20 CommentsManga Driver / By Scamp / Published: May 18, 2013

Manga Driver: Real

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Volume Count: 11 (ongoing)

Takehiko Inoue made his name in the 90′s with Slam Dunk, the hugely popular basketball manga. After that he was sponsored by ESPN to do another basketball manga, Buzzer Beater, but that one didn’t go down as well. So the next year he decided to switch genres and starting drawing Vagabond, the samurai epic. But I guess after a few years of him waking up surrounded by pages of samurai doing slam dunks, he realised the basketball was in him and he needed to go back to that genre before he exploded. Sitting in front of his editor and faced with pitching his new sports manga, he desperately needed some new angle.

“It’s about bask..bas…” gaze darts around the office.

“Baske…ba…baaaaa” eyes dart from newbie mangaka sweating profusely to experienced editor in chief picking his nose to the new sub-editor who only has one leg so is in a-

“Wheelchair basketball! My new manga is about wheelchair basketball!”

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24 CommentsManga Driver / By Shinmaru / Published: May 17, 2013

Manga Driver – JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders

jojos-bizarre-adventure-stardust-crusaders16 volumes (complete)

Here we are at Stardust Crusaders, the third part of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. It follows Jotaro Kujo, the grandson of Battle Tendency’s Joseph Joestar, who also tags along for the ride. Dio Brando, the sworn enemy of Jonathan Joestar, has risen from the grave once again due to a plot hole, because Erina totally took his reinforced coffin at the end of Phantom Blood. Dio’s rebirth brings with it the development of Stands — spiritual manifestations of psychic powers — among the Joestars, including Jotaro’s mother, Holly, who is in danger because her Stand is slowly killing her. Jotaro, Joseph and Joseph’s friend, Mohammed Avdol, embark on a long journey to Cairo, where Dio is hanging out, so that they can kick Dio’s ass and save Holly.

Stardust Crusaders is the most well known of all the JoJo arcs. It’s also where, I think, Araki’s ability as an artist catches up with his ability as a writer. Stardust Crusaders’ art starts off solid (if occasionally blocky) and gets quite good by the end. There’s a great level of detail in the settings, the character designs are cool, the layouts for the battles are more clever than before, and on and on. Lots of improvements, big and small, to the art that make it that much better than Phantom Blood and Battle Tendency. After a certain point, I’d probably pause a few times per volume just to admire a particularly well-drawn scene. Araki came a long way from Phantom Blood. (To be fair, it probably helps that I read the Viz release rather than crappy scans.)

It also introduces a concept that shifted a ton of things in the manga: Stands. Yes, the Ripple is out for the most part (Joseph uses it a bit, but not much), and Stands are the new hot shit. As I wrote mere sentences ago, Stands are the manifestation of one’s psychic abilities (Araki made them spiritual entities because he wanted a visually interesting way to draw psychic powers), but more importantly than that, they are a vehicle for Araki to turn the story into anything he wants at any given moment.

(Note: There will be minor spoilers in this post. There are precious few big twists to spoil in Stardust Crusaders, but I won’t be writing about any of that.)

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17 CommentsManga Driver / By Scamp / Published: May 16, 2013

Manga Driver: One Punch Man

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Volume Count: 3 (ongoing)

One Punch Man is a superhero comic, a genre I’ve never really got on with. Thankfully One Punch Man falls into that category of superhero comic that fully realises how silly the whole superhero idea is. It tells the story of Saitama, a man who trained so hard at becoming a superhero that he became really strong. So strong that he ends every single fight in a single punch.

The central joke to One Punch Man is that Saitama is so powerful that he’s bored. Nothing poses a threat to him anymore so he just sort of wanders through life in a mild unimpressed sulk. He shows up on the scene of the crime a little bit late because sure what’s the rush anyway, listens to the villain blabber on about how they are the strongest for a bit, before eventually getting tired of that and punching them through the nearest wall.

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25 CommentsGargantia on the Verdurous Planet / By Scamp / Published: May 15, 2013

Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet episode 6 – Shut up and dance for me

vlcsnap-2013-05-13-18h12m49s188A lesson on how writing episodics can sometimes lead me down really strange paths: I could now blag my way through the origins and history of bellydancing.

