no. 2
Eastern Standard Time Publishers Eric Chon Derek Guder
What’s So Cool About Fooly Cooly?
Editors Eric Chon Derek Guder Art Director Eric Chon Graphic Design Eric Chon Derek Guder
Page Page 12 12
Front Cover Art Jeremiah Colonna-Romano Back Cover Art From Noir
Taiyo Matsumoto: Untranslated
Screen Captures Jana Colonna-Romano Derek Guder Contributors Eric Chon Jana Colonna-Romano Jeremiah Colonna-Romano Andrew Cunningham Derek Guder Favorite Puffs Crab Shrimp Seaweed Cheese Corn Buttercup Contributions and Submissions kabael@softhome.net
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Eichiro Oda’s One Piece Adventure!
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Eastern Standard Time is published quarterly. No articles may be reproduced without prior consent. Zombies are for burning. Volume 1, Number 2.
Page 22 This magazine is funded and published by all those who’ve helped make this a reality. All articles are copyright their respect authors and all images and characters are copyright their respective owners. Please don’t sue us, we can’t pay anything as we’re all poor and destitute. If anything in this magazine is similar to any person who is dead, living, partially dead, not really living, or undead...this is pure coincidence and I promise it won’t happen again. Unless it does. ©2002
Hell on Earth
Anime Around the Corner
Guns. Babes. Undead.
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Manga Mania!
What’s good, bad, and ugly Herr Guder breaks it down - what’s good to read, what deserves your money, and what to avoid like 8-year old mayo. Covering what’s out there and what has since come and gone.
Pg.32
Columns and Departments
A close examination of this stylish series to see if this vampire is all Hell on Earth bark and no bite.
What’s coming out in a few weeks? What’s worth catching? Find out here! Pg. 2
Anime on the Horizon
What does the future hold? What lies ahead? This is an all-expense paid trip to get a glimpse of what hot property our companies are trying to get. Pg. 4
AX Licensing Frenzy
Man goes into cage. Cage goes to Anime Expo. Licensing frenzy happens at Anime Expo. “We’re gonna need some bigger otaku!” Pg. 6
Descent into Madess Addicted to DDR? Us to!
For serious addicts and those thinking of becoming serious addicts. Join one man’s descent into a spiral of LEFT, RIGHT, UP, UP. Where does sanity end and madness begin?
Legend of Zu
Tsui Hark’s latest effects extravaganza proves that sometimes, flash can have substance. Pg. 41
Other Reviews Volume 1, Number 2
Bio-Zombie
Pg.37
Zombies and a hottie. Two guys named Invincible Woody and Crazy Bee. All locked in a mall. You do the math. Pg. 44
Reviews!
Submission Info
You know we have ‘em It’s a staple of any entertainment-based magazine, get over it! We’ve got Bio-Zombie and Legend of Zu. Trust me, they’re worth it.
Pg. 41
We want your articles, artwork and comments! Support your fan community and drop us a3 line or, better yet, gives us an opinion to print! p.43
Tsukikage Ran
Tsukikage Ran – Bandai – volume 1 due 9/10 Akitaro Daichi is the man. Might as well give him a medal and certify him as a genius. He’s brought us everything from the crack-induced joys of Jubeichan to the darkly tragic Now and Then, Here and There. Now he shows a deep appreciation for old, classic samurai drama with Kazemakase Tsukikage Ran (being released just as Tsukikage Ran, I do believe). Ran is a wandering female samurai with stunning skill with the blade that is matched only by her appreciation of booze. Going wherever the wind (often a wind carrying the scent of sake) takes her, she of course stumbles into adventure and must, however reluctantly, right the injustices that have been done. She keeps running across the strange Chinese girl Miao-chan, who is a master of the martial art of Nekotekken out wandering the world to find her path in life. Ran’s calm and reserved demeanor balances (or clashes with, depending on how you look at it) Miaochan’s passionate and impetuous nature.
you check it out. I hadn’t expected anything out of it until I saw it and was immediately won over. Sometimes it’s nice to just have a straight-forward and pleasant show to relax to (and this coming from the guy renown for liking only the most twisted and convoluted shows), plus Miao-chan is just too much to pass up. It’s too bad we don’t have more of her, but maybe that’s just me jonesing for a good old fashioned martial arts flick. If Akitaro Daichi has proved that he’s a versatile enough director to nail the samurai flick so well, maybe he’ll give Miao-chan her own series soon? Maybe?
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X TV – Pioneer – volume 1 due 9/24 I hated the X movie. Go ahead and sue me, but I did. It managed to be both hyper-accelerated and boring at the same time, and everyone who knows me was amazed that I didn’t like something where virtually every character dies horribly. It was just so… boring. I don’t really care that it was based on umpteen-million volumes of manga, a movie is a movie and it has to stand on its own two feet if it really wants to be a good one. Requiring me to already know what’s going on just doesn’t fly. And what’s worse is that it’s quite obvious that I would really Simply animated (i.e. they know that their budget is enjoy the ideas of the manga – so it becomes a "This could have best used for fight scenes) with amusing character been so damn good!" kind of righteous indignation instead of designs (very similar in style to those in Jubei-chan), just "Damn, that sucked" disappointment. the show is almost entirely episodic; at least for the first three-quarters I’ve been able to see. Our heroes Then came the X TV series. This was something I had rolled breeze into a new town, find something wrong and my eyes at every time I heard about it, but when I watched then set things straight with some inspirational the first episode (actually episode 00, the OVA prequel), I was 4 speeches and good old fashion butt-kicking. And amazed. Instead of rushed and hastily cobbled together and there’s usually some kind of self-evident morale in it confusing and eventually boring, I was treated to a dark, moody, all somewhere. stylish and completely pretentious (but aware of it) show. The entire OVA prequel was concerned with one thing, and only Sounds pretty simple, and it is. Tsukikage Ran isn’t a one thing: setting up the mood for the TV show. From what I terribly deep, multi-layered or insanely unpredictable understand about the manga, they introduce a new character show, it’s just simple and charming samurai stories with precognition for the sole purpose of being able to provide with a fair amount of comedy and action. It may not cryptic and symbolic scenes of what is to come, and that’s all. sound like a blockbuster, but I strongly recommend
Such single-minded focus is necessary when creating a show concerned almost entirely with style and mood above all else, and it is incredibly rare. I’ve heard that as the series wears on, much of that focus and devotion is lost to typical anime pitfalls, but in what I’ve seen the show was tightly directed and possessed of a pleasantly slow pace (imagine that, X with a slow pace). The show takes time to build mood, develop characters and foreshadow events, and all the while maintaining a rather frank and self-aware sense of humor (much of the dialogue during the first few fights is just priceless). Trying to fully explain the contrast in storytelling style between this TV series and the movie is hard, it’s like trying to explain night to someone who’s only seen the day. The television series is a re-telling of the same events of the movie (as well as some of the ones that lead up to it, or those the movie skipped for time purposes). Our moody hero Kamui returns home after a long absence, but his demeanor has completely changed from the warm boy his friends remember into a cold, aloof and paranoid bastard. Slowly the Dragons of Heaven and Earth gather around him on various sides of the conflict. For those unfamiliar with both the movie and the manga, the X franchise is one of those stories about a tragic, gothic, prophesied Armageddon where the fate of the world is decided by small groups of angst-filled and almost-too-cool-fortheir-own-good good guys and bad guys. And with the excellent animation and atmospheric direction the TV series has exhibited so far, it actually manages to seem to work. I haven’t seen the entire series, so I cannot vouch for the quality of its ending, but it is something that I (very surprisingly) find myself anxiously waiting for.
Earth Girl Arjuna
Arjuna’s style and surprising honesty and candor at times (admitting that even though humans pollute, we’re not all evil creatures or portraying the natural jealousy in romantic relationships) really makes me want to love it, but then it turns all preachy on you at a moment’s notice. The down-to-earth atmosphere and relative realism that marks the rest of the show is almost completely absent from scenes about nature, where it takes you out for a tree-hugging field trip with the daisies. For a while this was a recognizable undercurrent, but still forgivable. Then came the "the bugs only eat the bad parts of the leaves!" scene (where we learn that pesticides are bad because insects and animals only eat the diseased portions of plants, leaving the healthy parts to thrive). In one scene, almost with one line, the entire show was almost ruined for me. How can a writer or director produce something so blatantly wrong and stupid and still keep a straight face? Ugh. If you can swallow the new-agish, tree-hugging hippie-crap baggage that comes with it, however, you’re in for a quality show. Unique style, human characters, a nice and unpredictable plot; you just have to check your sense of environmental realism at the door.
Read or Die! – Mange Entertainment
"The book. Please give it back." Okay, so there’s this super-spy, see, and she loves
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Earth Girl Arjuna – Bandai – volume 1 due 10/08 "One hot summer day, I died." A lot of anime these days has had a bland "sameness" to it. Cute girls, ruff-and-tumble boys, bright colors and fanservice comprise a formula that some shows follow almost religiously. Any show that manages to stand out with unique character designs is something I’m willing to check out, and Earth Girl Arjuna does not look like almost any other anime series out there. With straight lines and muted colors, the show makes quite an impression before it even begins (though I’ve found some people just can’t accept the style and find it ugly – but many people said the same thing about Serial Experiments lain). The show also makes somewhat liberal use of CG as well, though it is used well and integrated well enough.
The story is a familiar one: a female heroine (Arjuna) is given magical power and a responsibility to protect the world from an evil no one else can stop. It’s not quite that simplistic, however. The show begins with Arjuna dying, and she is given this task as a price for a second chance at life. She returns to protect the Earth from ecological devastation (shades of "Captain Planet, he’s our hero! Gonna bring pollution down to zero!" here), but still has to deal with trying to live a normal life. How do you eat a hamburger when you can feel the pain of the cow that it was made from? How do you maintain a relationship with someone who just cannot understand what you are going through, as much as he desperately wants to protect you?
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books. She loves them more than anything else in the world, so much, in fact, that she is able to control paper, making it do anything she wants. Hence her codename: The Paper (it sounds much cooler in Engrish as "Sa Pay-pah"). And she works for the British government, British libraries to be exact. Oh yeah, and she’s got to save the world to. Alright, by this point most of you are probably scratching your heads and wondering "How the hell does stuff like this get made? Some super-spy with the power to control paper working for an English bank out to save the world? Huh?" You’ll probably be saying that right up until the show starts and then you’ll shut up right quick; you’ll be too busy watching in slack-jawed captivation.
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The plot is simple. Someone has been cloning dead geniuses to create an army to steal rare and important books for some unknown purpose. Himiko Readman, a.k.a. The Paper, teams up with Miss Deep (who can phase through solid objects) and an American whose only power seems to be that he’s got lots of guns. Once that basic idea has been established, Read or Die! wastes no time moving on to the action as our heroes have to face one deranged and obscure dead genius after another. Superpowers verse the power of Science! What’s not to love? It’s really a shame that Hollywood’s summer blockbuster popcorn movies aren’t done with this imagination, intelligence or focus. It’s also a shame that this OVA is so hard to properly describe without either spoiling it or simply sitting people down to watch it. Combining breath-taking art and animation (I’ve heard that this was the most expensive OVA series produced to date, but I can’t confirm that) with an outrageous premise, great direction and awesome voice-acting, Read or Die! is easily one of the best shows of the year. Good-natured pulp adventure in the best sense of the world (i.e. high-action, high-drama, but not taking itself too seriously), this is sure to become an instant hit with anime fans who still have some taste. The only problem plaguing my enjoyment of Read or Die! is it’s length; at only 3 episodes, you’re left wanting more – anything more. With any luck, we’ll get just that. Reports are that another series or season or something for the show is now in production.
Noir – ADV Films
"If love can kill people, can hatred save them?" Girls with guns have always been a classic staple of anime. There’s just something about hot chicks running around together killing bad guys that gets the blood pumping and sells shows. Noir is another entry in this subgenre, though with a healthy dose of lesbian "undertones" (good ol’ shoujoai) tossed in for good measure. Kirika is a young schoolgirl who has lost her memory, but not her ability to whoop-ass. What bothers her is that she doesn’t feel any guilt for being an unstoppable murder machine. As she investigates what little evidence of her past that she has, she is brought to Mirielle, an older woman who has operating as an assassin. Mirielle’s past has its secrets as well, and the pair pledge to find the truth together (though Mirielle swears to kill Kirika when they do – don’t ask why, I’m not really sure myself). And so their adventure begins as they begin operating as an assassin team under the name "Noir" while trying to find out their pasts. Being a show about two assassins, Noir is naturally an action anime. Most episodes feature a shoot-out of one sort of another. The battle during the very first episode had a fluid and vicious fight scene that immediately had me on the edge of my seat, anxiously awaiting more of the show. Unfortunately, that first fight set the bar a little high. The rest of the fight scenes are something of a mixed bag. Some are exciting while others might as well be the girls shooting a bunch of paper targets for all the suspense they have. Something that has attracted many people to the show is its music, which is very different from the standard anime fare. Instead of bubblegum j-pop, it’s a strange and beautiful mix of techno/electronica and Mediterranean sounds, reminding me of the Sol Bianca: the Legacy soundtrack, but with a heavy Italian influence instead of a Spanish one. Adding to the dark colors and exotic locales often visited in the anime, it creates a powerful mood that often drives the show all by itself..
