As many people have already covered, including Brainster (and he's got links to several of the others), Marvel has finally gone and done it. They've killed off Captain America.
I'll admit from the start that I wasn't much of a comics junkie as a kid. Not from any dislike of the medium mind you. It was more of a matter of what was around to read, which was generally more along the lines of Tolkien and Lewis. Still, a friend of mine was, so I eventually got to go through significant portions of his collection.
It's a strange thing, to be at a point in your life where you're just forming your political opinions. It becomes exceptionally clear when people are disagreeing with those views, and what I was seeing in comics certainly counted. Now, it wasn't that I hadn't heard ideas like those voiced before, but I'd always considered fiction, with pictures or without, to be a realm unto itself, and the sanctity that I'd ascribed to it was being violated to an impressive degree.
Simply put, I don't get it. I'm not about to claim that America is perfect, but we've still got the best thing going in the world by such a long shot that it's not really arguable. I can put myself into a mindset where the problems that people like many comic writers exist, but I can't see how they get there from here. The view that this country is bad, evil, and the scum of the earth is so antithetical to reality that the disconnect can only be bridged by a suspension of disbelief more rigid than the one required for reading Crossroad.
Now, I haven't given up on comics wholly, but it's a near thing. Most of the particularly egregious examples that I can recall, and it's tough, since I have read much outside of 100 Bullets and Y: The Last Man in about three years now, are coming out of Marvel's comics lines.
Meanwhile, I've found my own alternative. While Brainster has mentioned that he's gone back to the golden and silver ages of comics (when heroes were heroes, villains were villains, and heroes thumped villains because it was the right thing to do, darn it), I've gone across the Pacific for my fix. Personally, I'm pleased with the results, though your mileage may vary. To me, it's going back to the day when a story was a story, rather than old favorite characters slapped on top of a political diatribe.
There may be something to be said here for the fact that characters in manga aren't forever, like they are in American comics. As I see it, there are only so many times the X-Men can fight off Magneto before a change of pace is needed. Rather than having a distinct starting point, a defined story, and a distinct end, the arcs simply blend and continue. And while there is something nice about having characters with a long history, having that long, involved history makes getting into some characters and stories more difficult. (Hence a lot of the re-launches of characters in the past few years.) So, instead of getting new characters, new villains, and new storylines, we get old characters, old villains, and old storylines, with a couple scoops of the political cause du jour on top to make it look different.
Well, if it sells, it sells, I suppose. Meanwhile, I'll just stick to stories for their own sake, and get my politics from the news sites.
P.S. - In the interest of fairness, there are questions about the presence of anti-Americanism in manga and anime. The best work I've read on the topic is here, at Hontou ni Sou Omou.
Showing posts with label comics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label comics. Show all posts
2007/02/04
Geoff Reviews - Spiral ~Suiri no Kizuna~ v.1
Why isn't this in with D.Gray-man and 100 Bullets? Because I hadn't finished the volume when I wrote that post. And the tildes in the title? That's how it's written on the author information and publisher information page.
Title: Spiral ~Suiri no Kizuna~ (volume 1)
Media: Manga (tankouban)
Text: Japanese
Story: Shirodaira Kyo
Art: Mizuno Eita
Publisher: Gangan Comics (a Square/Enix publication)
Overall: Honestly, I'd forgotten just how much I liked this series, both in manga and anime form. The subtitle of the series, "Suiri no Kizuna", translates as "The Bonds of Reasoning". (Inference is another translation of "suiri", though not used nearly as often in translating the subtitle. Interestingly, though not surprisingly, "suiri" also refers to the mystery or detective story genre.) This is easily my favorite meitantei (detective) story, though Death Note is a very solid second. In the end, though, Spiral has Hiyono-chan, who is quite possibly one of the most entertaining characters in manga. Spiral is right up there on the must-read list.
