You may have noticed already, but there is a ton of new manga in at the Mooresville library! Some of these are new volumes to series we already have, like Tsubasa, Case Closed, ./hack, and (waiting to be laminated) Kingdom Hearts, but others are completely new: Death Note, Hellsing, Kobato, Deadman Wonderland, and Bokurano: Ours are just a few.
A lot of the titles were those requested by the anime/manga club (sorry, guys, we couldn't order Spice & Wolf because it's rated M), so stop by and check it out. The new manga are on the bottom row of the shelf closest to the reference desk, and are now labeled with new book tags.
Plus, several volumes and series are still waiting to be laminated so they can go out on the shelves, so there'll be even more manga available in January!
December 29, 2010
December 03, 2010
Case Closed, by Gosho Aoyama
Ironically, I haven't been updating this blog lately because I've been so busy reading manga!
Case Closed is primarily a murder mystery series, in the sense that the main character runs into a dead body practically once a week. (I'm getting a little concerned that Japan will be depopulated by the time the series ends.) It's set in modern Japan and centered in a fictionalized and nameless Tokyo, although the characters sometimes travel to other parts of the country, and the main secondary characters are located in Osaka.
Since the English translations gave many of the characters English names--even more so in the anime than the manga--I'm going to go with those to avoid confusion.
Case Closed is the story of teenaged super-sleuth Jimmy Kudo, a huge Sherlock Holmes fan who dreams of becoming a P.I. But he gets in over his head when he runs afoul of an crime syndicate whose members all dress in black--Jimmy catches them in the middle of a crime, but is knocked out and poisoned before he can stop them. However, the poison he's given is a new type that the organization was working on, and instead of killing him, it reverts him back to his eight-year-old self.
Yeah. I'm not gonna lie; this series is kind of cheesy. Jimmy even has a family friend who's an inventor and gives him a bunch of gadgets to help him continue to fight crime even as a kid, including a bow-tie that is actually a voice modulator, a pair of super-powered sneakers, and fake glasses that are a screen for tracking devices. It's pretty great.
Jimmy's best friend Rachel Moore's father, Richard, is a private detective himself, so after Jimmy has been shrunk he takes the name Conan Edogawa (taken from the creator of Holmes and from a famous Japanese mystery writer, Edogawa Rampo--who himself created his pseudonym to sound like "Edgar Allen Poe") and lives with them. There, he starts solving mysteries in order to make Richard famous enough that he'll begin receiving cases tangled up with the crime syndicate. He does this by knocking out Richard (using a watch that shoots tranquilizer darts! I'm not making this up) and using his voice modulator to imitate his voice and solve the cases. As time goes by Jimmy does begin getting closer to the organization, and acquires more allies who know his secret: some likely, such as Harley Hartwell, son of a famous Osaka police officer and who's known as the great Detective of the West (Jimmy, unsurprisingly, is known as the Detective of the East, making him and Harley rivals when they first meet); and some not so much, like the retro-thief Kaito Kid (a tie-in to one of Aoyama's previous series) or Anita, a former member of the crime syndicate who fled their ranks after also being shrunk to kid-size.
The anime follows the manga pretty closely, without as much filler as you'd normally expect (unlike those months and months of Naruto filler episodes while the anime waited for the manga timeskip to occur and then scrambled to catch up to it). The main difference is that the storylines are told in different orders. The whole crime syndicate plot is basically a way to tie together a lot of individual murder mysteries, and only come up every few volumes or a couple of times per season.
The Case Closed manga is being published by Viz, while the anime is licensed and translated by Funimation. Volume 36 will be coming out soon in English, but in Japan the series is at 700+ chapters and nearly 600 episodes (!) and still going strong--putting it on the same level as Naruto, Bleach, or Inuyasha.
Case Closed is primarily a murder mystery series, in the sense that the main character runs into a dead body practically once a week. (I'm getting a little concerned that Japan will be depopulated by the time the series ends.) It's set in modern Japan and centered in a fictionalized and nameless Tokyo, although the characters sometimes travel to other parts of the country, and the main secondary characters are located in Osaka.
Since the English translations gave many of the characters English names--even more so in the anime than the manga--I'm going to go with those to avoid confusion.
Case Closed is the story of teenaged super-sleuth Jimmy Kudo, a huge Sherlock Holmes fan who dreams of becoming a P.I. But he gets in over his head when he runs afoul of an crime syndicate whose members all dress in black--Jimmy catches them in the middle of a crime, but is knocked out and poisoned before he can stop them. However, the poison he's given is a new type that the organization was working on, and instead of killing him, it reverts him back to his eight-year-old self.
Yeah. I'm not gonna lie; this series is kind of cheesy. Jimmy even has a family friend who's an inventor and gives him a bunch of gadgets to help him continue to fight crime even as a kid, including a bow-tie that is actually a voice modulator, a pair of super-powered sneakers, and fake glasses that are a screen for tracking devices. It's pretty great.
Jimmy's best friend Rachel Moore's father, Richard, is a private detective himself, so after Jimmy has been shrunk he takes the name Conan Edogawa (taken from the creator of Holmes and from a famous Japanese mystery writer, Edogawa Rampo--who himself created his pseudonym to sound like "Edgar Allen Poe") and lives with them. There, he starts solving mysteries in order to make Richard famous enough that he'll begin receiving cases tangled up with the crime syndicate. He does this by knocking out Richard (using a watch that shoots tranquilizer darts! I'm not making this up) and using his voice modulator to imitate his voice and solve the cases. As time goes by Jimmy does begin getting closer to the organization, and acquires more allies who know his secret: some likely, such as Harley Hartwell, son of a famous Osaka police officer and who's known as the great Detective of the West (Jimmy, unsurprisingly, is known as the Detective of the East, making him and Harley rivals when they first meet); and some not so much, like the retro-thief Kaito Kid (a tie-in to one of Aoyama's previous series) or Anita, a former member of the crime syndicate who fled their ranks after also being shrunk to kid-size.
The anime follows the manga pretty closely, without as much filler as you'd normally expect (unlike those months and months of Naruto filler episodes while the anime waited for the manga timeskip to occur and then scrambled to catch up to it). The main difference is that the storylines are told in different orders. The whole crime syndicate plot is basically a way to tie together a lot of individual murder mysteries, and only come up every few volumes or a couple of times per season.
The Case Closed manga is being published by Viz, while the anime is licensed and translated by Funimation. Volume 36 will be coming out soon in English, but in Japan the series is at 700+ chapters and nearly 600 episodes (!) and still going strong--putting it on the same level as Naruto, Bleach, or Inuyasha.
November 22, 2010
October 27, 2010
Pluto, by Naoki Urasawa & Osamu Tezuka
I mentioned that Pluto was one of our new September manga. But the summary for it in that post doesn't really do the series justice.
Now, I have to admit that I haven't watched Astro Boy, so I don't know the original version of "The Greatest Robot on Earth" storyline. Urasawa's version was my first introduction to it. But reading Pluto has really made me consider tracking down the original!