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In the end, this may sound like a rather contrived and clichéd. To be honest, it rather is. The show is fraught with forgettable villains of the week, I-saw-it-cominga-mile-away plot "twists" and (most distressingly) a problem with establishing a driving force for the show in the premise and then just forgetting about it for a while. Noir was one of those shows that I really loved when I first started watching it, but became more and more dissatisfied with it as time went on. This is certainly not a show that everyone is going to love, I’ve heard it called "Cowboy Bebop, but without any style or skill." For every good thing about the show that makes you want to love it, there’s an annoying flaw that you just can’t get out of your head. Had Noir been a short OVA series (bigger budget, say 6-7 episodes), it could have been the next Gunsmith Cats. Instead, we have another anime that’s about half great and half bad. If you’re lucky enough to have an anime rental store in your area, check it out. If not, you might want to try to convince one of your friends to get it so you can watch their copies…
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The Full and Complete List of Licenses Announced at AnimeExpo 2002
Eastern Standard Time
(source – pretty much copied directly from www.AnimeonDVD.com’s Grand High Licensing List)
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7 of Seven - Media Blasters Alien 9 - CPM Aoi Yori Aoshi - Pioneer Argent Soma - Bandai Blue Seed 2 OAV - ADV Chobits - Pioneer Cosplay Complex - ADV DNA^2 TV and OVA - CPM Super GALS - ADV Gatekeepers 21 - Pioneer Gravitation TV - TRSI I wish you were here - Zaion - ADV Infinite Ryvius - Bandai Iria - Media Blasters King of Bandits Jing (Bandit King Jing) - ADV Kolaida Star - ADV (still in production with Gonzo) Love Hina Winter Special and Episode 25 Bandai Lupin the Third Second Series (52 TV eps) Pioneer Mahoromatic - Pioneer Master Keaton - Pioneer (Gakuen Senki) Muryou - TRSI Nekojiro-so - CPM Nuku Nuku Dash OVA - ADV Patlabor WXIII (Movie 3) - Pioneer Pretear - ADV Rahxephon - ADV Ronin Warriors/Samurai Troopers OVAs - Bandai Sakura Wars the Movie - Pioneer Sentimental Journey - Media Blasters Seraphim Call - Media Blasters Sorcerer Hunter OAV - ADV Steam Detectives - ADV Steel Angel Kurumi ALL animated confirmed ADV Tiny Snow Fairy Sugar - Pioneer Tales of Eternia - Media Blasters Utena (rest of the TV series) - CPM Yume de Atera TV and OVA - Media Blasters
With more than 30 titles announced at this past AnimeExpo, it’s going to be rather hard for most people to be able to sort through all the news and really know what to keep an eye out for. In a deluge of title announcements like that, what is worth noting and searching for news on? Well, in the interest of keeping my fellow anime fans educated (and furthering my agenda of promoting shows I love), here are the 11 titles that I was excited to hear about. They grouped according to the company that has their license, so you know which company to pester for more news and information. Do keep in mind that I have not been lucky enough to see the entirety of all these shows, though I have seen enough to get me hooked on them. RahXephon – ADV, TV series, 26 episodes It was the stunning tech designs that first attracted me to this post-Evangelion era giant robot show, and it was the unique and stylish character designs that made me stick around long enough to really get sucked into the plot. Perhaps it could summed up as a lighter version of Evangelion without all of the angst and psychological problems, but I think it stands better on its own merits. I have not seen enough to really discern what’s going on behind the scenes and figure out the plot, but I’m enjoying the ride there. Our hero, Ayato, seems to have been raised by aliens, possible to pilot a giant, angelic robot. He is, however, "rescued" by the humanity’s resistance force and begins to learn that everything he had known growing up was a lie constructed by the beings he thought were his parents. References to music or musical symbolism are rampant in the show, as the alien monsters or mecha are strongly reminiscent of opera singers and actually attack through sound. Again, RahXephon owes a great deal to Evangelion but it does not appear to be simply are carbon-copy clone. It has a distinctly different visual style and has an astoundingly high animation budget for a television series and, in both visually and in terms of atmosphere, it is a much brighter show. This looks to be a series, plot-driven mecha show with significantly less emotional baggage than you might expect. Super GALS! – ADV, TV series, 52 episodes This could be called "Child’s Toy – the High School Years," as it’s almost as insane and hyper. Almost. Super GALS! is, however, a spastic light comedy that shares Kodomo no Omocha’s willful and passionate lead character and combination of a rather light tone and cheerful character designs with often remarkably serious and dark subject matter. Indeed, the very first episode is about nearprostitution while later ones tackle things like stalkers or having juvenile criminal records. And throughout all of this the cartoonish and exaggerated character designs make everything feel safe
and simple. It all almost slides right by you unless you think about it for a minute. Plus we’re treated to intermittent lesson in gals "culture" (gals being those stylish girls who have all the appropriate accessories of shows, bags, skirts, cell phones, etc. I’d just say "ko-gals", but I’m pretty sure there may be a fine distinction there).
"Uh-huh, sure," you say, nodding your head. "That sound like a great show. Just brilliant." Just keep your sarcasm in check until you actually get to watch it. It’s not as deep or symbolic as Neon Genesis Evangelion or as hyper as FLCL, but Mahoromatic is probably one of the cutest little shows Gainax has put out (despite all of the fanservice – and there’s plenty of it). Mahoro herself is so adorable and endearing, I don’t understand how anyone can hate the show. Humor + cuteness + a little more than the daily recommended dose of fanservice = a great, simple and entertaining show. When it tries to get more serious and melodramatic (and all lovelove) later on, it’s not as much fun, but the first three quarters or so was a blast. Besides, we actually get a male lead in an anime with both something of a backbone and some sense of perception. It’s amazing. You just have to loosen up a bit and accept the cute and the ecchi as it comes.
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Kotobuki Ran is the undefeated leader of the gals of Shibuya, leading her small gang of close friends to defend the area from not only other gals but anyone who would ruin their little slice of paradise. This often questionable behavior bothers Ran’s family to no end, as they are all cops, every last one of them. She wants nothing more than to live a free, passionate life partying and being with her friends, but her parents have other plans – she has to grow up to be a police woman after all. Let the wacky adventures (complete with wholesome morals packaged with them) ensue. Tiny Snow Fairy Sugar – Pioneer, TV series 26 episodes This has been one of my favorite "never gets With character designs done by Koge Donbo, the enough recognition" shows ever since I managed glorious woman who brought Di Gi Charat unto to stumble across the first episode. The cute, anime fans everywhere, I was expecting some sort hilarious and often spastic style is right up my of hyper-cute, hyper-insane hyper anime. I was alley and I’m the kind of person who actually more than a little disappointed to find out that Tiny enjoys reading translation notes, so the constant Snow Fairy Sugar was just cute; super-condensed, asides about gals’ slang in the show just about almost solid cute. tickled me pink. Add in a bobby and irresistibly catchy j-pop opening and you have a classic on Saga, a cute little girl living in a cute little generic your hands. If you have any taste and like those European town is attending a cute little school "crazy Japanese comedies," take a long look at when the cute little season-fairy-in-training Sugar this show. (she wants to be a snow fairy just like her mum) and her friends invade her life and cause all sorts of Mahoromatic – Pioneer, TV series and OVAs, cute little adventures. That pretty much sums it up 13 episodes right there. At first, I didn’t know if I could take it, but Sure, it’s another show following along in the eventually I guess you just build up a tolerance to maid craze that swept anime recently. Sure, it’s the sugary sweetness (ironically appropriate term in completely pandering with tons of panty shots this case) of the show. After the first few episodes, it and bath scenes and skimpy bathing suits and really seemed to hit a nice level of cute where each ecchi day-dreams. Sure, it’s all that – but it’s still episode was just a "kick back, relax and let the Gainax! And Gainax is gold! I’ve yet to see a smile creep across your face" kind of experience. Gainax production that wasn’t at least good. I can’t help but think that Sugar suffers for its length, Mahoro is a combat android (and a damn cute as there really isn’t much of anything there beyond one) who has less than a year of operational the cuteness. Okay, so there’s obviously some power left, if she disarms herself now and kind of plot involving everyone’s absent or dead goes "civilian." Vespar, the secret government mothers, but that’s so nebulous and melodramatic organization that created her to protect mankind that it really doesn’t hold my interest. Thus, after a from the alien invaders termed SAINT, has few episodes, the show may quickly begin to wear allowed her one wish in an attempt to repay thin whatever tolerance to the hyper-cute some her for all of her selfless service. What does viewers have built up. It might have been better as she decide? To serve the now orphaned son a brief OVA or something similar. Either way, this of Vespar’s former director – because she was is definitely a must-see for anyone who adores the directly responsible for his death (don’t worry, cuter side of anime. that’s not really a spoiler, it’s revealed in the premise of the show). Chobits – Pioneer, TV series, 26 episodes Ah, CLAMP, how we love you; such beautiful, sweeping artwork – with a constant undertow of
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perversion. A lonely college boy from the country moves to the city only to discover a persocon (personal computer/person computer – that is to say, a computer in the shape of a hot, nubile babe, if a bit young) in the trash. Overjoyed that he can finally get his own persocon, since everyone else seems to have one, he vows to take very good care of it. Surprisingly, he actually does so, despite brief, lecherous day-dreams. Of course, this is no ordinary persocon (oh no!), this is a mysterious model that not only seems to move without any OS installed, but has an disturbing amount of apparent free-will and volition for a machine.
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I am very much a fan of CLAMP’s more recent artwork (basically the Clover manga and Cardcaptor Sakura anime style and after). Their strong, simple and elegant forms are almost iconic, making everything so cute and fun. When the ecchi moment creep in they are shocking and exciting (i.e. pretty much what they should be) even when they are really no more than any other anime might do. Much more suggestive than it is explicit, Chobits managed to elicit smiles and giggles from both my wholesome and better-leftunsaid sides. Chobits only major flaw is really how obvious the foreshadowing and symbolism seems to be. It’s almost painfully obvious that this is all a big story about "Why not to fall in love with a machine instead of a person," what with the haunted looks that just about everyone except our oblivious hero seems to sport. Somewhere in their past, everyone seems to have either lost someone they love or a piece of themselves to a persocon. Hell, the show even has a short little children’s book about it all.
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It should also be noted that the equally excellent Chobits manga is being released by Tokyopop, as part of their "100% Authentic Manga" line. Do check it out. Alien 9 – Central Park Media, OVA series, 4 episodes When I see character designs this simple and… well… childish, I’m expecting some sort of bright children’s show about friendship or idealized love. I was not expecting something this dark and brooding, questioning identity, self and being forced to grow up. It was quite a shock. In a world that would only appear in an anime series, Yuri Otani has been picked to fulfill a particularly onerous class duty. Instead of cleaning the blackboard or mopping the floor, she has to unite with a symbiotic creature called a Borg and defend the school from rampaging alien life forms. Very much not up to the task, she spends more time crying and being protected than performing her tasks (her extended weeping if really the only annoying part of the show). Even her Borg almost seems to become scornful of her, and her two fellow classmates who also got chosen seem to synchronize with their Borgs
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almost too well. Before long, Yuri is forced to act instead of react – but is she really ready for that? And, behind all of that, it seems that someone is orchestrating everything that happens. Wonderfully animated with misleadingly simple character designs, Alien 9 is a surprisingly adult anime that is also refreshingly imaginative, standing out from the norm. After seeing each episode, I was waiting with baited breath for the next one, only to be left with something of a mysterious cliffhanger at the end. Thankfully I hear rumors of a second series, and if they’re smart, someone will license the manga it was based on.
DNA2 – Central Park Media, TV series and OVA, 15 episodes
For quite a long time I’d heard that the reason this classic (from the same mind that brought us the adolescent cheesecake romance Video Girl Ai) had never been licensed because the audio masters had been lost. Since it would be impossible to separate the dialogue from the sound effects and music, it would be much more expensive to dub and market in America. No dub is often a kiss of death for shows in English, sadly. The recent announcement that CPM has picked it up, however, has apparently proven that tale incorrect. I suppose that’s a lesson about believing unsubstantiated tales from otaku. So just what is this classic, aside from a romantic comedy of errors fraught with fanservice? Well, sometime in the future the hapless loser "no date" Junta will become the Mega-Playboy and impregnate so many women around the world that he pretty much single-handedly crushes the world beneath the weight of overpopulation. So the future sends an operative into the past to stop him from macking on all the ladies, except they didn’t really bother to send a competent agent. Hilarity ensues. Bittersweet romance and hilarity, that is. This is a very fun show, and a rather silly one at that. Anyone who loved Video Girl Ai should find themselves right at home here, as it is the same trade-mark mix of teenage pubescent angst, romantic tension and lovingly detailed butt-shots.
Trying to explain or even prime readers on this is pretty much impossible. Nekojiru-sou is really an experience as much as anything else. It is filled with a sense of wonder and innocence as the sister and brother cat wander through a symbolic world that feels right even if it doesn’t make much sense, but there is a haunting feeling of cruelty and even brutality throughout the
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Nekojiru-sou – Central Park Media, "movie" it’s only about a half hour long I’ve heard Nekojiru-sou called a Japanese "French art flick," and that could be pretty accurate. There is almost no dialogue in this surreal story of the travels two cat siblings take through the worlds of life, death and everything in between. It’s all just weirdness, straightup, "What the-?" oddity. The kind that I just love so much. The closest comparison I can think of would be Night on the Galactic Railroad, but more hallucinogenic and with a distinctly unique art style. Imagine some feverish drug vision of Hello Kitty, colored in muted tones and composed of squiggly lines.
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entire adventure. That’s probably the best descriptor I can think of for the show: haunting. The combination of innocent and the cruel, the pure and the brutal, the ideal and the real all make for a show that lingers around like a fog, leaving an impression but refusing any contact, denying the comfort of a solid conclusion. That is to say, it’s guaranteed to piss off anyone who can’t take "head scratchers" and make those who like paradoxical brainteasers almost giddily happy. Revolutionary Girl Utena – Central Park Media, the rest of the TV series, episodes 13 through 39 I doubt this needs any kind of introduction. Revolutionary Girl Utena has gathered itself an extraordinarily large following with remarkable speed. So why point this out? Well, for one, to make sure that everyone is aware of it and two, to make it clear how important this is for the series itself.
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Personally, I was not really drawn into Utena until the first recap episode where, stripped of any and all filler and stock footage, the crafting and symbolism of the show become blazingly apparent and it finally managed to "click" with me. I was amazed that it was so well built but disappointed that it had been hidden until then. Later, I got to see the last third of the show. Up until the end I found it fun, if equally exasperating and exhilarating in turn. But the ending of Utena, the way the show draws to a close… I found it almost sublime.