For those for whom a Japanese text is a mystery in and of itself, there is an anime version of Spiral released by FUNimation. Unfortunately, the translation isn't of the highest quality (or I'm just picky, having done my own translating for the manga), though serviceable, and the anime only covers the first six or so volumes of the manga. The anime does, however, have an incredibly appropriate soundtrack, which serves to highlight every important moment without getting in the way of the show. The other misfortune is that Tokyopop, the American company which has the rights to the Spiral manga, has been squatting on them, unmoving, since 2005.
The mystery begins two years before the story truly starts, in a short prologue in which Narumi Ayumu receives a cryptic phone call from his older brother, Narumi Kiyotaka: "I'm going to look into the mystery of the Blade Children. Please tell Madoka." Two years later, Ayumu wakes up from a dream fitting this description, late for his afternoon classes, only to end up fingered for a murder he did not commit.
Chapters one through three center on the mystery of how a girl could have been killed from a fall if no one was present to push her, and once the killer was revealed, who killed the killer, and why. The arc closes with the knowledge that the Blade Children mystery is somehow tied in to the first killing. Meanwhile, chapters four and five begin a locked room mystery quite as unfathomable as the one depicted in Sir A.C. Doyle's "The Sign of Four".
The characters make the series, with even the best of them having their flaws. Ayumu, for example, is an excellent deductive reasoner, but in his own mind, he is forever trapped in the shadow of his brother, Kiyotaka. Beside the brilliant Ayumu, Yuizaki Hiyono is the normal one, both noisy and nosy. Still, though she's neither a natural genius like Ayumu, or possessed of the mystery-shrouded brilliance of the Blade Children, Hiyono holds her own quite capably.
Volume two brings in the first of the important Blade Children, but we'll get to that later.
A few differences to note between volume one of the Spiral manga and the first few episodes of the Spiral anime:
The girl killed in the first volume of the manga actually survived in the anime, and was not done in by fellow students related somehow to the Blade Children, but instead by one of the Hunters (who the manga gets to later). The different outcome is explained by the presence of a delivery truck, which broke the girl's fall early, thus sparing her life.
The Hunter, after he was found out and confronted, was then shot (if I'm recalling correctly... it has been some time since I watched the anime) rather than felled by an arrow, and he didn't die either, but ended up in the hospital where he passed on the information about the plot being related to the Blade Children.
And finally, under the dust jacket, there is a four-panel extra of Ayumu trying to figure out what bothers him about the hand puppets that Hiyono had in chapter two.
Title: Spiral ~Suiri no Kizuna~ (volume 1)
Media: Manga (tankouban)
Text: Japanese
Story: Shirodaira Kyo
Art: Mizuno Eita
Publisher: Gangan Comics (a Square/Enix publication)
Overall: Honestly, I'd forgotten just how much I liked this series, both in manga and anime form. The subtitle of the series, "Suiri no Kizuna", translates as "The Bonds of Reasoning". (Inference is another translation of "suiri", though not used nearly as often in translating the subtitle. Interestingly, though not surprisingly, "suiri" also refers to the mystery or detective story genre.) This is easily my favorite meitantei (detective) story, though Death Note is a very solid second. In the end, though, Spiral has Hiyono-chan, who is quite possibly one of the most entertaining characters in manga. Spiral is right up there on the must-read list.
For those for whom a Japanese text is a mystery in and of itself, there is an anime version of Spiral released by FUNimation. Unfortunately, the translation isn't of the highest quality (or I'm just picky, having done my own translating for the manga), though serviceable, and the anime only covers the first six or so volumes of the manga. The anime does, however, have an incredibly appropriate soundtrack, which serves to highlight every important moment without getting in the way of the show. The other misfortune is that Tokyopop, the American company which has the rights to the Spiral manga, has been squatting on them, unmoving, since 2005.
