Recommended Anime/Manga?

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BIL
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by BIL »

Mischief Maker wrote:Well thanks to the (reportedly) terrible live-action remake, I finally saw Cowboy Bebop for the first time on Netflix.

This was NOT the show I was expecting. I'd heard people praising it for years, but all I'd ever seen was animated gifs of the church shootout where a bullet grazes Faye's cleavage. So I was expecting something goofy.

So much for the only Joss Whedon show I ever liked. Turns out "Firefly" was a blatant copy, even down to the autistic teen girl with superpowers. No disrespect to the cast.
Spoiler
The ending was a downer, but that really was the only direction Spike's character could go, even if Ed and Ein had stuck around.
I guess I'll watch Berserk now. Which version is better, the one on Netflix or the one on HBO Max?
Bebop spoilers:
Spoiler
the creator, whose name I can't recall offhand, said something about the sorrow innate in "the taste" of the show... I love the sentiment. It's bittersweet, simply.

As a good buddy put it, Spike is endearingly sanguine because as far as he's concerned, he should've died long ago and is always ready to depart. I hope he's never dug up and assraped, but who knows these days.
Lovely show, I'm due a rewatch. Glad the remake didn't turn you off the real thing! I guess it served some purpose in this world after all. :cool:

Berserk 1997 is a very decent trailer for the manga. Cuts out some things, but gets the gist across more than sufficiently. Great OST from Susumu Hirasawa! TBH with Miura's tragic passing, it may be the most complete Berserk project out there. Covers just one early arc, but by that arc's nature it'll leave a fuckin mark.

The more recent movie trilogy, which covers the same arc as the above series, is alright. The CG and overall aesthetic are kinda fugly imo, but it's not a bad alternative.

Berserk 2016 is infamously dogshit and has sweet fuck-all of the manga's excellence, don't bother. Seriously, it's awful on all levels. Looks like a shitty-ass PS2 game. (a shame, as the actual PS2 Berserk fuckin rocks) People have made careers lampooning it. It's not an adaptation of the manga, even, but some misbegotten hybrid mashup where Guts goes SSJ2 to kill a spooky tree.
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by drauch »

Bebop movie is also good. It takes place between eps 22-23 from what I gather.

I don't have any streaming services besides what I get with Bezos Prime, but I'm pretty sure everyone hates the 2012 movies. It looks awful, like visually. I think that's the main reason, but I could never stomach it enough to watch it. The 2016 series follows this up.

The first series from '97 is great. I've watched it a few times and love it. Covers the beginning all the way up to the Golden Age Arc, where it probably should have ended imo. But I'm probably in the minority there.

*BIL beat me to it while I was writing this, but he pretty much covers how I feel as well.
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by BIL »

Hell yeah, Spike v Vincent (all rounds) is some SSS+α animated kung-fu. Image If you like the show, the movie's a safe shot. "This is just like when I sunk the Bismarck! Shazoom!"
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by Mischief Maker »

Okay, HBO Max is Berserk 2016, and Netflix is Berserk 2012. Guess I'll pass.

Netflix doesn't seem to have the Cowboy Bebop movie. Oh well.
Two working class dudes, one black one white, just baked a tray of ten cookies together.

An oligarch walks in and grabs nine cookies for himself.

Then he says to the white dude "Watch out for that black dude, he wants a piece of your cookie!"
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by Steamflogger Boss »

First Bebop watch, I'm jealous. I loved the ending personally, fit really well but then I'm big into Noir movies.

Anyway I've watched some shit since last I stopped by. I think the last time I posted was about Log Horizon. More Galaxy Express, Burn Up, City Hunter 2, finished Hajime no Ippo. Currently watching Aura Battler Dunbine (yo it's Isekai Gundam) and Lupin the 3rd Part 3.
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by BryanM »

The only new thing I've watched recently was Life Lessons With Uramichi. "Jaded burnt out adults who've failed at their dreams go to their job at a terrible children's show everyday." It might be the only time where an official synopsis blurb got me onboard immediately.

I like how moderate the show is across the board - it isn't "try hard". There are no battles, it isn't trying much to be amusing, it's definitely not very honry (when most anime is very very honry)... a nice detox from all the drama and noise elsewhere. Perhaps not substantial enough to warrant another season, but for the four hours that exist, nearly half of it is worthwhile in my opinion.

Thinking maybe I should look into other workplace sitcoms. So much of the market is just boobmonsters+battles.

I remember Dragon Maid had quite a lot of this kind of melancholy adult life rumination.. while also having the standard boobmonsters and exactly one (1) battle.
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by Steamflogger Boss »

I quit even checking upcoming series but sometimes things come across my radar that end up being decent.