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There are a lot of things I love about the show, but just about as many that drive me insane with frustration (the director is a saucy little bitch who likes to toy with his audience as much as anything else, and I’m sure he knows it). When I finished the anime, however, the ending was so well done that I desperately wanted to completely forget any flaw that Utena may have ever had and hold it up as perfection itself. I can just imagine what a tried-and-true Utena fan is going to be like – and now we get to find out, since CPM officially has the license for the rest of the series (instead of just the first 13 – 1/3 of the show – it already had released). 7 of Seven – Media Blasters, TV series, 13 episodes This is a strange little show, I must admit, and I haven’t seen enough of it to really judge how well it all comes together in the end. I was only able to see the first two episodes before it was announced as licensed, but I’d definitely like to see more. Nana is a young girl who is trying to study and get into a good school while her parents travel abroad (leaving her with her madscientist grandfather). When she disturbs one of his experiments while trying to bake a special Valentine’s cake for the boy she has a deep crush on, suddenly there are seven of her ("nana’ is also the word for
seven, by the way. Those silly Japanese and their love of puns). Wackiness ensues, especially when they all apparently get superpowers or something. So now there are seven versions of the same girl, all of them with slightly different personalities, running around trying to stay out of trouble and attract the romantic attention of one boy. The superheroine schtick must come into play later, as I’ve seen lots of stills of the seven girls in complete heroic regalia, but it hasn’t come up in the anime yet. I’m certainly willing to wait until it does, though. 7 of Seven is cute, simple and definitely a young show, and I definitely have not decided whether I actually like it or not, but it does have some potential. It was certainly a surprising announcement, I must say, and that alone merits some mention here. Iria - Media Blasters, OVA series, 6 episodes This might be another title that many of you wonder why I’m mentioning, since it’s been out on DVD for quite some time now. It’s sitting over there on my DVD shelf, in fact. Apparently US Manga Corps (i.e. Central Park Media) has lost the license to produce Iria in English – to Media Blasters. Rumored to be because of their treatment of the Zeiram live-action films (which are based in the same universe with some of the same characters), they will have a chance to remaster and re-release the entire OVA series and I’m just taking a bit of your time to plug an old favorite of mine. I’m a big Iria fan myself. I just love Iria herself and all of the wild-and-crazy technology scattered about the show, so I’m glad to hear that it’s going to be redone, even if I never noticed much of a problem myself. Aside from the stupid cardboard box packaging, I was happy with the disc, but apparently there were a lot of reports on video problems and similar. Hopefully the new release will fix all that (and provide something extra and sweet for those of us who already have it).
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by Derek Guder To say that FLCL is about growing up is like saying "life is about living." It’s one of those broad, almost self-evident truths that when someone asks you specifically how it is, things become much more complicated. There’s this and that and some other stuff… but how does it all fit together? FLCL has a nasty habit of getting much more confusing and complicated the closer you look at it. Naota’s entire world, the town that "nothing out of the ordinary ever happens" in, is changed by a deranged woman who brains him with a guitar. Suddenly all his relationships get more complicated and giant hand-shaped robots start popping out of his forehead to destroy the world. Seems like a rather outrageous way of just showing a boy becoming a man, but that’s often what anime is about. Naota faces a lot of pressure to grow up (from his parents, his brother’s girlfriend, the bass-wielding Haruko and even himself) and play baseball, play guitar, save the world and maybe even drink sour stuff. He is still as much of a boy as he is a man, however, something that it takes quite a while for much of the cast to recognize. Naota himself is perhaps the last one to fully realize it. But what about all those giant robots and baseball games and guitars of doom? They’re all symbols of Naota’s maturation, and his relationship with everyone around him. If you squint real hard, smack yourself in the head and give up trying to get some concrete sense out of FLCL, everything begins to melt, flow together and just seem so much more natural. I’m not going to presume to completely dissect FLCL here, I have neither the time nor the space. Instead, I simply want to provide some ideas and speculation about what the various elements of the show might mean and fit together. Hopefully this will inspire some of you readers to watch the show with a slightly more critical eye and try to pick out your own significances.
Eastern Standard Time
Giant Hands Destroy Tokyo
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So what’s the deal with the giant hands, anyway? Why are all the Medical Mechanica attack robots built around the basic form the human hand, never mind why do they rip through Naota’s scalp to freedom? Again and again throughout the show, whenever he’s pushed around some monstrous robotic hand reaches out of his forehead to cause havoc and Canti must step in to stop it.
When Are We Going to Actually See this? FLCL has been a long way in coming to America, sadly. Synch-Point was a small companay that popped up with it as one of their debut releases. A variety of mishaps and delays pushed the release date of the disc back almost six months, but on the bright side we are apparently going to receive a director’s commentary track on the disc, which should be amazing to say the least. But that was back in June, and right about when everyone was about to run to the store and buy it, Synch-Point found that they had some sort of error in their masters and had to go back and revise them all, pushing the date back even further. This time we will apparently be getting a big, thick inseart booklet with the DVDs. At least they’re trying to keep us placated. Their present release date is September 13th, and it seems like they should be able to make it (I hope). So keep your fingers crossed that nothing else unforeseen stumbles through and gums up the works again. This is too good a show to be left unseen by American otaku.
So just what are the hands, anyway? They’re just that, hands pushing him this way or that. The desires and demands of everyone around him are given form and substance and forcibly expelled from Naota’s mind into the world around him. Sometimes, his own hands join in the pushing as his urges and desires slip from his control and try to influence him. Whether pressure to be a replacement for his brother or a cocky desire to possess Mamimi, when the pressure becomes too much, they burst from his skull and spill into the world. The fights that follow are, in a sense, the battle going on within Naota’s head itself (or at least it would be if they had stayed in his head). Urges, pressures and desires pushing against his own sense of self, his own ego given form – Canti. Just as the hands are thoughts and emotions brought into physical world, so is Canti. The powerful robot is Naota’s will and his image of what he should be. At first Naota almost entirely sees himself (in Canti) as a replacement for his brother, just as everyone else does. He looks up to Canti much as he looked up to his brother, someone cool to admire and someone powerful to be rescued by.
He carries around his brother’s bat and tries to fill his shoes as best he can, even going so far as to submit to his brother’s old girlfriend, but he’s wracked with guilt about it. Completely aware of falsehood of the charade he puts up, he continues with it because that’s what he’s convinced he is supposed to do as his brother’s standin, and because he really does care for Mamimi. Until he realizes that he is not just a proxy for his brother, however, they both remain leftovers. A Furi-Kuri Relationship
They aren’t talking about the ears or any other kind of food handout Mamimi might receive, no matter how poor she is. They’re talking about each other. Both of them are the leftovers from Naota’s brother. Mamimi is his ex-girlfriend that Naota feels he has to be with because he is supposed to be just like his brother, and Naota himself is the closest thing she can get to his brother; his leftovers, in a sense. That neither of them are really going to be able to get what they really want from this relationship is clear to the both of them, perhaps to Naota most of all.
Volume 1, Number 2
Just what the title has to actually do with the show itself is a tough question, one the cast certainly doesn’t know the answer to. While it’s never actually decided, a number of guesses or similar words are tossed out, especially by Naota’s hyperactive father, whose ideas all seem to revolve around sex. When probing about Naota’s relationship with Mamimi and Haruko, he talks about a "furi-kuri relationship," meaning they’re having sex. A few word-play rounds later and he’s just about frothing on the ground imagining what his son might be doing or already has done. The grandfather, meanwhile, seems intent on Eventually, that changes, however, as Naota learns to look at instructing Haruko on the art of breast tweaking, chanting Canti (and thus himself) not as a surrogate for his brother, but "kuri-kuri" all the while. as who he really is: a boy just trying to grow up. That is when Canti’s actions and behavior begin to shift, becoming much Haruko herself has a slightly different definition for FLCL more active and aggressive instead of simply being reactive when she examines Naota in the hospital under the and defensive. Naota begins to come into his own as a man guise of a helpful nurse. She calls it a skin disease that and directs Canti, no longer being content to simply get eaten children get when they push themselves too hard. Rather up and shot out. suggestive of the problem with growing horns and ears that Naota has developed, the implication is that children who try to hard (to be adults) will develop some sort of Bread Ears skin problem. Sounds to me like acne is universal. I always thought it strange that Mamimi was begging for leftover crusts of bread from Naota’s family until I paid closer attention to the father’s dialogue when he mentioned it to his son. He mentions that she came to get the bread and that he was surprised by it, asking if she was really that poor, or if it was a taboo topic and he shouldn’t talk about it. He makes a play on words there, calling it a "eartaboo" which is a play on words, since that sounds the same as the Japanese word for earlobe; the part of Naota that Mamimi is so intent on nibbling on to keep herself from "overflowing." When Naota catches up with Mamimi on the bridge, she tells him that she likes almost anything more than the leftovers she keeps getting. But when he asks why they don’t just stop this, she just pulls herself closer to him, unable to answer.
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You’ll Look all Grown Up and the Chicks Will Love You Baseball does not have a central position in the show except for in the fourth episode, but it is a strong and constant thread throughout the show, one connecting Naota to his brother as well as many of the expectations everyone else has of him because of his brother. He carries his brother’s old bat around with him almost everywhere, but refuses to play. Even when’s he’s actually in a baseball game, he won’t even swing. To Naota, his brother is the closest thing to an adult he has, since he father often acts more childish than Naota himself. His brother has become the definition of the man that he is supposed to grow up and be, so much so that he seems to think he has to be just like his brother (look at his relationship with Mamimi). Naota doesn’t really want that at all, however, and he carries the bat like a weight, a duty, not a dream.
Eastern Standard Time
The guitars are a little broader and more generic. The guitar as a sex symbol or of just being cool goes back to the very first rock stars. How many boys have gone through high school desperately trying to learn guitar and start a band so they can be rich and famous and get all the chicks? Haruko even says it pretty much flat-out herself when she sets up her guitar "school" for Naota in the fifth episode.“If you can play the guitar, you’ll seem very grown up. The girls will be all over you". The guitars also symbolize the kind of man you are (or, perhaps, could be) when Haruko starts pulling them out of people’s heads as she searches for appropriately powerful weapons. The close association between the guitar and sex becomes even more apparent during the scene in episode four, when Haruko pulls out Naota’s guitar directly from his mind and all of the women back at the headquarters monitoring room suffered the massive nosebleeds that are much commonly a man’s burden in anime.
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A FLCL in Miniature The first time I watched the show, episode three felt like "one of these things is not like the other, one of these things just doesn’t belong."
FLCL? Furi-Kuri? Fooly-Cooly? What’s in a name? Sometimes nothing but a fun story. FLCL’s director, had been flipping through a magazine when he saw "fooly-cooly" in an ad and thought it was really cool. He’d also apparently loved the Japanese habit of making weird abbreviations for things (like calling the band The Brilliant Green "buriguri" or the anime Fruits Basket "furuba") and he’d been looking for a cool title, so… I guess the simple FLCL is one step further. So why is FLCL called FLCL? Because it sounded cool. And why is the American release also being called "Fooly Cooly" instead of the more familiar FuriKuri? Because that’s what it was supposed to have been from the start.
It wasn’t until I had heard the director mention that Minamori didn’t have a central role in later episodes because her story "had been told" and that I rewatched the entire show a few time that I realized what this middle episode was: FLCL in miniature. Minamori, class president and daughter of the mayor, is remarkably similar to Naota. It is obvious that she is desperately trying to act older and more mature than the adults around her. Her father’s "secretary" must say "My, aren’t you grown up!" at least three times during their conversation at the beginning of the episode. Unfortunately, perhaps because she has been surrounded by politicians and the media, she seems convinced that keeping secrets is part of being an adult. From innocuous things like hiding the fact that she wears glasses to more serious lies like rigging the votes for the class play so that she and Naota would be playing the leads together, she keeps face serious and herself hidden. After having her head play host to the episode’s giant robot, she changes. Having been found out, she realizes that she was being just as childish as her parents and the secretary she had so despised. She doesn’t suddenly start revealing everything, but neither does she try to hide it all anymore. Even though the glasses she wears during the play are fake, she sometimes wears real ones in later episodes. Her episode is almost a reflection of the show as a whole, and serves to reinforce the central thrust of the entire anime. Especially in light of her line in episode six that might very well the "point" of FLCL.
"Say what’s in your head." In episode four, during the baseball adventure, Haruko tries to become Naota’s batting coach, telling him "You have to swing the bat before anything will happen." I’m sure your mother has told you the same thing many times over, that if you never try, you simply cannot succeed. Haruko is actually surprised, however, when Naota doesn’t "freeze up in the clutch" during the climax of the episode. He doesn’t succeed on his own, but he does try and things do work out in the end, through Haruko’s intervention. There’s nothing wrong with a little help, however.
FLCL is certainly about puberty and growing up, but in the sense of that’s what happens in the show. The point of the show is slightly different – it’s how to endure the constant process of growing up.
Volume 1, Number 2
In the final episode, Minamori says "He just has to say what’s in his head. I did." Then she jumps over the high bar in gym class, surprising everyone since no one else was able to make it. Naota suffers and worries, wringing his hands with guilt and frustration about Mamimi until he finally can’t take it anymore and just flat out says that he is not a replacement for his brother and to call him by his real name. If you just try, if you just talk about what’s bothering you or rattling around in your head (like Canti and the Medical Mechanica robots in Naota’s head), things will work out in the end. You might not win all the time or get what you want, and you may need help sometimes, but that’s all fine. Everything will be okay in the end if you just relax, talk things out and stop pushing yourself to hide everything and be an "adult."
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by Andrew ‘eirias’ Cunningham
Eastern Standard Time
"Since when the clever copy and easy styling became so appreciated? MATSUMOTO TAIYO has emerged like a penetrating black hole in the stereotyped sandstorm. The brilliance of intense pitch-darkness rather like a negative film of the sun shoots our eyes. Spectrum, calculated by words, of the "World of MATSUMOTO" is focused here." While he's lost me on the mixed metaphor, I understand his pain in seeking for words to actually describe the effect his work can have. My first exposure consisted of a few minutes of puzzled confusion followed by a sudden moment of revelation that raised the hairs on the back of my neck, sent shivers down my spine, and had me spinning through the nearest bookstore for more before I even finished reading volume one.
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While he's been well-known and respected for several years, both in America and Japan, Taiyo Matsumoto has suddenly been cast into the limelight. Two live action films based on his work are making the rounds in theaters this summer, his merchandise line is booming, and his English-speaking audience has been slowly discovering Black & White in numbers large enough to prompt Viz to take a chance and release No. 5. Kudos. So I thought it might just be time for us to take a look at the rest of his work, a mountain of manga that may never be translated into English. It may come as something of a surprise to Western readers that Taiyo Matsumoto normally writes sports manga. While virtually no such manga have been translated into English, I'm sure I'm not alone in my profound lack of interest in ever seeing such a thing come to pass. With the exception of Slam Dunk, sports manga are really dire affairs, filled with hammy characterization, bad art, and well...sports. If I want sports, I'll watch them on TV. But Taiyo Matsumoto takes the same off-kilter kinetic graffiti whirlwind approach to sports has he does sci-fi/action. Indeed, he got his start back in 1989 with Straight, a baseball manga. Written for Kodansha; he switched publishers after that and "found [his] freedom." Straight is out of print; I am hunting for it, but am not yet successful. I think we'll have to consider it something of a lost series for now.
