Lala Pipo movie trailer

It came to my attention that Lala Pipo the black humor erotic fiction I reviewed earlier in the week is coming out as a movie next year. It stars Hiroki Narimiya and Yuri Nakamura. Click the link below to see the teaser trailer. 

"Lala Pipo" teaser trailer

Going Down With Getting It Up

Lala Pipo
By Hideo Okuda

Sex sells.

That is the theme of the masterfully crafted intertwining stories that make up Lala Pipo. However those two words do not always go together as simply as our brains associate them, and the complexity, and simplicity, of sex and selling is what carries the daring reader who dives into this story. Both instigator and victim, Lala Pipo stimulates and also disgusts, sending its own genre under the proverbial bus. Shallow and deep at the same time Okuda plays the reader like the idiotic johns we are reading about, but we end up more satisfied in the end.

Lala Pipo is a criss-cross story intertwining six modern Tokyo residents (the seemingly meaningless title is properly explained near the end). We start out meeting shut-in writer and all-around loser Sugiyama who has inflated dreams of his own abilities (a recurring theme), but until opportunity knocks, he occupies himself by buying surveillance equipment to hear the sexual escapades of his cabaret-club scout neighbor living above him. Sugiyama's self-satisfying lonely sessions are detailed just enough until his neighbor suddenly moves. Sugiyama's complicated masturbatory ritual has been destroyed.

The story then shifts to perspective of Kenji Kurino, and up-and-coming scout who has gotten enough good breaks to allow him to move to nicer digs...

To say any more would ruin the genuine sticky fun of Lala Pipo. What follows is and rich mix of genuinely sad people presented with humor, eroticism and morose irony. We meet an erotic novel writer who wishes he was a more respected author, a karaoke box employee who finds himself to be an accessory to prostitution and a reclusive chubby woman who has not only discovered her masochistic and sadistic sides, but has one more important secret.

And these aren't even the most extreme characters the intertwisted yarns Lala Pipo spins.

This book is a lot of dark and sexy fun. It reminded me of one of my favorite films, "Requiem for a Dream" but had a bit more of a sense of humor, and was about sexuality, not drug addiction. We find people that are experts at finding what they want physically, but are intellectual infants at finding what they need emotionally. Modern Japanese society is skewered often in the stories, and non-communication and sexless marriages on one side versus cheap and risk-free sex with nubile and money-grubbing high-schoolers on the other paints a picture of a lost world that isn't only the fault of delusional individuals. Tokyo isn't completely a mess, but has some very messed up people that feed off each other like parasites.

Despite the lascivious nature of the story, what makes Lala Pipo a success is the dexterous sewing of these stories together. The tale isn't linear, but a patchwork, and is one that is entertaining like amateur porn and slow-motion car crashes. If the characters were completely despicable, this wouldn't be a book. The warm pull is that the reader can connect in some way with all of these fractured spirits, and that's what makes the results so memorable.

Thirteen Horror Manga for Halloween

As the witching hour draws near the need to satisfy that horror bug grows by the hour. I say feed it Japanese.

These are 13 of my favorite Japanese horror manga titles released in recent years. This is not an exhaustive list, but these are the books and series that encompass the spirit of Halloween and are among the best in Japanese horror manga.

I am a little bothered by lists I have seen recently that include shoujo vampire manga like Vampire Knight or even the very awesome Death Note on Halloween horror manga. Those books are great, but they aren't scary. The titles I present stick with you (and on you) and not always in a good way.

1) SCARY BOOK by Kazuo Umezu

Umezu is an icon in Japanese horror, and these three volumes are a collection of one-shot tales that showcase the fundamentals of modern Japanese horror in manga. Umezu's classic style might be dated, but the stories are truly timeless. SCARY BOOK is the Bela Lugosi chronicles of manga horror and is truly a must read for any student of Japanese macabre. SCARY BOOK might not give you bad dreams, but is a memorable walk through a very creepy museum.

