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.

I know Takahashi-sensei has made other series besides ‘Inuyasha’, very different manga, too. But ‘Rinne’ is pretty much in the same vein as ‘Inuyasha’, and has obvious parallels, so I think it’s fair to compare the two. Or even necessary.

Sakura is a first-year high school student who, for a reason that is explained eventually and that delightfully doesn’t mean she is inherently special, can see ghosts. That’s how she notices that her new classmate, Rinne, is working part-time as a shinigami of sorts. Naturally, they become friends and thus help various ghosts with whatever unfinished business binds them to this world.

So far, it’s episodic and light-hearted, often funny and with the occasional surprise thrown in for good measure. I actually find myself enjoying the individual “cases” themselves, instead of just seeing them as an excuse to introduce the characters and elements necessary for the inevitable longer story arc. It’s a solid manga, fun to read and actually funny here and there. I can see it running a long time based on these qualities.

However, like I said, it is pretty similar to ‘Inuyasha’. Maybe the biggest difference can be found between the titular characters, Rinne and Inuyasha, themselves – while the latter had a tragic backstory and a serious inner conflict, Rinne’s situation is a lot simpler and lacks that fascinating quality… It surely gives ‘Kyoukai no Rinne’ a lighter feel, which could be considered to be a disadvantage or an advantage, depending on your personal taste. I certainly don’t need tragic backstories, but still, Rinne seems to lack the depth that Inuyasha had, at least as of now. Sakura… Sakura is Kagome with braids. Not much to say here. Then there’s Shipp… I mean, Rokumon, the mascot-like demon-ish cuddle thing. Appears as a half-cat that looks very similar to Shippo in design, or as a cute black little kitten, or a bigger scarier/funnier demon, you know, like Shippo.

Chapter 13 introduces a mysterious antagonist who Rinne recognizes, and next week we will probably know if this yet unnamed stanger will turn out to be Rinne’s evil half brother or something. ;D Yeah, I wish. Anyway. So far, the characters feel familiar, which of course produces a familiar dynamic, and if you liked ‘Inuyasha’ and miss it, this might be just the thing to fill the hole in your heart. On the other hand, something new and unique would be nice, right?

Actually, I find it annoying that ‘Rinne’ feels so much like ‘Inuyasha’, and not just in subtle, thematic ways that can be explained with being created by the same author with not much time between. The introduction of Rokumon really makes it seem deliberate. And it makes me scared that ‘Rinne’ will end up emulating the worse aspects of ‘Inuyasha’, too, and will never come into its own! Well… only time will tell, and in the meantime,  why not just enjoy the manga! Because it’s definitely fun.

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’.The story is set in a post-apocalyptic world in what used to be Japan, but is now a desert with some ruins sticking out here and there. There is an evil Empire, and a main character, Tsubame, who lives with a bunch of orphaned kids, gathering and selling scrap metal to make a living.. One day, an Imperial officer named Jilda is sent to capture and kill him, but she only knows that he is supposed to be an escaped criminal, and has no further information. When a sandstorm separates her from her men, she’s rescued by Tsubame and eventually discovers his biggest secret, and the real reason why she has been ordered to kill him: Tsubame is a kagijin, that is a being that has a keyhole in his wrist, through which he can unlock – with the right key of course – extremely great power. The kagijin have been used as slaves by the Empire, but of course Tsubame doesn’t yield to such oppression, but wants to be free.

Tsubame means swallow (the bird, not the verb), and Tsubame’s shirt is decorated with a bird print. And he wants to be free. Like a bird. Get it? The Empire’s crest is a bird cage. Subtlety is not a strength of this manga.

There isn’t much to say after one chapter, I think the series could go either way. The setting and overall storyline is pretty generic, as you’ve probably realized yourself. The characters haven’t shown themselves as very interesting yet, and Tsubame goes on my nerves like whoa, but that may be just me. I seldom like manga main characters, but I also seldom loathe them, and there’s something about Tsubame I just don’t like. I can’t put my finger on it. I also dislike his character design, which was changed a lot from the oneshot… I liked it in the oneshot, actually, so this was disappointing and might be clouding my judgment. The positive change from the oneshot, however, concerns the female lead. While she was little else but two breasts in skimpy clothes that needed rescue, Jilda of the series has clothes, a job and does more than whimper in sexy poses. Congrats!