The mystery begins two years before the story truly starts, in a short prologue in which Narumi Ayumu receives a cryptic phone call from his older brother, Narumi Kiyotaka: "I'm going to look into the mystery of the Blade Children. Please tell Madoka." Two years later, Ayumu wakes up from a dream fitting this description, late for his afternoon classes, only to end up fingered for a murder he did not commit.
Chapters one through three center on the mystery of how a girl could have been killed from a fall if no one was present to push her, and once the killer was revealed, who killed the killer, and why. The arc closes with the knowledge that the Blade Children mystery is somehow tied in to the first killing. Meanwhile, chapters four and five begin a locked room mystery quite as unfathomable as the one depicted in Sir A.C. Doyle's "The Sign of Four".
The characters make the series, with even the best of them having their flaws. Ayumu, for example, is an excellent deductive reasoner, but in his own mind, he is forever trapped in the shadow of his brother, Kiyotaka. Beside the brilliant Ayumu, Yuizaki Hiyono is the normal one, both noisy and nosy. Still, though she's neither a natural genius like Ayumu, or possessed of the mystery-shrouded brilliance of the Blade Children, Hiyono holds her own quite capably.
Volume two brings in the first of the important Blade Children, but we'll get to that later.
A few differences to note between volume one of the Spiral manga and the first few episodes of the Spiral anime:
The girl killed in the first volume of the manga actually survived in the anime, and was not done in by fellow students related somehow to the Blade Children, but instead by one of the Hunters (who the manga gets to later). The different outcome is explained by the presence of a delivery truck, which broke the girl's fall early, thus sparing her life.
The Hunter, after he was found out and confronted, was then shot (if I'm recalling correctly... it has been some time since I watched the anime) rather than felled by an arrow, and he didn't die either, but ended up in the hospital where he passed on the information about the plot being related to the Blade Children.
And finally, under the dust jacket, there is a four-panel extra of Ayumu trying to figure out what bothers him about the hand puppets that Hiyono had in chapter two.
Geoff Reviews - D.Gray-man v.1-3, 100 Bullets v.9
For a quick review of how I'm going to go about reviewing things, please see the first installment of "Geoff Reviews". I'm going to change up the format slightly, to get the information about what I'm reviewing right up front. There are a couple of them today, so I'll get to it.
Quickly, though, a physical description of manga. Both translated manga released here in the States, or original Japanese tankouban are roughly the size of a paperback book. I only make this distinction in that I may well review things out of Japanese monthly compilations, which take chapters (in order) of current series and publish them in a large volume. There are also weeklies of the same variety. Anyway, the compilations are more the size of a hefty hardback book, though still technically a paperback. Manga tend to weigh in around 200 pages, containing between six and ten chapters, of a single story, while the compilation weeklies and monthlies are closer to 700 pages.
I'd use the term graphic novel, but in the world according to me, that applies to larger-sized compilations of (primarily American) comicbook works. These are roughly the size of an 8.5"x11" one subject notebook. (Note, that isn't an exact dimension gained by either looking it up or physically measuring it, but an eyeballed generalization.)
Title: D.Gray-man (volumes 1-3)
Media: Manga
Text: English (translated from Japanese)
Story: Hoshino Katsura
Art: Hoshino Katsura
Publisher: Viz Media
Overall: A fun adventure. The comparisons to Full Metal Alchemist are probably going to be made over-much, but that's okay for now. Still a fun adventure, even given the shounen action/adventure formula. File it under the heading "If the first volume doesn't catch your interest, don't push yourself." Offsetting that, though, is the fact that it was enjoyable enough that I went through the first two volumes in one sitting, and the third one the next day.
To expound, D.Gray-man is the story of Allen Walker, a boy turned exorcist after realizing the mistake he made in accepting an offer to have his father brought back from the dead. Like I sad, the comparisons to Full Metal Alchemist are probably going to be made over-much, and that's the plot point most people are going to hang such arguments on. (For those who don't know, the short version from FMA: Edward and Alphonse Elric are brothers who set out to become alchemists and find the Philosopher's Stone after a failed alchemic experiment in which they attempted to bring their mother back to life.)