2) MUSEUM OF TERROR by Junji Ito

Speaking of museums, don't get caught alone in this one. MUSEUM OF TERROR is another three-volume series of stand alone horror. The first two are full of Ito's most famous femme fatale, Tomie. The Tomie series of horror films stimulated on a very visceral level. The source manga is much more horrifying and original. The Tomie series that covers the first two volumes has never been properly presented like this in English before (complete and in order), and unlike SCARY BOOK, the uniquely disturbing scenes in MUSEUM OF TERROR are more than likely to invade your dreams.

3) Hino Horror series THE RED SNAKE by Hideshi Hino

Hideshi Hino is the third horror manga writer we will see with multiple titles on this list. Hino mixes a cartoony style with real gore. In a way this excuses what is on the page, but also makes it that much more frightening. The reason it works is not because of the blood and guts, but the psychology (or psychopathy) behind them. I have heard people compare Hino's work to Garbage Pail Kids, but that only applies is the Garbage Pail Kids are pus-spewing zombies jumping off their cards and biting your throat. The combination of sick and decrepit with brutal insight into the human psyche makes THE RED SNAKE and a lot of the Hino Horror collection (now out of print) especially disturbing.

4) UZUMAKI by Junji Ito

This is another example of Ito's work that heralded a big-screen release, but is still superior in its original manga form. The premise of UZUMAKI sounds like it was given to Junji Ito on a dare, but the execution of stand-alone stories over an increasingly creepy and mysterious backdrop gets more and more compelling of the these (surprise!) three volumes. The small town of Kurozucho is under attack. But not by demons, spirits or monsters...but by spirals. This bizarre premise holds firm in the series of escalating attacks by a very bizarre phenomenon. This may be the most unsettling series I have ever read, if only because what happens is so unexpected.

5) MPD-PSYCHO by Eiji Otsuka and artwork by Sho-u Tahima

This is horror on a different level, closer to "The Silence of the Lambs" than "Friday the 13th", but is is as psychologically disturbing as it is soaked to the seams in blood. We are introduced to a stark modern-day Tokyo where the psychopathy of the murderous criminals seems all-too-familiar to at least one police detective, Amamiya. What unfurls is layer after layer of conspiracy and insanity. The first volumes ask a lot of the readers, and the multitude of characters (and personalities) is even trickier for those not used to juggling a lot of Japanese sur-names, but blessed be those that stick with it, as by the third volume the severed limb filled roller coaster slowly reaches the top of the highest peak, and the real decrepit enjoyment begins. Each volume feels like taking a sterile shower of body fluids, and this most dedicated presentation is second to none.

6) PARASYTE by Hitoshi Iwaaki

Alien invasions tend to be horror in America and shoujo in Japan. PARASYTE is a welcome entry and Iwaaki sets a fantastic and horrific premise. What if aliens landed on earth as parastites and invaded human bodies in order to turn them into cannibalistic shape-shifting death machines? Like all good manga, PARASYTE is global and local at the same time, and our local hero is the high-school boy, Shin. Unlike most humans invaded by the alien, Shin cuts off his personal alien invasion in his arm with a tourniquet before it reaches his brain. What results is Shin has an alien right hand that wants to kill him and also wants to use him to kill. The resulting parasitic/symbiotic "Odd Couple" relationship is an uncomfortable source of dark humor, but also a vital contrast to some of the vicious scenes of violence, often raw and surprising in the context of Shin's typical teenager girl/bully/school/parent issues.

7) GYO by Junji Ito

The third and final Ito entry on this list, GYO unearths the unimaginable and does the incredible. Never has a completely visual medium like manga invaded the olfactory system in the way that GYO does. In a word, GYO stinks. That's not a testament to its quality, but a hint to the unique angle. GYO presents a world where undead fish move from the ocean to attack the mainland in an unexplainable and freakish attack. Hardly a frame is not invaded by the stink lines of the rotting fish, and as this manga goes from local to global the stench makes invades the senses in an insipid way. GYO shoots and scores in the first volume, but the second volume cleans up the mess. However, the saving factor of the weaker Volume 2 is the attached short tale "The Enigma of Amigara Fault". This 35-page tale more than makes up for GYO's second volume faults, and is one of the best manga horror short stories ever.

