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!
August 27, 2010
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.
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