Tako-Hachi Taiko Pics

A few of my friends are a part of this taiko group that performed today at the Beaverton Uwajimaya 10th Anniversary Celebration. Here a a few pics of TAKO-HACHI.

(click pic for slightly larger image)

Indiana Jones chirashi

As I told Lori Henderson at Comics Village this week, Real Life is a fair excuse for not being able to make a post sometimes.

And are you guys checking Comics Village? It's like half-manga, half-comics reviews by a bunch of very talented writers that I was able to sneak in on. As a guy that was raised on US comics, found anime and manga, and then rediscovered comics after a nearly 20-year break, I gotta say it's a great place to visit for the smorgasbord consumer.

May Yuuyake Shimbun is Out

The May issue of The Yuuyake Shimbun is on stands now, so I will share the April column here:

(click to enlarge)

I did a story on Dark Horse's 20th Anniversary of Manga (which also scored a Page 1 photo) this month and will include that article and photos with Dark Horse staff here next week. If you live in the Northwest, please try and pick up a copy.

Here's one pic from the "photo shoot" (with more to come next week).

L to R editors Philip Simon, Carl Horn, Tim Ervin, Samantha Robertson, and finally Director of Asian Licensing, Michael Gombos.

Having these five in a room together was apparently an fairly rare occurrence, and it was very kind of them to take time out of their incredibly busy schedules to allow me to snap a few (dozen) photos.

The Pictures that Horrified America

Though it isn't a directly manga-related article, CNN picked up on the Red-Scare like tactics that blasted the American comics world a few decades ago, and is detailed in David Hajdu's recent release The Ten-Cent Plague.

I just picked this title up from Amazon, (it was suggested when I ordered The Mammoth Book of Best Horror Comics, which is cheaper than the EC Collections I absolutely can't get enough of [that are as expensive as a new video game] but is smaller and in black-and-white. You get what you pay for. )

Link to article

Kumoricon Lite this Saturday

Those thinking about attending the Portland Anime Convention KUMORICON this summer can get a little hint as to what they are in for this Saturday at PSU.

Click the image for more details

My Two Sent-ences on:
Iron Man

It's a comic book movie with a lot more book than comic, but a lot of heart, great cast, and not so subtle politics. Thumbs up or thumbs down...it's a thumbs up, but not quite as good as the stellar reviews led me to believe.

BONUS SENTENCE:

Stick around through the credits for what may be be the best fan-boy (ahem, fan-MAN) scene in the entire movie, for more ways than three.

Saturday May 3 is Free Comic Book Day

Be sure to get to your local comic book shop for Free Comic Book Day. There are a couple manga offerings, as well.

Official Site

Row, Row, Dororo...



Dororo: Volume 1
by Osamu Tezuka

Sometime almost as telling as the "best of" lists that are released by reviewers at the end of the year are the "looking forward to" lists that are harder to find, but are common among the bloggers. One title that I have seen, and included on my own "looking forward to" in 2008 is Osamu Tezuka's three-volume Dororo series.

It's not like it's a bold bet. Vertical, Inc. has released a handful of Tezuka titles over the past few years, and have picked up the pace in 2006 and 2007 with the trifecta of Ode to Kirihito, Apollo's Song and MW. This year we'll see the complete Dororo series and the start of the even-more anticipated Blackjack. Each volume (going back to the Buddha series) has been treated as not a simple manga release, but as a archival quality release on high-quality paper with masterful translations and stunning but respectful cover-art.

Dororo: Volume 1 is no exception.

Daigo offers 48 body parts of his unborn son to the 48 Demon Gods in exchange for rule over Japan. As a result, in awesome Tezuka guro-kawaii (modern Japanese slang for "grotesque-cute"), Hyakkimaru is born, a limbless pupa with holes where is facial features should be. He must be a stronger-than-average baby, as who could survive with 48 body parts missing? Rejected by his family, baby Moses, I mean baby Hyakkimaru is sent floating in a basket down a reedy river. Discovered by a kind doctor, Hyakkimaru grows up training how to make up for his deficiencies, while his adopted father constructs artificial limbs. Think a R-rated Inspector Gadget set 500 years ago in feudal Japan...and possibly the inspiration for Rose McGowen's amputated heroine in "Planet Terror".