Pluto is part murder mystery, part robot battles, and all suspense. While Atom (the Japanese name of Astro Boy) and his sister are the most prominent characters in the series, the actual plot of the story revolves around an Europol robot detective named Gesicht as he attempts to solve a string of robot and human deaths. It is set in several locations, mostly Germany, Japan, and Persia.
Initially the deaths are assumed to be a violent outgrowth of anti-robot fervor, since all the victims, human and robot, were with two exceptions participants or otherwise involved in the 39th Middle East War; but soon it appears that it's a robot doing the killing--meaning these are the first robot-caused murders in nearly a decade. Because robots exist in a sort of second-class citizens state (like that in Penny Arcade's Automata project, but not quite as bad), the idea that a robot is now killing humans causes Gesicht's superiors to put a lot of pressure on him to solve the case and present the public with a suspect, fast. But he also must deal with politicians who are trying to deflect attention from the war crimes that occurred during the 39th Middle East War, scientists who are attempting to conceal the illegal research in robotics that led to the creation of the murderer, and a human supremacist group with a member who is out to destroy Gesicht for personal reasons, all while trying to protect the remaining robots who fought in the war from being destroyed.
Pluto is published by Viz in the United States. It is a complete series at 8 volumes, all of which have been translated. So far, the Mooresville Public Library has volume 1. There is currently no anime version.
Now, I have to admit that I haven't watched Astro Boy, so I don't know the original version of "The Greatest Robot on Earth" storyline. Urasawa's version was my first introduction to it. But reading Pluto has really made me consider tracking down the original!
Pluto is part murder mystery, part robot battles, and all suspense. While Atom (the Japanese name of Astro Boy) and his sister are the most prominent characters in the series, the actual plot of the story revolves around an Europol robot detective named Gesicht as he attempts to solve a string of robot and human deaths. It is set in several locations, mostly Germany, Japan, and Persia.
Initially the deaths are assumed to be a violent outgrowth of anti-robot fervor, since all the victims, human and robot, were with two exceptions participants or otherwise involved in the 39th Middle East War; but soon it appears that it's a robot doing the killing--meaning these are the first robot-caused murders in nearly a decade. Because robots exist in a sort of second-class citizens state (like that in Penny Arcade's Automata project, but not quite as bad), the idea that a robot is now killing humans causes Gesicht's superiors to put a lot of pressure on him to solve the case and present the public with a suspect, fast. But he also must deal with politicians who are trying to deflect attention from the war crimes that occurred during the 39th Middle East War, scientists who are attempting to conceal the illegal research in robotics that led to the creation of the murderer, and a human supremacist group with a member who is out to destroy Gesicht for personal reasons, all while trying to protect the remaining robots who fought in the war from being destroyed.
Pluto is published by Viz in the United States. It is a complete series at 8 volumes, all of which have been translated. So far, the Mooresville Public Library has volume 1. There is currently no anime version.
September 02, 2010
New September Manga
New manga at the library this month are:
Nightschool: the Weirn Books vol. 1 & 2
A young witch goes from homeschooling to the Nightschool, where she must navigate the perils of the classroom.
Ultimo vol. 1
The mechanical embodiments of good and evil were deactivated long ago; but now they've been awakened, with consequences for the teenager who caused it.
Pluto vol. 1
One of the most famous storylines of Astro Boy, retold by the creator of Monster and 20th Century Boys.
Cirque du Freak vol. 1
Darren Shan's Cirque du Freak vampire series: retold in manga form! Not everything is the same as before, though, ans some of the changes may surprise you.
Nightschool: the Weirn Books vol. 1 & 2
A young witch goes from homeschooling to the Nightschool, where she must navigate the perils of the classroom.
Ultimo vol. 1
The mechanical embodiments of good and evil were deactivated long ago; but now they've been awakened, with consequences for the teenager who caused it.
Pluto vol. 1
One of the most famous storylines of Astro Boy, retold by the creator of Monster and 20th Century Boys.
Cirque du Freak vol. 1
Darren Shan's Cirque du Freak vampire series: retold in manga form! Not everything is the same as before, though, ans some of the changes may surprise you.
August 27, 2010
Higurashi: When They Cry
Time to wrap up this month of scary series with Higurashi: When They Cry, an anime that I am still trying to work up the courage to watch the final episodes of.
Higurashi is a suspenseful murder mystery with a heavy psychological angle, mainly exploring paranoia and the consequences when it disrupts friendships and turns family memebers against each other. The "they" in this series' title refers to cicadas ("higurashi," or ひぐらし, is Japanese for 'evening cicada'). Because the sound of cicadas is synonymous with summer in Japan, the name is apt since the series takes place in June, 1983, and often a lot of action occurs at sunset and dusk.
The story is set in a rural village called Hinamizawa. A teenage boy named Keiichi moves there and makes friends with the handful of other kids around his age; and at first everything seems to be peaceful. But when the village holds its yearly festival honoring the local god, Keiichi learns that there are a lot of dark secrets under the town's plesant exterior: for the last four years, after the festival, one person from the village has disappered and another has been murdered. When the same thing happens again this year, to two people Keiichi knows, he finds himself entangled in mystery, distrusting his friends, and usually not coming to a good end.
I say "usually" because Higurashi is split up into multiple story arcs--nine in the anime, thirteen in the manga--and the story tends to reset after each arc. This can obviously be confusing at first because when the next arc begins, you're sitting there thinking "Wait, didn't you die? Didn't you disapper? Who is this new person? Why is that guy acting so differently?" But despite the story arcs seeming so unrelated, they slowly begin to reveal secrets about the characters, and the village, that tie them all together.
There's a reason for all of this: Higurashi originally began as a video game, so often when the arcs are different, its because Keiichi--and to an extent the other characters--did something differently from the previous arcs.
After the game came out, the story was translated into a manga, then a series of light novels and regular novels, then a set of drama CDs (those are kind've like audiobooks, except the voice actors for the characters act their dialogue out instead of having just one person read a script of the story), then it was made into two animes and an OVA (an original video animation, the term for an anime that is not long enough to be a series; they usually cover only a single storyline from a manga or novel), and finally it was turned into a live-action film. When you consider that all of these different takes on the story show a new secret about the village or the characters, it starts to look like Higurashi surpasses even Fullmetal Alchemist in terms of complicated plot.
The first anime has been licensed and dubbed in English by a combination of Geneon and Funimation; the manga has been translated by Yen Press. Even the game, separated into individual arcs, has been translated by MangaGamer! However, the second anime, OVA, and drama CDs have not been made available in English. The movie has an international title, Shrill Cries of Summer, but I haven't heard of a copy in English or with subtitles.
I hope all these series have given you enough chills to combat this record heatwave!
