“Level E”, by Yoshihiro Togashi

You probably all know Yoshihiro Togashi from his hit series “Yu Yu Hakusho” or ” Hunter X Hunter”. I still haven’t read the former, but boy, the things I could tell you of my hot’n heavy love affair with “Hunter X Hunter”! (Still ongoing affair, but man, HxH is a terrible lover. Never calls, never writes, just randomly shows up occasionally for an intense weekend of… okay, I’ll shut up.) Anyway, between these two series, Togashi came up with something very strange and weird that seems to defy pretty much all Weekly Jump rules. Because Togashi can get away with it.

“Level E ” ran in Weekly Shonen Jump for 16 chapters from 1995 to 1997. “Wait”, you say, “there’s only 16 chapters even though it ran for over a year in a weekly magazine?” The explanation? Togashi! If it’s Togashi, all bets are off, you can kiss your genre conventions good-bye along with your magazine guidelines and the laws of physics. Rules do not apply to Togashi.

And while breaking your rules, Togashi will also mock them.

You’ve been asking for it.

At the moment, I am writing my Master thesis. This means I have lots to read, lots to think about and this perpetual guilty conscience when I am being lazy and spending time reading somethng that is not thesis-related. I have some books lined up that I will read when I have time…next year. Same goes for manga. But over the past months, I’ve received a handful of angry comments to my reviews of Bakuman, Beck and Kyoukai no Rinne, and athough I stand by my reviews and am not going to change my mind just because I’m being called a “bigot” for not liking Bakuman… or I’m not going to explain why I didn’t take ch. 50 into account when writing a review a year before the release of ch. 50… I’ll address this other point that keeps coming up: You hate everything! You can’t enjoy anything! Now, this is silly. I’m pretty sure my reviews of World Embryo, Embalming, Luck Stealer and Double Arts have been positive. I called Kyoukai no Rinne “fun”, while regretting that it wasn’t terribly orginal… you know, because I do regret it. Rumiko Takahashi is an experienced mangaka, I should be allowed to expect more of her than “same old”. I know, the manga I admitted to disliking were all popular manga, you just don’t dislike them, right? So you should probably know once and for all that I have always been like this. What I like, I like on my terms, and no amount of people calling me “bitch” will make me change my mind. I’ve disliked Neon Genesis Evangelion, I’ve been slightly disappointed by Monster, and don’t get me started on Death Note.

This blog is for my own opinions and impressions and thoughts. If you don’t want to hear them, then don’t read my reviews. Simple! I’m trying to keep the reviews fun to read, and informative. I know these are my opinions and people will see things differently, that’s why I have always been trying to explain why I like something, or why I dislike something, or which aspects bother me, and so on.

I don’t engage in mindless praise. I just don’t. If you expect to find this here, go away. If you think insulting me will make me write positive Bakuman reviews like a good girl, go away, go away. Just go.

But due to popular demand, my next review will be of a manga I adore desperately, and I will not say a single bad word about it. Sounds good? I consider it, like, the boldest and most fantastic manga ever published in Weekly Shonen Jump. If this manga started its own cult, I’d join. Great, huh? Yeah, stay tuned.

‘Kyoukai no Rinne’, ch. 1-13, by Rumiko Takahashi

When ‘Inuyasha’ finally ended not so long ago, I guess everybody heaved a sigh of relief. It had been fun in the beginning, and I had quickly fallen in love with the characters and the world, but then things started to drag, nothing new happened, character growth came to a screeching halt… I stopped reading the manga altogether after I bought a new volume, accidently skipping the previous volume – and didn’t notice.

Of course, these experiences colour my judgement of Rumiko Takahashi’s post-’Inuyasha’ series.

‘Kagijin’ ch. 1, by Yasuki Tanaka

So we meet again, Mr. Tanaka. I have not been kind on you in the past. I did not have a lot of nice things to say about ‘Jamais Vu’. The biggest problem seems to be that you tend towards the ordinary, the clichés, the been-there-done-that. ‘Jamais Vu’ started out with a bizarre and intriguing science-fiction idea, only to revert to “good humans VS. evil aliens” after just a few pages. It was the kind of story that Baka Ouji-sama would not stand for. (One of these days, I should review ‘Level E’…) And you gave the aliens a weak spot that only M. Night Shyamalan would consider a good idea.

Anyway! ‘Kagijin’ is based on a oneshot by the same name, and is Yasuki Tanaka’s second series in Weekly Jump after the shortlived ‘Hitomi no Catoblepas’.

‘Genkaku Picasso’ ch. 1-2, by Usamaru Furuya

No, no excuses or promises. I’ve been both busy and lazy, and have not read much new manga. Phases like that happen. It’s really a sad state of affairs, because two days ago I walked into the comic section of a store and spent a lot of time staring at the manga shelves, trying to locate something that interests me. Oh, nothing. Is it me, or is it Germany’s saccharine manga market?