I was under the impression that Ledo asking Amy to perform the bellydance for him was not too far from asking for a private dance at a pole-dancing club. But bellydancing’s origins are not quite as explicitly sexual as that. It dates back from Egyptian times where it was seen as a fertility dance. It was still performed by dancers for a Pharaoh’s personal harem and all that, but it had much wider cultural acceptance as a form of social dance, performed by both sexes and often segregated. The sexual side was always there, but it’s only when western traders came into the region that the dancer became this image of Orientalist sexuality. The outfit Amy wears was popularised by nightclub owners when they realised the amount of money they could make out of something foreign that was just at the right level to not be too sexual to initiate moral outcry, although there has still been plenty of that. Nowadays there’s a large amateur bellydancing community. A big reason for this is the increased emigration rate means there are big communities of Arabs across the world and this is a way of getting in touch with their cultural heritage.

See? You’ve learned something new today.

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35 CommentsHunter X Hunter / By Shinmaru / Published: May 14, 2013

Hunter x Hunter 79 – The Koala Mafia

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I enjoy that the Chimera Ant designs are getting more ridiculous rather than less so. I cannot wait to see the next batch of bizarre creatures the Queen shits out.

But not everything is happy happy joy joy in the world of the Chimera Ants. This episode builds on the last by showing more of the Chimera Ants flashing their individuality in more brazen ways, pushing the limits of what they can and can’t do like children testing their parents’ patience. Colt and the penguin are correct when they say it’s behavior they have to crush quickly — it’s all well and good when they’re running around killing humans and stuff, but what happens when all the delicious humans are gone? Something tells me these rebellious Ants aren’t going to be too interested in kickin’ it and taking orders from whatever King the Queen poops out.

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11 CommentsFlowers of Evil / By Shinmaru / Published: May 13, 2013

Flowers of Evil 6 – Wetter than an Otter’s Pocket

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Regardless of whether it’s even close to what Nakamura says, I laughed at that phrasing in the gg version of this episode. I could totally buy Nakamura as a worldly traveler collecting phrases about people boning.

I had the funniest cringe on my face through the entire first half of this episode, mainly because I was waiting for something awful to come and shatter Kasuga’s happiness. Poor Kasuga really hoped that Nakamura just wanted to be friends with Saeki and cheer on their budding relationship from the sidelines. You can’t really blame him, though. He’s still a kid and hasn’t yet had hope stomped out of him by the world at large. I assume that is to come later, though.

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46 CommentsShingeki no Kyojin / By Inushinde / Published: May 12, 2013

Shingeki no Kyojin Episode 6: Mikas(Aaah), She’ll Save Every One Of Us

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Despite the title, and this being mostly Mikasa’s episode, I just had to include this week’s titan expression, even if it was ultimately a throwaway. No matter what, they always manage to get a laugh out of me, because I can think of at least two people that they resemble and I wonder how they’d feel knowing that somebody beautified their faces by putting them on lumbering, man-eating monstrosities.

From the six episodes that have aired so far, I’ve scrabbled together three constants of the Shingeki no Kyojin universe: Characters that talk about the future in any remotely optimistic way will end up with their blood decorating the scenery, large groups of panicked people will summon titans from the ether, and unrepentant dicks will find themselves on the business end of whatever edged weapon Mikasa has on hand at the time, or her equally sharp tongue. Read More »

22 CommentsManga Driver / By Scamp / Published: May 10, 2013

Manga Driver: Short Cuts

Short Cuts CoverFront

Volume Count: 2 (finished)

Every country seems to have their version of the materialistic, gossipy teenage girl stereotype. The details differ in minor ways, but many similar trends arise. Talking endlessly about mindless gossip, bitchy and shallow minded, fashion obsessed and concerned about their appearance. Where Japan differs is that, due to their fetishisation of youth, the teenage girl stereotype is seen as the ideal creature.

Short Cuts is a reaction to this idolisation of the teenage girl. More specifically, the Kogal, a specific brand of teenage girl with their baggy socks, short skirts, Shibuya-based lifestyle. If the Kogal had existed several centuries ago, there would be giant statues of them and their baggy socks. A monk’s sutra chat would be him saying “yeah but no but yeah I saw him checking me out but he’s like so gross and like I only like men who have load of money so I can like make them buy me new clothes”.

Yes, that is a joke from Short Cuts.

(Also NSFW warning: There are boobs in this post)

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