Higurashi is a suspenseful murder mystery with a heavy psychological angle, mainly exploring paranoia and the consequences when it disrupts friendships and turns family memebers against each other. The "they" in this series' title refers to cicadas ("higurashi," or ひぐらし, is Japanese for 'evening cicada'). Because the sound of cicadas is synonymous with summer in Japan, the name is apt since the series takes place in June, 1983, and often a lot of action occurs at sunset and dusk.
The story is set in a rural village called Hinamizawa. A teenage boy named Keiichi moves there and makes friends with the handful of other kids around his age; and at first everything seems to be peaceful. But when the village holds its yearly festival honoring the local god, Keiichi learns that there are a lot of dark secrets under the town's plesant exterior: for the last four years, after the festival, one person from the village has disappered and another has been murdered. When the same thing happens again this year, to two people Keiichi knows, he finds himself entangled in mystery, distrusting his friends, and usually not coming to a good end.
I say "usually" because Higurashi is split up into multiple story arcs--nine in the anime, thirteen in the manga--and the story tends to reset after each arc. This can obviously be confusing at first because when the next arc begins, you're sitting there thinking "Wait, didn't you die? Didn't you disapper? Who is this new person? Why is that guy acting so differently?" But despite the story arcs seeming so unrelated, they slowly begin to reveal secrets about the characters, and the village, that tie them all together.
There's a reason for all of this: Higurashi originally began as a video game, so often when the arcs are different, its because Keiichi--and to an extent the other characters--did something differently from the previous arcs.
After the game came out, the story was translated into a manga, then a series of light novels and regular novels, then a set of drama CDs (those are kind've like audiobooks, except the voice actors for the characters act their dialogue out instead of having just one person read a script of the story), then it was made into two animes and an OVA (an original video animation, the term for an anime that is not long enough to be a series; they usually cover only a single storyline from a manga or novel), and finally it was turned into a live-action film. When you consider that all of these different takes on the story show a new secret about the village or the characters, it starts to look like Higurashi surpasses even Fullmetal Alchemist in terms of complicated plot.
The first anime has been licensed and dubbed in English by a combination of Geneon and Funimation; the manga has been translated by Yen Press. Even the game, separated into individual arcs, has been translated by MangaGamer! However, the second anime, OVA, and drama CDs have not been made available in English. The movie has an international title, Shrill Cries of Summer, but I haven't heard of a copy in English or with subtitles.
I hope all these series have given you enough chills to combat this record heatwave!
August 20, 2010
Kakurenbo: Hide & Seek
Kakurenbo is neither a manga nor an anime series; it's a short (about 25 minutes long), animated psychological horror movie. It was written and produced by Shuuhei Morita. The premise of the movie is a very deadly game of masked hide-and-seek.
Eight children sneak into an abandoned city to play hide-and-seek. They aren't playing against each other: the rule is that they have to outrun the oni (a type of Japanese demon that mostly resembles an ogre), who is "it". However, the oni is the winner of the last game played in the city; they look like a child, too. So one of the eight is an enemy in disguise. To make things worse, the city is also populated by four demons: the Liver Taker, the Oil Taker, the Blood Taker, and the Child Taker. These creatures come to life after the game begins and are on the oni's side, helping it collect the children for its ultimate purpose and the reason behind the tradition of the city's game in the first place.
The main character of Kakurenbo is Hikora, who is playing the game along with a friend in order to find out what happened to his sister, who disappered after playing in the last game. The other children include a small gang, who playing because their leader doesn't believe in the demons, and twins who never reveal their reasons for joining the game. (Or anything: their dialogue consists of a couple grunts during a fight. I guess the movie's budget for voice actors ran low?)
Despite how short it is (practically the length of a single anime episode!), Kakurenbo is one of my favorites: the animation is gorgeous, the story is interesting, and the monsters and the ending are super eerie. I actually bounced in place when I discovered it on my library's shelves and realized I could finally watch it again.
Kakurenbo was distributed with English dubs and subtitles by U.S. Manga Corps, a company that has sadly gone out of business, meaning that the DVD is out of print. So this is another time where a library comes in handy!
Eight children sneak into an abandoned city to play hide-and-seek. They aren't playing against each other: the rule is that they have to outrun the oni (a type of Japanese demon that mostly resembles an ogre), who is "it". However, the oni is the winner of the last game played in the city; they look like a child, too. So one of the eight is an enemy in disguise. To make things worse, the city is also populated by four demons: the Liver Taker, the Oil Taker, the Blood Taker, and the Child Taker. These creatures come to life after the game begins and are on the oni's side, helping it collect the children for its ultimate purpose and the reason behind the tradition of the city's game in the first place.
The main character of Kakurenbo is Hikora, who is playing the game along with a friend in order to find out what happened to his sister, who disappered after playing in the last game. The other children include a small gang, who playing because their leader doesn't believe in the demons, and twins who never reveal their reasons for joining the game. (Or anything: their dialogue consists of a couple grunts during a fight. I guess the movie's budget for voice actors ran low?)
Despite how short it is (practically the length of a single anime episode!), Kakurenbo is one of my favorites: the animation is gorgeous, the story is interesting, and the monsters and the ending are super eerie. I actually bounced in place when I discovered it on my library's shelves and realized I could finally watch it again.
Kakurenbo was distributed with English dubs and subtitles by U.S. Manga Corps, a company that has sadly gone out of business, meaning that the DVD is out of print. So this is another time where a library comes in handy!
August 12, 2010
Ghost Hound
Not to be confused with Ghost Hunt of last week, Ghost Hound is a psychological thriller/horror anime. It was written by Shirow Masamune, who's most famous for the Ghost in the Shell series. It's also been adapted into a manga by Kanata Asahi, but I don't know much about that.
Ghost Hound is a story about four children who become unlikely friends over one thing: they all have out-of-body experiences. It's set in a remote mountain village in Kyushu, an island located to the southwest of Japan's mainland. Taro is a 14-year-old boy who was kidnapped with his older sister when he was three. They were left for several days in an abandoned hospital before they were found; Taro was rescued, but his sister didn't survive. Makoto is Taro's cousin, and his father is the one accused of kidnapping Taro and his sister. But because the man died, no one knows if he was innocent or not. Masayuki recently transferred to Taro and Makoto's school from Tokyo, and he's suffered from a fear of heights ever since he saw another student fall off of the school roof. And Miyako is a miko who lives at her family's shrine in the village and who not only has the ability to see ghosts but also is sometimes possessed by them, leaving her ostracized from the majority of the villagers.
The story often varies between rationality and spirituality. Characters with a scientific grounding--like the researchers at a new plant in the village or the school psychologist who works with Taro--see the children's out-of-body experiences as psychologically based and medically explainable, while characters who come from spiritual backgrounds--like Miyoko's father and the wandering shaman who is attracted to the village--have religious explanations for events; and the show makes a case for both and never specifies which is true. Taro and his friends certainly believe that their out-of-body experiences are real and that the things they encounter in the "unseen world," another layer of reality not normally visible in our own, actually happen to them; but because each of them are either running from or towards something terrible in their past, it's clear that they are not impartial observers. The anime gets off to a slow start (I only watched beyond the first two episodes because a friend had recommended it to me as really good and chilling), but it soon picks up and turns downright creepy at times.