However, I like the artwork (excluding the main character’s design). Tanaka-sensei seems to have improved a lot, and maybe also changed his style slightly. There is a hint of Akira Toriyama about the setting and the secondary characters. It feels nicely nostalgic, I like it.

I want to end this review on a positive note, I really do, but it’s hard. There’s little originality about ‘Kagijin’. The main attraction for me is the aforementioned nostalgia, which is not really a criteria, I guess… and probably won’t hold my interest for long. This manga lacks whatever it takes to make a manga really memorable or unique. I could imagine reading it for fun, without growing too attached to anything. Only time will tell.

Maybe Tanaka-sensei should team up with a writer, because his artwork is clean and nice-looking, but he doesn’t seem very good at the writing part.

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.

Hikari gets the nickname “Picasso” at school when he accidently misspells his name “Hikaso”, from which it’s just one tiny little squiggle to “Pikaso”. This fits insofar as he is constantly drawing on his sketchbook at school. He’s a loner and… honestly, rather rude and unlikable. One of the girls at school, Chiaki, befriends him practically against his will, through sheer persistence. But there is a freak accident, a helicopter crashes into them as they are sitting by a river, and Chiaki dies. Hikari survives, but he quickly learns that this was no lucky coincidence: rather, Chiaki made a deal so he could live: now she accompanies him in the form of a small shoulder-angel, invisible to anybody but him. Also, in order to stay alive, Hikari – Picasso – must save people.

After this accident, Picasso can see the auras of the people around him, and notices when someone has a deep-seated trauma that’s close to ruining or ending their life. He is able to draw a sketch that represents the person’s trauma, a surreal landscape that he and Chiaki can enter to figure out the person’s problem and solve a riddle to heal the trauma. That way, Picasso and Chiaki can save some of their classmates – and in a  curious twist to any such manga, the people he saved do somehow figure out that they owe Picasso something, and become his friends.

I have a number of problems with this manga. I find the main character utterly unlikable. His pessimism and hostility towards anybody is really making it hard to care about him. The character design is a bit strange as well. At first glance, I thought Hikari was a girl: the author draws the lips and eyelashes very pronounced, giving everyone a feminine touch. But this is all minor, and maybe there’s a good explanation. Maybe Picasso has a mysterious trauma of his own and this will be revealed at the end of the story, as a final challenge. Maybe he’s really a girl.

Anyway, the biggest problem is that the manga cannot really live up to its potential. I find the idea of entering surreal worlds that represent a soul, in order to solve riddles, very enticing. Especially the first sketch is very cool and atmospheric, and has a bit of a scary feel to it. The solution to the riddle is not very challenging, but for a first chapter, that’s okay. However, the second chapter’s riddle and solution is not just banal, but downright ridiculous: a girl is growing weaker and weaker because she refuses to eat any vegetables, and the explanation is that the family had a bunny when she was a baby, and the bunny died from dehydration, but the baby believed that it died because it ate vegetables, and this is why all her life, the girl believed vegetables to be evil – subconsciously, without even remembering the bunny. Yeah, I got nothing.

With more complex and thought-out riddles to solve, as well as rescues that take more than one chapter, the manga could be fantastic. Maybe I am too pessimistic and it picks up after the first few chapters? But the problem seems very basic: the concept is great, but if the individual “cases” are badly executed, it really doesn’t matter. Once the novelty factor has run out, it’s the characters and their stories that must keep the story going. By the way, the artwork is cool despite my issues with the lips. I love that the scenes that take place within the paintings are actually drawn in a pencil sketch style, including the characters. I’d love more of that, of surreal drawings and adventures in a hidden world that obeys a strange logic… and now I’m off looking at Escher drawings.

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.