In any event, volume one chronicles Allen's journey to a conclave of exorcists, and the happenings along the way. Primarily, this is the "get to know Allen and the world in general" volume, including the series primary villain (for the moment), the Millennium Earl. It picks up in the second half, when he actually reaches his destination, and quite nearly gets himself killed.
The next two volumes consist mostly of Allen's first two missions for the order of exorcists he has joined. The first of these is a standard race-against-the-clock-type story, where Allen and his partner for the mission have to rush off to keep an important item from falling into enemy hands. Being shounen action, of course, this ends up entailing a large brawl where Allen has to learn more about his abilities as an exorcist to end up the victor. Still, Hoshino-sensei draws a good fight, though, like most such manga, a high-budget anime will make it look more impressive.
Volume three, after a goofy opening chapter centered on the rampage of a robotic construct of the science department rampaging through the exorcist headquarters, settles into a much more human story - a city where time is looped for everyone except the exorcists sent to investigate, and one woman who has the misfortune of knowing that October 9th is currently eternal. This volume also introduced the council of villains working with the Earl, at least one of whom is a human collaborator, rather than a being from the darkness.
§§§§§
Title: 100 Bullets - Strychnine Lives
Media: Graphic Novel
Text: English
Story: Brian Azzarello
Art: Eduardo Risso
Publisher: Vertigo Comics
Overall: The continuing story of a loose collection of organized crime families called "The Trust" and their struggle for existence after they lost control of and then tried to wipe out their elite peace-keeping force, the Minutemen. It's tough to say much about this volume, if only because it builds directly on the eight that came before it. Simply, if you've been reading the series to this point, you'll want to get this volume for exactly the same reasons you got the others - characters you can't look away from, and the progression of a story that you want to read the end of. This is definitely not a "for everybody" kind of recommendation, though. If you don't approve of, or can't at least get past, a high level of sex, drugs, violence, and murder in your entertainment choices, 100 Bullets isn't the kind of thing you want to be reading.
It's very easy to lure someone into reading 100 Bullets. Here's the sales pitch that worked on me, and worked for me on everyone I've considered recommending the series to: A man meets you somewhere. Maybe it's on a bus. Maybe you're having lunch in your favorite restaurant. Maybe you're just walking down the street. Wherever you are, this man stops you, and holds up a case. "In this case," he says, "is a gun, one hundred rounds of untraceable ammunition, and irrefutable proof that what I'm about to tell you is true. How you use them is up to you." You've been wronged somewhere, by someone. Maybe you don't even know who it is, or exactly what they did. That man knows, though, and the information in that case proves it. Now what do you do?
That's not all there is to the story, of course, but that's the start of it. Some of the stories, like the primary of volume nine, attach to the main story only in that they occur in the same city at the same time that some of the main characters happen to be there. What they do effectively is to continue building the feeling of the world Azzarello has created. which stands on its sudden violence.
§§§§§
Quickly, though, a physical description of manga. Both translated manga released here in the States, or original Japanese tankouban are roughly the size of a paperback book. I only make this distinction in that I may well review things out of Japanese monthly compilations, which take chapters (in order) of current series and publish them in a large volume. There are also weeklies of the same variety. Anyway, the compilations are more the size of a hefty hardback book, though still technically a paperback. Manga tend to weigh in around 200 pages, containing between six and ten chapters, of a single story, while the compilation weeklies and monthlies are closer to 700 pages.
I'd use the term graphic novel, but in the world according to me, that applies to larger-sized compilations of (primarily American) comicbook works. These are roughly the size of an 8.5"x11" one subject notebook. (Note, that isn't an exact dimension gained by either looking it up or physically measuring it, but an eyeballed generalization.)