OK, what have I read? ‘Genkaku Picasso’, a manga running in Jump SQ. This one’s quite interesting and based on a very neat concept. Sadly, I find the execution a bit lacking, and considering that Usamaru Furuya has quite a bunch of manga onhis resumé (different genres and styles; can’t say he isn’t versatile and creative) there’s no reason to go easy on him.

‘Ultimo’ ch. 0 by Stan Lee and Hiroyuki Takei

I do remember this blog!!! Sorry for the delay, things got between me and manga, and I’m terribly behind on everything. So I’ll catch up by writing about something recent: ‘Ultimo’, the collaboration between Hiroyuki Takei and Stan Lee, is going to start as a series in Jump SQ in February.

In other words, now is the best time to look at the prologue – Chapter 0 – which was released back in April.

‘Beck’ by Harold Sakuishi

I am currently rather busy and have not read much manga, and not much that I feel like blogging about right now. It will come, once I’ve collected my thoughts and all.

I have read 17 volumes of ‘Beck’. When I started, and for the first couple of volumes, I loved it. There was something refreshing about the story, and after a little while of getting used to, I really liked the artwork, too.

But I won’t be reading anymore, and it’s not because the series has changed too much and I don’t like it anymore. That happens a lot with manga, my most prominent example being ‘Naruto’. Wasn’t it great in the beginning, when it was still about those three kids learning to respect each other and work together as a team? Yes, it was. ‘Beck’ lost my interest for the opposite reason: everything stays the same, moves too slowly, and gets repetitive.

‘Beck’ is the story of a struggling band. The emphasis is on struggling - these boys must never, ever get a break. Every success must immediately be followed by a setback. Everybody must be against them, and even their supporters in the industry, who are few, must be unfriendly, rude and make them understand that they must fight every step on the way.

Every now and then, the band will be challenged to a bet: if you sell so-and-so many CDs, you will be allowed to stay with our label. If you don’t manage to get so-and-so many people to visit your concert, you’ll never work with us again, and can forget your career, muahahahaha. They will always bravely accept the bet, and they will never manage to fulfil their side of the bargain – but they will somehow have impressed the other guys anyway, and will still be granted a second chance. And I yawn.

‘Beck’ believes that to be good, a band must be Indie, and must be struggling. Actually, ‘Beck’ has very definite ideas of what a respectable band must be like, and what attitudes its members must hold. They have to be poor and hard-working in menial jobs to finance their lifestyle, they have to admire all the famous English and American rock stars. Very, very much.

The virtuous members of ‘Beck’ are contrasted with another character, Eiji. He used to be in a band with one of the main characters, but now he’s a sell-out: he is with a very successful Japanese band, he is rich, does commercials, can trip around the world and wear expensive clothes etc. Of course, the musical quality of his band is relatively low. He’s mostly paraded through the manga to make sure the reader admires the members of ‘Beck’ and wrinkles his nose at the alternative career path, this rich prettiboy who isn’t really a musician because he doesn’t understand what music is really about.  When asked whether he visited some legendary club in an American city, he replies that he did, but was kind of disappointed by how small and dirty and not at all amazing it was in real life. “Really?” the other guy asks. “The guys from ‘Beck’ said they were completely in awe!” After all, this is where this-and-that legendary band had their legendary concert. This makes the place special, right?

See? Eiji doesn’t GET it. Funnily, I agree with Eiji when it comes to these things. You do not have to worship the toilet John Lennon took a dump on in order to deserve respect as an artist and musician. You can even dislike a certain famous singer out of personal taste, and still be “genuine”. Actually, what’s genuine about blindly adoring the entire Who-is-who of rock music?

I find it cheap of ‘Beck’ to have this character by the name of Eiji, whose sole purpose is to make the main characters look good with his supposed ignorance. I’m not holding out hopes to see his character will develop into something more. ‘Beck’ isn’t so big on character development anyway. Surely the main characters have grown a bit and maybe we know some more details of their backgrounds (in some cases), but when you think about it, they are still pretty much the same as in the beginning. Combine this with what I’ve mentioned earlier, that the story takes one step forth only to take two back, and maybe you understand why I’ve grown tired of this manga. It’s not bad, it’s just always the same.

Oh, I know, I know. Anna is writing another negative review! She is - what was it someone wrote in a comment? – “just overreacting and cant appreciate anything.” Yeah, sorry about that. Much like Eiji, who dislikes a music club despite its fame, I am not wild about ‘Beck’ even though a lot of people are. I have explained why, and you can either agree or disagree. You can also go on angry tirades like the ‘Psyren’ fan who wrote “Give the thing a chance you bitch”.

Speaking of Eiji, have you noticed that in ‘Bakuman’, they also introduced a rival for the main characters, one we’re obviously not supposed to root for, because he is nothing but a selfish, evil brat, if his introductory scene is any indication? And his name is also Eiji.

