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Saturday 20 February 2010

Manga Review: Rozen Maiden

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Title: Rozen Maiden
Author: Peach Pit
Release: Monthly
Status: Finished/Sequel
Genre: Fantasy, Slice of Life
Art: B
Originality: A
Story: B
Characters: S
Humor: B
Action: B

Impression: This is the story of a shut-in who one day receives a mysterious Victorian styled doll that he soon finds out is one of 7 legendary dolls that are alive and compete to become the perfect girl for their creator. Though that’s the setup here, the manga focuses more on slice of life moments rather than this conflict. The characters are quite interesting and their interactions with each other make the slice of life moments a joy to read. The dolls have their own uniquely amusing personalities but the main character is no slouch either as he gradually gets over his trauma and develops as a person so the story isn’t just about the dolls. If I had to guess what the leitmotif of this series was, it’d have to be that people should not be bound to their labels and that they should work their hardest to make the best out of every day. The manga was cancelled due to a dispute with the publishers but the story was continued in the form of a sequel in another magazine.

Manga Reviews Index

Friday 19 February 2010

Manga Review: Mangaka to Assistant-san

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Title: Mangaka to Assistant-san
Author: Hiroyuki
Release: Monthly
Status: Ongoing
Genre: Comedy
Art: A
Originality: B
Story: C
Characters: B
Humor: B
Action: B

Impression: This is comedy series about a mangaka troubles his assistant with his various needs. It’s funny enough and the art style is good but other than that it doesn’t really have much going for it since it averages 7-8 pages per chapter. It comes in two chapter formats so the chapter numbering gets confusing.

Manga Reviews Index

Wednesday 17 February 2010

Manga Review: Tiji-kun

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Title: Tiji-kun
Author: Oojiba Ken,Yokoyoma Masahiko
Release: Weekly
Status: Ongoing
Genre: Shonen, Martial Arts
Art: B
Originality: C
Story: B
Characters: B
Humor: B
Action: B

Impression: This is about a teenager of a certain school located in the vicinities of a red light district. As such the school feels the students need protection and they decide they need to get Tiji-kun, a rumored strongman who is known as the strongest person in the area. It turns out to be the main character and he wants to hide his identity as Tiji-kun from everyone but this isn’t the case as his identity gradually gets leaked out to the people around him. The premise feels a little uninspired to me as I didn’t feel much freshness from it but the way the plot is executed is done decently enough. At some point it feels like I missed an entire chapter as certain events happen so suddenly and without any warning even though it I’ve been reading it in proper sequence. It’s an okay series but it doesn’t really offer anything particularly interesting. For a better version of this kind of plot I’d recommend Holyland for a slightly different flavor and Shamo for a much darker and twisted taste altogether.

Manga Reviews Index

Tuesday 16 February 2010

Light Novel Review: Zaregoto Volume 1, Kubikiri Cycle

Author: Nisio Isin
Illustrator: Take
Genre: Mystery
Translator: Greg Moore

Sorry for the lack of updates from but between my higher education matters, my latest translation project and this absolutely addictive piece of literature I simply could not find the motivation or the time to write up any new manga reviews.

To be honest this is not the first light novel I’ve read but it is the first legal copy of such a publication I’ve ever possessed. Because of this, I was inspired to start writing reviews of light novels as well, starting with this one as my impression of it is still fresh in my mind. To this day, I have read installments of Fate/Zero, Kara no Kyoukai, Toradora, Zero no Tsukaima and of course the Suzumiya Haruhi series. I will probably write those up occasionally if I am in the mood to do so. Oh, before I forget, I should explain the concept of these “light novels”. Light novels are serialized novels from Japan that come with illustrations of various scenes and characters from the story. Quite a number of anime nowadays are adaptations of light novels as many of the stories of this form of literature are aimed at target audiences similar to those of anime.

Let me clear things up about this particular story first because there is no way in hell that you could call this a “light” read. I’m quite adept at English, come up with far too many story ideas to write out and am also very well versed in the mechanics of theoretical time travel but even I had trouble keeping up with the writing style at first. Nisio Isin’s first person POV writing style is, just as the protagonist frequently brings up a lot, utter nonsense. I’ll explain this bit later but all you need to know is that the writing style will be difficult for most people. When you combine that with the space saving format that they use, you end up with a story that takes just as long to finish as one of later volumes of the Harry Potter books(I took 5 hours to finish off Phoenix and I know that is very fast for most people). Those 300 pages of the protagonist’s highly eloquent and articulate babbling made me feel as I if I had just finished reading Order of the Phoenix in one sitting.

The story revolves around sealed room plots on a deserted island where the owner of the island invites genius’ to visit her on her island and stay for a while. The main characters for this story are Kunagisa Tomo and her best friend who’s only known as Ii-chan throughout the story. The story is told from Ii-chan’s perspective so that makes him the protagonist of this story and this proves to be an effective way to pull the readers in as his thoughts come off as very amusing and relatable.

