Anime Vice Anime/Manga News

So, while a third of the way through watching the first episode of DURARARA, I was getting ready to theorize about the merits of reality-based anime for this column. The first 15 or so minutes of this anime - - with its story of a suburban kid’s eyes being opened by a move to the big city - - honestly felt like a show on the CW. I was prepared to make all these snarky comments about how this was like, I don’t know, GOSSIP GIRL in 2D and think aloud about how perhaps there’s less room and a less-establish industry for live action in Japan, which is why such urban melodramas would be played out in animation. I could even reconcile the dark plot twist of the girl getting jumped in an alley, drugged and kidnapped by a van full of goons as being perhaps a “societal commentary” sub-plot. That is, unusual, but still within the realm of real world possibility.

Then the cat helmet vigilante showed up. Alright... the needle just went up a little on the fantasy dial. Perhaps this is going to be a more down-to-Earth story like DEATH WISH about a normal human taking the law into his own hands. Again, unusually, but not entirely outlandish.

Then, the “Headless” rider takes a couple rounds to the chest, survives a decapitation and then executes a goon with a reaper’s scythe made of shadows. DING! DING! DING! The aforementioned fantasy dial shoots all the way up. What? This is going to be a dark superhero story? I really couldn’t have called it.

You’ll notice that the unpredictability of these shows is recurring theme for these columns. Oddly, I’m reminded of the Japanese horror flick AUDITION, which I saw a few weeks ago. I suppose it’s a difference of Eastern and Western philosophies on genre entertainment, but the writing training I’ve got has stressed that you need to establish the tone of the story early on. That is, you can have a stretch about the character’s everyday lives in a slasher movie, but you need to at least tease about the killer in the first ten minutes. The thinking seems to be less stressed in shows this and AUDITION.  The latter of which seemed to go on for at least 50 minutes before anything scary actually happened. DURARARA certainly has better (pun intended) execution than that movie but, I don’t know, I’m not as intrigued to see what happens next as I have been with other shows so far.
 
Watch the first episode and judge for yourself. Thanks to Statiiq for suggesting this and keep these recommendations coming! However, do me a favor and make sure they're available to watch somewhere online - - preferably on Hulu.

-- Tom Pinchuk is the writer of UNIMAGINABLE for Arcana Comics and HYBRID BASTARDS! for Archaia Comics.   Watch out for the HYBRID BASTARDS! hardcover collection this March - - available for pre-order now on Amazon.com .

Apparently the Daily Beast, a web-based entertainment mag focusing on various pop culture features, posted an article declaring the "craziest cities" in the United States (mostly in a relatively positive light, although the factors involved psychiatrists per capita as well as "eccentricity"). Seattle, Washington ranked #19 and a blogger at Seattle Metropolitan Magazine blogged about their ranking. And how did they choose to depict "crazy"?

If you guessed "a picture of Naruto cosplayers goofing around at Sakura-Con," you win the big prize! (It's extra-funny because the blog's focus is on drinking, and the post talks about Seattle's ranking as a boozy city, and I'm pretty sure those Naruto cosplayers are NOT legal drinking age. Or drunk.)
 
For the record, I have no problem with the depiction of cosplay as "fun-crazy"-- the photos on the original Daily Beast are almost invariably of wild and crazy people at wild and crazy parties and usually in wild and crazy outfits.

No, my complaint is the suggestion that somehow cosplay is representative of Seattle's own unique craziness, as opposed to something that goes on in pretty much every state in America (not to mention abroad). So, without further ado: 

Dear Seattle Metropolitan Magazine, 
 
Cosplay is NOT, in fact, something uniquely Seattleish, much less NARUTO cosplay-- hell, I've seen hobos in Portland wear Naruto headbands! Come on. I'll be honest: I like Seattle's Sakura-Con, but it's not usually where I see the really crazy cosplay. And it's DEFINITELY not where I see the craziest and most chaotic anime fans. (That's a compliment to Sakura's staff, by the way.) 
 
Perhaps instead of using a picture of young cosplayers to depict Seattle's craziness, you should replace it with pictures of the traffic that flows into Seattle on I-5 on a Friday night. Now THAT is crazy. 
 
Lulz, 
gia

 Pretty ironic that this would come up the week we post the "cosplay" 3-Minute Expert. What say you folks?

If you've been keeping up on Durarara!! on Crunchyroll (or, ahem, elsewhere-- naughty), you've watched episode 10 and you're probably drooling for the next one. It's not that there's a really horrible cliffhanger, per se, but to borrow John and AHR's phrase: this shit is about to get real.


So yeah, we're all waiting on pins and needles to see some of the payoff from all of the (very entertaining in and of itself) setup. Here are some things you can do to keep yourself busy until episode 11 comes out on Friday:

1. Reorganize your anime and manga! My shelves are a horrible, horrible mess. Maybe I can kill some time by cleaning them up. This photo is of one of my manga shelves. I've carried so much stuff into the office for my coworkers to read (and so few of them actually DO read, sniffle! Except AHR, who does). Time to re-sort!
 
