The Anime Almanac

Based off of the classic arcade game from Bandai-Namco, Tower of Druaga: The Aegis of Uruk is the tale of wannabe hero Jil. Sixty years after the Tower of Druaga was defeated, it has once again returned to the Uruk Kingdom. But fortunately for the people of Uruk, the Summer of Anu approaches, which subdues the monsters living in the tower enough to give the villagers a fighting chance to enter and climb its many levels.

While most of the folks who venture into the tower merely wish to take the treasure hidden within it, Jil has much bigger plans in mind. He wants to reach the top level and beat the evil Druaga himself. But his first guild fires him after he nearly gets them all killed in the lower levels. So he gathers another colorful band of warriors, mages, and other characters you’d expect from a typical fantasy story, and ventures on into battle.

If you remember a few weeks ago, I reviewed Blassreiter, one of the first anime series legally simulcasted on the internet while airing on Japanese TV 20 months ago. Well, Druaga was the other simulcast that aired that season, and just like Blassreiter, I absolutely loved watching this series on a 2-disc DVD box set from FUNimation.

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Watch out, America, there’s a new manga company in town.

Kodansha is the largest publisher in Japan and puts out some of the country’s most popular manga magazines like Morning, Nakayoshi, and Weekly Shonen Magazine.

They shook up the American manga industry five years ago by going into an exclusive partnership with Random House to create Del Rey Manga. Thanks to Kodansha’s amazing catalog of works from artists like CLAMP and Ken Akamatsu, Del Rey entered the market with a bang, and is now considered to be the second largest manga publisher in America.

But over a year ago, rumors began circulating that Kodansha was going to be setting up their own manga division in America that would run separately from Del Rey. Personally, I’m cautious whenever something like this happens. When Toei Animation and Bandai Visual decided to bypass their American partners and enter into the domestic anime market themselves, it was disastrous. So, I was worried that a “Kodansha USA” would meet a similar fate in the manga world.

Well, the rumors turned out to be true, and the new domestic manga publisher, now officially called Kodansha Comics, released their first two manga volumes last month. They were Akira and The Ghost in the Shell, both originally released in America by Dark Horse Comics many years ago.

So considering that I have no idea who is running the new company or if they even had a PR department, you can imagine my surprise to see these two books magically arrive in my mailbox last week for review. And being that I’ve never read either of these series from Dark Horse in the past, I decided to see what this new publisher was all about with their first volume of The Ghost in the Shell manga by Masamune Shirow.

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What ever happened to all those old toys and doodads you had when you were a kid? Doesn’t it feel like they have just simply vanished off of the face of the Earth?

That is the premise behind the latest anime movie from Production I.G., Oblivion Island: Haruka and the Magic Mirror. As a child, Haruka heard an old Japanese fable of how all the items that have gone unnoticed and forgotten by people eventually get picked up and taken away by nature’s most sneaky creatures, foxes.

Now your typical rebellious teenager, Haruka wonders what ever happened to a mirror given to her by her late mother. She happens upon a Shinto shrine and makes an offering to the gods to return the mirror to her. There she encounters a tiny fox-looking creature named Teo carrying an abandoned toy plane.

While following him, she is suddenly swept away to Oblivion Island, a secret world inhabited by Teo’s people and built entirely out of the objects that humans have long forgotten about. So now she teams up with Teo to explore the island and find her long lost mirror.

The movie was only released in Japanese theaters a few months ago, but Fuji Television was generous enough to invite me to an exclusive screening in New York City last week. What I saw was an absolutely delightful children’s film filled with more imagination, heart, and wonderment than the last two Miyazaki films combined.

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Dragonaut: The Resonance is the sci-fi story of Jin Kamishima, a boy who has felt alone in the world after surviving a space shuttle accident that killed the rest of his family. Suddenly one day, he discovers Toa, a beautiful and powerful pink-haired babe that has sworn to protect him and stay by his side forever. With the appearance of this mysterious girl, Jin is thrown into the clutches of the ISDA, a protection agency that is secretly researching how to save the Earth from an asteroid heading directly for the planet.

