2chan.us

Kuishinbou, Tsuchiyama Shigeru, vol 1 (2005)

Every once in a while, I hear someone throw out the idea that a certain manga is made specifically for Japanese salarymen as vicarious entertainment. Sometimes the claim made by mistaken individuals in regards to works that simply have universal appeal (Golgo 13, Fist of the North Star) while other times they’re actually talking about works about average 20-30something dudes who, by luck or by pluck, end up doing something TOTALLY AWESOME with their lives, like become a professional pachinko player, a professional mahjong player, or the athlete-playboy ancestor of Gilgamesh who gets hypnotized by the granddaughter of Hitler so that they can mate and create a new breed of supermen. Kuishinbo belongs to the latter group, as it is at once about a regular guy in fairly believable situation, doing something we all can do, while also being as ridiculous and over-the-top as anything you’d find in Jump.

So what’s this guy’s special ability? Sharingan? Nanto Ningen Houdan? PILDER ON? Actually, it’s already spoiled for you if you know any Japanese, because it’s eating. Kuishinbo is about a guy who likes to eat. A lot. Ouhara Mantarou (大原　満太郎, a ha ha ha) is a regular salaryman who finds himself suddenly thrust into the wild world of food fighting when he takes up his local donburi shop’s timed eating contest of 10 katsudon in 30 minutes. While he fails, he finds a powerful, possibly American (!!) professional food fighter who recognizes his talent and is willing to take him under his wing! His next challenge is to act as his boss’s entry in a nikuman eating contest against a fearsome opponent: Yokogawa, the famous (possibly Chinese !!!) Osakan man who once ate 100 Takoyaki in 5 minutes!!!! While I won’t spoil the exciting ending of the volume for you, I will tell you that I learned that the true path of a righteous food fighter is that of respect towards the food.

So yeah, like I was saying, a lot like a shonen manga for grown men, while trying to retain some sort of grip on reality. I mean, everyone loves to brag about that time that you were 16 and ate two large pizzas, and if you were put up to it, you could totally eat like, five and a half pounds of curry. To be honest, the first time I read through this volume, I rolled my eyes at it and decided not to get the second volume, but reading it again, it’s kind of grown on me. (Actually to be completely honest, I bought this out of frustration when I couldn’t find where Oishinbo was at the Shibuya Mandarake) It’s ridiculous and the plot so far is a bit formulaic, yes, but that stopped me from reading a manga, then my bookshelf would be out dozens of volumes of Golgo 13, and that is an alternate reality in which I could not bear to live. The art isn’t bad, though sometimes people are drawn in Grappler Baki-style poses while slurping down a bowl of food. Either way, I’m probably going to pick up at least one more volume of this when I get a chance, and I’d suggest it to anyone looking for a fun, light read who can put up with plot contrivances for the sake of fun.

I know I promised to keep writing manga reviews, but I’ve been too busy taking stock and making a website where you can buy fabulous doujinshi, doujin music, manga, and more at low low prices! Touhou, Bemani, Rozen Maiden, Haruhi/Lucky Star crossovers, Naruto manga, anime girls with boy parts where their girl parts normally are, there’s something for everyone!! Please buy things and keep me from starving on the streets of Kyoto! Check it out at:

http://krsale.wordpress.com/

Remember that time I did this in February and I thought that maybe I’d do this once a month? Man, I’m a funny guy. Anyway, as part of my plan to clean up/out my nerdy crap from my house before I leave to Glorious Nippon for a year of education and debauchery I figured I’d give some of the manga that’s been lying around my place a review before I leave all my earthly belongings behind / try to pawn it off on you suckers (keep an eye on this webspace in the coming weeks for more on that!). Oh, and rather than doing a bunch of reviews at once, I’m going to actually split these up in a futile attempt to get more page views. anyway this introduction is already longer than it should be so

Neko Ramen, Sonishi Kenji, vols 1 (2006) and 2 (2007)

This manga apparently has gotten not one but two seasons of flash-created Original Net Anime (what an unfortunate acronym) made out of it, so I figured that this would be worth reviewing. Anyway, obligatory plot summary:

A cat… that makes RAMEN??! This must be high-concept gag manga at its finest! Well, it got me to buy it at least.

Yeah, that’s about it. I know I shouldn’t have really expected too much from this, especially given my horrible track record with 4-koma (the genre needs more Ki-Sho-Ten-Ketsu-YAMI), but somehow I couldn’t help myself. I blame the Nekojiru kick I was on. Anyway, it’s about two volumes of roughly 4 jokes: the cat is bad at making ramen, the cat is bad at making business decisions, one of his three customers displays their character traits, the cat is a cat!! I do have to say in its defense, blasting through a volume of 4-koma gags is not really the optimal way to enjoy the form and genre, but still, this only got the occasional smile out of me. Incidentally, the parts of Neko Ramen that I found most interesting were the 16-page regular manga-style stories. They’re mostly little vignettes about Taisho, the eponymous neko, and his past, riffing off of generic manga backstories to somewhat comedic effect. These free up the story a bit, letting Sonishi play around outside of THERE IS A CAT. HE MAKES RAMEN. JOKETIME ENSUES., but they tend to not have any joke until the last page, and not in the shaggy dog Cromartie kind of way, either.

I checked out the net anime for this, too, hoping that somehow they could turn it around into something great, like the top-notch adaptation of Sketchbook‘s snooze-inducing manga (which incidentally runs in the same magazine as this, remind me to stay away from it), but no dice. At least it’s free! (Like most, um, onanisms.) Overall, if you want a casual, light read (it’s got furigana!) and/or love cats doing goofy things, or happened to love the anime and think I’m completely misguided, I’d say to pick this up, but otherwise I’d recommend saving your yens.