Now back to what I meant about the writer’s style. Things really twist around in our hero’s head much like our very own(or at least mine) so there are times where he asks one question only for him to repeat what he just thought as an answer an thus you get several cryptic sentences in one paragraph that may take some rereading to figure out what Ii-chan is talking about. Then there are lines when it really seems like he’s holding a conversation with someone else but it’s still all just in his head. It is simply chaotic, grammatically criminal, utterly confusing and pure nonsense – and I find this peculiar narration of his to be quite invigorating and challenging mentally. Incidentally it is quite difficult for me to imitate his style here to use as part of my review.

For a story of the mystery genre, the sealed off island murder plot didn’t seem all that inspired really. While Ii-chan may not have been able to figure out how the criminal’s scheme worked until the end of the novel, I was able to work out who the murderer was along with how and why the gimmicks were done with the exception of how the perpetrator managed to get out of the second sealed room (which was rather unconventional to say the least) by the time the third incident happened because it really narrowed down the suspect list. When I was a kid I wanted to be a detective because I liked solving conundrums so I was pleased with myself for solving the mystery and immediately picking up on all the clues that were necessary to solve this. What was really inspired were the two character twists at the end of the book and at that point I could only mirror Ii-chan’s reactions to them. I completely missed the first one but I had an inkling when it came to the second one because I couldn’t figure out the “Why?” behind their actions. Basically, the author ended what would have been a decent mystery with excellent dialogue otherwise into an amazingly detailed and brilliant misdirected mystery with excellent dialogue.

The characterization is superb for this story. The author first introduces the skeleton of the characters’ personality and gradually builds on tops of that foundation by slipping in subtle hints through all the dialogue. It’s quite amazing how the author manages to use some of the hints meant for other characters and also use them to form pictures of other characters, including ones that don’t really have much image until late in the story. The first twist at the end makes use of the up till then solid image of one character to basically turn two characters’ images topsy-turvy and it, in all seriousness, makes perfect sense. That twist wasn’t a necessary factor in the plot and really seemed to be there mainly for shock value and to make way for the final twist at the end. It was a interesting way to end the case and it certainly played up one of the themes.

Speaking of themes, Nisio Isin seems to have a fondness to include motifs that centre upon the concept of genius as shown here and in his manga Medaka Box. All of the female characters in this story are quite eccentric by society’s standards and half of them have reputations as world class geniuses. The idea of what a genius is, what defines a genius and how genius’ are treated by the rest of the world is brought up in at least half of the pages in the book. It’s even used as foreshadowing for certain twists in the plot and that echoes back on all that’s been said. It also plays into the relationship between Ii-chan and Kunagisa, digging very deeply at the core of things often through some rather harsh words from the other guests at the island followed by quick but frequent bouts of angst in the protagonist’s head.

I do find something unusual about the illustrations used in this book though. Most light novels include illustrations of characters and scenes but for some reason there are only illustrations of characters only and no scenes at all. With a mystery novel you’d think they’d at least have pictures of the crime scenes give strengthen their images but since most of the focus goes to the dialogue and motifs I guess it serves its purpose sufficiently enough though I really would have liked to see what the river of paint looked like.

Overall the book is simply a wonderful read. It makes one think about the various motifs featured in the story while providing multiple points of views about them through the winding and twisting dialogue and characterisation. Hopefully SHAFT will animate this when they’re done with Katanagatari, another one of Nisio Isin’s works. I really would suggest this to anyone who likes reading and I would suggest that Del Rey hire another translator to work on the remaining eight novels. It’s not that Greg Moore did a terrible job. Quite the contrary; he did a terrific job of translating this novel and having managed to match the author’s style as well. I know these books are abnormally text heavy for light novels and that translating a novel is nowhere near as easy as translating manga so I can accept the long delay between releases. However, when you’ve got fans like me who wants to read more of this nonsense and the 2nd translated volume is to be released almost two years after the first then you can see why they really need to get more people working on this. To summarise my review I’ll use a question:

So what exactly makes this such a fantastic book?

Nonsense.

Sunday 7 February 2010

Manga Review: Barihaken

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Title: Barihaken
Author: Suzuki Shinya
Release: Weekly
Status: Finished
Genre: Comedy, Shonen
Art: B
Originality: B
Story: C
Characters: B
Humor: B
Action: B

Impression: This is about an otaku who through a certain chain of events has become the leader of the delinquents in his school and now has to deal with hiding his otaku-ness from his gang members and all the social stigmas that come from being their leader. Frankly I wanted to give the characters a C score but since I've only seen the first four chapters of this manga so it's okay for the characters to be a flat at this point. The main character is basically an idiot and the story depends on his gang members misinterpreting the things he says and do so that takes down the fun factor for me. The concept has been done before in other ways but this particular "otaku in hiding" plot doesn't stand up very well against those other ones, quite likely due to the fact that it's not unthinkable for a delinquent to like anime. It works for people of high standing but just not a delinquent.