Sidenote: The animation from the upcoming Shenmue series made me want to upchuck. Not that I wanted to watch it anyway but still...
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by Udderdude »

I dunno, I've been averaging 10 shows a season since 2016, and I don't really watch anything with boobmonsters. Except Dragon Maid, of course.
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by BIL »

So I check in on Baki Part 5, and first thing Yuujiro is straight up raping a man in he asshole. Image

Image

Disturbingly, too! Guy's kicking and screaming and left mute/fetal, becoming a legendarily brave adventurer in the sixteen years hence because, in his words, he doesn't care if he lives or dies anymore. Image I mean I get it, totally. Can't get more grotesquely macho than the rest of manhood being so much 24/7 boipucci buffet. HOWEVER that's not what I find notable - no, it's the ever-fractious Western readership tearing itself apart with hollers of "NAAAAH BRUH THE MAN YUJIRO GAY AF YALLLL" and "Aykshualy, thats vry homophobic+misogyny of u, u were ok when it was just women getting victimized" (got a point tbh!) "BRUHHH, U GAY 2 LMAO, YAAAAACK"

Spoiler
Image


I think sometimes of cannibal murderer Issei Sagawa, who upon deportation home from France, made a good living as a minor celebrity and restaurant critic. I dunno, I'm far from a "nuke the cunts again" sort, but given that and other tales... the invincible antagonist of a deranged uber-yaoi-masquerading-as-shonen being a habitual sodomizer of anything with a pulse doesn't really move the needle.

Christ, Baki is retarded. I really like it, in stints Image

TBH it's mostly the Musashi arc from Part 4 / Baki-dou that keeps me coming back. Lovable fellow! I wish the mangaka would leave the homoerotic gorno, and just do an outright Sengoku. He portrays the era with a wonderful gallows humour. No wonder Musashi cleaned out the roster! Buncha soft-ass bitches. Back in his day, men was FUCKIN JUST 2 SURVIVE :o

Image

Image

That face Image

Image
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by Udderdude »

All you really have to say is "No homo".
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by BIL »

Yeah true! :o And as long as the balls don't touch ofc
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by drauch »

https://www.cbr.com/bastard-anime-netfl ... ouncement/

Man, this came out of nowhere. Always bummed me out how this never got anything more than the abrupt OVA bitd. Loving the promotional still there. Curious how they'll handle all the band names and stuff, presumably like the old official translation. Better be some tittays nah mean. This also means the manga is finally going to be finished. I have verified this and nobody should question it.
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by BIL »

Fawwwk yeah :shock: That promo still is legit. Image Image
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by Randorama »

Part 9 of JoJo is in the works.

I finished Part 8 recently, and I think that I will re-read to get a feeling of the whole part as a complete work.
I am also going through Araki's interviews, like this one.
Always a pleasure to know Araki-san's views on life, food and butter (!).

...The Bastard!! announcement is funny.
I remember the manga becoming a train-wreck the moment the author was allowed to go off a strict schedule (1992? 1993? I remember reading it in 9th grade or something).

Maybe they will have some plan to turn this into something interesting, but at this point I am not surprised of anything anymore, manga- and anime-wise.
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by BIL »

Excellent news, and even excellenter to hear Part 8's done, so I can finish reading it. :cool: Liked the ~5 volumes I read, but I dread the thought of ever waiting on a JoJo. Just how I grew up, naw mean. Image

Meanwhile - whoa! :o What the heck? :shock: BAKI HAS AIDS!11111 Image

Image

It's a damn good thing his BFF RETSU KAIOH knows his CHINESE BUTT STUFF! Image SPEAKING OF:

Image

SAIKYO CHUUGOKU OUGI: IRON FINGER NUTSACK FLICK (■`w´■)

Image

Image

I'd rather live in a world with Baki than one without (`w´メ)
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by Randorama »

There is a nice surprise at the end of Pt. 8, but I don't want to add any spoilers.

I definitely think that you should proceed via tankobon, also: part 8's pace heavily hinges on the format (not just fights - revelations and narrative arcs, as befits seinen manga).

Just for fun, I am going with silly theories about adaptations.

I believe that Araki will not start before 2023 or so, and may spend some time roaming around the world for research (for pt. 5, he spent 2 months in Naples alone, if I recall correctly).

So, he may be busy until 2030, when he will be 70 or something (class of 1959? 1960? Too lazy to check).

If Part 6 ends this year, We won't see Steel Ball Run until late 2024, if we want to be optimistic. SBR is long, so 50-odd episodes would make perfect sense, and the same reasoning would apply to JoJolion.

SBR could thus come out in 2025/2026, and JJ-lion in 2029/2030. Just in time for Pt. 9's ending, I am tempted to guess.

This may sound like teenager-flavoured speculation, but Pt. 6 has NetFlix and Warner Bros Japan as backers, and the series' popularity in the US and China seems to have exploded.

I bet that these companies would like to build a long-term investment in a franchise that has literally started a second (really lucrative) life, the moment it received an anime adaptation.

My early teen self would have never believed any of these outcomes, to be fair. JoJo was definitely slipstream reading, back in the '80s/'90s :wink:
Chomsky, Buckminster Fuller, Yunus and Glass would have played Battle Garegga, for sure.
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by BIL »

It's been wonderful seeing JoJo's second lease on life, hasn't it. Image I was happy just to get a good Battle Tendency adaptation, back when this project kicked off. I distinctly recall seeing Part 6's panels in the intro, and thinking "That'd be nice..." but not really believing they'd get that far. Feels good to be wrong. :cool:
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by Randorama »

I spent 1 hour trying to write a well-thought comment on the JoJo burning issue.