This is a worthless post I stole from a bunch of other people. Sorry!

• ADV Films is in financial trouble! I bet you didn’t know that. I actually like them, even though their magazine was boring and all of their DVDs are encoded horribly at random. Hopefully they can stay away from actual Japanese businessmen in the future, since apparently they don’t know how to sell anything.
• Of course, some companies nobody likes; GONZO’s holding company is in a stock death spiral and will probably be delisted.
• You can watch Yu-gi-oh Abridged with Japanese subtitles on Nicovideo. I was going to do a panel about Nico at Otakon, and this would be great for it, but their panels department has been messed up since last year and rejected it. Guess I’d better prereg…

Since you replied to this, I feel compelled to respond. I used to be the Executive Editor of Newtype USA and feel strongly about this.

No, Otaku USA is not a “good pub.” It’s a magazine that stole its ideas, format, look, “USA” suffix, DVD and layout from Newtype USA and banked largely on consumer confusion at the newsstand to sell issues (which got even easier when NTUSA went away, lucky for you guys). You proceeded to trumpet how unbiased a magazine it was while often having large news items/features promoting books the magazine’s editors and contributors had written. And you printed columns on vinyl toys written by a guy who makes a living selling those same toys and often spent lots of real estate promoting his own merchandise. Unbiased? Hardly. Finally, for a magazine that claims to be for only the “hardcore” fans Otaku USA has spent its last 3 recent months peddling only mainstream titles like Naruto, Bleach and Dragon Ball Z on its cover–apparently in a vaguely Beckett Anime-style attempt to sell issues. What’s on your next cover, InuYasha? One Piece? Oh, maybe Bleach again?

Let’s call a spade a spade. Otaku USA was conceived from the beginning as a Newtype USA copycat and will always be a poorly executed, amateurish dupe in my eyes. (Despite having the opportunity to do something original or fill the void left by Animerica’s departure.) My only regret is that ADV’s ill-advised business “tactics” in late 2007 caused Kadokawa to pull the Newtype license before Otaku USA fell back into the porta-potty from whence it came. Hopefully though, as your pool of anime advertisers shrinks and costs of paper/postage and that free DVD go up, you’re circling the bowl. Since you feel the need to advertise the mere existence of your magazine in a PiQ topic, maybe that time is near. I can only hope.

Sure I’m bitter. But when someone attempts to copy your act so completely like the way OUSA did (badly, thankfully–but it may have fooled some) I think I’m entitled.

Now, I don’t know much about this whole magazine thing, but isn’t the writing quality more important than having “USA” in the name? I guess not when all your articles were translated from Japanese anyway.

So it turns out that the doujin of cute girls wearing headphones that I bought last winter at the dirt cheap price of 8000 yen is getting a reprint and then some. And KEI is doing an artbook too? What’s the world coming to? Before you know it, all this increased supply will drive those poor, poor scalpers out of business!

(so fucking bitter right now)

update 6/25: new improved moonruneless hyper link

Maybe now I won’t have to hear quite as many Kooky Japan stories at school?

And here I was, thinking that I was being a fool for hoping that 2ch would manage to have some pull on a big corporation after seeing signs of the stink on itai.

(real posts about more important things (MY ANIMES) to resume next week maybe)

A 25-year-old yakuza named Tomohiro Kato completely ruined everyone’s day just now, driving into a crowd in Akihabara and then stabbing 15 people, with 5 of them in cardiac arrest. The pointless TV media attention has just been dying down, but now I guess it’ll be back for a while, and even worse. Patrick thinks it’s going to mess up everything, but hopefully it’s going to reflect badly on the Yakuza and not on the Tsukihime remake!?

alex: I’m going to be hearing about this for fucking weeks
alex: holy shit it was right out side the fucking sofmap

Live report from a maid and japanese akibablog

ALL THE TEXT ON THIS DVD IS IN BANK GOTHIC, I WANT MY $2 BACK RIGHTSTUF

Nice OP, though. If my Macross 7 torrent finishes soon, I won’t have to watch anything but 90s space shows for months!

This Impz guy told me to nominate some people for some awards, and then only like one of the blogs I nominated only made it in! In protest, here’s some stuff you should read that you can’t vote for. Most of these people update more than we do!

Anipages Daily writes mini-essays about art, can somehow identify individual animators, and really likes Masaaki Yuasa. Since most of the anime industry doesn’t really do art and there’s only one of him, that doesn’t leave him with much, but he tries!
(Personally, I didn’t start watching Kemonozume ’cause I don’t really like poop jokes. I really mean to finish/start Mononoke sometime, though)

Akiba Blog brings me to tears with its beautiful writing every single time I read it. From what I gather, Akiba is only for porn and tourism these days, so pretty much all the entries are about that, but sometimes you can read about games with stupid names like “12RIVEN -the Ψcliminal of integral-“.

This is the eroge that writes about delusion. Toranoana writes on its POP that “we have never seen this kind of eroge! It’s like an erotic manga. Your delusion would definitely exposes!

Karmaburn has been running since back in the day with Momotato and JASCII. They were only useful for knowing what to watch (ie, make sure not to watch anything they liked), but his brain hasn’t been replaced by moe just yet. Also, he compares everything to Eva, whereas everybody else forgets about a show maybe a month after it’s done airing. May or may not be in a secret club with us.

Fast Karate and AWO are, uh, not actually blogs I guess. But they do write for the world’s most powerful magazine! Although Clarissa really needs to develop a writing gimmick to match “talks about Golgo 13 all the time” and “actually likes DBZ” – do we really need to know setting details about Shuffle?