatman looked good in that show, but the incidental character art was universally terrible and I had to stop watching almost immediately. The gigantic eyes she draws looked good on Ai, but pretty much nobody else. Since characters are the only appeal for anime, I have no idea why they’d keep her on it.

Anyway, maybe this will be good sometime, but not yet. Stick to Kaiji.

wait maybe they’ll bring back scatman for this one

I’ve started to dig into my pile of DVDs that I really need to watch sooner or later, and I had the brilliant idea of writing normal-length reviews (500-700 words) of most of them. Then I remembered that I’m incredibly lazy, so here are very condensed notes on the Crusher Joe Movie+OVAs:

CRUSH.

General: I’ll start with few things I feel like I can safely generalize about for the 3 installments, the movie and the two OVAs. For one thing, it’s all very 80s. This is of course a wonderful thing, unless you don’t watch things because “they look old,” in which case I suggest that you close your browser window, boot up the Love Hina DVD that is undoubtedly sitting in your player as we speak, and summarily hang yourself. Er, this is supposed to be short. Focus.

CRUSH.

I realize that “very 80s” doesn’t really say much, so here’s a few more specific things! For one, the animation looks very nice throughout the series. Crusher Joe is ultimately an action show, and the action scenes look fantastic. The music for all of it is also great. Light on the cheesy 80s synths (although the soundtrack that was probably composed on a sega genesis is what made overfiend for me) and heavy on the authentic-sounding Film Music. Kind of Star Wars-y at times. Much like a lot of the plot. Speaking of unoriginal plot, there is probably very little in these that will cause you to stroke your neckbeard in contemplation. In fact, chances are you’ve seen more or less all of the plot in one place or another. It really doesn’t hurt the series. Like I said, ACTION.

CRUSH.

Movie:

The movie clocks in at just a little over 2 hours, and it feels like it. Lots of action scenes broken up with humor scenes, all of which feels very cartoony. It’s somewhat strange to see standard comedy devices used in between bloody deaths, but it works! There’s a little bit of introduction to the world of Crusher Joe sprinkled in here, but not a whole lot. I don’t really feel like going into the plot, the AnimEigo page for it does that well enough. It drags a little in the late middle parts, but overall it’s good fun.

CRUSH.

OVAs

Both of these are a lot lighter on the comedy, but you don’t really need it. Where the movie felt like a full-scale movie, these 1-hour OVAs pack about the same amount of action as the movie. The Ice Prison is solid space commando and space navy fun, while The Ultimate Weapon: Ash drags a bit when the Crusher Joe team is running away from the Evil Robots that Tentacle Rape You and then Explode for the 12th time, but it gets a big kick in the ass in the last 15 minutes or so. I saw Ice Prison first, and it was winning out over The Ultimate Weapon until those last few minutes. They’re about even in my book, now. I’m also speculating if working on Ideon psychologically broke the director of The Ultimate Weapon, some of that shit is pretty grim. Anyway, once again, these plots aren’t going to win any awards, and you can probably see most of the plot points coming from miles away, but who cares. If you don’t feel like watching a perfectly good cartoon because it’s not “deep” then just throw all those DVDs of burned fansubs that you own in the trash away (or burn your trashy dvds that are practically fansubs away, if you’re from singapore) and go finish reading that 3rd Dave Eggers book you’re on.

CRUSH.

The AnimEigo release did a fairly good job, from what I can judge of these things. The sub track is pretty colloquial to the point of nearly changing entire meanings of lines around, and some of that can be really hit-or-miss. I saw a few lines in there that I really loved and hope to remember in the future, and also saw a few lines that seemed absolutely terrible. Didn’t really listen to the dub.

CRUSH.

I think that about wraps it up: Good clean sci-fi action fun backed up with solid technical work. Apparently the disc is out of print now, but I picked it up for $5 at a con, and really, it’s damn hard to beat $1.25/hour of this stuff. Recommended to anyone that wants to kick back and just watch some fun cartoons, which should be all of you.

edit: I just did a word count and this was almost 800 words. oops.