8) THE DRIFTING CLASSROOM by Kazuo Umezu

This long series really takes the reader to some of the lowest places Umezu visits, and with his unmatchable style that is much more than a flash in a pan over these 11 horrifying volumes. A suburban elementary school is at the center of an earthquake at the start of a typical school day, but if it was a normal earthquake, this would not be a Kazuo Umezu adventure. In fact, the entire school is transported to a mysterious desert, leaving both those left behind and the transported students and faculty in complete confusion. Umezu is the king of putting kids in peril, and the dangers of the desert become secondary to the dangers inside the school.

9) KUROSAGI CORPSE DELIVERY SERVICE by Eiji Otsuka and artwork by Housui Yamazaki

KUROSAGI is the perfect example of a manga that finds its legs (and other body parts) and grows and expands into more clever and more gruesome corners as it goes along. The story is about a group of Buddhist college students with differing abilities that together make a perfect team for corpse recovery and delivery. That sounds limited in scope, but the originality of the stories is coupled with Otuska's ability to keep one foot planted (or buried) firmly in reality. In the great Japanese tradition, the story can go from light to horrifying at the turn of the page, and that's why I included it on this list.

10) CAT EYED BOY by Kazuo Umezu

CAT EYED BOY is like a lot of Umezu's work in that it is both classic and timeless. Viz did a very nice putting this out in two giant volumes earlier this year. The title character lives in the attics of houses stealing snacks and observing the disturbing antics of their residents. The Cat Eyed Boy starts as the storyteller letting us in on the secrets he sees at night behind closed doors, but it is when our storyteller is pulled into the episodic tales that it is most unsettling for the reader.

11) MAIL by Housui Yamazaki

The short series MAIL is a collection of tales starring a private detective named Akiba. Only Akiba can exorcise ghosts from the locations they have attached themselves to. The real stars of the show are the ghosts and their stories, and each episode is like a mini-horror movie based on classic Japanese scares and urban legends.

12) OCTOPUS GIRL by Toru Yamazaki

Some horror is deep and psychological and some is just ick. Yamazaki's splats face first in the latter catagory and you might want to put on rubber gloves before picking up this title. Imagine Bratz soaked in blood and brine, and you start to get the idea. Icky, sticky and full of twisted characters, OCTOPUS GIRL will make you go "eww" at every turn of the page.

13) TOKYO ZOMBIE by Yusaku Hanakuma

This isn't a traditional horror title, but nothing about TOKYO ZOMBIE is traditional, so I think it fits here nicely. Partially a social statement on society and the environment and partially a kick-ass zombie slug fest, TOKYO ZOMBIE is both funny and repulsive, sometimes in the same frame.

Horrible mentions: If you are looking for more, also check out Gantz, Monster, Alive, One Missed Call, Reiko the Zombie Shop, Presents and Lullabies from Hell

Talking Tokyo Zombie

Co-editor and translator Ryan Sands and co-editor Colin Turner were kind enough to recently take the time to answer a few questions about Tokyo Zombie. An abrigded version of this interview appears in this month's The Yuuyake Shimbun.

How did Last Gasp discover Tokyo Zombie?

Colin Turner: I had read the first few installments when it appeared in AX magazine in the late 1990s.When I was last in Tokyo, I saw a copy of the graphic novel version and bought it. I read through it and immediately needed to publish it in English.

In simple terms, what was the process like in obtaining the license? Easier, harder than usual? What did the Seirinkogeisha think about this becoming an international title? Did they have any special needs or requirements?

CT: It wasn't difficult to obtain the license. I have known the good folks at Sei

rinkogeisha for almost a decade and have imported their books for many years, which probably helped.  We made a good offer, and Seirinkogeisha accepted after a bit of negotiation. I think they may have been a bit surprised we chose this title over others, but not too surprised. There weren't any special needs. We couldn't get the rights for the original cover image, so we had to make our own. I think our cover is great too. The artist, Hanakuma-san, designed a great logo for us for this project.  It's nice to have that kind of support from the artist.

