Summer Round-Up Part Three (Final)

It's hard to believe two whole years have passed since I started introducing Japanese media available in English to The Yuuyake Shimbun readers and in this blog. A lot has happened in the last 24 months in the manga and anime worlds. We have seen the demise of magazines NewTypeUSA and its follow-up, PiQ. We have seen the death of anime giant Geneon and also ADV has taken its lumps. Manga publisher Tokyopop recently cut a good chunk of its staff.

But it's not all, or even mostly bad news. Otaku USA is a much more fan-friendly magazine, and it is growing in readership every issue. Anime is getting more exposure on late-night cable, and there are no less than ten Japanese series that can be seen which are directed at high-school plus age viewers. Like a tree shedding branches, the number of manga titles published every month has been reduced recently, but the quality of titles coming out is going up and up. "Manga Conquers America" splashed the cover of WIRED Magazine late last year, and we have seen the manga shelves grow at Kinokuniya as well as at local libraries. As Dark Horse editor Philip Simon said recently in an interview for The Yuuyake Shimbun, "Not only is it is good time to be a manga fan, it is the BEST time to be one." And I have to agree.

What convinced me more than anything that anime and manga fans really have nothing to fear was spending Labor Day weekend at the 6th annual Kumoricon held in Portland. Thousands of conventions-goers spent three full days (and nights!) cosplaying, reading, watching, gaming, singing, and most importantly, solidifying themselves as a community of American fans of Japanese pop-culture on so many levels. The experience was very vitalizing and inspiring. Please check out my article on Kumoricon in next month’s issue, and my pics here.

Choosing a Pick of the Month was hard for September, but using my complex scientific formula I call “un-put-down-ability” I have to give September to Takehiko “Slam Jump” Inoue’s new series, Real. Last time I introduced the unexpected, and unexpectedly accessible Me and the Devil Blues, a Japanese manga about an actual 1920’s blues guitarist from the American South. So I really shouldn’t have been surprised by a manga about wheelchair-bound basketball players. The truth is, Real is about so much more than basketball. After a motorcycle accident that injures teen punk, Nomiya much less than his almost unknown female passenger, the boy quits school, which also means he must quit the basketball team. Nomiya doesn’t comprehend the meaning of that loss until it is really gone, and the afro-permed gangster-wannabe is a lead character that evokes genuine emotions. His desire to be as good as his N.B.A. heroes is challenged by a wheelchair-bound baller he meets at the hospital gym when visiting his now-mute accident victim. The manga is titled Real for a reason. It pulls the brain one way and the heart another. Seriously, check Real out.

The end of summer means the end of “The Summer of Dororo”. The third volume of Osamu Tezuka’s samurai-age journey of a demon-hunting boy and his master-thief sidekick must finally meet its end. I won’t go into the storyline again, but if there is any question that the three-volume Dororo is a worthy series to invest in, let me dash those doubts right here.

Dark Horse is doing a valiant effort in re-releasing all of Shirow Masamune’s manga in unflipped format, and this is becoming a growing archival-level collection. Shirow’s first publication was Black Magic and, like “Blade Runner”, feels much undated. This is a graphic novel in a very real sense of the word, as it opens up big and wordy (not an approach I love, as regular readers surely know) and the complex story of the Venus-managing supercomputer named “Nemesis” can be a little confusing. (Note to humanity: Don’t name supercomputers things like “Nemesis”.) After meeting military leaders and ESPers, the story boils down to the city tank police (a Shirow specialty) fighting super-powered humanoid robots. This is where the action is intense and makes the long-winded opening completely worth it. Sci-fi manga doesn’t get any better than Shirow Masamune, and this and his other series (Appleseed, Dominion, etc.) belong on every SF fan’s shelf.

Keiji Nakazawa was only seven years old when the atomic bomb was dropped onto his hometown of Hiroshima. Nakazawa survived to write the ten-volume series Barefoot Gen. This series has been called the most important manga ever released in Japan, and has been read and discussed nonstop since its original release in Japan in the 1970s. American publisher Last Gasp has accepted the task of bringing it to English-speaking readers in a re-release with a new English translation and introductions. Manga fans often read books to escape this world, but this is one that should be read to learn about an actual history and reality. In no way does Barefoot Gen feel like a textbook. The first volume feels like a downward spiral as the student, Gen, and his family are persecuted because their father will not support Japan’s war effort and is considered a traitor. Rejected by friends and beaten by neighbors, not accepting Japan’s emperor as the all-knowing deity leads Gen’s family to despair. And that is before the bomb is even dropped…
Six volumes of Barefoot Gen are available now.

Ninkyo-style (or “chivalry film”) yakuza movies were popular in the 1960s, but many consider Hideo Gosha’s “The Wolves” to be the pinnacle of the genre. Set in the late 1920s, this tale of the changing of the guard among rival yakuza families would be difficult for American audiences to understand if it weren’t for the amazingly expressive lead, Tatsuya Nakadai. There are plenty of babes, boozing and blood, but what makes “The Wolves” something fascinating this many years after its original release is Nakadai’s frightfully expressive acting.

The announcement of a new monthly manga anthology is big news, and Yen Plus, released by Yen Press has received a lot of attention in recent weeks. One half is OEL manga and manhwa (read L to R) and the other is Japanese titles (read R to L). In all, nine titles are introduced and at an $8.99 price tag doesn’t seem so bad…but overall I was not moved by the majority of titles, making it a hard value. This is a dissenting opinion among most critics, and I hope I can be persuaded by future issues of Yen Plus.

After September comes October, and a great month for j-horror reviews.

I also received a review copy of Bat-Manga today, and this Chip Kidd title is awesome. Part archival coffee-table book and part kitchy Batman manga, this is a fun book that will appeal to everyone from manga fans to 60s-style gurus. Not only a translation of the Batman manga, we are treated to dozens of full color pages of covers and merchandise. Bat-Manga is on shelves October 28.