Not too long ago, the ISDA had discovered an alien egg deep in the ocean. They use the egg to create “Dragons”, artificial humanoid beings that are able to morph into large flying mechanical weapons that look like… well… dragons! When a dragon is born, they’re paired with a human Dragonaut. The dragons fully obey their human Dragonauts and serve as their slave and protectors in peace, and the Dragonauts pilot their dragons during battle.

The ISDA figures out that Toa is a dragon and that Jin has unexpectedly become her Dragonaut, but there is something different in this situation. Toa was not created by the ISDA, she’s a naturally born dragon and far more powerful then any they’ve seen before. And not only has Jin partnered up with Toa, but he’s also taken control of Gio, a newly-born dragon who already has partnered with another Dragonaut.

Can the ISDA utilize Jin and Toa to help them save the world from the deadly asteroid, or will the reluctant two refuse to become lab rats to the organization’s secret operation?

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Like most people, I made just one New Years Resolution last January: 2009 was going to be the year I was going to get in shape!

I had gained a lot of weight from college, and I’ve kept it on for the few years since graduation. I was six feet tall and 238 pounds. So my goal was to be under 200 by the end of the year, which would be reasonable for a man of my size and body type.

It couldn’t be any easier for me as a new gym had just opened a few blocks away from my apartment. So I joined the gym and for the first half of the year, I worked out three days every week.

But there was a problem. Sure, I lost weight as soon as I started working out, but for some reason, I just couldn’t get under 232 lb. I was working my ass off on the treadmill and lifting weights, but it quickly became apparent to me that the work was not paying off.

So around Otakon, I gave up hitting the gym. In the few weeks after that, I had rebounded up to 243 pounds, the most I have ever weighed in my life. That’s when I finally decided to pick up my review copy of the diet book Sayonara, Mr. Fatty! A Geek’s Diet Memoir from Vertical Publishing.

And this book has possibly changed my life forever.

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Detective Toyama is assigned to investigate the apparent suicide of an elementary school teacher. He goes undercover as a teacher himself and fills in for the victim’s class of fifth grade students. He is determined to find out if the suicide was just that, or if there was any foul play was involved that could put the kids in danger too.

He quickly discovers Makoto, a strange boy who seems to be an outcast and bullied by his classmates. But it turns out that the reason why Makoto is so strange is because he has a special gift. He is able to look at people and see all their stresses and worries manifest into hideous demons and monsters. So with the help of the kind undercover detective, the two work together to fix the problems that plague these early adolescent students.

While its “monster-of-the-week” episodic formula seems very simple and shallow on the surface, Deka Kyoshi turns out to be a very delightful read.

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In a fictional modern day Germany, a new terror has emerged as bio-mechanical zombies called “Demoniacs” reek havoc on the unsuspecting masses. The XAT, Xenogenesis Assault Team, fight the Demoniacs in an attempt to keep the people safe and to figure out where these monsters are coming from.

Enter Gerd Frentzen, a prized motorcycle racer who’s suffered an accident that will paralyze him and end his career for sure. Left with no other option, he takes an experimental drug to regain feeling in his legs. It works, but the side effect is that it turns him into a Demoniac himself.

Unlike the other Demoniacs, Gerd is not dead, he’s still alive. So he becomes of interest to the XAT as a test subject and a weapon against other monsters. But as Gerd’s personal life falls apart in front of him, will he be able to stay a hero to the human race, or will he succumb to the bio-mechanical beast he’s turning into?

Over a year ago, Blassreiter made anime history for being one of the first titles to be simulcasted around the world via legal internet distribution. Many folks doubted if the simulcast idea would work out or if it could possibly hurt the chances of the show seeing a proper American release.

Well, twenty months later, the simulcast trend is still going incredibly well, and Blassreiter has finally seen an R1 release with the first 13 episodes in this two disc box set. So how does this landmark series stand up?