Ghost Hound was created by Production I.G. and has been translated by Sentai Filmworks, a Japan-based company that used to distribute anime through ADV. The manga has not currently been translated into English.
Ghost Hound is a story about four children who become unlikely friends over one thing: they all have out-of-body experiences. It's set in a remote mountain village in Kyushu, an island located to the southwest of Japan's mainland. Taro is a 14-year-old boy who was kidnapped with his older sister when he was three. They were left for several days in an abandoned hospital before they were found; Taro was rescued, but his sister didn't survive. Makoto is Taro's cousin, and his father is the one accused of kidnapping Taro and his sister. But because the man died, no one knows if he was innocent or not. Masayuki recently transferred to Taro and Makoto's school from Tokyo, and he's suffered from a fear of heights ever since he saw another student fall off of the school roof. And Miyako is a miko who lives at her family's shrine in the village and who not only has the ability to see ghosts but also is sometimes possessed by them, leaving her ostracized from the majority of the villagers.
The story often varies between rationality and spirituality. Characters with a scientific grounding--like the researchers at a new plant in the village or the school psychologist who works with Taro--see the children's out-of-body experiences as psychologically based and medically explainable, while characters who come from spiritual backgrounds--like Miyoko's father and the wandering shaman who is attracted to the village--have religious explanations for events; and the show makes a case for both and never specifies which is true. Taro and his friends certainly believe that their out-of-body experiences are real and that the things they encounter in the "unseen world," another layer of reality not normally visible in our own, actually happen to them; but because each of them are either running from or towards something terrible in their past, it's clear that they are not impartial observers. The anime gets off to a slow start (I only watched beyond the first two episodes because a friend had recommended it to me as really good and chilling), but it soon picks up and turns downright creepy at times.
Ghost Hound was created by Production I.G. and has been translated by Sentai Filmworks, a Japan-based company that used to distribute anime through ADV. The manga has not currently been translated into English.
August 06, 2010
Ghost Hunt, by Shiho Inada & Fuyumi Ono
Since it's been a real scorcher this summer, especially this last week, let's cool down with a month of ghost stories.
(There's a method to this madness: in Japan, a popular summertime tradition is telling ghost stories. Supposedly, the chills you get will help with the heat. xxxHolic dealt with this theme in volume 2, which the Mooresville Public Library has in its omnibus collection of the series.)
The Ghost Hunt series began as "light novels," a term for novellas geared towards jr. high and high school students, written by Fuyumi Ono--an author best known for her Twelve Kingdoms series, four of which have currently been translated into English. It was then adapted into a manga by Shiho Inada, and later turned into an anime as well.
Ghost Hunt is a horror series with a heavy focus on eastern religions, specifically Buddhism and Shinto (a specifically Japanese religion), and on Japanese superstitions. It's set in modern Japan and centered in Tokyo, although the characters travel around the country to solve cases. It's the story of the Shibuya Psychic Center, a ghost hunting company which investigates and solves supernatural phenomenon. The company is run by a teenager named Kazuya Shibuya (nicknamed Naru) and his assistant Lin. He employs part-timer Mai Taniyama, the heroine who met Naru when he came to investigate an old building with more than its fair share of accidents at her old school; and he also hires a core group of other people on a case by case basis, including a Buddhist monk, a Catholic priest, a Shinto miko (also known as a "shrine maiden;" a miko is a girl who serves ceremonial roles in Shinto shrines), and a psychic medium. Together, they investigate psychic phenomena and exorcise and purify places of the ghosts haunting them; however, the ghosts usually don't go quietly.
This series is a case where I was really thrilled to see the anime come out, because some of the stories are even better when animated. For example, one story is set in a mansion designed after the Winchester Mystery House in California (the house of Sarah Winchester, daughter of the creator of the Winchester guns; she was convinced that she was haunted by the ghosts of everyone who had ever been killed by one of those guns and therefore kept her house under construction for 38 years straight in order to ward off any ghosts trying to find their way in); that story was already scary in the manga, but the anime kicks it up a level because you're able to see a lot more clearly the crazy design of the house as the characters travel through it.
The Ghost Hunt manga is being published by Del Ray, while the anime has been licensed and translated by Funimation. The light novels, unfortunately, have not been translated into English.
(There's a method to this madness: in Japan, a popular summertime tradition is telling ghost stories. Supposedly, the chills you get will help with the heat. xxxHolic dealt with this theme in volume 2, which the Mooresville Public Library has in its omnibus collection of the series.)
The Ghost Hunt series began as "light novels," a term for novellas geared towards jr. high and high school students, written by Fuyumi Ono--an author best known for her Twelve Kingdoms series, four of which have currently been translated into English. It was then adapted into a manga by Shiho Inada, and later turned into an anime as well.
Ghost Hunt is a horror series with a heavy focus on eastern religions, specifically Buddhism and Shinto (a specifically Japanese religion), and on Japanese superstitions. It's set in modern Japan and centered in Tokyo, although the characters travel around the country to solve cases. It's the story of the Shibuya Psychic Center, a ghost hunting company which investigates and solves supernatural phenomenon. The company is run by a teenager named Kazuya Shibuya (nicknamed Naru) and his assistant Lin. He employs part-timer Mai Taniyama, the heroine who met Naru when he came to investigate an old building with more than its fair share of accidents at her old school; and he also hires a core group of other people on a case by case basis, including a Buddhist monk, a Catholic priest, a Shinto miko (also known as a "shrine maiden;" a miko is a girl who serves ceremonial roles in Shinto shrines), and a psychic medium. Together, they investigate psychic phenomena and exorcise and purify places of the ghosts haunting them; however, the ghosts usually don't go quietly.
This series is a case where I was really thrilled to see the anime come out, because some of the stories are even better when animated. For example, one story is set in a mansion designed after the Winchester Mystery House in California (the house of Sarah Winchester, daughter of the creator of the Winchester guns; she was convinced that she was haunted by the ghosts of everyone who had ever been killed by one of those guns and therefore kept her house under construction for 38 years straight in order to ward off any ghosts trying to find their way in); that story was already scary in the manga, but the anime kicks it up a level because you're able to see a lot more clearly the crazy design of the house as the characters travel through it.
The Ghost Hunt manga is being published by Del Ray, while the anime has been licensed and translated by Funimation. The light novels, unfortunately, have not been translated into English.
August 04, 2010
Anime Culture
That was a little longer delay between posts than intended! However, since I recently attended an anime convention, it seems like a good idea to talk about anime fans' subculture.
