The Anime Almanac

I’ve been pretty hit-or-miss when it comes to releases from CMX Manga. In general, I’ve found their shojo releases to be very enjoyable and quite entertaining. Their Densha Otoko release was the best manga adaptation I read of that series, and their Emma series is one of the best manga releases out in the US, period. But shonen action series – the bread and butter of the American manga market – is obviously not CMX’s forte, and Shoko Fukaki’s The Battle of Genryu: Origin is one such shonen series.

Jun is a goofy young martial arts fighter who gains superhuman fighting ability once every month. At school, he practices with the help of his sparring partner, the hot Fusano. But there’s trouble one day when a group of thugs gang up on Jun, and he just barely survives the attack. The thugs were hired by Jun’s older brother, who (for reasons unknown to the reader) appears to be starting a war with his younger brother and their sister.

The cover art, lore, and overall attitude of this comic reminded me a lot of Ikki Tousen – just without any fan service.

And what’s Ikki Tousen without the fan service?

Not very much of anything. (-_-)

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When I looked at the back of the box for FUNimation’s rerelease of Rozen Maiden Traumend, I literally laughed out loud. Of all the good things that review sites have said about the series, they selected one quote in particular to write on the box:

“Very Enjoyable” – AnimeOnDVD.com

Very enjoyable?

Very enjoyable is the type of thing that I would put in my review when I thought an anime or manga series was entertaining, but not necessarily all that great. For example, I’ve said that Venus Versus Virus and Venus Capriccio were both “enjoyable” series. So reading this quote on the back of the box read more to me like:

“Meh… it’s alright, I guess…”

But being a closeted fan of the manga artist group Peach Pit, I was very interested in seeing this series. So I popped in this 12 episode series to find out for myself that it was, in fact, very enjoyable.

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Why do we care so much whenever our favorite novel, comic, or cartoon is adapted into a live-action movie? After all, we already have the original version right there in front of us, and we know that something in the story is going to be lost when squeezed into a 2-hour-long flick. So why do we care so much when that story is shown back to us on the big screen?

I think the reason is because when you see the story on the big screen being portrayed by real life actors, it feels more real and authentic. It gives the fan the notion that the fictional world could happen in real life. Even with something so deep in fantasy as the Lord of the Rings saga could actually look realistic when done as a big budget Hollywood blockbuster.

Viz has recently released Naoki Urasawa’s 20th Century Boys and Pluto in America, and both series have been taking manga critics by storm. When everyone submits their “Best of 2009” lists at the end of this year, you can bet that those two titles will be placed at the top of many of those lists.

They are most certainly at the top of my list right now. As the newest member of the Urasawa fan club, I was very eager to see the first two films of the 20th Century Boys live-action trilogy being shown at the New York Asian Film Festival last weekend.

So did these films succeed in bringing the original comics to life on the big screen?

Yes, oh god yes, they did! (^_^)

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So as I looked at the stack of new releases from FUNimation for this week, I reached a dilemma. I only have time to watch one series, and neither one of these selections particularly caught my interests. So I posed the question to my Tweet Peeps, the people who follow me on Twitter, “What should I review?”

“What’s Kaze no Stigma?”

“Hmm.. Kaze no Stigma sounds interesting.”

“Why don’t you check out Kaze?”

The consensus was pretty clear. I have never watched Kaze no Stigma or have even heard about it up until now. But then again, it looked like neither had most of my Tweet Peeps. So I popped in the series completely blind about what it was or what to expect.

And unfortunately, I found out that maybe there was a reason why I have never heard of this before… (-_-)

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When I read the fifth volume of Black Jack a few weeks ago, I decided to give in to the peer pressure of my fellow manga enthusiasts and open myself up to the grandfather of manga, Osamu Tezuka. I wanted to dive deep into this man’s massive catalog of decades old works. So when I found out that Digital Manga Publishing was releasing the 1968 Tezuka classic Swallowing the Earth this week, I leapt at the chance of securing a review copy for my second fray into the world of this legendary manga artist.

In World War II, an American soldier dies with a smile on his face in front of the Japanese. He uses his final breaths to tell his oppressors the name of one woman, Zephyrus, and hands them a photo of a beautifully buxom blond woman.

The Japanese soldiers are absolutely infatuated with the woman in the picture, and begin to ask around about Zephyrus. What they come to learn were stories of a goddess among women, a seductress with the power to charm any man into bed with her. After nights of the most incredible pleasure, the men literally shrivel up dry and get thrown aside, then the blond siren moves on to her next boy toy.