‘Double Arts’, the end

Just when I had caught up with ‘Double Arts’ again, the manga is cancelled. The reason, as usual, is that the manga seemed rather unpopular with the Jump readership. For the past few weeks, it had been at the back of the magazine. The manga has an open ending – after only 23 chapters and with the characters clearly just about to begin the long journey ahead of them, what else could have been expected? It would have been impossible to wrap the story up in a few chapters, and I’m glad Naoshi Komi did not attempt to do so, and chose to stay true to his pace and his story and the characters instead.

The pace might have been one of the reasons – or the main reason – why the story did not last. ‘Double Arts’ was really rather slow. I have also seen people complain that the battles were too short – I disagree with that, I think ‘Double Arts’d did battles right, because they were not simply short, they were to the point. I like it when battle scenes don’t waste time with long exchanges of kicks and blows, drawn out over panels or pages. I prefer short fights where only the relevant moves are shown, and where the fighting styles or techniques are actually interesting and clever. In that regard, I liked ‘Double Arts’. But I did not mind the slow pace either, since it came across as a direct result of the characters’ behaviour… The Jump audience might see things differently. I’m not the target audience at all.

As for the characters, I liked them, and I loved that they were given the time to act and react realistically. Something else occured to me, probably in relation to the ‘Bakuman’ discussions. ‘Double Arts’ had a lot of female characters. It had more female than male characters. Heck, if you substract the disposable enemies that attack the heroes every now and then, and substract the characters who only appear in like two chapters
… there are three male characters. And roughly twice as many female. A very cynical part of me wants to see a connection between this unusual gender balance and the series’ cancellation… It’s probably a combination of both pace and lack of male characters (to either identify with, or draw yaoi fanart about).

In any case, ‘Double Arts’ was a good manga, and I’ll be looking forward to Naoshi Komi’s future works. Like the oneshot that’s going to appear in Jump SQ next December. Hopefully the Jump SQ audience appreciates him more… they are more mature, I hear…

I’m slightly bitter, yeah. Weekly Jump is boring again now.

Bakuman

I am sort of grateful now, because it is kind of morbidly fascinating how many people are ready to defend sentences like “Men have dreams women can’t understand!” as being facts, not sexist. =_=

Then again, this makes me hate the manga more than it deserves. It does not deserve hatred. It deserves indifference. It’s slow, unoriginal, pretentious and unfunny.
Three chapters and I still don’t even know what genre it is supposed to be. There are instances of drama and instances of over-the-top parody… played straight. This is simply bad storytelling – Jump manga ned to grab the reader more quickly… if we’re 100 pages in and still can’t tell whether the authors are being serious or not, something has gone wrong.

Some people say they love the references to other Jump manga, but those references are mostly simple name-dropping. “We want to become more popular than One Piece!” and “My favourite manga is Dragonball”…

The only reason why we are talking about the manga at all is because it’s by Ohba and Obata.

‘Bakuman’ by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata, ch. 1

It was almost to be expected after Obata’s last few projects, which were little more than average: he teams up again with the writer of ‘Death Note’. Their new manga series, ‘Bakuman’ is just starting in Weekly Jump, with a first chapter of 58 pages.

Obata and Ohba do the only sensible thing in their situation: they come up with a story that is completely different from ‘Death Note’, but allows for occasional ‘Death Note’ references to keep the fans happy. ‘Bakuman’ is about two boys trying to become mangaka, which could become the perfect basis for a lot of self-ironic reflections on the authors’ own careers. The first chapter does have a bit of talk about what a tough job it is even for established authors, which does sound like Obata’s own experience with ‘Ral Grad’, the (rightfully) cancelled ‘Death Note’ successor. But these parts are not particularly funny, nor are they revealing anything new about the business, unless you are completely new to Weekly Jump manga.

I don’t feel ready to review this manga after only one chapter. I will wait a few chapters more to see what kind of series it will become. The first chapter was a little uneven and left me unsure what I thought of it or expected of it in the future.

It was a little boring, too. A lot of time was spent on showing the main character be depressed, pessimistic and disillusioned about his future. It took until the last ten pages for him to perk up and declare his intention of becoming a famous mangaka. That scene suddenly made the manga look like a comedy or even a parody. I’m just not sure if that was intended. After fifty pages of depression, I cannot take the sudden burst of optimism seriously at all. But ‘Bakuman’ isn’t funny enough to be a comedy, and that’s mostly because of its protagonist, who is dull as a brick, and who somehow made ME feel depressed about life halfway through the chapter. If the second chapter will have more of him angsting about the future, I’ll probably quit reading this manga for mental health reasons.

So far: average shonen manga about a boy who wants to follow a dream and become the best in his chosen profession. Biggest problems: very slow pace, lame emo main character. The artwork is nice, definitely more lively than ‘Death Note’, with a more interesting character design. Not sure what to think of the romance aspect yet, but if that isn’t a parody, I’ll barf.