Local residents are probably familiar GenCon, which is held yearly in Indianapolis. That convention is focused on gaming (video, board, and otherwise), but the basic principle is the same. The United States hosts a lot of anime conventions (generally referred to as "cons")--more than I can even pretend to know of--and the general purpose of them is to allow anime and manga fans to gather in one place with people who share their interests. Most cons will feature fan-run discussion panels about topics related to anime, manga, and Japanese culture, as well as have showings of anime; some of the bigger cons will have popular voice actors (American and sometimes also Japanese) who also host panels and sign autographs. Otakon, a yearly convention held in Baltimore, Maryland and one of the biggest in the country, will also have Japanese rock or pop bands come in to play for the dances; and this year there was even a fashion show hosted by one of Japan's popular designers!
Another popular fan activity at cons is dressing up as favorite characters from an anime or manga series, or even from video games and Japanese TV shows. This is called "cosplay" (short for 'costume play;' despite using English words, to the extent of my knowledge this term originated in Japan. Language is crossing boundaries and getting more fluid than ever!) Below is a photograph of two people who are cosplaying characters from the video game Kingdom Hearts:
Photo from the Cosplay.com forums; photographer Paul Crino.
The bigger a convention is, the more likely it is to have a wide range of things going on during it to appeal to of its attendees. Smaller cons can have more specific themes, like focusing solely on manga, or on Japanese culture, or on specific topics and genres of anime and manga. Most cons that are focused on a specific topic will state as much in their burbs and on their webpages; bigger cons, like Otakon or AnimeExpo in California, will generally cover a lot more topics.
If you're interested in attending an anime convention, Indiana has one of its very own! It's called Ikatsucon, and is held yearly in Fort Wayne.
Local residents are probably familiar GenCon, which is held yearly in Indianapolis. That convention is focused on gaming (video, board, and otherwise), but the basic principle is the same. The United States hosts a lot of anime conventions (generally referred to as "cons")--more than I can even pretend to know of--and the general purpose of them is to allow anime and manga fans to gather in one place with people who share their interests. Most cons will feature fan-run discussion panels about topics related to anime, manga, and Japanese culture, as well as have showings of anime; some of the bigger cons will have popular voice actors (American and sometimes also Japanese) who also host panels and sign autographs. Otakon, a yearly convention held in Baltimore, Maryland and one of the biggest in the country, will also have Japanese rock or pop bands come in to play for the dances; and this year there was even a fashion show hosted by one of Japan's popular designers!
Another popular fan activity at cons is dressing up as favorite characters from an anime or manga series, or even from video games and Japanese TV shows. This is called "cosplay" (short for 'costume play;' despite using English words, to the extent of my knowledge this term originated in Japan. Language is crossing boundaries and getting more fluid than ever!) Below is a photograph of two people who are cosplaying characters from the video game Kingdom Hearts:
Photo from the Cosplay.com forums; photographer Paul Crino.
The bigger a convention is, the more likely it is to have a wide range of things going on during it to appeal to of its attendees. Smaller cons can have more specific themes, like focusing solely on manga, or on Japanese culture, or on specific topics and genres of anime and manga. Most cons that are focused on a specific topic will state as much in their burbs and on their webpages; bigger cons, like Otakon or AnimeExpo in California, will generally cover a lot more topics.
If you're interested in attending an anime convention, Indiana has one of its very own! It's called Ikatsucon, and is held yearly in Fort Wayne.
June 28, 2010
Fullmetal Alchemist, by Hiromu Arakawa
Continuing in the shounen theme, Fullmetal Alchemist is an action/adventure story written by Hiromu Arakawa; it's set in a fictional world reminicent of pre-WWII Europe, with the major difference that alchemy is a (relatively) accepted branch of science with heavy military use. Like Naruto, it has a large cast of characters, some of whom are nearly as important as the main protagonists; but it's primarily about two brothers, Edward and Alphonse Elric, young men who have joined their country's army in order to gain access to research materials and labs to further their quest for the philosohper's stone. The reason they are searching for this is because, at the start of the story, the misuse of alchemy has caused Edward to lose his arm and leg and be forced to wear metal prosthetics in their place, and has left Alphonse as nothing but a soul bound to a suit of armor. Their belief is that the philosopher's stone will allow them to restore Ed's arm and leg and bring back Al's human body so that his soul can return.
This is about all the anime and manga share in common--at a certain point in the plot, when the brothers reunite with their mentor, the two diverge wildly; and unfortunately I can't give any more details on how without horribly spoiling both stories for you. However, the main difference is that the manga--the original story--just ended this month, while the first anime ended in 2004, meaning that it had to create its own ending; and the movie, Conqueror of Shamballa, which came out afterward followed the anime's storyline further. A second anime, Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, also began in 2009, and follows the manga storyline instead of continuing the original story of the first anime.
It sounds pretty complicated (okay, it is pretty complicated), but in essence there are two versions of FMA, the manga and the anime; and both are really good. The cast of characters remains essentially the same in both, but the paths that they all take and where they end up in the end are the real differences.
The Fullmetal Alchemist manga is published by Viz in the United States, while the two animes have both been licensed, subtitled and dubbed into English by Funimation. The second anime is still being produced in Japan, so English-dubbed episodes of it are still ongoing, as is translation of the manga; however, the Mooresville Public Library carries the entire manga series up to the latest volume (volume 22 at the time of this writing), so if you're interested in a story about alchemy, military life, and the consequences of making choices, give it a try!
This is about all the anime and manga share in common--at a certain point in the plot, when the brothers reunite with their mentor, the two diverge wildly; and unfortunately I can't give any more details on how without horribly spoiling both stories for you. However, the main difference is that the manga--the original story--just ended this month, while the first anime ended in 2004, meaning that it had to create its own ending; and the movie, Conqueror of Shamballa, which came out afterward followed the anime's storyline further. A second anime, Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, also began in 2009, and follows the manga storyline instead of continuing the original story of the first anime.
It sounds pretty complicated (okay, it is pretty complicated), but in essence there are two versions of FMA, the manga and the anime; and both are really good. The cast of characters remains essentially the same in both, but the paths that they all take and where they end up in the end are the real differences.
The Fullmetal Alchemist manga is published by Viz in the United States, while the two animes have both been licensed, subtitled and dubbed into English by Funimation. The second anime is still being produced in Japan, so English-dubbed episodes of it are still ongoing, as is translation of the manga; however, the Mooresville Public Library carries the entire manga series up to the latest volume (volume 22 at the time of this writing), so if you're interested in a story about alchemy, military life, and the consequences of making choices, give it a try!
June 09, 2010
Naruto, by Masashi Kishimoto
In celebration of the summer, let's get a little shounen up in here!
(Shounen is the term for a specific subset of manga, also known as "boys' comics;" shounen stories are typically about, and designed for, boys, though they're read by girls and adults as well. It's similar to the Harry Potter and Percy Jackson type books, but usually with more ninjas.)
