Catching Up on…Manga

I’ve pretty seriously neglected this blog, so I’m going to do a series of “Catching Up On…” posts to discuss and respond to some of the various media I’ve been consuming and my experiences with them. While these posts may be long depending on how many titles I’m discussing, I don’t want to spend too much time on each title. As a result, I’m hoping to engage folks in the comments to flesh out things a bit more. Also, of course: SPOILERS ABOUND.

I used to read buy a fair amount of manga, but not a lot of variety. I jumped in on Bleach as it was starting here in the U.S., and I read Naruto, Fruits Basket, Death Note, Emma, Genshiken, Hot Gimmick, Nana, and probably a smattering of other titles along the way. But due to the lack of new titles that looked interesting (I didn’t go to manga blogs to find new gems, instead flipping through books at Borders) and, more importantly, a lack of funds, I dropped manga from my purchasing routines. I rarely checked out the section at Borders (hell, I rarely went to Borders at that point) and that was that.

But with an increased cashflow and a desire to get back into comics again, I took advantage of Borders’ going out of business sales and picked up a number of titles after I was given recommendations by a number of folks on Twitter, including @MangaCritic, @animeresearch, @ABCBTom,  @edsizemore,  @OneGreatTurtle, @PhoenixTerran, and @Jrnemanich (If I missed someone, apologies).

So below you’ll find some thoughts on the 10 series I picked up a volume or three of over the past few months. There’s a decent variety here, from a baseball series (I know!) to yonkoma about a cat who runs a ramen shop. Most of these are relatively recent titles, however.

Persona 4: The Animation – “You’re Myself, I’m Yourself”

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4, was the last game I purchased for the PlayStation2 (I even pre-ordered it), it’s the focus of a chapter in my thesis, and it, perhaps more than Persona 3 (another game I particularly enjoyed), made me very interested in not only other games in the SMT franchise, but in Atlus as a game developer and publisher.

So, as should have been expected, I was excited by the idea of an anime adaptation of the game when it was announced last year. But I was also intrigued by the logistics of adapting this particular sort of video game (a mix of classic dungeon crawling with dating simulations) to a more linear narrative mapped out over 26 episodes.

I won’t be doing weekly write-ups on the show (instead I’ll drop in and out when I feel particularly spurred to write something about an episode), but I wanted to address the first episode and some of the elements of the game that come through in the episode that feel particularly interesting, and my own unfamiliarity with animes based on video games.

Catching Up On…Anime

I’ve pretty seriously neglected this blog, so I’m going to do a series of “Catching Up On…” posts to discuss and respond to some of the various media I’ve been consuming and my experiences with them. While these posts may be long depending on how many titles I’m discussing, I don’t want to spend too much time on each title. As a result, I’m hoping to engage folks in the comments to flesh out things a bit more. Also, of course: SPOILERS ABOUND.

Summer Wars

I was excited about Summer Wars for a while. You had Mamoru Hosoda directing, fresh off of the delightful The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (seriously, you should watch it), Madhouse doing the animation, and notion of the world shutting down as it had given up much of its basic functions to a single online entity (in this case, OZ) rang especially hard as it was seeing release in the U.S. around the time Julian Assange was all over the place.

So my expectations were fairly high for Summer Wars, and while I wasn’t totally disappointed, I was a bit more than surprised by the movie’s overall arc. I was expecting something of a young kid saves the day from artificial intelligence while in the countryside sort of a deal. And I did get that. What I was not expecting was the emphasis on the intergenertional family unit and the tensions inherent with that dynamic.

Yes, Summer Wars is what would have happened had Ozu been alive to direct a cyberpunk film.

Justice League #1

Only 4 of them are in this volume, and only 2 them for any significant amount of time (and 1 isn't even a superhero yet).

While I’ve read a lot of manga recently, and will do a “Catching Up On…” post for them soon, I wanted to quickly talk about the American superhero comic, particularly the DC New 52.

I started reading comics when Ben Reilly first became the Scarlet Spider. I stopped shortly after Norman Osborn returned and Peter Parker was, once again, Spider-Man. During that time, I read mostly Spider-Man and X-Men titles, including the big Marvel universe event Onslaught (and in turn read a few issues of the Franklin Richards pocket universe the Avengers and the Fantastic Four had ended up in as a result). Despite being a big fan of the Batman: The Animated Series, I never ventured into purchasing anything from DC Comics (synergy fail?).

I left comics for a couple of reasons, not the least of which is that both comic shops in my town disappeared on the same weekend (raising even my young suspicions that they were doing something illegal, and got out of Dodge before the fuzz showed up). But by the end of the Clone Saga and the Onslaught event, I was just kind of done with the insanity and knowledge required to keep up some narrative points (so…many…back…issues…purchased…).

I, likewise, had shifted interests from comics to movies, and was spending my limited income from my first job on DVDs (thinking of how many back issues or different titles I could read had I spent the money on comics…man.). And so I pretty much left comics alone.

Catching Up On…Video Games

I’ve pretty seriously neglected this blog, so I’m going to do a series of “Catching Up On…” posts to discuss and respond to some of the various media I’ve been consuming and my experiences with them. While these posts may be long depending on how many titles I’m discussing, I don’t want to spend too much time on each title. As a result, I’m hoping to engage folks in the comments to flesh out things a bit more. Also, of course: SPOILERS ABOUND.

I only have a Wii, so my discussion of my video game catch up dates back months ago (really December of last year and into the start of this year) to when I received a number of games for Christmas. It’s rare for me to ask for games since I normally just buy them myself, but since I so rarely ask for specific things from people, I figured why not?

I will say that it was nice to have a number of games to play again as gaming is something that I’ve never done very avidly since the end of the SNES era. My gaming consumption fell off sharply after that, not picking up a PS1 until near the end of its life cycle and then getting a PS2 (which is now dead). I’ve had a DS and a DS Lite, but I’ve never brought or played many games. While I enjoy them, I’m much more casual than I often wish I were about it.

In any case, the games I asked for were all games I was eager to play and experience, so it was actually a real treat (and often frustration).