I think that I will write a 1-page mini-essay as a preliminary draft of a paper that I will publish somewhere, at some point, but in a nutshell my thoughts are these:

Araki (and Shonen Jump) took a gigantic punt by trying to adapt the bizarre, boundaries-breaking style of British/French works of the late '70s/early '80s. More than once, Araki admitted being influenced by the usual suspects (e.g. Moebius, Bilal) but he also hinted at knowing authors from the 2000 A.D./Crisis scene.

What was bold and innovative 40 years ago (i.e. the pulp fiction-style mash-ups of genres and tropes) has now become slipstream, if not mainstream ("slipstream"=popular and commercially successful, but technically alternative/not mainstream, in Rudy Rucker's original definition).

Araki and David Production took another giant punt in 2010, but it was a well-calculated risk: "bizarre" sells well these days, the "trend-setter" vibe of the series contributed to its contemporary success, and production values have always been high for each adapted part.

Being innovative can pay good dividends when innovations become the new norms, or at least trends- and you bring the innovations to the masses in formats that allow them to be lazy (...and anime is a general game-changer for popularity, for obvious reasons).

...still, at some point I'll put everything into lovely indented paragraphs, size 12 times news unicode, MLA references, single space, line numbers + justified format, max 10000 words. I swear!
Chomsky, Buckminster Fuller, Yunus and Glass would have played Battle Garegga, for sure.
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by drauch »

Not trying to be the AYKSHUALLY guy, but I wasn't familiar with slipstream (which is an interesting take on something like Jojo, which seems to fit the bill), so I looked it up. Wikipedia is telling me it was coined by Richard Dorsett!

I'm glad Jojo is getting some recognition here, but it's still hard for a pissy fuck like me not to feel a little sour when something as big as Jojo wasn't already well-known, and now it's memeified into annoyance almost. Might just be me, which is okay--I'm miserable! The pain I feel though when some ape I know that casually watches only modern anime asks me if I've heard of fuckin' Jojo and Devilman... These fuckers are almost 40, too! For shame. Ah, but I be a bit sour, I know; I'm starved to talk to anyone in person with a heart that beats for fiction outside of the realm of Steam and Netflix.

On another note, I dunno if I'd consider pulp fiction in general at this point to be mainstream. 80s and 90s yeah, with countless hardboiled detectives, barbarians, ghouls and such running about. Stuff like that now seems like it has to have a comedic edge, or needs to be a bit 'safer' (superheroes and shiet) to be viable to a bigger audience. Even talking comics more inline with the popular stuff, I think there's a reason John Constantine or Swamp thing got dropped and kinda petered off into oblivion, since they lack the familiarity of common heroes (and anti-heroes), and are more fixed in the pulp. Then you see every new horror game slathered with "Lovecraftian". Your character is spooked beyond belief! Lovecraftian! He's that one guy who wrote about the kathooloo, ain't he?

Aye, yeah, I'm talking out my ass. It can be ignored. Slipstream eh, I can buy it--just not mainstream.
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by Randorama »

Oh, not Rudy Rucker?
Or, maybe Rucker quoted Dorsett but of course I couldn't recall that?
I am generally too lazy to look up sources in cases in which I would need to re-read definitions, especially when they are a click away (ahem!).

"Slipstream" is purposefully a vague term - in the essay I recall, it was used to to define SF that sounds almost like "normal" fiction but not quite; speculative/extrapolative elements yes, but the rest reads like a "mainstream" book/comic/etc (e.g. William Gibson's post-cyberpunk novels).
Bruce Sterling, apparently, wrote an early essay on the topic.

I cannot remember where did I read the one by Rucker, but it was certainly longer and published at a later time (Oh well).
I suspect that I would fall in a rabbit hole and go to sleep at 4 am if I start chasing the original source, so I'll just add some more random rants (Oh well, x2).

Personally, I find the term useful to describe any work that is somehow liminal, falling in the place(s) among the "mainstream", the "alternative", the "obscure", the "niche", the "elitist", the "pretentious"...smart and well-read but not with pretentious philosophical under-tones, low-brow but not vulgar, and so on...protagonists doing something but thinking about actions and consequences are also welcome.

Always thought that JoJo and a few other manga, maybe the occasional comic, would somehow fit the description in a relatively loose manner.
Some rare "western" comics (US/FR/UK/ITA/Etc.) may also fit the bill.
As soon as I realise that a work has a bit of everything to offer and cannot be placed into a specific hole, I am tempted to label it "slipstream".

On pulp fiction:

I remember reading that early pulp writers would often mash-up all kinds of sources and inspirations into their stories (and I'd include early SF in the mix, or at least SF magazines until WWII).
There is a sense in which the idea of re-elaborating, mixing, stealing ideas from older stories from very disparate backgrounds has become a more and more popular approach during the 20th century.
One simple reason is that telling stories has become a serious business, but also that there is simply less gate-keeping on what can get published/released (well, until NetFlix will take over the planet...).