‘Ultimo’ starts out simple enough: a certain Dr. Dunstan creates two artificial, doll-like, boy-shaped robot creatures: Ultimo, who is goodness incarnate, and Vice, who is pure evil. Both have arms that can transform to copy any weapon. One thousand years later (from our pov, in the future), they suddenly show up above a city and start battling… I wonder what Dr. Dunstan’s motives were. Two creatures with superhuman abilities whose whole nature dictates that they must forever fight one another, that sure sounds like a particularly nasty thing to unleash on the world. Indeed, the man mentions that the creation of Ultimo and Vice is his “curse” for the world, and he wonders aloud how the people of the world will react to this.

At worst, this will be a series about two superhumans with one-dimensional personalities fighting each other with increasingly insane weaponry. At best, it will be a story about how ordinary people react to the presence of such beings and such powers. A social experiment, if you will. An exploration of human nature.

The prologue sets up a couple of things that might work in that second direction: Vice loses an arm, which is recovered by a soldier – a soldier who is very thrilled to get his hands on such a powerful device! (He wears glasses, too. Allow me to rely on broad manga stereotypes, but that means he is intelligent and possibly a scientist; someone who could study the technology of the arm to develop high-tech weapons! Oh no.) Meanwhile, a simple policeman is fascinated by the two robot boys and decides to investigate their existence… And there is also a group of monks setting out to rid the Earth from Vice and Ultimo (who, they believe, really shouldn’t be there at all), and there is even an ominous business man who seems to have been anticipating the incident, and plans to exploit it in some way…

The  battle between Vice and Ultimo ends with an extremely powerful attack that seemingly catapults the two right into space. But Ultimo at least remains on Earth: he is found unconscious by a hiker on Mt. Fuji.

The prologue is written in a particular style where the action is overlaid with a narrative text in text boxes – the way Yoshihiro Togashi had been doing for a couple of the more recent chapters of ‘Hunter X Hunter’. The effect of that technique is to give the story a sense of fatefulness. It’s a dramatic voice-over narration which illustrates one thing first and foremost: ‘Ultimo’ isn’t modest. This series wants to be epic. Look at how many conflicts are set up!

Apart from that, I’m undecided. Cautiously optimistic, maybe. ‘Ultimo’ has received a lot of flak, and it is true that this chapter isn’t particularly impressive all by itself. Since it concerns itself with foreshadowing and introducing the story’s setting, the characters – the meat of any story – remain anonymous. And Ultimo and Vice themselves are problematic the way they appear in this story: purposely one-dimensional and impossible to relate to. But there’s the chance that this will change for the actual series: Ultimo is discovered unconscious by a hiker; if we are really lucky, he’ll have lost his memories, become more human and only gradually rediscovers all the big, fateful things we see hinted in the prologue.

I believe it’s definitely too early to judge ‘Ultimo’ for its narration style, characters and story, the way a lot of people are doing. It’s a prologue, it’s likely that there will be a change in tone and approach for the actual series.

Additionally, a lot of the negativity aimed at ‘Ultimo’ stems from bias towards their authors… Stan Lee is an American comic legend, but a lot of manga fans don’t like American comics and see this collaboration as some sort of hostile take-over. And Takei? He’s a Shonen Jump author and his most famous work is a long-running battle manga with a long drawn-out tournament arch… which lost so much popularity in the end that it was cancelled. Takei’s next series, ‘Juuki Ningen Yumbor‘ was cancelled after a mere ten chapters. So you have people who think that it will be the American superhero influence ruining ‘Ultimo’, and others who think it’s the fighting/shonen influence, or specifically Takei (who could get called a one-hit wonder by the people who like to do so). Whatever ‘Ultimo’ does, I doubt it will manage to overcome all of that bias. But as long as it’s decent and does its own thing well, I am sure it can find its audience. I do wish Takei well. 2009 could be his year: he will get to finish ‘Shaman King’ and he will start a new prestigious project, a collaboration with someone he admires. Good luck, man!