Matsumoto came to Big Comics with instructions a sort of demon, art gradually slipping into the to do a story about boxing, and instantly got in stuff of nightmares. And then Zero's madness trouble for writing a story about a man ten years possesses his opponent. older than himself. In the early nineties, Matsumoto wrote several Zero may be nearing thirty, but he is still the short stories, which are collected in Blue Spring. middleweight champion of the world. He's known (Not sure what that title means; none of the stories as a crazy man, his signature unhinged grin in here have that name.) He seems to view short gradually destroying his opponent's confidence. stories as a chance to play with new ideas without They call him Zero because anyone can be having to worry about actually being popular, or Number One -- but no one else can be Zero. He indeed, making sense. Blue Spring is less genius first appeared at the gym holding an insect in his than an interesting chronicle of his development. hand, begging for some toys that weren't so easy You can see him experimenting with all the to break. His trainers consider him unfit for a life storytelling elements that later became his They call him outside the ring, and indeed, he seems to do trademarks...it's just that they don't, by and little but train and tend his flowers. But now he's large, work. While there are scattered Zero because getting old, and people are starting to wonder moments of brilliance in all of these stories how long he can keep this going. Zero might be (especially one about Mr. Suzuki, who anyone can be to -- he's been eyeing a Mexican boxer famed for later appeared in Black & White), only two Number One killing a man in the ring. Is he still looking for a are completely satisfying. One, "Family toy that's tough to break, or is he looking to die Restaurants are Our Paradise" is largely but no one else can be Zero. fighting? Zero is only two volumes long. The first a lengthy argument over a check, skillfully volume is a sort of battle between Zero and his blended with a lot of background noise and trainers; they keep trying to match him up with details going on around them. The other, weaklings, and he says nothing at all, reading "Dami da korya!" ("Aw, shiiit...") is a hilarious articles about the Mexican fighter with pointed chase sequence, with a boy desperately trying interest. The second volume is a long, brutal to meet his date while being constantly pursued boxing match. Zero is such an overpowering by a crazy delinquent hell bent on blood. An boxer that he rarely has to fight for more than a upcoming live action movie appears to be based couple of rounds, but the Mexican is more than on the first story in here, which centers around a a match for him, drawing the fight out longer and group of boys testing themselves by seeing how longer, as Zero grows badly tired. Making Zero many times they can clap before they catch the tired doesn't quite have the effect intended; the railing again and stop themselves from falling off lines of humanity begin to blur. He becomes the roof. He wrote another slew of short stories in
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94/95, collected in a hardcover volume called Nihon no Kyoudai (Brothers of Japan). With only one exception, these make no sense at all; surrealist avant-garde experiments interesting to die-hard fans like me, but not accessible enough for anyone else. While Blue Spring is interesting, and Zero quite good, as far as I'm concerned, the series where he dramatic powers really came together is Hana Otoko. This is where it starts to feel like Taiyo Matsumoto. Hana Otoko is ostensibly a baseball manga, but contains virtually no actually baseball. Rather, it focuses on a snotty 8-year-old forced to move back in with his father. His mother explains that yes, his father is an idiot who gave up his family to follow this absurd dream of playing for the Giants despite his age, but just because someone's thinking differs from yours doesn't mean it's wrong. Besides, she rather likes men with dreams. The boy spends the bulk of the series at war with his father, who constantly interferes with his studying. And while, of course, the boy learns all the life lessons that we expected, it never feels pat. Hana Otoko is perhaps unnecessarily surreal at times (though I rather like the man painting the sky back to indicate nightfall) but it never gets out of control and diverts the series from its focal point. And of course, Matsumoto never forgets that, despite all his talk, the I cribbed a lot of info from this page; any quotes from Matsumoto boy is really 8-years old; he's rather or references to his opinions of his easily distracted by motorcycles work are from here: and really big bugs, and he finds www.inter-g7.or.jp/g2/manga/HTML/ other, responsible adults, just as irritating and incomprehensible. He GHTML/MATIN.html tells his mother that he considers Blue Spring movie website: himself the adult and his father a www.aoiharu.com child who needs looking after. Black & White movie: www.ocv.ne.jp/~nene/ariari/tekkon/ core.html Ping Pong movie website: pingpong.asmik-ace.co.jp/
But common sense and maturity are not always actually correct. Simplicity and innocence have a way of getting better results...a theme Matsumoto has continued to play with ever since. Especially in Tekkonkinkurito (Black & White), his next series, which was so successful it eventually caused his early work to be reprinted on high quality, oversized paper. Black & White may actually be made into a computer animated film, but I can't find any recent updates on this. Ping Pong, at five volumes, is his longest work, and may by, rather
surprisingly, his most emotionally satisfying. Ping pong, as a game, bores the living hell out of me...but I read all five volumes in one sitting, unable to put them down. This is the most conventional storyline of his career, filled with classic elements of the genre: strong opponents, defeat and recovery, underdogs winning surprise victories, and cocky players getting a taste of reality, all made electrifying by the completely insane art. There's more kinetic energy in a single shoe skidding across the floor than in the entirety of most other famous sports series. In fact, the success of Ping Pong is so heavily based on the artwork that I doubt this summer's live action movie will be anything other than a pale shadow of the manga. But no matter -- I still have the original, with its breathtaking montage-like page layouts, depicting the matches through dramatic long shorts and visceral details that are more alive than real life. While writing this article, I swung by a movie theater and watched the astounding Dead or Alive: Final. That theater had a ton of stills from the Ping Pong movie, and not only have they matched the actors physically with the drawings (quite frighteningly so) but the stills are all from the exact same angle as the manga. They have shots of a boy sitting between lockers with giant butterfly wings. They have shots of Smile serving, leaping about six feet in the air as he does. The preview suggests they've used gratuitous slow motion and CGI. If nothing else, it should be an experience. After the success of Ping Pong, Matsumoto vanished for a few years, before emerging with the self-published, hardcover, 450 page graphic novel Go Go Monster. This is a return to the themes of Black & White, with a small boy who can see things no one else can. His classmates are terrified of him, except for one new student, who is usually more puzzled. As their friendship grows, his powers fade, until he's forced to let the other world go. Sadly, this is actually demonstrated as very long sequence of surreal landscapes and almost all black pages in which we can dimly make out shapes; this is less than comprehensible. Still, this is a 450 page graphic novel; 80 pages of incomprehensible gibberish were unable to completely ruin the experience for me, but this remains the work I'd be least likely to translate into English. Still, a flawed masterpiece is still a hell of a lot better than anything else out there. There are a billion manga about kids with special talents, and this is perhaps the only one that handles them in anything approaching a realistic fashion, despite his unexplained trip through the back end of reality. Go Go Monster has a lot to say about paranormal gifts, and the acceptance of unusual behavior in others, and it says it very well by telling a story so compelling you don't even realize there's a moral. In addition to actual manga, Taiyo Matsumoto has
also released two huge hardcover artbooks, 100, and 101. No Dalmatians involved. 100 is simply jaw-dropping; full color, interspersed with short, nifty surreal stories, and an impressive range of subjects. So many artists release artbooks that are basically just the color pages they did for their manga but that were black in white in the original collections. Not here: while there are a few pages from his big hits, the bulk of it is sketches and paintings done for a bewildering array of magazines and other venues. Female characters are rather rare in Matsumoto's work, so it's really nice to see that he can actually draw them, as he does several times in here. In fact, my favorite page is easily a picture of a little girl asleep in a tree. 101 is less impressive, however; while still worth the money, much of the art seems to have been drawn in five minute on a napkin, or is bluntly experimental. So what's next for Taiyo Matsumoto? No. 5 has two volumes out, and is ongoing in bimonthly Ikki, and there are those two movies keeping his name in the press. His merchandizing line is growing quite massive, with T-shirts, keychains, sweatshirts, and statues and dolls in a bewildering array of shapes and sizes. Since No. 5 is coming out at about half the speed of anything else he's written, I'd like to believe he's working on a new GN on the side. It's also worth mentioning that he is not without his advocates and imitators. I think it’s safe to say his influence will be felt for years to come.
The Life of Ichabod, by Shouji Hiroyuki. Three volumes, ran in Kodansha Afternoon. This surreal crime story reads like Miike Takashi directing Taiyo Matsumoto, and the zip-a-tone art deco chaos of the art seems to have let it slip beneath the radar of most readers. Including me, since I only got around to reading it after it had already reached its conclusion. Ichabod is a boy raised by lesbians, borne by one, egg provided by the other, artificially inseminated by the seed of a mysterious phantom thief. Only one of his mothers is still around, and, convinced she hates men, Ichabod puts himself in the hospital when a vision of his father convinces him to try castration. He only manages circumcision. He escapes from the hospital when he hooks up with a group of famous bank robbers trained by his father, and quickly winds up helping to rob a bank in which is stored some body parts needed to save his father's life. Filled with fascinating characters, like the criminal priest who aims to be a real life Judas Iscariot, and brilliant ideas, like the hostages photographing the criminal with their cell phones and emailing the photos to the mass media, Life of Ichabod is unexpectedly exuberant. I see a direct influence from Matsumoto in the unhinged, freehand, winged looking perspective art style, the liberal use of surrealistic touches, and fascination with adults who never grew up and children who have grown up much too fast. The tightly constructed story lasts three volumes with no apparent intention of ever having made it an ongoing work. It too would make a terrific movie.
by Derek Guder
Black & White A friend had been recommending Black & White to me for quite some time before I bothered to pick it up. He knew I’d like it if I just sat down and read it, but I never managed to get past the art while flipping through it in the store. So different from that of any other manga I had ever seen, it wasn’t until I actually picked up a volume and just sat down and read it that it all clicked in my mind and everything seemed to mesh properly. No other art style could manage to contain and convey so well the innocence, violence, surrealism, frantic energy and even that menacing atmosphere of a Yakuza film. As brutal as it is childlike, Taiyo Matsumoto’s art style has something of a disturbing or uncomfortable feeling to it at first, as if that mixture is just unnatural. By the end of the first volume, however, you are forced to admit that not only is it natural, the world has always been like that. Living in the streets and on the rooftops of Treasure City, Black and White are apparent orphans, homeless children ruling the alleyways and empty lots. White is the pure, while Black is the impure. I’m tempted to call White "innocent" but that carries far too much implication and baggage White is far from a carefree and wholesome child. He is certainly child-like and lives in a world made fantastical by his own imagination, but the dim-witted boy also lives in a cruel world. His ever-present double Black sometimes seems to be everything White is not: cynical, scarred, quick tempered, vicious and much too smart for anyone’s good. Black is touchingly gentle towards White, however, as if he were trying to take the brunt of the world and provide White a shelter in which to grow and blossom.
Eastern Standard Time
The metropolis that Black and White rule over as diminutive tyrants is not a static, dead entity, however. It is constantly growing and changing and anyone who does not keep up, whether they are punks, policemen, Yakuza or even Black and White themselves, will be left behind. It is during this time of tumult that we come to know our heroes, as the pair attempts to defend their city from the Yakuza who want to control it, the foreigners who want to shape it and sometimes it seems even the citizens who want to live in it. Can Black and White balance and steady each other when so much is changing around them?
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Ultimately, Black & White seems to be able the dichotomy of reality and dreams, their Yin and Yang relationship. Black is grounded, almost composed of, the brutality and stark horror of the world. White, on the other hand, lives almost as much in a paradise of his own design as in the real world. Their extremes are only dangerously exacerbated when they are separated, though neither is completely without the other. White is often terrifyingly eager to cause pain and Black is soothingly gentle where White is concerned, but those seeds are often drowned out when the boys are separated. And therein lies the crux of the entire manga. Live in the world and you will drown in blood and bile. Live in the clouds and you will suffocate on fantasy and delusion. Remember that while the world is a ball of mud and misery, it is in the pursuit and protection of a dream that we create a paradise. "In everything, moderation."
No. 5 Having fallen in love with Black & White after it kicked my ass, the news that another one of Taiyo Matsumoto’s works was going to be release left me anxious and impatient. Black & White had been so gleefully surreal and brutal, but even that didn’t really prepare me for No. 5. Almost beyond surreal and encroaching on sublimely absurd, it feels much more consciously constructed than its predecessor. There is an almost overpowering feeling of rigid form and structure to the manga, despite maintaining Matsumoto’s trademark kinetic and almost punkish
artwork. As Number Five, as our lead is called, travels through the world protecting the disturbing little girl "Matroshka," he must face and defeat each of his former comrades, allies and friends, in order. An almost resigned feeling of fatalism is strung through the entire story. You almost feel like you can feel what’s going to come next, even if you cannot articulate it clearly. The setting is vaguely post-apocalyptic (surreal post-apocalypse? That’s almost like a wet dream on paper for me) as nearly 70% of the world has been transformed into a desert and the world seems to be unified under a peaceful world government. Number Five, along with his eight other comrades, was part of the Rainbow Council of the International Peace Keeping forces, a small group of elite, almost super-powered, misfit soldiers used more as a military mascot than anything else. For reasons still unclear, Number Five went AWOL along with Matroshka, a mystery and almost catatonic girl with a voracious and insatiable appetite. As No. 5 is still incomplete, it is a very slippery fish to grab a hold of and pin down. Whatever message or impression Matsumoto intends to get across to his audience is still incomplete itself. It is clear that whatever the "point" of No. 5, duty and honor hold a central position in it. Duty, honor and devotion apparently forcing people to perform actions they dread is starkly clear in this first volume, as is the resignation of knowing the traps that those will force you into and being unable (or unwilling) to change anything. The constant flow of time and evolution of the world as well as the darker side of "innocence" are also strong themes in No. 5, but not in the same light at Black & White. The times almost seem to have already changed and the innocents are far more dangerous here.
One of Matsumoto’s "pet themes" seems to be what I would call the "child-like monster." Whether it is the ingenuous committing atrocities or the innocent that threaten to simply overwhelm everything, we see it in both Black and White as well as the silent Matroshka. Matsumoto’s children are not idyllic or perfect angels, they are more akin to beasts that have not learned how to become men yet. Sometimes he shows us adults who have never learned. In Black & White, this apparent paradox of predatory children remaining children none the less is very much the thrust of the entire manga. The reader is shown both the vicious tempers of Black and White along with their wondrous naiveté, and then forced to admit that is the way things really are and always have been because it seems so natural. Black and White would have been simple flat stereotypes without the natural contradiction that exists in everyone to some degree or another. If you doubt that, think back to your own youth. Not the childhood you would like to remember, full of wide eyes and new discoveries, but the real one, where the ant-burnings and school ground beatings live. Watch a child catch a bug and rip off its wings for fun and try to discount the cruelty that comes with innocence. No. 5 paints a slightly different image of innocence. Instead of showing that the lack of control that so typifies innocence can be horrific, as Black & White did, here we see an innocence so insatiable and voracious that it threatens to consume the entire world even as it sits there, docile. Matroshka is almost completely unexplained in No. 5, beyond allusions to her being "the real problem" and similar. She’s almost like a spectator, simply watching at Number Five murders his friends as he tries to protect her. Almost constantly eating, she only pauses from her diet of M&Ms, whole fish and anything else to whimsically dance with Number Five on occasion. Everything she touches is brought near her mouth, even if we do not see it consumed. Number Five himself seems consumed with the desire to protect her, despite the fact that we have yet to even see her endangered once. This kind of innocence seems to be more pure and unadulterated than it is cruel, and I call it "innocence" because of Matroshka’s mannerisms. She almost sits passively like an infant, waiting for the world to come to her. And I have seen a hint of that appetite in my young brother or even myself. It’s the desire to consume and consume and consume more. The world is not enough to quench a hunger of such conspicuous consumption. We have seen this mixture of frighteningly familiar traits with the idyllic child form before. Look at Tetsuo’s transformation through the power he could not control in Akira (both the manga and the anime). Witness the jagged-toothed demon-baby Barbatos in Vertigo Comics’ The Books of Magic. The difference in Matsumoto’s work is often the subtlety and familiarity of it. He does not provide us with a fantasy to use as a shield. Instead we are given children who act like demons so we must admit that growing up is as much learning how not to be a monster as anything else. We aren’t as able to distance ourselves from the character or the story and say "That’s not me, I’ve never done something like that." We are all monsters, all of us. We just learned how to keep that on a leash.