Manga Reviews Index

Friday 5 February 2010

Hardcore Poke’mon Pics from /b/

A few days ago a random member of Anon came up with the brilliant idea of requesting hardcore Poke’mon pics in /b/. This piqued my interest as we all inherently understand that real life versions of these cute little mons would be serious threats to human lives. I also understood that this being /b/ someone would definitely take a shot at it with the more depraved interpretation of the word ‘Hardcore’ but fortunately for me no one rose up to that possibility while I was raiding the thread for awesome pictures hence nothing for me that I would wish to unsee. There may have been a new popo meme that got started but who knows if it’ll take off elsewhere.

Sadly, the thread is most likely gone by now as threads in 4chan are deleted if they aren’t bumped often enough so I have taken up the duty that non-/b/tards get the chance to see these awesome pics. Bear in mind that some of these pictures also have some traces of nightmare fuel in them so I’d rate this post to be at least PG-13 so kids, BEWARE.


Steelix

Red Gyarados

Arcanine

Pinsir

Feraligatr

Charmeleon

Venasaur

Togepi... Ugh

Scyther

Raichu

Mr Mime

Haunter

Gengar... Under your beds!

Koffing... is what happens when you smoke!

Beedrill! Your drills are the drills that pierce the heavens!!

Butterfree

Electabuzz

Cubone

Lapras

Sandslash

Tentacruel

Geodude aka Stoner Voldemort

Shiftry

Fuck Yeah! Magikarp!

Arbok

Blaziken

Aerodactyl

Kabuto... I don't know if this is a real animal or not

Kabutops

Alakazam

Ninetails. Apparently they destroy villages.

Articuno

Zapdos

Moltres

Lugia

Lucario

Darkrai

Mew... Fuwa Fuwari Fuwa Fuwaru...

Mewtwo

Groudon. Click for Epicness!

Last one and I love this but please don't feel offended:

Fuck You Too Sandshrew!!

Tuesday 2 February 2010

Manga Review: Evangelion RE-TAKE

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Title: Evangelion RE-TAKE
Author: Studio Kimigabuchi
Release: Doujin
Status: Finished
Genre: Seinen, Sci-Fi, Doujinshi
Art: B
Originality: A
Story: S+
Characters: S
Humor: B
Action: S

Impression: This is what has come to be known as the BEST Evangelion doujinshi of all time for its amazing storyline and characterization that matches and builds on the original flavor of the original series. The mind-screw is not quite up to snuff of the original series but that is more than made up for(In spades I might add) with its masterful storytelling, captivating characterisation and spectacularly powerful scenes. In five short but incredible volumes, the story surpasses the original epic in the best ways and ends it in such a way that it provides a perfect way to explain all the different adaptations of the story, both canon and fanmade. It is a highly satisfying read that makes you wish they continued it even further but alas the perfection that is its ending is not easily topped. There is a soundtrack for it and an extra epilogue volume but the focus of that volume is different in a way, not quite as satisfying but it does add a nicely done layer to complement its prequels. In short, this is absolutely and undeniably a must read for every Evangelion fan out there.

Manga Reviews Index

Monday 1 February 2010

Manga Review: Neon Genesis Evangelion

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Title: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Author: Sadamoto Yoshiyuki
Release: Monthly
Status: Ongoing
Genre: Seinen, Sci-Fi, Mecha
Art: B
Originality: A
Story: A
Characters: S
Humor: B
Action: B

Impression: This is the manga adaptation of the infamous Evangelion anime series which follows the original story almost to the letter. When I first tried reading it, I was turned off by the manga’s painfully slow pacing since it took the entire first volume to show just enough plot to fill up one anime episode which is a no-no for any monthly publication. It did finally pick up speed around when Asuka showed up and they did that dance thing. In comparison to the few videos I’ve seen on youtube and the End of Evangelion movies I can safely say that the characters are much more likeable in this version of the story since they don’t spend as much time pouring the angst on us. It also seems to be missing whatever scenes that made Asuka and Rei so worship-worthy to the fanbase cause I honestly can’t see very much appeal here. If I didn’t know that Asuka was a famed Tsundere I wouldn’t be able to pick up whether or not she actually had romantic feelings for Shinji. On the other hand, Rei’s relationship with Shinji was fleshed out quite brilliantly and her character development proved to be fascinating though I still don’t what’s so appealing about her. Personally I felt the real strength of the cast lies with the side characters rather than the main trio as they managed to show off just as much depth with less screen time. In summary, this story really does deserve all the praise it gets for all of its fascinating characters and developments and it seems the author is pulling a twist ending on the fans as it seems to be going for a different direction from the previous two endings GAINAX pulled on us.

Manga Reviews Index
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