Were other publishers going after Tokyo Zombie?
CT: I don't know. If they were, they were moving too slow for our licensing jiu-jitsu.

TZ is a clearly an adult title, which fits with Last Gasp's catalog, but was there anything that made you doubt whether or not it was a good idea? (i.e. the heta-uma art-style or penis chomp)?
CT:Yeah, I pretty much doubted it would be a good idea from the start. The art is a bit different from some heta-uma style art.  I usually don't like heta-uma style. But Hanakuma-san's artwork has an intangible comedy to it.  Artwork that makes me laugh by itself is my favorite kind of art. I think anyone with marketing sense would have realized this is a terrible idea.  But I was compelled.  I think I would have started building zombies out of mashed potatoes or something.

So, aside from that, the problem was in the adult content. It is an adult title, but not smut. Unfortunately this country has a dumb way of looking at nudity and we have to classify this as "adults only" even though it's not for the same people who buy Bondage Fairies or A-G Super Erotic Anthology.  

Were there any unique issues or hurdles that you experienced on the way, from discovery to final print?
CT: Not really.  The whole project worked out really well.  Everyone involved was on top of things and great to work with: the licensor, the translator, the designer, the author. Smooth.

How would you describe TZ to a manga fan who had never heard of it?
CT: This manga is great, but it is not at all close to your typical manga. I would classify it as more akin to an independent graphic novel. Yes, the artwork is crude, but it is supposed to be crude.  It's funny, so relax and let go a little bit and enjoy it. I'd probably show them a picture of the little dog to make them laugh.  Or a zombie's head getting kicked off.

Ryan Sands: What kind of manga fan hasn't heard of Tokyo Zombie?

Tokyo Zombie is a short but dense tale of class warfare and friendship, told via wrestlemania theatrics, undead hordes and lovingly-detailed depictions of both jiu-jitsu moves and pig stampedes. It's like nothing else you'll see on the manga shelf, and I mean that as the highest compliment.

From what I have read, it seems like Tokyo Zombie had gotten a very positive reaction from critics. Would you agree?  Will we see more Yusaku Hanakuma titles in the future? 

CT: It has gotten positive reviews all around from critics.  On a few message boards I've seen comments from people who don't "get it" and think it is just poorly drawn. That's okay, I'll give them a second chance.  But, overall, the reaction has been incredible.  It's nice to see I'm not alone. We're looking at Hanakuma-san's other works. They are less narrative and might be more difficult to translate, both literally, and for an English-speaking audience. But we're definitely thinking about it.

RS: Hanakuma has a lot of fans in the cartooning world, including Johnny Ryan and Dash Shaw. While we're waiting on the next Last Gasp Hanakuma manga (hopefully!), it seems like a no-brainer to include a short story of his in any collection of badass contemporary cartooning.

Last Gasp has been expanding into the manga world. Can we expect to see more modern, non-mainstream manga coming from you?
CT: Yes, we've been publishing manga for a number of years, and steadily increasing our output. We'd like to continue releasing a few titles each year. We want to publish all kinds of Japanese comics -- everything from very serious, literary comics, to fluffy fun books, to dark and depraved tales. 

As a comic and manga fan, what do you enjoy reading in your spare time?
CT: I really like sci-fi manga with robots and cyborgs and mecha.  I also love the work of Dan Clowes. I mean, I could run down a whole list of my favorites, but that would be about 1000 words. The most recent books I've enjoyed were some of Jiro Taniguchi's works, some of Guy Delisle's works.  And I've just been re-reading some of the Tintin stories and Akira.  It's fun to go back to the classics.

How did you learn Japanese well enough to become a translator?