  2. Learn to cook something awesome. Vertical has a great line of Japanese cookbooks (my favorite is actually Donburi Mania, but it's looking a little worse for the wear, so I took a picture of Bento Love instead). But you don't have to stick to something so thematic. Have you ever made lasagna? Yum.


3. Play some cards. I'm an ancient old hag and I like cribbage. John is reading this over my shoulder and says you guys should start an Anime Vice Texas Hold 'Em tourney. For the record, Anime Vice does not encourage gambling, and play responsibly.

4. Hang out on Anime Vice. A lot. Duh.
 
5. Beat FFXIII. Hey, that'll take you a few days if you play straight through.
 

6. Learn sanskrit! Granted, it probably won't come in handy much, but come on, how cool is it to say that you know sanskrit? Besides, you know how much fun it is to look at someone's kanji tattoo and tell them that it doesn't mean what they think it does? You can do the same thing with sanskrit!

7. Build a real, working Gurren Lagann. I wanted to include this video in today's 3-Minute Expert, but we don't have the source file anymore, so I'm embedding it here instead. Nyahhh!

 
 

So what are YOU doing to kill the time before Durarara!! 11? And how did you dig 10?    

To those you who were irked because you thought FINAL FANTASY XIII was too “on the rail”… your concerns have been addressed. Motomu Toriyama, the game director behind the 13 installment, has promised that the next game - - presumably the fifthteenth game that will follow the FFXIV MMO that was just recently available made its beta available for play - -   will be more of an RPG. It seems Toriyama-san prefers a narrative with some interactive elements on the PS3, rather than a game with some plot to string it along.

In his words…

“Personally, the Final Fantasy games that I have worked on have been very story-driven, so in terms of the development I wanted to, of course, use my personal strengths which where those… the next title that we will create will have those [RPG] elements, and the improvements to those elements that [fans] were mentioning.”

I don’t know if it’s a translation issue, but there seems to be a lot of generalized double-speak in his statements here. I suppose he wasn’t expecting there to be such a response to the changes he made, and now he’s saving face. Anyway, though I haven’t played FFXIII myself and, thus, can’t vouch for fans' concerns, I can speak from my own experience with plenty of other games. While I’m all for crafting a narrative and immersing the player in a world, there’s nothing more maddening than when a game starts feeling like a CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE book with even less choice. I’m specifically thinking of the last METAL GEAR game that had something like 40 minutes of cut scenes before you even started playing the thing.

Gia still deep into FFXIII, last I checked, so she can probably vouch for how on-or-off the rail it is. But, in the meantime, what do you think, oh narrative-enduring Anime Vice community? How much story is too much for your final fantasy?

-- Tom Pinchuk is the writer of UNIMAGINABLE for Arcana Comics and HYBRID BASTARDS! for Archaia Comics.   Watch out for the HYBRID BASTARDS! hardcover collection this March - - available for pre-order now on Amazon.com .

 

Info

Title: Berserk
Studio: OLM
Number of Episodes: 25
Year Produced: 1997 
 
  

Plot:

Berserk is the tale of the somber swordsman, Guts. Told over a number of years, we watch his development from an emotional aloof youth, to a tragic, grizzled adult. Set in a feudal environment, the story contains fairly normal (though graphic) plots of war and political intrigue. Yet, despite being the protagonist, Guts is not the "main character" of the story. That honor goes to Griffith, the common birth mercenary leader with dreams of ascending social ladders.
 
Griffith, a figure of great skill, grace, and charm, raises an army entirely by force of will. In an ever changing world, the "army of the hawk" evolves too, taking on roles bent on proving their place and worth.
 
Of course, what makes this tale the most enjoyable is its story telling. Spanning years, guts goes from being an unwilling (i.e. involuntary) member of the group, to Griffith's most trusted ally. Its at this point that an element of graphic fantasy shows up. Foreshadowing what is to come, the raiders come across a seemingly impossible foe. A man so monstrously powerful he's referred to as "The Immortal." Clearly inhuman, he directly states that this story is a tragedy, and no one's role will be sadder, than that of the swordsman Guts...
 

Stuff you might love about it

• The slow boil, but masterful story
• The use of nudity, in non hyper-sexualized ways
• The dark, dark undertones, splashed with graphic imagery
• The beautiful art
• The grand evolution of tone
  

Recommend it to your friends who liked...

Claymore
Fist of the North Star
Gungrave
Blade of the Immortal

Images

 

Conclusion

If you're looking for something quick and gratifying, Berserk might not be for you. Much like real life, the characters will occasionally act quite illogically, but viewing their lives over the course of years leaves a delicious taste in your mouth. The biggest flaw, of course, is the ending. Most people will tell you that the ending is terrible, but that resides mostly around the fact that it does not continue. I mean that seriously. Your jaw will drop, everything will change, and you will check your DVD menu over and over for that next episode that's never to come.
 