Still, genre hybrids were once a cultural taboo, and someone like Derrida even coined some maxim on the matter ("genres shall not be mixed!", or something I am too lazy to verify in a proper).
Ironically, the "classical" pulp genres have faded off the radar, but the "methodology" seems now relatively popular (or slipstream, to just abuse the term).

Even more ironically, since I work as a linguist in academia, I sometimes need to deal with people who teach and research literature, and act like genre blending is some kind of wild and new phenomenon...
...and Lovecraft some new hot writer kid in town :wink:
Chomsky, Buckminster Fuller, Yunus and Glass would have played Battle Garegga, for sure.
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by drauch »

Randorama wrote: I remember reading that early pulp writers would often mash-up all kinds of sources and inspirations into their stories (and I'd include early SF in the mix, or at least SF magazines until WWII).
Definitely. I read a lot of pulp stuff from the early 1900s-30s, and there's almost always a sci-fi slant. Especially someone huge like Burroughs with John Carter and all the martian tech, or Pellucidar, where scientists build a machine to discover this lost race in the center of the earth. Obviously much more pulpy than Wells, as the world-building is just whatever goes, and heavy on the action. It's great. But then more 'super' heroes that really describe pulp, like Doc Savage and The Spider and such, it's usually dastardly villains unleashing insane experiments on the world, or in Doc's (lame) case, he's a scientific mastermind, amongst other things. I can appreciate hard science and speculation, but the almost erudite nature of such scifi particularly ages poorly when it appears absolutely ridiculous in the present; meanwhile, pulpy fun always remains fresh and vibrant for coming generations. Even after the magazines died, there's still plenty of cheapo paperbacks that flourished in the 70s and 80s. I'm particular fond of men's adventure, which is almost akin to playing something like Metal Slug.
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by Randorama »

My general problem with "hard" SF writers is that the typical writer of this genre tends to believe that what do we know at a certain age X is "the" definitive understanding of scientific phenomenon X.
Then, story Y based on this assumption gets outdated the very moment we get a better picture of X.
You also do get tons of people who frankly should study the topics more, before writing up stuff...but at this point ranting about this topic would become boring, yes.

Space Opera has become the most popular genre within SF because it usually dodges these conceptual traps by simply assuming things like FTL (Faster Than Light) travel, and then focuses on the actual narrative and on characters in the good cases, and on world building in most cases. Or: it focuses on offering stories that are actually stories and resemble "history", at least in the temporal span they cover.


TL;DR incoming.

...Speaking of which, I have been re-reading Matsumoto's works and going back and forth Tanaka's Legend of the Galactic Heroes's various iterations, while also sifting through Tomino's written works on Gundam (manga, book translations). Let's chalk it up to "work commitments", and if I can get one or more papers with an impact factor (and if my employers will count them...), then I will have committed the crime of the century.

At the tender age of 42 (in September, but still), I feel that Matsumoto has been deeply influential as a 3-trick pony: 999, Harlock, and Yamato, of course.
All stunningly beautiful works, but all the subsequent iterations beyond the original '70s versions are now leaving me cold, given how they re-hash familiar themes without trying very hard to propose new ideas (but the Rin Taro 13-episode series was masterfully executed, at least from a cinematographic point of view).
999 works a charm as a bed-time reading/watch: one chapter and one episode before sleeping, and then I am all set.

Tanaka Yoshiki is this guy with a Ph.D. in Literature that has made an illustrious career by starting many multi-book series across different genres.
The common trait to all these series is that they re-elaborate many themes from a genre (e.g., Space Opera in Legend) and mix them with ideas and settings that are almost irrelevant to the genre.
Say, Legend is really "Prussian/Napoleonic wars in Space", and there are moments in which I find it *impossible* to watch it without cringing at the sheer idea of, well, Prussians in space.
The execution is however brilliant, since the author (and all the adaptations) are written in such a way that the spectator can sit and think on each side's political positions and goals, and so on.

Gundam...It's hard to diss a franchise I grew up with, and of which I have models at home (Char/Quattro's Hyaku Shiki, or whatever it is spelt).
I generally feel that the original series had a great idea ("WW2 in space", plus Zeon representing the potentially oppressed colonies etc. etc.), but started very early on with problematic concepts all rooted in wonky '70s-style "new age SF" (e.g., Newtypes/"space mutants", the "Gaia theory" that Zeon Dikum sells as "philosophy for the spacenoids", Minkovsky particles, etc.).
The other problem I have with the franchise is that Tomino decided to develop the whole world in a direction that depresses me (the "Turn-A Gundam" part).

...Gundam: The Origin is written and illustrated by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko (manga, at least), and has this intense, brooding vibe that Yoshikazu also implemented in his historical mangas (e.g. the one on Roman emperor Nero, but also Alexander the Great, Joan of Arc, a certain Joshua ben Hiram...).
At times, it really makes me feel like I am going through some tragic, crucial period of humankind's history that might turn out to be in the future.
The way the story portrays Char is also superb (never sympathetic, but always very detailed), and it shows that Yoshikazu worked a lot on historical biographies involving controversial figures.
I would honestly consider this version and perhaps Zeta Gundam (and maybe Char's counterattack?) as classics, as they had a vision of a world (U.C.) and a story to tell.
The rest is Tomino and Bandai/Sunrise milking the fans, as far as I am concerned.