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In an effort of oversimplifying everything I do, I tend to find one anime or manga company to point out in a blog post and declare my clear “winner” of every major convention I go to. Past winners have included Yen Press at the New York Comic Con in 2008, Bandai Entertainment in Otakon 08 and again in ’09, and FUNimation at the New York Anime Festival last year.

But my winner of the NYAF this year came completely out of left field. Vertical Publishing has never been a particularly exciting company to watch at these cons. Their focus on classical manga and non-manga Japanese publishing seemed to be disconnected with the convention audience, and I honestly did not consider them part of the same industry as Del Rey or Yen Press.

And then a few months ago, they hired manga expert Ed Chavez as their new marketing director, and immediately things started changing for the small publisher. At the NYAF, we finally got to see what the future of Vertical was going to look like with Chavez on board. They announced four new manga acquisitions, including the experimental Peepo Choo and the highly anticipated Chi’s Sweet Home. This was arguably the most exciting news to come out of that weekend.

To learn more about how Vertical managed to make such an amazing appearance at NYAF this year, I spent some time interviewing the man himself, Ed Chavez:
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After a summer of amazing anime and with a packed November quickly approaching, FUNimation has been pretty sparse as far as October new releases go. A good bulk of the review units coming in lately have been either re-releases or re-releases of previous re-releases for the anime giant.

So rather than going a fourth week sans anime review, I decided to look through this stack of re-releases and pick out the best of the best to pop into the ol’ DVD player and take another look. And sure enough, FUNimation had released an all time favorite of mine, Welcome to the NHK, in a complete series box set a few weeks ago.

Tatsuhiro Satou is a hikikomori, a shut-in unable to leave his apartment to find a job or meet new friends. But after nearly four years of not leaving his room, he begins to freak out. The walls are caving in on him, the house appliances have started speaking to him, and his goddamn otaku neighbor won’t stop playing the same goddamn magical girl theme song that has been on repeat for days. On top of all this, he is convinced that the Japanese public broadcast network, the NHK, is really a huge elaborate government conspiracy that is out to get him. After all, why wouldn’t he believe this? The refrigerator and air conditioner told him it was true.

In comes Misaki, a relatively harmless teenage girl who discovers the shut-in while going door-to-door passing out pamphlets. For reasons unknown to anyone, she offers to personally consult Satou on how to shed his hikikomori ways. Now thanks to Misaki’s pet project, Satou goes down a long and twisted road filled with otaku, hentai video games, internet addictions, porn, pyramid schemes, suicide pacts, and every other real-life national pandemic that is scaring the citizens of Japan these days.

And would you believe this is all a comedy?

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In the top floor area of the historical Webster Hall venue in downtown New York City, a sold out house of anime and music fans wait patiently for a show to begin. It is the weekend of the New York Anime Festival, and on this Sunday evening, the fans are showing fatigue from days worth of events. Upon entry to the venue, they were given a pink glow stick and a red handkerchief for reasons yet unknown.

The house lights dim, the stage lights go on, and an announcer blasts, “Are you ready?” to the crowd’s enthusiastic applause.

Then suddenly sixteen girls, with ages ranged from 14 to 21, step onto the stage and begin performing a synchronized song and dance. It is quite a sight to see so many pretty girls occupy one single stage like this. Their opening song, an upbeat number called “Aitaikatta”, greets the crowd with Japanese lyrics that translate to,”We’ve missed you all, we’ve missed you all, we’ve missed you all, yes!”

Sure, the pitch perfect vocals going through the speakers were all prerecorded, but that did not seem to matter to the predominately male audience. Their bouncy choreography got the crowd hyped up and waving their glow sticks to the sugar coated beat of their music. And for extra fan service, their catholic school girl outfits were specially weighted so that their skimpy skirts would flare up with every turn, innocently exposing their black undergarments.

Cute, sexy, cheerful, and pure, the girls of AKB48 are to these nerdish men what the Jonas Brothers are to American teenage girls. But the j-idol phenomena is rarely seen outside of Japan, so for most of these native New York otaku, this was their first time seeing a show like this in person.

And what better idol show to see for your first time than the most popular group in Japan these days?

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