Volume 1, Number 2
At the moment, Viz has only released the first volume of No. 5, which is still on-going in Japan now. The second volume isn’t even out there yet. This seems like quite a risk to take, to release an unfinished manga into English, but it seems that the success of Black & White spurred them to translate some of his other high-action manga. Compared to Black & White, this has a slightly more polished feel and an apparently more intricate plot, but the characters have yet to fully blossom, they have not had time to grow on me yet, like the cast of Black & White. With any luck, not only will Matsumoto release No. 5 volume 2 soon, but Viz will be able to translate his other works as well.
The Child-Like Monster
23
Eastern Standard Time
by Andrew ‘eirias’ Cunningham
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One Piece volume 23 had an initial print run of 2.45 million copies. It is one of the highest selling manga in Japan. It sold like gangbusters even before the nearly perfect animated adaptation brought it to an even larger audience. Three movies and over a hundred TV episodes later, the One Piece anime is about to catch up with the manga. And not suck. The One Piece video release has, so far, produced only one anime original storyline: the five episodes on volume 15, episodes 57 to 61. (Following that, the characters finally entered the Grand Line, and the video/DVD release started over from volume 1, but with only three episodes a tape.) I’d been fairly worried about this storyline (a couple of filler episodes during the Loguetown storyline had been, well, ‘fillery’) especially since it revolved around an obnoxiously genki eight year-old and her pet dragon. Much to my surprise, it was quite entertaining. Had I not read the manga, I probably would not have guessed that it was new material. The nature of One Piece allows them to freely work in entirely new storylines in between manga arcs without anyone knowing the difference, and the anime staff understands the show well enough that the writing quality fails to devolve. Something about One Piece appeals to just about everybody, and it feels like it could go on forever without ever sacrificing quality. One Piece is truly open ended.
So who is Oda Eiichiro, the genius that writes and draws it? Damned if we know. We know that, along with the author of Shaman King and the artist of the inexplicably popular Hikaru no Go, he worked as an assistant on Rurouni Kenshin. I have a theory that these three may have been responsible for quite a lot of what made Kenshin work. Given that:
the proclamation, and has instead directed the meteor to strike a busy department store at 4:44 and 44 seconds. Since God can’t change things written with the Pen of Fate, he decides to leave this up to the pickpocket: if the pickpocket can evacuate the store in time, God will let him live.
B. The most recent Kenshin OAV played like bad fanfiction, turning what should have been a graceful eulogy into a screaming nightmare of out of character moments and inexplicable flashbacks, seemingly designed from an End of Eva-ish desire to brutally destroy any dreams of the characters actually living happily ever after the manga might have left intact, and, most importantly,
A Nocturnal Demon is nowhere near as innovative, but does mark a huge step forward in action. And absurd melodrama with lots of exclamation points, another big part of One Piece. While not inspired, it does seem to contain the germs of a lot of the storytelling ideas that eventually grew into One Piece. But, while well told, the story is a rather conventional traveling Buddhist thing.
The humor and unpredictability that made him famous are all on display here. He claims this was the first time he actually came A. The Kenshin manga wound down a little bit rockily up with a plot before starting to draw. It shows.
C: Watsuki Nobuhiro’s follow up to Kenshin, Gun Blaze West, was completely unreadable garbage that lasted all of 28 issues before Jump editors demanded to know “Why the hell some kid who can’t shoot straight is in the middle of the American Old West fighting knights in shining armor and their mutant XMen reject friends?” and canceled the series. We know that Oda never uses screentone if he can help it, on the theory that it’s damned annoying pasting all that stuff on. We know that the art in One Piece has been extremely consistent throughout, with the only apparent differences being a subtle loosening of body language, freeing up of page layouts, and renewed interest in bizarre distorted perspectives...and then only when you compare the first volume with the newest stuff closely. We know that each storyline has been longer, more complex, and more ambitious than the one before...and they still keep paying off big time. And last of all, we have his short story collection, Wanted!
A Prophetic Present from God is miles above it. The story of a pickpocket so shiftless, so irredeemable, that God himself decides to strike him down with a meteor. Unfortunately, God forgets to write a kanji in
Romance Dawn has several. It is One Piece; he renamed the girl, and fiddled about with Rufi’s origin story quite a bit, but everything that makes One Piece One Piece is here. Thick, strong, contrasty line work, a natural grasp of body language and facial expressions that never feel stale, completely weird villains and critters, Rufi’s completely deranged personality, and, above all, the distinction between things that can and should be laughed off, and things that are really worth getting pissed off about. (Apparently, this is the second version of the story printed. Haven’t tracked down the first, which was collected in One Piece: Red, a fan book.) This understanding is the basis of Rufi’s entire personality, spelled out perfectly in the first chapter of One Piece proper (and without resorting to absurd moralizing like say, Spiderman. “With great power comes great responsibility.” Anyone who can deliver that line with a straight face gets a drink on me.) In that first issue, Shanks the Red gets a bottle smashed over his head in a display of saber rattling from some passing bandits, and doesn’t bat an eye, laughing it off. But when the same men hurt Rufi, his friend, they all go down in the blink of an eye. What this does, and Romance Dawn didn’t, is provide Rufi with a role model. The Romance Dawn pirates were simply strong and cool; there was nothing to distinguish them from any other ruffians. Shanks then sacrifices his arm saving Rufi from a giant sea monster, proving to the child just how far Shanks is willing to carry this philosophy. And finally, in a moment fraught with 25 symbolism, he passes his straw hat on to Rufi as he leaves.
Volume 1, Number 2
The five stories in Wanted! appeared from uh...about 1993 to 1996 with One Piece cranking up early in 1997. The earliest of them was written while he was in high school. This is obvious. The art lacks the confidence of One Piece; not only are his faces less distinctive, but the line itself is thinner. In fact, of the five stories in here, only the final story, Romance Dawn (which later became One Piece) actually has the ultra thick line he’s used ever since. The title story, Wanted!, is about a gunman out west, followed around by a ghost. It’s fairly dull stuff. There are enough decent laughs and surprise twists that it understandably got him started in the business, but it isn’t something worth reading twice.
Monsters is more of the same: increasingly unique art, better and better sense of how to show action, and how to combine action with loads of melodrama and comedy. But it simply doesn’t leap off the page; there’s no more story here. Nothing to catch hold of you or make you want more. He’s missing a hook.
Characters: Heroes Monkey D. Rufi - There’s a lot of controversy over
the spelling of Rufi’s name, much of it instituted by me. I write it Rufi, a direct romanization of the katakana. I feel this best reflects the way the name is pronounced: Roo Fee. Oda Eiichiro, who speaks very little English and, let’s face it, can’t be expected to guess how a native speaker would pronounce a word, spells it Luffy, which clearly rhymes with fluffy and is therefore right out. So there. Monkey D. Rufi. Somehow Rufi comes across as entirely original, mostly by means of being far too simple. There is, essentially, nothing to his character. Whatever crosses his mind, he says. Whatever he wants to do, he does. There are no gray areas. There is no middle ground. Once his mind is made up, he never changes it, unless someone points out to him a sufficiently simple reason to do so. This is why he never kills anyone he fights; by the time he beats them, he’s already forgotten why they were fighting. He’s moved on. As a child, Rufi ate one of the famous Devil Fruits; his body is now made of rubber. He can be cut, but blunt objects never fade him. He can’t swim, but can fall for miles without being much bothered by it. And Oda has been remarkably sensible about not constantly throwing him the water. Rufi is too carefree to bother worrying much about this at all. [Vol 1]
Eastern Standard Time
Roronoa Zorro - The first man to join Rufi’s crew,
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Zorro has no superpowers. He’s just the best. He has perfected a new school of swordplay involving three katana: one in each hand, a third in the mouth (which is in a state of perpetual snarl which seems to exhaust him enough that he spends the bulk of his time sleeping). Oda has stated that his intention, with Rufi’s crew, was to put together a group of people who would all make perfectly fine main characters. Zorro certainly could carry a series on his own. Like Rufi, Zorro is quite a simple character. Unlike Rufi, Zorro is not an idiot, and does not feel the need to telegraph his every thought at the top of his lungs. In later volumes, Zorro picked up some much better katana by hurling a cursed sword into the air and holding his arm in its path, thus proving his fate stronger than the curse. He also learned how to cut through things without actually hurting them. [Vol 1]
Nami was, for a long time, the token girl. I’d say it would
be quite a stretch to say she could carry a series on her own; she seems to be pretty much the perfect supporting character. One long storyline [volumes 8 to 11] rises out of her backstory, she has a useful, but noncombatative skill, and she frequently serves as the slightly hysterical voice of reason and sanity while everyone else is being completely mad. [Vol 1.]
Usopp is also quite difficult to view as the main character
in any series. Except maybe a gag manga. Usopp has a useful skill: he’s an excellent marksman, inventor, and he fixes the boat a lot. He has fired the ship’s cannon approximately twice. More, if you count the anime original stuff. He invented Nami a super staff, which contained a very large number of party tricks with bad ass sounding names, all of which annoyed her tremendously when she tried to actually beat someone up with them. But he mostly exists purely as comic relief. He does sort of grow on you; I was initially quite bored with him, since his entire intro storyline was Never Cry Wolf again, but he really came into his own when Tony Tony Chopper joined. The two of them really play off each other beautifully; Usopp lies compulsively, and Tony takes them all literally. [Vol 3]
Sanji is the ship’s cook. Claiming that the worst fate
that can befall a cook is to injure a hand, his fighting style consists entirely of kicking. And spinning his legs around as he stands on his hands. He has proven fully capable of kicking a sea monster out of the water, but, like Zorro, has no superpowers. He’s just cool that way. With his crisp suits, neatly combed blonde hair, and curled eyebrow, Sanji is the only crew member with panache. His everpresent cigarette also single handedly prevents One Piece from airing on TV in the US. I know he makes ME want to smoke. Sanji is a very laidback, cynical individual, prone to snarling curt one liners. Unless a pretty lady is involved, in which case he fawns sickeningly. [Vol 5]
Tony Tony Chopper is the ship’s doctor. Formerly a
reindeer, he ate a Devil Fruit that turned him half-human. He isn’t very good with people, with advanced concepts like sarcasm flying right over his head, and is thus prone to hiding backwards, one eye behind the door jamb and his body in the doorway. While his many different forms, ranging from almost human to almost reindeer, give him speed and power, he mostly serves as a brilliant foil for Usopp. And, of course, he’s cute. [Vol 15]
Volume 1, Number 2
The crew stayed there for a while, until they entered the fabled Grand Line, hotbed of pirate mayhem. There, they quickly picked up Vivi, who was a vital link to the plot for the next dozen volumes. Initially, Vivi appears as Miss Wednesday, a villain in the evil Baroque Works organized crime and conspiracy unit. She quickly turned out to be undercover, searching for evidence to save her kingdom from destruction. She traveled with Rufi and company until they finally succeeded in saving her kingdom, but there she stayed. Vivi was an extremely gentle woman, not much for fighting, and she provided a much needed voice of sanity. [Nami would like to see herself in that role, but she’s really as crazy as the rest of them.] As Rufi put it, she’s constantly begging everyone not to sacrifice themselves to save others, and yet is always the first to actually do so. [Vol 12 to 23]
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Characters: Villains Buggy is an evil clown. The first significant villain, he is
also the first other Devil Fruit victim Rufi runs across. He can break his body apart into dozens of pieces, maintain control over them, and then put himself back together. Completely mad, he is also rather silly. He works with a Lion Tamer and a Unicycle Swordsman. The lion is the best character of the bunch. Buggy may look like a clown, but he has a massive complex about his giant red nose, and any comment that sounds anything like “red” or “nose” will drive him insane. Buggy has continued to be a thorn in Rufi’s heel, popping up again at completely unexpected moments, seeking revenge. [Vol 2, 3, 11, 12, 25?]
Claude, aka Captain Claw, leader of the Black
Cats. After Buggy, a refreshingly sinister villain. He faked his own death, (thus promoting the evil Cap’n Morgan from Volume 1) and took a position as a butler for the girl Usopp is in love with. His hypnotist sidekick Jango has since converted to the Naval cause, after becoming firm friends with Brass Knuckles Fullbody at a disco competition. Claw has 12 inch long metal clawed gloves, and moves to fast for the eye to see. [Vol 3 to 5]
Eastern Standard Time
Don Krieg: The invincible Man - Limping off the
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Grandline, his ship in shreds, he made the mistake of trying to hijack the floating restaurant Sanji worked for. Without any Devil Fruit powers, he relies on a nearly endless bag of tricks, guns, and armor. Fueled by desperation, he and his crew put up quite a battle, and it required the full power of the fighting cooks to defeat him. Krieg himself was mostly stupid, petty, and strong. His Mate Gin was the interesting one; fiercely loyal, even when Krieg cheerily poisoned him. [Vol Six to 8]
Arlong isn’t actually human. He’s a hammerhead shark/
man. He and his crew of fishmen go around terrorizing small villages, milking them for money. Saying much more would ruin some nice surprises, but his past is intertwined with Nami’s. It was during this storyline that both Usopp and Nami really came into their own as characters, and we finally saw Rufi get really mad. It also marks the last time, so far, that Rufi has been flung into the water. After that, he used more creative methods to get him out of the way. The bit from the animation version where Zorro uses his three swords against the six swords wielded by the octopus remains the most amazingly well animated second in the show. [Vol 8 to 11]
While the last two stories were a linked rather creatively, after this, Oda abandons “evil pirate of the year� storylines in favor of a much more ambitious structure. He first spend a volume or two in Loguetown, the last city before the Grandline, setting up a few supporting players. Some of them, like Dragon, have yet to surface again.