Oh well, after this rather long rant, I want to buy the Arcadia giant model I saw at the toy shop.
Chomsky, Buckminster Fuller, Yunus and Glass would have played Battle Garegga, for sure.
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by Steamflogger Boss »

Finished Kenichi. Typical friend collector shonen. Through the power of being nice and hard work you too can turn enemies into friends.

Started on Saiyuki. Rough animation on this one.
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by Steamflogger Boss »

Dear Brother is a top tier banger.
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by kitten »

been reading a hell of a lot, lately!

i've recently FINALLY gotten started on taking tezuka more seriously after a lifetime of light engagement and seeing his ideas as reinterpreted, recycled, or just plain regurgitated for many years. i've been pretty sure i'd love him for what feels like forever, and i'm finally starting to develop that affection with real engagement. i think that people often think of him as someone with superb ideas and a real verve for depth in storytelling, but i think that's maybe a bit of a mischaracterization given to a man whose attainment of what is essentially considered godhood seems to eclipse the proper noticing of any of his weaknesses.

tezuka's true strength is total indefatigability. he does not ever tire out, and when he begins to get even a little bored, he switches gears in story beats or into writing an entirely new story. he averaged over 7 pages of manga drawn per day throughout his life, which becomes much more impressive when you realize for the first couple of decades that he wasn't exactly pumping books out. this is an output that, when considering its consistency and high quality, is probably correctly characterized as nearly beyond human. his cartooning skills are absolutely

(it was at this point my cat's incessant mewling at the ceiling went from "she's doing that thing where she sees something on the ceiling again" to "what the hell is on the ceiling")

Image

oh shit!!! (i'm fine and my stuff is fine but there was a leak of some variety. had to take quick action and it's one of those rare instances i'm glad to be renting (my landlord actually responds quickly.... thank u god :pleadingemoji:)

whoops, well, anyway. uh. tezuka. the dude really is a completely exceptional person, but i'd say his strengths are more... pacing, dramatic irony, high concept action, etc. his stories are not what i'd call 'deep,' they tend more to gesture at a lot and do so very quickly. reading him feels almost like sprinting. his comics most remind me of a more manic, more socially conscientious carl barks. tezuka was actually a barks fan - beyond the extremely obvious influence in his art, he actually kept correspondence, had donald cameo in a comic, etc. this isn't to say that i think tezuka is a bad storyteller by any stretch of the imagination, but he's best when tackling smaller scenarios and keeps his longform together by having them be strings of unique encounters. you get more of a chapter with him than you get out of a whole volume of most other people.

as i've read interviews, reviews, and historical information regarding the guy, i have to point out before continuing with some reviews: holy shit is he misunderstood, these days. almost all the adaptations of his work are bizarrely serious or depressive, even when the comic they're adapting has a gag every other page and moves at ten times the speed. i think he'd be really plum depressed to see how little fun people have remembering him, or how much they treat him as an untouchable figure. he's a pretty humble guy who worked real goddamn hard and made some outstanding, wonderful comics... but he's not the messiah.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

anyway, some reviews on some of his stuff i read, recently, as well as a few other things -

dororo (1967-68, osamu tezuka)

one of tezuka's most fondly remembered works! easily within the top ten of those still talked about, but probably outside of his top 5. before you ask: "how meaningful can that possibly be for one person?" please keep in mind that he penned over 250 different comics. dororo is an action tale about a wandering warrior named hyakkimaru looking to regain his body parts, which were taken from him at birth by 42 different demons. it's also about his traveling companion, dororo, who is an impudent little rascal with his own sad past. i probably shouldn't undercut dororo's importance to the narrative, but it's a little bit more 'about' hyakkimaru.

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the two characters are faced with a comically relentless onslaught of trauma and horror, but you hardly feel all that bogged down by it because of the superlatively ridiculous nature of our hero, who begins the story with swords for arms and can't kill someone without there being a slapstick panel of them screaming "yikes!" at their being stabbed. not to say this tanks the atmosphere by any stretch of the imagination, but it allows one to enjoy the otherworldly dread of yokai encounters and their profound spiritual allegory with a fair shake of levity. don't "get it?" tezuka has you covered - it's just damn fun, even for the basest of thinkers.

the ending happens almost out of the blue in such a way that makes me think tezuka just got bored with the project. he seemed to be aiming to try and top gegege no kitaro and all the risingly popular boys' comics of that time period, and i don't know if he really considered the attempt successful or not. it's easy to read as a high quality series of short stories, even though it promises fruition with its breadcrumbs and kind of just ends, instead. he probably should have just had the narrative disregard continuity and ditch a couple of gimmicks, the characters are very likable and so are the tales within.