RS: My first exposure to Japanese was as a high school exchange student for a three-week trip. I fell for the language and started studying Japanese a local college when I was in high school, and ended up taking another four years  of itand majoring in Ja

panese at Stanford. I was most on top of my game after living in Kyoto & Osaka for 6 months back in 2003, and it's definitely been a challenge to hold on to those skills. It's still a hard slog for me every time, but I love the challenges on both ends of the process--- first at getting a deep comprehension of

 what you're reading, and then later as a writer/editor in English, trying to get a fart joke just right.

Besides Tokyo Zombie, where else can we see your translation work?

RS:The first translation I ever did was a final project for a graduate seminar on Japanese translation--  I translated Edogawa Rampo's 1925 short story, "The Death of a Sleepwalker". My translation is embarrassingly bad, but undertaking and completing it was a good exercise. 

A few years back, I did some translations of gag strips by Yoshida Sensha and Koji Aiahra, as a lark and mostly for my own practice,. With my best friend Evan Hayden (who did the lettering and book production for Tokyo Zombie) we also did a few fan translations of short, likely unlicensable comics by Suehiro Maruo that received a good reception online. We stopped those after a while, but the strips did serve as great practice and hopefully turned some English-speaking folks on to cartoonists they'd never hear about otherwise. 

[Be sure to check out Ryan and Evan's blog at Same Hat! Same Hat!]

How did you get attached to Last Gasp and the Tokyo Zombie project?

RS: I got to know Colin and the Last Gasp folks over the course of a year, as we ran into each other and commiserated on the floor of publishing trade shows (which are utterly exhausting and soul-sucking, by the way). I'd been a fan of Last Gasp's books for a really long time and had heard through the grapevine that they were interested in publishing more manga in the near future. Colin and I shared a friendship with Anne from Vertical and a love of sick and twisted horror manga, so we became fast friends. It was happenstance that Colin had recently acquired the rights to Tokyo Zombie and Evan and I were looking for an indie manga project to work on. Perfect.

Tokyo Zombie is a violent and adult manga. It is also a black comedy and has some social commentary. How did this influence the way you approached this as a translation?

RS: Tokyo Zombie is at its heart a buddy comedy, albeit with ample bits of severed limbs and bare boobs thrown in there. It was actually quite freeing to know early on that (despite the book being more like gag manga than Gantz), Tokyo Zombie would have to be marketed as ADULTS ONLY in the U.S. because of a few specific scenes. 

Those few bits of sex and nudity made the book 18+, but that gave me the freedom to make jokes in the book as funny as they should be, and not worry about swearing or dumbing things down. People sometimes say that Japanese doesn't really  have swear words, but for Hanakuma's characters the appropriate response to a zombie biting your dick off is really "HOLY FUCKING SHIT!" and not simply "OH GOODNESS!". It was fun to be able to take the text and jokes all the way there.

What were the most difficult hurdles in approaching a title like Tokyo Zombie?

RS: Yusaku Hanakuma is a really savvy writer, and his art and text serve each other so well to effortlessly tell this ridiculous and strange tale; The act of translating the concepts and details of the story for English-audiences was fairly easy. The two hard parts were getting the jiu-jitsu terms right and nailing down certain sounds effects. I'd be sitting at my desk working and be constantly peppering my GF with questions like, "What's the sound of a severed head getting skewered by a tree branch? It's sorta like a wet THOCK sounds, right?" 

How long did the translation take?

RS: I worked on the translation during evenings and weekends for about three to four months. That said, after finishing each chapter (and again many times during the final stretch with the book), I'd put my editor hat on just tear my translation and writing to pieces. There were lots and lots of revisions along the way. All-in-all, Evan and I worked on the project for about six months.

What do you think when you hold the final product in your hands?

RS: It's fucking awesome! I'm so pleased that English-readers can now get a piece of the Hanakuma action, and the price is right. That said, I've literally read the goddamn book dozens and dozens and dozens of times, so now that it's out I'm already itching to move on to another project.

Any future projects you can talk about yet?

RS: Nothing I can talk about yet. Colin and I share short list of manga creators and specific titles that we believe must someday see the light of day in English, for the sake of humanity and all that is good in the world. 