And speaking of ninjas:
On the off chance that you're one of the few people who has yet to come across Naruto, it is a story about ninjas! (Technically, it is a story about ninja; like the Japanese words manga, anime, sushi, &c., the word ninja can refer to both the singular and the plural form. However, the English practice of adding an s to denote a plural has been become accepted with some Japanese words, so ninjas works just as well. Bet you didn't think you be getting a grammar lesson in an anime blog, huh?)
Naruto is an action/adventure story written by Masashi Kishimoto; it's set in a fictional world that has a lot of similarity to Japan in some of the customs and in the feudal nature of the territories that make up the area, but otherwise the story's world doesn't share much with our own other than the fact that gravity works. (Well, sometimes. Like I said, these are ninjas; sometimes gravity is there only to be defied.) The story has a huge cast of characters, but at the core it's about a boy named Naruto, an orphan in the hidden village (a term historically used to describe villages composed of ninjas taht Kishimoto adopted) of Konoha, who just happens to have the spirit of a fox demon sealed inside him. This happened because at the start of the story, 12 years ago, the fox demon attacked the village, and its leader was not strong enough to kill it; the best he could do was seal it away, and into an infant.
Because Naruto bears scars from this--most distinctively the whisker-like marks on his face--that remind the other villagers of both the fox demon and the huge loss of life that occurred when it attacked, he has spent much of his life being ignored and shunned by everyone. This in turn has driven him to vow that he'll make people notice him--and he usually does it in bratty ways (the first time we meet him, he's vandalizing a village momument by painting graffiti all over it). But as the story goes on, he slowly begins to meet people who look past the scars and see who he really is. Some of these people are from his own village, like Sakura and Sasuke, two of his classmates who were assigned to the same team with him under the guidance of an older ninja named Kakashi (in Naruto's world, learning to be a ninja is kind of like an apprenticeship); some of them are civilians from other, normal villages; and some are even enemies from rival ninja villages, including one character who also had a demon sealed into him by his own village leader, but who--for several reasons--turned out very different from Naruto.
As I mentioned, this series has a huge cast of characters; the characters above form the core group--Team 7--that Naruto both influences and is influenced by, but the village Naruto lives in has many different families in it, all of whom pass down different ninja techniques to their children, and part of Naruto's story is winning the approval of those families via his classmates. The story is also split into two parts: after the end of the first part Kishimoto jumped ahead three years, taking the characters from age twelve to age fifteen. In the anime, the post-timeskip story is referred to as Naruto Shippuden, while the pre-timeskip part is just plain Naruto; the manga uses the name "Naruto" for both.
Naruto was one of the first titles that Viz put out when it started publishing Shonen Jump and began its shift away from adult manga titles to more young adult ones, so it's been around for a while--and in Japan the series is still unfinished, so Naruto's story is still going strong!
(Shounen is the term for a specific subset of manga, also known as "boys' comics;" shounen stories are typically about, and designed for, boys, though they're read by girls and adults as well. It's similar to the Harry Potter and Percy Jackson type books, but usually with more ninjas.)
And speaking of ninjas:
On the off chance that you're one of the few people who has yet to come across Naruto, it is a story about ninjas! (Technically, it is a story about ninja; like the Japanese words manga, anime, sushi, &c., the word ninja can refer to both the singular and the plural form. However, the English practice of adding an s to denote a plural has been become accepted with some Japanese words, so ninjas works just as well. Bet you didn't think you be getting a grammar lesson in an anime blog, huh?)
Naruto is an action/adventure story written by Masashi Kishimoto; it's set in a fictional world that has a lot of similarity to Japan in some of the customs and in the feudal nature of the territories that make up the area, but otherwise the story's world doesn't share much with our own other than the fact that gravity works. (Well, sometimes. Like I said, these are ninjas; sometimes gravity is there only to be defied.) The story has a huge cast of characters, but at the core it's about a boy named Naruto, an orphan in the hidden village (a term historically used to describe villages composed of ninjas taht Kishimoto adopted) of Konoha, who just happens to have the spirit of a fox demon sealed inside him. This happened because at the start of the story, 12 years ago, the fox demon attacked the village, and its leader was not strong enough to kill it; the best he could do was seal it away, and into an infant.
Because Naruto bears scars from this--most distinctively the whisker-like marks on his face--that remind the other villagers of both the fox demon and the huge loss of life that occurred when it attacked, he has spent much of his life being ignored and shunned by everyone. This in turn has driven him to vow that he'll make people notice him--and he usually does it in bratty ways (the first time we meet him, he's vandalizing a village momument by painting graffiti all over it). But as the story goes on, he slowly begins to meet people who look past the scars and see who he really is. Some of these people are from his own village, like Sakura and Sasuke, two of his classmates who were assigned to the same team with him under the guidance of an older ninja named Kakashi (in Naruto's world, learning to be a ninja is kind of like an apprenticeship); some of them are civilians from other, normal villages; and some are even enemies from rival ninja villages, including one character who also had a demon sealed into him by his own village leader, but who--for several reasons--turned out very different from Naruto.
As I mentioned, this series has a huge cast of characters; the characters above form the core group--Team 7--that Naruto both influences and is influenced by, but the village Naruto lives in has many different families in it, all of whom pass down different ninja techniques to their children, and part of Naruto's story is winning the approval of those families via his classmates. The story is also split into two parts: after the end of the first part Kishimoto jumped ahead three years, taking the characters from age twelve to age fifteen. In the anime, the post-timeskip story is referred to as Naruto Shippuden, while the pre-timeskip part is just plain Naruto; the manga uses the name "Naruto" for both.
Naruto was one of the first titles that Viz put out when it started publishing Shonen Jump and began its shift away from adult manga titles to more young adult ones, so it's been around for a while--and in Japan the series is still unfinished, so Naruto's story is still going strong!
May 28, 2010
Azumanga Daioh, by Kiyohiko Azuma
Well, that was an unexpectedly long break between updates! But, what better way to kick off MPL's summer reading than with a manga about school?
(No, really, hang with me here. It's very good.)
Azumanga Daioh is a another slice-of-life comedy written by Kiyohiko Azuma; like Yotsuba&!, it's set in a smaller, though still urban, town in Japan; and the majority of the story revolves around school life, though there's plenty of summertime jokes as well. It's the story of a group of five friends who are all in the same class at school. (This is significant because in Japanese schools, students are assigned to one classroom and then stay in it throughout the day; it's the teachers who travel from one class to another to teach their subjects. So in Japan, the classroom you're assigned to is the one you stay in for the whole school year--just imagine what that would be like if you didn't like one of your classmates.) The story focuses on these five girls, but there are lots of other characters, some of them students and some teachers, who get plenty of face-time too.
I mentioned when talking about Yotsuba&! Azumanga Daioh is not drawn in a standard manga page format; it was originally published as a four-panel comic strip, but while in America comic strips are printed and read from left-to-right, in Japan the panels are stacked on top of each other and read up-to-down--in addition to right-to left! It's not as confusing as it sounds, though; after a few comics you'll fall into the swing of it. And it isn't all comics; each book has one or two 'specials,' where Azuma draws the story in a more familiar manga format.