- - - -

under the air (1968-70, osamu tezuka)

a collection of short stories written by tezuka. in it, you'll see many of his common fixations! such as:

- staunch depiction of the evils of racism
- brutalized/marginalized animal people as allegories for [fill in any conceivable thing here]
- "shit about the atom bomb"
- defense of incest (and, really, any non-standard love)
- gags that break the fourth wall, incuding inserting a character that is just him
- more transformation fetishism than you can shake a stick at

you can also find this

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and this

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and also this

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golly! you know, i'm really curious if the original text uses "the n-word." or whatever kana form the syllables for what would be used to say that. (ni-ga?). i actually read this one online but have a physical edition on the way, i'll at least find out if what they used for the localization. somehow, i imagine it isn't.... that. but i'm not sure it was wrong to use that, either. it's amazing to see someone who i think genuinely despises racism this much use golliwogs (even during the time period, especially with his love for keeping up with american social progress), but, to be fair, he also draws himself with a really ridiculous nose and tends to play up japanese racial characteristics to extremes, sometimes, too. trying to imagine a time where we give the artist the benefit of the doubt on something like this is sure hard, these days.

ANYWAY, these stories are great! their shared fixation is tragedy with a quick, ironic ending. perfect for a man who can whip up a narrative in no-time flat. quick and easy gratification with pretty consistently mature (if whimsical) storytelling. excellent as a first selection for someone wanting to read tezuka, you'll get a really good view of his strengths. tezuka is a little bit didactic, but he's also bold, brave, and somehow, also, really filled with humility. he's "moralizing," but he's a sweetie-pie willing to do whatever it takes to get you to even consider agreeing with his deeply humanist views. and if you don't, hey, i'm sure the comics are a joy, anyway.

- - - -

mw (1976-78, osamu tezuka)

oh boy! tezuka doing gekiga! and god damn does he go over the top! rape, bestiality, child molestation, child murder, severe gaslighting, chemical warfare and associated mass death, mental deterioration, blasphemy, okama, more okama, graphic mutilation - i'm probably forgetting something. tezuka brings out every single big gun imaginable in this one, and while i can't say they're all handled with grace, they're all at least certainly handled with impact and a bizarrely prevailing empathy amongst all the obvious edge.

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despite the above panel, this comic has very little humor for a tezuka work. gags are usually 5 or 10 pages apart, rather than 2-3 panels apart, which is remarkably restrained for a man whose compulsion to draw silly faces is without equal. his recurring silly-faced character, ban, does show up, and i assume his penis getting eaten is meant to be comedy. i can't imagine he doesn't think it's funny, anyway - i certainly thought it was funny.

mw (pronounced "mu" - which i assume is a language thing, given that 'mu' is a deeply buddhist concept, but "mw" is meant to be the vague initials for an american chemical weapon) is a narrative about a lot of things, but mostly the relationship between one catholic priest who wants to redeem himself and one devilish man whose redemption seems impossible. i'm sure that many reviews go on endlessly about the "deep examination of sociopathy and the nature of evil" - and this was nominated for an eisner that lost out to a taiyo matsumoto manga, so i'm sure the literary critique is both hyperbolically stuck-up and overtly abundant - but, in essence, this is a shock comic obsessed with cruelty.

not to say it doesn't present interesting situations or meaningful commentary on the human condition, but tezuka is less examining, more presenting (as always). character motives can be guessed at, but are never really fully explained, and the manga has a serious obsession with the abject frankness of a deeply wicked reality. tezuka's lack of assumption about the inner workings of his characters allows them to feel a lot more real - while one might argue they lack depth, we have an author with a clearly diverse set of lived experiences just channeling what he knows. i think his refusal to justify his villains - particularly in this instance - allows them to be more compassionately depicted and with this sting of truth to them.

sometimes, there is no way of rationalizing what someone is doing. and yet, they do. people [verb] the shit out of life. "what if there was just, like, an extremely fucked up guy." - osamu tezuka. context is provided, evil is depicted, and yet condemnation and dismissal never arrive. it makes for a compelling read.

- - - -

apollo's song (1970, osamu tezuka)

another one of tezuka's more serious and tragic works, apollo's song is about a boy born in mud, raised in shit, and built to suffer. the premise for this one is that said poor boy, who cannot find it within himself to love another, is approached by a god who declares he shall fall in love and have it stripped from him just before the point of its consummation for all eternity. a bit like, i guess, if alex from a clockwork orange were in some sort of recursive greek tragedy.

as the narrative progresses, we see our poor boy fall into numerous delusional states via a variety of methods, such as hypnotic suggestion, electroshock therapy, dreams, etc. each delusion brings about a deeply complex and immersive world that feels to him like another life. and with each new life, he finds himself learning to love a woman only for tragedy to separate them as they try to overcome adversity in the name of learning to love each other.

every time we're brought back to the real world, our boy makes a little bit of personal progress in overcoming his trauma. but the world won't leave him be, and his circumstances keep slipping back into more and more dire situations.