In all seriousness, it was absolutely lovely working with every single person on Tokyo Zombie, and I'd jump at the chance to do another book for Last Gasp. I also have a bunch of weird ideas for short projects and creators I want to push, in the rare case that MOME or VICE or maybe the New York Times Magazine's Funny Pages want to feature weirdo, grotesque indie manga.

As a comic and manga fan, what do you enjoy reading in your spare time?

RS: I try my damnedest to read a little of everything, but rely heavily on my writer GF for fiction recommendations. If we're limiting it to comics, my bread and butter will always be horror and indie manga. On my recent trip to Japan I bought up about $200 worth of every new Seirinkogeisha and EnterBrain I could get my hands on--- I'm still working through that stack! Cool books on my table in front of me right now are: One More Cup of Coffee by Naoto Yamakawa, Justice Corps by Yuka Goto and A Life by Fukumitsu Shigeyuki. All are awesome in their own ways.

I try to stay knee-deep in contemporary cartoonists working right now. On the indie comics front, I'm dying to read the first UNLOVABLE collection by Esther Pearl Watson and anxious to see the next volume of Kazimir Strzepek's The Mourning Star. If I had to bet though, I think the best new comic of the year will be the first issue of Hellen Jo's debut book from Sparkplug, Jin & Jam #1. 

Also, oh yeah! Soon, PictureBox will be releasing the first big book of Takashi Nemoto in English, followed by Travel by Yokoyama and, from what I heard, a possible Yoshikazu Ebisu book next year  With those, and other books coming in 2009 from Last Gasp, Fantagraphics and D&Q, (and muthafuckin' PLUTO & 20TH CENTURY BOYS coming out from Viz), it's a really exciting time to be a manga fan.

(Photographs provided by R.S. and used with permission.)

The Perils of Translation: Part 2

This is a series I started to discuss the difficulties translators run into when bringing Japanese titles to English. Last time I talked about some non-translatable hints as to who was speaking, changing perspectives and sibling terminology as some pot holes to honest but smooth translations. Today, in part two of this ongoing series I have a few more points translators, would-be translators, or serious readers of translated works might find interesting.

4) Tense and Fakeys.

One of the first things I noticed when I started my first novel

 translation, The Great Adventures of the Dirty Pair, was how the tense of every sentence was almost random for an English speaker. The editor and I discussed this and agreed that a first-person passive past tense matched best with English readers. If we would have kept the switches between the obscure present/future tense and past tense it would have thrown the readers off like crazy. I have found that this style is not uncommon in Japanese novels, but simply doesn't work in English. Here's an example of how it might go in Blood+ (another series with the same issue).

Saya swung her katana at the burly beast.

She slices its head open exposing its brains.

But, no, the Chiropteran will block her sword with its muscular right arm.

Saya bounded backwards to prepare for her next attack.

This is wonky in English and this "no" isn't uncommon. The reader thinks something happens, but then is told "no" the first person perspective was incorrect, and a different thing happened. This isn't strange in the original Japanese, but it is strange in English.

5) Singular or Plural?

One of the first hurdles for new Japanese learners is grasping the concept there is no plural in Japanese. I won't try and explain counters and plurality for the non-initiated here, but just know that any noun in any sentence could be singular or could be plural. For normal conversation, context will answer that question, and when knowing the number of things being talked about is needed (as it is often) there is a clear way to do it, though the "counter system" in Japanese goes against English logic. 

What gets tricky in translation is that sometimes authors use this ambiguity to disguise something temporarily from the reader. Unfortunately, English doesn't have this plurality ambiguity, so sometimes it must be revealed there are several attackers before the Japanese original wants that to be clear. It's interesting to note that a term like "the enemy" is helpful in these cases, as "the enemy" could be one, or several opponents. 

6) Afterwords.

This will be interesting to almost no one, but since I just finished the Afterword and Commentary for the Blood+ novelizations, it is fresh in my head.  I will talk about run-on sentences in more detail in Part 3, but for some reason authors and directors throw the rules of grammar out the window when the shoot from the hip in afterwords and commentaries. I do not yet know if the ones I did for Blood+ will make it to print. (The ones I did for Dirty Pair didn't, and for good reason. They weren't directed at an English-speaking audience, and would have been more confusing than not.) That's for my editor and Japanese licensor to decide, and I will let you know what happens. 