Its not uncommon to feel a number of emotions at that point, but I think everyone will agree... this is a series that doesn't suck.

Today we will be looking at JZH’s resume of amazing costumes. JZH is from the country of Russia, and yes they do cosplay in Russia. Other than that I do not have a lot of information about her, probably because of the whole Russia thing. Either way she looks fantastic in a dress, so who needs words when you have pictures!

JZH cosplay curriculum vitae spans wonderful Jrock costumes to the common place C.C. and even heads into the crossplay territory. Check out her Cosplay.com profile for more pictures.  
 

Comic Natalie reports that Yubisaki Milk Tea's last issue is now on sale in Japan, so I thought this would be a good time to talk about the manga-- and why you should seriously consider picking it up. And not just because it involves a dude in a dress (though for me, that's an added perk).

Yubisaki Milk Tea is a romantic drama about a young man who's torn between two women; one is his slightly younger childhood friend, and the other is an emotionally damaged classmate. The twist is that the man, Yoshinori Ikeda, has a hobby: he cross-dresses. In the end he actually creates an entirely alternate identity named Yuki, as whom he originally befriends said classmate.

It sounds like the setup for a wacky comedy, and there are some amusing moments, but this M-rated manga is a bit more of a dark look at growing up and discovering one's identity. It's also a manga that's often brought up in conjunction with Kodomo no Jikan due to the frequent sexual tension and occasional nudity and other content, because the characters involved are young: Ikeda and his classmate Minamo are in high school, and his childhod friend Hidari is in middle school. Yubisaki is one of the titles that sometimes comes into question when people talk about the potential fallout of Chris Handley's sentencing-- but volume 8 is still currently scheduled on TOKYOPOP's website.

The story that develops, in all honesty, doesn't really deliver as much as it could. The result is in large part an angsty love-triangle soap opera.  But in my opinion it's still a bit more creative than your average love-triangle manga (more so than, say, the earlier chunks of Vampire Knight, which was entertaining but let's face it, pretty trashy). 

It's also published in Hakusensha's Young Animal seinen anthology, which is known for some of its more fanservicey titles (and photos of real women in bikinis), but I think its story combined with its more sketchy, fairly neutral art style makes it one that will appeal to members of both genders who like a bit of romantic drama in their lives.

If that's you, go pick up a copy of Yubisaki Milk Tea #1 today. And then come back here and tell me what you think! (Or, if you've already read it, get a-commenting!)    

There are a couple good ways for a city to attract tourists. Now I’m not going to name them all, for that will be impossible, but probably the best way and easiest way to attract millions of people is to build something from One Piece, and that’s what Kumamoto City is going to do. On Thursday they had a meeting in which they decided to build the pirate ship Going Merry in the city park. They decided to build something from One Piece because it’s creator, Eiichiro Oda was born there.

The Governor is sure that this plan will stimulate the local economy by attracting tourists from around the country and around the world. However, by building Going Merry, they will now have to build Thousand Sunny, and then maybe Impel Down, Marine Ford, and the floating restaurant Baratie; it can’t stop with Going Merry. When I become a homeless man panhandling in Japan, guess where I’m going to call home?

[Via ANN]

So, a friend linked me to this new music video-- it's known Japanophile Lady Gaga's new tune "Telephone," featuring Beyonce, and the video itself is essentially a sort of hip-hop Thelma and Louise on a ton of crack (and it's probably NSFW).
    
But I noticed something interesting: there's a bit where Beyonce goes and meets some douchebag in a diner, and he gets up to do...something, and smacks some other girl's butt on his way back. The subtitle that appears when he does this is ワンピース-- "Wanpiisu," which can also be read as, you guessed it: One Piece.

Okay, it could also be referring to a "one piece dress," but no one in the shot is wearing one, so I'm going to suggest a more fun idea: that Lady Gaga is in fact a huge fan of Monkey D. Luffy and crew and threw in a reference.

I don't know if that's actually the case, mind. But it'd make more sense than the video itself... 
 
UPDATE: Apparently La Gaga may be a Command & Conquer fan, too.

Okay, so, my months do theatrical costume design have taught me several things. First, and foremost, you'll spend more time designing and assembling female clothes. Female clothes just tend to be more complex, or varied, covered in various establishments that male clothing usually lacks. Granted, this dress/battle armor from Shining Wind isn't everyday wear... BUT LOOK AT THE FRILLS!
 
At the wallet busting price of ¥8,330 (US$91.87) I assume that this might not be a pick-up for most of us, but I'm not about 10x more interested in checking out the 2007 Shining Tears x Wind anime, based off the video game franchise. I mean, look at those frills! Plus, she's got some sort of cross weapon. It kinda looks like a lance, but it looks blunt... so its kinda like a cross-cudgel. Talk about beating someone over the head with the religious dogma.