Captain Smoker is the main Naval officer on Rufi’s
tail. Never seen without a pair of cigars in his jaw, he likes buying children ice cream, letting enemies go if they give him a good enough reason, and generally being a very fair minded maverick. Since his body is made of smoke, thanks to the Devil Fruit, very few people are inclined to argue with him. His second is a katana girl, Tashigi, who dresses like a sixties spy girl, and looks remarkably like a friend Zorro had as a child.
Volume 1, Number 2 29
Hell on Earth by Derek Guder
The Who, What and Where There are monsters out there, in the shadows, and someone has to defend humanity from them. Working in the name of the Queen and for the sake of England, the Hellsing Foundation does whatever is necessary to ensure that creatures like vampires and the zombies they spawn don’t overrun the world. Their methods and secrecy have not endeared them to everyone, however, and they have many enemies, both from without England and from within, who want to expose, destroy or even use them.
Eastern Standard Time
Any Show Worth Getting Is Worth Getting With a Box
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As I mentioned briefly in the review, Pioneer is making a box available for Hellsing with the first of four volumes, following in the recent trend of releasing volume one of a new show with an empty box for the rest of it. The Japanese have been doing that for quite some time, and I for one am overjoyed at the recent rise in box popularity. Taken directly from the (now actually informative) Pioneer web site, the specifics about the first volume are: Available as a DVD or as a DVD packaged with a limited edition box for all four volumes. DVD Extras: Non-Credit opening, Hellsing trailer, and more! Run Time: 75 min SRP: DVD: $29.98/DVD with Box:$34.98 EDP#: 11813/11812 Street Date: July 23, 200 Volume two is slated for release on 9/10, with the third volume following on 11/12.
The iron-fisted and unforgiving Lady Integra Hellsing commands the foundation, having inherited it from her father and paid for it in blood. At her side stands the frightening Arucard, a vampire apparently bound to serve Integra’s will. Gathered around this pair is the rest of the foundation, soldiers who have pledged their lives to fight the dark and keep the forces of evil at bay in the name of God and the Queen, Amen. As the anime progresses, we follow the story of one new recruit into the organization who must not only deal with her new duties but also her new self, as she has become a vampire and must adapt to a new life as what she has been trained to destroy. Sears Victoria’s story is perhaps the most compelling in Hellsing, aside from maybe the truth about Arucard himself. The first few episodes are largely focused on her developing character, and are among the strongest of the show. While Searas is still adapting to her new life and body, the Hellsing Foundation itself comes under attack again and again as it becomes apparent that someone or something with vast resources and influence wants it crushed. From artificially created zombie hordes to political machinations to immensely powerful supernatural beings, the foundation faces one onslaught after another, often with only Integra’s will and determination to hold it together. Bound by duty to Integra and by blood to her master Arucard, Sears cannot help but become embroiled and caught up in the schemes of creatures she doesn’t even comprehend.
The Players Upon the Stage Arucard Almost more like a demon than just a simple vampire, Arucard seems to be bound to the will of Integra, his power contained within a number of wards that he may only release at the behest of his mistress. The powers that he does display are often unnerving and disturbing. Arucard’s voice actor is superb, his deep and almost threatening voice providing the perfect feeling to almost constant boredom peppered with moments of wry amusement. Seras Victoria She just wanted to protect people but found herself in the wrong place at the wrong time and would have died at the hands of her own friends risen as zombies or their master if it had not been for the intervention of Arucard. He killed her to save her, and now she is a vampire – a monster – herself. Becoming used to the urges and desires of her new state, as well as its frightening powers, proves to be quite a challenge. One good thing about her unnatural strength though, her massive bosom probably doesn’t give her a backache anymore. Lady Integra Hellsing Dedicated, almost obsessive, Integra Hellsing will protect England from all of its enemies. She will destroy any monsters or demons she comes across. She will not fail to maintain the honor of her family. Failure is simply not an option. Now she is facing a foe that she can barely imagine, however, and success may hinge on just how strong her will really is. Walter Faithful and attentive servant to Lady Integra, Walter’s unassuming demeanor seems to hide as many secrets as any other member of the Hellsing Foundation. He is certainly far from a normal butler, showing startling speed, strength and viciousness. Sadly, we may never know his full story. What’s in a name, anyway? Just what Arucard’s name is has been quite a touch subject among fans. Pioneer has officially said it will be "Arucard," though many fansubbers chose either "Alucard" or "Arcard." To my untrained ear, it sounds like they are saying "Ahkah-do" in Japanese, which isn’t that close to any of those. But then again Japanese has this habit of being rather tricky. My personal favorite was "Alucard" since it’s "Dracula" backwards, but "Arucard" has grown on me. I just think of it as Dracula backwards – but in Engrish! Besides, the creator has a habit of slightly misspelling things (probably on purpose. Just look at the title itself, it’s Hellsing, not Helsing.
Volume 1, Number 2
Father Alexander Anderson The Queen of England is not the only powerful figure to wield tools against the encroaching darkness, the Catholic Church has its own agenda and its own occult force. Anderson is sent by the Pope to ensure that whatever conflict the Hellsing Foundation seems to have found itself in does not spread elsewhere. The best way to do that might be to simply destroy everyone involved, and let God sort them out.
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What Came Before
Eastern Standard Time
The Hellsing anime is, unsurprisingly, based on a manga by Kouta Hirano. With oftentimes even more stylish art than the anime, it follows a surprisingly different track. While it starts at the same point as the anime does, when Arucard intervenes to save Seras from a vampiric priest, the manga then jumps back to reveal much of the history that the anime had kept hidden much longer. Revealing Integra’s past and how she came to head the Hellsing Foundation in its current form, as well as the exact nature of her relationship with Arucard, so early in the storyline does take much of the mystery out of the characters, I must admit. The anime’s framing sequences and set-up stage is much more polished and better executed, but the manga has its own strengths.
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Perhaps because of the different medium, the manga’s pacing is much steadier and more comfortable. It seems to move a bit faster than the anime, avoiding the pitfalls of filler story-arcs or low-budget animation that the anime fell prey to more than once. The manga’s quality does rise and fall, just like the anime, but its high points are lower and its lower points higher than the anime. That is to say it’s more consistent than the anime. It doesn’t often get quite as good as the show, but neither is it ever really as bad as it might get. It’s really a shame that the manga lacks some of the best elements of the show: Arucard’s voice actor and Seras Victoria’s character development. I suppose that is somewhat balanced out by its increased focus and consistency. It also gets better as it goes along. The manga art had its own share of inconsistencies and warped perspectives or compositions, just as the anime did, but the creator pulled things together quickly and it became tighter and more solid as it went along. The manga’s biggest appeal to me, however, is in that it might actually explain everything the anime ignored or didn’t have time for, like just what Walter is or who was really behind the conspiracy attacking the Hellsing Foundation. Hopefully it provides a much more brutal and tragic ending. Considering that Hellsing should sell like hotcakes once it’s released, I imagine it’s only a matter of time before someone licenses the manga and releases it in English. Of course, that doesn’t mean contacting your favorite manga publisher to pester them about it wouldn’t help.
Style Above All Else Hellsing is one of those shows I hate to love, if you know what I mean. There are just so many cool characters and scenes that I can’t help but like it, and the art style is just so cool. At the same time I can’t forget just how poorly the show is executed at times. When I heard it had been licensed and was being released with a box as well, my initial reaction was "That’s nice, I’ll pass." But then, after talking with several people about the show, I couldn’t forget how characters like Arucard and Anderson just drip coolness and stylish badassness. Hellsing is carried by its characters, I think, partly because they are simply that good but also because of the relatively weakness of the story. The fact that the show is good but could have been so much better is incredibly infuriating. Suffering from the same drifting vision that seems to affect almost every anime that attempts to have something of a focused, over-arcing storyline, Hellsing starts out really, really strong but starts to lose its way a few episodes in. Episodes begin to feel very, well… episodic and the villains don’t seem to amount to anything. They become filler episodes, in other words. Then the plot seems to come rushing back for a few episodes, annoyed that it was lost in fun with zombies and vampires. But then it begins to drift a bit again, requiring something of a hasty resolution. And speaking of resolutions, I won’t spoil anything for anyone, but I was very disappointed with how pat and clean the ending was. That was not what I was hoping for at all.
I’ve heard it said that Hellsing is one of those "style of substance" kinds of anime, and that is largely true, it is generally much more concerned about style (looking and feeling cool) than substance (character and plot development). Unfortunately its dedication to style is sometimes as muddled as the
So do you begin to see my dilemma? I have this show in front of me with an inspired cast and moments where everything comes together and it’s almost perfect (such as the character development for Seras in the second episode), but at the same time it manages to dither away much of the limited time it has through sloppy direction and immaterial subplots. In the end, Hellsing is going to be on my shelf, snug in its little box, but that’s not going to be able to stop me from frowning a bit if I think about it too much.
Volume 1, Number 2
When you only have 13 episodes to introduce us to a number of somewhat complicated characters and show us their place in some secret conspiracy that even some of them don’t know anything about, you don’t have the luxury of taking a vacation and just putting out some side-story filler episode one week (or two, or three). You can’t waste the time you have, or something in the story is going to give. Take the mysterious Walter, for instance. We never do get find out what his deal is. Or look at the ending I mentioned briefly above. It comes almost completely out of left field, even on a second viewing. Perhaps even worse, one of the dramatic foreshadowing plot elements from more than one previous episodes unfolds and falls completely flat because it just has no time to unfold.
rest of the show, and greatly hindered by the intermittent drops in animation quality throughout the show. The opening and some of the show itself is animated with the typical Gonzo flare for superb imagery and fluid animation, but there are other bits that seem to spring right out of the early-90s, and that just doesn’t work. It’s possible to have a brilliant show with only an intermittently connecting plot so long as you remain committed, consistent and focused on something. Look at Cowboy Bebop for an example of a show that was episodic or continuing in turns, but still remained focused and concerned with quality and style. In many ways, I think that Hellsing, like some other shows such as Noir, would have benefited more from being a shorter OVA series than a television program. A higher budget would have allowed them to more easily maintain the style and atmosphere they are clearly capable of producing while the limited space would have hopefully forced them to the focus the show needs.
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By Derek Guder Manga fans have long envied the truly massive comic collections that the Japanese received weekly. Thousands of pages of manga so often for so little – its almost like heaven for some people. Sadly, the American comic market, geared around a monthly schedule with a greater emphasis on production value, has nothing really comparable, though we are not without a few of our own manga magazines. Those collections that are available make for excellent monthly samplings or tours of a variety of manga styles and genres.
Originally, this was supposed to be a tour of the magazines available in America (specifically, in my local comic store). I went to my local comic store, bought a whole bunch of issues (it’s easier to spend money when you call it "research") and came home happy and content, intending to write a celebration of manga magazines, showing fans the variety out there and urging people to check them out. Somewhere along the way, however, as it was lost in revisions and rewriting, two of my favorite magazines, Pulp and Smile, were cancelled. Suddenly, this became less of a celebration of the manga industry in America than an obituary to mark the passing of the best, and a commentary on why they failed.
Unfortunately, recent events have severely constricted even those few choices. Tokyopop’s restructuring (and dramatic expansion) of their manga release format and schedule left no place for their shoujo manga magazine Smile, and low sales led Viz to declare that the last issue of the superb Pulp will be released this summer. Despite these losses, however, hopeful and curious readers can still turn to the venerable Animerica Extra and the much more recent (but very well done) Super Manga Blast!.
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Animerica Extra, Viz Communications, Inc., http://www.animerica-mag.com As the name would suggest, Animerica Extra is the sister production to the general anime magazine Animerica. The longest standing manga magazine in America, it contains several serialized manga titles as well as a handful of short articles. The average anime fan would be likely to flip through an issue simply due to name brand recognition: three of its six manga are also very popular anime titles. Every issue also includes a few short articles about successful and noteworthy manga that have yet to be translated, which are interesting to hear about even though it is frustrating to hear about something I know I would enjoy but won’t likely ever see in English. The one with probably the largest fan following is Fushigi Yuugi, the story of a modern Japanese schoolgirl tossed into plots of destiny, love and sacrifice in another dimension strongly resembling ancient China. The epic anime has a huge fan following, but my enjoyment of it was often ruined by the antics of the aforementioned schoolgirl – Miaka. In the manga version however, she comes across as much less stupid, which is a vast improvement. A touching tale with great characters and just enough supernatural elements tossed in to keep everything exotic, fans of romance and fantasy are definitely advised to check it out.