The frustrating part of translating afterwords is 1) you don't know if they will be published and 2) it's the hardest part of the entire translation and 3) it can make a sweet end of a translation bittersweet. There was one sentence in six pages by the original writer in the afterwords in Blood+ Volume 4 that was four lines long. At about 45 characters a line in Japanese, this is as long as a flight to Japan. I ended up breaking it up into four individual sentences. It seems this is forgivable in Japan, but hard to sell in English.

This commentary reveals some fascinating secrets, but is also written like a mental train of conscience, so we will see if it makes it into the English release. Personally I am on the fence.

I am just getting started, and have more "Perils of Translation" to come. Please stay tuned as I will get to dealing with subtle racism and sexism, repetition of terms, and self-identification.

Ultraman Origami

This came in the mail from a friend in Japan. If you are an Ultraman fan or like challenging origami, or both, this is a fun little set. I include Red King and Zetton with instructions for you try your nimble fingers at. Bewarned...these are no cakewalk monster origami.

Click to expand to printable sizes

Afro Samurai Volume 1

by Takashi Okazaki

Many are familiar with Afro Samurai in its anime form as it appeared on Spike TV starting last year. In anticipation of the video game and "Afro Samurai: Resurrection" releases in early 2009 we have the first volume of the Afro Samurai manga to tide fans over. But to be honest, this discounts the stand-alone satisfaction this first volume that only-manga readers will get.

Personally, I have never seen "Afro Samurai" in anime form, so my read of the manga is my first introduction to the story. Initially I thought the premise, although original, was a little contrived, but I am happy to report this manga delivers, though maybe more in style than depth. Although American fans got the anime version first, it is easy to see why Takahashi Okazaki's original manga was picked up for animation. The story reads like a movie storyboard, carried by Okazaki's ambitious and original artwork.

Afro Samurai is a story of power and revenge. This is a modern, or futuristic vision of Japan that is still living in the feudalistic days of the samurai. Katana meet machine guns, rocket launchers and woofer-packing danjiri tanks. This is not "Road Warrior", though, and like something out of a Seijun Suzuki or Guy Ritchie movie, these baddies have a code. Warriors are ranked, and only Number Two can challenge the envied title of Number One, marked by the appropriate headband. It will be no surprise to hear that Afro Samurai's father held that Number One headband until he was murdered in front of his then very young son. As the story begins, the Afro Samurai wears the Number Two headband, and as his mission to find Number One takes him across Japan, and he is challenged by those that want that powerful Number Two status in order to go after Number One themselves.

This first volume contains five chapters that basically introduce Number Two, as he is called, and the scores and scores and scores of assassins and warlords that want not only Number Two's head, but more importantly his headband. The body count in this manga is ginormous and the simple story is a solid but not always important factor in Okazaki's expose of Number Two's very worthy ranking on the samurai charts.

There are several things I liked about this new series in English that inspired the anime. The story is simple and Okazaki takes advantage of the manga genre to show off his rich and brilliant style. I also enjoyed the odd timeless nature of the story. A traditional festival has a DJ mixing records and although samurai swords are the weapon of choice, cell phones and Gatling guns are no stranger to this reality.

Despite having Samuel L. Jackson voice the anime, Number Two almost never speaks in the manga, like the true Spaghetti Western heroes and the samurai movies that helped inspire them. Afro Samurai lets his blade do the talking, and it is as busy as the hosts of "The View".

Race is not a factor in this tale, rank is. Afro Samurai presents a very visual, vibrant and violent approach to its story telling. As I mentioned earlier, this reads like a storyboard to an incredibly badass samurai movie. Okazaki's artwork is cool and infective, but there are more than a couple frames where the intensity of the action gets the best him, and it is hard to see what it going on. Overall, however, it is Okazaki's rich and darkly toned style and unique universe which makes Afro Samurai a more than worthy read...if "read" is the right word...maybe "experience" that makes this reader looking forward to cracking Volume 2.

