8
Oct/091
Oct/091
Ninja Girls
Ninja Girls, otherwise known as Rappi Rangai, has finally been released in the US by Del Rey manga. I popped into the bookstore while out shopping today and decided to check for it on a whim. The book is $10.99, which is slightly more pricey than most manga, but it’s definitely worth it.
I talked about this series in my “6 Manga You’ve Never Read” post but I just wanted to gush about it, and the US release, s’more. Bear in mind this series is a tad raunchy, so don’t read on if your innocent mind can’t handle it.
25
May/0933
May/0933
6 Manga You’ve Never Heard Of (But Should Read)
And here we are, the follow-up to my 5 Anime You’ve Never Heard Of post!
You damn kids have it easy! Why I remember back in the day (that day being the late 90’s) when Japanese comic books could only be found in comic and specialty shops and the paperback graphic novels cost 20 bucks a pop!
Imagine trying to keep up with your precious Naurtos at that price! Rassa frassin’, get off my lawn and sit your keesters down while I show you 6 manga you’ve never heard of!
20
May/082
May/082
+Anima
Being a geek I naturally have a collector habit. Of course all I really seem to collect these days are comic books and video games, not that there’s anything wrong with that. When it comes to comics my tastes obviously tend to lean heavily toward the manga flavor (interrupted now and again by things like ElfQuest or Marvel’s Dark Tower adaptation) and since I’m only really collecting Fruits Basket and Fullmetal Alchemist right now (despite having read all of the former and up to the recent magazine chapters of the latter in scanlation) I will sometimes grab a random book for something fresh. Lately I’ve had no luck with series sticking for me, one volume of Trinity Blood and two volumes of Godchild (some part of the Cain series) sitting on my dusty "manga I randomly have for whatever reason or are in Japanese, French or Spanish" shelf will attest to that.
While perusing the book store one day after work I spied something called "Anima" (not noticing the "+" at the time which would have otherwise scared me away, I hate titles like that, the godawful Blood the Last Vampire spinoff Blood+ has not helped my opinion on that matter either), which looked kiddy but the style and the back description caught my interest and so I picked it up. Seven volumes later I have to say I’m diggin’ it.
10
Dec/0718
Dec/0718
Death Note
Not too long ago, I found myself becoming a Death Note fan literally overnight. …It was kind of an accident. You see, after a year or so of people telling me over and over to read Death Note and me ignoring them, I happened to catch the second episode on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim, having turned on the TV to that station thinking it was Sunday. By the end of the episode I said to myself “Wow… I didn’t know the main character was this insane” and decided I needed to see more.
I had just been watching Avatar episodes on Veoh.com so I decided to see if Death Note was on there. Sure enough it was and I watched the entire anime series over the course of 3 days. Now I’ve also collected and read all 12 volumes of the manga. At this point I have come to the conclusion that the goth kiddies who carry around little black notebooks and worship “Kira” have completely misinterpreted the plot.
Without many spoilers, I’d like to give a little review of the anime, the manga, and the overall plot. But mostly I wish to discuss how I believe many fans of the show misconstrue the main character Light Yagami entirely.
22
Nov/071
Nov/071
The Gunslinger Born
"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."
I was going into the bookstore for something else entirely the other week and happened to see Marvel’s The Gunslinger Born, hard cover and featuring all 7 chapters, sitting on a shelf right at the entrance with an offer of 40% off with my Border’s card.
I never finished reading Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, but I plan to some day, despite hearing of the abysmal ending. I sort of lost track of the books when Mr. King was out of commission, having been hit by a car, and then one day saw the 7th book sitting on the shelves of the bookstore. Despite all that, and despite that I had read the first four books many years ago and my recollection is fuzzy, I remember liking The Gunslinger. So this deal was naturally too good to pass up.
31
Oct/075
Oct/075
A Jack Chick Halloween
I regret to inform that I was not able to come up with a good Halloween comic in time for the holiday this year. Truthfully it sort of snuck up on me, oh man, I’m getting old. However! I didn’t want to leave anyone high and dry in the giggle department so I decided to compensate by partaking in the grand tradition of remixing a Jack Chick tract (one about Halloween, of course.)
For those of you who don’t know, Jack Chick is an Evangelical Christian who founded a publishing empire of shitty, shitty comics that are supposed to somehow convert people to "crazy on fire Catholic-hating fundamentalist Christianity", many of which he’s drawn himself. These comics tend to follow the same formula, there’s the good Christian, the ugly, evil non-Christians who are all consciously on Satan’s side, and some moron who somehow never heard of Jesus ever and believes every single word the good Christian tells them, converting completely 5 minutes later. I mean, if you honestly never heard of Jesus before, and someone tried to explain the concept to you, seriously, would you believe it?
Jack Chick is also known to write absolute untrue bullshit about other religions and Halloween in his "tracts", and when he does cite a source it’s always something under his own publishing company. I chose a Halloween comic that has the biggest load of bull about the origins of Halloween you’ve ever seen, and as a bonus is stars a favorite Chick character of mine: Lil’ Susy, who he always inadvertently draws really insane and creepy looking when she talks about JEE-SAYZ.
9
Jun/07219
Jun/07219
Fullmetal Alchemist: Manga Versus Anime
WARNING! HERE THERE BE SPOILERS!
also tl;dr
2009 Notes: Hooray for Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. It pretty much fixes everything I had a problem with here. I’ll probably revise this rant in the future seeing as its haphazard and now somewhat obsolete, but for now here is it’s preserved for the ages!
Keep in mind this rant was about the FIRST Fullmetal Alchemist TV anime. Brotherhood makes me quite a happy Sai.
This is a huge rant I was writing on and off for quite some time. There isn’t alot of stuff out there that can give me a serious case of nerd rage, but this is one of them: Fullmetal Alchemist the brilliant comic book and its grossly subpar animated counterpart. I just heard some fangirl heads explode, but hear me out! Unless you don’t like spoilers, because I don’t care to dance around them and wish to make a solid case for why the Fullmetal Alchemist manga is superior and why it should be read. Please keep in mind this post is aimed at people already familiar with the series, although it may get you interested, and you may find it funny, you might be confused at some points!
12
Apr/074
Apr/074
Making Comics With Scott McCloud
A while ago I went on a sort of shopping spree at the bookstore. Somewhere between grabbing The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis and picking up volumes 10 and 11 of Fullmetal Alchemist I spied a book with the word “Comics” and the name “Scott McCloud” and snatched it up without a second thought.
Now, I will admit to never actually having read any of McCloud’s comics, and yet I recognize him not only as the brilliant mind behind the 24 Hour Comic but also as a comic guru of sorts. His level of enthusiasm for the artform is contagious and his books are both fun and informative. Some of his quirky ideas have been criticized or even considered crazy, it’s definitely nice to hear more than the same old same old from cartooning books.
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