Azumanga Daioh was published by ADV Manga in the middle of their switch to doing more literal translations, so in the last two of the series's four volumes there are a few notes on jokes or customs and untranslated Japanese words. The most occur in the fourth and final volume, during the students' class trip to Okinawa, a southern island of Japan that has a heavily aborigine-influenced culture (it's kind of similar to how Hawaii is a part of the US but still has its own people and customs). The majority of the jokes and the story are translated as accessibly as possible, though, so it's a great and funny read!
(No, really, hang with me here. It's very good.)
Azumanga Daioh is a another slice-of-life comedy written by Kiyohiko Azuma; like Yotsuba&!, it's set in a smaller, though still urban, town in Japan; and the majority of the story revolves around school life, though there's plenty of summertime jokes as well. It's the story of a group of five friends who are all in the same class at school. (This is significant because in Japanese schools, students are assigned to one classroom and then stay in it throughout the day; it's the teachers who travel from one class to another to teach their subjects. So in Japan, the classroom you're assigned to is the one you stay in for the whole school year--just imagine what that would be like if you didn't like one of your classmates.) The story focuses on these five girls, but there are lots of other characters, some of them students and some teachers, who get plenty of face-time too.
I mentioned when talking about Yotsuba&! Azumanga Daioh is not drawn in a standard manga page format; it was originally published as a four-panel comic strip, but while in America comic strips are printed and read from left-to-right, in Japan the panels are stacked on top of each other and read up-to-down--in addition to right-to left! It's not as confusing as it sounds, though; after a few comics you'll fall into the swing of it. And it isn't all comics; each book has one or two 'specials,' where Azuma draws the story in a more familiar manga format.
Azumanga Daioh was published by ADV Manga in the middle of their switch to doing more literal translations, so in the last two of the series's four volumes there are a few notes on jokes or customs and untranslated Japanese words. The most occur in the fourth and final volume, during the students' class trip to Okinawa, a southern island of Japan that has a heavily aborigine-influenced culture (it's kind of similar to how Hawaii is a part of the US but still has its own people and customs). The majority of the jokes and the story are translated as accessibly as possible, though, so it's a great and funny read!
May 03, 2010
Yotsuba&!, by Kiyohiko Azuma
Yotsuba&! is a slice-of-life comedy set in a small Japanese town and written by Kiyohiko Azuma. It's the story of Yotsuba Koiwai, a quirky five-year-old, and her life after she and her adoptive father move to a new town. The story focuses on Yotsuba, her father and his friends, and the neighboring family, and deals with many of the events that occur during in daily life in Japan, like shopping, school festivals, summer homework, and typhoons. The humor of the series comes primarily from Yotsuba's lack of knowledge about things a typical five-year-old would know, and the resulting way that she misunderstands a lot of what goes on around her. (If I'm making this sound too dry, trust me, it's not; this series is hilarious. My favorite parts are when Yotsuba and Yanda--a friend of her father's who became Yotsuba's enemy when he ate her ice cream--get into childish arguments with each other.)
Yotsuba&! is a change from Azuma's previously translated series, Azumanga Daioh: Yotsuba&! is drawn in a standard manga page format, while Azumanga Daioh was a series of four-panel comics (kind of like the comic strips in newspaper, except in Japan comics are printed and read up-to-down rather than left-to-right).
Yotsuba&! is published by two different translation companies: ADV Manga published the first five volumes, and then sold the title to Yen Press, which reprinted those five and has continued with the following volumes. This means that if you go from reading ADV Manga's translations to reading Yen Press's, you'll find some differences: one of the character's names is spelled differently (Fuka in ADV's, Fuuka in Yen Press's), and a few of the jokes are different. This reflects the two companies' different appraches to translation: ADV aims to make the translation as accessable as possible for the widest range of readers, while Yen Press tends to focus a little more on readers who already have a familiarity with manga and Japanese customs and spelling (the difference between Fuka and Fuuka is that romaji--the Japanese alphabet--has many double vowels, while in English that's pretty rare). But Yen Press includes notes to avoid being too obscure.
(I mention all this because at Mooresville Public Library, the first five copies of Yotsuba&! are by ADV, so don't be surprised when you spot the changes in volume 6!)
Yotsuba&! is a change from Azuma's previously translated series, Azumanga Daioh: Yotsuba&! is drawn in a standard manga page format, while Azumanga Daioh was a series of four-panel comics (kind of like the comic strips in newspaper, except in Japan comics are printed and read up-to-down rather than left-to-right).
Yotsuba&! is published by two different translation companies: ADV Manga published the first five volumes, and then sold the title to Yen Press, which reprinted those five and has continued with the following volumes. This means that if you go from reading ADV Manga's translations to reading Yen Press's, you'll find some differences: one of the character's names is spelled differently (Fuka in ADV's, Fuuka in Yen Press's), and a few of the jokes are different. This reflects the two companies' different appraches to translation: ADV aims to make the translation as accessable as possible for the widest range of readers, while Yen Press tends to focus a little more on readers who already have a familiarity with manga and Japanese customs and spelling (the difference between Fuka and Fuuka is that romaji--the Japanese alphabet--has many double vowels, while in English that's pretty rare). But Yen Press includes notes to avoid being too obscure.
(I mention all this because at Mooresville Public Library, the first five copies of Yotsuba&! are by ADV, so don't be surprised when you spot the changes in volume 6!)
April 26, 2010
Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles, by CLAMP
It's a month full of CLAMP titles! But when the mangaka (the Japanese term for a manga artist/writer) group has been creating series for over fifteen years, maybe it's surprising that it's only a month.
I mentioned Tsubasa, or TRC (not to be confused with Tsubasa: Those Who Have Wings, a series produced by Natsuki Takaya, the mangaka of Fruits Basket) before when talking about xxxHolic; as I said there, the two series occur within the same universe and often reference each other. TRC differs slightly from xxxHolic in terms of story-telling--it was published in the Japanese Shonen Jump, and is a part of the shounen (boy's stories) subgroup of manga, meaning it is similar to other shounen titles like Bleach, Naruto, and One Piece.
Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles is a fantasy series set in no particular world; in fact, its plot involves four people traveling together to different worlds for their own reasons. Sakura is a princess whose memories were changed into feathers ('tsubasa' is Japanese for wing or feather) and scattered among many worlds as the result of an evil spell; she and Syaoran, a young man from her world, are traveling in order to find and return these memories to her. Kurogane is a ninja who was sent away from his world by the princess he served for being too bloodthirsty; he's traveling in order to return home. And the fourth person, Fai, is a wizard who refuses to use magic and who is traveling because he is running away from something--or someone.