October issue of The Yuuyake Shimbun is on stands

October's The Yuuyake Shimbun came out today, and it includes a cover story on Kumoricon, an interview with the editors and translator of Tokyo Zombie and my annual J-Horror Halloween edition of Mecha Mecha Media. 

I will post a longer version of the Tokyo Zombie interview next week. 

Stay tuned...

Translucent News Correction

In July I reported on a post from the Dark Horse Boards where editor Philip Simon assured fans that Shaman Warrior, Banya, and Translucent (titles that had been on hiatus) would indeed be back in 2009, and that some translator changes had taken place.

I was very happy to learn this week that Heidi Plechl, the very capable translator of Translucent, is still on the project and that I had read too much into Simon's post.

Heidi does as natural a translation as you are going to read on Translucent, and I was horrified to hear she had read my post and thought she had been cut from the project.

My apologies, Heidi!

If you haven't checked out this title, you should. It is shoujo that can truly be enjoyed by girls and boys, women and men.

The Perils of Translation: Part 1

Since starting the translations of the novelizations of Blood+ into English I have kept of running list of tricky translation points that may be of interest to up-and-coming speakers and readers of Japanese as well as those interested in translation of Japanese media. (Or just Blood+ fans.)

This will be a periodic posting and I have about 20 points already, but will start with three perilous translation points for today.

1) Non-translatable hints as to who is speaking: Pronouns.

This month I will finish the fourth volume of the Blood+ anime novelizations. Older brother, Kai, always refers to himself as おれ ore in the first person. Riku uses ぼく boku. Lulu says あたい atai and Mao says あたし atashi. These are all different personal pronouns for the English "I" or "me" (and aren't even a complete list). In Japanese light novels it isn't uncommon to have streams of dialogue where there are no ", said Saya." or ", said Hagi" helpers. Sometimes it can read a little like a script. For the Japanese reader, these unique indicators (generally decided by gender and age) reveal who is speaking, but we don't have that distinction in English. 

After discussions with the editor and proofreader, we decided to add the ", said XXX" when it wasn't clear who was speaking, as the Japanese hint didn't translate into English.

2) Changing perspectives

The author of a novelization like Blood+, based on an anime, tries to do what he can to take advantage of the media that prose fiction allows. In this case author Ryo Ikehata constantly shifts the first-person perspective of the story. When watching the anime, the viewer always has an omnipresent view. However, in the novels the reader reads from the perspective of one character in each scene. I think this makes for a dynamic read, as we can get in the heads of Saya, Kai, Van, David, etc. but it is also a "unique challenge" for the translator... a nice way of saying "a pain in the butt". 

I have seen this in other Japanese novels. Each perspective drifts between personal and omnipresent (as sometimes situations are described even though the character has his or her eyes closed). 

In Blood+ the Frenchman, Van, uses more flowery language and multi-syllable words, where the teenage boy, Kai, is more rough and direct. Translating that into a coherent and smooth English has been fun challenge. 

3) Big brother - Little sister

This last one isn't too complicated. There is no direct word for "brother" or for "sister" in Japanese. 

There are four words:

兄 ani (oniisan) older brother

姉 ane (oneesan) older sister

弟 otouto younger brother

妹 imouto younger sister

So any time you see simply "brother" or "sister" written in an novel or manga translated from Japanese, you can know that the translator dropped the "older" or "younger" (big or little) distinction. Finding that balance is tricky when translating into English. One reason is the distinction of age is much more revered in Japan than it is in the Western world. Even twins in are distinguished by who was born first, even if by mere seconds. 

Kai, Saya, and Riku are siblings (of a sort) in that order, but it felt funny to constantly write "Hey big brother," or "She's my younger sister". When the age distinction didn't make a difference in what a character was trying to say I usually dropped it. If they were all left in, it would probably have been distracting for the reader.