Title: D.Gray-man (volumes 1-3)
Media: Manga
Text: English (translated from Japanese)
Story: Hoshino Katsura
Art: Hoshino Katsura
Publisher: Viz Media
Overall: A fun adventure. The comparisons to Full Metal Alchemist are probably going to be made over-much, but that's okay for now. Still a fun adventure, even given the shounen action/adventure formula. File it under the heading "If the first volume doesn't catch your interest, don't push yourself." Offsetting that, though, is the fact that it was enjoyable enough that I went through the first two volumes in one sitting, and the third one the next day.
To expound, D.Gray-man is the story of Allen Walker, a boy turned exorcist after realizing the mistake he made in accepting an offer to have his father brought back from the dead. Like I sad, the comparisons to Full Metal Alchemist are probably going to be made over-much, and that's the plot point most people are going to hang such arguments on. (For those who don't know, the short version from FMA: Edward and Alphonse Elric are brothers who set out to become alchemists and find the Philosopher's Stone after a failed alchemic experiment in which they attempted to bring their mother back to life.)
In any event, volume one chronicles Allen's journey to a conclave of exorcists, and the happenings along the way. Primarily, this is the "get to know Allen and the world in general" volume, including the series primary villain (for the moment), the Millennium Earl. It picks up in the second half, when he actually reaches his destination, and quite nearly gets himself killed.
The next two volumes consist mostly of Allen's first two missions for the order of exorcists he has joined. The first of these is a standard race-against-the-clock-type story, where Allen and his partner for the mission have to rush off to keep an important item from falling into enemy hands. Being shounen action, of course, this ends up entailing a large brawl where Allen has to learn more about his abilities as an exorcist to end up the victor. Still, Hoshino-sensei draws a good fight, though, like most such manga, a high-budget anime will make it look more impressive.
Volume three, after a goofy opening chapter centered on the rampage of a robotic construct of the science department rampaging through the exorcist headquarters, settles into a much more human story - a city where time is looped for everyone except the exorcists sent to investigate, and one woman who has the misfortune of knowing that October 9th is currently eternal. This volume also introduced the council of villains working with the Earl, at least one of whom is a human collaborator, rather than a being from the darkness.
§§§§§
Title: 100 Bullets - Strychnine Lives
Media: Graphic Novel
Text: English
Story: Brian Azzarello
Art: Eduardo Risso
Publisher: Vertigo Comics
Overall: The continuing story of a loose collection of organized crime families called "The Trust" and their struggle for existence after they lost control of and then tried to wipe out their elite peace-keeping force, the Minutemen. It's tough to say much about this volume, if only because it builds directly on the eight that came before it. Simply, if you've been reading the series to this point, you'll want to get this volume for exactly the same reasons you got the others - characters you can't look away from, and the progression of a story that you want to read the end of. This is definitely not a "for everybody" kind of recommendation, though. If you don't approve of, or can't at least get past, a high level of sex, drugs, violence, and murder in your entertainment choices, 100 Bullets isn't the kind of thing you want to be reading.
It's very easy to lure someone into reading 100 Bullets. Here's the sales pitch that worked on me, and worked for me on everyone I've considered recommending the series to: A man meets you somewhere. Maybe it's on a bus. Maybe you're having lunch in your favorite restaurant. Maybe you're just walking down the street. Wherever you are, this man stops you, and holds up a case. "In this case," he says, "is a gun, one hundred rounds of untraceable ammunition, and irrefutable proof that what I'm about to tell you is true. How you use them is up to you." You've been wronged somewhere, by someone. Maybe you don't even know who it is, or exactly what they did. That man knows, though, and the information in that case proves it. Now what do you do?
That's not all there is to the story, of course, but that's the start of it. Some of the stories, like the primary of volume nine, attach to the main story only in that they occur in the same city at the same time that some of the main characters happen to be there. What they do effectively is to continue building the feeling of the world Azzarello has created. which stands on its sudden violence.
§§§§§
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