The relatively recent addition of Revolutionary Girl Utena is also sure to attract new readers, as the anime 34 rapidly developed a following of its own. Be warned, however, the manga does not follow the anime exactly. While it has not yet had time to fully diverge from the anime, it has its own… unique pacing, and is somewhat cuter than the anime – plus it lacks the stock footage, a huge bonus. Very surreal and heavy with symbolism, Utena is a bit hard to properly describe to those unfamiliar with it. Let’s just say love triangles, lesbian overtones and rampant slapping fill this story of "fencers" fighting for the ultimate prize. Video Girl Ai is a large part of the reason that I got a subscription to Animerica Extra – it’s hard to resist the allure of hopeless adolescent love stories so thoroughly mixed with shameless cheesecake. A shy boy with unrequited love rents a tape to cheer himself up, only to have the girl on it become real and pledge to help
him win his heart’s desire. The characters are depressingly easy to identify with for us geeks, but the manga’s lighthearted nature and willingness to indulge itself in the omnipresent fanservice keeps it from being too sappy, but it also may prevent some more… *ahem*… sensitive readers from enjoying it. A recent addition to the magazine is the action manga Chicago. Set in something of a vaguely futuristic city after some sort of presumably small-scale military conflict, it seems to be a mixture of action and espionage with a distinctly shoujo styling, though that’s just an assumption based off the emotion-laden monologues and art style. Speaking of Chicago’s art style, it takes some getting used to. It shares much of the wispiness of many shoujo titles but is thankfully more concrete, at the same time managing to preserve a nice sketchiness that lends a sense of energy to the manga. If only the eyes weren’t so frustratingly strange. I’d call them perpetually watery or cloudy, but they seem like nothing so much as simply unfinished. The other titles in the magazine are Marionette Generation and Steam Detectives. The former, whose creator did the character designs for Macross, manages to reach that critical mass of cuteness sometimes and can be a lot of amusing fun. Sadly, it also lacks a clear sense of direction. Not entirely sure of what it wants to do sometimes, this "love triangle between a boy, a girl and a living doll" tends to meander and lose its way much too often. The more recent material seems to have reached a more concentrated level of cohesion, however, so it may improve in the future. Steam Detectives is a straight-up pulp hero story of a boy and his robot out to protect the innocent. While I found myself unexpectedly warming to the rather stylized artwork of Kia Asamiya, the story leaves much to be desired. It almost seems like it refuses to rise above the basic conceit of using one robot to fight for justice against the evil mechanical legions of some criminal genius. As I have little patience for simple stories of heroics and black-and-white moral lessons, Steam Detectives falls flat. Unfortunately, with the recent demise of the superb magazine Pulp (see the accompanying sidebar), Animerica Extra is slated to be expanded later this year to include Banana Fish, a shounen-ai story about some convoluted plot involving mind control drugs developed by the CIA, world crime organizations and lots of gay sex. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t really care that every romantic (or even just sexual) relationship in the title is between two men, I just can’t take such an overwrought and melodramatic series. Banana Fish takes itself way too seriously for anyone’s good, wrapping its angst-ridden (yet still nearly perfect) characters in vast, convoluted plots of revenge and betrayal. There has been only one scene from the manga I’ve actually enjoyed, and that was the much more light-hearted banter between the two male leads (and lovers). If it could just sit back and laugh at itself sometimes, it would be vastly improved. The Record of the Fallen
Volume 1, Number 2
The cancellations of both Pulp and Smile is really a massive blow to the manga industry in America, as both were among the most significant sources for "non mainstream" manga titles. Smile provided a venue for a variety of predominantly shoujo (girls’) titles, but Tokyopop’s new release schedule of monthly graphic novels left no room for it. The resoundingly average Juline and virtually completely incomprehensible Sailor Moon StarS both ran in it for quite a while, but a number of other, more unique, titles first appeared in English between Smile’s covers. The stylish and intricate CLAMP masterpiece Clover and the high school drama Peach Girl (which reminds me of nothing so much as KareKano) were both first published here before jumping to graphic novels. In fact, just before its cancellation, Smile was slated to serve as just such an introduction house, giving newly released titles a few months to warm up fans before moving to a graphic novel only release. Paradis Kiss was one of the last manga to do this, and its unique art style and frank and amusing characters make it well worth checking out.
The loss of Pulp is even more devastating than Smile’s, actually. Pulp served not only as a home for more "adult" (read: mature, as in gory or sexual) or experimental manga, but it also supplied some of the best articles on anime, manga and general Asian entertainment available in English. Even without the unforgettable manga (just try to erase the cutely twisted imagery of Cinderalla or the first time Uzumaki sent a shiver up your spine from your memory) I would have snatched up each issue of Pulp the moment it came out. From insightful interviews with creators to Hong Kong and Japanese cinema reviews (Pulp showed me the joys of Takashi Miike) to a monthly whirlwind tour of manga releases in America, Pulp covered it with an unrivaled style and talent. It will be sorely missed, and my dreams of one day seeing my own work on its pages have been shattered.
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Super Manga Blast!, Dark Horse Comics, Inc., http://www.darkhorse.com With Pulp now gone, the title of "Best American Manga Magazine" moves to Super Manga Blast!, simply to the quality of the titles it contains. Begun just within the last few years from Dark Horse, the magazine is manga and only manga, no articles and very few ads, just 128 pages of manga - almost uniformly excellent manga at that. The most recognizable title in the lineup is almost certainly 3x3 Eyes, as most anime fans should be familiar with the anime. The manga has a lot more room than the two OVA series did, and although the two previous trade paperbacks did little with that the current story arc is definitely taking advantage of that space. The story of the last sanjiyan’s (three-eyed demons) attempt to become a normal human girl and her blossoming love with her protector, the manga is still in the beginning of the second OVA. Both the art and the storytelling are solidly in the late ‘80s style, but its lighthearted and fun nature keeps it from feeling hopelessly dated, making it more warmly nostalgic.
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It’s the cute and well-drawn manga Shadow Star that is really the jewel in SMB!’s crown, however, and almost single-handedly the reason I’d call this the best manga magazine available in Ameirca. Despite the cute (and very alien) little monsters and spunky main character, this is a far cry from Pokemon. We are treated to surprisingly deft characterization against a misleadingly standard backdrop of a "young kid discovers cute monster and make friends only to learn that the creature is much more than it appears and is drawn into grand adventure" kind of plot. The story’s ominous air of misfortune and hidden conspiracy hidden behind bursts of outright hilarious dialogue meshes perfectly with the simple and strong artwork. Shadow Star is definitely a title to keep an eye on, worth the price of admission to SMB! all by itself.
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Two other titles in the magazine are both from the same artist, the longer running animal comedy What’s Michael? and the newer (apparently a romantic comedy) Club 9. The former is an amusing collection of short and amusing gag strips, almost always revolving around people and their relationships with their pets. Most of them are simply quick little charming stories poking fun at animals and their owners, but the best ones are the running stories, like the yakuza thug with the worst luck with cats or the parody of The Fugitive, with a veterinarian on the run. Club 9, on the other hand, follows a complete klutz of a girl from her hick home town to college in – guess where – the big city of Tokyo. I’ve found Club 9 to be fairly amusing, though it’s still really just beginning. The art is even more… unique than What’s Michael? though, and many people simply cannot take the extraordinarily thick accent the main character carries in the manga. Neither title really has the normal anime/manga style, though. Neither extremely cool or tooth-achingly cute, a lot of people breeze right past both of them. The big exception to SMB!’s quality is the very poor manga Seraphic Feather. Looking liks some cheap CLAMP knock-off with enough conspiracies, bishounen, transvestites and psychic powers to choke a horse, it lacks their talent and ends up jumble of cliches. Even worse, the artist (Hiroyuki Utatane) can only really draw panties and super-deformed characters with any skill, despite his insistence on attempting action scenes and a wider range of T&A. Seraphic Feather is a large blemish on the magazine, and I can only hope that it will get squeezed out in favor of something that’s actually worth reading.
Antarctic Press Confuses Me While I was collecting magazines for "research" on this article, I picked up a number of "American manga" (yes, the term isn’t really accurate, but for lack of a better one, bear with me) collections as well. I came home with several issues of Benzine and Manga EX, both published by Antarctic Press. I was not particularly impressed, but I sought out more so that I could get a larger sampling to build a more informed opinion from. But I couldn’t find any more, even at the store I had originally bought them from, and after several fruitless trips, I threw my hands up in defeat. Then I found Mangazine, yet another magazine published by Antarctic Press, though different from the previous two in that it was many, many times their size. So now I was completely confused, as I couldn’t find any more issues of magazines I’d seen several of before and all I could find was a massive collection that I’d never encountered before. Some poking around AP’s web site cleared up some of the confusion, at least. It seems that Mangazine, the one I’d found last, is actually the oldest title, beginning back all the way to July of 1999. Benzine and Manga EX were both (thankfully) much shorter lived projects, running from October 2000 to May 2001 and February 2001 to December 2001, respectively.
Why Bother With It All?
The other confusing thing about Mangazine, however, was that it seems to be a collection of five AP titles that are all available individually. Why they would put a bunch of titles that I’d imagine sell very well alone (Gold Digger, Warrior Nun Areala) together at a much reduced price (one payment of $8.99 instead of five of around $3.00? sounds like a deal to me) is beyond me, however, and their web site certainly didn’t offer an explanation. Even at the reduced price, however, my opinion of "American manga" remains the same: it’s not really worth spending money on. I would enjoy all of AP’s titles as free web comics or something similar, but none of them are polished enough mixtures of cheesecake and action to actually get my monetary vote.
Volume 1, Number 2
With the recent cancellation of fully half of the manga magazines in America, I was initially worried about the remaining two. Thankfully, both Animerica Extra and Super Manga Blast! seem to be selling reasonably well, and their circulation may even be growing. So why did they succeed where Smile and Pulp both failed? Both of the surviving magazines have a very broad target audience, each has some action, a bit of comedy, a dash of romance and a hint of conspiracy. Almost any manga fan should be able to find at least something interesting in each. Smile and Pulp, on the other hand, were both much more focused magazines. Smile on shoujo manga and Pulp on what might be called "independent" manga, or at least more underground and less mainstream. Unfortunately, it just seems that there aren’t enough people in those subsets of an already niche market to support publications dedicated to them. It’s an unfortunate loss.
Why? Why is it so unfortunate that they were cancelled, especially since all the titles that were published in them will continue to be released in graphic novel format? Because manga magazines are not only nice samples of different 37 genres and styles, but they also expose readers to things they might not have otherwise given a second thought to. If I hadn’t picked up several issues of Smile I never would have discovered the charming gem Peach Girl. If I hadn’t devoured Pulp each month, I wouldn’t have come to appreciate the absurdity of Bakune Young. Some titles I buy again when they are released as graphic novels, despite the fact that I still have all my individual issues in a nice and tidy box. Others I won’t revisit again, but I almost always would have rather read them than never heard of them at all. I’ve found many more excellent series by coming to know them and get a real feeling for them through monthly sampling than I have by randomly grabbing collections from the store shelves. Magazines are cheaper anyway…
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Eastern Standard Time
by Eric Chon
Lights flash about my vision like some sort of druggedout 60s fever dream. A constant thumping echoes across the floor and through my veins. Left. Right. Up. Up. Images race across my mind; patterns of light and color dance everywhere. I’m drawn in – hypnotized into a trance-like state. Just one more step. One more beat. One more song. I am slave to its video caress. A crowd, somewhere in the distance, cheers me on. There is nothing else. There is only…the beat. And then, like fingernails across a chalk board, “Are you a monkey??” Everything comes screeching to a halt. My brief journey into the epicenter of a dance revolution ends in a lurch. No longer does the crowd cheer for me. I am not a hero. Volume 1, Number 2
Although around for quite some time, only recently has Konami’s (in)famous Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) dug its icy talons into the very center of my videogame addiction. And like so many before me, its clutch was stronger than mine and DDR has held me captive ever since. Only after holding a newly-played copy of Dance Dance Revolution Disney Mix did I realize exactly how deep I’ve fallen. When does a simple interest become dangerous addiction? And how does it happen?
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Vile Disgust Turns Into Frightening Obsession Isn’t that always the case? My previous addiction was much more sensible and dignified. I was a Certified Apostle of The Divine Order of Tekken (it’s true, just ask me to whip out my papers). Always a fan of the beat-‘em-ups, fighting games were the logical next step and I believed Tekken (and Tekken 3 in particular) was the zenith. I had made friends, cut classes, and lost money because of this game. I was the first on my block with an import copy for my venerable Playstation. As time progressed, a close friend of mine showed up with a copy of Beat Mania, a nifty rhythm game that incorporated a cool peripheral (scratch-pad a la DJ Turntables). I was introduced to rhythm and music games but didn’t think much of them. Of course, the genre progressed (I was then enjoying Parappa and Um Jammer Lammy) and I got a chance to play Bust-A-Groove (also known as Bust-AMove in Japan). I got hooked for a short while. Perhaps I have a certain aptitude for rhythm games (playing an instrument for 14 years certainly helps), but it was fun beating my friends in something that didn’t involve ass-kicking. It was short-lived however and I quickly forgot about it.
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Of course time passed and I heard mention of a new dance game that actually made you move around. Being a not-so-slim gamer, I scoffed at it and said it was thinly-disguised exercise. Bah. I disdained it and mocked those who played it. I watched in morbid fascination as gamers…moved as they played. It was a horrifying sight at first. Then, it became amusing as the level of ridiculousness hit me. Not to be harsh, but here were societal rejects playing a Japanese game that was telling everyone how cool it was to hop around like a maniac. All I could do was imagine myself in said situation and shake my head in disgust. That was my attitude right until the end of this year’s Katsucon (2002) when *another* good friend convinced both Derek and I to at least try the game. I don’t know how they were able to pique our curiosity enough to agree to it, but it worked. Shortly after the convention, we embarked on our first experience with DDR in the arcade. Three hours later, Derek and I were both convinced that we had to get the game for ourselves. Stat.
Inject It RIGHT INTO MY GODDAMN VEINS!!
After my initial foray into the near-drug-induced frenzy of DDR, the urgency with which I needed to snort 100% Pure Columbian-by-wayof-Japan started to taper off. My PSX was at home (after suffering underneath the booted-heel of a dreaded Cable-TV repairman) and, as far as I knew, there wasn’t a Dreamcast version. Oh how wrong 40 I was. Derek, being much newer to this whole “magical video-box” phenomenon than I, had bought a Dreamcast for Soul Calibur (yay!) and the promise that DDR was, in fact, available for the system. He even was the first to get a pad and copies of the game. At last we could finally be stupid in the privacy of our own living room. It was fairly embarrassing at times to go out on the arcade-pad and get smoked by a 12-year old girl.
It was then we started inquiring about making the home experience better. Information poured in about modifying your pads, what surfaces were best to play on, and where you could get different brands. I didn’t know that such a supportcommunity existed for “feet-crack.” Support as in “support your habit” support. I finally buckled and brought my PSX back up, spent large amounts of money I didn’t have on a pad and a pad cover, and began to acquire the games like they were going outta style. I couldn’t and can’t stop. Figuring that DDR Konamix (the latest release for the US market) would satiate my hunger was a foolish and naïve move. It only fueled my fire and I started trying to get as many people addicted as possible. You know, an obsession is only really fun when other people do it with you (kind of like sex). I became like a crazed maniac – offering a glimpse into dance-pad heaven for anyone I could ensnare. Nobody was safe from my offers and appeals. “Howabout one game?” I would ask. “It’s just one little game. It’s not like it’ll hurt you. Everybody’s doing it.” My voice and dialogue started to resemble some bizarre and twisted after-school special! All I needed was just one unlucky soul, and the spiral into ‘Left! Right! Up!’ madness would begin. No longer would I be one, but legion!
So…What Anyway?
the
Hell
is
Hacking Your Pad and Playstation You’ll need to either mod your PSOne to play these imports, or get an old grey PSX with a parallel port on the back and get a GoldFinger/Game Shark. Check out Buy Right Video Games (www.buyrite.net) or National Console Support X (www.ncsx.com) for further information. The only pads I’ve been able to find in the local stores around here (EBX and Babbages) are the crappy ones by Mad Catz or similar. I was able to obtain a different, arcadesized pad via Red Octane (www.redoctane.com) that really kicks some ass. Even if you do just get a regular pad, e-bay regularly has auctions for pad covers that really enhance playability.