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i think it's a little too easy to read this story as cynical, but i think that its remarkable sense of hope and persistence winds up overcoming its trappings. this is probably one of tezuka's better start-to-finish narratives, even if it does wind up being something of a short story compilation with how things play out. his endings are often a bit too abrupt to really "land," for me, but this one felt more than earned.

- - - -

dai dark (q hayashida, 2019 - )

i recently read through all of dorohedoro, which quickly became one of the most beloved things i have ever experienced in my entire life. absurd horror, existentialism, abstracted and twisted notions of memory and identity, and more than a fair shot of good buddies having some good fun. it was a manga that felt unusually easygoing, like i could just slip into its world and love life in spite of all of the toxic death coating every meter of it. a unique and delightful blend of the obscene and the adorable. it's something that i could probably begin a never-ending bloviating over, singing endlessly the many qualities of its beauty

so, dai dark had some big shoes to fill. unlike other reviews, here, it's ongoing - which means i'm only up to the third volume, at the moment. while it has already delivered on much of what i want, it's not been afraid to take its own steps to being something rather unique and with its own particular flavor to it.

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despite having a similar relationship to gore and goofiness, dai dark drops the retrograde amnesia bit and picks up a bunch of bizarrely video gamey gimmicks. the main character can collect people's skeletons and upgrade his gear, he eventually gets a space craft that lets him travel from here to there, he adds members to his traveling group like they're a party in an rpg, etc. the tone is also a lot more consistently silly - while still owing much to its uncanny depictions of the unspeakable-in-polite-company, it's a lot more 'strictly fun' and committed to its characters enjoying themselves over their being in perpetual mortal terror.

the cast has already grown on me a lot and i'm deeply interested to see where it goes. i can't imagine someone who liked dorohedoro not at least enjoying this, and vice versa.

- - - -

girls' last tour (tkmiz, 2014-18)

i really enjoyed the anime for this one, so i decided to go and give the manga a shot. it's only 6 volumes, so it's not particularly heavy reading for a series so lauded by the weird and depressed on the internet, and the anime only adapted up to volume 4, so i had a fair shake of narrative left to get through to see where its melancholic philosophies would drop it off. however, before getting to that point, my friends decided to subject me to learning about the author, tkmiz. he's, uh. he's... not doing so well, everybody...

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D:>

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you... you don't want to find the one this is from.

anyway, despite having just revealed what about the author i just did, i'm going to go ahead and say this: i do love the comic. and i'm sure a good part of that is because the author is (obviously) very sad and very lonely. the examination of these things that goes on in the comic - told through two girls exploring a desolate world and approaching concepts like "culture" and "memory" with their dead-eyed glaze and wondering what those things mean - approaches heights of meaning only told by someone who has genuinely suffered through the ten thousand hells of ennui brought about by consuming too much moe.

this may sound sardonic, but i really mean that - there's a certain plateau of thinking only reached by incredible yearning and a similarly incredible inability to consummate that yearning, and it's where every stoner dares trek courageously. the characters are - in classic moe fashion - "too" relatable. only rather than simply being a projection of one's desires, and the projection of emptiness just being an odious byproduct the author wishes to deny the existence of, the emptiness is something examined with acute awareness, which becomes the true substance.

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achieved is a kind of bliss one only derives from those ephemeral, happy days spent in the quiet pleasure of the company of someone you love. its problem, maybe, is that it does kind of have a difficult time seeing anywhere past that point. it's a little *too* humble, and in being so, settles for answers that are ultimately the cause of its own misery. while i think the manga is unambiguously hopeful and may bring one to tears (i certainly bawled!), i'd like to see future work (i need to read shimeji simulation!) exceed the boundaries that girls last tour settles for stopping at.

also: this is the only time i have ever read/watched/listened to the work of a japanese person and felt a deep suspicion they're a stoner. in any other case, i assume weed is just too hard to get over there for anyone putting themselves out in the creative industry to risk a possession charge. while i lack any absolute confirmation, there's a bit in the manga where both characters get baked on what seem to obviously be marijuana cigarettes. i think that... confirms my suspicion. this is a stoner comic if i have ever read one.

- - - -

mobile suit gundam: the origin (yasuhiko yoshikazu, 2000-10)

just plainly one of the best things that i've ever read. that's coming from both as personal as a standpoint is allowed to be and from as unbiased a perspective as you can believe a person would purport themselves to be coming from. this is a criminally beautiful work of art and unparalleled masterpiece and my very favorite gundam work, no question.

as i've been getting "seriously" into gundam in the last couple of years (following a lifetime of casual and occasional enjoyment), i've found myself with growing curiosities about the people behind it. following an initial interest in the most obvious man, tomino (who i came to love and still love), my curiosity became more and more fixed on yas, the character designer behind the original mobile suit gundam and recurring collaborator on various gundam works.

he was introduced to me as someone who 'didn't believe' in newtypes, and in that same introduction, i was to find out the man was a christian. how does someone who seems to consider themselves devout not believe in the miracle allegory in gundam, but still "believe in gundam?" i went on a sideways route of exploring him by reading some of his historical manga and other directorial work. his 'jesus' manga wound up being what an evangelical would likely consider more blasphemous than the last temptation of christ! no miracles, no resurrection, and the insertion of a wholly original character whose belief in those things impedes his love and adoration.