Many of the worlds and supporting characters of TRC are similar to those of previous CLAMP titles. In fact, Sakura and Syaoran are both characters from the series Cardcaptor Sakura, and many of the events in that series have an impact later on in the story of TRC. No world is ever quite like its original story's; but because so much of Tsubasa Reservior Chronicles either relies upon or is improved by a knowledge of CLAMP's previous works, it can make the story a little harder to dive into for those unfamiliar with them. And like xxxHolic, the translation of TRC maintains honorifics (those name-endings in Japanese that are similar to English "Mr." and "Mrs.") and some Japanese words. But also like xxxHolic, each volume has notes on terms and references to Japanese customs.
Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles is heavily dependent on a prior knowledge of CLAMP's works to understand a lot of its background; but the foreground--the plot and the growth of the characters as they travel, work together, change and sometimes even betray each other--does not require it, so you can read and enjoy the story for what it is: the tale of a group of people from vastly different worlds thrown together for a common goal and learning how to work together and to accept the personal changes that come as a consequence of growing close to other human beings.
I mentioned Tsubasa, or TRC (not to be confused with Tsubasa: Those Who Have Wings, a series produced by Natsuki Takaya, the mangaka of Fruits Basket) before when talking about xxxHolic; as I said there, the two series occur within the same universe and often reference each other. TRC differs slightly from xxxHolic in terms of story-telling--it was published in the Japanese Shonen Jump, and is a part of the shounen (boy's stories) subgroup of manga, meaning it is similar to other shounen titles like Bleach, Naruto, and One Piece.
Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles is a fantasy series set in no particular world; in fact, its plot involves four people traveling together to different worlds for their own reasons. Sakura is a princess whose memories were changed into feathers ('tsubasa' is Japanese for wing or feather) and scattered among many worlds as the result of an evil spell; she and Syaoran, a young man from her world, are traveling in order to find and return these memories to her. Kurogane is a ninja who was sent away from his world by the princess he served for being too bloodthirsty; he's traveling in order to return home. And the fourth person, Fai, is a wizard who refuses to use magic and who is traveling because he is running away from something--or someone.
Many of the worlds and supporting characters of TRC are similar to those of previous CLAMP titles. In fact, Sakura and Syaoran are both characters from the series Cardcaptor Sakura, and many of the events in that series have an impact later on in the story of TRC. No world is ever quite like its original story's; but because so much of Tsubasa Reservior Chronicles either relies upon or is improved by a knowledge of CLAMP's previous works, it can make the story a little harder to dive into for those unfamiliar with them. And like xxxHolic, the translation of TRC maintains honorifics (those name-endings in Japanese that are similar to English "Mr." and "Mrs.") and some Japanese words. But also like xxxHolic, each volume has notes on terms and references to Japanese customs.
Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles is heavily dependent on a prior knowledge of CLAMP's works to understand a lot of its background; but the foreground--the plot and the growth of the characters as they travel, work together, change and sometimes even betray each other--does not require it, so you can read and enjoy the story for what it is: the tale of a group of people from vastly different worlds thrown together for a common goal and learning how to work together and to accept the personal changes that come as a consequence of growing close to other human beings.
April 13, 2010
Publishers: Del Rey Manga
I mentioned last week that Del Rey is the English publisher for xxxHolic, along with many other titles (including Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles, Gundam Seed Destiny, the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney comics, and some of my favorites like Air Gear and Ghost Hunt), and I thought I should give a little more background on them.
Del Rey Manga (which is a subset of Del Rey Books, a scifi and fantasy publisher) is a relative newcomer to the manga translation world. They began publishing manga series in 2004, and are probably most famous for being the first to consistently include honorifics in their translations, to maintain Japanese references within works instead of converting them to equivalent English ones, and to have notes at the beginning and end of each volume of their manga to explain both of these to new readers and readers unfamiliar with Japanese culture. Del Rey also began a practice of including a few pages, still in the original Japanese, of the next volume of a series in the back of the manga; but unlike the notes on honorifics and references, this is not consistent for each series.
Del Rey took the foundation that its main predecessors, TokyoPop and Viz, had built in bringing over manga titles, and added to it by assuming that manga had settled enough into the American landscape that more of its original, Japanese aspects could be preserved without causing too much confusion (or risking a rejection of the titles!). And since the manga they've brought over has been enjoyed for six years now, they may have gambled right. Del Rey's manga titles might not be the right place to start if you're just beginning to explore this whole 'manga thing,' but if you see one you want to read among their series, the notes will make sure you don't lose the story among the translation.
April 06, 2010
xxxHolic, by CLAMP
I learned about xxxHolic the same way a lot of people probably learn about a series they like: a friend told me I should read it.
xxxHolic is a supernatural series set in Tokyo (and occasionally other locales of Japan) and produced by CLAMP, a four-woman writing/drawing group. It's the story of Watanuki, a teenage boy who can see spirits and who is constantly chased by them. To get rid of his power (and to save his life), he makes a deal with Yûko, also known as the Time-Space Witch and who has the ability to grant wishes, to work for her in exchange for taking his ability away. However, Yûko's powers are based on equivalent exchange: because removing Watanuki's ability to see spirits and also his unconscious, unwanted ability to draw them to him is such a difficult task, he has to work for her for a very, very long time before it's paid off. (If it sounds a little bit like the philosophy of alchemy in Fullmetal Alchemist, that's because it is. If you don't know what Fullmetal Alchemist is, don't worry, I'll get to it.) So the two of them get off to a rocky start.
At first the series focuses only on Watanuki and Yûko and the fates of various customers who come into Yûko's shop looking to have their wishes granted, but as it goes on more characters appear: Himiwari, a girl at Watanuki's school who he has a crush on, and who always has strange things happen around her; and Doumeki, another classmate and the son of a Buddhist temple priest, who also has unusual powers and who Watanuki takes an instinctive dislike to. (Actually, it's more like irrational hatred.) Slowly these two become more and more involved in the wishes being granted in Yûko's shop, and in the lives of Watanuki and Yûko themselves.
Compared to other manga series, xxxHolic is heavily based on Japanese customs and superstitions. The translator maintains honorifics (ending words in Japanese that are attached to names, which serve the same purpose as English "Mr." and "Mrs.") throughout the dialog, and some words that would be hard to translate into English are left in their original Japanese. The most common one of these is "hitsuzen," a difficult word and an even more difficult concept (not even Watanuki knows what it means when Yûko first says it!): boiled down, it's the opposite of coincidence, the belief that something happens for a reason and there was no other possible way that things could have occurred--a theme throughout the series that some characters accept, and some fight tooth and nail. Fortunately, each volume of the series has notes on honorifics and jokes or puns that didn't quite translate right from the Japanese, so you won't get lost reading.
xxxHolic is a change from CLAMP's previous work in two ways: the art style is different, because the previous artist took a background role due to wrist problems; and the series is intertwined with another manga that CLAMP was producing at the same time, called Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles. The early volumes of the manga rely heavily on reading Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles at the same time to get a full idea of what is going on; but over time the series settles into its own world and the characters' friendships -- and antagonisms -- change and grow.
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