It
Dance Dance Revolution is infinitely simple in concept and that’s where the game is at its most deceiving. You only have to keep track of four (4) buttons - left, right, up, and down – represented as arrows on the screen. The arrows are arranged into a line on the screen; this represents the “beat.” Below the line, arrows scroll up from the bottom of the screen. As they pass the “beat” you have to hit the corresponding arrow on the dance-pad – this is done all in time to the music. Essentially, it boils down to “hit the right arrow at the right time.” It all seems easy, doesn’t it? But who could possibly be addicted to something that sounded so lame?
Volume 1, Number 2
If you’ve never heard of the game you’ve either been busy searching for lost Nazi gold for the past few years or living in some illicit relationship to some woodland animal in the forest. This section is for you.
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Therein lies the challenge, and the drive that makes almost everyone scream bloody murder even as they feverishly “dance” to avoid mockery by the most unholy of announcers. Each song has a “foot” rating detailing its difficulty. The more “feet” a song has, the harder it is. That could mean anything from a faster beat, more steps to hit, half-beat steps, and double-steps (where you have to hit two arrows at the same time). Let’s not forget to mention that there are “Trick” and “Maniac” modes for each song. So what started as a simple rhythm game becomes a Byzantine ordeal attainable by only the most dexterous of gamers. And what gamer shies away from challenge? Make An Ass of Yourself in the Privacy of Your Own Home – 4 Easy steps! 1) Obtain (by any means necessary and/or legal) a PSone or PS2 2) Procure a copy of Dance Dance Revolution, Dance Dance Revolution Konamix, or go for the gold with Dance Dance Revolution Disney Mix 3) Get yourself a nice dance-pad (controllers are for chumps) 4) Proceed to look like an idiot in front of your television It all seems so simple. But, truth be told, there are at least four more mixes available on the Playstation and one more for the PS2 – all only available as imports (for now). Here are There are tons of different kinds of dancedescriptions of the mixes pads out there as well, including hard pads I’ve played/owned: made of metal and plastic. There are instructions on-line on how to modify Dance Dance Revolution – The grand-daddy of them all. Has your dance-pads! a crude interface and low-end graphics but certainly has some good songs on it. Yes, this thing has reached cult
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2nd Remix – Similar in many ways to the first, but the dude has a mesh-shirt that’s really quite awful to stare at all the time. Import.
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3rd Mix- The first one I played in the arcade. It’s got my favorites (Butterfly, Dub I Dub, etc…) and I remember the songs the best here. Selection-wise, I think it’s the best of the bunch. Import. 4th Mix – Newer, super-slick interface that can also be seen on Konamix. Lots of good stuff here as well but starts getting a little strange in their songs. I guess Konami’s experimenting with different song formats beyond techno. Import. 5th Mix – The latest one for me. Even slicker interface with a better selection of music than 4th. Second best in my opinion. Import. Konamix – A mix of songs from 4th Mix, and some ones I haven’t seen elsewhere, with tons of extras. Same interface as 4th Mix. Disney – Sick. Just sick. Imagine techno-versions of “Supercalifragalistic.” Has some neat features (including showing you your score *as* you play) and some songs from other mixes thrown in there. Still, it’s disturbing to witness “DJ Donald, Master of the Turntables.”
status. And I’m no longer afraid to admit that not only do I subscribe to their magazine, but I solicit for it too. Next time I may knock on your door!
Legend What happens when you take 6 epic stories of massive proportions, intertwine them into one mammoth battle near their respective ends, and then condense it all into a movie? You get Legend of Zu, a mass of stories jumbled together with huge effects and big-name actors. That’s not to say that Zu is bad or even mediocre, but be willing to chart your own time-line prior to experiencing Tsui Hark’s latest and greatest. Zu Mountain is a beautiful and majestic mountain that is forever the center of a raging war between evil and mankind. Protected by the greatest warriors in the world, it is the focal point for any invasion of evil - and this trial is its greatest. Despite the movie’s giant cast filled with martial-artists and warriors, Legend of Zu is a romance at its very core. It interweaves King Sky’s (Ekin Cheng) forbidden love with his master, Dawn (Cecilia Cheung), with Lord Insomnia’s designs for world domination.
Hark’s original Zu: Warriors of the Mystic Mountain was a phenomenal feat that combined a tried and true martialarts fantasy story with great visuals that were, at the time, unparalleled in Hong Kong. Some say it spawned the modern martial-arts fantasy genre itself. Its combination of magic and sword-play fueled by state-of-the-art special effects left a resounding impact with viewers everywhere. Films since have taken the basic precepts introduced in Zu: Warriors and pushed the boundaries to new heights. Recent examples, such as the amazing Stormriders, only show us how far this genre has come. And now Hark is back to show us how a real martial-arts fantasy movie is supposed to be.
Volume 1, Number 2
Insomnia ripped Dawn away from King Sky hundreds of years ago - causing King Sky to become a stoic and haunted figure, only to discover Enigma as Insomnia prepares his final assault against Zu. Enigma (also played by Cecilia Cheung) is the reincarnation of Dawn who has yet to remember who she is. The quiet and subtle interchanges between the two are worth the entry fee alone.
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I guess squishing a bunch of colossal tales into one is how it’s supposed to be. It’s visible that Tsui Hark sought to outdo himself, and all those after and before him, with Legend of Zu – everything from the big-name stars to the amazingly vibrant (and copious) visual effects just screams “More!” In the hands of an incompetent or pedestrian director, this would be a disaster of Emmerich proportions. Despite these obstacles, Hark turns what could be a muddled mess into a near cohesive movie that entertains as much as it confuses. Legend of Zu’s main problem lies in its ambition – it tries too hard to tell the whole story. You may think that giving the whole story is the most important factor, but in this case I’d have been happy jumping into the middle of the finalclimactic-battle-to-end-all-final-climactic-battles. It would have been just as much a visual feast (if not more so) and much more consistent. We wouldn’t be introduced to kick-ass characters who then proceed to kick ass and disappear with only five minutes of screen time. For those who’ve seen Giant Robo, you know what I mean.
Eastern Standard Time
Again, if they were forgettable entities with spiffy-keen powers it would’ve been okay. But it feels as if each character has a universe of stories stored in their history – and we’re only allowed the briefest of glimpses. Events happen at such a frantic pace that keeping track of all of them requires more than enough patience. Adding flash-back sequences definitely do not help. It only serves to confuse further as we wonder who the hell all these other people are. I suppose it’s beginning sound like Legend is too confusing to deal with, perhaps a bit too disjointed to enjoy. That couldn’t be farther from the truth.
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Strong performances by Ekin Cheng (Stormriders, Man Called Hero, everything else…) and Louis Koo add a lot of depth to all the confrontations in this movie. Sammo Hung reprises his role from the first Zu flawlessly (but this time, he ain’t tied to no boulder). Each of the main characters are played with passion and emotion – despite the abundance of super-powered kung-fu heroes, there isn’t a throwaway among the bunch. And if nothing else, each character is designed flawlessly – they all look bitchin’! The only exception to this rule is, sadly, the near forgettable Zhang Zi-Yi. This is through no fault in her performance; rather she seems to have been a last-minute addition to capture some of the fans of Crouching Tiger. Although the special effects can get a bit over-the-top (in a Hong Kong movie? No way!), they seemed to have spent a very long time creating a unique and detailed look for everyone’s super-power. And that’s what it all boils down too, really. It’s a rebirth of the original Chinese martial-arts fantasy movie. Super-powered kung-fu versus impending doom. Legend of Zu makes you feel like you’re witnessing something bigger than life – something larger than what’s presented on the screen, and that’s okay. If I still get to witness this ancient Chinese super-hero fantasy, that’s what really counts.
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So, you want to write for us? Or perhaps send in a piece of fan art? Well you’ve come to the right section. We’re always looking for outside ideas and your creativity to help make this publication the best it possibly can be. So with that in mind, here are some guidelines should you want to help us out: Writers If you have this fantastic idea for an article, tell us what it is! You should do this before you write it. Why? Well, if someone came up with a similar article before you and started already, it’d be terrible to find out we couldn’t use it if you had already written it. This way it’ll save you lots of time and trouble (which we all want to do). If you don’t have an idea but would really like to write for us, let us know as well. Perhaps we can come up with something that’ll best suit your abilities. If you want to review a game or video, make sure you have it first (or at least access to it). So far, everything reviewed here is owned by one of us so we can’t really send out tapes/games for people to review (though we would like to be able to do that someday). Fan Artists You don’t have to write ahead for this. We want it all! However, due to budget constraints we might not be able to print every thing we get right away(this is assuming people actually send us stuff). Keep in mind that we will print it one way or another (we do have a website after all) and in the order we received it. Please try not to fold whatever you’re sending us, and we really can’t scan things in that are too much bigger than a page. However, since we may put it online feel free to send in color work. Make sure you print your name clearly on the artwork (back, side) so we can give proper credit. Also be sure to include your age and location. We won’t be able to send anything back (it’s a hassle for everyone involved here) so if you’d rather send a print, that’s perfectly fine. We also accept e-mail submissions. Just make sure you scan it in at 300 dpi. Now get cracking! We can’t wait to see what guys can do.
Contact Information
If you’d like a response, please also include a Self-Addressed Stamped Envelope. That’s only if you don’t email us that is. Please send all mail, letterbombs, money, toys, and siblings to: Eastern Standard Time c/o Derek Guder 6 Menlo Street Brighton, MA 02138 Want to reach us on-line? Connect to: www.eastern-standard.com
Volume 1, Number 2
All letters to this magazine must clearly include the authors name, address, and may be edited for clarity or length. We promise to not butcher your letter, honest!
45
By Eric Chon Illustrations by Jeremiah Colonna-Romano
satisfaction when There is a strong sense of vie. It’s hard to explain, watching a good zombie mo dead chewing on people’s un e th t ou ab g in th me so t bu rhaps it’s the utter brains feels just right. Pe lar image that creates a ridiculousness of said popu or and comedy. Regardless synaptic spark between horr plain silly and, dammit, of intent, zombies are just that’s the way it should be.
Eastern Standard Time
When you understand this fact, it seems secon d nature to assume a zombie-movie bent on “making with the funny ” would be a good idea, and rightly so! Perhaps it’s a natural human respo nse to laugh at horrible things – and nothing is worse than a walking stiff. Evil Dead 2 and Dead Alive are two such examples where the blending of the cadaverous and the comical creates cinematic success. But who, then, carries the torch when both Raimi and Jackson yearn for the epic adve ntures of super-men and sorcerers?
46
ile
if only for a brief wh Wilson Yip is your man, ie, mb -Zo Bio of se ca In the afterwards). seemed to decompose (his love for the undead
There’s some plot that involves the Milit ary and a drugged soft-drink that gives us the zombies to begin with, but its significance is quickly discarded as soon as the first zombie makes its way into the shopping mall. It’s all a fairly weak pretense to get to the may hem (much like many other horror movies out there). Although Bio-Zom bie’s chemically created corpses are nothing new, there is a certain charm and inventiveness about the film. And they lie within the main characters. Invincible Woo dy (Jordan Cha n) and Crazy B hoodlums that ee (Sam Lee) ar work the pirate e two young VCD store in a days scammin local mall. They g high-school spend their kids, hitting on and acting toug chicks, playing h. Sure this so video games, unds innocent beginning of an enough and co y number of Am uld be the erican drama-an main character’s gst movies. But names, this is H just like the ong Kong throug h and through.
dering n Woody and Bee hit a man wan The meat of the film begins whe tary mili a be to s s’ car. He just so happen around on the street with their bos way w-a thro (see bottle of the evil soft-drink officer who has escaped with a to the quite dead yet, the officer motions zombie explanation above). Not on mpi cha e quit of its deadly contents. Not drink, supposedly to warn them gulp big a him the man is thirsty and give thinkers, Woody and Bee assume trunk, rse, they freak out, put him in the cou – which proceeds to kill him. Of thugs t htes brig I mention they weren’t the and then go back to work (did ws follo rity hila the bie bedlam ensues and in the world?). Pretty soon, zom suit. Of course, this being a Hong Kong film, there is extreme amounts of gore and violence that accompanies virtually every scene. Zombies continue to shop. Zombies continue to “do their thing” – but at the same time craving brains. Zombies eat at a sushi restaurant that now serves severed fingers rather than salmon. The come dy is also incorpora how Woo te dy and B ee discov d extremely well. A (hit them e scene de r how to in tailin actually s of the De the head – duh!) to p the zom g p ad right d arallels S bies own to th ega’s arc Another e ade-hit H scene wh ouse ere our h “reload” icons and to safety eroes att (ge empt to m sound-effects. off by sho tting to the garag ake a e wing eac and drivin h of their almost lik g the hell mad-dash “stats” an e a Japa away) sta d nese role rts -playing g their “preferred w eapon” ame. medy. As the movie vie than horror and co mo s thi to re mo s are moments of But there’ and mature. There lop ve de rs cte ara ch , become the heroes progresses Bee as they start to d an y od Wo m fro n put, both Chan and compassio started out as. Simply y the s on go the n adds an additional rather tha I was expecting and it ing yth an nd yo be is g gela Tong (playing Lee’s actin vie’s resident hottie, An mo e Th . film the to ish scream-queen dimension m a scheming, squeam fro es go ), lls Ro r cte rman of the film is a the chara nter. And the real supe hu iemb zo ed ad he to a levelbiting bastard. But the who becomes a brainlls Ro th wi e lov in f t had me crying. sushi-che ong and his end almos str too s ve pro ve Lo Power of
r (everyone rmula is simila fo e th gh ou rb. If you s. Alth ie itself is supe o good to mis to ov m is e e th bi ), om es -Z bi Bio ake sure zom ong movies, m K ilding filled with g bu on a H in of ed ld pp wor tra excellent anyone to the production and ce p to du etro -th in er to ov t s wan t. It’ e, it helps Hong Kong styl cluded in the lis e in th is in e bi ly on om t -Z Bio y is no gore and comed combination of define it.
DVD Information
Volume 1, Number 2
Yip also manages to give the film a visu al flare that really sets Bio-Zombie apart from its contemporaries. Camera angles become skewed at moments, giving scenes a surreal and deranged quality. Background scenery is used to distort perception, making the undead seem closer than they actually appear. Colors and costumes became vitally important to the mood of every scene. There are times when the film resemble d a music-video (warped angles, fast cuts) sans the suckiness. All done in a strangely rough, grainy manner that actually enhanced the experience.
The Tokyo Shock DVD is excellent. Picture and audio quality are superb and it even 47 looks nice on your shelf! Although there aren’t too many extras, the previews for other movies are hilarious and there’s even an option to use the original engrish subtitle track to get that full “Hong Kong” experience. Classic!