I will start this off with a disclaimer. If you are a major fan of the Pretty Cure franchise or children’s toys in general all these observations will be incredibly obvious to you. It will be like me letting you in on the secret that the sun rises in the east and then sets in the west. But for everyone else this might be interesting.
Posts Tagged ‘Pretty Cure’
Pretty Cure Merchandise: Welcome to the Machine
July 19, 2011
Ongoing Investigations: Case #130
July 8, 2011
GEN Magazine is a new online offering from small publisher GEN Manga Entertainment, Inc.. The first issue features four very different stories from sumo and boxing to oddball comedy to fantasy and finally to horror. The first Wolf was a bit hard to decipher at first, I thought perhaps it was a crime series but by the end it had a dramatic sports feeling. I’m curious how the budding friendship between Shota and Naoto will affect their separate threads. Also on the curious drama end was KAMEN where a masked warrior wakes up to find himself in a war-torn countryside. This story has a familiar, kind of like Guin Saga, feeling. But as with most fantasy stories, one chapter is not enough to get a feel for the world and mythos it is building yet. The drama is finished out with Souls where a mysterious woman confronts a girl’s mother about her past grievances. There wasn’t enough time to build the tension and emotion in the story so the resolution doesn’t produce a great reaction. My reactions were spot on for VS Aliens though with its absurd humor. Kitaro is minding his own business in school when Aya approaches him saying she believes another girl, Sana, is actually an alien. What sold me was Sana’s reaction to the whole thing, I chuckled quite a lot. The art in this anthology stands out because each series is dramatically different from each other but all leaning to the more raw end. While odd at times and indie, it never comes off as pretentious. I enjoyed three out of four stories so I call this a successful first issue!
I want to be clear what it means when GEN Magazine says it is an indie manga collection. For better or for worse this is not the AX Alternative Manga magazine. These are not radically experimental manga that break with the formula and structure of traditional manga. This is your more standard forms of manga from a small publisher that you would not normally think of alongside names like Shueisha and Kodansha. These are standard story types with artists you most probably have never heard of. But this is not a bad thing. Every manga anthology tends to have a different feel. If you had three baseball manga you can pick out which one is from Shonen Sunday, Shonen Jump, and Afternoon just by their style. So even something like the boxing manga in this anthology may have manga tropes you have seen in more mainstream titles but it also has a unique vibe. Like Narutaki said the titles contained within feel a little more raw than you may be used to. You can tell the artists don’t have many (if any) assistants due to smaller budgets so the backgrounds are very infrequent and some of the art looks less polished than you would see in bigger magazines. On the other hand, the titles also seem freer structure and less merchandise controlled than selections from the big boys. The two titles that stuck out for me were VS Aliens and Souls. I just had to say that VS Aliens in my opinion feels very influenced by Haruhi without being a carbon copy. Not exactly sure where it is going but I am curious. I also did not like Souls but I freely admit that horror is my least favorite genre so very few horror manga tickle my fancy. Wolf and KAMEN were enjoyable but I would need a few more chapters before I could give any sort of definitive opinion on them. Wolf reminded me of Ashita no Joe while KAMEN struck my as a fantasy version of Parasyte. Reading GEN left like reading original concept doujinshi with the benefit of the structure and reliability of a professional magazine. It is a magazine for people who want something outside of the mainstream without going into avant-garde pretentiousness.
5 Series We’re Surprised Aren’t Licensed
August 9, 2010I’m not going to lie to you. This post is mostly an easy post we are doing to recover from the madness and non stop posts that came from our Otakon 2010 coverage. But just because it is easy post doesn’t mean it can’t be entertaining. These are all series that we feel have the ability to do really well if they were licensed and translated into English but for one reason or another have not been picked up for the U.S. There might be licensing issues behinds the scenes, the price might be insanely high, there might be a bidding war going on, or dozens of other reasons that are keeping these shows from being picked up. But the #1 cure to such problems is enough customer demand. So what do you think? Are we being delusional about the series we picked? Did we leave anything out that you think is a sure fire success?
Honestly, I find it fun to speculate what would make a good license and why going beyond my own personal desire for a series. There are about a million shows and books that I’d like to own for myself in English but a lot of that is wishful thinking (Legend of the Galactic Heroes will surely be picked up, right? RIGHT?) but with this post it is more about a business stand point or atleast the thinking that these series would do well enough to earn a little bit for the companies releasing them. That being said, I don’t work in the anime and manga business and I only have a vague knowledge of certain aspects of it.
Ongoing Investigations: Case #004
July 25, 2008
Banana Fish ends, as all classic BL manga do, with tragedy. I enjoyed the series. It ended well and rounds out the last book with a prequel story and an epilogue. I’d recommended it to people who want to test the water on their enjoyment of BL and can get over the fact that Ash Lynx is the bestest guy at everything. On a side note it might come off that I dislike Ash but I found him a charming if rather messed up character. I am mostly warning our readers of what to expect. Plus it’s fun to make fun of Ash.
Pretty Cure, wouldn’t you know as soon as I start watching this it comes up by Toei for download! Hurry up and catch up to where I am! This series is a more modern Sailor Moon. Why 4Kids licensed this and never put it on TV has slipped into many a conversation lately. I’m about to buy the license and become rich by getting it on TV because it would be that big. It is magical girl to a tee, nothing more and nothing less. The two girls are very different from each other and they start an unexpected friendship since, ya know, now they have to save the world together. They have cute outfits and cell phones that transform them into their other identities (Cure Black and Cure White). I do find their little familiars incredibly annoying. And even if you can’t get into this show, I dare you to watch the opening and/or ending and NOT get it stuck in your head.
I have watched about as much Pretty Cure as Narutaki has and I only have one comment. Dear Internet: Nagisa and Honoka are not lesbians. Get over it. I don’t see this lesbian subtext people go on and on about. If you want there to be this subtext A. you are extremely creepy or B. admit that it’s all in your head. They have a perfectly innocent female friendship. It seems guys can be just as bad as fujoshi in self-delusion.
Mach Girl is a new show and the first short episode is streaming online in Japanese. This is a spin-off series of Speed Racer. The styling of the show is what most interested me, it is a meld of American and Japanese. Certainly Flash created and has the cutout feel (and extreme simplicity) seen in a lot of Cartoon Network original shows. Also has very Hanna-Barbara type villains.
I just finished Tower of Druaga. I enjoyed it. It’s nice to see some fantasy anime again. I was obviously much sadder about one character’s death than Narutaki was but I think it was mostly because I liked that character more. Seeing how Gonzo is in big trouble, I really hope they can finish Tower of Druaga. I can’t say I would be devastated if they never finished it but I do want to see how it will all play out. I am most curious to learn more about Neeba’s motivations. In many ways the reasons for his actions will determine how much I go on to recommend this series overall.
I <3 Neeba
Just got around to reading the first book of Two Flowers for the Dragon. It is shaping up to be a good fantasy shojo romance. It has a competent female lead who is willful and spiritually powerful. Her two suitors (quite literally fiance #1 and fiance #2) are different from each other but not polar opposites. And neither is pretending to dislike our heroine (thank goodness!). There is also a story beyond this love triangle dealing with the kingdom, her missing father, and hopefully more to come. I’m glad to see CMX continuing to pick up some obscure but delightful titles.
That’s it for this week’s investigations! Look for new ongoing investigations every Friday!
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