in that comic, we watch a man find his faith against all odds, all doubt, all secular reasoning. and we see that faith be suggested to only be true by nature of it defying those things. yas is no one of blind devotion and someone with a powerful love for history, and i think this shows in all of his 'historical' (often christian history) manga. and, so to does it show in gundam. the nature of this retelling being a retrospective that is allowed its own canon lets him work his own particular magic on the story, and the pull of destiny feels both breathtakingly wondrous and outright suffocating.

i found myself sympathizing with characters i'd have never found sympathetic, believing in the human beauty of an oft-considered monster like degwin zabi, weeping over the loss of a brutish idiot like sleggar. this manga took me for a ride, and yas' unparalleled artistic ability was only part of why. this is just a damned good read - whether it your very first gundam story or very last.

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as is classic with yas, there's a fair amount of queerbaiting, and the tension between garma and char has never felt this thick. i do seriously wonder: yas, what is up with you and gay men? you seem to put them or the suggestion of them into everything. even your character in your jesus manga seems to be gay for jesus' feet. is your wife a beard? did you have an affair? were you once seduced by a lurid tart of a man? you can tell me. i'll keep it a secret. to anyone who hasn't watched it, i suggest going and checking out 'kaze to ki no uta,' an ova he adapted of a year 24 group mangaka's work. violently homosexual catholic boarding school shit - great for any fujoshi or fujoshi-aspiring.

i also really strongly suggest checking out the latest gundam movie, cucuruz doan's island, which is very excellent and fits kind of ambiguously into "the origin" canon. it's not a direct adaptation of the old, banned episode, nor is it an adaptation of the manga series that split-off from the origin (which yas supervised, but didn't pen). it's its own thing and it's one of the best anime film i've seen in ages. i don't think he'd directed since, like... venus wars in the mid-eighties? please go see this movie, this man is a legend and i will weep for his death and it's wonderful he is getting to direct again after such a long, long time.

that said, somehow, i still like dorohedoro most out of everything i've read, lately. v__v i'm sorry, everyone. fucking love those goobers.

- - - -

also, i have read a bunch of witch hat atelier. looks gorgeous, feels sadly, deeply empty. bunch'a shonen tropes and way too much focus on the mechanics and doo-dads of its world rather than its facile characters who can't even match up to the tertiary cast members in your naruto or one piece or etc. this bitch is badly in need of an editor.
~Imagination and memory are but one thing, which for diverse considerations have diverse names~
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~*~*~*~*~*~* If there's a place that I could be ~ Then I'd be another memory *~*~*~*~*~*~
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BIL
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by BIL »

Screencap game on point as ever :cool: Me fookin eye is playin' up so I can only skim. 3; But I've always been fascinated with Tezuka's adultier stuff. Reminds me a bit of Roald Dahl. Homie was known for his bright-eyed wuvvables but god damn he could bust like a mahfucka when the kids had gone upstairs to bed :shock: That WW2 gen Old Man Darkness I guess Image Will catch up when I'm less destroyed :cool:

Also yeah holy fuck that's a leak alright! :o Glad you didn't sustain any damage to The Good Stuff! My first encounter with that was a "you gotta be shittin' me" *WOMP* "Ah fuck" Then a fucking bird flew in through my new skylight, and I had to catch n' evict like I was the fucking Pope! Nostalgic tbh 3;
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by kitten »

BIL wrote:but god damn he could bust like a mahfucka when the kids had gone upstairs to bed :shock:
(read left to right, because they're trying to give me an aneurysm with these english prints)
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mw would make garth ennis blush that shit is fucking nuts
~Imagination and memory are but one thing, which for diverse considerations have diverse names~
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~*~*~*~*~*~* If there's a place that I could be ~ Then I'd be another memory *~*~*~*~*~*~
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by drauch »

Ah, yeah, when I saw the N bomb drop I didn't figure that was a printed localization--but maybe wrong! I'll check my copy tonight and report back if I remember. He did some crazy minstrel characters a few times as well, but always claimed innocence about that. Probably so, but I read a lot of insane garbage so I can't say I'm too surprised by much. Always just seems a bit crazier when the drawings are so cutesy.

Apollo's Song is a favorite. I always loved how he drew babes, and always thought about getting one tatted on my aging flab. Maybe someday. Ode to Kirihito is also great for one of his more serious works. Sometimes Tezuka kinda annoys me with how he'll throw in something silly to a tragic comic, but iirc that was always his intention, to sort of lessen the blow. Glad more is getting printed lately, instead of relying on shitty kickstarters that so far my track record for them getting funded and then failing to produce the intended product is 2/2.
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drauch
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by drauch »

^Physical print for that, btw: "S-so, they planted a black man's heart in my body. Why would they do such a thing!?"

Not quite verbatim, but that's almost exact. A little different, lol.
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Re: Recommended Anime/Manga?

Post by BIL »

I wonder if someone on Oz's team was an OG Tezuka fan? :lol: *SAX STING* :cool:
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