Twenty years after the war, those former soldiers still remember the picture, and they just so happen to hear that a woman named Zephyrus just checked into a Japanese hotel. To add to the mystery, she is said to be just as beautiful as she was in the picture, and hasn’t age at all in all these years. So one of the soldiers employs his drunken slacker of a son named Gohonmatsu Seki to spy on the girl. If there’s any man strong enough, or just plain stupid enough, to not fall for the siren’s tempting advances, it would be him!

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When FUNimation ran their “Sneak Preview” panel at AnimeNEXT weeks ago, their centerpiece was a new title from studio Gonzo called Romeo x Juliet (pronounced “Romeo and Juliet”). In this Youtube clip, FUNi rep Adam Sheehan describes the unique dub that they did for this series:

An English dub consisting of actual lines of Shakespeare and next episode previews written in iambic pentameter? That sounded interesting.

And so he showed off two clips from the show, and sure enough, the dub did appear quite impressive. Many people in the audience left the panel eager to see more of this show and its unique dub.

So now that I’ve had a chance to watch the series, does it live up to the hype surrounding it?

Well, yes, but not in the ways that I thought it would.

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CMX’s newest release, Ballad of a Shinigami by Asuka Izumi, is the manga adaptation of the light novel by K-Ske Hasegawa. It follows Momo, the cutest little shinigami (a “God of Death” or grim reaper) that you’ve ever seen. Along with her animal familiar Daniel, Momo watches in the shadows as the human drama plays out in front of her in the world of the living.

Ballad is not so much of a serialized series as it is a collection of short stories that Momo watches from the sidelines. Volume one includes a short prelude and three stories.

Each story generally centers around a person who has recently suffered the loss of someone close to them, so they become all too aware of the cute death god watching over them. They become too preoccupied in contemplating their own mortality to realize all the love and life that still exists around them.

Man, who would have thought that shojo could be this gloomy and depressing! (o_o)

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You know, for being called The Anime Almanac, I sure haven’t been showcasing a lot of anime as of late. The last anime review I did was of the first Lucky Star DVD from over a year ago. The last time I even directly talked about any anime show in particular was my analysis of Haré + Guu. Since then, I’ve been either writing editorials or con reports, or I’ve been reviewing manga and video games.

That’s why I am so glad that FUNimation stepped in and answered my call for anime review material. And boy, did they ever! They literally sent over more anime my way then I’ll ever have time to go over! So for my first of many weekly anime reviews, I selected the 13-episode horror/action series, Venus Versus Virus, a rescue title from ADV.

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In my years of fandom, one of the most interesting people I have ever met has been Erica Friedman. As a lesbian and hardcore manga fan, Erica has become very vocal and passionate about the yuri subgenre of comics. She’s so into it that she writes in her Okazu yuri-blog many times each week, runs the occasional Yuricon in both America and Japan, and has even started her own independent publishing company called ALC Publishing.

The somewhat annual yuri anthology Yuri Monogatari is Erica’s pride and joy. A combination of short stories from both Japanese and Western manga artists, Monogatari offers a wide variety of “authentic yuri” manga compiled together from the queen of the genre herself.

So how does this compilation play out for a more mainstream manga fan such as myself? Well, I got to check out the latest volume, and I discovered that like pretty much every manga anthology, you’ve gotta take the good with the bad.

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One time when I was getting a job interview for an entry level position, my potential employer took a good look over my resume.

“So I see you’re really into this anime stuff,” he said. Since I had run a number of anime clubs in college and minored in Japanese, it was a pretty obvious theme through out my resume.

“Yes,” I told him, “I collect Japanese animation and Japanese comic books.”

I am a little worried about bringing up this subject at job interviews. How would these potential employers interpret my hobby? Would they consider it unique and interesting, or would they think it was silly and childish?

But luckily for me, he seemed to have a very favorable impression on the medium.

“You know, the best book I have ever read about business and business practices was a Japanese comic book. I couldn’t believe how educational it was. I learned so much from that one book.”

And a week later, he hired me for the job.

So when No Starch Press sent me over their current selection of The Manga Guide to… educational series, I remembered what my boss had said about learning his trade from just one comic book. Can manga actually be used in education?

After reading through three books that have been released in the series, I can confidently say that yes, manga does make a great educational tool.

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