For some reason the demons that stole his body parts find it necessary to haunt the poor boy, and he is sadly banished from his adopted home. This is where Hyakkimaru's quest begins: to kill the 48 demons and recover his body parts. But it isn't a solo journey for long. Soon Hyakkimaru comes across Dororo, the self-proclaimed greatest child thief in the world. What follows is a unusual and not always comfortable partnership between Hyakkimaru and Dororo which also includes flashbacks to Dororo's life story, which is arguably sadder than Hyakkimaru's own.

Unlike some recent Tezuka releases in English, Dororo is a journey in the time of the samurai with many fantasy elements. Tezuka's Demon Gods appear "as anything from sandals to dogs to that pile of garbage...", reminding me of traditional yokai, bizarre Japanese ghouls. In a monster movie, it doesn't matter who plays the hero, as everyone will be looking at the monster, and in the very well-framed action sequences, this is true. Between Hyakkimaru's and Dororo's background stories we have a few individual stories of fantasy and horror splattered with no shortage of severed heads and buckets of blood.

All three volumes of Dororo will be out by the end of the summer, a perfect pace for a series you will surely see jump from those "looking forward to" lists to the "best of 2008" lists at the end of the year.

Grindhouse Complete Edition available in Japan (but not US) + killer Grindhouse movie-related mooks

At this point the Quentin Tarantino / Robert Rodriguez double-feature "Grindhouse" has made its way to DVD in both Japan and the US. The funny thing is that the "complete Grindhouse experience" that US movie-goers got to see (including fake trailers and 70s-style snack counter ads) has been eliminated from any American DVD release so far, but the split release of "Death Proof" and "Planet Terror" in theaters in Japan led to the truly complete edition of the "Grindhouse experience" on Japanese DVD.

Tarantino fan or not, Japan puts out box-sets like you only read about state-side, and Japan's "Grindhouse Complete Set" is no exception. There are no toys or t-shirts, like the Kill Bill sets had, but this is a full six-DVD set in a very nicely done fold-out case with slip-cover. I imagine something similar to this will come out eventually in the US, but six-DVDs? Probably not. In Japan presentation is king and this one wears a pretty bloody crown.

Along with that I discovered these two "mooks", (a term combining the words "magazine" with "book". It's not a book, and not a magazine...it's a mook!) that coincided with this DVD release.

Japanese publications are nothing if they aren't thorough, and these two books would sell like crazy in English. The one with Tarantino on the cover basically chronicles the movies he was inspired by for Death Proof, and in Taratino-style, a whole lot more. The second book is a shlock-shock cinema crash course, and both are a lot of fun, even if you can't read Japanese. The idea of "not showing spoilers" is limited to this side of the Pacific, and some of the most gruesome scenes of cimematic horror are presented in grainy black-and-white. Interviews with Dario Argento and Eli Roth included.

I'd Like to See Detective Ritual in English

Detective Ritual
(Tantei Gishiki)
by Eiji Otsuka
art by Chizu Hashii
based in a story by Ryusui Seiryoin

I chanced upon this book in a Japanese bookstore last month and was immediately struck by the cover and the art-style. Artist Chizu Hashii did the character designs for the Blood+ anime, and I then saw the story was adapted by none other than Eiji Otsuka (Mail, MPD-Psycho, Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service).

We have talked about the "Otsuka-verse" in the past, and in the Eiji Otsuka's tradition, Detective Toru Sasayama is a major player in this bizarre thriller series. (Det. Sasayama appears in both MPD-Psycho and Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, though in different capacities, implying different times in his life.) The shorned and scarred Sasayama is still as savvy as can be, which makes me hope that Detective Ritual is on some short lists for English publishers (hopefully Dark Horse, who has brought us all of Otsuka's other titles).

Five volumes have been released in Japan, but I was unable to find a copy of Volume 1, (and was actually laughed at by one bookstore employee when I asked if any copies of Volume 1 were available.)