Kobato is something between a slice-of-life and a mystery series, with a touch of fantasy (more along the lines of xxxHolic, where the story is set in current Japan with supernatural events occurring, rather than Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles, where supernatural events occur in strange worlds). On the surface it's the story of a girl named Kobato Hanato who gets a job working at a kindergarten plagued by money troubles; but below that is the mystery of why the yakuza threatening to close the kindergarten is married to the woman running it, and who Kobato really is.
Because Kobato has a wish: she wants to go somewhere. And in order to do so, she has to fill a magic bottle with the fragments of injured hearts that she has healed. I'd almost say this series has a magical girl angle, except Kobato (so far) doesn't transform and hasn't fought anyone. But the reason she asked for her job at the kindergarten was to try and help the owner of it with her problems, thereby healing her heart and making Kobato one step closer to her wish.
In addition, there's another story going on: Kobato has some kind of spirit guide (this is the best term I can think of to explain the abusive, animate stuffed animal who is helping her on her quest--think Cerberus with a lot of rage), Ioryogi, who has his own motives for wanting to see her wish come true. He has no chance of being freed from the form he's currently in unless Kobato succeeds. And Ioryogi isn't the only supernatural creature stuck in a body that isn't his own; there are other creatures, too, and it's been implied that Kobato herself isn't human (or at least, sure isn't a normal one). There's clearly something going on in the spiritual world, and Kobato is involved, regardless of whether she knows it or not.
Kobato seems like a sweet, fun read; but if you're like me and you've read a lot of CLAMP's works, a warning light probably went off as soon as I mentioned that she had a wish. The series is cute and sweet; but there's a darker undercurrent to it that has me counting pages until we learn that one character is blind in their right eye. After all, it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye: then it's CLAMP.
Kobato is translated by Yen Press, which is something of a newcomer in the field of manga, but which is a company I've always admired for both their diverse titles and their translations. The series was put on hiatus by CLAMP in 2005, and then was not so much resumed as restarted (opening at an earlier point in the timeline) in 2007. There are 5 volumes so far; 3 have been translated into English, with volume 4 coming out in May. There is also an anime of the series that ran for 24 episodes from 2009-2010, but so far it has not been brought over in subtitled or dubbed form.
January 31, 2011
January 17, 2011
Tokyo Vice, by Jake Adelstein
While this isn't quite manga, it goes into so much depth about Tokyo, Japan, and Japanese culture that I have to recommend it.
Jake Adelstein is an American who went to college in Japan and then became a reporter for the Yomiuri Shinbun, one of Japan's largest newspapers (one chapter gives a great description of the entrance exams and training that he went through to do it). There, he went into the Vice Beat area, and began covering the seedy aspects of Tokyo and nearby Saitama, including yakuza (the Japanese mafia) activities, murders, host club scams, and a group of robbers who once stole an entire ATM machine using a forklift.
In the process, Adelstein learns a lot about the workings of the police, the give and take between police and reporters, and especially about yakuza-related crime (this is because one of his stories gets his life threatened by the head of one of the biggest yakuza groups--in fact, it's the reason Adelstein and his family are currently living back in the United States). He also writes a lot about Japan, including real-life examples of sempai-kohai relationships, host clubs (most are not, in fact, run like Ouran's), and basic details about Japan that are really interesting: I've been reading manga for nearly 11 years, and I was well aware of the public bathhouse system in Japan, but I had no idea that there are also coin-operated showers! (At the time of Adelstein's writing, 100 yen would get you five minutes of hot water.)
Since one of my favorite manga, Sanctuary (by Sho Fumimura and Ryoichi Ikegami) is about yakuza and politicians, I had to pick this up. And I definitely learned a lot about yakuza from it, and even some about Japanese politics: I had no idea that the reigning party in Japan, the (quite misnamed and very conservative) Liberal Democratic Party, was founded by yakuza money given to the creator of the LDP--apparently this is an open secret in the country! The things you learn.
What fascinated me the most, however, was Adelstein's breakdown of the different districts within Tokyo. I knew the main names--Shibuya, Shinjuku, Roppongi, Akibahara--but I didn't know much about the different aspects of them. The one I knew most about was Akibahara, and that's because any otaku worth their salt has to know the electronics/manga/doujinshi/otaku playground. (Plus, a good chunk of Genshiken takes place there, so.) But Adelstein goes a lot more in-depth about the areas, including what businesses (mainly shady) tend to be where and what each district is most famous for (for Roppongi, it's apparently catering to foreigners. No wonder I never see that place much in manga).
Tokyo Vice contains a ton of information about Japan, including a whole lot about the side that you don't see much in manga (at least, outside of seinen, or manga geared toward adult men), on top of all the vice beat stories. If you're interested in more details of Japan and Japanese culture to better understand the background behind your favorite manga, this book is a great place to start.
Jake Adelstein is an American who went to college in Japan and then became a reporter for the Yomiuri Shinbun, one of Japan's largest newspapers (one chapter gives a great description of the entrance exams and training that he went through to do it). There, he went into the Vice Beat area, and began covering the seedy aspects of Tokyo and nearby Saitama, including yakuza (the Japanese mafia) activities, murders, host club scams, and a group of robbers who once stole an entire ATM machine using a forklift.
In the process, Adelstein learns a lot about the workings of the police, the give and take between police and reporters, and especially about yakuza-related crime (this is because one of his stories gets his life threatened by the head of one of the biggest yakuza groups--in fact, it's the reason Adelstein and his family are currently living back in the United States). He also writes a lot about Japan, including real-life examples of sempai-kohai relationships, host clubs (most are not, in fact, run like Ouran's), and basic details about Japan that are really interesting: I've been reading manga for nearly 11 years, and I was well aware of the public bathhouse system in Japan, but I had no idea that there are also coin-operated showers! (At the time of Adelstein's writing, 100 yen would get you five minutes of hot water.)
Since one of my favorite manga, Sanctuary (by Sho Fumimura and Ryoichi Ikegami) is about yakuza and politicians, I had to pick this up. And I definitely learned a lot about yakuza from it, and even some about Japanese politics: I had no idea that the reigning party in Japan, the (quite misnamed and very conservative) Liberal Democratic Party, was founded by yakuza money given to the creator of the LDP--apparently this is an open secret in the country! The things you learn.
What fascinated me the most, however, was Adelstein's breakdown of the different districts within Tokyo. I knew the main names--Shibuya, Shinjuku, Roppongi, Akibahara--but I didn't know much about the different aspects of them. The one I knew most about was Akibahara, and that's because any otaku worth their salt has to know the electronics/manga/doujinshi/otaku playground. (Plus, a good chunk of Genshiken takes place there, so.) But Adelstein goes a lot more in-depth about the areas, including what businesses (mainly shady) tend to be where and what each district is most famous for (for Roppongi, it's apparently catering to foreigners. No wonder I never see that place much in manga).
Tokyo Vice contains a ton of information about Japan, including a whole lot about the side that you don't see much in manga (at least, outside of seinen, or manga geared toward adult men), on top of all the vice beat stories. If you're interested in more details of Japan and Japanese culture to better understand the background behind your favorite manga, this book is a great place to start.
December 29, 2010
New December manga!
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!
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 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.
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