My biggest personal issue will be with the artwork. I had read ‘Shaman King’ from the beginning to around volume 22, and while I was never a big fan of Takei’s drawing style, I sort of liked it. It’s unique, and looks particularly smooth and neat in ‘Ultimo’. But I always had trouble following the fighting sequences in ‘Shaman King’, and this could definitely become a problem again here. It remains to be seen, though.

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.

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.

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.

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.

For a change, and because I’m currently too lazy to read a lot of manga, this post will neither be a review nor a rant. Instead, I’ll show off some photos I took a while ago. They are manga-related, don’t worry. You see, a few years ago, I read Naoki Urasawa’s ‘Monster’ faithfully and with joy, but it never amazed me as much as I had been thinking it would. Specifically, Johann was a bit of a disappointment to me. Now, don’t get me wrong, I liked the manga, I read the entire series, but I am not a fan and I did not reread it as often as I reread other manga.

That’s probably why it took me a few weeks after moving here to remember that a part of ‘Monster’ takes place in Munich. At my university. I go to the same university as Johann.

Enough babbling, on to the photos and comparisons!

First off, main building of the Ludwig Maximilian University, main entrance. Evidently, I took that photo months ago when it was still winter. Good thing I did, because you can tell by the tree that Urasawa paid attention to the details.

(The photos are only displayed as 450×450, but they are actually 500×500. If you care enough, riight click, view. Sorry.)

It is rather nice in front of the main entrance, where students hang out on the Geschwister-Scholl-Platz, a standard spot for meeting people and lazing about. Urasawa sure got that right, too.

Meh, apparantly, I do not have photos showing the fountain and the grass, and I am rally sorry that I could not bother to find the exact angles… but you get the point…

Next is still the main entrance, an open, arching hallway thing. I should maybe catch up on my architecture vocab, geez.

There are more hallways in the manga that look familiar, but I cannot say for sure whether they were drawn after specific places, and if so, which. It is a pretty big building and some places look similar.

Next, the library! You know which? I am not sure how open I can be here concerning spoilers, I better not ruin the plot for anyone. But if you’ve read Monster, you’ll remember that a library played a role in that story arch.

It was impossible for me to get a proper angle because the building is directly at a street, and I don’t want to be run over… Urasawa passes this off as the university library, if I recall correctly, but it’s the Bavarian State Library. Of course it is used by students, who affectionally (or just lazily) call it Stabi.

At one point, Nina is shown standing on the Geschwister-Scholl-Platz, next to the fountain, looking up at the library. This is not actually possible, as the library in question is situated a bit further down the street.

That’s really the only nitpick I have. Oh, wait, there’s something else. It’s incredibly world-shattering! The main entrance’s doors cannot be pushed to the inside, as shown in the manga, but must be pulled to the outside. I know because I keep running into them.

Last but not least, I was very determined to locate the stairs from another, very memorable scene. When I had found the stairway rather by accident, I spent a lot of time trying to find the right angle. I hope the result is convincing enough.

The funny thing is that when I came across this place first, it was a Saturday afternoon and the university was silent, almost deserted. Everything about this empty, old stairway told me: You should not be here. This is an evil, forbidden place. Run! Run for your liiiife! Remember what happened in the manga!!!

Then my sister told me she uses the stairway a lot when going to the Slavistic Studies library, and I felt silly.

Regarding Tokyopop’s Manga Pilot contract:

I’m not an artist, so sadly I can’t say “That’s it, I’ll never work for Tokyopop”, but I’m a potential customer, and I can say: “I’ll never buy their manga again”.

What really gets to me is the gratuitous French-bashing in the contract. A lame attempt to be cool and edgy? It kind of seems like they assume this is the general opinion -  everybody hates the French, every potential signer is racist.
But insulting France like that seems to be a typically American thing, and one I expect to find on teenager parties, in bad movies and on internet message boards – not in legal documents.

A legal document containing xenophobic speech, while the program is meant to appeal to non-US citizens as well – give me a break!

The language of the contract is obviously geared towards American kids, and not the intelligent, open-minded kind, but the lowest common denominator. And if this is the kind of artist Tokyopop wants, this is the kind of content they want to produce, and this means I’m not wanted as a customer either. Good riddance then.