Mon, 28 June 2010
Again, I can't say thanks enough to Caroline and Johanna for such a wonderful discussion. You can read Caroline's thoughts at www.FantasticFanGirls.org Johanna's website is www.ComicsWorthReading.com Here is the list of books we discussed:
Comments[5]
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- Just found the podcast - I am enjoying it tremendously!
Just a note on Ooku: The narrative seems to be loosely based on actual Japanese history. I happened to watch the J-Drama "Ooku Dai Isho" that centered around the character of Kasuga, and the birth of the Ooku. Gives another dimension to the manga for me. - Thanks for the comments, Julia! I second the rec of Fullmetal Alchemist. I have now read the next 4 books and it\'s endlessly inventive with great character work. The feel of it reminds me a little bit of Buffy/Angel/Firefly, with lots of varied male and female characters, and a range of tone between wacky/funny and dark/metaphysical often in the same story.
How is Mai the Psychic Girl? We did a followup conversation the other day, after which I went to the library and raided the \'girl-manga\' racks (which I had never found before because I\'d been going to a different library branch) and saw that one but my hands were already full.
Thanks for reading and commenting! I\'m glad this was an interesting discussion to you. - Ooh, I'll love to see how you react to the "girl manga". I tend to love some of the settings and stories, but not so much the romance sadly. Crimson Hero is best example for me. If it was just a series about competitive volleyball with all the training and matches and team interactions, it'd be great. When they add in the love triangle, I actually get bored.
I haven't read Mai since it was released, so I don't know how it has held up over time. It\'s very psychic powers and conspiracy theory -- more "Push" than "X-men". The artist Ryoichi Ikegami has a very clean semi-realistic style. He's best known for ultra-violent assassin/Yakuza type stories -- Sanctuary and Crying Freeman. And Mai doesn't stint on the violence end at all, especially in the confrontations between characters. I do think by today's standards Mai may come off as a more passive hero than we're used to. It's certainly not a hearts and flowers approach to psychic powers. - First off, I loved the theme of this podcast episode. It's very useful seeing and hearing manga through someone else's eyes. Experience wise, it's funny. I've read manga since the early Eclipse days, but only came back to it in the last six or seven years, when it started appearing in every Tom-Dick-Harry bookshop. I still tend to think I'm somewhere in between Johanna and Ed vs Caroline. I don't read nearly as much and I'm mostly in the shojo/seinen side of things.
When I started out, the only stuff they were bringing over was shonen. Mai the Psychic Girl was about a teenage girl with psychic powers, but it was shonen. I also read Shirow's Appleseed, so I found the reactions to Ghost in the Shell interesting. These days I don't read all that much shonen, because I've found the art style so cluttered and sketchy and fanservicey. Hikaru no Go appears to be the odd exception to the rule, since it has a much cleaner style. From what you've said I might enjoy FMA.
Caroline and Ed talked about Pluto and the panels without any dialogue. As someone that grew up with 1980s superhero comics crammed with dialogue and exposition, that was the biggest revelation for me. Suddenly the story could breathe. Characters were allowed to simply react. I agree about the over captioning of current superhero comics with different points of view; it gets almost as ridiculous as the angsty thought balloons. And harder to read, since they have to color the boxes for each viewpoint. Sometimes the color contrast is not what it should be either.
I *love* Jiro Taniguchi's books. I haven't read Summit of the Gods, but I've read both Walking Man and Distant Neighborhood. American publishers would be aghast at Walking Man particularly. They're so into "something big has to happen every issue" these days. They really don't know how to deal with slice of life material. Even in the 1980s we'd see "the day in the life" issues and now even the one shots have to feel momentous.
I read all three volumes of Ooku. I had the same issues with the character designs. I loved the story when it swung more to the political intrigue and the female shogun. The harem didn't interest me as much. The one thing that you didn't touch on in the podcast was the language/speech patterns. I know the translation has been a bit of a controversial topic on twitter and with other reviewers. I think I eventually grew used to it.
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